>What is this if not cultural-historical psychology?
>
>Bruce Robinson
Indeed--but the translation seems markedly different in tone from what I
recall. It sounds more or less the same, up until tradition is
characterized through the "alp" metaphor. I am being lazy and not hunting
up my Marx/Engels compilation, but I am positive that the usual translation
has been tradition weighing like a "nightmare" on the brains of the living.
Marx's attitude was more sarcastic and angry than this suspiciously
Durkheimesque translation seems to suggest--unless Marx was mistranslated
before. This Marx sounds more like one who would have regarded culture as
socially constructive in a way that 20th century Marxist theory has been at
great pains to theorize, precisely because Marx didn't account for it.
Isn't Marx's take on Louis-Napoleon's rise one of a victory of false
consciousness, of delusion, of fantasy? To change Marx's airy
"nightmare"--if indeed that is what his metaphor was--to "Alp", a massive,
*material* object, is to completely invert the contextual referent, and thus
the meaning, of the phrase.
Perhaps someone who is familiar with the German original could clarify that.
(Perhaps *I* could, but I'm afraid my research time is accounted for, for
the next few weeks.)
Wordily quibbling about words again,
Doug