Perhaps you’re new to this site, but no one’s allowed to make fun of LVT on AWP. Them’s the rules.

Consequently, I think a certain exacerbation of the narcissistic tendency here is precisely where a kind of politicization can happen (although that’s not to suggest it is easy): I should be more significant, but instead of reading this discrepancy as a problem with me, I see it as a problem with the world that produced me, and therefore a world that would undervalue its constituents must be challenged and changed. Of course, this could easily lead off into some kind of liberal politics of healing, or even something worse, and hence politicization is not inherently neutral, but that is more of a practical difficulty than a theoretical contradiction.

The ‘black iron prison’ of neoliberalism rendering art, theory and politics into a childish (and deadening) series of stunts. Academic bread and circuses.

if life imitates art, then the current zombie fascination in music, film and fashion should make the revolution well worth televising

somehow i think dubstep will be the soundtrack as opposed to black metal. from the plodding halfstep to the mid range squawkers and the full on aural assault of the likes of reso and king cannibal.

lets fookin ‘ave it:)

The issue isn’t really one of the “enjoyment having its way with you” – which it of course will or won’t, and does so every day and in all sorts of ways. It’s a question of what we make this pleasure / the having of its way when we turn to description / analysis / argument. In other words, just because we enjoy looking at the scenery of Ballard’s novels, it’s a more complicated issue what we do with that enjoyment.

wayne,

I look forward to writing about ballard too – and the issue of what he makes of the relationship (and nature) of the “unconscious” to the material world is one of the things I surely will be writing about.

APS,

That’s exactly what I meant, yes. And exactly why I didn’t in the end go back and edit my post.

Roger,

That’s rather brilliant, Roger… What’s interesting about it, from the perspective that I usually take as a lit guy, is that one way to describe the modernist novel is that it breaks the seal that held, say, the source of the wealth that underwrites Austen’s novels, exposes the source of the happiness (unhappy happiness) of romance. Heart of Darkness, just to cite an obvious example, seems like a romance turned inside out – Kurtz’s quest for the Intended is the front story gone back.