Dear Erik.
I am very grateful for the intellectual contribution you have made. In the sociology degree and in the master's degree at the University of Chile, we have read your texts and they are very significant. A hug and best wishes
Erik, in all that you do, in how you live, relate to others, and reflect on it all in these blog posts, you continue to be my teacher and mentor. I'm grateful for everything I keep learning from you. Sending love and hugs, Ofer
Dear Erik, I have read your recent posts with great admiration. As so many others have said, you inspire us all in so many ways.
This week, the prize winning poet, Mary Oliver, passed away. Looking ahead to her own death, Oliver wrote in one of her poems:
"When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking
the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."
Erik, I cannot think of anyone who has embraced life in all its aspects more fully than you have.
May your path forward be comfortable and surrounded by love.
Many thanks for your wonderful blog (received courtesy of Patrick Bond). You have inspired us to the end. A good death, like yours, is a product of a good life; one without regrets, without lament for lack of courage; that has been principled and committed and made a difference. You certainly made a difference to me and many others too; not just those of us from the generation of 68, but to those who are younger, some here in South Africa, who are angry about the savagery that capitalism has inflicted on humanity, and determined to piece together, calmly and rationally, an alternative way, a just and egalitarian way, of organising society. In order to achieve this, we need critical Marxism of the kind you epitomise, and from my travels it is apparent that a small yet growing number of activists and students are reaching this conclusion.
You are one of the cleverest, most knowledgable people I have ever met, and your writings and talks have motivated me to work harder and think more clearly. But yours has been an intellectual life that eschews intellectualism, that recognises the limitations of intellectuals, and that underscores the importance of mass movements, both in formulating key theoretical questions, and in answering the violations and systemic abuse of ordinary people, especially those who are working-class and poor. I highlighted the following line from your blog: "without being embedded in a social milieu where those ideas were debated and linked in both sensible and misguided ways to social movements, I would never have been able to pursue this particular set of ideas [i.e. Marxism]."
You have also stimulated me and my colleagues through your kindness. We will never forget the way you supported our research on “class" in Soweto. Our 2007 "kombi seminar" in the township, which paused to look around and listen to people, then halted again for us to engage with your generalisations and new questions, is forever etched in my memory, and, whenever recalled, brings a broad smile. Your generous response to our book and Mosa Phadi’s film gave further encouragement.
I share your rejection of beliefs about an afterlife, but when people make a difference to the lives of others, a bit of them lives on, it becomes part of the identity and intellect of another human being. This is the reality of living within society. We are too frail to gain lasting benefit from all around us, but we embody the lives of a few - our parents, our loved ones, and, very occasionally, others who influenced our lives in meaningful ways. For me you are one of those very rare individuals, somebody who changed, improved, the way I act on the world. Ngiyabonga. I thank you, comrade. When you leave us, go well! Hamba kahle!
Peter Alexander, now known as Kate.
P.S. I have emailed a photograph from our tour of Soweto that captures the magic of realism.
Professor K. Alexander. South African Research Chair in Social Change, Director: Centre for Social Change, and Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg.
Like so many others, I am eternally grateful for the ways that you have both directly and indirectly shaped my thinking and the trajectory of my work, and the ways that your work has made possible a more rigorous engagement with Marxist thought. In our brief meetings, in regularly revisiting your writing, and perhaps most significantly, in listening to your recorded course lectures, I have learned much and been forced to systematize my own approach to research that contributes to social movements.
I’m in the middle of a road trip across the South, trying to answer some preliminary practical questions related to my research, and I have been re-listening to your Soc621 lectures, this time starting from the first class and listening all the way through, rather than cherry picking the lectures that pertain to the particular questions I’m studying at the moment (as I’ve done in the past). As always, the rigor in understanding class concepts is so insightful and useful, and the focus on ideology/mystification/hegemony in this latest iteration of the class has been especially engaging.
These short reflections don’t touch the magnitude of your impact, obviously, but I feel the depth of your contributions in my life and work, and in the outpouring of affection from so many others on this blog and so many other forums. I’ll never forget your incredibly kind call to let me know that I was accepted to the program in Madison, the first moment I felt it was possible for an organizer like me to find kindred spirits in graduate school.
Thank you for all that you are and all that you do.
Dear Eric,
Your blog was forwarded to me by my son, who is now a grad student in comparative politics, but many years ago, had the pleasure of playing some kind of crazy chess with you when we were in Costa Rica together for a MacArthur Foundation research group. Even these many years later, he remembers your kindness. And of course, I remember your impact as a scholar and activist. Those of us working in other institutions tried for many years to pry you from UW, but it was impossible given your loyalty to your students, colleagues, and to that grand public institution. They have been so fortunate to have you.
Most of all, I appreciate your relentless good will and even optimism about the possibilities of life and the redemption we might be able to expect some day even in a society so plagued by inequality, racial antagonism, and class hostility. To be able to see past all of this into a future that could be better is a special gift. It will be missed.
I hope these last weeks will be filled with the gratitude of hundreds of people who have been touched by your writing and your teaching. Your grace under the most unimaginable difficulty is something to behold.
Our thoughts are with you,
Katherine
Dear Eric, I recall your generosity and kindness way back then when I spent a few days at your place in the heady days of 1993 when I was trying to make sense of the crazy events unfolding in South Africa. I remember how you laughed at the silly jacket and shoes I had brought with me from California and how you padded me up to face the cold. As a subtropical gremlin, I really struggled to make sense of such sub-zero worlds, but what I did not struggle with was the clarity of discussion around strategy and tactics and the obvious limitations of my euphoric hopes about the transition in my country. But that immediately makes me recall of your close to the mid-eighties visit in Johannesburg and Durban where you uttered a peculiar word that had us flummoxed: eMail! Little did we know that our admiration for the fax machine would be outpaced by that, other s/heMail. You had a defining influence on many of us trying to fathom out the intricacies of class, race, caste and gender and we in turn, did torture our students with your intermediary class locations (and later, with many more).
Your posts are moving and heartening- and your words a counsel about facing the inevitability that will outlast us all. Shwele as we say here!
Astrid and I are at the moment sitting here in Cape Town thinking of you, staring at a full moon on this summer's night and want to say: thank you. Here: to the imagination and to real utopias!
Dear Erik, Your rigorous, elegant and thoughtful work on class is something I share with my students and use in my work: Recommended to me years ago by another dear Marxist friend. I am deeply saddened to hear how much you've been in pain; and hope for you the clarity and calm that you need for connecting and living as you wish to in the time that remains. I would be proud to feel as you do in the same situation. You continue to inspire. In friendship. Shakuntala. X
A fellow sociolgist who was a grad student at UW , from 64-68, before you arrived. Always enjoyed reading your work and now your moving thoughts on this site. We’re all going to transform to stardust sooner or later and believing one has made the most of the opportunity we had in our human form makes for no regrets. I will send your last post to the blogosphere where it will also have a fruitful life.
here is one of the countless who read you avidly at some point of their student life. For me, this happened to be the case at a time of profound disappointment about socialist politics and pessimism concerning its rational foundations. You were among the half-dozen scholars who helped me out. Thanks in particular for the "What is AM?" paper. You guys were showing the red/expert space might be a tricky one, but there is no absolute tradeoff, and there are paths science and revolution can walk hand in hand. In doing this, you struck me for the absolute reluctance to buy into any sort of aesthetics of trenchancy and categorical posturing. Raising strong criticisms without making a carnage, and getting to work on them constructively as soon as they were clarified, is a rare virtue. The overall example you gave me is one of remarkable balance, good-naturedness and intellectual honesty. This image of you and the lesson it carries will endure, I suspect, for all my life. Goodbye
I am very grateful for the intellectual contribution you have made. In the sociology degree and in the master's degree at the University of Chile, we have read your texts and they are very significant. A hug and best wishes