Perhaps for the sake of argument you are correct that Hebrew dietary laws have nothing to do with sanitation and health risk-or 'clean' versus 'dirty' in the common tongue.
OTH my (reform) Jewish friends say otherwise, and go to some length to demonstrate a rational basis as to why, say, bottom-dwelling and unscaled fish would/should have been considered a health risk any time prior to the advent of modern biology.
This, of course, is done intentionally to appeal to my Anthropological side, sort of like that old chestnut, "The cultural ecology of India's cattle'.
But then again, my attitude has changed. Now I'm far more inclined to accept the Woody Allen Theory (from Bananas) that power is, at its base, enforced by making others do and believe things which are totally absurd. To study a society's culture, then, is to understand the contours of power and force.
Armed Levite priests, the SS arm of history's first true Nazi, the genocidal Moses, simply talked dietary shit in order to force total compliance. Therefore, like all superstitions, being Jew is nothing more than an abject obedience to potential force; and my liberal-minded friends are simply, naively wrong.
Yet most of us goy-people like to think that jewish thought--like our own--
makes a bit of sense when placed in the proper context. For example, we derive the (somewhat)
misplaced metaphor 'bottom feeder' or 'catfish' as a epithet because it's nice to think that that's what Kosher is all about.
But adding to my statement that 'catfish' is poor philosophy and worse biology, you've strongly suggested that it isn't even good theology. I happily stand corrected.
BH
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:05:17 -0500
From:
[log in to unmask]Subject: Re: Showgirls/catfish
To:
[log in to unmask]if BH is so concerned with people really knowing whereof they speak, he should be careful about misrepresenting the concept of “kosher” which has nothing – repeat, NOTHING – to do withclean and dirty . . . although perhaps the metaphoric slip that turns all “acceptable/unacceptable” binaries into “clean/dirty” ones is at the heart of much of this discussion
m
Bad metaphors make for poor judgment.
My work at Vincennes, under Deleuze, was on Kant's Third Critique. Yet perhaps that's too muddy for you, as well.
OTH, Deleuze's concept of the Body without Organs appears in Anti-Oedipus. This was not discussed in class because Deleuze--rare among academics--categorically refusd to discuss his own work therein.
Verhoven--unlike, say, Kieslowski-- was famous for employing camp to illustrate larger points of meaning. This is more or less consistent with Spinozan univocity, which itself extends back into The Scholastic Era...and forward to W's Tractatus.
In this perspective, depth and elevation totally miss the point: it's all on the surface which, in Showgirls, is made as glossy as possible. All we can do is make a case with facts within a given frame of reference.
Calling others 'catfish', then, reeks of the idiocy of an over-Platonized Christianity. It's also bad Biology, derived from the Kosher obsession with 'clean' and 'dirty' fish.
BH
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:56:11 +1100
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Showgirls
To: [log in to unmask]
At the risk of sounding a bit like Ralph Wiggum from Der Simpsons, I
quite like Showgirls.
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