Re: Marxist aesthetics

[Jon Beasley-Murray <jpb8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Oh, this could get just too tedious, but still...

On Thu, 7 Dec 1995 owner-marxism-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 05:10:27 -0800
> Subject: ENGLISH BLAKE & MARXIST AESTHETICS --- REPLIES
>
> To Jon Beastley-Murray:
>
> >Myself, I think that left has to be against aesthetics.
>
> Here is where you are wrong.  And if you think that way, what the
> hell are you doing in an English department?

I am not in an English department.

> I am not the only
> person to note that lack of a notion of aesthetics is what fatally
> cripples Marxist criticism.

I think I have a fine, historically situated notion of aesthetics...

> Without aesthetics, art is reduced to
> to social provenance and political propaganda.

What does "reduced to social provenance" mean?

> Therefore
> everything is to be judged by whether it contains social protest
> or not.

No.  What is this about judgment, anyhow?

> Hence Ice-T and not Coltrane becomes the revolutionary
> artist.

No.

> This is a very convenient notion for academic parasites
> like yourself, especially at vile institutions like Puke
> University.

Is "academic parasite" a tautology as far as you are concerned?

> English professors are the second lowest form of
> human life, next to the rappers.  Ice-T rapping is like man
> attempting art before he has descended from the trees.  There is
> nothing revolutionary about the ugly and the vicious.  I seek to
> wipe his kind and yours off the face of the earth.

Is "English professors" to refer to me?

Who mentioned rap?  Not me.  I'm glad you are so against ugliness and
viciousness.  Heaven help us if you were to become either.

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Literature Program
Duke University
jpb8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons


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