rc-am wrote:
>
> the question, for
> me, is whether he should be observing and studying those who have distinctly
> less social power than he does.
> why is he so interested in the 'character'
>
> fatal ones Michael said,
> but what are they? I detect a bit of hesitancy to articulate exactly what
> these are.
>
> getting round to finishing _corrosion_ was a real effort, writing the review
> even harder. not because it was a difficult book, but because I had trouble
> reconciling a certain affection for sennett, one derived on the vaguest of
> recollections that he was on the team, a pioneer, etc. and being quite
> appalled at the book in front of me. if it says something about me more than
> sennett, it might well be that as I get older i get less conservative. if
> it's about sennett, then it might be that he's become more conservative. it
> might be a combination of both. who knows?
A beautifully thoughtful post.
You are right to point out my hesitancies in naming the specifics of a critique of sennet even in the face of the ostensibly neo-liberal complicit propagandizing tripe of corrosion of character.
I, too, thought of sennett as a particular fellow traveler. On the one hand he strives with a kind of earnestness to render a critical vocabulary of capitalism's depredation without recourse to the genre specific creole of marx and other dialectical historical materialists and left business observers. Looking for perhaps an indigenous american tongue to speak to the degradation of our humanity in the face of that which flows from this mode of production. I too like sennett attempting a kind of synoptic history in representing what subjectivity has become. Perhaps outside of continental vocabularies of deconstructions, post-thisandthat, culinary institutes, etc.
Fatal flaws: I think you are right on in asking about the power of 'observing' and 'studying' his subjects. In my mind he never adequately answers.
There are a variety of charges we can lay against sennett for the failure of naming, or taking into account, or disowning his own subject position. Bourgeois bad faith perhaps the most obvious.
Let me suggest one of my big problems.
Sennett's work, unacknowledged, is a template of reading 'character' as a map of relationships among and between men. He never deals with the most obvious strength of his work is in revealing men to themselves and whether there are specific politics that flow from said revelations. corrosion of character is an inverted oedipal drama. not that i believe in that oedipus shit.
fall of public man too is what happens with the consciousness among men and how a critical language shared among and between them is unrealized, perhaps like on listservs. perhaps i stretch here.
and this is not to claim a kind of 'feminist' reading, but, rather, what are men are doing with each other and what does it bode for solidarity, anti-capitalism, and, well all of that.
I haven't read these books for a while, so let me try and do that. You mention a review of yours. Perhaps you can point me to it.
Also, if you could provide any information of Maori struggles I would appreciate it.
yours,
michael