>The sketch on whiteness wasn't empirical behaviorism. It was an
>attempt to evoke insight through literary means and references to
>Arendt, Mann, Melville and Paz. So, if it failed to do that, then it
>fails on that account, not on fidelity to realism.
>From my perspective, from my way of thinking--or not-thinking, or
stupidity, or whatever you want to call it--your method of evoking insight
will always fail. Not because you are not insightful, but because it seems,
like all good pomos, that you try to wow me with *how* you articulate
instead of *what* you articulate. This a shame, because once I got through
the density of your language and overly self-conscious references, I found
some nuggets of thought that *were* insightful and intriguing.
>But my narrative didn't do its job, so I'll be borish.
I don't consider it borish--just speaking clearly. Again, though, my eyes get that Christian blank glaze when confronted with crit-speak and academic thought. I'm not telling you what you should do, only what does and does not work for me.
I do have one question/complaint from the original Ode, Chuck. You write
>In the media of recent years, it has become popular to visit a
>re-constructed heartland and call it The Heartland. For example, the
>Jim Lerher News Hour visited the suburbs of Denver at several points
>last year to gage the feeling of the people over the Clinton scandals,
>and the news producers considered the people there representative of
>a typical American place and sensibility. Certainly it was just about
>as white as it can get these days and was typical of the Right
>Heartland of semi-urban, semi-rural, suburban, middle town regions
>where there are few minorities, immigrants, and even fewer tracks of
>obvious poverty.
which is a great point. But why then go on to denegrate the people of this Denver suburb (and all of suburban-white America)? Isn't Jim Lehrer and the rest of the power elite more to blame than Joe Jones in Loveland? It seems to me much more productive to attack the real sources of power than the random suburbanites; it seems like a better strategy to attack and destroy racism at its source rather than attack the people who live (albeit, ignorantly) under its yolk. Maybe I am being overly simplistic, or maybe I am defensive about my white-boy suburban roots, but in my opinion it is too easy and not at all productive to criticize suburbia while not addressing the actual power structure.
eric beck