I was too young to have any real interest in leftism in the Bush era, but I can only imagine, given the general derangement in the air. I mostly agree with you about aesthetics, though I’ll add that in addition to converting the sensibility in Morrison et al into hegemon the culture war also had a way of transmuting dissenting voices however radical in their original form into gray persons in flannel suits arguing for immemorial tradition, which is I think in itself a terrible loss. I’ll have to revisit the Woolf essay, I remember reading a Powers/Harrington sort of complimentarian reaction into it that I wonder if I conjured with an overly paranoid hermeneutic looking back
It's kind of a double-edged sword, though, because every so often the radical discourse cemented into the ruling edifice gets melted back into direct violence in the street, so reliably that I wonder if this—the same equivocation on popular violence I see in Said—is one of its purposes. (Aversion to "direct violence in the street" is a very deep and perhaps Podhoretzian political instinct with me. I agree with Blake on the sole desirability of "mental fight.")
Re: Woolf, I was defending complementarianism at the cosmic level—if you lose that, "gray persons" are all that even *can* be left, not to mention the way universal they/them works against cis *and* trans she/her and he/him in the same way that Palestinianism works against Zionism, annihilating the very possibility of difference (to briefly echo our beloved Émilie)—but I'm not judgmental about the way that works out in any individual life, which is to say I'm not a "reactionary feminist" (I'm not a reactionary and I'm not a feminist).
Yes, I have similar beliefs about the streets, although I also suspect the problem is cyclical and probably irresolvable. I liked your point about Dworkin and Freud in that essay, I’ve been reading right wing women recently, and while I think a lot of it probably holds up it struck me how strange it is that she essentially just inverts the neoFreudian midcentury argument about homosexuality-that it represents a stunted failure to mature into a adulthood- to describe the conservative desire to be protected and have a defined role.
Sure, it's cyclical and irresolvable—nobody can do anything about anything!—but I concern myself with what it would be dignified for a writer to express. And thanks—I've never read Right-Wing Women, surprisingly given my literary and cultural admiration for all the right-wing women (Cather, Barnes, Hurston, O'Connor, Didion, Paglia, Lana, Anna K...). I did, in those early 2000s politics binges, read her last book, with its systematic comparison of feminism to Zionism; I think I self-protectively blanked out the full extent of the argument, though, and need to reread it someday.
The book is mostly about the kind of person who wants to retreat back into domesticity and only be wife and mother, which doesn’t really cover any of the people you’ve mentioned!
Right, though some of them believe implicitly or explicitly that most women should do this, while the artist-aristocrat should be free to do anything (not quite unlike Yeats...)
Ironically, Said's ex-gf who wrote the memoir about him was the more moderate of the two, as I think I discussed before, so I guess he couldn't relate.
I was too young to have any real interest in leftism in the Bush era, but I can only imagine, given the general derangement in the air. I mostly agree with you about aesthetics, though I’ll add that in addition to converting the sensibility in Morrison et al into hegemon the culture war also had a way of transmuting dissenting voices however radical in their original form into gray persons in flannel suits arguing for immemorial tradition, which is I think in itself a terrible loss. I’ll have to revisit the Woolf essay, I remember reading a Powers/Harrington sort of complimentarian reaction into it that I wonder if I conjured with an overly paranoid hermeneutic looking back
It's kind of a double-edged sword, though, because every so often the radical discourse cemented into the ruling edifice gets melted back into direct violence in the street, so reliably that I wonder if this—the same equivocation on popular violence I see in Said—is one of its purposes. (Aversion to "direct violence in the street" is a very deep and perhaps Podhoretzian political instinct with me. I agree with Blake on the sole desirability of "mental fight.")
Re: Woolf, I was defending complementarianism at the cosmic level—if you lose that, "gray persons" are all that even *can* be left, not to mention the way universal they/them works against cis *and* trans she/her and he/him in the same way that Palestinianism works against Zionism, annihilating the very possibility of difference (to briefly echo our beloved Émilie)—but I'm not judgmental about the way that works out in any individual life, which is to say I'm not a "reactionary feminist" (I'm not a reactionary and I'm not a feminist).
Yes, I have similar beliefs about the streets, although I also suspect the problem is cyclical and probably irresolvable. I liked your point about Dworkin and Freud in that essay, I’ve been reading right wing women recently, and while I think a lot of it probably holds up it struck me how strange it is that she essentially just inverts the neoFreudian midcentury argument about homosexuality-that it represents a stunted failure to mature into a adulthood- to describe the conservative desire to be protected and have a defined role.
Sure, it's cyclical and irresolvable—nobody can do anything about anything!—but I concern myself with what it would be dignified for a writer to express. And thanks—I've never read Right-Wing Women, surprisingly given my literary and cultural admiration for all the right-wing women (Cather, Barnes, Hurston, O'Connor, Didion, Paglia, Lana, Anna K...). I did, in those early 2000s politics binges, read her last book, with its systematic comparison of feminism to Zionism; I think I self-protectively blanked out the full extent of the argument, though, and need to reread it someday.
The book is mostly about the kind of person who wants to retreat back into domesticity and only be wife and mother, which doesn’t really cover any of the people you’ve mentioned!
Right, though some of them believe implicitly or explicitly that most women should do this, while the artist-aristocrat should be free to do anything (not quite unlike Yeats...)
I haven’t finished it admittedly, but at least and what I’ve read I don’t actually think most of *those* right wing women would apply –
“Or that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways / Or hurled the little streets upon the great”
Proto-fashy nationalist bf, proto-commie nationalist gf. It happens!
Ha probably one of the great breakup poems. But I can see why Said would have avoided it in his analysis.
Ironically, Said's ex-gf who wrote the memoir about him was the more moderate of the two, as I think I discussed before, so I guess he couldn't relate.