[lbo-talk] compare and contrast

[Carrol Cox]

I'm in agreement with the general drift of W's post below (at least after
subtracting elements of his usual cynicism). Some of what he writes is a
weaker rehashing of a classical article by James Kincaid, "Coherent Readers,
Incoherent Texts."  Kincaid's point, crudely, is that we simply have no
choice but to impose out own coherence on any given text, and to some extent
that means finding our 'own' ideas in it (or as often, the opposite of our
own ideas in it). But I do not accept his implied admiration of "thinking
for oneself." Just as the "self-made man" has usually made a botch of the
job, so the "independent thinker" is usually merely a thinker utterly
unconscious of where he/she did the those ideas. Far better is the struggle
for awarness of where one's ideas have in fact come from: complete success
in that struggle is probably impossible, but one can try, thereby avoiding
the delusion of "thinking for oneself." 

The "theory" Wojtek refers to is commonplace among many literary scholars
and has been for some time.

Carrol 

	********* 
Wojtek Monday, April 30, 

Ravi: "The real problem IMHO is that unless the student is suitably informed
that Plato (and Rand) is (are) caricatured version(s) of thinking, they
might quite likely take him (them) very seriously, as many do, and the
results are dangerous. And most readers are given no such corrective
precaution before they are introduced to this stuff. With that in mind, I
feel the least harm is not to wilfully expose impressionable minds to these
writings but to let them arrive at them in the due course of events " 

[WS:]  An interesting thought, but I think it is the other way around.
Impressionable minds are attracted to Plato, Rand & Co. because they find in
them the confirmation of the conclusions at which they have already arrived
- about their own special place in the universe.  I think Joanna was right
on the target when she called it juvenile - part of adolescence is a
discovery that one can think for oneself rather than being told what to
think by parents and teachers.  Some get carried away with this realization,
especially when it gets reinforced with cultural tropes celebrating
individual creativity, which btw have a particular appeal to adolescents. 

One interesting school of thought on the social impact of mass media is the
"uses and gratifications" theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_and_gratifications_theory emphasizing the
active role of the audience in creating the actual media content.  In other
words, its is not the media telling audience what to thing but rather the
audience finding in the media what they want to find. 

I think the same applies to the classics, philosophy, etc.  Their popularity
lies mainly in the fact that for centuries different people were finding in
them what they wanted to find and reproduced that for their contemporaries.
Or stated differently, there is no such a thing as the "original classic" -
only contemporary reproductions labeled as "classic" - which as the Old Man
tells us is "conjuring up the spirits of the past to their service,
borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present
this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed
language." 

--
Wojtek 

"Modern conservatism is just a neoliberal gloss on medieval domination."

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