Op 06-feb-98 schreef WillyXXX@xxxxxxx:
> "Albrightian hogwash"? "superfluous hornblowing"? "destructive juju"?
>Lighten up!
>Frankly, if this is his pattern, I find the Albright blizzard intriguing,
>verging on provocative, thus far, and not at all destructive.
> Randall writes: "....time moves so FAST these days, Michel! You wrote this
>in 1978, and...it all seems so... so dated compared to... others...or does
>it?"
> I too have been struck by the dated, almost quaint appearance of this Part
>One.
> We "Other Victorians" , that is, was written in the light of a cultural
>"discourse in which sex, the revelation of truth, the overturning of global
>laws, the proclamation of a new day to come, and the promise of a certain
>felicity are linked together." When "repression", that is to say, was out of
>grace.
> Time moved fast, indeed, didn't it?
> In America, with the demise of the ERA as a dominant cultural topic, the
>attitude of feminism turned from one of rebellion against the agencies of
>power, which have tacitly, and expressly, oppressed women, to a mood of mere
>gender-hostility, and sexual disparagement. Accompanying this change has been
>the cultural reconstitution of the female from one of potential or actual
>"equality", to one of unmitigated "vulnerability" and "fragility". Other
>protracted cultural events such as the "rise in teen pregnancies", the
>abortion debate, and the advent of the "world-wide AIDS epidemic", have,
>simultaneously, produced wave after wave of anti-sexual discourse.
> All of which - feminist sexual disparagement, the fragilized female, and
>various issue-specific anti-sexual discourses - have been constitutive of a
>renaissance of virtuous sexual repression.
> At least, in the United States.
> So that, reading We "Other Victorians" in that light, makes it appear
>rather like one of the discursive artifacts with which Foucault is
>preoccupied.
Don't forget the talkshows. All, from Oprah to Jerry, seem to breed a little
Victorian inside.
-erik
> "Albrightian hogwash"? "superfluous hornblowing"? "destructive juju"?
>Lighten up!
>Frankly, if this is his pattern, I find the Albright blizzard intriguing,
>verging on provocative, thus far, and not at all destructive.
> Randall writes: "....time moves so FAST these days, Michel! You wrote this
>in 1978, and...it all seems so... so dated compared to... others...or does
>it?"
> I too have been struck by the dated, almost quaint appearance of this Part
>One.
> We "Other Victorians" , that is, was written in the light of a cultural
>"discourse in which sex, the revelation of truth, the overturning of global
>laws, the proclamation of a new day to come, and the promise of a certain
>felicity are linked together." When "repression", that is to say, was out of
>grace.
> Time moved fast, indeed, didn't it?
> In America, with the demise of the ERA as a dominant cultural topic, the
>attitude of feminism turned from one of rebellion against the agencies of
>power, which have tacitly, and expressly, oppressed women, to a mood of mere
>gender-hostility, and sexual disparagement. Accompanying this change has been
>the cultural reconstitution of the female from one of potential or actual
>"equality", to one of unmitigated "vulnerability" and "fragility". Other
>protracted cultural events such as the "rise in teen pregnancies", the
>abortion debate, and the advent of the "world-wide AIDS epidemic", have,
>simultaneously, produced wave after wave of anti-sexual discourse.
> All of which - feminist sexual disparagement, the fragilized female, and
>various issue-specific anti-sexual discourses - have been constitutive of a
>renaissance of virtuous sexual repression.
> At least, in the United States.
> So that, reading We "Other Victorians" in that light, makes it appear
>rather like one of the discursive artifacts with which Foucault is
>preoccupied.
Don't forget the talkshows. All, from Oprah to Jerry, seem to breed a little
Victorian inside.
-erik