From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Uncritical thought (was: Unintelligentsia (was: Re: Spider...))
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 15:47:10 GMT

In article <1g11jx#2s4vDL4MyVsg6zdv8cB5JJSg=eric@snark.thyrsus.com> eric@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>In <92092.120001U19807@uicvm.uic.edu> U19807@uicvm.uic.edu wrote:

>> Another blatant assertion on your part,Eric. Not every "art-lit" critic is
>> a Marxist. T. S. Eliot was anything _but_ one.

>I'm well aware of this.  Nevertheless, the art-lit crowd was for a long time
>predominantly Marxist or fellow-traveller.  My description stands.

What is this?  Red-baiting in the '90s?

"Fellow-traveller," for heaven's sake?

Your continued concern for the ideological purity of the "art-lit crowd,"
Eric, calls your entire point-of-view into _serious_ question.  You have
made an accusation -- whether or not it is a damning one is irrelevant;
you obviously believe it is.

But you have coupled this accusation with the classic McCarthyist tactic
of simply making, and repeating, it without a single shred of evidence.
Can you provide some evidence, statistical or otherwise, that the "art-lit
crowd" was "predominantly Marxist or fellow-traveller," rather than a few
prominent blowhards?

Or is this simple (if, in the '90s, pointless and even ludicrous) smear
of an intellectual discipline you've made your antipathy toward clear
in the past?


>Nonsense.  Criticizing the art-literature crowd for being locked into an
>alienated stance does not imply that they ought to be "subservient".  In
>fact, if "fine arts" were healthy I'd expect to see a Gaussian distribution
>on that axis, with a few "alienated" artists at one end, a few "subservient"
>ones at the other, and a large middle hump that simply did their own thing
>without any political agenda at all.  And in fact that *is* what you see if
>your drop the intelligentsiya's blinders and look at popular and folk art
>without sneering or filtering it for political correctness.

. . . well, in fact, you generally see that the "fine" arts (a term devised
specifically to exclude the homely, which in this culture have tended to
be the female, arts) have a tendency toward the extremes -- both left and 
right -- of the spectrum.  Primarily because these arts exist as expression
of self, whereas the homely arts exist as expression of society.  (Odd,
that:  while disenfranchising women from expression of self, society also
encouraged them to participation in expression of society; making it
easier to understand how long rebellion was kept to a minimum, and how
even _today_ so many women reject the women's movement -- every form
of expression they have been permitted is essentially _conservative_!)

The sort of "expression of self" encouraged by the "fine" arts is possible, ]
or necessary, only when the self is perceived as _different_ from society.  
While this difference is not necessarily political, it is always felt as
present, which is why the emphasis on "alienation" in "fine"-art criticism.

Those with "no political agenda at all" are not centrists; they're simply
off the political spectrum completely.


>No.  Heck, I *like* Surrealist and Dadaist art.  But the *attitude* that came
>in with it --- the ideological baggage, the elitist rejection of common
>experience, the "revolutionary" arrogance --- *that* has got to go.  And *will*
>go, no matter how hard you cling to it or how furiously as you deride its
>critics for alleged "know-nothingism".  The times, they are a'changin'....

They are indeed.  And you are clinging to an idealized, and historically
false, past in which the "fine" arts in some way reflected "common
experience" -- which really means the experience of a non-alienated
person in the mainstream of (white, patriarchal) culture.  There have
been artists -- commercial artists -- who have done this at all times.
There have _never_, despite Aristotle's pronunciamenti to the contrary,
been "fine" artists who did.


>If we had a healthy arts subculture, art would have something to say to
>the average Joe and art museums would be as popular as baseball games.  And
>they were, in the last century.  

Well, no.

Art museums were as well-attended as baseball games, in the last century
-- but only because baseball games were far less well-attended.  "Art"
has always been, and will always be, an "elitist" activity in the limited
sense that only a limited segment of society will be interested in it;
the rest will consider it something to decorate with at best.

			Lord!  Here comes the flood,
			We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood.
			If again the seas are silent, and any still alive,
			It'll be those who gave their island to survive.
			Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry. . .
				-- Peter Gabriel
		
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written