Comments on: TERRY MARSHALL: It’s All About Hegemony

By: Robin Margolis

Robin Margolis — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:06:58 +0000

Thanks for this article. It sits nicely with a number of other books and articles (Jeff Chang and Robin D.G. Kelley featuring heavily within them) about the Left and its relationship to the larger cultural trends around us that I have been thinking about.

The one part of your article I didn’t feel I fully understood is your contention that “the Left is lazy and does not engage in study.” Could you clarify?

In part I think this sentence suffers from the ambiguity of both “study” and “the Left” as both can mean quite a number of things. As a recent college graduate, my frustration has far more been the fact that many elders as well as younger leftists have situated themselves in the academy and this has been the case for a long time. I wouldn’t fault them for not studying, but for not handing down traditions of Leftism, Leftist spaces, or even Leftist modes of study.

This strategy of placing Leftist thought and theorizing within the academy has kept many ideas alive, but also forces the context to be one of high compromise and great stress on any professors engaging in Leftist or radical thought because the academy has always been a dangerous and inhospitable space for this kind of work and since 9/11 even more so.

But you point out Robin D.G. Kelley, who himself is an example of a Leftist (or as he puts it a “Marxist surrealist feminist who is not just anti something but pro-emancipation, pro-liberation) who is invaluable to understanding our current situation and is academic as it gets, though he has worked extremely hard on top of that to study MORE in ways that will result in work housed outside of college and university classrooms.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:01:15 +0000

Hey Terry- This is great. I love it. At my job we’ve been using flip cams to document actions and load them asap. Our local groups have started to do it, and we used it during the big mobilization against the American Bankers Association in Chicago and the instant-ness of it I think made it really popular. We had over 40,000 views. The Bx just did a great one, tennants v/ Milbank and they got their heat and hot water back on after two months. I’d love to hear how other ppl are using “new media” in their organizing too. And I also love this idea of thinking about this bigger picture re: myth.

By: Vinny

Vinny — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:44:52 +0000

Great contribution, Terry.

Among other things, I particularly liked your analysis on MIA and Dance Crews. What are your thoughts on K’naan?

I will be meditating on your question about creating a revolutionary left myth.

By: Terry Marshall

Terry Marshall — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:34:02 +0000

Harmony this is an excellent way of putting it. The only person who i have seen that is attempting to deal with this question is Jeff Chang http://cantstopwontstop.com/blog/ who is coming out with a new book called “who we be: the colorization of america”

By: Harmony

Harmony — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:20:34 +0000

I think that the question that Terry’s raising is more about learning from Obama’s practice than it is about joining his project. The question that is important for the left – and left organizers in particular – to think about is not whether or not we should get on board with Obama’s project of nation-building. We shouldn’t. The question is whether we are fighting to construct a new sense of “people” or “nation” that will galvanize masses of people or whether we are content to just critique this (settler) nation. At the very least, Obama put the question on the table; the U.S left hasn’t even had the orientation to ask ourselves political questions at that scale (much less try to answer them).

Whether we like it or not, the national character of the United States is about to be up for grabs as the population becomes majority people of color / oppressed nationality over the course of the next 40 years. In the face of those transitions, the Right has their vision of a return to a pure white nation (that never really existed). Obama offered his vision for a more multi-cultural / assimilationist (but still imperialist) nation-building project. What is our vision? We need to develop an orientation that will allow us to engage that reality and put us on a new collective path.

By: Terry Marshall

Terry Marshall — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:04:15 +0000

Hello Boris, i partly agree with you. I wast saying that the left should mimic Obama’s exact words or even engage in the project he is engaging in. I was saying what can we learn from it.
Clearly Obama’s race speech was not historically accurate let alone truthful. But some parts of it did slightly challenge race and helped expand his base.
Reverend Wrights speech was on point1 Brilliant by anyone’s standards but it did expand and enlarge the Left. why is that? is there something in the left narrative that need to be fix? what is good about it and what is bad? these are the questions that i am trying to raise. Why are our facts not reaching people? what are our myths? I would suggest readings of Stephen Dumcomb’s book: Dreams: progressive politics in the age of fantasy.
We need to develop “Ethical Spectacles” not false ones like the right. Case in point: the summer townhalls over healthcare reform the talk of death panels. Dick Armey, head of Freedom works (non-profit leading the townhall/teabagger movement)was quoted in a new yorker magazine as saying “i don’t agree with their(tea baggers) facts but it has been helpful for the movement”

Whats our narrative?

By: Boris

Boris — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:36:56 +0000

On Obama and developing a US national identity: I think this is precisely where he should not be followed, but should be sharply challenged. The national identity Obama is developing in his speeches, including in his discussions of service, is one that covers up and reconciles the contradictions (class and national) that make up this society, when they need to be exposed.

An analysis of Obama’s speech on race may be worthwhile. Reverend Wright’s words did not “denigrate the greatness and the goodness of our nation” as Obama said, but rather exposed fundamental truths about this society: settler colonialism, imperialism, national oppression, and their manifestations (prison expansion, devastation of communities by drugs). Key elements of the Left narrative are already there, in the speeches of Reverend Wright not Obama. Concretely, challenging ruling class hegemony in this country will mean expanding that core of the people heartened not offended by Wright’s words and by the fact that someone was finally telling the truth on national television.

This is not a critique of the approach of “unite with Obama when he is right and oppose him when he is wrong,” but on the question of national identity and historical narrative of what the US represents, I think the Left has to maintain its complete independence, especially if the objective is conceived in terms of challenging ruling class hegemony. It is possible to develop a mass Left numerically, but it is just as possible for that mass base to quickly evaporate when the times get tough, if its political consciousness is essentially social democratic (e.g. what happened during the McCarthy Era following on the heels of the Popular Front).