From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #16 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Thursday, April 10 2003 Volume 02 : Number 016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 01:06:20 -0600 From: "Jacob Proffitt" Subject: RE: [AML] Conservative Literary Theory? - ---Original Message From: Clark Goble >=20 > Onward to a few comments. >=20 > ___ Jacob ___ > | Conservativism isn't about blind adherence to tradition and/or=20 > | following historical precedence. It *is* about core values and=20 > | applying important traditional principals to new and emerging=20 > | circumstances. > ___ >=20 > Is this conservativism in the Bloom mold? i.e. that there=20 > are certain=20 > texts that were formative for our culture and that we ought to=20 > reinterpret *those* texts in light of present circumstances? Thus=20 > rather than focusing in on Joyce or Kafka as an analysis of modern=20 > life, we ought to reread Shakespeare though a modern lens? >=20 > If this is what you mean then ends up offering many elements of=20 > critical legal hermeneutics to the more general literary community. =20 > After all in law we have to apply legal texts to new=20 > circumstances the=20 > authors may never have thought of. Yet because those texts are the=20 > "embodiment" of the community values they are what must be=20 > utilized to=20 > deal with new circumstances. Yes, I think it would be very much in this vein, though not really as accretive (more on that below) as the legal model would imply. It would = be something that isn't afraid to explore universal themes and symbolism in addition to historical textual criticism and still feel comfortable = dragging those themes kicking and screaming into a modern context without abusing them with a full-on deconstruction. Take Shakespeare's Henry V big pre-battle speech. A conservative = analysis would be interested in the calls to honor and brotherhood and might = explore the insinuation of fame and obliquely implied shame. Those would = represent the core values I mention above. But instead of going the classicism = route suggested by Jim Laird, I'd much prefer to give it breadth to move = further. Relate those themes to current issues of honor, fame, and brotherhood = for example. Or examine how those universal themes found differing = expression through the faceted lens of different characters in the play--i.e. = preempt the post-modernist deconstruction of those themes by examining how the themes persist even if they are flawed in their various applications. = Hence my appellation 'neo-post-modernism'... > The problem with Bloom's approach is probably highlighted by the=20 > parallel to law. While we certainly do have a literary=20 > "canon" we also=20 > pass new laws. Thus we have a situation very similar to law where we=20 > have old laws and new laws. While we ought not neglect old laws,=20 > neither do they gain precedence over new laws. The exception is with=20 > the constitution. However even there we have many amendments. One=20 > could well argue that perhaps literature ought to have some "critical=20 > canon." Yet that critical canon ought, like the=20 > constitution, be open=20 > ended. I'd insist that while it may be open, entrance criteria should be = rigorous (i.e. "not so open that our brains fall out"). New regimes, texts, and methods should be met with initial skepticism and careful examination = and accepted provisionally for a time before gaining even pseudo-universal acclaim. New theories and ideas should *expect* and *receive* extensive questioning and discomfort--even if it *is* neat and/or illuminating. That's a bit counter to the legal analogy above where the more recent = tends to have more precedence. > The debate then gets into what ought to be considered=20 > literary canon. =20 > Personally I think we ought to include Camus, Kafka, Hemmingway and=20 > others. (Joyce I'm more mixed about, if only because of the long=20 > background in philosophy and literature necessary to even be able to=20 > read him well) >=20 > Perhaps that's not what you meant Jacob. Perhaps you meant=20 > that there=20 > is some "natural law" that ought to underlie both the "how" and "why"=20 > of our criticisms. Nope. I don't like "natural law" any more than I like a resurgent classicism. "Natural law" has all the weaknesses of capital 'T' Truth = and none of the ameliorating strengths. I don't want to lose the advances = we've made once we acknowledged complexity and the essentially relativistic = nature of existence. Appeals to natural law will tend to be easily discredited = and much effort will be wasted trying to prove or disprove various = philosophical viewpoints as being "natural law". I'd rather pre-empt all that and = explore how our relativism and alienness nevertheless have shared = characteristics that are valuable and that help us overcome this alienation and how that happens. In other words, I want to skip the knotty question of the = "origin" of universal traits and move instead into how those universals help us, = tie us together, and are expressed. People have had a ball deconstructing Shakespeare, it's time to put him back together again--explore how he *still* resonates so strongly and "universally". Why is it that every culture wants to adopt Shakespeare? I've heard him referred to (only half-jokingly) as "that great German poet", "that great Muslim poet", = and even "that great Klingon poet" (seriously, I can document each of = those). Why *is* that? I think a neo-conservatism can shed some light here in = ways that will leave the Marxists envious. Of course, I'm hardly the prophet (Proffitt?) of neo-conservatism. = Alan's and/or Jim's definitions could well turn out more valid than my own = musings. Jacob Proffitt - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 10:28:03 -0600 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] Politics and Literature Robert Slaven quite accurately pointed out: >One person reads "Little Red Riding Hood" and sees a tale of >service, and a lesson of caution. Another reads it and sees oppression = of >females by predatory males (the wolf), patriarchal condescension by = >other >males (the woodcutter), and a general powerlessness of women that must be >condemned as a misogynist effort to warp poor little girls' minds. = That's >part of what makes all this so much fun. And I know this wasn't the main point he was making. But part of the = point I've been trying to make (badly) is that I wouldn't consider either = of these readings particularly illuminating. Both seem to me reductive, = both suggest that this particular text ought only to be read one particular= ly tendentious way, and neither opens up further possibilities the text = might offer us. Surely a reading that combined and balanced these = polarizing views of this text would be, to my mind, richer. I privilege = any both/and reading over any either/or. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 09:39:46 -0600 (MDT) From: Ivan Angus Wolfe Subject: [AML] Changing Our Minds (was: DDT) No, this is not a thread about DDT, though the comment sparked an intersting though in me. First, here is a link to a website claiming evidence that DDT banning causes death by malaria: http://www.acsh.org/publications/reports/ddt2002.html What is interesting here is not the DDT thing, but the basic ideas behing it. It comes down to this: My side has to be right, so I ignore facts to the contrary and only take the facts that support my position. I am not accussing anyone on the list of this - I think the article above likely has that same attitude. But I was thinking of the aml-list and began to wonder - - do any of us change our opinions that often due to the discussion here - or at the least, truly respect those with diametrically oppossed opinions? This is not rhetorical, I really want to know. I ask because while we seem to say that we are here for dicussion and understanding, sometimes it seems odd to me how bullheaded some people (including myself) are when it comes to political/cultural/doctrinal issues. For example, I remember a poster (can't recall who at the moment) once said that he felt teens in Utah were just as sexually active as teens elsehwere in the country. Then he remarked he knew polsters and survey takers foudn that Utah teens were less sexually active, but he decided that just meant Utah teens were good liars. To me, that indicated a stubborness "My side is right and any facts that contradict it don't really exist." I do it even - I often selectively choose facts to fit my opinions, ignoring those that don't quite fit with what I want to believe. I try not to do it, but I still seem to do it at times, without really meaning to. With the Clean FLicks debate that is going on, it seems to be the same. Some fell it is okay, and so quote the parts of the law that seem to support it. Those who are against it (generally) will quote legal arguments against the cutting of movies. Okay - that was rambling. Any thoughts? - --ivan wolfe - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 10:55:45 -0600 From: "Eugene Woodbury" Subject: Re: [AML] _Kadosh_ > I likely missed something but I wanted to know: where can we see this movie? If you can't find "Kadosh" at your local Blockbuster, and you don't live near the Orem library (small town library, fantastic video collection -- BTW, do libraries operate under the same royalty arrangements as commercial outfits when renting videos?), then check out http://www.greencine.com/. It's one of those web sites that justifies the existence of the Internet. Greencine rents only DVDs, but you needed a good excuse to get a DVD player, right? - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 11:06:25 -0600 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] Artists' Personal Lives First of all, in response to Jongiorgio's post about Roman Polanski; = Polanski was indicted and charged on six counts for drugging and raping a = thirteen year old. My source is the Washington Post, March 23, 1977. He = was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of engaging in unlawful = sexual intercourse with a minor at the request of the girl's mother, who = wanted to protect her daughter from the publicity expected to accompany = such a trial. The prosecution agreed to dismiss five other charges, = including two more serious counts=AFfurnishing drugs to a minor and rape = by use of drugs. He was ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination = prior to sentencing. He then skipped the country hours before his = sentencing hearing. My sources for the last two pieces of information is = the Washington Post for Sept 20 1977, and Feb. 3, 1978. So he is in fact = a convicted pedophile. His grand jury testimony has been released, and is = widely available. It's clear enough from that testimony that his actions = are accurately described as an act of rape. Jongiorgio is quite right that Europeans tend to view the Polanski case = differently from the way Americans view it. His exploration of the = nuances of those cultural differences was valuable and, as a Europhile = myself, accurate. I still hold to what I said before. The Pianist is a = great film. There were several great films released in 2002. Taking = everything into consideration, I disagree with the Academy. Had they = given the Best Picture Oscar to The Pianist, that would have been fine. = But I would not have voted to give the Best Director Oscar to a convicted = pedophile, especially since other directors were, in my mind, equally = deserving. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 02:03:17 -0600 From: "Jacob Proffitt" Subject: [AML] Religious/Artistic Relativism (was: _Kadosh_) [MOD: Please don't beat up Jacob for this renamed thread. This is my own wording that seems to me to express where this conversation has gone. Note that I do not mean "relativism" as either a particularly negative or a particularly positive term, but simply a neutral term for part of what I think we're talking about here.] A response to two messages by Richard: - ---Original Message From: RichardDutcher@aol.com >=20 > For a second there I thought I had misunderstood you, which=20 > was actually=20 > comforting to me because I almost always agree with your=20 > posts. But then, as=20 > you continued to explain, you expressed yourself in such a=20 > way that I still=20 > find the "true" attitude you espouse (not you personally) as arrogant=20 > and unteachable.=20 Ah. I will attempt to disabuse you of that notion then :). Although, = I'll say in preparation that those terms are pretty much synonymous (arrogant = and unteachable). > I don't have a problem with LDS artists believing we are=20 > "right." But I do=20 > have a problem in our believing that other religious artists=20 > are wrong and=20 > that their philosophies are inferior. Despite your=20 > protestations, I still=20 > interpret your argument in this way. Seriously, how can we=20 > remain teachable=20 > while harboring such attitudes? Okay, I'm going to split some hairs here, but they're important hairs. First, I don't believe that other philosophies are wrong. I do, = however, believe them to be inferior. If I didn't, I would be an adherent of = those philosophies. I think that should be a given. There's a certain = dishonesty in trying to maintain that you don't consider philosophies different = from your own inferior. Is it arrogant to believe other philosophies = inferior? Well, to me, it is only arrogance if it leads to being unteachable. In thinking it over, I'd have to say that an additional quality is required = for it to be arrogant: the belief that your philosophy is complete and = without flaw. I don't believe that. I find other philosophies fascinating and enjoy learning about/from them. Frankly, many of them have some great things to teach us. If I find something better, I'm more than willing = to add it to my own philosophy. It's a very free-market, capitalist, = American way of looking at philosophy (and one way where at least my brand of Mormonism really does qualify as Bloom's "American Religion"). It is = the essence of the 13th Article of Faith. So while Judaism is inferior to Mormonism, that doesn't mean that Gitai's work doesn't contain valuable insights that we might do well to explore. It doesn't mean that I'm prepared to dismiss Jewish thought or Jewish artists, though I'll = probably discard some parts of their art. But then, I discard parts of *every* = art. > Perhaps this attitude has contributed to some of our (and the=20 > mainstream=20 > Christian community's) crappy art. We are so sure we are=20 > right and chosen=20 > that we really aren't open to what this whole wide world of=20 > ours has to teach=20 > us. Surely Judaism and almost every other religion on this=20 > earth has some=20 > truth to share with us, truth that we haven't recognized or=20 > understood yet.=20 > And surely some untruths have wriggled their way into Mormonism. Yes. Definitely. I'd agree with this entire paragraph--that attitude = would indeed produce crappy art because we *can* learn from other religions = and I hope that we will examine and remove errors in our own religion. Again, just because I think I'm right doesn't mean I think I'm complete or that = I can't be wrong. Call it the provisional, limited belief that I'm = right... > I can easily see how a committed LDS artist, with a very=20 > Mormon passion for=20 > truth, could suddenly find himself no longer Mormon. An=20 > unwilling "apostate." Well, I can understand the fear, but I'd have to see it to believe it. = I can even see the *threat*--even a semi-official threat. But one thing = I've learned is that when it comes to excommunication, the vast majority of = local leaders and *all* G.A.s (that I've ever heard of) are extremely = reluctant to pull out that particular big gun and use it. While you get a vocal = minority with their knickers in a knot and while it can be *very* uncomfortable = at times (and those who experience it have my deepest sympathies), I find = it hard to imagine it actually happening--an artist who wants to stay in = the church will always be able to do so. One reason I have such respect for Gene England is for his principled stands that nonetheless avoided = artistic arrogance. I'm not saying that artists aren't excommunicated because of things they consider truth. But I will say that it doesn't happen = without a good deal of warning--it doesn't happen "suddenly". And I'll say that = when it happens, it happens because the artist decides that their truth is = more important than their membership. - ---Original Message From: RichardDutcher@aol.com >=20 > Richard wrote: "Jacob said (I'm paraphrasing) that it is a > moot question=3D20 > > because the orthodox=3D20 > > Jewish doctrine is wrong, the community is worshipping in=3D20 > > falsehood, and=3D20 therefor Gitai has done nothing wrong and=20 > is better > > off outside the=3D20 community." >=20 > Jacob replies: "Oh, I didn't say any of that." >=20 > Then what did you mean, Jacob, when you said this: "I don't > believe at all=3D20 that his soul is on the line...To me, he's=20 > just fine because he didn't (as=3D20 presented, bear in mind I=20 > haven't seen the movie) violate anything sacred." >=20 > Or this: "His doctrine is wrong, you see."=3DA0 >=20 > If I misunderstood you, surely you can see how I might have > arrived at my=3D20 conclusions. You need to recontextualize those quotes. Both those statements were = made as support for a specific point. The question asked was specific and my response was specific and not at all as broad as implied above. My statements have relevance towards that specific point and widening them beyond it is inapplicable. Both fragments alone can be interpreted one = way, but in context it should be clear that they're intended to be applied = very narrowly--i.e. to the question "Was it worth it, in the eternal scheme = of things, for Gitai to have alienated himself from his spiritual community = in order to create such a magnificent work of art?" And I'll = reiterate--"the eternal scheme of things" is *vital* to my faith and not worth risking = for *anything*. In fact, I'm a little distraught at the selective quotation. I mean, = you chunked up two sentences that both carried important modifiers (the ellipses, for example, only serve to remove the question mark ending = that first sentence). I express explicitly that I'm reacting to how my = opinion changes in translating his experience to the situation "if he had been = LDS and abused doctrines I hold dear." Those are important distinctions/modifications and shouldn't be so easily excised. Jacob Proffitt - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 02:42:04 -0600 From: Clark Goble Subject: [AML] CARD, _Ender's Game_ A couple of interesting links for you Ender fans. Over on Slashdot they had a story about how the military is using _Ender's Game_ for training. Here's the story: http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/ 03/technology/circuits/03camp.html The story is at the NY Times, and there is a free registration required. The more interesting stuff, as always on Slashdot, is in the discussion about the story linked to. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/04/1853251 The discussion points out that what made Ender such a powerful general was his empathy. To quote one poster, "He understood his enemies so fully that he loved them deeply, since he could see their motivations for attacking him. He is always at odds with the case. The reason why Ender did what he did was because he thought it was a game, if he knew it wasn't a game, he would not have gone through with it. He spends the rest of the series dealing with that guilt." While a few of you may have noticed this before, what struck me was the parallels to both Christ and Book of Mormon figures. The Christ motif is that God is this perfect general with respect to the plan of salvation and us. We often think of Christ as freeing us from our guilt, but what struck me is that perhaps the "guilt" he freed was as much his and his father's as it is ours. In punishing us for our sins, I'm sure our Father in his perfect empathy feels as Ender does. I'd always seen the rest of the series with Ender as fairly disconnected from the first book. But seeing the guilt as intrinsically tied to the military and empathy makes it seem like one coherent whole a lot better. Ender becomes both the guilt/justice and also the mercy and shows how these opposites can be unified. The second motif is more relevant to the military. I think of Moroni and how he loved his enemies. That is a very hard thing to do. Perhaps I was thinking all the more of it because of Pres. Hinkley's talk on Sunday. In a political discussion someone asked how someone who valued life as sacred could take it. In a way, _Ender's Game_ show how it can happen. In a sense I think that Card, perhaps unconsciously, was fleshing out the lessons on war that the Book of Mormon teaches. I don't want to make a political point of this. After all *how* we fight is a far different issue than *whether* we should fight. The later is the political debate for which there are arguments for both sides. The former is a far deeper human issue that keeps popping up in literature. Clark - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 09:55:22 -0700 From: "Richard B.Johnson" Subject: [AML] AML-List Columns [MOD: See my answer below.] > -----Original Message----- > You probably weren't expecting a huge discourse on the subject > when you asked > the question, but I wrote a column on the subject for AML-List > several years > ago. It never made it on the List, though, because it needed > some polishing > up. Shortly afterwards, AML-List discontinued all columns. So, > hey, I'll just > send it now. > Somewhat off topic but for what its worth, I really miss the columns. They also provided a seed bed for some published works, Ed Snow's, for instance. Did they go away because it was too much trouble to edit and publish, or because columnists didn't turn in copy, or what? Richard B. Johnson; Husband, Father, Grandfather, Actor, Director, Puppeteer, Teacher, Playwright, Thingmaker, Mormon, Person, Fool. I sometimes think that the last persona is most important and most valuable. Http://PuppenRich.com [MOD: During the latter part of Ben's tenure as moderator, he was unable to put a lot of the time into recruiting and editing the columns that he had previously done. I think there were also problems with reliability and availability of columnists. I also think that much of the impulse that had led to the column wound up going to _Irreantum_ when it started up. When I took over as moderator--three years ago now! hard to believe--there were still a few columns limping along, and I had hopes for organizing something more elaborate again. We've had a few columns from Ed Snow and Eric Samuelsen, and in theory I'm still quite fine with columns. But I just haven't had the time to put into them... I miss them too.] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 16:57:12 -0700 From: thelairdjim Subject: Re: [AML] Conservative Literary Theory? On Tuesday, Apr 8, 2003, at 12:23 America/Phoenix, Eric R. Samuelsen wrote: > Precisely so. I was describing the more or less mainstream way in > which the term 'conservative literary criticism' is likely to be > viewed. I wasn't endorsing it; on the contrary, I was saying that it > would interesting to read more nuanced conservative criticism. I'd > appreciate it if you'd read my posts a little more carefully before > launching this sort of ad hominem attack. I was merely stating my experience. I have met only a very few honest liberals (by which I mean possessed of only the usual levels of hypocrisy, nothing exceptional), and fewer still that would actually engage an idea intellectually. Since I had a liberal education, it is no easy thing to shake off the same kind of thinking. Free thinking is not something the education system likes. In literary terms this means that anything that damages the bourgeois order is good, anything that defends it is bad, and so it goes in school and college. My 11th grade history teacher was an exception to the rule, and judged on the merits, for which I still thank heaven; without him I might've been trapped. > It's very nice to be told that, as a liberal, I support the mass > murders of Marxism. Thanks for that. Wouldn't it be more accurate to > acknowledge that Hitler was a monster of the right, Stalin a monster > of the left, and that you and I are both agreeably anti-monster? Hitler was another monster of the Left. Nazism is leftist. What else do you call utopian socialism? The fact that it used Roman imagery doesn't make it right wing. There is no construction possible to fit Nazism into any conservative mold. They were only the right wing of the left wing. They share ZERO beliefs with modern conservatism. How pagan socialist fantasists got lumped with libertarians, federalists and classical liberals is beyond me. > You've written at some length in your posts about 'classicism.' What > exactly do you mean by that? A literary criticism derived from, say, > Plato's Republic, Aristotle's The Poetics and Horace's Ars Poetica, > with a smattering of Plutarch and Cicero, an immersion in Stoicism and > Epicurianism and neo-Platonism, a grounding in Seneca and Marcus > Aurelius, a nod to the Tractatus Coislinianus, seasoned by readings of > Aeschylus-Terence (incl.). Or do you mean neo-classical criticism, > including Robortello, Scaliger, Guarini, Castelvetro, Sir Phllip > Sidney and the whole Corneille/Academy nexus? Personally, I find the > unities rather tiresome, but if that's what you're accessing, let's > have at it. All of the above. I like the old stuff myself, because I don't trust too many scholars after the advent of socialism. I hate having to plumb through it all myself unguided, but that's what lack of trust gets you. I even detest the fact that I have to trust the translators. As far as sides go, however, I'm on the Stoic side, and that is the prism that I use to criticize literature. The platonic side was worth reading and learning, but I don't much care for mysticism. > And it's still taught in the academy, is still the focus of major > academic conferences, and remains viable and relevant to the study of > classical texts. I know, because I've attended those conferences. Very true. Except that it isn't taught at all in primary or secondary school, and one can get a degree in philosophy without ever touching any of it. Those of us who were unfortunate enough to go to state schools and universities can miss out on it entirely. > Wow. Sounds like quite the struggle there. What on earth are you > talking about? See the last statement. > What's a 'universal?' Sophocles was a fifth century (BCE) Greek, > writing about local concerns, accessing the myths of his culture. His > work (Antigone, say) can still be performed, and an audience today can > and does respond to it. Not all audiences, obviously, get it, and not > all performances are successful, but it's still regarded as rather a > good play. Is it 'universal?' Certainly not. My own religious > beliefs and practices do not require me to bury a relative in a > certain way, with a certain ceremony, to allow his soul to pass over > to Hades. I do not believe in Zeus or Athena. Politically, the play > has some resonance. I'm a liberal, and I like this particular play. > It hasn't a universal appeal, nothing can have, but it does still > resonate with some cultures today, and that's saying a great deal. If > I also point out that Antigone's rebellion is in part an expansion on > 5th century Greek constructions of gender, that doesn't make me a > moral relativist; it makes me a scholar trying to understand a > difficult and richly nuanced text. Universals are those things that appear in everything. I am not speaking of Chomsky's silly theory that there's a nifty English grammar underlying all other languages, but of those things that are true. Literature, even fiction, is part of the search for truth. By denying the existence of truth (which both marxist and post-modernist criticism do openly, and feminist & environmentalist do by their fantastic rejection of reality) one precludes the finding of it. Everything written at every time is relative to the time. Some things survived by chance, but some things survived because somebody who died 3000 years ago knew what it's still like to live today. Perhaps the reason why Sophocles' plays aren't ultra popular today is because many people have no clue that there is such a thing as universals. The education system is so poor that people can be as ignorant as a medieval serf and still have a degree. They have learned the balderdash theory of life. The world is layers of balderdash and life consists of finding your own layer. It just doesn't look like balderdash from where you sit, but it really is. > Nonsense. I cannot approach any text from any perspective other than > that of a 21st century white American male. What I can do is access > the insights of a variety of philosophical perspectives. They will > not allow me to read any text purely; they will instead give me the > multiple perspectives of a series of misreadings. But then, all > readings are, at some level, misreadings. Criticism isn't a straight > line to a single, discernable, point; it's a series of circlings, > towards an ever-moving target, dimly illumined. So what? The more you learn the broader your horizons get. Perspective changes constantly as you learn. When you have a pre-configured perspective that is unalterable then you will never get to the truth. When all you're looking for is "men are evil" all you'll find is "men are evil." Or class exploitation, etc. The fact that you live in a certain time and place doesn't mean that you are forever stuck with it. It's like Said's orientalism; a westerner can never criticize an easterner, because he can't understand what it's like to live there. But it's fine for the easterner to criticize the west (which he does constantly). I think he's wrong on all counts. To understand all is not to forgive all. I really don't care what the cultural reasons are for female circumcision--I just want it stopped. Same with slavery, same with all sorts of things. I don't condemn everyone involved, after all they were taught it by a long tradition. It's an evil tradition, and it should be halted. > "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught > somewhat in all the learning of my father." What that does not mean > is 'gosh, I sure had a swell Dad.' What it means is, I was born into > a wealthy family, sufficiently wealthy that I was able to receive an > education, unilke other residents of Jerusalem in my time period. The > sentence has class implications and it has gender implications (no > mention of Mom's education.) Knowing that that text has class and > gender implications enriches my understanding of that particular text. > That's all that criticism is trying to do. I don't see the class or gender implications in the sense you mean. It says that Lehi was wealthy, to be sure. It doesn't say he got wealthy by exploiting the proletariat. It doesn't mention mom's education. So what? Maybe she was as educated as Nephi. The fact that it wasn't mentioned doesn't mean a thing, except that he wasn't poisoned by political correctness. Granted that the oriental culture he came from was very male-oriented; the cultural background for northern Europe was not. German and Celtic women had far greater freedom than Greek or Latin, and they're not even in the same ballpark as the Middle or Far East. Strangely enough, however, I learned these things from crusty old Romans like Tacitus. It didn't take a feminist reading of history to winnow it out. > Certainly. Good for technology. And since we have the benefit of > both that technology and that equality, we cannot help but look at > texts from the past from the perspective of our day. But we don't. Feminist criticism ignores the value of that technology in gaining equality. The conspiracy of the Patriarchy is why it was so. Technology was meaningless since (to hear Patricia McKinnon tell it) there has been no progress at all. > Is this really how you see reading? As an exercise in tossing stuff? Not in tossing stuff, but finding the needle in the haystack. Jesus did it with the whole Old Testament. "This is the Law and the Prophets." It doesn't mean that everything written is valueless, but that much of it is merely signage on the highway. It's not the destination. Tossing away the fluff is what criticism is. The difference between classical and the others that are getting tedious to mention is that classicism is looking for a universal while the others deny any such thing. > So it's contentless? What about all those universals? Stoicism and Platonicism are as different as liberal and conservative. Both are useful as perspective. I agree with much of Zeno and his followers and disagree with much of Plato and his. I read both to find the truth. If I look for everything to be Stoic then I'm never going to learn much, which is why the one-note criticism of marxism or feminism see always exactly the same things over and over. I think Stoicism is mostly right in many areas, and one of the reasons I look at things from that perspective first is because of the faithful-wealthy-faithless-war-poverty cycle in the Book of Mormon. I never attribute Stoic beliefs to anybody unless it really fits, however. > Those would be several prisms, would they not? Each of which offers a > different perspective on texts, providing more, not less, insight? If there was a unified theory that used them all it might be a bit more useful. Post-modernism is not that, however. Each of the others independently hates the rest. > Okay, so leftists are moral relativists, who do not believe in > universals; if we did believe in universals we'd understand and not > condemn an act of historical genocide. These universals require us to > look tolerantly at the horrors of history. See classicism requires us > to look at the Crusaders from their own perspective. > > Only? That's it? I can't bring any insight from my day into a study > of the Crusades? No, see, I can't, because as a leftist, I can only > bring a single prism into my study of the Crusades. A single > Marxist/feminist/environmentalist prism. That's not three prisms, it's > one, without body parts or passions, one presumes. I'm not capable > ideologically to look at something like medieval rules of combat > engagement from a medieval perspective. No, I'm blinded by gender > studies, or something. > > Let me just say as your common, or garden, medievalist, that this is > utter balderdash. Tell David Bevington that he can't understand the > Crusades because he's too post-modern or something. But be prepared > to duck. I didn't say that I didn't condemn the act. The actors get a bit of a pass because of the rules of war and the general ignorance of their time. What they did was horrible, but they didn't know how horrible. They should have, we might say, but those were the rules. Many other learned from them, but they didn't learn. The Black Prince was wasting whole cities in Spain not 200 years later. The British and French sacked and burned whole cities as late as the Napoleonic wars. I condemn the acts of all of them. Once again, however, they're culpability before God wouldn't be the same as if I did it. I know better, and on several levels. All they had was the light of Christ drowned by the cacophony of lies around them. So do I despise every one of them? Do I wish them speedily to hell and roasting? I do not. In order to understand it is necessary to look as much through their perspective as possible. They left very little record, since most couldn't write, and the few records there are are mostly hostile. All three of the styles you mention deny the possibility of trying to understand the perspective of the actors. So any one of them is faulty, and by using them exclusively you cannot understand the Crusades. So far as Bevington is concerned I didn't know he'd done anything on the Crusades but if he is a postmodernist then after I'd read his work I likely would tell him he didn't understand. I've read lots of deconstruction and it is uniformly balderdash. > Okay, so some medieval writers were appalled by the Crusades, but we > shouldn't judge those who weren't, because after all we had Hitler and > Stalin. You just can't get that whole 'see it from their side' thing. Some of those who ought to have been appalled weren't--the educated sorts, the priests, etc, who should've known better. They are far more guilty because they knew of the existence of a different set of rules of war and didn't bother to expound them. Chivalry is based on the Arab _furusiya_, and was transferred onto the German barbarians by the same priests who encouraged the slaughter. They are of the same mold as Hitler and Stalin--or even more those intellectuals, here and in Europe, who consistently backed whatever socialist was currently murdering thousands or millions. Many communists in Russia were ignorant as stumps, bought what was sold them, and killed as they were told. I don't blame them either. > I'll agree with you this far; 'good critical thinking skills, widely > practiced, might have prevented the rise of power of Lenin or Hitler. > Which would have been, in both instances, a moral good.' Could also have prevented the rise of Huey Long, Franco, Castro, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Hussein, etc. People like their fantasies, which is why they hate America, even in America. > Welcome to modern conservatism, a fact free zone. Sorry, it's true. The French terrified the daylights out of Malawi and Botswana about Frankenfood, so they refused to accept American corn. In 1972, the before year DDT was banned, there were 1,500 deaths from Malaria worldwide. It's back up to 100,000. Nobody cares, though, except conservatives, because they're just Africans. > Glad to hear it. It's actually been pretty mainstream all along, but > there you go. Yeah, so mainstream it hasn't been taught in the majority of Americans schools for more than 30 years. In some cases as much as 70 years. My grandfather was in 9th grade when they kicked out the classical standards at his school in California. > I haven't the faintest idea what this last sentence means, unless > you're saying that bad literary criticism leads to Hitler or > something. Which, come to think of it, isn't far off. A good close > reading, by Neville Chamberlain, of Mein Kampf, might have had some > salutary results. Well now that you put it that way it does. And you're exactly right about _Mein Kampf_ except one thing. It's too stupid to be taken seriously. If I had read it in 1932 I would've laughed my head off. In 1938 it would've been more ominous, but it's among the worst written books I've ever read, even allowing that the translator could be to blame for much of it. If a lot of critical thinkers had read it in Germany, however, he would never have gained power. Incidentally what I mean by fantasy-dreamers is all the utopians of various types. Jacobins, communists, nazis, fascists, etc. Those who dream that they're going to force the world to be reasonable somehow, and bring about heaven on earth. They live in fantasy, and when reality touches them they react savagely. I would lump everything from Libertarians to Marxist-Leninists into this camp, though some are more violent than others, thank heaven. > I rather think that all Dead White Men are rather unpalatably skeletal > right now, and are mostly of merit nutritionally, for earthworms. I refer, as I'm sure you know, to the current disdain with which "dead white men" are treated in many parts of the literary world. It is of course their work to which I refer, which should be judged on the merits. > There you go. I agree with that wholeheartedly. We're not so > different, you and I. It's often the case, but there's that awful medium of language to get through. > Well, it was nice to throw psycho-analytic criticism into the prism. > We're really refracting some light here, aren't we? I tried really hard to avoid the psychology side of this but I couldn't help myself. I will say no more, I could go on for weeks about...well never mind, let's just say I'm no fan of Freud OR Jung. > Look, I'm a liberal, sort of, and you're a conservative, sort of. I > think politically the facts are on my side and you think politically > the facts are on your side. We don't agree politically. We both read > the same classical texts, and we both respond to them, though probably > differently. I read a lot of literary criticism, and I think a lot of > it is awful and a lot of it is really valuable, and a lot is > in-between. Either way, the goal is to illuminate the text, and when > criticism doesn't, I don't care for it. But this whole-sale bashing > of the academy is just silly. You don't know what you're talking > about. Neither does George Will, or Ann Coulter, or David Horowitz, > or whoever it is you're reading regarding this stuff. I attend a lot > of academic conferences and when really loopy papers are read, the > reaction from everyone is a lot of muffled chuckles, and rolled eyes, > and gossip afterwards. That's just the way it works. I agree that you're a sort-of liberal, but I am a hard-core conservative. You just don't realize what that means. Classical liberals are conservatives. Teddy Roosevelt progressives are conservatives. Whigs and Abolitionists are conservatives. The left ceded far too much ground by embracing democratic socialist, which is the least bad form, but still bad. There are still a few Truman-type liberals around, but precious few, and most of them are now conservatives. A conservative is anybody who says, "if we're going to err, let's err on the side of tradition." It encompasses so many beliefs and ideologies that it's ridiculous. The three you mention above are all from different camps, even though two of them work together. I agree with you that in literary criticism most is bad, some is good, and plenty is indifferent. I rarely read the narrow-lens critics and in that I encompass the Jerry Falwell camp. I enjoy reading all of those you mention, particularly Anne Coulter, but she doesn't form my opinions for me. My criticism of the academy is based on my own experience. I used to work with hundreds of colleges and professors around the country, though mostly in Arizona. It is a depressing thing to remember. I love to argue (just in case you couldn't guess) and I many times put the chance to argue above the chance to make some money. I am a very ignorant person, and not overly bright, but I made mincemeat out of them so often that it really began to frighten me. I'm terrified of public school, and even more of public colleges. Much of my own learning comes from trying to find out what went wrong, and when. It seems that the education system has decided to tear a page from Orwell. Ignorance is strength. This is extraordinarily important in terms of criticism, because otherwise rotten books can become bestsellers. If a critic always looks for one thing and always finds it, he's doing the people who read his reviews a disservice. What's worse, he might be helping along one of those fantasies that are always waiting in the wings. > I don't want to make enemies, and I am interested in any good literary > criticism, from whatever source. Who's good? Most of the reviews I read on a weekly basis are from Arts & Philosophy. Unfortunately I don't have the URL at the moment because I read them at work. 12 hours is a long shift. > I respond to your passion, and to your obvious love of literature. > Let's make a deal. You stop bashing me and I'll stop bashing you. > Okay? I never bashed you once, and never felt bashed. I may have mentioned I love to argue. I don't mind if it gets heated--the more heated the better. It's more fun that way. I see it as an outgrowth of relativism that nobody wants to fight. Why have beliefs if you won't fight for 'em? There's a guy in California who's suing the government for their coverup of Drake's true landing place south of SF. Bravo for him, even though I could care less. I suppose I could be more temperate in language but where's the fun in that? I suppose though it would make it easier to get past Justin [MOD: I assume you mean me, Jonathan], I will try to tone it down a little. But only a little. I'm enjoying myself hugely. Jim Wilson aka The Laird Jim - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #16 *****************************