Modest Proposals
Groundling
The hosts of this new and welcome Group might consider personally
inviting the creators (e.g. "Mouse" et al) of the now spam-ridden HLAS
to join here.
The following was spiked at SHAKSPER (www.SHAKSPER.net):
In my youth I enjoyed watching the Western TV series HAVE GUN WILL
TRAVEL, starring Richard Boone as Paladin, a sophistricated mercenary
gunfighter based in San Francisco. In one episode, if memory serves,
Paladin, out West on the lonesome trail, encounters a Jewish peddler
aboard his wagon. During their chat on life and crime, Paladin, to
make a point, blurts out in Hebrew the Mishnaic maxim: "Ayn Kemach Ayn
Torah", meaning: Without Bread there can be no Law. Surprised at
Hebrew words emanating from this gun-toting killer, the peddler smiles
and replies, again in Hebrew: "Ayn Torah Ayn Kemach", or: Without Law
there can be no Bread. The Sages of Old, in their enduring wisdom,
insisted both maxims were true at the same time, that any such rigid
dichotomies were dubious at best, be they Bread and Law, Body and
Soul, Flesh and Spirit, Matter and Idea, or more recently, Base
(Economy) and Superstructure (Culture). Rather, they blend into an
organic whole encompassing in its shifting unity both tensions and
supports---all evolving eschatologically in history's Providential
drama toward ultimate universal redemption through the people Israel.
Later, Platonized Orthodox Christianity, after mercilessly suppressing
those heretics who either demonized or overvalued the Flesh or Bread,
nonetheless emerged privileging the Spiritual Law over Bread in a more
hardened version of that dichotomy, while retaining an eschatology,
though now adapted to salvific Christian doctrine. A desacralized
version of this eschatology persisted in Hegel's dialectical drama of
History, still privileging the Spirit or Idea, but secularized as self-
consciousness en route to full liberation. Marx, of course, inverted
the privilege within this eschatology: now Bread or Base, not Law or
Superstructure, would drive History toward the Last Judgment in their
dance of Revolution. And so, over the years, the legions of the Left
and the armies of the Spirit have demonized each other from their
respective standpoints.
The acids of deconstruction have now dissolved both the teleology and
privileging of Bread inherent in authentic Marxism, to the cheers of
religionists but over the cries of diehard ideologues nursed on
Matter's milk. The weaning process is still underway. Yet many remain
trapped in their materialist vocabulary. They cling to it like a Linus
blanket. Why else does Cary DiPietro in SHAKSPER (SHK 18.0092) always
refer to a "material" past, as if the real past did not comprehend
both Bread and Law in their dynamic interaction? Likewise, any
aesthetic, it seems, must be "materialist" to merit our attention.
Yet tentative steps have been and are being taken toward the original
organic model of the Sages, in secular guise. DiPietro again: "there
are also lines of continuity that connect us to that past." I'd argue
that the past and present, even in their differences, constitute one
long continuum and that the overriding mission of scholarship is to
trace that continuum (after Aristotle) from native original to present
trans-lation---but not exclusively as a narrowly focused agenda-driven
exercise. The present being itself the perfect issue of its past,
presentism (as transvalued) becomes merely one endpoint of the
historicist project as a whole, and not its mighty dialectical
opposite.
Later in SHAKSPER, Hugh Grady warns us: "Labels can be
reductive." (SHK 18.0157) Would it were so! I find the contrary to be
the main problem, namely, the tossing about of undefined and ill-
defined labels. In this vein DiPietro (SHK 18.0092) predicts
presentism will help determine "what it means to be 'modern'." Yet
this ubiquitous lack of definition has not stopped theorists from
using labels like "modern," "reactionary," "positivist", etc., in
their convoluted lucubrations---largely exercies in meaningless
circularity.
I propose, therefore, that theorists, unwilling to define their
obscure labels on the spot, restrict their discourse to terms already
defined consensually (and not yet transvalued). I understand how
radical a departure from current practice this may appear, but after
their initial disorientation has passed, they may in time become
inured to the ensuing clarity of thought and expression---a boon for
all.
I further propose that, to advance the standards of scholarship, we
institute an annual award honoring those whose evasions, distortions,
and obfuscations have done most to render discourse unintelligible.
Call the honoree Floating Signifier of the Year. After a strange
surreal non-debate with an unresponsive stick-and-run labeler
elsewhere, I already have someone in mind (though I concede he faces
stiff competition). Oh yes, the award itself?---a virtual statuette of
an unclothed emperor.
Finally, one last counter-mantra on "our old friend the facts" (SHK
18.0130). Once again, Facts emphatically exist in themselves, and
therefore speak perfectly for themselves. Only we hear or experience
them selectively and imperfectly in trans-lation. The tree falls, or
Shakespeare writes his draft, whether we witness it or not. Foreigners
speak perfectly for themselves, carrying their own inherent meaning,
whether we hear and understand their strange words, or not. In my
view, scholarship should seek to approach as nearly as possible the
unattainable Object, should aim at that impossible Objectivity, and in
no way discourage or undermine this Quest for the Grail.
Modestly yours,
Joe Egert
For more ordnance, follow the link below to Graham Good's 1996 "The
Hegemony of Theory":
The Moderator
LOL.
> Finally, one last counter-mantra on "our old friend the facts" (SHK
> 18.0130). Once again, Facts emphatically exist in themselves, and
> therefore speak perfectly for themselves. Only we hear or experience
> them selectively and imperfectly in trans-lation. The tree falls, or
> Shakespeare writes his draft, whether we witness it or not. Foreigners
> speak perfectly for themselves, carrying their own inherent meaning,
> whether we hear and understand their strange words, or not. In my
> view, scholarship should seek to approach as nearly as possible the
> unattainable Object, should aim at that impossible Objectivity, and in
> no way discourage or undermine this Quest for the Grail.
>
> Modestly yours,
> Joe Egert
>
> For more ordnance, follow the link below to Graham Good's 1996 "The
> Hegemony of Theory":
>
> http://www.greggsimpson.com/Hegemony.htm
Thank you Groundling- a nice counter blast against some of the
excesses of modern scholars (or 'scholars', as the case may be).
Mark Houlsby
Or perhaps even "skolers", one might suggest.
Elizabeth
> Greetings to all!
>
> The hosts of this new and welcome Group might consider personally
> inviting the creators (e.g. "Mouse" et al) of the now spam-ridden HLAS
> to join here.
>
> The following was spiked at SHAKSPER (www.SHAKSPER.net):
>
> In my youth I enjoyed watching the Western TV series HAVE GUN WILL
> TRAVEL, starring Richard Boone as Paladin, a sophistricated mercenary
> gunfighter based in San Francisco. In one episode, if memory serves,
> Paladin, out West on the lonesome trail, encounters a Jewish peddler
> aboard his wagon. During their chat on life and crime, Paladin, to
> make a point, blurts out in Hebrew the Mishnaic maxim: "Ayn Kemach Ayn
> Torah", meaning: Without Bread there can be no Law. Surprised at
> Hebrew words emanating from this gun-toting killer, the peddler smiles
> and replies, again in Hebrew: "Ayn Torah Ayn Kemach", or: Without Law
> there can be no Bread. The Sages of Old, in their enduring wisdom,
> insisted both maxims were true at the same time, that any such rigid
> dichotomies were dubious at best, be they Bread and Law, Body and
> Soul, Flesh and Spirit, Matter and Idea, or more recently, Base
> (Economy) and Superstructure (Culture). Rather, they blend into an
> organic whole encompassing in its shifting unity both tensions and
> supports---all evolving eschatologically in history's Providential
> drama toward ultimate universal redemption through the people Israel.
The question of theory is a good starting point for
this forum.
I see these so-called theories, including the current
Baconian theory, more along the lines of literary narratives presented
as theories, unsubstantiated hypotheses, circular arguments, ad hoc
suppositions, etc. I don't see a proper theory or even a sound
hypothesis among them.
The following is taken from Agassi's Theoretical Bias
In Evidence: A Historical Sketch.
In particular, he [Bacon] knew the difference between
sense illusion and theory-laden observation whose
error is theory-based; he knew the difference between
theory-ladenness on account of some very general
features of our faculties (or our perceptual-cum-cognitive
apparatus) and theory-ladenness on account of a specific
theory, be it Aristotle's or Gilbert's.
Theoretical Bias In Evidence: A Historical Sketch
Philosophica, 31, 1983 (1), pp. 7 -24.
<http://www.tau.ac.il/~agass/joseph-papers/bias.pdf>
Biased theories account for the fact that the authorship dispute has
never been resolved. In
my opinion.
Thanks for your post and the link to Graham Good's
paper. Read it.
Ignoto
And as a follow up to Agassi's paper, I'd recommend:
http://www.sydneyline.com/Stove%20foreword.htm
I'll write more when I have more time.
Ignoto
> Biased theories account for the fact that the authorship dispute has
> never been resolved. In
> my opinion.
>
> Thanks for your post and the link to Graham Good's
> paper. Read it.
>
[snip]
spinoza1111
On Apr 9, 5:40 pm, "Elizabeth" <elizabeth_w...@mail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 5, 12:50 pm, "Groundling" <tre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Greetings to all!
>
> > The hosts of this new and welcome Group might consider personally
> > inviting the creators (e.g. "Mouse" et al) of the now spam-ridden HLAS
> > to join here.
The situation on the unmoderated HLAS is changing because Mark Houlsby
is beginning to change. However, he's not published an apology.
I wouldn't dignify Shakespeare denial as a theory, since a scientific
theory is one that is either true, or on the verge of being proved
true in hopes of obtaining further results. The preponderance of
evidence makes Shakespeare's existence as a guy from Stratford the
only "theory" worth considering, since the (unavailable and unlikely)
refutation of this true theory would be Copernican and require a
rethink of the corpus of responsible Shakespearean scholarship.
Furthermore, any Shakespeare denial has to posit at least one
"conspiracy theory", and given the thinness of the historical record,
and the necessity of a certain trust in documents which, far from
being "irrational" as it is in the suspicious peasant mind of the
autodidact, is a Kantian foundation of the historical effort: if we
did not believe on balance that written documents are most of the time
written in good faith, history (including literary history) would have
to be abandoned.
The fact is that history IS a conspiracy, of the people in control to
kill most of the inconvenient slaves, helots, proletarians and other
slobs after extracting their labor to build monuments to the vanity of
the elite. But this takes quite an effort to wrap the head around, and
is replaced by localized conspiracy theories.
Nor would I dignify Shakespeare denial as a literary narrative,
because it's classist, vulgar, stupid and ugly to believe in the
existence of "aristocratic refinement" as prerequisite to literary
creation in an era when the bourgeoisie were the creative class, of
necessary (for, as Caliban said, I must eat my dinner), and the
aristocrats a bunch of gangstas who'd grabbed public commons land from
its rightful owners, and thrown good people out of work to be beaten,
as is Tom o' Bedlam, from town to town, and to "drink the green mantle
of the standing pool".
>
> The following is taken from Agassi's Theoretical Bias
> In Evidence: A Historical Sketch.
>
> In particular, he [Bacon] knew the difference between
> sense illusion and theory-laden observation whose
> error is theory-based; he knew the difference between
> theory-ladenness on account of some very general
> features of our faculties (or our perceptual-cum-cognitive
> apparatus) and theory-ladenness on account of a specific
> theory, be it Aristotle's or Gilbert's.
Bacon in fact contributed very little to the philosophy of science. It
is a myth that mediaeval man did not observe, and that all of a
sudden, in the Renaissance, men started to observe. In fact, working
people observe (and form theories based on and tested by evidence) in
the struggle for existence. Their conservatism in the Middle Ages ("we
must plant this way") was actually rational, since unlike aristocrats,
they had to pay for their mistakes.
Bacon only redressed the monkish Scholastic bias towards theory. But
theory formation is absolutely essential to any kind of empirical
research, and this was stated first by Aristotle and not Bacon.
>
> Theoretical Bias In Evidence: A Historical Sketch
> Philosophica, 31, 1983 (1), pp. 7 -24.
>
> <http://www.tau.ac.il/~agass/joseph-papers/bias.pdf>
>
> Biased theories account for the fact that the authorship dispute has
> never been resolved. In
> my opinion.
No, the authorship dispute was resolved in 1708 when the Rowe edition
of Shakespeare was published crediting no other than the man
Shakespeare. Sure, it could be reopened if a document, appropriately
dateable by both textual and scientific means, was discovered
describing an authorship conspiracy: but no such document has yet been
found by London workmen excavating yet another Yuppie swine condo in
Southwark or anywhere else.
Shakespeare denial, Holocaust denial, global warming denial, and Da
Vinci code moronization are all destructive ventures. It's like the
way the History Channel, fearful of offending advertisers (who so
strangely control despite the fact that the subscriber pays for the
goddamn and so called History channel) eschews history as a record of
victimization (such as the creation of US infrastructure by enslaved
blackamoors) and instead to present superstitious possibility as
pseudo history in programs labeled "in search of".
The fact is that it's impossible for most modern people to sit on
their butts during a serious presentation of a Shakespeare play for
the same reasons Adorno and Benjamin found for the destruction of the
ability to apprehend music, and people know this, and their engagement
with Shakespeare is therefore limited to a passive-aggressive campaign
to replace Shakespeare by the aristo twit of the month.
> >http://www.greggsimpson.com/Hegemony.htm- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Mouse
I would just like to say that I am deeply offended and will read no
more of this vicious, ignorant, and unwarranted screed. If people such
as Spinoza are going to make these kinds of posts about non-Strats or
anyone else without censure, then this clearly isn't the kind of forum
I was hoping it might be. In its own way, Spinoza's post is at least
as bad as the trolling idiocy that has overtaken hlas, and so it's
highly unlikely that I will participate here.
Lynne
> > >http://www.greggsimpson.com/Hegemony.htm-Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111
Ms. Mouse, I take the position that denying the authorship of
Shakespeare goes against Shakespeare scholarship starting with
Nicholas Rowe, since nearly all scholars have affirmed, based on the
documentary record, that Shakespeare of Stratford is the author of the
canon, AND it takes an unverifiable and unfalsifiable positing of a
conspiracy to deny this.
I don't call people "trolls". I don't attack their personal honesty
and integrity. I merely restate as necessarily axiomatic something
that's common knowledge.
But, people here are so invested in what I have described as "the
anarchy of the lower middle class" that when I call them on the
psychological reasons for their essentially destructive effort, they
become indeed profoundly offended.
Too bad. I'll thank you, Ms. Mouse, to form in your mind a clear
separation between passion for the simple truth and a stalking attempt
to trash male posters while getting access to the chicks here, which
is the Ponzi scheme of Mark Houlsby.
I have yet to see anybody engage my (Kantian) point that you just
don't start your investigation of Shakespeare by adopting a
Shakespeare denial pose. I have yet to see anybody engage my (Marxist)
point that aristocratic thugs have no earthly reason to engage in the
exacting business of drafting, in iambic pentameter, an actable play.
Instead, we have here Yet Another wounded spirit with hurt feelings,
who I have not attacked either by name or by description, only by a
display of perhaps excessive self-confidence and an old-fashioned self-
esteem quite unlike the crazy combination of utter self-confidence in
a bad cause, and self-questioning and self-doubt as excuses for not
having read the text).
The wimmen posters in HLAS have over the past few months ENABLED Mark
Houlsby's campaign of personal destruction by speaking him fair. But
it's dollars to donuts they will not speak me fair for in fact, my
case is based on a painful truth: we can almost no longer read
Shakespeare because (in Yeat's words) "with hearts grown brutal we
have fed ourselves with fantasies".
Let the moderator, Ms. Mouse, decide, and not pass my posts along. It
won't be the first time I've been Eighty-Sixed. But I don't go about
trashing people unless they over-identify with the abstract petty
bourgeois who cannot bring himself or herself to admit that perhaps
most culture is, as Brecht said, dogshit erected on suffering, with a
precious modicum being something else, such as a rumour about the
redemption of humanity.
> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
The Moderator
> > > Shakespeare denial, Holocaust denial, global warming denial, and Da
> > > Vinci code moronization are all destructive ventures.
>
> > I would just like to say that I am deeply offended and will read no
> > more of this vicious, ignorant, and unwarranted screed. If people such
> > as Spinoza are going to make these kinds of posts about non-Strats or
> > anyone else without censure, then this clearly isn't the kind of forum
> > I was hoping it might be. In its own way, Spinoza's post is at least
> > as bad as the trolling idiocy that has overtaken hlas, and so it's
> > highly unlikely that I will participate here.
>
> Ms. Mouse, I take the position that denying the authorship of
> Shakespeare goes against Shakespeare scholarship starting with
> Nicholas Rowe, since nearly all scholars have affirmed, based on the
> documentary record, that Shakespeare of Stratford is the author of the
> canon, AND it takes an unverifiable and unfalsifiable positing of a
> conspiracy to deny this.
>
Spinoza, comparing anti-stratfordians to holocaust deniers plainly
creates more heat than light. I would ask, therefore, that you do not
use the comparison.
[snip]
Mouse
Thanks for trying, Ig, but I'm not a Shakespeare denier either. I am a
Shakespeare lover. Nor do I believe that it's "classist, vulgar,
stupid and ugly" to believe that someone other than WS of Stratford,
even an aristo, wrote the plays. Nor do I care to hear my candidate
called an "aristocratic thug." Nor am I "another wounded spirit with
hurt feelings." I am simply asking for participants to address one
another with respect, in fact with collegiality, as Spinoza promised
to in his earliest post here. It seems he is constitutionally
incapable of doing so.
If I want to be insulted on a regular basis, or see others or my
candidate insulted, I can stay on hlas. But good luck with your
venture.
L.
>
> [snip]- Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111
I won't revoke it, but I will on HLASM in future eliminate mention of
Holocaust denial, in part because I have several other examples of the
general phenomenon of passive-aggressive denial of knowledge including
global warming denial, the Da Vinci code, and Creationism. Fair
enough?
>
> [snip]- Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111
Sorry, collegiality is definitely not offending or insulting you, but
if it is interpreted as not offending something in your cognitive
network which you admire, then we're up Shit's Creek as far as being
able to have a discussion as opposed to something like a staff meeting
in a typical American corporation...where everyone's so scared of
losing their job and health insurance that they walk in eggshells in
an unknowable network of informal connections, guanxi, bak sheesh, and
grab ass.
Mathematically, because everything is relatable to everything, I can
never know, while engaged in a vigorous analysis of some piece of
nonsense, whether I might call your pal an aristocratic thug if he
seems indeed to be one given the Tudor destruction of the monasteries
and commons. But I can know when I am calling you names such as
booger, and I can refrain.
This is collegiality, and part of collegiality is being able to know
one's boundaries, and not feel oh so offended when your pet theory or
hobby horse is attacked.
I realize we live in a culture where my fine distinction may be
incomprehensible...where Don Imus can call the women of Rutgers' b-
ball team "nappy headed hos" and in all probability keep his fucking
job, because he makes money for the elite, and the Devil take dem
nappy head hos, who DON'T COUNT.
But it's bone stupid in my book not to be able to make a distinction
between language which Christ defined to be of the form "thou fool"
and language which hazards that there is something called the truth..
Since as Samuel Johnson said, no man except a fool writes for free, it
is NONSENSE to believe that aristocratic goons and wiseguys sat around
writing at Shakespeare's level. Writing anywhere near that level, such
that the mostly unlettered audience can follow the plot, understand
motivation and character, and so on, happens to be hard work which
have aristocratic thugs pulling the bell pull for the help pronto.
It's not about you, Ms. Mouse. Because you think it's about you,
you've passive aggressively started a flame war which will end only
when I, as the loudest if most precise voice in the room, get unfairly
but predictably Eighty-Sixed. This is because you're making
essentially the same demand on HLASM that Houlsby made on HLAS: that
it conform to your norms, which with all respect, I do not think you
have thought through. If they are applied, we'd have no discussion,
but instead a corporate meeting and as such an expense of spirit in a
waste of shame, and silence.
>
> If I want to be insulted on a regular basis, or see others or my
> candidate insulted, I can stay on hlas. But good luck with your
> venture.
Yeah, well complementary to this desire to live in a walled community
in which nothing in one's network is accidentally smashed by us bulls
in those China shops is the creation of Prison Planet outside the
wall, in which the Mark Houlsbys of the world are enabled by the
inability to make simple distinctions between "raca, thou fool", and
"you like something that sucks: you believe something that is false".
You let Houlsby stomp all over HLAS because when people like Michael
responded to him in defense of their good name, you were offended by
THEM and not as much by Mark. In other words, babe, you used to be so
amused by Napoleon in rags and the language that he used.
>
> L.
>
>
>
>
>
> > [snip]- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
Mouse
You appear to have mistaken me for someone else. I have never been
offended by Michael, although sometimes I've responded to his
arguments about Shakespeare; in the same way, I've never denigrated
Lyra or Art or others; I rather like all of them; however, I was
extremely offended by Houlsby, and told him so on a number of
occasions before going silent as I realised that speaking to someone
like him only worsens the situation, no matter what one says. Neither
do I desire to start a flame war with you. I extremely dislike your
"discussion etiquette," if such it might be called, and as I said, I'm
leaving because I'd rather not put up with it. To my mind, you and
Houlsby have destroyed HLAS between you, and unlike some others, I'm
not afraid to say so. I was just waiting to see if Ig had anything
else to say, because
a) I very much respect him in some ways, and
b) it interests me to know how he's going to deal with someone who in
time will knock anyone who is both non-Strat and sane out of the
group.
L.
John W. Kennedy
> I have yet to see anybody engage my (Kantian) point that you just
> don't start your investigation of Shakespeare by adopting a
> Shakespeare denial pose. I have yet to see anybody engage my (Marxist)
> point that aristocratic thugs have no earthly reason to engage in the
> exacting business of drafting, in iambic pentameter, an actable play.
But there /have/ been aristocrats who were major literary figures, such
as Alfred the Great, James I of Scotland, Charles d'Orleans, and Rama II
of Siam, and there has been at least one aristocrat who was a major
figure in theater history, namely, Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
-- Charles Williams. "Mount Badon"
* TagZilla 0.066 * http://tagzilla.mozdev.org
The Moderator
[snip]
MS Mouse, it seems, does not like pejorative characterisations of
people or arguments.
I would remind her that the entire anti-stratfordian argument (the
negative case, by which it is established that WS of Stratford could
not have been the author) relies on pejorative characterisation of WS
of Stratford. So we find WS of Stratford characterised as
"illiterate", as from a "family of illiterates", as having "illiterate
daughters" as Jonson's "Sogliardo" (shit), as Jonson's "poet-ape", as
a "play-broker" as a "front man" etc.
As a 'stratfordian' *I* do not care to hear any of these things about
WS. But I do not complain to anti-stratfordians that they cannot say
such things. I DO tell them that they are *wrong* to draw such
conclusions.
[There's more I could say on this, but I don't have time at the moment]
John W. Kennedy
> I have yet to see anybody engage my (Kantian) point that you just
> don't start your investigation of Shakespeare by adopting a
> Shakespeare denial pose. I have yet to see anybody engage my (Marxist)
> point that aristocratic thugs have no earthly reason to engage in the
> exacting business of drafting, in iambic pentameter, an actable play.
But there /have/ been aristocrats who were major literary figures, such
Mouse
I don't tend to say such things, ig, except to say that Judith was
likely illiterate as she signed with a mark. I certainly wouldn't say
such things in a moderated group. There are ways and ways of arguing.
One can argue the facts hard without resorting to insult, imo. I post
to at least three groups where this is the case. Nor would I
characterise Stratfordians as anything at all except those who believe
that WS of Stratford wrote the canon. I do not malign them in any way,
as you well know.
>
> As a 'stratfordian' *I* do not care to hear any of these things about
> WS. But I do not complain to anti-stratfordians that they cannot say
> such things. I DO tell them that they are *wrong* to draw such
> conclusions.
Again, there are ways and ways of discussing and arguing. I am
insulted by the ignorant comparisons that have been made, the sort of
comparisons I would never make myself. I am not a Shakespeare denier;
nor do I in any way resemble a Holocaust denier, a global warming-
denier, or a Da Vinci Code fan. I have, in fact, written scholarly
articles accepted by orthodox journals that publish material on
Shakespeare. I have also written novels deploring the Holocaust and
worked towards a cleaner environment. I have in addition, for what
it's worth, criticised the DVC. I could easily slur Stratfordians in
the same way that Spinoza slurs non-Strats. I could even make the same
comparisons. But I don't. These kinds of disparagements do not help
dialogue. They get in the way.
In any case, you've made yourself quite clear on how things will go on
here and given Spinoza a carte blanche with only a slight smudge on
it. I doubt I'll post again.
L.
>
> [There's more I could say on this, but I don't have time at the moment]- Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111
On Apr 12, 12:25 pm, "John W. Kennedy" <john.w.kenn...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> spinoza1111 wrote:
> > I have yet to see anybody engage my (Kantian) point that you just
> > don't start your investigation of Shakespeare by adopting a
> > Shakespeare denial pose. I have yet to see anybody engage my (Marxist)
> > point that aristocratic thugs have no earthly reason to engage in the
> > exacting business of drafting, in iambic pentameter, an actable play.
>
> But there /have/ been aristocrats who were major literary figures, such
> as Alfred the Great, James I of Scotland, Charles d'Orleans, and Rama II
Give me a break. They are known as literary figures for the same
reason Samuel Johnson compared a woman preaching to a bear dancing, in
a form of ugly fawning in which we ape the courtiers of old, and
murmur approbation when the monarch labors to produce only a law code
(Alfred) or a "Counterblast to Tobacco" (James).
We do this because of the equivocation, in modern society, between
corporate production and individual production. Corporate production
is a summation of individual production which is then, in a gesture
made to reconcile contradictory interests, credited to the manager.
I hope you don't think James translated the Bible.
spinoza1111
> here and given Spinoza a carte blanche with onlylife a slight smudge on
> it. I doubt I'll post again.
I've promised the moderator to omit Holocaust denial. Unfortunately,
for many people who labor to publish books, it is uncomfortable to be
told the facts of life.
Look, I don't like being lower middle class, and subject to the
(almost) forced patterns of thought that are beamed at the petite
bourgeoisie.
They are told that "if only" they had a mysterious combination of
"talent" and "work ethic", success would be theirs, only to be subject
(in the USA) to pandemic clinical depression and obesity because they
discover that their technical and cultural work is atomized and
stolen.
They shrink from those dirty people who do dirty jobs and continue to
hope for affiliation with the material base of high culture.
But ultimately, as in the History Channel, everything becomes a
puzzle.
The solution becomes a key, if disempowering form of denial meant to
select the denier as a person with a short circuit to the insight of
the "real" scholar.
As in HLAS, the topic continually drifts away from the newsgroup
charter to the *amour propre* of the discussants who hope in each
discussion for that sort of recognition they systematically withhold
from others.
Look, the topic, whether in HLAS or HLASM, is not my *amour propre*
nor is it anyone else's. It's a guy, as far as we can tell from the
documentary record, who left his wife but did not forget his
responsibilities and who willingly worked as a team member to meet
those responsibilities. He was "flamed" but did not respond except by
creating art.
>
> L.
>
>
>
>
>
> > [There's more I could say on this, but I don't have time at the moment]- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
John W. Kennedy
>
>
> On Apr 12, 12:25 pm, "John W. Kennedy" <john.w.kenn...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 wrote:
>>> I have yet to see anybody engage my (Kantian) point that you just
>>> don't start your investigation of Shakespeare by adopting a
>>> Shakespeare denial pose. I have yet to see anybody engage my (Marxist)
>>> point that aristocratic thugs have no earthly reason to engage in the
>>> exacting business of drafting, in iambic pentameter, an actable play.
>> But there /have/ been aristocrats who were major literary figures, such
>> as Alfred the Great, James I of Scotland, Charles d'Orleans, and Rama II
>
> Give me a break. They are known as literary figures for the same
> reason Samuel Johnson compared a woman preaching to a bear dancing, in
> a form of ugly fawning in which we ape the courtiers of old, and
> murmur approbation when the monarch labors to produce only a law code
> (Alfred) or a "Counterblast to Tobacco" (James).
> [snip]
> I hope you don't think James translated the Bible.
You might, sometime before you die, want to learn the difference between
England and Scotland, what with them being two different countries and
all. Some folk are rather touchy on the subject.
You also might want to check your facts. Alfred is probably the most
important non-anonymous author in Old English. His translation of
Boethius is especially well known. (For that matter, his Doom Book
continues to influence the laws of the entire English-speaking world to
this day -- but it is not generally filed under "literature".)
--
John W. Kennedy
"Sweet, was Christ crucified to create this chat?"
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
spinoza1111
On Apr 13, 12:45 pm, "John W. Kennedy" <John.W.Kenn...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> spinoza1111 wrote:
>
> > On Apr 12, 12:25 pm, "John W. Kennedy" <john.w.kenn...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> spinoza1111 wrote:
> >>> I have yet to see anybody engage my (Kantian) point that you just
> >>> don't start your investigation of Shakespeare by adopting a
> >>> Shakespeare denial pose. I have yet to see anybody engage my (Marxist)
> >>> point that aristocratic thugs have no earthly reason to engage in the
> >>> exacting business of drafting, in iambic pentameter, an actable play.
> >> But there /have/ been aristocrats who were major literary figures, such
> >> as Alfred the Great, James I of Scotland, Charles d'Orleans, and Rama II
>
> > Give me a break. They are known as literary figures for the same
> > reason Samuel Johnson compared a woman preaching to a bear dancing, in
> > a form of ugly fawning in which we ape the courtiers of old, and
> > murmur approbation when the monarch labors to produce only a law code
> > (Alfred) or a "Counterblast to Tobacco" (James).
> > [snip]
> > I hope you don't think James translated the Bible.
>
> You might, sometime before you die, want to learn the difference between
> England and Scotland, what with them being two different countries and
> all. Some folk are rather touchy on the subject.
Patronizing, sniggering, and of course no contribution to the
dialogue.
The figures you name remain obscurities. The fact is that I've
forgotten more about the canon than you've ever learned, because
you've specialized in pedantic obscurity.
The fact remains is that approximately 80 to 90 percent of the authors
in the Oxford Book of English Verse came from humble or middle class
backgrounds. Furthermore, the greatest writers of Alfred's time were
anonymous because they were of no account, at best minstrels but
apparently sailors in the case of The Wanderer ("the souls of sailors
contain not many known songs").
The Wanderer in particular is probably the greatest and most well-
known poem of this era, and in it, the "wanderer" documents a material
struggle to find a patron, sailing between Denmark and England.
Compared to this, a "doom" book and a translation of the Consolations
of fucking Philosophy is hack and Grub street work that WOULD NOT HAVE
BEEN REMEMBERED had its author not been King Alfred.
You are fooled, you are gulled, you are tricked in the same way
buffoons buy books because they are written by Donald Trump.
>
> You also might want to check your facts. Alfred is probably the most
> important non-anonymous author in Old English. His translation of
Wow. That's like being "the most important black baseball player in
the national leagues before Jackie Robinson".
> Boethius is especially well known. (For that matter, his Doom Book
> continues to influence the laws of the entire English-speaking world to
> this day -- but it is not generally filed under "literature".)
Some people here specializing in Shakespere denial. You specialize in
knowing obscure and unimportant trivia to give the impression you know
the well-known. This is a scam.
"Hey Harv, are you into trivia?" "I'm talkin' to ya, ain't I?" -
Harvey Pekar, American Splendor
>
> --
> John W. Kennedy
> "Sweet, was Christ crucified to create this chat?"
> -- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
> * TagZilla 0.066 *http://tagzilla.mozdev.org- Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111
Indeed. Well, perhaps you were having a bad hair day that day.
> such things in a moderated group. There are ways and ways of arguing.
> One can argue the facts hard without resorting to insult, imo. I post
Let me see if I can clarify, because the direction you are going is
the "corporate staff meeting" direction in which the weaker members
enable the unprincipled members because nobody can say anything
"negative" even by implication.
Let there be three types of "insults":
(1) A core insult which is modally and necessarily about the essential
person addressed, expressed by Christ as "raca, thou fool".
(2) A noncore insult which is about one's interlocutor's attributes,
not his necessary soul, such as "you look like an idiot in those
speedos". The distinction between (1) and (2) is understandable in
terms of modal logic, for in the latter case, the Speedos are an
accident: I can wear board shorts or go naked, while in (1) I cannot
be other than my essence (that entity, naked himself of any attributes
in the form of free will choices, which is the soul that is judged,
according to Christianity, at the latter day).
(3) A "network associative" insult which attacks something to which I
cathect and thus by an emotion laden implication insults me: "the
bands you like suck".
Now, I claim that Ms Mouse's claimed insults lie in the outer circle
of the above topos.
The interesting thing about this outer circle is that if we so
generalize our desire to be some sort of Ghandi (or, more precisely,
our erroneous conception of Ghandi) we think that we will get
blessings and Mitzvots for avoiding insults of type 3.
Monastic rules of silence are sometimes adopted because flawed people
can indeed hurt feelings with insults of type 3.
At the same time, vigorous discussion gets at truth and truth is good
and stuff.
I find the VIEW that Shakespeare didn't write "Shakespeare" nasty and
unsupported by any Shakespeare critic or literary historian for whom I
have respect. I would not like to associate with a person holding that
view because the view shows passive aggressive hostility to high
culture combined with a desire to use it to exclude the very idea that
working slobs make culture, not upper class twits. But that's only
because I prefer to associate with people who are more intelligent,
witty and sensitive than me so that I can learn, using the ideas of
the original Spinoza on this important matter.
I like more or less steamrolling and carpet bombing Shakespeare denial
in order to make clear that despite what the mass media tell us, we do
have a subconscious in Freud's sense, and this if we let it causes us
to believe nonsense.
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111
Well, yes indeed. Shakespeare deniers "insult" (in my sense # 3 of a
"network insult") anyone not fortunate enough to have a rich Daddy and
I could take that personally. But all I have to go on is what Marcette
Chute presented (to me in her 1960 book Shakespeare of London) and
what Wells and Taylor present today: that measured by what is
available in the text of the historical record (where the data of
history is not "facts" but "texts", "facts" being a construct, for the
historian, of "texts") we Know that the glover's son wrote the plays.
I am not going to get my pantyhose in a tangle when this Kennedy clown
deliberately inserts "James I of Scotland" as a jejune trick, knowing
that a class act like me, who assumes good faith, would stumble
thereupon, temporarily confusing that clown with the Tobacco
counterblaster, and indeed hoping to bring me down a peg, in the
manner of the bitter, twisted and permanently aged graduate student
(or quondam graduate student in an unpaid internship at Bear Stearns,
stealing his company's time) who has long lost his love for the canon
because his professors are or were classist thugs.
This is partly because I don't wear pantyhose, but also because even
in a moderated group one has to be a grownup who knows what he knows,
and knows that the reason why aristos, who manage to write a Doom book
or translate Boethius get into the Canon is the same reason why
Princeton and Yale admitted boneheads like George Bush: legacy and
celebrity admission policies, in which King Al gets in the canon
because its editors hope to ingratiate themselves with the upper
clawss.
There is an uncharitable and zero sum rage here on usenet to increase
one's prestige by reducing that of others, and an anthropologist would
notice right away that we live in a reverse-Kwakiutl economy in which
we snatch each other's salmon catch for prestige.
It is TRUE that men posters to usenet, and highly paid radio talk show
hosts who are also men (or overgrown boys) create an intimidating
environment for the ladies because our genetics cause us to want to
turn everything into a song contest or wrestling match.
But to call a woman member of a basketball team a nappy head ho is to
insult at level 1 because it can in no way be charitably parsed as
meaning that the person insulted should change to conform to an ideal:
it is "raca thou fool" in its intent and effect.
Ms. Mouse, nobody is calling you names here, and given your record of
publication we need you here. But you are as I have been oversensitive
to the point where pleasing you would transform this to a corporate
staff meeting in which nothing is said.
>
> As a 'stratfordian' *I* do not care to hear any of these things about
> WS. But I do not complain to anti-stratfordians that they cannot say
> such things. I DO tell them that they are *wrong* to draw such
> conclusions.
>
> [There's more I could say on this, but I don't have time at the moment]- Hide quoted text -
John W. Kennedy
In other words, you still cannot distinguish between James I of Scotland
(1394-1437) and James I of England (1566-1625).
> The figures you name remain obscurities.
You are only flaunting your ignorance. Any student of Early Scots knows
"The Kingis Quair". Any student of Middle French is acquainted with the
poems of Charles d'Orleans. Any student of Old English has read Alfred
the Great. I know of the literary status of Rama II only by report, but
every source I have encountered agrees that he is a giant of Thai
literature.
> The fact is that I've
> forgotten more about the canon than you've ever learned, because
> you've specialized in pedantic obscurity.
And now you have reduced yourself to mere scratching and spitting, like
a cat that knows it's being taken to the vet.
Fifty years ago, the famous science-fiction short story, "The
Darfsteller", by Walter M. Miller, Jr., supposed that the fall of
communism would involve giants, that the tale of the last communist
would, in the fullness of time, be suitable raw material for a great
tragedy. But in this, as in all else, Marxism has failed to live up to
its promises. Not with a bang, no, not even with a self-respecting
whimper....
John W. Kennedy
> I am not going to get my pantyhose in a tangle when this Kennedy clown
> deliberately inserts "James I of Scotland" as a jejune trick, knowing
> that a class act like me, who assumes good faith, would stumble
> thereupon, temporarily confusing that clown with the Tobacco
> counterblaster, and indeed hoping to bring me down a peg, in the
> manner of the bitter, twisted and permanently aged graduate student
> (or quondam graduate student in an unpaid internship at Bear Stearns,
> stealing his company's time) who has long lost his love for the canon
> because his professors are or were classist thugs.
Hey, Cato! You forgot to call me a drunkard!
> There is an uncharitable and zero sum rage here on usenet
This isn't Usenet; it's Google Groups.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
-- Charles Williams. "Mount Badon"
spinoza1111
concerned not with discussion of Shakespeare but with discrediting
another poster, myself. I request that this poster not be allowed to
post since every one of his posts is concerned with his pedantry being
superior to having read and understood Shakespeare, who was quite
unsparing of pedants like this.
On Apr 13, 3:30 pm, "John W. Kennedy" <John.W.Kenn...@gmail.com>
Actually, I could, but you inserted a vulgar trick by saying "of
Scotland", because James came down from Scotland to become king of
England. This isn't even pedantry. It's crossword puzzles and trivial
pursuit and the sort of nastiness that doesn't belong in this group.
>
> > The figures you name remain obscurities.
>
> You are only flaunting your ignorance. Any student of Early Scots knows
> "The Kingis Quair". Any student of Middle French is acquainted with the
> poems of Charles d'Orleans. Any student of Old English has read Alfred
> the Great. I know of the literary status of Rama II only by report, but
> every source I have encountered agrees that he is a giant of Thai
> literature.
In other words, you like to drop names in order not to get at the
truth but to discredit people. You're out of luck, pal, since I've
read and understood not Rama Bama II of Thailand but the author under
discussion, who happens to be Shakespeare. You're acting like Robert
Greene: bitter and twisted because someone's come in the room who
makes you feel small.
Moderator: this ISN'T a moderated group. You've allowed Houlsby to
post and you've allowed Kennedy here to start Yet Another campaign of
insults types 1 and 2 (not to be confused with network insults and Ms
Mouse's oh so hurt feelings) TO WHICH I WILL RESPOND IN FORCE. Please
do your job.
>
> > The fact is that I've
> > forgotten more about the canon than you've ever learned, because
> > you've specialized in pedantic obscurity.
>
> And now you have reduced yourself to mere scratching and spitting, like
> a cat that knows it's being taken to the vet.
Asshole.
Moderator: DO YOUR JOB. I don't liken people to cats being taken to
the vet and I don't call them nappy headed hos. Instead, I question
their good faith when they deny Shakespeare in the teeth of historical
evidence. GET IT STRAIGHT and get this guy off my case, otherwise you
are going to have a flame war on your hands.
>
> Fifty years ago, the famous science-fiction short story, "The
> Darfsteller", by Walter M. Miller, Jr., supposed that the fall of
> communism would involve giants, that the tale of the last communist
> would, in the fullness of time, be suitable raw material for a great
> tragedy. But in this, as in all else, Marxism has failed to live up to
> its promises. Not with a bang, no, not even with a self-respecting
> whimper....- Hide quoted text -
You're prematurely announcing its death, because its undergoing a
revival worldwide, and especially in Latin America. You come in here
and insult people not because you give a damn about literature (anyone
who did would not consider the Doom book literature) but to show that
despite your enslavement by the capitalist system, you are special.
Nobody has yet taken the time to even answer my question about
Fluellen, and because our moderator isn't doing his job as far as I
can see, Mouse and Kennedy are turning this ng into another circus of
zero sum Me Me Me in which I I I destroy people to show how very
Special I am.
The Moderator
> Moderator: this ISN'T a moderated group. You've allowed Houlsby to
> post and you've allowed Kennedy here to start Yet Another campaign of
> insults types 1 and 2 (not to be confused with network insults and Ms
> Mouse's oh so hurt feelings) TO WHICH I WILL RESPOND IN FORCE. Please
> do your job.
Ok Spinoza, I've read through John Kennedy's posts. I do not consider
correction of factual error to be untoward. Nor do I consider his
response to your posts disproportionate.
I note that you have shown yourself incapable of getting along with
either Mouse or John Kennedy. (If you cannot get along with these two
then I doubt that you will get along with anyone on this forum.)
I note that you have threatened me (the Moderator!) with a flamewar if
I do not "do [my] job"
Very well. You leave me with no choice. You are barred from these
forums (which is unfortunate because I think you *are* well read in WS
and *do* have worthwhile and interesting contributions to make).
If anyone (aside from Spinoza) wishes to dispute this decision they
are welcome to do so (yada yada yada).
The Moderator.
[snip]
Groundling
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Spinz,
I had privately requested your reinstatement onto HLASM even before
your open letter for the reasons mentioned by both you and our patient
Moderator. I'd only ask that you refrain from any unnecessary
scatology and personal vitriol, and thereby conform to the minimal
code of decency suggested by Ms Mouse. Vigorous debate and reasoned
vitriol against select positions, but not fellow posters, are welcome
to my mind and make for lively interchange. Please review your own
posts and consider carefully what Ms Mouse has written. Apologies may
be in order all around. Let's start afresh and give the long-needed
HLASM a chance to grow and flourish.
Regards,
Joe Egert
Groundling
On Apr 14, 3:38 am, "spinoza1111" <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Spinz,
I had privately requested your reinstatement onto HLASM even before
your open letter for reasons mentioned by both you and our patient
Moderator. I'd only ask that you refrain from any unnecessary
scatology or personal abuse, and thereby conform to the minimal code
of decency suggested by Ms Mouse. Vigorous debate and reasoned vitriol
against select positions, but not fellow posters, are welcome to my
mind and make for lively interchange. Please review your own posts and
consider carefully what Ms Mouse has written. Apologies may be in
order all around. Let's start afresh and give the long-needed HLASM a
chance to grow and flourish.
Hope to engage you on HLASM,
Joe Egert
Groundling
theory and to the review article on Stover. Sadly, I find Agassi's
simplified summary riddled with the same indefinition, circularity,
and tautology I complain about in the Modest Proposal essay.
A key problem is that the terms of discourse, in much of what passes
for critical theory, simply do not carry consensual meaning and cannot
pass logical muster. Related is their filtration through agenda---a
classic example being the eccentric Dollimore reading of LEAR through
his materialist lens. Ad hominem issues, I fear, cannot be avoided.
Did Dollimore truly conceive his interpretation, even in inchoate
form, before his indoctrination? Or did he structure his reading to
serve his ideology disingenuously, himself not believing in it---a
practice common to sectarians of all stripes? Or finally, and most
horrible of all, has Dollimore come to truly believe in his reading
because of his indoctrination, reminiscent of Winston Smith's
perceptual surrender to O'Brien's interrogation in "1984". In short,
has Dollimore internalized and succumbed to the O'Brien within in an
act of cultic self-deformation? Unfortunately the caricatured assaults
on Enlightenment "rationality" from diehard materialists engaged in
skewed agitprop, as well as from floating "postmodernists", encourage
such nihilist relativism. Like Pilate before them, they've washed
their hands of the Truth.
Joe Egert
On Apr 9, 8:40 pm, "Elizabeth" <elizabeth_w...@mail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 5, 12:50 pm, "Groundling" <tre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Greetings to all!
>
> > The hosts of this new and welcome Group might consider personally
> > inviting the creators (e.g. "Mouse" et al) of the now spam-ridden HLAS
> > to join here.
>
> The following is taken from Agassi's Theoretical Bias
> In Evidence: A Historical Sketch.
>
> In particular, he [Bacon] knew the difference between
> sense illusion and theory-laden observation whose
> error is theory-based; he knew the difference between
> theory-ladenness on account of some very general
> features of our faculties (or our perceptual-cum-cognitive
> apparatus) and theory-ladenness on account of a specific
> theory, be it Aristotle's or Gilbert's.
>
> Theoretical Bias In Evidence: A Historical Sketch
> Philosophica, 31, 1983 (1), pp. 7 -24.
>
> <http://www.tau.ac.il/~agass/joseph-papers/bias.pdf>
>
> Biased theories account for the fact that the authorship dispute has
> never been resolved. In
> my opinion.
>
> >http://www.greggsimpson.com/Hegemony.htm- Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111 (with his parole officer)
On Apr 17, 11:32 am, Groundling <tre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks, Elizabeth and Ignoto, for the links to the Agassi piece on
> theory and to the review article on Stover. Sadly, I find Agassi's
> simplified summary riddled with the same indefinition, circularity,
> and tautology I complain about in the Modest Proposal essay.
>
> A key problem is that the terms of discourse, in much of what passes
> for critical theory, simply do not carry consensual meaning and cannot
> pass logical muster. Related is their filtration through agenda---a
> classic example being the eccentric Dollimore reading of LEAR through
> his materialist lens. Ad hominem issues, I fear, cannot be avoided.
> Did Dollimore truly conceive his interpretation, even in inchoate
> form, before his indoctrination? Or did he structure his reading to
> serve his ideology disingenuously, himself not believing in it---a
> practice common to sectarians of all stripes? Or finally, and most
> horrible of all, has Dollimore come to truly believe in his reading
> because of his indoctrination, reminiscent of Winston Smith's
> perceptual surrender to O'Brien's interrogation in "1984". In short,
> has Dollimore internalized and succumbed to the O'Brien within in an
> act of cultic self-deformation? Unfortunately the caricatured assaults
> on Enlightenment "rationality" from diehard materialists engaged in
> skewed agitprop, as well as from floating "postmodernists", encourage
> such nihilist relativism. Like Pilate before them, they've washed
> their hands of the Truth.
So, Lear doesn't have a materialist reading?
When Lear is deprived of the means of life?
When Tom o' Bedlam is so clearly based on dispossessed laborers of
Shakespeare's time?
I think the problem with the reception of "postmodernism" is the
inability of so many students and adult learners to read outside
narrow confines in service of a readerly operationalism in which the
reader wants not to read, but to be recognized as an "intelligent
person".
Thus students resist "postmodernism" whenever that consists of a
healthy injection of theory.
> > >http://www.greggsimpson.com/Hegemony.htm-Hide quoted text -
Groundling
"So, Lear doesn't have a materialist reading?
"When Lear is deprived of the means of life?
"When Tom o' Bedlam is so clearly based on dispossessed laborers of
Shakespeare's time?"
I fear Spinz has sidestepped the central issue. Clearly Shakespeare
fully addresses the Matter/Idea dynamic in LEAR as elsewhere. The
question is whether the critic has skewed her reading disingenuously
or unconsciously (post-indoctrination) to drive her agenda, be it
narrowly Materialist, Idealist, or whatever.
Spinz goes on:
"I think the problem with the reception of "postmodernism" is the
inability of so many students and adult learners to read outside
narrow confines in service of a readerly operationalism in which the
reader wants not to read, but to be recognized as an "intelligent
person".
My own sense, Spinz, is that the charge of intellectual preening could
more properly
be directed at the self-styled "postmodernists" themselves, rather
than their
long-suffering student or adult readers struggling to envision
clothing on naked emperors.
Regards,
Joe Egert
> > > >http://www.greggsimpson.com/Hegemony.htm-Hidequoted text -
>
> > > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> > > - Show quoted text --
>
> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
John W. Kennedy
> Spinz asks:
>
> "So, Lear doesn't have a materialist reading?
>
> "When Lear is deprived of the means of life?
>
> "When Tom o' Bedlam is so clearly based on dispossessed laborers of
> Shakespeare's time?"
>
>
> I fear Spinz has sidestepped the central issue. Clearly Shakespeare
> fully addresses the Matter/Idea dynamic in LEAR as elsewhere. The
> question is whether the critic has skewed her reading disingenuously
> or unconsciously (post-indoctrination) to drive her agenda, be it
> narrowly Materialist, Idealist, or whatever.
"Spinoza1111" is a Marxist, and consequently means by "Materialist"
something quite other than "the opposite of Idealist".
spinoza1111 (with his parole officer)
On Apr 19, 3:53 am, Groundling <tre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Spinz asks:
>
> "So, Lear doesn't have a materialist reading?
>
> "When Lear is deprived of the means of life?
>
> "When Tom o' Bedlam is so clearly based on dispossessed laborers of
> Shakespeare's time?"
>
> I fear Spinz has sidestepped the central issue. Clearly Shakespeare
> fully addresses the Matter/Idea dynamic in LEAR as elsewhere. The
> question is whether the critic has skewed her reading disingenuously
> or unconsciously (post-indoctrination) to drive her agenda, be it
> narrowly Materialist, Idealist, or whatever.
It is an urban legend that "college professors have a left-wing
agenda, and skew their reading of great literature to fit this
agenda".
College professors don't have a left-wing agenda. Nearly all of them
are middle and lower-middle class, and upon marriage and starting a
family, like most people in the USA, their values become more
conservative, since college professors in particular have to plan very
carefully for their long term financial security. Most prominent
college professors, such as Stanley Fish, the Milton expert formerly
at Duke and the University of Illinois and now with Florida
International University, are centrist and right wing and getting more
so.
As to the skew. It is thought that is is somehow unscientific to bring
progressive or feminist concerns to the reading, here, of Shakespeare,
because it is thought that these concerns have "naught to do with
Mistress Shore" because Shakespeare, it's thought, never anticipated
those readings.
But on a straight historical and scientific basis, the concerns of
progressives and feminists are relevant insofar as those concerns
arose in the 19th century amongst people in England, America, and
other places, who'd formed a world view based in part on what the
(neocon) Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom refers to as Shakespeare's
construction of the human.
Americans in particular crossed the American continent carrying the
King James Bible, the Pilgrim's Progress, and Rowe's Collected Works
of Shakespeare.
Bloom believes, and he's right on this particular issue, that just as
Shakespeare CREATED the "early modern English" that did not exist
before Shakespeare, that was something very different, he constructed
the notions of personal autonomy that surface, for example, in Romeo
and Juliet (the source novella for which represented the deaths of the
lovers as a condign and just punishment for disobeying their parents).
We're thinking inside a system constructed by a man who was
instinctively anti-war (Henry V and the Henrician trilogy) who liked
his "knucklehead" characters far more than his powerful men.
Shakespeare is one of the reasons why we would probably check "agree"
to such simple, if LIBERAL, propositions as "there should be no
concentration camps", "it's both useless and profoundly unjust to
torture political dissidents" and "everybody should have access to
clean water". In fact, King Lear is a particular reason for this. It
portrays extrajudicial torture when Gloucester has his eyes gouged
out, and Tom O' Bedlam "drinks the green water of the standing pool",
and this excites our compassion...because, in some measure, before
Shakespeare, theater managers like Burbage believed that the only way
to make the big bucks was the crude tragedy in which the baddie has
his eyes put out, children were boiled in oil for disobeying their
parents and the knuckleheads were beaten and then dragged into Hell.
Shakespeare seems to have shown the money guys that a richer and more
morally serious drama could result in gate receipts and butts on
seats, possibly because human nature started to change around the time
of Abraham and on the mountain with Isaac, started a long march
towards...liberalism.
But Shakespeare didn't invent "libertarianism". He viewed (cf Lear)
personal autonomy as a delicate construct based on Christian, and
indeed LIBERAL notions of communitarian duties to each other, where
Lear had a right to ask his daughter to "reason not the need" and
support his retinue, which under a form of *stare decisis* Lear
imagined he had a natural right-to. Goneril and Regan on the other
hand are, in today's terms, but not in any way anachronistically,
libertarians in that they would like to return to a zero-state in
which the only rights are economic, and based on pre-existing
possession ("possession is nine tenths of the law") and subsequent
exchange (which for them included force and fraud because the setting
of the play is, after all, the Dark ages and before John Locke's
attempt to justify the unjustifiable rape of North America).
In today's terms, I can read King Lear as a judgement on the fit
between American-style fuck-you libertarianism and what it means to be
a human being by reflecting on the way we react to the play.
We recognize Edmund to be a "libertarian" in today's terms: "Thou,
nature, art my goddess; to thy law/My services are bound. Wherefore
should I/Stand in the plague of custom..." not because we want to
"read things into Shakespeare" but because our beliefs were formed,
not in all cases by TeeVee in TeeVee land, a land constructed to sell
us shit, but by reading Shakespeare, or perhaps because our granny
read Shakespeare and baked cookies for homeless bums because she'd
read Lear.
This isn't "unscientific". In fact, it accounts for a fact that at a
point in time a message was emitted and the world aether today is
necessarily pervaded with this message whether we will or no.
Saying that a professor has an agenda is often a polite way of saying
that her mental world is richer and more populated with both
compassion and knowledge than thee, and her additional quantum of what
Bourdieu calls Distinction offends your self-esteem, because you're a
slob.
In American universities, these attacks on "left wing agendas"
normally start with some rich autodidact or aliterate who once he's
made his pile by force and fraud, starts listening to middlebrow texts
on the CD player in his Jag(uar), and, since those texts are made
(often by the windbag Charlton Heston) for profit, they hypostatize
something that's unfamiliar to the truly well educated: "western
culture", considered as unique, and invested in an American style,
absolute, and fuck-you-buddy libertarianism.
These pigs then fund attacks on professors at the State university,
with their shock troops being ignorant products of increasingly
dysfunctional and anti-intellectual American high schools, for the
throughcrime of being at all open, and stating their agenda.
This ignores that fact that in REAL ideologies, discussion of the
truth of the ideology itself is usually forbidden. In Communist
societies of Russia and Eastern Europe, ordinary people were not
encouraged to even state their support for Marxist-Leninism because
this raises the possibility, for both the *apparatchik* and the
*nomenklatura*, that "yon Cassius" thinks too much and might as easily
conclude at variance with the top man.
The paradox is that the more the so-called "left-wing" professor
explicitly states "ideological" committments to the reading of
literature, the more he endangers himself and subjects herself to the
charge that she is an ideologue, while the laissez-faire and
neoclassical committments of the right-wing are treated as the only
possible norm.
The most "ideological" zone of the university happens to the business
school. This is because in the business school, ALL discussion of the
axiomatics are forbidden and met at best with nervous giggles in the
same way those of us who have worked in the Leninist state of China
discover that Chinese software developers produce the same sort of
nervous giggles when the politics of their country is discussed, and
learn not to endanger our coworkers by this discussion.
>
> Spinz goes on:
>
> "I think the problem with the reception of "postmodernism" is the
> inability of so many students and adult learners to read outside
> narrow confines in service of a readerly operationalism in which the
> reader wants not to read, but to be recognized as an "intelligent
> person".
>
> My own sense, Spinz, is that the charge of intellectual preening could
> more properly
> be directed at the self-styled "postmodernists" themselves, rather
> than their
> long-suffering student or adult readers struggling to envision
> clothing on naked emperors.
Their "long suffering or adult readers", I am afraid, have been
persuaded by TeeVee in TeeVee Land that they already know everything
worth while, and when they take courses down to State or East Jesus,
they are confronted with some clown who drives a used Ford Escort, yet
claims under the rules of the game that he knows more about them.
This is why Americans often believe college professors have an
"agenda". They seek in classes and in book discussion groups not
education *per se* but certification, and a Recognition that's
withheld in American society.
You often get the sense, when some isolated male speaks up for the
first time in a class or a book discussion group, that he doesn't want
to learn anything new, but seeks approbation for having Secret
Knowledge (such as that Shakespeare didn't not write dem plays).
> > > > >http://www.greggsimpson.com/Hegemony.htm-Hidequotedtext -