From: n2412@cray.com (Joe Green)
Subject: Re: The Business of Poetry
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 14 Apr 92 10:36:15 CDT

In article <1992Apr13.222738.4192@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> "Andrew C. Aiken" <aaiken@silver.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
>In <1992Apr10.131536.28619@hemlock.cray.com> n2412@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:
>
>>Another banality is the banality imposed by the commodification
>>of everything (including language).  This banality is a consequence
>>of capitalism.  Adorno.  Gramsci. Marx.  The metaphor of the commodity
>>is of a piece with the metaphor of apocalypse which is of a piece
>>with the process of the Hegelian dialectic, which is of a piece
>>with metaphors and myths imposed by patriarchy.
>
>	Yet, I stand on the other side of the Atlantic from
>Professor Hegel and his whimsical interpretation of power.  Such 
>people as Hegel and Marx were better suited to be poets than philosophers.

Yes -- and you are misunderstanding me completely. During the last 20
years Nietzsche has been partially understood and the Hegelian
dialectic has been seen for what it is -- a machine designed
to devour what is outside it.  Hegel and Marx would not have
been great poets becasue most great poetry manages to subvert
this dialectic (finally and even when the sense is that it
is being justified -- ask me about John Milton and Paradise Lost.)

I am abhoring the dialectic -- not supporting it.  It is designed
to achieve apocolypse. 



>They had no sense of "banality."  The substance of matter could be
>transformed by Thought and Will.  I prefer cooler breezes.  Marx wrote
>poetry for a while, and failed.  Then he compiled his data, tossing out
>any that did not fit his prejudices.  He howled gigantic curses at God.
>The trouble is, sometimes God howls back.

Very nice but sometimes unfair to Marx. Marx had nothing to do with
substances.  The sentiment you express is the essence of capitalism
-- the commodity is substance transformed, the usual lusty alchemy.

Again -- the problem with Marxism and with our current capitalism
is "gigantic curses at God" and the attempt to end finitude
which is only expressed by transforming others until they
become part of one's body.  This is what leads to the killing fields
on both sides.

God doesn't howl back.  It is nice to believe the slaughtered do.
In my experience they go to the dark meekly.  This is the real
howling.  


>
>
>>No -- in fact, framing the "problem" the way you do foregrounds certain
>>metaphysical scruples that can be endlessly discussed while the body
>>of the other is being tortured.  What needs to be foregrounded is
>>the fact of anothers pain -- this is simply an act of intution and
>>is simply what we do all the time when we try to help someone who is
>>hurt.  It seems pointless for one person in the slaughterhouse to
>>be paralyzed with these scruples.  Get out of the slaughterhouse
>>first and then sit down and talk about this.
>
>>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.

  



>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.

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.  

>
>>Seems like the cant of phenomenology to me.  Better not to think of the
>>world in terms like saved and unsaved and avoid being dominated by
>>the old theology.  This seems to me just a restatement of the old theology
>>-- the same longings still there.
>
>	There is nothing new under the sun.  Vanity, all is vanity.
>

Yes -- and the sun is there solar and patriarchal, nuclear and
longing for nookie.  The question is whether there is anything
new under the moon. 


>Andrew Aiken
>
>"Ideology: the science of idiocy"  -- John Adams

Exactly and you are aware that this is also how the Marxist
Gramsci defines it.  

Better yet it is the science of rationalizing the alien -- the idiot
universe.




>
>


-- 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems