Perry Anderson

BUT

Surely not the LRB archive?

The NLR archive?

I'm unsure if it was Mark S who gave me PA on the Stones, or vice versa - I think the latter - in any case we discussed it quite a bit at some point. Possibly not on ILX. Possibly even in an actual pub.

PA's argument on the Stones is actually relatively good and distinct (ie: good because it is an argument at all, not just waffle). It's something like: the Stones are more interesting than others from a progressive POV, because they proceed by taking reactionary things (like sexism) to an extreme.

This argument is structurally very similar to Adam Mars-Jones' VENUS ENVY (c.1990?) in its praise of Alasdair Gray in contrast to Amis & McEwan.

I tend to agree with Mark S re PA on Foucault - that line didn't work very well. For PA's overall take on MF one might want to go back to the very entertaining IN THE TRACKS OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM (1983?).

oops yes apologies zelda, i meant the NLR achive not the LRB archive

i shouldn't actually be posting at all this morning i am RGHT UP AGAINST IT deadline-wise

[posts some more]

Coming back from a long ILX hibernation and have to post in reply to the parody article upthread, I genuinely LOL'd - thanks for sharing that! It looks like there are some old blog posts about him floating online as Richard Merton w/ excerpts (https://chaosofmemories.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/perry-anderson-meets-the-rolling-stones)

A t/s question on British Marxist historians writing music criticism under a pseudonym: Richard Merton (Perry) vs Francis Newton (Eric Hobsbawm)?

I still have to read the new LRB essays when I have the time...

PA on music would always interest me much more than EJH - simply because EJH, like Philip Larkin I suppose, only wrote about jazz. The very idea of PA on the Stones is, by contrast, utterly compelling to me.

That's a good blog post.

hobbo took a pseud bcz the CPGB line on jazz at the time he started was that jazz was footling and degraded bourgeois trash (the proletariat shd be levelling up to and inheriting the classical greats, not shifting dodgily sideways towards modernism or anything american and commerical) -- and then kept it after this line softened bcz that was the name his critical work was attached to and the reveal would never not be awkward

PA i think bcz the NLR's foray into rock writing was very much a kind of intellectual speculation when a curious artistic opening seemed to flash up in a moment of political turmoil: he was (correectly) very uncertain of how the times (and the arts of the times) would work out, PLUS he didn't want to risk his recently acquired high-octane intellectual shtick and is nothing if not a massive cowardly pussy in this regard

in conclusion: i disapprove

also what a boring pseud ffs

he shd have called himself PIPPIN SHAGRAT

anyway reading that blogpost has reminded why it is so very U&K that i complete my patreon post on the same material but also that i have a ton of actual real work i'm actually being paid for that i need to get on with right now >:(

perry shd totally subsidise me for my attention to his oeuvre, out of his pots and pots of inherited landed-gentry money, the only way for the intellectual thread to extend to a new generation imo

While we're talking NLR pseudonyms, we can recall that Peter Wollen called himself Lucien Rey and Lee Russell. One reason in his case was that he had deserted the Army and was afraid of being recaptured and court-martialled.

One of my arguments about PA on the EU was that he overstated the extent to which the neo-liberal EU would automatically forbid any kind of social democracy. My sense is that it is more contingent than that, and more a matter of Realpolitik, rather than rigid rules.

Thus, an extreme instance: if Germany were to 'go socialist', could the EU stop it? Effectively unthinkable, as Germany is an EU hegemon. But of course the whole issue is more complex anyway.

I raise this because a letter to the LRB has made these points:

Perry Anderson claims that ‘Bernie Sanders’s three basic demands – reject or modify Nafta and the TPP; raise taxes on Wall Street; free university tuition – would be out of reach’ if the US were subject to EU rules. The EU member states and the EU Parliament rejected TTIP. The Commission has no direct influence on corporation tax but has objected to the tax breaks sanctioned by several member states, including Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It is true that the Stability and Growth pact attempts to exert fiscal discipline, but this is routinely flouted, especially at present during the Covid crisis. Taxation remains an area of state competence, beyond the reach of the Commission. As for tuition fees, many EU member states charge virtually nothing for university tuition and whether they do or not has nothing to do with the EU.

Simon Sweeney
York

I think 'routinely flouted' is the most useful reminder here. One thing that we often learn about the EU (from PA as well as others) is that it makes up, bends and breaks rules as it goes along.

The point about tuition fees (again, look at Germany) is rather a zinger - but perhaps PA has a comeback to this that I have not yet read.

yes the tuition fees thing is so obviously wrong with many eu member states currently having, or having previously had free tuition fees (scotland for example, which, perry cuomo being someone who is somewhat knowledgable on the uk and, you know, from there, should know) and bernie sanders tuition thing being limited to public colleges,HBCUs and trade schools.

I recently finished PA's 'The European Coup', so admired by Fizzles.

Superb levels of knowledge and detail - often into absurdly arcane things like sub-post-Machiavellian thinkers. Yet there is also a certain absurdity in PA writing at such length about this one writer, Luuk can Middelaar (I'd quite forgotten his first name till now), at such length. He seems to be mainly an ideologue, a self-justifying hack, though quite well-versed in the history of political thought.

I suppose you have to say that this is a conceit, a way of writing about the EU. But PA writes about the EU anyway, in parts 2 & 3!

Or is van Middelaar, whom many of us had probably never heard of, actually a bigger deal - not just in the halls of the EU itself but among, say, British pro-European types? Is he actually admired by the same people who like to retweet pictures of Donald Tusk saying he regrets Britain's departure? Had half the people on the anti-Brexit marches heard of him? Has he influenced their thought even if they haven't?

Many of us have had some degree of investment in the EU and a wish for the UK to stay in it. But it is hard for that view to endure PA's critique. He is one of the few people I have ever read who can make Brexit seem quite a logical and principled idea (though still, I think, a bad policy in real-world practice). I recall JC's grant of a score of 7/10 to the EU. People have scorned that for years. But wasn't JC, as usual, correct? PA, though, would surely not give the EU higher than 2/10.

i need to write up my commentary on this 3-part piece but not right now as i am extremely tired after being extremely busy for weeks on end

This thread must now be one of the best multi-authored discussions on PA ever to exist. It's longer than you might think.

we shd post him a print-out of this thread so he can rewrite where necessary (e.g. concerning uncle adolphe and also omitting any discussion of john bayley's opinions on anything)

― mark s, Wednesday, August 22, 2018

one day important ppl will be collecting my ilx comments into benjamin-style convolutes and writing as to how we wont see his (my) like again

Remarkably, I don't think that Mark S, or anyone, has yet commented on PA's epistolary exchange with Luuk von Middelaar himself, which becomes like a tribute act to the vintage exchange with T G Ash.

It's extraordinary stuff overall, with LVM writing a letter 2/3 of a page long in which he accuses PA of ad hominem biographical attacks, and drags in facts about PA's family history.

PA then responds to all his critics - too briskly and briefly to be satisfactory, in truth - and *in each case* inserts biographical facts about their careers as though these undermine what they've said! Rather playing into the image of him that LVM has just constructed.

Then PA responds to LVM, making too light of his own factual errors. He responds to LVM's excusing of his youthful Neo-Con writings (they were only in 2001! When we were writing on ILX! But LVM treats them as impossibly distant and thus forgivable), asking if LVM showed any sign of opposition to the Iraq War. This is odd because in early 2003 PA wrote an LRB article scorning protesters against the Iraq War. (I probably complained about it on ILX at the time!)

Finally PA winds up talking about 'tease for tease' between them and hopes to meet LVM over a glass of wine. Amphibologies revisited!

the tone of the exchange of letters annoyed me a lot actually, on both sides -- substantive content aside i really really disliked that mode of SCR clubbability, though i'm not sure if it's merely a rhetorical device (i think to be fair to LVM it was) or an actual reflection, of these great well-heeled comfortable thinkers laughing as they quaff port before a roaring fire, on a plane far above the rest of us

which is worse, rhetorical or actual? can't decide

Like to imagine that one day soon may we all quaff port before a roaring fire - ideally in a boozer in Borough - far above the plane of ILx.

This desirable plan would be more plausible if the Royal Oak had not had its deleterious makeover. Maybe another boozer can be found.

Mark: I can't disagree, but isn't this exactly the same thing as the long-ago TGA exchange that you were the only person to know about (and tell us about), and which you didn't seem to mind?

On reflection: isn't the clubbability a compensation for the bitterness of the exchange, with all its ad hominem insinuations?

I actually think that PA's greatest weakness here is NOT engaging on substantive content. LVM insinuates that PA is a timid Brexiter. Rather than coming out and admitting to a Lexit position, or whatever (which is what all his articles imply), PA just plays with words a bit and raises a glass. But the absence of substantive engagement goes beyond that accusation. PA's responses to the other critics are desultory, when most of them appeared to have raised substantive points.

a missive in the latest issue pointed out that LVM proposed dinner, with PA rejoindering with an offer of a glass of wine. WHICH IS IT????

This is clearly something to look forward to, once I have read the remaining ... 17 articles in my current issue.

https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/1378770031044030465/photo/1

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EyJf8MUVEAIJKYw?format=png&name=small

Edgerton on Pezza:
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2021/10/why-the-left-must-abandon-the-myth-of-british-decline

That was really good guide on Britisher intellectual history.

Is CP Snow taken seriously though? Not sure if he overstates that one.

the totality of snow's cultural presence today is the phrase "the two cultures" for science vs arts, with (if yr lucky) snow's line tacked on, that the arts shd know more abt the sciences, to be 👍🏽 or 👎🏽. i don't believe most present-day citations recall that leavis was snow's antagonist (leavis having also fallen a very long way out of intellectual favour)

which is not being "taken seriously" -- edgerton brings up a phrase ppl recognise to introduce a debate they know only by vaguest repute, as a rhetorical move to call for its replacementment (with perry vs EP) and as a low-key burn lol ("btw perry = snow in my analogy")

adding: leavis IS more worthwhile than snow i think, but VERY VERY flawed (i read his book on lawrence and it's just amazingly rambly and terrible and intellectually thin)

Just saw this take on the piece.

I have lots of thoughts about this from @DEHEdgerton about Perry Anderson and declinism - mainly that it's great to see a such sharp and appreciative essay on PA. I still think that DE bends the analytic stick too far though, missing lots on the processhttps://t.co/O9TtGmGVR3

— John Merrick (@johnpmerrick) October 5, 2021

merrick's unfleshed suggestion is i think on point, that PA's version of gramsci and hegemony pays too much mind to elites (and the formation of shaping cultural ideologies), with the key money-stuff morphing away hugely under the cultural radar.

tbf of course the NLR has published lots on the role of finance so the overall anderson project *does* address it, it's just that, having allowed space for all this important scholarship, anderson himself seems to pay it mind only rarely in his work

tl;dr: PA is an idealist gramscian not a materialist gramscian lol

I've always viewed gulf between NYT, & Times of London, as evidence of the Nairn-Anderson thesis (that our bourgeois revolution is incomplete and is fused with plenty of feudal aspects).

While the NYT published Krugman, the Times *genuinely believed* Ed Miliband was a Marxist > https://t.co/Irm6MNjtM1

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) September 12, 2022

today in claims i'm afraid i don't actually believe:

If you want to know “how to be like that” Mike Davis read 500 pages a day and apparently Perry Anderson reads a book every afternoon

— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) November 2, 2022

Is the book by Perry Anderson?

https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/0*71MbysBs606ZN8Nr

Mike relaxing with a book after he'd finished feeding his collection of exotic pets

Nobody ever got smart by reading a book in two weeks and taking time to think about it.

everything fredric jameson writes is terrible

― mark s, Wednesday, September 28, 2022

That one book with the Andy Warhol ballet slippers on the front sure had a nice cover design though.

Perry Anderson reading a Goosebumps a day.

mofo finishes the quick crossword in matrix bullet time

not me spending 20 minutes hunting the internet for news on the longest word perry has ever used (and whether you could contruct a crossword round it)

Not read it for years, but I *think* I'd stan for *The Logic of Late Capitalism*.

The essay?

long solid thread on PA's "in the tracks of historical marxism" -- useful at least a marker on specific conflicts and how accurately PA summarises them, in particular the debate pro and con althusser (kind of homework list in a moment when further homework may be a distraction and a luxury?) (anyway and however… )

I started Perry Anderson's In the Tracks of Historical Materialism. Early on he provides a hand summary of his Considerations on Western Marxism, which I generally think is good and right, but Tracks has raised a new doubt or two for me that I want to think about. He talks about

— Nate Holdren (@n_hold) January 14, 2023

IN THE TRACKS OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

I find it a bit odd to make a statement like this author has done through a series of tweets, not a piece of connected prose (eg: linked from a tweet).

I fully realise that Twitter is attractive and consumable and that Twitter threads have their appeal.

But in this instance the format isn't the best way to follow an argument.

"in the tracks": could mean like sherlock holmes! could also mean PA has been left lying bruised in its foosteps after it passed on its way

The thread is odd in not mentioning a large part of IN THE TRACKS, which is a critique of post-structuralism. A critique that Terry Eagleton opportunistically attacked at the time, before going on to say very similar things himself.

I agree it's a funny title, with those connotations. My sense has always been that it means something like "French theory today is merely following in the tracks of Marxism", but I would have to return to the book to corroborate this.

"I wouldn't trust Anderson on any empirical matters" lol

"did you pick up the milk Perry?"
"as to whether Anderson purchased the aforementioned dairy product, the record must remain forever in a state of occluded obscurity"