Stale news now, and I may be mistaken, but looking at the recent archives
it seems as if this never made it into Britpo --
K
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 12:57:53 +0100 (BST)
From: K.M. Sutherland <[log in to unmask]>
To: Henry <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Exits from the ego
On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, Henry wrote:
> Keston, I get the sense that your "totality of relations" means an intellectual
> pursuit of social justice. It involves a recognition of the fact that our
> lives are "managed" by corporate and state powers pursuing their own
> interests, over which we have little or no control; in which case the
> idea of the individual as well as the idea of lyric poetry are suspect,
> irrelevant "idiocy" (in the Greek sense). Poetry ought to pursue freedom
> and social justice by addressing THAT particular global reality before
> anything else. Have I got it right in terms of your "general poetical
> principles"?
>
> - Henry
>
Henry -- it would be more useful I think to reply to this and to Peter's
mail in one shot (and less exhausting, too). I'll try to do that quickly,
though I'm heading away for a few days tomorrow. But, rapidly: no, I
don't mean by 'totality of relations' any act of pursuit or recognition,
but rather the objective predicament in which all recognition (and all
reaction) is possible, recognition of which is therefore (in my view) the
primary and irrefutable grounds of contribution to any durable discourse.
The totality of relations is -objective-; the trends you identify are
surely part of it, but they are presently the limited case of
"westerners", so-called. The totality of relations would of course
include all those relations between people who are not yet part of such a
predicament; or at least, who cannot yet perceive that they are part of it
because their participation is solely through labour and seems therefore
indirect. Doug Oliver (to mention him again) made all this clear
implicitly in _A Salvo for Africa_ (I wonder what you think of that book,
Peter -- it does claim openly what you deny, i.e. that economic
involvement in a democratic nation with a continuing history of
imperialism -does- constitute an ethical responsibility for every
individual so involved, e.g. for -every- Briton, American from the USA
etc.)
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