What I had been attempting to point out in my post on the excerpt from
Peter Ganick's e-zine, was that the current insistence on (or
prejudice for) 'play' could be thought of as a phase in intellectual
history, initiated by Nietzsche for reasons that would imply the
futility and decadence of our continued acceptance of that phase. This is
because: Nietzsche argued for 'play' in vituperative reaction to the
thinking habits of his day; had these habits been -our- present
habits, Nietzsche would surely have found 'play' unbearably vulgar and a
warrant for conformist mediocrity. It would be silly to stick to
Nietzsche exactly, but the deconstructive tradition has him as its
inceptor-of-sorts, and ought at least to imagine how his project of
radical and comprehensive aversion was the intellectual provenance of
'play' as he sought to recommend it. Currently, or so it seems to me,
writers wish to be playful in service of eclecticism and a kind of
conscription to exegetical liberty for the reader: not much of the adverse
there, more a case of brass-rubbing the tablets than smashing them.
For me, the connection of Bruce Andrews's fishing-line of single words has
so little to do with jazz notes articulated singly, that I'd feel duped by
enthusiasm were I prepared to believe that anything more than the most
casual and token resemblance had been intended (or could be accepted).
Perhaps this is different for others. Thanks for your extra info cris --
still I feel that it's decadent, a fashionable trade-off. The tacit
metaphrasy is so clamorous, you can't hear the zaps for the pows.
Ric you mention 'play' as an antidote to the mundane: don't want to 'stick
around in the glum and blunted world'. Well yes, that's exactly what I
wish to criticize, exactly that kind of privatized distress. If the world
is blunted, -sharpen it- why don't you.
k
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