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SCIALABBAS_GOODS
July 20, 2012
Scialabba's "What Are Intellectuals Good For?"
opens with a dedication: SCIALABBA
For Chomsky, Rorty and Lasch--
three answers.
Chomsky is one of Scilabba's best examples
for his thesis that what the world really
needs now is solid information-- rather It no doubt will come as
than, say, insightful recontextualizations news to many that Rorty
and grand philosophies. This is Chomsky was good for something,
considered as a detail man, painstakingly and I'm afraid Scialabba
collecting underknown and unappreciated does not convince me that
facts. I've been missing
something: the passages
he quotes with approval
invariably strike me as
vapid.
Scilabba's third answer was,
for me, the "who?" moment...
Lasch? Christopher Lasch?
OTAKU_HISTORICAL
Two essays collected in his book discuss Lasch,
who I gather was a critic of the modern left
based on a view of cultural history that might
make some sense if one completely disregards the
Freudian underpinnings that Lasch regarded as
crucial:
"A world populated by rigid selves is a world of
sublimation and its derivatives: aggression, greed,
cruelty, hypocrisy, unquestioning adherence to
inherited values and restraints. A world of weak
selves is more fluid, corruptible, blandly
manipulative, sexually easygoing, uncomfortable
with anger and rivalry, and leery of defining
constraints, whether in the form of traditional
values or future commitments. The distinction
between the early capitalist self and the late
capitalist self is, roughly, the distinction
between Prometheus and Narcissus, the Puritan and
the swinger, the entrepreneur and the corporate OTAKU_ANIMAL
gamesman, the imperial self and the minimal self."
Scilabba on Christopher Lasch
p. 179 of "What Are Intellectuals Good For?"
Perhaps Rorty works
as an example of a
minimial self?
Lasch has a name that cries out
for stupid puns ("Lasched to the
Wheel"?), and I've resisted--
this time-- only with effort.
Over at the crookedtimber.org web site,
Rich Yeselson was not so strong, with http://crookedtimber.org/2009/08/04/avoiding-the-lasch-of-modernity/
his "Avoiding the Lasch of Modernity",
published on August 4, 2009
Yeselson covers a lot of territory, but
I would say the central point that he
makes is that Scialabba presents a very You can make a case
favorable image of Lasch, who in many that it is both a
respects was very cranky, reactionary strength and weakness
and out-of-touch... of Scialabba that he's
very sympathetic: as
Yselson puts it
Yeselson compares Scialabba *inhabits*
Lasch and Rorty-- the books that he's
two of Scialabba's reviewing, he gets
heroes-- and their inside the author's
different views of point of view.
history:
But in this case, when
"... on the big questions, Scialabba responds to
Lasch and Rorty stand miles Yeselson, I think he
apart. Rorty thinks the last just talks past him:
250 years or so in the North Scialabba just points
America and much of Europe have out that Lasch didn't
been a period of evolving literally want to turn
progress, a vast mitigation back the clock. Or at
against cruelty and sadism, least, Lasch said he
even allowing for every war and didn't.
other form of inhumanity; Lasch
thinks that we’re going in the
wrong direction: destroying
communities; creating hollowed
out individuals, lacking
autonomy, vulnerable to
consumer blandishments,
oscillating between rage and
fear; abdicating familial
authority to faceless
professional 'experts', and
eviscerating any vestiges of
local autonomy and worker
skills in favor of giant state
and corporate bureaucracies ... "
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