Alec Ramsdell:
> It can work both ways, when the question of
> self-deception comes in. Take the example of a type
> of modern lyric poem, drawing from the romantic lyric,
> which seems to problematize Habermas' model as I'm
> gleaning it from these posts (haven't read Habermas).
> Traditionally the lyric is "overheard" by a reader,
> rather than addressed directly to a reader by the
> writer. The poet is writing/speaking to herself by
> way of, for instance, a landscape, and the reader
> happens by and overhears it. There's no basis for
> gauging intentional intersubjective truth/deception
> value, even if one attributes intersubjective
> manipulative intent to the poet's particular
> manipulation of the traditional techniques and
> material, which aren't top secret. And the reader of
> the lyric, I would think, would want to be affectively
> manipulated to a degree. ...
Self-deception is a very interesting kind of deception.
I think in the case of poetry the constructed object is valued for its hypnotic or magical qualities, like the other tools of the shaman, and the communicative properties are secondary. If something cognitive is communicated or understood by reading "There's a certain slant of light/ winter afternoons/ that oppresses like the weight/ of cathedral tunes" I think it's well beyond the reach of materialist thought, and so off what I perceive as Habermas's board. I don't understand Emily D. and I don't want to, I just want the drugs which she mixed for herself and left (maybe knowingly) in her bureau drawer where I could steal them.
Of course it's the poetry that gives a lot of religious and political incantations their zip and then the addicts go out and kill people, so I suppose we could see them as a kind of bad drugs. That's why, in politics, I try to stick to a sober engineeringish style.