From: n2412@cray.com (Joe Green)
Subject: Re: john wesley hardin
Keywords: was a friend to the poor
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 16 Apr 92 10:02:07 CDT

In article <22595@alice.att.com> rhh@alice.att.com (r hardin) writes:
>
>
>>hm.  i am confused here.  do you mean Cavell's response to Modelski
>>was the first paragraph or that part (in an earlier post) on Allan
>>Bloom.  that is the only other thing i saw.  have i missed something
>>then?
>
>>at any rate, i do think Cavell often guilty of a Modleskian implication.
>>(that you quote).  certainly there has been enough on the 'limits of
>>criticism', and nothing a priori wrong with the examination of a text
>>of itself, but Cavell's approach does at times border on the same
>>sort of inattentiveness with which he seems to speak of the teenagers
>>and their walkmen.  better to stay away from his interpretations of
>>these 'weepies' and remain in the relatively non-implicatory field of
>>the hollywood re-marriage genre....
>
>The stuff on Bloom came from an earlier CI article by Cavell. v15 n3
>I put it in without enough transition, I wanted to show the sort
>of analysis, that strikes me as very beautiful, that philosophizing
>in Cavell's tradition is capable of; in particular that it can find
>a silenced voice.

 I want to reply in detail to the original article and meant to do it
yesterday but was busy shooing away the Goth and last night was
devoted to prayer and practicing  a few new flourishes with my sword
cane -- plus a visit from the O'Toole.  More about that later.
But -- just for a start -- the problem seems to be that Cavell is
unaware that his ideas and the kind of attention he brings to the
work are not new -- not something that feminist scholars haven't
done already.  He suggests that melodrama -- simply because of the
way it is structured -- invites interpretation that seems to
contradict the overt message -- a misogynist melodrama has an overt
message of misogyny but _because it is a melodrama_  it calls attention
to its own overdetermined structure and so invites interpretation
that subvert the overts message.  This is how "great literature"
has been saved for the past 15 years.  It is also common in literary
versions of deconstruction.

The difference is that Cavell derives some comfort from this because
he somehow conceives of the work as an autonomous object with these
counter-meanings already inscribed within it.  The work gestures
its own deconstruction.  The difference seems to be what is emphasized.
Cavell calls attention to the metaphysical object and is comforted
that these other meanings are THERE.  Feminism emphasizes the
struggle necessary to engender the suspicion that the work offers
itself up to counter-interpretation and insists on examining
the actual effect of the work on readers, on the audience.  Who is
it exactly that sees or feels that the work actually provides
a way to resist its own ideology?  How did they get THERE?



>
>Cavell's tradition has been called uniquely American, which touches
>on his earlier remark that the distance of high and low culture
>in America is very different from Europe, ``a fact that Adorno
>is incapable of grasping.''

I'll stick with William James.  I can't see what is uniquely
American about it unless the fact that it seems new but is
derivative is what is uniquely American. 



>
>I wanted to propose, against Joe's reading list, that in America
>another way might touch things more fittingly.
>
>What I cited by Cavell about Modleski was a choice that mentioned
>what Joe had mentioned about Shakespeare's having done what he accepted
>as right, and also that the theme of Gaslight was explicitly about
>interpretation.
>
>Other citations would make Cavell's case better, that feminism is
>condescending towards these works that already know everything
>feminism finds in them.

This is untrue.  The case Cavell has to make is that these works
know (a curious construction that points to a certain sort of
metaphysics that seems to be smuggled in) what feminism has
found in them in any way that in fact engenders resistance
to their overt ideology.  "Birth of a Nation" is a racist film
that demeans African Americans.  It is, however ridiculously overdetermined
and comically exaggerated.  This seems to demand that it be
interpreted against itself.  But -- who, in fact, does this?
The actual effect of the film seems to be that it engendered
and helped to rationalize rascist attitudes.  What comfort is there
that to certain learned exegetes or "enlightened" persons the
film self-destructs?



>
>It's worth reading for that alone, even if you were, like me, not
>particularly interested in the films.  A question of which tradition
>touches the works appropriately.  CI v16 n2 for articles, v17 n1 for letters
>
>Everybody winds up with a set of authors that carry weight for them.
>Mine include Cavell and Derrida, who will someday be seen as a moral
>philosopher too I think.  Memoires for Paul de Man, breathtaking Holderlin.
>
>I know in advance what Joe thinks.

What?  You mean about de Man?  I prefer Heine over Holderlin.  Is that what
you mean?


>


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