> Jerry wrote:
>
>
>
> >Butler's charms are in fact pretty resistible. Just read her very
> >uninformed and quite ignorant essay on Antigone. If she were a graduate
> >studying the classics I would never let her graduate.
>
>
> Butler writes:
>
> "I am no classicist and do not strive to be one. I read Antigone as
> many humanists have because the play poses questions about kinship
> and the state that recur in a number of cultural and historical contexts."
>
>
>
> >Quite frankly reading her Antigone essay was a little
> >like seeing the construction of a con game. Yet people who want to puff
> >themselves up or don't know better allow themselves to be conned.
>
>
> Heh. And you're not puffing yourself up at all by saying you would
> have flunked Butler and that anyone who reads her is a mark who needs
> to be wised up?
The book is laughable. She should be embarrassed. But you know who cares? If you are a real intellectual you can say anything as long as you have a bit of a cult to follow you.
This goes for people I agree with as well as people I disagree with. The cult phenomena around certain intellectuals is exactly the kind of thing that Doug complained about around Obama earlier this year. But intellectuals are very good at detecting cult phenomena in the masses but not in themselves.
The reason her book on Antigone comes up for me now is that while I was writing to Robert I thought I had only read three of her works and then discovered this fourth one on my shelf. I must have blocked it out of my mind. Reading what I had underlined in the book I wanted to laugh.
I know Butler is not a classicist and I know she said she wasn't. But she really adds nothing at all to the debate. When I read the book I really wanted a hard feminist analysis of Antigone instead of blathering and banalities.
You don't have to be a classicist to say something interesting about Antigone and Andie is correct to point to Weil in this case. But you actually should have something to say. I am not holding her to a very high level.
Jerry
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>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/