needs and desires (att: Joanna)

Joanna Sheldon cjs10 at cornell.edu
Wed Feb 2 11:40:54 PST 2000


Chuck,


>>Art is out of excess. The wonderful thing about art is that it IS out of
>>excess and humans seem to need it still, as though it were not.


>Maybe it isn't. Consider there is no such activity as art in societies
>that have not under gone extensive differentiation and
>specialization. In that context all sorts of categories that we
>consider intrinsic to culture are erased or conflated or folded into
>one another.

I would be interested to hear more about these societies that lack art. Never heard of such a thing.


>BTW, I wrote a long answer to your post on jealousy that agreed with
>you, but ended by saying that there was profit to be made in envy
>because of its dry qualities--a nawing need that travelled well from
>one purchase to the next. While jealousy in its outlandish forms
>destorys social relations and therefore can not be tailored to fit and
>motivate mass consumer culture. But somewhere along the way the post
>took a dark turn into capital's need to constricted and normalize the
>bourgeois psyche, commodify it etc, etc,---and so on.

I see. You're right, I think, that one person's envy can turned to another's advantage. Then again, people sometimes take advantage of jealousy in similar ways (Iago comes to mind).

Joanna

www.overlookhouse.com



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