From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: too beautiful
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 12:58:27 +0300


Päivää, Gary--

>I think that we who come out of the left have fetishized content so much
>that we actually have very little to say about a lot of art.

Actually this is probably an occupational hazard more for marxists rather
than for leftists generally.  I wouldn't make this a charge against
poststructuralists, some of whom (bless their pointy little heads) are still
more or less leftist.

>           I think we should
>totalise without losing touch with the concrete aesthetic piece of work we
>are discussing.

Agreed.  In fact I think it's a sad thing that close textual analysis has
been killed off.  A true story: an editor at Routledge asked an acquaintance
of mine if her proposed book discussed plays, and on being told it would,
said Routledge wouldn't be interested.

>            Nevertheless I
>insist that there is a universal human condition and great art works can
>break through the barrier of the local mainly by being local.

Well, these contentions demand some unpacking, at the very least.  There's
certainly a universal of embodiment, yet our bodies differ.  We all get born
and drop dead, but rather few of us can report on these experiences
first-hand.  Pain, food, sex, taxes, alcohol and bad hair days are virtually
unavoidable though.  But do we have to end up relying on some version of the
empathy theory here?  And is the discovery of universality necessarily more
important or central than the recognition (and hopefully, acceptance) of
differences?  Is univerality even possible without the differences?  Now
*there's* a question about absences!

And speaking of absences, Finland's springtime seems to be AWOL.

Cheers, T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net *or* tobin.nellhaus-AT-helsinki.fi
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





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