[lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 16 18:49:46 PST 2009


By the way Charles, do you like the works of anybody associated with any nasty, mass-murdering regimes, like, say, Paul Robeson? Or is that different somehow?

--- On Fri, 1/16/09, Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:


> From: Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Friday, January 16, 2009, 6:33 PM
> Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
> Fri Jan 16 05:50:32 PST 2009
>
> Previous message: [lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life:
> Was Fuck Hope
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> 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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>
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