Posties

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Jan 10 15:40:28 PST 2002


Dennis Robert Redmond wrote:


>On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Hakki Alacakaptan crossposted:
>
>> lib obscurantism. Here's an old Paglia comment from Salon:
>>
>> priori thesis. For those in the humanities, where anti-aesthetic British
>> cultural studies (shaped by the out-of-date Frankfurt School) has become
>> entrenched, I recommend "The Social History of Art" (translated into English
>> in 1951), an epic work by the Marxist scholar Arnold Hauser that influenced
>> me in graduate school. No one in British or American cultural studies has
>> Hauser's erudition, precision and connoisseurship.
>
>Hilarious. The Frankfurt School was the eternal ghost at the neolib/neocon
>feast; always at the margins, so frightening you couldn't dare to do more
>than mention the thing -- like the glimpse one gets of monsters in
>nightmares, you never actually see The Beast. Hauser's stuff is, well,
>cheaper than Nyquil, I suppose -- sociological description, not aesthetic
>analysis.
>
>It's always interesting how allegedly subversive and radical neocons, who
>denounce the PC orthodoxy of the Left, are themselves unable to tolerate
>true intellectual or aesthetic diversity.

Paglia's made a career out of repackaging conventional opinion as bold and "edgy." Amazing to see her brought up here.

Doug



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