Pigpen and The Rubber Duck

I’ve started another Wolff and Resnick text, Knowledge and Class, as the first in a set of three fairly sophisticated books involving Marxian approaches to class. After this, it’ll be Gibson-Graham’s The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, and then the collection edited by Wolff, Resnick, and Gibson-Graham, Class and Its Others. After that it’ll be on to the network society and information economy stuff in an attempt to apply these models of class, though there’ll be some side trips into composition along the way. It’s starting to feel like I’m getting a little momentum going, building up a little speed and force.

One of the first long-haul missions I drove when I was a brand-new soldier was in a convoy hauling 113s (originally manufactured by the Food Machinery Corporation, which always struck me as odd) on flatbed S&Ps across the state to an older base. There was a good stretch of road where we got off the coastal plain and into the hills on two-lane blacktop, country roads, not a traffic light in sight, though there’d sometimes be washboard or potholes at the lowest points between the hills. We were driving 931s, 5-tons, which don’t have much pull when you’ve got an armored vehicle sitting on the deck behind you, and we learned to open up the throttle all the way about halfway down the downhill side just so we’d be going good enough to make it most of the way up the uphill side.

Thing is, there’s only four tiedown points for those 113s. Two crossed chains in front, two crossed chains in back, hooked to the deck. One time or another, we’d all seen a chain pop. So you know we were watching our mirrors, especially when we hit top speed right at the washboard at the bottoms of those hills. You’d ignore the hard click of your teeth, or else you’d learn to bite your cheeks, and you’d keep your chin level while the horizon rattled, one look to the left side mirror, one look to the right, long enough to see those chains thrum. Then it was just the wide-open roar that slowed to an easy chug back up the uphill side.

That’s what this is starting to feel like: that first and early sense of rhythm on the uphill chug. I’m hoping it’s a while before I hit the downhill side.

In any case: Wolff and Resnick seem to be taking a hard-line social constructionist approach to Marxism, suggesting — as noted elsewhere — that they’re constituting an overdetermined theoretical practice that avoids teleological claims and goals of “revolution”. Interestingly, they oppose Marx to Locke, Descartes, and Kant (7), whereas Habermas — oh, hell.

I can’t do this. I’m reading this Knowledge and Class, and there are pencilled notes in the margins like “Hegelian!” and I’m distracted and tired and not much feeling like attempting to build my own bridges between critical theory and poststructuralism, especially not with some young genius who’s read Hegel and feels like writing in his books. (And, yes, it’s so obviously a him.) Tink’s got a horrible big wet phlegmy rattle in her chest and I’m worried about her and I’m taking her to the vet tomorrow. I want to save this post, say something smart, say that Wolff and Resnick are boring as hell and I’ve seen this all before. It’s rehearsal of class practices all around.

Bonus points: “Shirley” by L7, “Repo Man” by Iggy Pop, “Twin Cadillac Valentine” by the Screaming Blue Messiahs, “Hot Rod Lincoln” by Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, “Jesus Built My Hotrod” by Ministry, and the title track referred to above (missed it? uh-oh): what would you add?