Re: Inorganic Intellectuals and the Mythical Ideal of the Marxist Tradition (Re: Moderation)
On Jan 15, 2007, at 12:51 PM, joanna wrote:
Doug Henwood wrote:
There’s an idea on the left that the really good stuff should
percolate up from below, and the duty of intellectuals is to
listen and learn from such but I really would love some concrete
examples.The writing of Zora Neale Hurston, Tillie Olsen, and RB Traven, any
music worth listening to.
So that rules out almost all the classic British novels and poetry of
the 19th century and a good chunk of American lit too. And most of
the classical repertory.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all the good stuff percolates
up from below. But the fact is that the process of education is
largely a process of indoctrination and stultification, with the
result that fresh ideas and perspectives are few and far between.
That’s true always and everywhere. No doubt there were massive
quantities of crap produced in the past, now forgotten. Still, as
Carrol points out, there’s more good art than anyone could possibly
consume in a lifetime.
I know we’ve sparred over this before, but this notion that education
is mostly harmful just isn’t true. Sure there are diamonds in the
rough, but in my experience, the spontaneous ideas of the lightly
educated are often confused and sometimes appalling. I can’t imagine
any radical agenda that wouldn’t include, near the top, free and
universal access to education from pre-K to postdoc.
Doug