This small essay by Janine Brodie called “Power and Politics” has several other issues, but their most frustrating one is their outright DISMISSAL of Marxist class analysis for the stupidest reasons. Economic determinism? I guess if you yearned to softly dismiss marx by misrepresenting him.
God I fucking hate poli sci majors.
The previous page:
The next one:
I’m not the brightest crayon in the box but is it just me or does Doctor Brodie somehow make politics and power some sort of vague, unsolvable mystery? Like fr I don’t want just an echochamber of nodding heads plz help am I in the wrong?
I need help putting words to my issues with it.
Thanks for this, I’ll read through it later.
In the meantime, I’ve had a quick look at the author. What I will say is that successful career academics like Brodie are good for one thing in particular: they tend to represent the orthodox state of affairs even if they create their own brand around the edges. This means you can read a few of their articles, maybe a book (skimming the waffle sections) for a snapshot of the mainstream, ‘critical’ but uncontentious thought.
When you write for an academic audience that has been trained to think in a certain way, you’re at disadvantage as a Marxist. You know they’ll reject you if you push the Marxism too fast or too hard before you have demonstrated your intellectual credentials.
Opening an essay with close, analytical, and critical engagement with writers like Brodie let’s you show your reader (examiner) that you know what you’re supposed to know. This can also help to lure the reader in to accept your challenges, left with the question, ‘okay, so now what?’
And that’s when you can hit them with the Marxism, with or without directly referencing (well known) Marxists (including Marx). For example, you can present evidence of what’s been said elsewhere in this thread about the uselessness of lower, middle, upper class by asking what’s similar about an senior engineer at Tesla (‘upper class’) and the owner, Musk. This lets you question the orthodoxy in a way that leads back to Marxism without letting the reader know until it’s too late for them to reject your argument on it’s face for being Marxist.
This approach doesn’t always work and it’s not a fixed blueprint (a lot also depends on the learning outcomes and the marking criteria, etc) but maybe it’ll help you power through when you’re given other anti-Marxist readings.
Tagging @SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml as you might be interested in this thread if you haven’t seen it.
thank you for the advice!
Me thinks Janine Brodie has only read the Communist Manifesto…
I don’t really have an excuse as to why it took me so long to read this thread, but I finally did and I wanted to thank you for tagging me. Your comment (and all your comments) is very useful for me as a student and future professor, especially that bit about being a Marxist in academia. If the paper is not about Marx directly I really do have to censor myself quite a bit by talking about Marxist ideas and views but not referencing Marxists themselves for fear of being penalized.
To me, this piece by Brodie comes across as Political Science 101. It’s incredibly status quo and doesn’t say much of anything outside of what is already well established. I’m not going to speculate what year OP is in, but this is not out of the realm of first year PoliSci. While I don’t recall ever reading anything by Brodie in any of my classes, I’ve read and been lectured to in the same language. She is also a Canadian academic so maybe thats also why I am sensing severe overlap.
Glad you found the discussion helpful.
I realise this was a month ago now. Can’t believe I’ve not posted for that long!