Via Dan (who himself dealt with this topic yesterday) comes this piece from James Lewis touching on the topic of idealizing Otherness that I brushed against yesterday in my dealings with Mr Seiple and his quaint semantic concerns.
Well worth your time.
As a bit of a gloss, let me relate some of my own academic experiences. During one of my summers as a fellow at the School of Lit Theory and Criticism, we were treated to a host of guest lecturers who consistently hit on these same themes — a kind of fetishizing / infantalizing of Otherness combined with a pointed rebuke of our own cultural trajectory — without the speakers even once consciously recognizing their own rather dripping condescension toward those exotic cultures they were ostensibly speaking for (by telling us that we have no right to speak for them or, in certain cases, even intelligently of them), and without once acknowledging that their critiques, inasmuch as they were offering them, were as much a part of our culture as the caricature of our culture they were condemning.
What I was most amazed by was not the content of the lectures themselves — after all, I’d lived through Vanessa Redgrave’s Oscar speech and had made it through the first golden age of PLO-chic — but rather it was the looks these lecturers gave me when I brought to their attention the basic flaw in their presentations. It was as if I had violated some club rule by mentioning the obvious. I may as well have farted “Dixie” at a faculty cocktail party, my ass right over the punch bowl, rum bubbles dancing and popping like some Confederate hick’s whip.
What they couldn’t — or rather wouldn’t — do, however, was provide a coherent answer.
“This is just how we do things,” their looks remarked, “and we don’t much appreciate your highlighting flaws in our arguments that, frankly, we’re already quite aware of.”
Quite a lot for a look to say, I grant you. But then, these were some looks…
Comment by ushie on 3/31 @ 1:10 pm #
Looks? I dunno. But I’ll never forget the Cornell prof who told us, at a lecture, that “the white pussy” was to blame for racism. You see, men have bee modified culturally to all want the “white pussy,” in the value system that prizes the Xian Virgin White Pussy above all others, so all women who have “the white pussy” are inflicting racism upon all men who aren’t white.
And here I’d thought “the white pussy” was what that Bondian villain used to stroke.
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 1:12 pm #
pussy galore
pause- i must be dreaming
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/31 @ 1:14 pm #
The School of Lit and Crit was at Cornell.
I didn’t see Keith there, though.
Comment by Keith Olbermann on 3/31 @ 1:15 pm #
You went to the wrong school then. Go Aggies!!!
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/31 @ 1:19 pm #
“the value system that prizes the Xian Virgin White Pussy above all others”
Well, to be honest, it is pretty good.
Comment by ushie on 3/31 @ 1:25 pm #
Don’t be lookin’ at The White Pussy, please.
Comment by cranky-d on 3/31 @ 1:26 pm #
True. The leftist tyrants running my little country into the ground are driving me quite mad.
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 1:33 pm #
phylis schafly mentioned
always dry’s up the cunts
booga booga
Comment by blowhard on 3/31 @ 1:34 pm #
Reason number 498 to read pw:
It’s “Rousseauvean” not “Rou-ish” or “shit, I’m a dummy, pick another word”.
Comment by blowhard on 3/31 @ 1:35 pm #
Reason number 499:
Where else can you find orange hyperlinks?
Comment by LTC John on 3/31 @ 1:35 pm #
“I may as well have farted “Dixie†at a faculty cocktail party, my ass right over the punch bowl, rum bubbles dancing and popping like some Confederate hick’s whip.”
That has to be one of the most outstanding bits o’ writing I have had the good fortune to laugh about. Well done.
Also, I think I know that look…
Comment by davis,br on 3/31 @ 1:38 pm #
^^ rum bubbles. Me too (laughing, that is).
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 1:40 pm #
the two best songs [in my opinion]
dixie and
my eyes have seen the glory…
600,000.000 peeps died
but we gots two smokin tunes!
well done ancestors
well done
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 1:41 pm #
my math be off
xcuse please/thanks
Comment by Rob Crawford on 3/31 @ 1:47 pm #
It certainly makes me wonder about Don Ho and his “Tiny Bubbles”.
Comment by Vermont Neighbor on 3/31 @ 1:54 pm #
men have been modified culturally to all want the
Hmm.. that theory left out the gay community. And in an institute of higher learning no less. /s
Comment by psycho... on 3/31 @ 1:59 pm #
Funny.
Remember (not that you should) a couple days ago when I said I always only see things that I think are true (or almost true) presented in the form of immediately retracted rhetorical questions, as half-thought-because-unthinkable things?
Like that! (Almost!)
If you — because you have to, because you’re used to saying it, because it’s said — think it’s self-hatred, you stay baffled. There’s no such thing.
“We” means not us. And an exotic “Other” is “idealized” — weaponized — only for battle against another, nearer, more-”Other” (because more nearly real) “Other,” a pure(r) hate-object. So…
Think it.
(Not the “moral” part, though. If politics were about that, it wouldn’t be vomiting corpses all over the place.)
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 3/31 @ 2:08 pm #
Where does one find these “murdering & raping chimpanzees” Lewis speaks of?
I wish to procure one and set it loose during the next US Congressional Session.
Comment by blowhard on 3/31 @ 2:10 pm #
Minor quibble though, Jeff.
The post was already better than my writing before the edits. Now you’re just discouraging me.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/31 @ 2:12 pm #
“And an exotic “Other†is “idealized†— weaponized — only for battle against another, nearer, more-â€Other†(because more nearly real)”
Bingo. They don’t really feel bad about being white and taking the fast track to an all-expense paid degree in Gender Studies at Ivy League State. They’re just mediocre – so instead of attempting to build a wee lil brick in the giant and impressive edifice that is the West, they get more out of attempting to destroy it.
Its kind of like when you read a feminist blog all about how marriage is an oppressive Patriarchal institution and such, and then you see a picture of the woman who wrote it, and you think to yourself “not a chance any patriarch will oppress her . . . ” and you know that it says more about her than it does anything of import about marriage.
One great gag I used to run on different lefty blogs that used the “othering” mumbo-jumbo was to point out their “othering” of me right before the ban. That was a lot of fun, because we all knew at that point that claims of “othering” were bullshit, but only I would admit it.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 3/31 @ 2:13 pm #
I’m so glad I went to engineering school. I don’t think I could have listened to this shit for four years and not been expelled at some point.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 3/31 @ 2:13 pm #
BTW, “White Pussy for All Americans” is a great slogan.
Who wants a bumper sticker?
Comment by Jeff G. on 3/31 @ 2:14 pm #
Meh. I had all my posts done early and timed to post. This one was clumsily written so I edited a bit. Plus, farts.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/31 @ 2:20 pm #
“Where does one find these “murdering & raping chimpanzees†Lewis speaks of?”
T’would have to be somewhere in the Arctic, for fear of teh Racism. Unless, of course, Eskimos were oft compared to primates.
Comment by kelly on 3/31 @ 2:22 pm #
Wasn’t Rum Bubbles one of the characters in Cats? No? Shoulda been.
Comment by happyfeet on 3/31 @ 2:32 pm #
liberals what hate America these days are on to something I think
Comment by ushie on 3/31 @ 2:33 pm #
Bros before Hos, you know.
Comment by White Reverend Wright on 3/31 @ 2:40 pm #
I am sick and tired of whiteys that just do not get it. Hillary Cunton, excuse me I mean Clinton (waves hands and holds for applause), Rahm Emanuel, they just does not get it. Barack Hussien Obama ain’t neva been called a cracka!
Comment by Slartibartfast on 3/31 @ 2:41 pm #
Nearly subliminal in that video is Goldie Hawn presenting a broad expanse of…um…chest. Sometimes “cleavage” is appropriate with that sort of situation; not this time.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 3/31 @ 2:42 pm #
…maybe “rib cage”.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 3/31 @ 2:42 pm #
Self-denounced, if anyone’s interested.
Comment by The Pragmatic Republicans on 3/31 @ 2:48 pm #
Funny, you get those same looks from us, Jeff.
Comment by White Reverend Wright on 3/31 @ 2:48 pm #
We have supported state socialism against the French and white Europeans and NOW WE ARE IDIGNANT!!! Because the stuff we have done overseas brought right back into our own front yaaard. Americas chickens, are coming home, to roost!
Comment by George Orwell on 3/31 @ 2:59 pm #
“Rum bubbles?” Rum=liquor produced from sugar cane in tropical climes=exploitation of indigent non-white labor to serve the vices of the white overlords.
Racist!!!11!!1!!
Comment by MarkD on 3/31 @ 3:17 pm #
I remember that look. In a moment of desperation, I quoted Time magazine for an economics paper. It was late, the library was going to close, and this was before Al Gore invented the Internet. I wasn’t in the Marine Corps anymore, so I couldn’t use Autodin (anybody remember teletypes?) to get to the Library of Congress. Besides, they weren’t on the network.
Anyway, Time magazine wasn’t considered a reliable source of economic data. My hopes of an economic career lasted as long as Saddam’s air force in Gulf War I.
Comment by David Ross on 3/31 @ 3:35 pm #
I think the -eau in French is a stand-in for Old French *-el: château < *castel; traveau < *travel; nouveau < *novel – and compare the feminine forms for each. That adjective should be “Rousselean”…
Comment by George Orwell on 3/31 @ 3:45 pm #
Hairsplitting, but “traveau” is meaningless in French. Travel is translated as “voyage.” At any rate making an adjective out of a noun ought to be a euphonious exercise. I like Jeff’s word. It comes across the tongue easily with the “v” sound, like Jovian, or Shavian.
Comment by Ric Locke on 3/31 @ 3:49 pm #
It isn’t a neologism, guys. The usage has been around for a while.
English is the result of Roman soldiers chatting up Anglo-Saxon barmaids, and tacking an English suffix onto a French name is at least as legitimate as any of the other issue.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by T&T on 3/31 @ 3:59 pm #
Jeff,
Thanks for citing statements that fail to pass their own test. I’m always glad to add those to my armory.
T&T
Comment by T&T on 3/31 @ 4:01 pm #
And Rousseauvean sounds soft and furry, like mink. Or maybe white, feline fur.
T&T
Comment by George Orwell on 3/31 @ 4:05 pm #
English is the result of Roman soldiers chatting up Anglo-Saxon barmaids,
Mmm… I like that image. Makes me love English.
Comment by geoffb on 3/31 @ 4:24 pm #
Charlie M’s dream. Still festering it’s way into reality. All the fringe bene’s too. Charlie’s girls are in this life, unlike Mo’s 72.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 3/31 @ 4:27 pm #
You had me at “Anglo-Saxon barmaids.”
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 3/31 @ 4:32 pm #
…”Or maybe white, feline fur.”
Uh…that’s white pussy.
That’s it. This thread has officially gone full circle.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/31 @ 4:33 pm #
You had me at “Anglo-Saxon barmaids.â€
Wit cleavages.
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 4:46 pm #
st pauli girl
y i buy it?
alcohol si’
cleavage?
si’ si’
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/31 @ 4:53 pm #
Roman soldiers chatting up Anglo-Saxon barmaids
Norman, surely?
The Anglo-Saxons invaded after the Romans, so at that stage they would’ve been the soldiers, and the Latinized Celts would’ve been the barmaids. :-)
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 3/31 @ 5:13 pm #
“The Anglo-Saxons invaded after the Romans, so at that stage they would’ve been the soldiers, and the Latinized Celts would’ve been the barmaids. :-)”
Stop hammering my barmaid fantasies with factual history damnit.
In fact, to hell with the barmaids. When do we get to the wenches and mead?
Comment by Matt on 3/31 @ 5:16 pm #
One of my old roomates cats was named Bongwater… =x
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 3/31 @ 5:26 pm #
“One of my old roomates cats was named Bongwater… =x”
Hell, one of my old roommates was named Bongwater. (Algonquin name I think).
Don’t remember what we called his cat.
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 5:29 pm #
tits were not invented
or[smokes pipe-sighs]
not de-invented til[suck pipe-pause-exhale]
romulus and[sigh-fidget-sigh]
and remus….
would share
i am not[suck pipe-pause-fidget-pause sigh]
queer
Comment by blowhard on 3/31 @ 5:35 pm #
One of my old roommates smelled like bongwater. I think his name was ICan’tFindMyLighterCanIBorrowYours. Something like that.
Comment by Cowboy on 3/31 @ 5:53 pm #
I always use “Thoreauvian” when teaching Hank.
It impresses my students and I need all of that I can get.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 3/31 @ 6:13 pm #
Q: [flashes two fingers spread in a "V"] What does this mean?
A: Why it’s “V for victory”!
Um, no.
A: An English “up yours”??
A: No, it’s a Roman soldier ordering five more beers.
[Rimshot. Thud. Sound of body being dragged off stage.]
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 6:28 pm #
my pinky
offered
if russell crow
is shut off
Comment by Clouseau on 3/31 @ 7:46 pm #
Norman, surely?
Stop calling me Shirley.
Comment by pdbuttons on 3/31 @ 9:51 pm #
surely u jest
Comment by OregonGuy on 4/1 @ 11:00 am #
Interesting. You’re dealing with existentialism and nihilism, we’re stuck with post-modernism.
We have state agencies that go through Jungian visioning processes. Objective reality is “so not today.”
Logic in Oregon is dead. How long before Colorado follows?
.
Comment by mojo on 4/1 @ 12:58 pm #
Time for that video mash-up of the marching zombies from “The Mummy” moaning “O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!”…