Interesting thoughts, Christopher. It occurred to me that these hazards --
all of them legitimate, having some attractive pull like one of Bourdieu's
fields -- bear interestingly on the neoclassical economists' nostrum of
efficient capital markets, where prices incorporate all known information.
It is one thing to *have* information; it is another thing to be able to
*interpret* it.
P
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Christopher Walker
> Sent: 25 October 2007 23:53
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: sentimentality & 'classism' Re: New at Sharp Sand
>
> <snip>
> I think the thing that is irksome about the ascription of the label
> 'sentimental' is the confidence with which it is done. I have a similar
> problem with the concept of kitsch. There are a few things that I like
that
> other people describe as 'kitsch', and I'm damned if I'm going to come up
> with 'ironic' ways of liking them. [PC]
> <snip>
>
> If the key is some sort of disparity between some sort of surface effect
on
> the one hand and some sort of underlying *authenticity* on the other, then
> another family member might be *camp*.
>
> *Sentimentality* and *irony* seem to me counterposed on both sides of
> whatever the divide is between the audience and the work: where
> sentimentality tends to warm what is emotionally relatively cold, irony
does
> the opposite. *Camp* and *kitsch* are slightly more problematic: whereas
the
> latter (through mass production, for example) is a sort of placeholder for
> the genuine, the former seems to mark out (by deliberate accentuation, by
> replacing what is understood as *real* with what is not) a _new_ sort of
> genuineness; but there is, of course, some leakage between these two.
>
> The irksomeness arises, I think, through the problem of how and whom to
> trust. A bad reading of something emotionally powerful is often, for
> example, the result of a misplaced sense of irony. And a misreading (ie a
> gullible one) of something that's ironic is also often, in some sense, a
> sentimental one.
>
> As to who decides what's misreading (or bad writing), that's clearly a
> matter of communities but also more than salons and refusés in any
> simplistic sense.
>
> I shall go and think about Bourdieu.
>
> CW
> _______________________________________________
>
> That which is the future here, when read from right to left, has
> already happened. (Giorgio Manganelli)
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