Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 12:15:31 -0500
From: elorsbch-AT-otto.tcd.ie
Subject: Re: HAB: patheticism conference



Dear Brad, 

sorry for the belated response - we've been really busy these last few
days.  But we did want to come back to your comments. 

I appreciate - and share - your concern that criticism be engage.  Do you
think that giving an account of the genealogy (& possible causes for) what
one sees as a pervasive cultural phenomenon can ever contribute to such a
critical agenda?  e.g. can giving an account of the "is" help us to
articulate the form of the "ought"?

You write that 'only relatively powerless "things" can be summarily
dismissed, and what is at issue here are "things" which, whatever else they
are -- for good or ill --, have a lot more power than I have.'  I don't see
how you can posit this separation between "powerless things" and "things
with power."  Giving an account of peoples' experiences of powerlessness
may be one way into the question of how power works.  Not that we are
endorsing victim-criticism - on the contrary, I think one of our aims with
this conference is to begin to outline the ways (aesthetic and political)
that the expression of the human experience of *limitation* can transcend
mere finger-pointing (& creation of "interest groups") and work towards
some sense of "community".  I don't think Husserl would have been averse to
such a project.  The "pathetic" in one way (in the classic sense of the
term) stands opposed to the "heroic" version of the artist/writer that you
evoke in the Canetti quote, but in another way it can (in some cases)
enact, or at least attempt, an alternative heroism.  Note that the Canetti
quote does not claim success but *failure*....

Sally Jacob
(member of the conference committee)