>P.S. Joanna wrote:
>
>Oh, piffle. Every gesture we make is political.
>Besides (and therefore), having fun can be a form of resistance.
>
>This is utter nonsense. Note that the statements "God is
>everything" or "*Everything is God" are in fact the same
>thing as saying nothing is God. Just as pantheism is a route
>to atheism, so Joanna's statement is a way to dissolve
>politics. If everything is politics, then nothing is politics.
>
>But I think her post illustrates the point I was making
>in my original post -- as she herself acknowledges by
>its wording: "having fun CAN BE a form of resistance."
>This was one of the few verbal forms that I used to
>really burn English 101 students for using in their themes.
>It is an utterly meaningless statement. Almost anything
>CAN BE almost everything. "Can Be" statements are a
>way for the writer to avoid responsibility for whatever
>he/she is saying. They are a form of intellectual cowardice.
>
>Carrol
Ack, I was demoted to a P.S. -- so I didn't see this until I found myself in Rob's post. And that'd be a hard act to follow, so I won't attempt to add to my defence.
But -- never mind the fact that he misread me, for I didn't say everything is politics -- Carrol claims something that makes me wonder how he forces himself to get up in the morning: that to say 'everything is God' is the same as saying 'nothing is God'. Poor Carrol! To see in such statements only the dry logical masks of themselves! Even a miserable atheist like me can see what magic it would be to find every rock and Carrol Cox suffused with the divine!
Resistance can be fun.
Joanna
www.overlookhouse.com mailto:cjs10 at cornell.edu