[lbo-talk] Maximise or satisfice? (was:stupid americans?

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Wed Sep 29 13:05:32 PDT 2004


Too bad you didn't write it. But I'd be more forgiving of Whitman. I had the bad luck of going to one of Ashberry's self-absorbed poetry readings at U.C.L.A. The poetry was delicately frozen and the guy had the handsomeness of a tailor's dummy and what appeared to be a permanent tan.

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
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>
> .
>



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