>
> On May 26, 2008, at 10:55 PM, WD wrote:
>
> > But I do
> > suspect physical labor nevertheless has some sort of inherent (if
> > intangible) value.
>
> I think Adorno already addressed this point better than I ever could,
> but I hear the guilt of an intellectual talking here.
>
> > Argument from authority aside, criticizing alienated (physical) labor
> > without ever having, e.g., worked on an assembly line does seem a
> > little odd. The summer I spent before college sanding metal filing
> > cabinets all day certainly left an impression on me, and I'm better
> > off for it.
>
> I've done dishwashing, merchant marining, toll collecting, loading
> trucks, mopping floors - all in small doses, with the knowledge that
> it was almost certainly very temporary. But that sort of manual labor
> leaves one exhausted and mentally numb. I don't think there's any
> wisdom to be derived from it. Isn't one of the points of being a
> socialist or other sort of radical helping make people's work lives
> less damaging?
>
> Doug
I think it depends on the person. My poetry was at its best (and better published) when I was working construction and driving a Taxi. It was at its worse when I was teaching literature and poetry. Sometimes manual work can clear the mind.
But the kind of labor you mention, except possibly your work as a merchant marine, is mostly of the necessarily unthinking kind.
On the other hand I have met many craftsmen (and women) who have loved their work... machinists, carpenters, printers (when this was a real craft), etc.
Doug wrote: "Jerry won't like this, but Adorno's my hero."
And by the way, was it the fact that you selected a "hero" or was it the fact that the hero you selected was Adorno that made you think I wouldn't disapprove? I sometimes enjoy reading Adorno and think he is often interesting, but I can't for the life of me see why he would be anyone's "hero." Is it because his mind is so dialectical and supple and tricky?
But as you know I think "heroism" itself is in need of critique. (If only Alexander had read the Iliad closely he might have realized that Achilles transcended the hero that Alexander mistakenly took him for.) Heroism is, after all, in some aspects, the ancient ancestor to our star-culture, minus the commodity-fetishism of course. Unfortunately "intellectuals" who are proclaimed as heroes (since the Reformation, or there about) have not been absent of a huge dose personality-commodity-fetishism in their "branding" and subsequent "marketing." But I suppose this is even true of Trotsky and Che. (Do you think that Bishop Romero or Robespierre or Rosa Luxembourg avoided it? Maybe a sort of negative marketing and avoidance compulsion has attached to their anti-"brands and thus counteracted the usual fetishism.)
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/