File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2000/phillitcrit.0008, message 106


Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 01:26:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Howard on Mein Kampf


On Sat, 12 Aug 2000 Patsloane-AT-aol.com wrote:

  I think the annotators began with too much certitude about what 
> they expected Dante to say about Jews, and how they expected him to say it. 
> If they came on some small detail that conflicted with their assumptions, 
> they just skipped over it. It's a very common kind of selective reading, in 
> which people see what they want to see.  That it happens all the time is a 
> commonplace.

A commonplace, and not only in Dante critcism, as the following
demonstrates:

> >     - is it a common anti-semitic slur that Jews are preoccupied with
> >       money? or is that  my preconception I bring to the poem?
> 
   Let's say I write the words "Jew" and 
> "money" on a piece of paper, and ask you what your first association is.  So 
> you say "Jews are proccupied with money."
> Now I say, "why are you saying that?" And you say, "that's what the 
> antisemites always say."
> See the inconsistency? 

{Indeed I do! more below]

  As you aren't an antisemite, and don't want to be one, 
> it doesn't make much sense for you to be automatically repeating the 
> assertions of antisemites and pointing to antisemites as your authority for 
> the assertions. You've got to reason this out, amend your thinking in a way 
> that incorporates any wish you might have to distance yourself  from the 
> antisemites. It could be something as simple as "antisemites say Jews are 
> preocuppied with money," which is really quite a different statement than 
> "Jews are preoccupied with money."  It shows that you aren't one of the 
> antisemites, which your original phrasing didn't do.

Actually, David's original phrasing was clear enough on this point. I
wager there is no on this list but you, Pat, who didn't.

> If you want to be really imaginative, and explore new possibilities, read a 
> book on the history of Jewish philanthropy, which you may not know much 
> about. Some people, after all, look at the words "Jew" and "money" and come 
> up with associations like "Jews have always been generous in their support of 
> philanthropic causes."  

Then you, David, would be less apt to associate Jews with money.

> You keep coming back to what antisemites say, as if it was supposed to have 
> some special authority. I'm trying to tell you that I don't care what the 
> antisemites say. It doesn't really carry any weight with me, and I'd rather 
> do my own thinking, about Eliot's poem or anything else. 

> But do we really have to go over and over on the same issue? I think you're 
> far too quick to assume that any thought entering your mind is either "what 
> Eliot thinks" or "what everyone thinks." These are claims that have to be 
> substantiated, and they don't fly, in my opinion, as unexamined assumptions.  
> But we can just agree to disagree on that if you like.

I am sure everyone is quick enough to pick this up, but I would still like
to state it publicly:  

  1. David has not assumed that any thought entering his mind is "what
     Eliot thinks" or "what everyone thinks." 

  2. He has assumed that there is a traditional and conventional   
     association of money and Jews which authors often played on in times
     when such play raised few eyebrows. 

  3. He has connected this to the poetry of an author who expressed    
     antisemitic sentiments in his social theories, legitimating the
     connection by properly quoting the lines he is refering to and
     adumbrating their context.

  4. In doing so he is neither imposing his own private associations on
     the matter in question, nor is he assuming there is a "universal"
     or necessary association of Jews with money. He is refering to a
    specific, conventional association.

On the other hand, Pat, in order to defend her reading of Eliot, must

  1.  Construct David as a straw man making "universal associations." 
      (E.g., he is challenged to explain why Byron doesn't associate
      Venetian slime with Jews.) 

  2.  Reduce the association of Jews and money from antisemitic
      tradition, where David had clearly situated it, to a personal
      association of David's, along with the implication that it is
      David really, and not Eliot, who is the source of antisemtic
      sentiments.

  3.  After attempting to delegitimize David's reading on the grounds
      that it arose from his personal association, she then attempts
      to legitimize her own on the grounds that slimy protozoans do
      not necessarily connote something negative to her, so why should
      we assume they do so when associated with Jewish images in a
      poem by a man who expresses antisemitic sentiments?   If David
      thinks associating someone with protozoa is disgusting then he
      ought to explain why he thinks Eliot does too. 

  4. The operative assumptions of her argument are that Eliot
     interpretations which conflict with hers only exist because
     people "polemicize'" their reading of him or do not really
     read him at all.  He cannot be antisemtic, and people who think
     otherwise cannot think.  The call for "substantiation" is 
     specious where it has already been offered and ignored. 

So I would like to see a response from Pat which demonstrates she has
understood the points David has actually made.  I would urge her to
account for the existence of other interpretations  on some other grounds
than other readers' character flaws. 

Try that, and you will not be going over "the same issue."



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

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005