[lbo-talk] Classics in the Slums

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Sun Jan 16 21:08:10 PST 2005


snit snat wrote:


> great article:
>
It was a great article...and very, very true. Professor Stephen Greenblatt (who complained about my mau-mauing his class) once told me that there was no working class left in the U.S....and hence no one for the socialists to appeal to. This was in 1979. Since then he has made a marvellous career out of his "despair" the point of which being that intellectuals had no one to talk to but other intellectuals. Intellectuals=academics. But never mind him. A lively intelligence wedded to a supremely bad faith.

I don't know to what extent the burning desire to learn remains in the working class. It seems to be the hallmark of a corrupt, moribund culture that this desire is lost. One thing academia seems dedicated to is to disown this desire and to dampen its flame. Outside of academia, things are a bit better. When I worked at Tandem (now Compaq), the engineers would get together once a week to read Shakespeare. Once in a while, they would even stage a play. At the last place I worked, another engineer read through the Peloponnesean War with me -- cause it's hard to read that book alone.

I wonder how many takers I'd get if I started a Shakespeare reading group or a poetry reading group at Sun????

Joanna



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