Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:
>
> Alec --
> Both Donne and Herbert are good examples of the usefulness of
> sado-masochism as an explanatory concept.
There is utterly no control on the labelling process: Since every human action and every human thought can always be labelled either pain or pleasure, the analyst with the S-M label in his/her hands can in effect write an essay in literary interpretation of an unwritten poem (its elements be chosen at random from whatever phenomenat float into the interpreter's ken). Marx offered a fine description of this sort of pseudo-explanation (substituting the name of a thing, or paraphrase of the facts, for an explanation):
****Thus *Providence* is the locomotive which makes the whole of M. Proudhon's economic baggage move better than his pure and volatilised reason. He has devoted to Providence a whole chapter, which follows the one on taxes.
Providence, providential aim, this is the great word used today to explain the movement of history. In fact, this word explains nothing. It is at most a rhetorical form, one of the various ways of paraphrasing facts.
It is a fact that in Scotland landed property acquired a new value by the development of English industry. This industry opened up new outlets for wool. In order to produce wool on a large scale, arable land had to be transformed into pasturage. To effect this transformation, the estates had to be concentrated. To concentrate the estates, small holdings had first to be abolished, thousands of tenants had to be driven from their native soil and a few shepherds in charge of millions of sheep to be installed in their place. Thus, by successive transformations, landed property in Scotland has resulted in the driving out of men by sheep. Now say that the providential aim of the institution of landed property in Scotland was to have men driven out by sheep, and you will have made providential history.
Of course, the tendency towards equality belongs to our century. To say now that all former centuries, with entirely different needs, means of production, etc., worked providentially for the realisation of equality is, firstly, to substitute the means and the men of our century for the men and the means of earlier centuries and to misunderstand the historical movement by which the successive generations transformed the results acquired by the generations that preceded them. Economists know very well that the very thing that was for the one a finished product was for the other but the raw material for new production.
Suppose, as M. Proudhon does, tht social genius produced, or rather improvised, the feudal lords with the providential aim of transforming the *settlers* into *responsible* and *equally-placed* workers: and you will have effected a substitution of aims and of persons worthy of the Providence that instituted landed property in Scotland, in order to give itself the malicious pleasure of driving out men by sheep.
But since M. Proudhon takes such a tender interest in Providence, we refer him to the *Histoire de l'economie politique* of M. de Villenneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providential aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but catholicism.
_Poverty of Philosophy_ (Moscow, 1973), pp. 104-105 *******
For S/M to have explanatory power there would have to be some way of establishing that Event X, apparently no different from Event Y, was explained by S/M but Y was not. That is, S/M by explaining everything, explains nothing. Any reference to pain or pleasure is an instance of S/M.
Carrol