[- Book Review: Metromarxism by Andy Merrifield
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By TreborScholz, Section review-a-rama Posted on Tue May 13th, 2003 at 08:04:17 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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summer reading: Metromarxism by Andy Merrifield
A Marxist Tale of the City
(Routledge, 2002)
From Mr. Marx to Sir Engels to Herrn Benjamin, Monsieur Lefebvre and Debord to David Harvey and Marshall Berman. The author looks at these Marxist scholars and their relationship to the city.
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When Daniel Libeskind designed the windows of the Jewish Museum in Berlin he started with a list of the Jewish intellectuals closest to his heart. He then pinned down their living quarters on a map of Berlin of the time. Now his marker would glide from one dot to the other and the shapes that appeared on paper are now the frames through which visitors to the museum look at the Berlin of today.
In a somewhat similar manner, Andy Merrifield links Marxist theorists, dead or alive, in this charming, and witty book getting the core of their philosophies across and ending each chapter looking at biographical details that become evidence of their particular relationship to the city.
Let's grandfather Marx speak:
Now, humans "must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness of [Feuerbach's] thinking into practice. The dispute over the reality of non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question." Merrifield paraphrases: Philosophers can argue about truth until they are blue in the face. But they'll never find real truth in hallowed university debating rooms. Abstract thinking can be tested out only by being put through its paces, by making it right because it has been made to work.
Here on Discordia we had discussions about what it means to be "academic" (g-d forbid). I think there is no problem with theory unless it removes itself from everyday experiences. Then I'd use the a-word also.
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