Stuart -- in your interesting post you say,
"Leisure is not a neutral term. Frankly, it has a distinctive accent - an
accessed voice which asserts while it ex-nominates. It exudes a
confidence, and to feel able to dispute terms on the basis that you see
no rational connection between them is almost a stereotype of privilege."
I'm not sure what you mean. Who claimed that leisure is a neutral term?
In the period which I began to discuss, Pope to Gray (as an example), the
term was very loaded indeed. I think it still is. When Andrew Duncan
uses the phrase, The Cambridge Leisure Centre, he's not being so neutral;
he's making what I think is a good critical description of the conditions
within which much stuff gets written here.
I don't mean to -support- anyone by saying they're at leisure, not at all.
You're right to point to privilege, but still (though perhaps I missed a
connecting point) I don't see how this should automatically translate
into a point about money. Money is not privilege exactly, and vice versa.
Scholars don't earn a great deal, and students are for the most part
broke. I object not the the -spirit- of Peter's use of the term, but to
its -inaccuracy-. As I said in my other post, I think that in this
specific case the metaphoric inaccuracy is not to the credit of the
expression.
Whether the connection between 'money' and 'leisure' is RATIONAL, is
surely not the point (or, I'd guess not, from the emphasis of your own
post on people's real living conditions and economic difficulties)?
Best, k
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