Absences and Inhumanity: Six Works of Abstract Horror

[Mr. Veech]

@ Coa

One of the reasons I avoided graduate school in philosophy after attaining my BA was because of some of the intellectual dishonesty I discovered on the part of Continental philosophers. Nietzsche, for example, was appropriated within a post-Marxist context which was completely hostile to the spirit of what he wrote, a fact which is apparent to anyone who bothered to actually read his work. The fact is that the events of the Cold War disillusioned many post-Marxist theorists (e.g., Foucault, Deleuze). Nietzsche was effectively used as a placeholder.

I always loved Kaufmann's scholarly work on Nietzsche, though. But it was too intellectually honest to become fashionable.

[Druidic]

Unless it's a piece of crude political propaganda, it's a mistake to judge art by politics.

Would "The Colour out of Space" have been a different story if Lovecraft were a liberal? I doubt it. The mature artist, even if a fantasist, works with the world we all know; it's not political fantasies that direct him.

Using related logic, I think The Horror at Red Hook would still be as weak if it weren't racist.

[Druidic]

Perhaps not, James lol. If a well known Liberal had written Red Hook it might well have been hailed as a brilliant portrait of right wing paranoia. Don't forget Lovecraft wrote "Eryx" which reads like the work of a bleeding heart Liberal.

My point remains the same. It's the work that counts, not the artist's politics.

That was my point as well.

[Hidden X]

Quote Originally Posted by Coa

People who consider themselves Left can't afford to act like that, Left should always be one ready to embrace, to be inclusive, to go deeper in it, if necessary to subvert to their cause - worst thing for the Left would be this kind of distancing, labeling and moralizing-away from it. What I want to say is that, take for example, Marquis de Sade in France. Who wrote about him? Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, Annie Le Brun... Left. They accepted him, analyzed him, politicized him, subverted him, basically transformed him into progressive, feminist, liberal humanist. You do it like that, you don't hold your dumb reserves and prejudice of what is acceptable or which is the right way to fight for liberal causes. Can we have Nietzsche with revitalization of values but without rest of it? or hippe-WSB, without all that Mugwump crap? Being bigoted, snarky puritan, should not be the way of Left intellectuals.

You should note that de Sade was "subverted" AFTER his death.

Far cry from trying to do the same for someone like Land who is very much alive and kicking and is opposed to any such interpretations of his theories, not to mention his definite, active political/ideological involvements. I have a hard time seeing how you can do liberal "subversion" of living philosopher who is actively, vocally working against everything that western liberalism stands for. Might as well try to do the same with Roger Scruton and the like, while we're at it...

[Coa]

Ye, I mean, I agree with you. I wasn't spamming about those two nobodies. I was more triggered by the way they deal with people like WSB and N. Okay.

Like, perfect example for what I was trying to say is stupid Sundance film festival. So, you are not satisfied how are things in the Industry; with the way films are produced and which topics are dealt with (and in which way); so you organize this thing that will support Indie, low-budget, alternative cinema that usually deals with serious topics - that Industry avoids, in a sorta artsy-way. All good so far.

So, after some time directors, from all over the world, start coming and so in 2001 there comes Kim Ki-duk with The Isle. It's a low budget surreal-whatever-drama. There are couple of violent scenes and people start walking out. Outraged and stuff. Same happened in another even bigger and more pretentious festival.

You want to establish alternatives to predominant form of cinema but you are not ready to cultivate your audience, you want same blockbuster mind-set just on the smaller scale and in slightly different form; you want films about Fascism (always hot####), but you want Schindler's List and not Salo,120 Days; you want anti-establishment films, like, All the President's Men and not They Live or Holy Mountain. Because that's bad taste - kitsch or immature or whatever. Quintessential leftist film: Starship Troopers - if you want to die laughing read review for it by Roger Ebert.

My problem is this kind of toothless, sterile, constipated Left elite that acts like some kind of real alternative. I was stupid enough another day to watch Beguiled 71 and then Beguiled 17; totally sanitized, somehow labeled feminist, bloodless nothing in comparison. Does it makes sense? I 'learned' English by googling stuff.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I don't mind people walking out if they can't take the violence. It's the booing and jeering like a bunch of children I hate.

[luxfugio]

I have enjoyed conservative works of art; I have read every novel by William Peter Blatty, who at the end particularly was a Right-winger. And Kingsley Amis, that crusty British drunk who managed to inject his every perversion into even his finest work, as in my favorite, "The Green Man".


If only there were actually an Alt Left.

Then we could break into the banks, arrest the bankers, drag Donald Trump out of the White House and slap him till his face was crimson. If only.

The sense of communitarian justice on the part of the Left has sung its death rattle. Most liberals--I won't say Leftists, because they tend to be a more hands on bunch, or were--would rather twiddle their hands at home than risk themselves in something like a revolution.

Right wingers are dumpy and thirsty for violence, and only need and create pretense for who and where.

I have enjoyed conservative works of art; I have read every novel by William Peter Blatty, who at the end particularly was a right winger. And Kingsley Amis, that crusty British drunk who managed to inject his every perversion into even his finest work, as in my favorite, "The Green Man".

I can't believe Thomas Ligotti's site is like this, attracting quasi fascists like it does and has continued to for a few years now.

It'd be hard to slap the orange out of him.

It isn't just a problem with the left. The right and their elected buffoon president have been crying themselves to sleep over sports players kneeling. People are becoming ridiculously sensitive to other views being expressed.