File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1997/avant-garde.9704, message 59


Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 08:48:37 -0500
From: Dick Higgins <dhiggins-AT-mhv.net>
Subject: Re: mea culta



>  i simply get a little weary of jargon rich rhetoric that spirals all too
>much only within its own frame of reference

Ever tried to do without honest jargon? Pretty cumbersome, isn't it! Honest
jargon sums up pasragraphs of defionitions. For instance, "class bias" has
a different meaning in Marxian contexts than it would if Newt Gingerich
were speaking.

>theory which does not address class bias and
>economic ideological design dwells only comfortably amongst a minority
>sphere of influence.

>if we are not indeed to become simply the
>jester-apologists for the most astonishing feudal concentration of wealth
>since the Middle Ages, then i would recommend that the 'avant-garde' become
>something other than cute and available.

Good idea, but is that what it is? Remember-Karl Marx's favorite
Shakespearean play was ROMEO AND JULIET, not TIMON OF ATHENS or JULIUS
CAESAR. If you have no principles to live for, how are you going to know
what is worth dying for?

Furthermore, who says "avant-garde" even today is synonmymous with "cute
and available?" I, for instance, would say that whatever the NEW YORK TIMES
calls avant-garde or whatever equations Hollywood makes between
"avant-garde" and "cute and available" is a pretty good guarabntee that
this is NOT avant-garde in any of its historical meanings.

However, you are to be commended for rejecting the Ros Krauss type of
postmodernist assumptions. The OCTOBER crowd is the new Naziism of
"postmodernist" criticism.

Dick Higgins






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>     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


Curious about what I do? You can view some paintings at the Left Hand Books
site, <http://www.lefthandbooks.com/lhb> (they are for sale) and other
things at the Ubuweb one, <http://www.lefthandbooks.com/lhb> (they aren't)
among others. My next book that is coming out will be: MODERNISM SINCE
POSTMODERNISM (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, June 1997). You
can get it through Amazon Books, <http://www.amazon.com>.




     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

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