On 16/3/05 11:46 PM, "MJ Walker" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Why did Adam & Eve bite the apple, only to be told they would have to
> bite the dust?
This makes me think of the temptation scene in Paradise Lost. If you'll
forgive me quoting myself for a second: "In Milton's Paradise Lost, Eve
addresses the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge as the "best of Fruits", "whose
taste ... at first assay / Gave elocution to the mute, and taught / The
Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise". Significantly, in Milton's
version the most tempting quality of the fruit is rationality: Eve sees that
the Serpent "knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes" and, desiring
this "intellectual food", she eats the apple, greedily gorging "without
restraint". A woman's intellectual curiosity, inseparable from sensual
abandon, precipitates the Fall of Mankind, instates the central myth of
nostalgia in Western symbology, and is a synonym for disaster."
Thinking also of the introductory temptation scenes of Goethe's Faust.
(Peter Stein's production of Parts I&II were televised here recently,
although I didn't see it all). Bruno Ganz played Faust as a passionate
sensualist in his intellectual strivings, but a sensualist repressed; his
ambition to understand everything is a monstrous hunger (by which of course
he is revealed and undone).
Given all those cautionary tales, I guess it's unsurprising that pleasure
should enjoy such anathema: it seems to be embedded as a cultural assumption
that as soon as one enjoys thinking too much, disaster follows. But
naturally I'd take Barthes' idea and analyse it genderwise as well (though
Knut I've seen enough right wing commentary to attest to its contemporary
application). The notion of the pleasure-hating feminist is an idee fixe in
conservative thinking, and isn't often borne out in reality. The odd thing
is that it's mostly the right wingers who are hell bent on interfering with
other people's pleasures. But yes, pleasure is as Barthes says "scandalous"
and (potentially) "revolutionary"; and also politically neutral.
This is of course a more dynamic and multiple idea of pleasure than those of
the Culture's citizens (I haven't read the book, but it sounds very like
Brave New World), which sounds somewhat anaesthetising; consumable pleasure,
unidimensional and transient, which engages less than the whole self.
Rather like many of the pleasures available to us, which must be partial and
disposable in order to keep the economy growing.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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