Re: writ large

Jim writes:
<< Of course the woman writing the article reinforced the old saw about
intellectuals being irrelevant. If she'd listened to any of them, of
course, she'd know how cliche this criticism was...

I guess I'll just have to be content with the smug knowledge that **I**
know just how stupid and unoriginal she was being, even when she doesn't. >>

I don't have the article in front of me now, but I remember at the time
thinking (rightly or wrongly) that the author was not reinforcing the
irrelevance of intellectuals. The way she chose to close the article was
with a quote claiming, as I remember it, that the claims at the conference
could be accounted for by the fact that these particular intellectuals are
mortified of being politically irrelevant.

I remember thinking that the article, if it betrayed any substantial bias,
was critical of their claims -- or at least amused by them while not taking
them seriously. The title, even, was something like "The Latest Theory is
that Theory is Irrelevant." I doubt very much that the author was blind to
the irony.

I'm not sure I understand or agree with the wideness of the claim that
consumer culture is THE source of burden.

By the anthropocizing of the intellectual, I meant something like the
inverse of the intellectualizing of the people.

Many of the problems you see ("A uniformity of attributes acribed to all
'intellectuals' -- as if they all wrote and spoke the same, and held to the
same positions.") might just as well be seen on the other side of the coin.
Just as we might benefit from a mass intellectualizing of hoi polloi -- not
speaking of particulars, but only of the generality -- so also we might
benefit from a change that is similar, proportional, though perhaps
different in character, in the intellectual elite -- though, again, not
speaking of particulars, but only of the generality.

To borrow from Aristophanes (whom I mentioned instead of Swift quite
deliberately -- though Swift, too, is as you say), getting one's head out of
the clouds must be as important as opening one's eyes. It seems probable
that the two are fundamentally similar in effect, and perhaps even in
nature.

-robbie

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Received on Fri Apr 25 05:14:45 2003