Is it all coming together? Thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis: (16) Comrades against the counterrevolutions: Bringing people (back?) in

City

Volumn 13, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 531-550

  Catterall, Bob ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 72149084390     PISSN: 13604813     EISSN: 14703629     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13604810903425861     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. The notion is in part derived from Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (1961). It is developed here beyond his discussion in that book but as influenced by engagement with the full range of his work and other work indicated in this endpiece.
2. An extremely valuable account of the book in relation to subsequent social developments is Michael Rustin's 'The Long Revolution Revisited' published in Soundings 35, Spring 2007, pp.16-30.
3. I refer to the speculative, at times impressionistic (with nevertheless systematic underpinnings that I begin to make explicit here), and wide-ranging approach - critical of exclusive reliance on standard scholarly sources and making use of narratives derived from a range of media - presented in a series of endpieces to issues of City, 'Is It All Coming Together? Thoughts on Urban Studies and the Present Crisis' The series was developed partly as an exploratory response to aspects of the significance of 9/11 and subsequently to aspects of the recent financialeconomic crisis, drawing on that sense of deep time, reaching out to pre-industrial contexts and times, to which I refer above. It has been developed episodically in this series, to some extent experimentally and also opportunistically as new events, publications and interpretations come up, as an exercise in what I have termed critical epic.
4. Catterall, B. (2007) 'Is it all coming together? Thoughts on urban studies and the present crisis: (11) From Neoliberalism towards a paradigm for a New International' City 11.2, pp. 244-272, particularly pp. 259-260.
5. Marcuse, P. Missing Marx: A Personal and Political Journal of a Year in East Germany, 1989-90, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991 (this is a re-worked version of an Oct 1990 German edition, A German Way of Revolution.)
6. E-mail correspondence
7. Nuttall, A.D. (2007), Shakespeare the Thinker, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. A problem for interdisciplinary studies arises here. What room is there for the interpretation of texts by scholars and citizens operating outside these disciplines? How authoritative should intradisciplinary readings be in inter- or transdisciplinary work? For citizens Virginia Woolf provided a clear answer: 'To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what to read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.' (An essay, 'How should one read a book?' (1932) reprinted in Penguin's 'Great Ideas' series, Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid, London: Penguin 2009, p. 91) Anything goes, then? No, that is not Woolf's answer. I shall discuss this on another occasion.
8. Miranda, J.P. (1980) Marx against the Marxists: The Christian Humanism of Karl Marx London: SCM Press (originally published in Spanish in 1978). Secularists disinclined to accept Miranda's philosophical account of science may suppose themselves vindicated by the references to Christianity and humanism in the book's subtitle. Before seeking to dismiss his overall account, they should consider, for example, both the range of sources establishing Marx and Engels' deep interest in the 'science of war' or 'military science' and, more importantly, the relevant aspects of such a science: 'supplies, the terrain, distances, the psychology of the contending parties, the moral trustworthiness of the generals, the possibility of new alliances, the political leanings of their governments, the variability of public opinion, the constructive capabilities of the engineers, the military traditions and training programs of the various nations, the time available for preparation, the authority of Clausewitz, the precedents set by the great geniuses of war, and so forth.' (p. 288) There could/should have been some such comprehensive scientific basis, or for a conclusion that there isn't one, for action in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or, moving beyond, purely 'military science', in New Orleans before, during and after Katrina, or indeed in the field of planning, or of policy and action in general.
9. Catterall, B. (2007) particularly pp. 261-263.
10. The Grady text referred to here is Grady, H. (2000), Shakespeare's links to Machiavelli and Montaigne: constructing intellectual modernity in early modern Europe', Comparative Literature, 52(2).
11. Grady, H (2000), 'On the need for a differentiated theory of (early) modern subjects' in Philosophical Shakespeares, John J. Joughin (ed), London: Routledge, pp. 34-50.
12. Hardt and Negri (2009), in the concluding volume of their trilogy, Commonwealth, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard U.P, argue, referring to the second half of the 1970s, that Foucault has a notion of power that is always double: 'He devotes most of his attention to disciplinary regimes, architecture of power, and the application of power through distributed and capillary networks, a power that does not so much repress as produce subjects. however, sometimes in what seem like asides or marginal notes, Foucault also constantly theorizes an other power to power (or even an other power), for which he seems unable to find an adequate name. In our view, the other to power. is best defined as an alternative production of subjectivity, which not only resists power but also seeks autonomy from it.' (p. 56) This can be seen as suggesting the possibility of a welcome and necessary convergence between Shakespeare and aspects of critical theory and of Foucault.
13. Greenblatt, S. (2004) Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare New York: Norton
14. In fact unions were already legal but the oathtaking involved was used as the basis for legal action against them.
15. My thanks to the BFI Information Unit and to Louisa Bewley of the National Film Trustee Company Ltd, for tracing back the permission to use five images that are currently on the BFI website, to "Film 4", to whom all credit is due.
16. Rowbotham, S. (2009), 'A New Moral World'. The Guardian, 18 July
17. Cairns, D. (2009), 'The Forgotten: Total Eclipse', see http://ww.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/ 825 (accessed 29/9/2009). Included on the second disc of the DVD of Comrades with much other valuable material (interviews with Douglas himself, with cast members, etc.), is a beautiful and fascinating documentary 'Lanterna Magicka: Bill Douglas and the Secret History of Cinema' (2009, 60 minutes)
18. Our Australian deputy editor, Kurt Iveson, notes that while there was some discussion in Australia on the Tolpuddle Martyrs on the 150th anniversary of their sentencing/deportation in 1984, a search of scholarly indexes did not seem to reveal much interest since then. My thanks for a reference to James Friguglietti's 'A Scholar 'In Exile': George Rudé as a Historian of Australia', the source for the information used in my discussion here. See http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache: aBHnmRFlQhYJ:www.h-france.net/rude/2005conference/Friguglietti1.pdf+george&+rude &+on&+the&+tolpuddle&+martyrs&+in&+australia&hl=en&si g=AFQjCNH6BJoD8bFoINZGPQiXq_SAC2318w 16
19. 'It's time the people rediscovered their collective power and sense of pride', argues Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan(The Age of Indifference, The Guardian, 10 January, 2009)
20. de Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America, OUP, 1946ed, p.403
21. 'In praise of. The Pitman Painters' The Guardian, 18 September 2009.
22. Hoggart,R. The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life, London: Penguin, 2009 edition with an introduction by Lynsey Hanley. In view of the complaint (point 5 above) about 'the university's limited and at times slanted conception of its extra-mural responsibilities' it should be noted that some of the most valuable intellectual work in the UK in the post-war period came from the extramural teaching commitments of Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and E.P. Thompson. The undermining of extra-mural departments is an important aspect (relevant to points 2-4 as well) of what became the neoliberal counterrevolution. In the US it's clear that events eventually associated with Lawrence Summers' brief reign at Harvard are a dramatic illustration of the slanting of universities. Though at least one British investigative journalist portrayed Summers' eventual resignation as the outcome of having upset 'minorities' (ie, blacks and women!), Joseph Stiglitz, admittedly no friend of Summers, gives some of the neglected background. He presents, first, the general picture, and later some of the specifics: 'Ironically, even as the United States was lecturing Russia on the dangers of corruption, there was a major corruption scandal involving Harvard University which had been given the contract for administering U.S. assistance for privatization. Andrei Sheifler, a professor and a close friend and associate of the then undersecretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, was appointed to advise Russia on privatisation through an AID (America's development agency) contract with Harvard. Amidst charges of the Harvard adviser using insider information for trading and inside connection to get a licence for establishing a finance firm, AID suspended and then cancelled, and sued to recover what it had spent. After spending millions in legal bills. Harvard paid more than $25 million and Shleifer more than $2 million. Summers, by then president of Harvard, resigned shortly thereafter, partially under pressure resulting from this incident.' (Stiglitz, J. (2006) Making Globalization Work, New York and London: Norton, pp. 242, 332) The very different subsequent careers, in relation to government and President Obama's quest for 'change', of Summers, on the one hand, and, on the other, Stiglitz and Cornel West (who left Harvard for Princeton in protest against Summers' attempt to steer West's extra-mural interests and work) have been and are a recurrent point of focus for reading the times in this series of endpieces.
23. This is the negative dimension to the employment of good film critics, referred to above, in the 'posh' newspapers
24. There has been little explicit discussion of the categories urban, rural, and rurban on this occasion though Flierl and Marcuse consider civic responsibilities in cities and Comrades implicitly raises questions about the nature of social life, imposed and potential, in rural areas. The nature of the 'rurban' has been defined and/or questioned in recent issues of City, notably in my endpiece to 12.2, July 2008, and Sharon Meagher's and Marcelo Lopes de Souza's contributions to 13.1, March 2009, and this discussion is to be extended to, for example Pushpa Arabindoo's use of the term 'peri-urban' in her paper 'Falling apart at the margins? Neighbourhood Transformations in Peri- Urban Chennai' (forthcoming in Development and Change)