Joanna
Doug Henwood wrote:
> Carl Remick wrote:
>
>> [Caution: extreme flight of fancy follows] I think one reason is
>> that the national cult of individualism has decayed into easily
>> manipulable mass narcissism (a la Christopher Lasch) and lost any of
>> the positive qualities individualism can have
>
>
>
>
>> That line of thought might sound screwy, but at least in part it has
>> had some popular resonance in US history. I would cite the leading
>> example of Ralph Waldo Emerson. RWE might have been Mr. Frosty
>> Freeze in temperament (as Doug would surely agree)
>
>
> Not only that - he was our ur-narcissist! In the dissertation I never
> wrote, I was planning to examine the transformations of narcissism in
> American culture from Emerson though Whitman and onto Stevens and
> Ashbery. RWE's was more "heroic" and "imperial" than Stevens and
> Ashberry's interiorized and aestheticized one, but they're all part of
> the same lineage. Ralph's notions of self-creation and self-reliance
> are largely bereft of any idea of the social, and his individual
> exists almost in opposition to the social. That kind of individuation
> is more a sign of weakness than strength - a stubborn refusal of
> interdependency, a childish "No!" that takes the place of real
> engagement.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> .
>