[lbo-talk] Ezekiel

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 8/4/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 4, 2006, at 11:01 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Why are secular leftists as literal-minded as fundamentalists are
> > said to be?
> >
> > Ezekiel was talking about Samaria and Jerusalem (cast metaphorically
> > as women), how they ought to conduct their foreign affairs.
>
> Yeah, I know that. But, as any lit crit knows, you also have to take
> the content of metaphors seriously, and the fear of women and sex in
> that passage (and the admiration of those horse-cocked guys) is
> pretty striking. And that God - what a violent, vengeful motherfucker
> He is. You may have noticed that that stuff has considerable
> influence on American culture - and Israeli politics as well.

It's the poverty of language, which plagues us to this day, that is to
blame: sexualization of decadence.  Can we desexualize decadence?  We
ought to try.

Aside from that, it is quite understandable that Ezekiel felt stiff
competition from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and other men of
North Africa and West Asia.  As Jean Genet, Michel Foucault, Juan
Goytisolo, and so on made clear through their lives, that's the axis
of male beauty.

Ezekiel shouldn't have feared the consequence of Jewish women being
surrounded by handsome men of other nations of the Middle East,
though.  After all, the Jewish identity is matrilineal: the more
gentile men Jewish women conquer, the more Jews there will be.  :->
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>