The Contempt felt by Left Intellectuals towards their peers (Re: A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back by Judith Butler)

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au
Fri Mar 26 04:40:30 PST 1999


Reason and Democracy writes:


>> And certain 'to help people at large understand the rights and
responsibilities
>> that they have as social and political beings' is *not* the 'object' of the
>> literary/cultural critic -- that's literature/culture.
>
>So, only bourgoise critics strive to make works of art more intelligible
>to the masses. Revolutionary critics create dense texts that only a
>grad-school-trained elite can comprehend.
>
>Dialectical contradictions, you just gotta love'm!
>
>In a anti-neo-post-Lacanian sense, of course!

Hmm. I must say Paul I do not at all understand what criticism of my point you claim to be making.


>So, only bourgoise critics strive to make works of art more intelligible
>to the masses.

I did not say this. Indeed I am saying this is *not* the case.


>Revolutionary critics create dense texts that only a
>grad-school-trained elite can comprehend.

I do not claim to be revolutionary. I did not write any dense text -- although I will admit I have done so in some contexts in which it seemed the only way to respond in the way I felt appropriate.


>Dialectical contradictions, you just gotta love'm!

What was the dialectic? Or the contradiction?


>In a anti-neo-post-Lacanian sense, of course!

This is of course not meant to be make sense in any context. But as I would hope always to be post-Lacanian I'll be generous and settle for saying thank you.

Catherine



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