>At 02:59 PM 4/27/2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
One wonders what grad Prof Cox would have given this essay...
<http://www.wsws.org/arts/1995/nov1995/conroy.shtml> -----
this isn't apples and oranges; it's apples and lug nuts. I think you two are seriously talking past one another.
I'm curious, cause this essay says that the Stalinist dropped the prole writer bent and shunted this guy aside. Apparently, it wasn't even sustained -- certainly not enough to raise it to the level of a "tendency among the left". (I have a buncha q's about art that I hope someone can answer, too. they're appended)
So what is the point? (not to mention that it deosn't even address what woj was talking about.)
Break>>>> Interlude from the Past:
"The whole bubba/white trash thing implies that such denizens are a discredit to the white race - it implies a dignified, civilized norm to which the rednecks are embarrassing exceptions. [Doug]"
"What ever are you talking about? You let fly some reckless caricature of (white) people in the South, as if they were terminally violent cretins best left to do each other in, then you defend yourself by imitating Hilton Kramer. All kinds of people live in the South; it's a complicated place with a complicated history. Why do you feel confident about slurring it and them? People have said nasty things about Poland, just to take a random example - would you object to those? [Doug]
This "culturalist Left" has become a strawperson. People on this list, for example, take seriously the tasks of union organizing and political agitation; is there anyone here who thinks that slipping a Public Enemy CD into the Discman is a revolutionary act in itself? And lots of cult studs are involved in campus anti-sweatshop campaigns, local living wage campaigns, and other very real world concerns. And the "culturalist Left" label is applied recklessly to people other than the practitioners of the politics of gesture or style - to people who take race and sex seriously, for example, as you seem not to. But last time I checked, race and sex were deeply materialist things (and culture itself was embedded in material practices and social relations). So instead of throwing around labels with the intent to insult or disparage, could you provide some example texts, thinkers, or ideas to illustrate your indictment? [Doug]
Oh goodie: "I'm headed to the library, and I'm still waiting for that list of leftists who valorize the lives of the poor."
I would also like to quote one of the worst pomo advocates for the lives of the white working class. you know those ones who get all down with the peeps and then suggest that we should all let them revel in their beautiful hell.
As to that book review: And what is art anyway. Posters and leaflets are art now. I thought I was told at bad subjects that graphic artists aren't artists. Are you trying to say some guy in the 30s represents a tendency among the left to valorize the lives of the poor, to romanticize them? According to the essay, the Stalinits "junked" their prole writer thang.
And whose standards are being used here to define whether lit/art is good /bad. could they have been talking about standards of lit refinement that meant that women authors were left out of tha canon as literary also-rans, only the later be unearted as fine pieces of writing. One author, forgotten her name, wrote like Twain, was even MORE popular than twain during that era. She wasn't unearthed for a century.
When they're talking "getting down" with the proles and claiming that the proles art is "crude" but it's "truth" -- who's standards are they using to characterize art as crude" WTF is crude art. The art bizzo always makes me wonder, cause I never understand how a painting does anything for anyone. I'd really like a book that will explain this to me.
A novel maybe. But painting? Music? How are these things that inspire revolution? Musci, I can see. But how will a painting inspire someone?
Anyway, were these words written by the same people who wiped women writers out of the canon? black writers? wokring class writers. people we are only now discovering?
Stacey, under the influence of the horrid pomos, decides to let her respondents read her book and have the last word in the epilogue. Without reading the book, you can see from their words that they are somewhat embarassed and ashamed by what their lives look like as Stacey, an advocate, has written about them. da dee dum dum da dum. You mean to tell me, Stacey, the pomo culturalist feminist advocate, didn't flatter them?
Oh.
MY
GOD!!!!!
"By the time Dotty and Pam read the chapters I had written about their families, the unavoildable distortions in my crafting of their stories ahd been severely mocked by time. ... Dotty unenthusiastically indulged my "noble" impulse, but claimed few grievances with my rendition of her family. She found my portrais of Danny and Kristina [k: the effups in the family] overly generous but "I think, unfortunately," she acknowledged, "you were right-on with most of the rest of it." Reading my account had been painful. "Sometimes living it is easier than reading it, 'cause reading it you see it all over again and you see how hard and horrible it really was. And when you're going through it, it isn't that bad." Dotty had "mixed feelings" about placing her family's travails in the public record -- uncomfortable about the exposre, but comforted by "the thought that maybe there's something in there that can steer people in an etnirely different direction than we ended up going." She vioced no desire for me to fictionalize more details in order to further reduce the risks of public exposure. "Nobody's going to know me. And if they do, too bad. There's nothing in there that's not real." Nor did she concede any regrets about her particpation in my research.
...
Pam's response...was much less flattering. It is also, I believe, an eloquent contribution to postmodern meditations on the impossiblity of "writing culture." I close this book, therefore, with Pam's edited and revised version of a transcript of the conversation...
Pam: After reading the chapters...I thought that one of my big problems, and one of a lot of people's problems is that I'm alienated from myself. And in one sense reading about my life, that's more alination. Because, if you read about yourself and you're removed from yourself, it's just one more level of alienation. And I rememberd something I've read or heard -- the we go thorugh life being terrifed that well be taken at our word. So when I look at the book, it's one of the rare isnatnce whre I'm being taken at my word, and over a period of years. It's scary to establish the impression of completeness that print does. Well, at first it frighteneed me, it disturbed me, becaue I thought, i sthis me? You know, here I am being taken at my word, is this the real me? And it took me awhile to realize that, yes, it is me, but it is only a part of me.
[Pam goes on to meditate on being classified among a group she didn't think she belonged to] [oooooooooooo noooooooooooooooo apparently the author didn't valorize their lives after all. and this is considered a classic in the field -- influenced by POEEEEEH MOOOOOOOOOW. the shame. the cultural leftness of it all!
Judy (the author): What group did I put you in, or did I put you in any groups that seemed surprising or wrong?
Pam: The group I felt like I was in is a _Diary of a Mad Houseweife" -- you iknow that picture -- "Tell me what you want me to be and I'll be it"? No values, nothing buat a need to be accepted, with changes coming so fast, how could I keep up if I were in that group.