Empire: Hardt responds

[Brad DeLong]

>G'day Brad,
>
>
>>All good questions...
>
>Pity no bugger ever answers 'em, then ...

Well, they are not only good questions but they are hard ones....

Issues about how people's tastes are to be molded, and what they 
"really" want, are very tough ones. On the one hand, we have 
"Comrades! After the Revolution we will all dine on caviar." "But 
Comrade, I don't like caviar." "Comrade! After the Revolution you 
will dine on caviar--and like it!"

But I also believe in the elevation of taste. I think a world in 
which large numbers of people are watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden 
Dragon" is a superior world to one in which large numbers of people 
watch "Red Detachment of Women" or "Terminator IV: Infiltrator." But 
I have no confidence that any sort of Hand--Visible or 
Invisible--will lead us to a good world as far as matters of taste 
are concerned.

Claims that what we need is a return to the classics especially 
irritate me, given that there is absolutely nothing Quentin Tarantino 
could teach William Shakespeare as far as the body count is 
concerned--consider the last scene of Hamlet. Or consider the Iliad 
as the original slasher novel. Or consider the poem by the sensitive, 
romantic Gaius Valerius Catullus that begins:

All fuck the two of you, each the way he likes it--
Oral for Furius, anal for Aurelius...


Brad DeLong