Yes, we're going to *read* Judy. I tried to tell you before when you were gearing up to read Dostoevsky on BAD and you were trying to force me into doing same by suggesting that I was a wimp if I didn't read Dos along with y'all. So, run to Cody's this very minute and pick up a copy of _Psychic Life of Power_. If'n you're interested that is. Starts on or after 1/18. Yes that's right Doug, on or after 1/18 because I started this thing and I get to say when. Nyeh Nyeh.
Kelley
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Kelley,
I believe you claimed to have read all of Dos by the time you were nine. And, if you remember, my suggestion was taking on Proust, not Dos. So, technically, you whimped out on Proust--which I did too.
But like Francis, I'll shop for Judy on the cheap. I am not looking forward to it and already harbor a nasty sort of scepticism, a qualified sneering, and will be looking for any edge or crack in the surface to peel off. Just reading the chapter headings seems enough.
I have spent the last several years reading and thinking about the entire spectrum of what I've read from the cultural theory crowd and I have been trying to pin point what is wrong with it. I have to admit, I wasn't friendly toward any of it to begin with. So, now I've been through a few, learned some, and most of it is still wrong headed. It isn't just a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with it. In fact, most of the time, I more or less agree with the motivation behind it. For example, it is obvious that the modernist supra-rationalization of the world of the mind and culture was both arrogant and empty. But so what? That was obvious in the first place. In a sense the arrogance was betrayed by it's own vacuity. So? Do we really need to read endless diatribes against that presumption? Wasn't the whole attack referenced here on this list on positivism, empiricism, and the scientific method already known long before the the pomo crowd was potty trained?
I don't know at this point how to grabble with this impression--how to characterize the equally vacuous, pointless, and mis-directed thrust of cultural theory or whatever you want to call this work. Here is one version. Have you seen enough Brian de Palma films to see him as an imitation film director? He is like a bad clone of an art film--an inverse of the spagetti western. He already qualifies as camp in my mind. Well, when I read any of these latter day theory crowd, I feel like I am watching a Brian de Palma movie. I think after enough exposure, they will all look like the surrealists, like Dali--weird, amusing, period pieces.
Annalee said something that I thought was funny about a year ago. She said that post-structuralism was as dated as bell-bottoms. But that goes for the whole spectrum. It ages quickly, which in my mind links it to the endlessly recycled consumer culture, forever new, forever the same. The same old dead enemies, the same old dead heros, the same old dead issues.
So, I'll go find Judy, but that is the state of mind I will probably be reading from.
Chuck Grimes