Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 17:25:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Henry Miller and the Academy Who Doesn't Read Him


At 01:26 PM 12/25/97 -0400, you wrote:
>>[Aside: Maybe minimizing direct criticism of those who disagree with us
>>would serve us all well.]
>
>In the end it is impossible to talk about literature without engaging in
>direct personal criticism of other people - authors, critics, professors,
>students, opponents. This is because if literature ceases to alter people,
>or if the person brings nothing to their reading - then there is no meaning
>or point, we might as well be memorising crossword puzzles.
>
>In almost all discussions almost everyone is in favor of preventing *other*
>people from engaging in direct personal criticism.
>
>Stirling Newberry
>

All discussions of cultural issues -- impersonally couched, or set up as
direct arguments between two or among more than two parties -- are not
equally eristic in tone and effect. From that I'd infer that it possible to
be more ersitic, or less so. Degree of eristicism is not predetermined.

It's as if we're all sitting in the pool or hot-tub. When one person pisses
in it, pissing back does not make the pool more pleasant to sit [spell that
word carefully, Greg] in. Generic assertions of hypocrisy on everyone's part
(especially when rightly hedged by "almosts") don't change that state of
affairs, or its consequences.

How did I manage to *disagree* in the two paragraphs above without using the
second person singular at all, let alone 2nd-ps's combined with pejorative
predications? Tis called rhetoric, a/k/a how to do thingies with words.

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing-AT-nyu.edu or downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu



     --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---