From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: re:  the business of poetry (0)
Date: 16 Apr 92 21:02:56 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA

In rec.arts.poems, n2412@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:

> In article <1992Apr13.222738.4192@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> "Andrew C. Aiken" <aaiken@silver.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
> >
> >>I am not fantasizing inexpressiveness.  There are millions of
> >>people who are not permitted to speak.  Any language they might
> >>have has been taken from them by their masters.  Your grammar
> >>of pain stuff is what you can chat about in the cruise ship
> >>lounge.   Your dark-skinned waiter doesn't want to listen to these
> >>marvelous chats.   
> >
> >	This is patently ridiculous.  If it is revolution you want,
> >then include me out.  As a counter-revolutionary, I care not for
> >a system of thought which can imagine mankind as divorced from nature.
> 
> Again, you are projecting your characterization of what Marxism is
> onto what I am saying.  Marxism and capitalism see mankind divorced
> from nature.  Are you suggesting that there are not millions of
> people who are not permitted to speak -- who don't have a language
> because they are not heard and because everything is structured
> to keep them silent?  Go to Bangladesh.  Check it out.

Yes, the danger of hearing the word 'Marx' and making lots of
assumptions is there.  I think I am beginning to see that
you are not preaching leftist dialectic.  You ARE talking about
revolution, but it is a newer kind of revolution.  Whether
it could be any more successful in its aims, well, permit me
to be cynical.

> >If you didn't try to be so clever, then perhaps you would find that
> >the needs and hopes of the waiter were similar to your own.  Madison
> >had plenty to say about factions.  He was right, after all.
> 
> 
> Another instance of projection.  Yes -- to some degree the needs
> and hopes of the waiter are similar.  The question is -- will
> he ever be allowed to meet these needs or to achieve these hopes.
> Another question is whether the needs he has are simply needs
> that keep him enslaved and whether he gets these needs because
> they are forced on him by the dominant culture.  This should
> be obvious.

It is definitely the case that we have needs forced upon us that
relly are not NEEDS.  Perhaps this is part of keeping us
quiet.  We become so confused and mesmerized by our needs that
we do not see what the REAL needs are.  But I see no way out unless
I can cast off the socially imposed needs.  I am not sure I
am that strong.  My life is very comfortable.

> 
> And, I hope that you, Andrew, are not going to engage in the
> Volkishness that endlessly declaims the meanness of my
> "clevverness."  Read what I write.  Don't assume that when I mention
> Marx or practice aspects of Marxian analysis that I accept the whole
> program.  I have been very explicit about what is wrong with
> both philosophies -- the body of others as metaphor.  

Cleverness can put one off, but as long as I can view it as honest
cleverness, I have no problem with it.  I must confess that it
is sometimes difficult to understand your discourse and at times
I wonder if it is cleverness for its own sake.  At those times
I can be less charitable.

One thing you might conisider Joe is that what is explicit for
you might not be so explicit for others who are not so accomplished
in their reading skills.  Careful reading is difficult, and not
everyone can read philosophers.  Perhaps you should imagine that
you are talking to people who have no idea what you are talking
about and do not have the vocabulary of philosophy.  It DOES
have a very distinct vocabulary you know.

Of course you know...

doug
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems