Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com Fri Jan 16 05:50:32 PST 2009
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Thw comment I was responding to was this:
"If one likes the poems of right-wingers, one might want to do a little introspection. Most "deep" thoughts, even "personal" ones, impinge on politics and ideology."
^^^^ CB: I said that. So, that means you think that "doing a little introspection" and
"refusing to enjoy the products of people with views alien and/or repugnant to my own"
are synonymous. They are not.
Why are you afraid of a little self-examination or self-criticism even ?
a little self-examination does not mean at all that one would have to take the ridiculous overreaction of closing off , " all of human artistic production created before around 1800. Bad Dante! Bad Homer! Evil Voltaire! Down with Shakespeare! I can also extend this to people whose personal behavior I don't like. After all, their personal behavior is not totally sealed off from their intellectual production and must have influenced it. Picasso beat women -- no more Guernica for Chris! Althusser WAS A MURDERER -- no more For Marx on my bookshelf!
I really can't believe advance such totalitarian arguments seriously.
^^^ CB: Refusal to think critically about your personal tastes in literature as you grow is your privilege. It is also the way of minds in "totalitarianism" - uncritical in thinking.
Totalitarianism is a bankrupt concept. I hear "Hitch" using it as a theory in a C-Span lecture the other day. Now I see why his politics are in crisis.
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