It's funny. John Holbo posts a link on Crooked Timber to a forum where comic book fans fake a passionate discussion about comic books that don't exist. I can't help but see in that forum thread a critique of the very blog linking to it. I suppose it's just a reaction to a bunch of lefties who would ostensibly support dissent in form as well as dissent in content while practicing only a bloodless academicism. Most of the bloggers at Crooked Timber write about politics the same way: like it's a exercise in form. What good is dissent if it is discussed as dispassionately as a fake comic book?
I mean, shit, Michael Berube wrote a beautiful capsule on the Habermas-Lyotard argument. It would be nice if people understood that representation has to take the form of asses in seats to really mean anything. Just like you can't serve the principles of racial equality by merely enjoying the pleasant idea of a black guy on your corporation's board, you can't show that you support dissent by nodding vaguely in that direction while you argue with somebody who might one day work for Time magazine.
Sunday, 21 August 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment