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Is every set of social relations political? -----Original Message----- From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Scott Hamilton Sent: Friday, August 04, 2000 12:41 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Politics IN poetry All the discussion of poetry and politics the Dalai Lama sucks posting seems to have initiated treats politics as an OPTIONAL EXTRA for poets - it's like, 'should I include political comment in my work'. I think that Qs about political comment - is it possible to write a good sestina about Tony Blair, is Mayakovsky more sensitive than Yevtushenko to the needs of poetry etc etc are fundamentally RED HERRINGS. Arguing about whether poetry SHOULD be political is like arguing whether art should be sociological - of course it bloody well already is, itnever fell from the sky! A better Q is: should art be looked at sociologically, should the political commitments of poems and poets, the political commitments underlying a fair deal of aesthetic experience, be examined? I would argue that every poem is political because every poem is born out of a place in a set of social relations, and therefore serves an interest(s) which defines itself in terms of its place in those relations. Hence a sensible Q might be: what place do the 6th Dalai Lama's poems come from in Tibetan social relations, what interests and conflicts are built into their very existence, let alone their aesthetic appeal? An obvious start to answering this Q is a recognition of the fact that the guy is writing in a language WHOSE VERY EXISTENCE is predicated on a feudal set of social relations - it's a language which only the upper classes can understand, it's a language in which masters obscure their secrets from slaves... Cheers Scott ===== "Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life... Philosophical problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas from life, we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig Wittgenstein __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%