>I wouldn't compare Foucault to Shakespeare, but I do think that
>Caravaggio and Shakespeare must share something on some meta-aesthetic
>level of adventure, masculinity, feminity, gender ambiguity and
>transgression, crime, power, and master craft. They both belong to the
>big scale of accomplishments and performances.
I don't really see the substance of your argument here. Isn't this just another invocation of 'Shakespeare as genius'? -- an invocation that relies on canonisation industries as well as on any reading of Shakespeare in comparison to other writers. You name some themes that can be found in many places and specificy that these occur on a 'meta-aesthetic' level in S. and in C. But how? What are you using this to mean?
>The only reason for my suggesting a comparison is to gage what we
>consider adventurous, progressive, and an accomplished performance in
>art, life and transgression by some other scales. It isn't a matter
>of the decline of the West, but the contraction of expression.
These are assessments which, as you well know, are shaped by all kinds of contexts. This is true for the people who dislike/d the work of S. and C. as much as for those who love it. This is true for the people who like and/or dislike the work of Foucault, Butler, or Hockney.
>Yoshie wondered vaguely about the suppression of histories of
>transgression. Most people who look at Caravaggio or go to Shakespeare
>never see what we are talking about here--it has indeed been
>suppressed, and quite successfully--squeezed flat so to speak. On the
>other hand, we have been diminished and the fact that writers like
>Foucault or Butler struggle within extremely confined little boxes of
>analysis is a fairly accurate reflection of that diminishment.
We have been diminished? How would you assess this? In comparison to the people of the Renaissance I am presuming you to mean, and by what third term will you judge this? How can you have a full enough perception of the people of that period to ground that judgement? Do you think selected works of art sufficient for that? And could selected works of art be sufficient to judge 'us' (and as to this -- meaning who, exactly?).
>It
>isn't a matter of declines or hierarchies, but constriction and
>reduction of the means of expression.
Which is a hierarchical system of judgement.
>After all neither are painting
>giant masterpieces or writing sweeping plays on accension to power,
>and falls into revenge, love, and murder, are they? There is not the
>money, the public, nor the cultural context to do so.
You are looking in the wrong place.
>(Although
>considering Monica, Bill, Ken, and Trent, you have to wonder why the
>hell not!) That isn't to deride Foucault or Butler,
It is an utterly misplaced set of comparisons based on a belief that different cultures are neatly comparable.
>Butler is constricted, and has reduced her means of expression,
>just like her prose style, into tight little circles. As I was reading
>her, I wanted to scream, Come on Judy, open up a little. Take a few
>broad strokes, stretch out a little, exercise the flamboyant, the
>expressive, and a more broadly conceived spectrum of registers. Risk
>being a fool, a slut, a poet and a philosopher all at the same
>time--make me admire you and worry that you will fail or fall in love
>with you if you succeed--you know take, the fucking chances.
She is not writing literature. I presume from this that you have such responses to Hegel? Well I don't, not at all. I find Butler's style not very sexy and sometimes disagreeable, but more enjoyable than Hegel. What does that mean? -- not much at all. I am just trying to understand what you're asking for here. I don't turn to Butler for stylistic brilliance, but to engage with new sets of questions about my cultural contexts. I get that. I don't always agree, I am even often annoyed or frustrated, but that is to be expected from such engagement.
>And the
>same goes (of course posthumously) for Foucault. Too fucking tight
>ass.
Playing your terrain, I find Foucault's style very sexy indeed. Varies between texts, but _The Order of Things_, for example, makes me laugh aloud, which I always find exciting. Does this pleasure prove anything about the comparative worth of F. and B.? It might. But it doesn't prove that B. asks no productive questions, which is what I want from her.
Catherine