> One of the things that makes so much left writing so dismal is the
> fear of wit or irony or style, as if beauty and pleasure were somehow
> suspect. (I could name names, but I won't.) Instead, we get the
> endless recitation of pieties in a grating moralizing-exhortatory
> tone, or some affectless just-the-facts empiricism. <...> preference
> for style was really an attempt to speak to and seduce elites.
i think this is a bit akin to something i like to rant about. proponents of newish 'critical' thinking--make sure to intone 'critical' with proper reverence--can't account for the burden their collective or aggregate critiques put on anything thought, said, done, or, alternatively, not thought, not said, or not done. the result is a sort of market-ethic, wherein through some mysterious Hidden Ha<cough>, i mean, 'dynamic,' the result of a universe of criticism will 'make the world a better place.'
it's very much a damned-if-you do, damned-if-you-don't dilemma. but, of course, this is because the fundamental gesture of being 'critical' is to set oneself--or a school of thought or a method, whichever you please--as sitting in judgment of phenomenon X. the enterprise is Moral to the bone, but only in the rarest case will a practitioners be honest enough to use that word. not that i op- pose moralism, mind you; but at least be honest about, rather than adopting some more-sophisticated-than-thou posture backed up by nothing more than some imaginary azure of a truth.
this insufferable sanctimony to which you refer is the key to the nature of this micro-reactionary enterprise. on good days i like to think it's the overripe fruit of an end-of-the-century zeitgeist. on bad days, i think this bullsh*t factory manned by jurunculi really is a terminal condition, in that no escape can evade being branded naive, nostalgic, ignorant, neglectful of X or Y historical lesson, a repetition of A or B process, etc.
cheers, t