548
PETER BROOKS
the basis of true human concerns and values.
It
seems to me imperative
that we bring to political debate - as
to
all our reflections on reality -
the best critical languages we possess, or can invent; and that our whole
sensibilities be engaged where our lives are. I was in my article trying to
understand, to interpret, what to many seemed sheer and ominous chaos.
If
Phillips chooses to see such an attempt as playing the "weathervane,"
so be it; but surely we need some instruments (and I hope mine were
closer to the more analytical variety) to know what the vectors of our
political atmosphere are.
If
we abandon the effort to understand the
world - and to understand consciousness in the process of reflecting on
the world - how shall we ever change it?
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
It is too bad both Bersani and Brooks are out
to
score points,
mostly textual ones, rather than to come to grips with the issues.
They manuever themselves to the side of good (meaning new)
politics and those who question their positions
to
the side of bad (mean–
ing old) politics, which, so far as I can make out, is a grab bag of
liberalism, Marxism, Trotskyism, electoral politics, "politics-as-usual"–
all presumably the exclusive property of the past. Bersani and Brooks
remind us of the evils of society, and the virtues of those who would
remedy them, as though this was what is in question. They are not, they
say, for everything that's new on the Left, though it is not clear where
they draw the line. There is also a good deal of fancy footwork about
language and literature and politics, which I do not understand. Nor
can I comprehend their unwillingness to recognizlt that, as Hegel ob–
served, all things may be related but they are also distinct.
What is the question I raised? I thought I'd made clear that it was
one of political identity.
If
not, let me be blunt. Are BI100ks and Bersani
radicals or liberals? What do they really believe about such basic ques–
tions as the nature of the existing system, the possibility of reforming it,
the viability of revolutionary activity in the U.S. today? Do they agree
with the politics of the Panthers, the Weathermen, Castro, Dubcek-of
the various Marxist movements in the rest of the world? On the issue
of tactics, which has a long and complex history, which tactics do they
accept, and which do they reject? Or do they simply favor, as their writ–
ing seems to suggest, anything militant and youthful, so long as it isn't
too
nutty?
I
~
