Ric -- it's the trail-out of your message that exemplifies what I most
object to in what I understand to be your way of thinking about this and
other issues. You hint that cetain kinds of conceptual narrowness are
responsible for the conflict in Yugoslavia, accomplishing in tacit abandon
a leap from a discussion of anthologies to one which posits (structuralist
style) a connection between our present methods of argument and a
dreadful, real military disaster. This wasn't the purpose of my comment
on 'mature society'. I said simply that this society cannot be considered
mature on account of its eclecticism, when its fiscal-military commitments
are so evidently not conditioned by that social attribute (if it exists at
all). I posit no connection between eclecticism and military conflict,
but rather attempt to distinguish them radically, and to argue that their
very separateness is a problem to the hypothesis that society is mature.
This is what I mean when I say that a certain power of inference has
become too proliferated. More commonly the inferred connection is between
eclectic taste in poetry and progessive identity politics, which again I
would want to distinguish rather than conflate. I hope this is clear --
have I misread you?
best, k
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