At 4:17 PM -0500 1/6/03, Frederick Pollack wrote:
>it
>doesn't really counter my points, which were: a) that in the long run,
>beyond the reach of hegemonies and academies, quality will out (I have
>to believe this, so as not to despair at my own lack of recognition);
I think on the whole that is true. But as feminist scholarship has
shown, sometimes it takes hundreds of years; and sometimes those
hardwon grounds are very quickly eroded again.
>b), more important, that one must choose, in aesthetics as elsewhere,
>between universalism and relativism.
Do we really have to choose? Can't we just do a Keats and enhance
our negative capabilities?
> I admit that the oppression of
>women (and dismissal of their art) is the longest-lived and most
>widespread - but it interacts with all sorts of other repression and
>rebellion. I'm sorry I used Gentileschi as an example; Frida Kahlo
>would have been better, for exactly the reasons you cite. You make, I
>think, the crucial point: that it is artists who decide what's good, by
>deciding what they need and what they can draw on; and in the long run
>their judgments outlive those of establishments.
Yep, it's up to us, folks!
Cheers
A
--
Alison Croggon
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