WHile agreeing with most of what you say here, Alison, I'd suggest you
check out the Culture novels before sequestering the 'pleasure' its
citizens can know off that way, and for the sheer pleasure of their
texts (if perhaps more a readerly one than a writerly one, but I always
thought there's a rather complex interaction there rather than a clear
distinction...
Doug
On 16-Mar-05, at 3:33 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
> On 16/3/05 11:46 PM, "MJ Walker" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Why did Adam & Eve bite the apple, only to be told they would have to
>> bite the dust?
>
> This makes me think of the temptation scene in Paradise Lost. If
> you'll
> forgive me quoting myself for a second: "In Milton's Paradise Lost, Eve
> addresses the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge as the "best of Fruits",
> "whose
> taste ... at first assay / Gave elocution to the mute, and taught / The
> Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise". Significantly, in
> Milton's
> version the most tempting quality of the fruit is rationality: Eve
> sees that
> the Serpent "knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes" and,
> desiring
> this "intellectual food", she eats the apple, greedily gorging "without
> restraint". A woman's intellectual curiosity, inseparable from sensual
> abandon, precipitates the Fall of Mankind, instates the central myth of
> nostalgia in Western symbology, and is a synonym for disaster."
>
> Thinking also of the introductory temptation scenes of Goethe's Faust.
> (Peter Stein's production of Parts I&II were televised here recently,
> although I didn't see it all). Bruno Ganz played Faust as a passionate
> sensualist in his intellectual strivings, but a sensualist repressed;
> his
> ambition to understand everything is a monstrous hunger (by which of
> course
> he is revealed and undone).
>
> Given all those cautionary tales, I guess it's unsurprising that
> pleasure
> should enjoy such anathema: it seems to be embedded as a cultural
> assumption
> that as soon as one enjoys thinking too much, disaster follows. But
> naturally I'd take Barthes' idea and analyse it genderwise as well
> (though
> Knut I've seen enough right wing commentary to attest to its
> contemporary
> application). The notion of the pleasure-hating feminist is an idee
> fixe in
> conservative thinking, and isn't often borne out in reality. The odd
> thing
> is that it's mostly the right wingers who are hell bent on interfering
> with
> other people's pleasures. But yes, pleasure is as Barthes says
> "scandalous"
> and (potentially) "revolutionary"; and also politically neutral.
>
> This is of course a more dynamic and multiple idea of pleasure than
> those of
> the Culture's citizens (I haven't read the book, but it sounds very
> like
> Brave New World), which sounds somewhat anaesthetising; consumable
> pleasure,
> unidimensional and transient, which engages less than the whole self.
> Rather like many of the pleasures available to us, which must be
> partial and
> disposable in order to keep the economy growing.
>
> Best
>
> A
>
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
'Goodbye Porkpie Hat': A slow air written by bass legend, band-leader
and composer Charles Mingus . . . . It originally appeared on is 1959
album for Columbia "Mingus Ah Um" scored for quintet.
Tony Mcmanus "Ceol More'
