January 07, 2009
zizek and kirsch get it on
I am grateful to Mr. Kirsch for the time and effort he put into running over so many of my books in order to find incriminating passages that would support his thesis on my anti-Semitic Fascism-Communism. Perhaps, however, it would have been better for him to stick to just one or two books and read them with a simple unprejudiced attention - in this way, he would have been able to avoid many unfortunate misreadings, like the one apropos Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, where Mr. Kirsch writes:more from TNR here.Zizek's dialectic allows him to have it all: the jihadis are not really motivated by religion, as they say they are; they are actually casualties of global capitalism, and thus "objectively" on the left. "The only way to conceive of what happened on September 11," he writes, "is to locate it in the context of the antagonisms of global capitalism."Well ... first, in my Violence, I claim that jihadis are really motivated neither by religion nor by a Leftist sense of justice, but by resentment, which in no way puts them on the Left, neither "objectively" nor "subjectively." I simply never wrote that Islamic fundamentalists are in any sense on the Left--the whole point of my writing on this topic is that the "antagonism" between liberal tolerance and ethnic or religious fundamentalism is inherent to the universe of global capitalism: in their very opposition, they are the two faces of the same system. The true Left starts with the insight into this complicity.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 09:35 AM | Permalink
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i've been thinking (now don't get all quaggy-faced) – an open letter to twofriends who have come to my defense against each other: i try to make peace
i've liked both of you a lot (though lack of proof is not proof of lack)for decades. i am a fag and it's not a drag and as a lothario always had far to go (but the gods were kind and gave me a dirty mind albeit not at an olympic competition level). (so much of my life has been in parentheses) eons ago there used to be signs at london underground entrances saying stamp out fags (that surprised rick a lot in 1975 as we came up to the islington station and he saw those signs). you are both wellmeaning and wonderful and might become the best of friends even though you are both knights in shining armor and quick to help the underdog. there no friendlyfire but there are many fairy tales and horror tales and so much mythology that comes from similes (this is like THAT and therefore that). we have wars out there and so many fires are flaring i worry abt us charging toward each other. and yes i have to agree i noticed that "fag" comment but passed by as i placed it our time past and chalked it up to some of the problems of the flow-poem made in the moment and not easily responsive to meditation or mediation. (then i moved the shard into the “save” posts.) thank you both for being there for me and caring about our shared humanity and engaging in nonlethal discussions because if my friends take eachother out, where am i then?! i try to be more propeace than antiwar. what the difference is is the direction of the effort. in a few months i'll be 72 and my timeenergy wanes and i keep losing my marbles. i couldn't remember today my password to my atm card and so had to give up withdrawing a q40. (i have done this in the past --pretty far past--and it may be high blood pressure.anyway don't go swordfighting over my grave.) "QUE DRAMA!" elena de los santos mycue, my brother david's wife would pronounce to my siblings who are so gloriously volatile. then she would hug the ones deep into engagement saying "TAN JULA." (or maybe it was "CHULA") that seemed to say "i love you you wild things; you care about what matters; but don't hurt each other."
I was sent to technical high school because (and since we, a family w/7 children, were poor) it was felt i lacked the intellectual discipline to become a self-supporting adult, that i was a dreamy boy. i now feel that if i'd have gone on that 'shops' way i could have been somebody who could have a useful skill. i was identified by the math and english teachers, who were also the football coaches, to go into the thin college preparation class in my big n.r.crozier technical high school. and though i kept at the shops, my way swept me perhaps past my abilities (even while experiencing the schooling of hard knocks). they all must have sensed i was odd as my parents and teachers each chose different paths for me to take in life to save myself. in dallas, texas in 1951 i sensed enough to hide my attraction for other lads (easy enough as i loved the girls and dancing and dating too) and poems. i was used to being different and it seemed everybody was a bit odd too--as my greatgrandmother the quaker influenced jane kennedy-carson delehant would say endlessly that everybody's odd, that everyone has his way, that everyone's way does, that is everyone but thee and me, dearie, AND then SHE'D WINK! and add: “and sometimes i wonder about thee”.
if you don't mind i have a quote from vilhelm ekelund (translated by lennart bruce, poet and friend of my heart) in 1970's selection AGENDA (cloud marauder press, 1976):
"When the young Wesley (1703-1791,founder of a religious sect) ransacked his heart, he found that his whole Christianity was but a 'cute summer religion.' For winter and storm and death it was useless.
"That's how things stand with our highly praised culture, our urge of 'self-refinement,' our 'love of truth;' it's all a slight summer philosophy. A gust of wind is all that's needed to bring down the whole house of cards--a glance out of the eye of someone on the street, a smile which might occur suspect to you, a word whispered behind your back...not to speak of storm and death. Our philosophy does in no way suffice even to damper the pains of plain ordinary irritability and irascibility. It's excellent for the after dinner drink and the cigar, sure!
"It's always a question of need! Changing the old proverb around one might say: a book that stands up in need is a book indeed. Yes, one might think it over more than once, before one seriously wished to be placed in such situations and such moods of life, where a book becomes its full reality, becomes something that enters the bloodstream. One may find it desirable or not, still the true situation is, that any other way of reading is like when a child plays with a knife."
(of Ekelund, lennart bruce wrote : "Gradually his style grew more austere until finally, in search of 'the great poem,' he denounced lyrics as the art of the intellectually impotent and condemned his earlier work as too sentimental and superficial. In 1907 he published his last poem." Laura Riding--my first master, as a late teenager--renounced poetry as the lying word in 1937, the year i was born. Ekelund lived until 1949 and Riding until her early 90's.)
I TOLD YOU I WAS LOSING MY MARBLES. i start and then i drift. like tallulah bankhead who was pure as the driven snow but drifted--or was it as the driven slush. Anyway it's never a lush life in a plush room as you two heros know.
ever manic the mantic?, edward mycue (for Michael Waggener interested onlooker)
6 January 2009
Posted by: Edward Mycue | Jan 8, 2009 2:32:01 AM
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