Cool. I look forward to some sippin and cogitatin time this weekend, during which the first item of business will be to read that stuff. Incidentally, are you going to get some of your sketches shot and up on the blog or do I have to find a food service size can opener for the whup-ass Imahafta bring down on you?
Yeah, I like what he says but what you say is closer to the bones of it, imo. It's weird that critics can go along for so long, me included I suppose, without talking about the sentences and events of the work itself. Like a party where the men end up so rapt in their competition with each other that they don't notice the reason for the party, which is everywhere and always the women.
The web ("web") of blogs and online mags that this dude is hooked into seems cool. I'm realizing that I don't know diddly about contemporary Marxist critiques of our augmenting darkness (imagine a really big umlaut leering at you from atop the 'a' in darkness, please)which, the critiques, I have one of. Although it usually looks as if it's just back from a cold swim. Mine, the critique. (Is it phallic language if it's about the male organization unrousted/unroosted?) Hmm. Seems to be a pattern this morning.
I also giggle a little about how the Aesthetes and the Ethicists can talk about the same thing all day long without agreeing on one blessed point. I tend to feel more comfortable with the aesthetic approach: i feel this way about this and understand it in the light of this tradition and relative to these philosophies, etc., than i do with the ethical or political (i think basically Marxist) approach with its relentless and usually humorless focus on The Man and all his/our nefarious mistreatments of the many colonial- postcolonial- futurecolonized generally brown victims. Not only is the politics mostly obvious, boring, and unlikely to change because of books (or talking about books), but the readings tend to be susceptible to social prejudice and deaf to music. In the reviews at Contra James Wood, you can see frequent errors of anger, too, such as attributing a certain authorial politics or intention where none can be known, and using these as points of argument. I spose the thing is to be aware of the aesthetic tendency to gloss and to set ideology apart from form, and the Marxist tendency to categorize ruthlessly and to impute tone and presume knowledge of the author's 'purpose'. Maybe a kind of foppery faces a sort of Red Guard and all sorts of misunderstandings and injustices inevitable follow.
You remember Mary Johnston's take on this? And Mark Burns'? One little Mormon congregation can be mighty diverse.
Cool. I look forward to some sippin and cogitatin time this weekend, during which the first item of business will be to read that stuff.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, are you going to get some of your sketches shot and up on the blog or do I have to find a food service size can opener for the whup-ass Imahafta bring down on you?
Yeah, I like what he says but what you say is closer to the bones of it, imo. It's weird that critics can go along for so long, me included I suppose, without talking about the sentences and events of the work itself. Like a party where the men end up so rapt in their competition with each other that they don't notice the reason for the party, which is everywhere and always the women.
ReplyDeleteThe web ("web") of blogs and online mags that this dude is hooked into seems cool. I'm realizing that I don't know diddly about contemporary Marxist critiques of our augmenting darkness (imagine a really big umlaut leering at you from atop the 'a' in darkness, please)which, the critiques, I have one of. Although it usually looks as if it's just back from a cold swim. Mine, the critique. (Is it phallic language if it's about the male organization unrousted/unroosted?)
ReplyDeleteHmm. Seems to be a pattern this morning.
I giggle a little about that.
ReplyDeleteI also giggle a little about how the Aesthetes and the Ethicists can talk about the same thing all day long without agreeing on one blessed point. I tend to feel more comfortable with the aesthetic approach: i feel this way about this and understand it in the light of this tradition and relative to these philosophies, etc., than i do with the ethical or political (i think basically Marxist) approach with its relentless and usually humorless focus on The Man and all his/our nefarious mistreatments of the many colonial- postcolonial- futurecolonized generally brown victims. Not only is the politics mostly obvious, boring, and unlikely to change because of books (or talking about books), but the readings tend to be susceptible to social prejudice and deaf to music. In the reviews at Contra James Wood, you can see frequent errors of anger, too, such as attributing a certain authorial politics or intention where none can be known, and using these as points of argument. I spose the thing is to be aware of the aesthetic tendency to gloss and to set ideology apart from form, and the Marxist tendency to categorize ruthlessly and to impute tone and presume knowledge of the author's 'purpose'. Maybe a kind of foppery faces a sort of Red Guard and all sorts of misunderstandings and injustices inevitable follow.
You remember Mary Johnston's take on this? And Mark Burns'? One little Mormon congregation can be mighty diverse.