Put Up or Shut Up

"symptomatic of our times": compared to when, Tadeusz? I've read THOUSANDS of words over the last two months offering justifications and alternatives in re Afghanistan; and chosen not to read thousands more — not cuz I'm cynical; cuz I have a living to earn and limited time; and also cuz proper reading to me means being overwhelmed by someone else's worldview, and swimming to the surface and MY take only after considerable effort. I think there's more discussion and attempt at justification in the world today than at any time previously — partly because literacy is at a world-historical high (if well-grounded dissent at a lower ebb in the US at the moment than say 1968, it's FAR more the rule of things in eastern europe, in the middle and far east than it was say 50 yrs ago).

A very good question indeed...*thinks* Since I can't speak for the worldwide points Mark S raises (sounds plausible, though), perhaps the best initial response -- initial, I note, not *the* answer -- is that a critic who is not sure of the best alternative can still raise valid points in an argument. Take Ed on the response to 9/11 -- he mentioned a while back that he's not sure of what he would do himself, but I think made and makes a strong case based on his philosophy about why launching attacks in turn was no solution. I didn't take that as him cynically flapping his yap or anything, more an honest, heartfelt questioning. I've said before that alternatives to the current attack needed to be advanced in order to prevent marginalization and I still think that, but that doesn't exclude what Ed was trying to point out.

I think a truly destructive response to 9/11 in the debate would be the equivalent of a head-in-the-sand approach, in the sense of -- this may sound strange, but I've read/seen this more than once now -- ignoring the actual WTC/Pentagon attacks themselves, or rather skipping over them in order to simply and solely say, "America bad, it must not bomb" (in extreme cases, rewritten to "America bad, it must not *act*" -- or rather, must act simply and solely to, say, force Israel to stop its own idiocies, a good thing from where I sit though the unproven assumption is that this will then immediately solve everything else). It's a kneejerk response that denies or reduces the emotional, psychological and related consequences of the day to a harmless fly- sting on a monolithic beast now seen as trampling the woods randomly -- it confuses the people with the government, for one thing, and it denies the fact that people from around the world died in the attacks, for another. Ed doesn't and never has made this mistake.

Tadeusz, I think you have an excellent point. I do believe that nearly anything can be made to look corrupt, ridiculous, or foolish by the endless sniping of certain forms of criticism. Too many critics, and modes of criticism, are like the morose people standing off to the side at nearly any event, firing a succession of skillfully-crafted one-liners that neatly cut down whatever's going on...but who are on the sidelines of all of those events because they never actually, y'know, do anything, and never hold anything up as exemplar of what they themselves think is unequivocally wonderful. They're a waste of time.

Mark: proper reading to me means being overwhelmed by someone else's worldview, and swimming to the surface and MY take only after considerable effort.

Proper criticism, though, needs to offer insight of some sort -- after all, we're talking about what happens after the proper reading (and, btw, I agree with you there -- reading with complete ironic detachment is, barring utterly hostile or offensive tracts that practically have to be read at arm's length [Pr0t0cols of the E1ders of Z!on and that sort of thing], hardly reading at all).

I suppose my take on all of this really depends on the precise mode of criticism being offered, and its tone. I know in music criticism, it often seems like the people who do the most effective impersonations of the Simpsons' comic book salesman are the ones who don't actually make any music themselves. Again I come back to the idea of how very easy it is to cut things down, how very hard it is to actually make something of significance, and how much one's world-view changes if one actually tries to engage the material (cf. Hegel) rather than just sitting on a golden throne above it.

As for sociopolitical criticism, I do think that queer theory, for instance, has practitioners who acknowledge the consistent neglect of the school to provide attractive and workable alternatives to What Is. (See here, for instance -- down at the bottom: "Maybe queer theory as an enterprise senses that it will look promising only as long as it speaks from outside any tribe or community.") Perhaps this is in part due to the recognition that utopianism of any sort necessarily predicates some form of totalitarian action, which the events of the 20th century rendered very unattractive to most people who are emotionally affected by the idea of mass murder or similar acts. So many philosophies with a utopian bent -- from every side of the political spectrum -- have ensconced themselves in a role that affords them ample opportunity to attack the current norms, the canon, and what have you, but that never really confronts the troubling questions of how they'd remake the world in their ideal, and what tools they'd use to force the world to comply.

btw, Mark, I think the shift in academic discussion has been undeniable -- whereas in the past, we had "No, not X (and here's why): Y instead (and here's why)", and certainly the "Y" was often far from proof against further critiques (but isn't that what, you know, the evolution of human thought is all about?), now we all too often get just the first half of the equation. Maybe folks who were living under repressive regimes are in fact able to offer dissenting views and workable alternatives in ways that would've gotten them shot 30 years ago, but that doesn't contradict the powerful (and IMHO highly cynical) movement in academia towards a POV that does indeed spend all of its time on meta- and very little on actually making something (and when it does make something, it piles it under such layers of obscurantism and quoting and what-have-you that only a small subset of folks can penetrate the jargon to realize that what is being said is, in essence, the Poky Little Puppy with jackboots and Derrida).

Having said all that, I do think there is a role for "I don't know what should be done/made, but it surely isn't THAT". Maybe implicit in that statement is the recognition that, if you were fully informed, you would indeed be able to offer a workable alternative -- but that, particularly with something like the Afghanistan situation, it's almost literally impossible to be fully informed, so one is cognizant that any solution that you might offer would lack a sound and complete foundation...but nevertheless, things can be identified that are wrong, or ill-advised, or clearly the product of cynical calculation, and they can and should be challenged.

Poky Little Puppy with jackboots and Derrida = me!!

(Now how did I know that was coming?)

at least there's no layer of jargonXoR!!

I'd be very wary of the assumption that *anyone*, academic, critic or otherwise should be barred from offering criticism without advancing constructive solutions or alternatives. It's usually a lot easier to see why all the available options are somewhat iffy than to effect another option. For example, there may not be a political party in the UK with which I have more than a cursory common cause. Should I therefore be disallowed from criticising the government, the opposition or any possible alternative forms of government unless I actually go out and form my own party? Equally, to suggest that only those making music -- even a baby with a rattle and a musical telephone? -- should be able to criticise music seems ridiculous.

I find most criticism -- academic, journalistic, political -- tedious and trite because it revolves around a set of values I think need to be re-thought from the ground up. But at the same time, I think that much of whatever the opposite of criticism is -- those 'positive suggestions' -- suffers from the same problems and needs a similar re- thinking. Criticising and offering alternatives are two different occupations, and the idea that only the latter can somehow validate the former seems to me to be a cheap way to establish means for the legitimation of certain voices and the exclusion of others. Not everyone is going to be able to suggest a solution to the current state of the British railway system, for example. But to suggest that everyone who wishes to criticise Virgin trains should be required to draft some kind of executive action plan for submission to Stephen Byers is ludicrous, and potentially anti-democratic. Sure, moaning may be dull, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Police Chief O'Lanagan: "I don't believe it! Another outbreaked of unqualified Derrida- citage threatens ILx-ville. What can we do? Call the Masked Deconstructor!!"
*Deep in shadowy t-manor a phone shrills*:
*MEEP MEEP*
millionaire alext: "There's rethinking from the bottom up to be done, robin"
robin: "holy hauntology, bat de man!" (etc)

to suggest that only those making music -- even a baby with a rattle and a musical telephone? -- should be able to criticise music seems ridiculous.

Never said that. My point is that people who want to criticize music, but who have no hands-on idea of what goes into making it, need to recognize the limitations of their own criticism, and to respect and be mindful of what they don't know -- which is the same attitude a musician who can make music, but lacks an appreciation of the social and historical context in which he or she works, might well have towards those who are capable of making those connections.

Besides, who ever talked about "barring" anybody? Recognizing the compromised position of those who chronically belittle without offering anything non-meta- of their own up for criticism isn't the same as barring them from getting into that compromised position. My point, again, is that we ultimately need to recognize that tearing things down is often far easier than building something of substance, whether it be a work of art, a rail system, or whatever you care to name. You don't need to know anything to belittle something, but you need to know quite a bit to make something. The people who want to criticize Virgin trains can and perhaps should do so, but I think that the phrase "but I don't know the whole story" needs to be at their lips, too. It's a false binary to suggest I think they need to draft a revision plan -- it's not "either you wholeheartedly support utterly uninformed criticism, or you insist that people go through ludicrous steps before they can voice an opinion". I'm somewhere in between -- I think that people should be self-monitors, recognizing when they really don't know enough or don't have a sufficiently thorough understanding, and that all discussion should always, all the time, be moderated by people's acknowledgements of what they do and don't know, and how that limits their perspective -- and that others should use that information to assess the credibility of what they say. Is that so unreasonable?

to respect and be mindful of what they don't know

I may not know how to play guitar any, but I don't want to hear another Eric Clapton record ever again. Should he come to me and say, "But hark! A craftsman am I!" I would say, "A dullard are you" and beat him about them head.

Or 'the head' even.

Raggett is barred

Bound and gagged. YET I RUN FREE IN MY MIND. Hahahahahahaha!

Presumably because he's not, um, a "bard"...?

Neither is he much good. "But he studied all the blues masters and knows all the things and the deals and..." *cue snoring from me* Why should I respect *that*?

No, um, it was a pun, referring to you, and a very bad one...you know, "barred/bard"...I'll shut up now...

"It's such fun to criticize."

Yep, that's why we do it Tad. FUN!

Do you really want this to be a boring, dreary message board just like millions of other equally boring, dreary message boards and chatrooms where posters raise a number of key points which have been thus far criminally omitted from the debate?

My own take on this whole thing is that, unless you are directly involved, it doesn't do to get too involved with "current affairs" since our inability to do anything about them (vote every four years? Write to your MP/senator/whoever? For all the good that does?) merely magnifies our own perceived insignificance and irrelevance in relation to the world. We need to learn more about ourselves. There are people I work with who know more about Afghanistan than they do about their own children, and that's surely not a healthy state of affairs.

Nothing particularly profound and/or revolutionary has ever been said on ILx, or is likely to be said, but nonetheless I do think that the FITE aesthetic is OK, provided that we don't (even inadvertently) hurt others by indulging in it.

I personally find that the likes of the Dunedin crew are far more "on tap" with humanity than endless paragraphs of pointless polemic (and by pointless I mean unentertaining and unenlightening). Current paragraphs included!