http://www.plaidder.com/english.htm
Scroll down to "Panopticon in Your Soul".
Funniest Foucault Synopsis Ever.
Dominic
On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 03:45:31 +1000, Alison Croggon
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Chris
>
> Up late again (bad sleep for the past few nights, shocking flu, fever &c
> bleah) and noticed this, which I had overlooked; I also don't think the url
> has been posted where that impudent gentleman Mr Chris Murray gets his hand
> slapped (tsk!) Do you know him?
>
> http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4345
>
> I see that Matthew Arnold is the keynote thinker of this particular article
> ("In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal
> honor, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be
> kept inviolate and inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating
> the distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only
> half-sound, true and untrue or only half true. It is charlatanism, conscious
> or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. And in poetry, more
> than anywhere else, it is unpermissable to confuse or obliterate them.")
>
> As Arnold is the acme of the imperialist poet, who thought culture had the
> sacred duty above all to support the Empire, I guess this makes sense.
> Culture is to Arnold the "best" that is thought and done; but who determines
> that "best" is a tricky one. Eternal honor, hmmm. Is it defined by being
> not-charlatanism? Or does one simply recognises such "glory" straight away,
> by dazzlement, maybe? I really don't know though about the virginal quality
> of poetry outlined here, unviolated by, well, anything, but looking dazedly
> and gloriously out from its viewpoint high above the soiled hurly burly of
> the inferior world...
>
> There are certain canonical works that I couldn't do without. I would never
> eschew Shakespeare, for instance, or various other dead white males
> considered great; I like their work too much. What I would query is what
> that status makes of their work - how it makes dead and oppressive cultural
> momuments out of them, instead of living, dynamic and fertile works. But
> how a culture ingests and neutralises works of art, and how this is
> resisted, is one of the ongoing battles. Is art merely to embellish and
> celebrate Authority, or is it for something else?
>
> As for soul - I've always rather liked that Foucault definition, that a soul
> is the marks and traces left by various authorities across a human psyche.
> I used this idea for a monologue once, a character called Ruth, in a play
> which also quoted lots of Rilke:
>
> "They went away and then they came back and then they went away again and
> then they came back. Policemen with wings like bats. An old man with the
> face of a baby. The busdriver with a hacksaw. Children with teeth like
> dogs. I knew what they looked like even though I never saw them. I only
> heard them.
>
> "They laughed at me. All of them.
>
> "They took my soul and they drew all over it with their claws. Crisscross
> crisscross. Teachers. Mum. The babies. The police. The judges.
> Crisscross crisscross. The doctors. Dad. The lawyers. The newspapers.
> The social workers. The nurses. The schoolkids. Crisscross crisscross.
> And that was my soul. This poor ragged thing what everybody walked across
> and tore and wrote on. They wrote everything on it. Everything. It got so
> I couldnąt even read my own name. But then I remembered. I remembered at
> last.
>
> "I went down to the river to look into the water but I didnąt see nothing.
> All the drowned girls came out and stood on the banks. They stood there
> shivering and they said, come in, come in. But I didnąt. And they said,
> Ruth, come in. And I remembered my name, and I said, no. I said, no, I
> donąt want to. I remembered my name and I said no. And thatąs when the
> trouble started."
>
> But now I really am rambling. And so to bed...
>
> Best
>
> A
>
>
> On 25/3/05 4:29 AM, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Hi Alison--thanks for the good words. I thought the gender issue
> > interesting, too. I noticed here in scanning the recent messages that
> > there was some talk on Camille Paglia'a new (weak and weird) book--it
> > was a quote from her intro, along with the opening line in Alyssa
> > Lappen's article that caught my attention--Lappen's line is "Poetry is
> > a window on the soul," and Paglia echoes that assumptive (and in my
> > opinion, romanticist crap) notion. I paired up the two and wrote a
> > couple of sentences taking issue with their notion of poetic
> > "soul"--who's soul might it be, I wonder, and who's notion of "the"
> > soul?--on my blog. That seems to be what irritated this _American
> > Thinker_ editor, since he tried to reaffirm the notion by starting his
> > own 'hateful' editorial by requoting it with great reverence. Sheesh!
> > Now we cannot even debate historicized notions of what poetry might be
> > with coming under right wing ridicule and attack.
> >
> > But then, too: it's good to clear the air somewhat with these crackpot
> > thinkers, so, yeah: let's just call what they're trying to pass off as
> > defensible, reasonable argument, just plain old, same old, *bullshit*.
> >
> > :)
> >
> > best,
> > c
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
--
// Alas, this comparison function can't be total:
// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov
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