Re: transgression again

John Ransom wrote:

>(A) Limit: Women are (ideally) perfectly proportioned sexual objects who
>nevertheless find their sexuality constrained and shaped by the fashion
>industry.
>
>Transgression: Burning bras at the Miss America pageant
>
>(B) Limit: Students are to be neatly dressed. In addition, certain
>hairstyles are allowed for women but not men, and vice versa.
>
>Transgression: Students walk around shabbily dressed, refuse to bathe, and
>men wear their hair long.
>
>(C) Limit: Workers are incapable of running factories and must rely on the
>expertise of owners of capital to organize production and distribution.
>
>Transgression: Workers take over factories in 1917 under the banner of
>"All Power to the Soviets" and do a pretty good job of running things on
>their own.
>
>(D) Limit: Societal laws against murder and canibbalism
>
>Transgression: Jeffrey Dahmer eats lunch.

So aren't you applying a single set of terms (limit-transgression) to 4
very different phenomena, each of which has a perfectly fine name in itself
(civil disobedience and/or protest, revolution, appalling crime)? Isn't
this a step away from the particular and towards the obscuring and abstract
Universal?

Doug





Folow-ups
  • Re: transgression again
    • From: John Ransom
  • Replies
    Re: transgression again, Doug Henwood
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