File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0306, message 37


Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 15:21:47 +0100
Subject: downing the anti-
From: michaelP <michael-AT-sandwich-de-sign.co.uk>


In an article published in TheGuardian concerning the anti-semitism of TS
Eliot, I came across this passage:

> Eliot's anti-semitic poetry is deeply troubling. Writing my book, I was
> searching for a way of respecting its integrity while recognising its
> ugliness. I imagined a Jewish reader pushing one of Eliot's Jew-despising
> poems away, affronted. I asked myself, how can this reader be persuaded to
> return to it? 
> 
> I propose an adversarial stance. One maintains one's relation with the work,
> but argues with it. This is not a prosecutorial reading, but it is one that
> acknowledges the offence to the reader. It does not suppress the offence, or
> wish it away. But nor does it reject the work. Indifference to offence given
> by these poems is a failure of interpretation. They insult Jews, I argue. To
> ignore these insults is to misread the poems. And if one is addressed as a
> Jew, isn't it reasonable to respond as one?
> 
> We ought not to seek to outlaw Eliot's poems, but neither can we submit to
> them. We should not ban them; but we must not abandon ourselves to them.
> Instead we must contest that poetry, with strategies that acknowledge both its
> value and its menace.
> 
> Refusing either to acquiesce in, or to rail at, Eliot's contempt for Jews, one
> strives to do justice to the many injustices Eliot does to Jews. This is what
> adversarial reading allows. It is an alternative to two kinds of silence: the
> coercive silence of censorship, the passive silence of the submissive reader.
> It combines resistance with respect.

In the article, the author, Anthony Julius, expresses a deep disturbance
concerning the supposed/real anti-semitism of the great poet (at least as
present in a few early poems); he does not tar the man Eliot with the brush
of anti-semitism so much but rather more the poems themselves. The language.
More generally, given the episodic re-occurences of various anti- sentiments
expressed on this list, might the approach of a Julius be more appropo than
simple rant and rage, shock & awe, etc? Yes, "strategies that acknowledge
both [the] value and [the] menace [of the speech/poem/writing]"

Taking sides against something considered offensive is just another taking
of sides and can be just as offensive; perhaps we should just attempt to not
take sides of any kind and resist the temptation to rise to offence with
defence&attack [and I know this is rich coming from me :-)]; instead to
read&respond neither with censorship nor indifference, but... thinking?

regards

michaelP 


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