Who’s Afraid of Literature?

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Clarissa

May 20, 2014

“Literature disorders the order of faith, be that quasi-unshakable belief in a religious creed or in a political-economic way of governing society. Theism, communism, free market capitalism and neoconservatism do not allow for ambiguity in everyday life. They do so precisely because awareness of the ambiguous could question the appeal of a static societal order.”

Mack, Michael. Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis. Challenging Our Infatuation with Numbers. New York & London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Have you noticed how all totalitarian societies try to destroy literature and literary criticism? Have you noticed that this destruction is always one of the greatest priorities of any totalitarian order?

Have you observed, as well, the enormous efforts made today in your, seemingly free, society to demolish literary studies under the guise of a fight for productivity and fiscal responsibility?

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7 responses to “Who’s Afraid of Literature?”

J. Otto Pohl

May 20, 2014

It reminds me of Osip Mandelstam’s quip about poets only being respected in the USSR because only in the Soviet Union did the government bother to kill people for writing poetry.

“Only in Russia is poetry respected, it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?”

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cliff arroyo

May 20, 2014

From the perspective of an outsider (with insider knowledge) the US is unmistakeably headed in a very dark direction and the idea of gutting the humanities in education is a canary in the coalmine indicator.

On the other hand….. as awful as Puttanesca Russia is (horrible and nothing I would want to be any part of) it’s hard to say the US is (in sum) going in a better direction and Obama has not helped that one little bit, not. one. He’s not a walking embarassment like W but he’s no lover of freedom or democracy or many other the values I hold dear and would like to see ascendant either.

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musteryou

May 20, 2014

This is a greatly insightful post. Also, not just Clarissa, but I have always thought Michael Mack was a cut above other academics in terms of understanding the interplay between psychology and politics. Most academics are rather dull on this essential point.

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1. Clarissa
  
  May 20, 2014
  
  I just read him for the first time and I really liked the text. It was very refreshing in how non-apologetic he is. Most literary critics seem constantly to apologize for their existences.
  
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  1. musteryou
    
    May 20, 2014
    
    He’s kind of pro-Jewish too, in a strange way. It’s almost like he is defending traditional Jewish ways against other, more Christian ways, for instance in defending Freud in relation to Kant.
    
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ms.prof

May 20, 2014

Literature makes us think about ourselves and our world. And thinkers are very dangerous people.

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musteryou

May 20, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/trigger-warnings-college-campus-books?CMP=fb_ot

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