The Universe May Not Be Universal
Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:39:09 -0400
Arne wrote, before unsubscribing, apparently in the later stages of
disgust and frustration, with perhaps an appeal to the "our world is
crumbling as it is, so why do you contentious naysayers insist on
smashing the bits of beauty and certainty we do have into dust"
battlecry:
> Could you please point out what things ARE universal then, except, of
> course, the universe itself?
Along the lines of the argument we've been following, the universe is,
ultimately, an ideological construction that is itself far from
universal. I'm not really a Marxist (Menshevik, or Bolshevik, does he
mean?), so while I'm not especially interested in the idea, I do believe
that people in power market versions of the world to others that best
serve their needs. The idea that certain things are "universal"
eventually only facilitates this or that form of oppression. If Leader
A can manage to convince Third World Scrub P that Leader A's version of
reality is universal and that Third World Scrub P should go along with
it, Leader A can succeed in keeping Third World Scrub P from thinking
that maybe things should be different. Substitue "Missionary B" and
"Native American X" above, if you like.
> If personal experiences that we all have,
> always (like love, death, loss, friendship, etc. etc. etc - all those
> things that Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and, indeed
> Salinger, wrote about..) aren't, then nothing is.
But see, while we (members of this list, most of our friends and
colleagues, and most people we encounter in the media and in
economically stable free western countries) all have these experiences,
there are lots of people who don't. So you've got it. Nothing is
universal. As far as I know, everybody does indeed die. But not all
cultures look at death in the same way, so my idea of and experience
with death (which resembles Shakespeare's, et al.) is not just like
everybody else's idea and therefore not universal. The less sickeningly
liberal version of this argument is pointing out that compulsive
murderers don't appear to value human lives in the same way that most
other people do. We put them in institutions to teach them the
universal values they somehow failed to acquire.
> Since identification is,
> in my opinion, the only real argument for reading literature (if I want to
> know something about America and its youth in the 50s, I'd rather check a
> history book), I think the only qualification for being 'Universal'
> actually is, identification with exactly these personal experiences, that
> are of all time.
Of all time so far for large amounts of the people whose voices are and
have been heard on this earth and have filtered down to us through
histories. Do you see how other people can be left out of this
universal experience? I rather like the west, just as I like reading.
I experience wonderful ecstacies when I read books generally considered
canonical. But I realize that not everybody everywhere is the same
way.
> Everything can transcent the time and place of composing, if only it is
> written well. Since I think we would all agree that Salinger is a good
> writer, I don't see why his work should not transcent time & place of
> writing.
It does, for most, if not all, of us.
> Why is Shakespeare so famous? Not because of what he wrote, about
> some historical kings and kingdoms, but how he wrote it , and how he
> described human feelings and actions.
Please see Gary Taylor's _Reinventing Shakespeare_.
--
Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu