I like Mike Davis's books, especially "City of Quartz" (haven't read them all).
My question is: what is the point of Mike Davis? What has he done, concretely, to upend the the thing he critiques? Or does he more enjoy his comfortable job as an academic?
The "point of Mike Davis" is to remind us that writers like Matt are working from within the liberal tradition they critique, without doing anything concrete to upend the thing they both criticize and defend?
This is way over my head; I dunno what MT is "both criticizing and defending."
MT is a working journalist, not an academic. MD is an academic. I think both MT and MD have done a lot of good work to critique the negative externalities of the neoliberal infrastructure under which we now live.
I guess my question is: so what? I'd hazard that MT probably has a wider audience than MD; I like both of them, but academics are always going to be in the academic tarantula-hole. Journalists and disk-jockeys (Rush Limbaugh!) can find a broader audience.
Informing people is a worthy goal. Getting them to take concrete action is a lot harder.
Matt criticizes and defends American liberal capitalism, thus eating his cake and having it too. At least a Marxist like Davis is consistent in opposing liberal capitalism.
Whether either one of them somehow energizes people to take concrete action is an altogether different question.
I also like them both, although the jingoism Matt is displaying here is pretty hard to take. Not being an American, I find the hollow puffery of "what the founders" intended pretty much masturbatorial.
Mike Davis is an academic and a Marxist. His rubber meets the road.
Now there's a contradiction.
I like Mike Davis's books, especially "City of Quartz" (haven't read them all).
My question is: what is the point of Mike Davis? What has he done, concretely, to upend the the thing he critiques? Or does he more enjoy his comfortable job as an academic?
The "point of Mike Davis" is to remind us that writers like Matt are working from within the liberal tradition they critique, without doing anything concrete to upend the thing they both criticize and defend?
This is way over my head; I dunno what MT is "both criticizing and defending."
MT is a working journalist, not an academic. MD is an academic. I think both MT and MD have done a lot of good work to critique the negative externalities of the neoliberal infrastructure under which we now live.
I guess my question is: so what? I'd hazard that MT probably has a wider audience than MD; I like both of them, but academics are always going to be in the academic tarantula-hole. Journalists and disk-jockeys (Rush Limbaugh!) can find a broader audience.
Informing people is a worthy goal. Getting them to take concrete action is a lot harder.
Matt criticizes and defends American liberal capitalism, thus eating his cake and having it too. At least a Marxist like Davis is consistent in opposing liberal capitalism.
Whether either one of them somehow energizes people to take concrete action is an altogether different question.
I also like them both, although the jingoism Matt is displaying here is pretty hard to take. Not being an American, I find the hollow puffery of "what the founders" intended pretty much masturbatorial.
"Pretty much maturbatorial".
Pretty much like postmodernist theory?