by Jerome du Bois
The sitemeter shows a lot of searches for Jason Gatliff, so I might as well set down some further notions prompted by that curiosity, as well as a comment I deleted but which still buzzes in my brain.
The comment --on the Gatliff piece, Rebarbarization In The Academy, Part Two: The Innocent Are Guilty-- came from an obscene email address, so I thought at first it was dirty spam. I trashed it after I read it, so I no longer have it verbatim. The first sentence, though, was
Have you at least read his essay?
The essay's title: "In Defense Of Terrorism: When Is It Permissible To Target Children?" The speech he gave in Boise on the same subject bore the title: "In Defense Of Terrorism: When Is It Okay To Kill Kids?" I don't know why Gatliff changed it.
Now, I'm a Darwinian. I reason, I'm smart, I trust my mind, and I'm busy. There is no conceivable defense of terrorism consistent with the sovereign individual's rights. End of argument.
But there's more with these people. They want to piss on your shoes, and they want you to stand there and take it until they're done. They have the emotional needs --and lack of boundaries-- of two-year-olds throwing tantrums. The culture, especially the contemporary arts and humanities, is overflowing with these needy hyenas who, knowing their stuff is crap and knowing it insults your intelligence to spend any time or attention on it, still demand that time and attention. That is their triumph, that is their purpose. The content is secondary; the main goal is to make you share their stink.
A couple of years ago Catherine and I went to a slide lecture featuring the artist Jon Haddock. We knew his work, hated it, but wanted to see and hear. But when he put up his cartoon of poor doomed cartoon animal figures in the burning windows of the WTC, we had to get up and leave. No commotion; we just booked in disgust.
In the ensuing email discussion between John Spiak and us, he suggested that we should have at least stayed for the whole thing, and then ask our questions and make our points.
But our point was the leavetaking. We walked out. We don't TAKE IT.
This little twit Gatliff knows damn well he's wrong, he's playing with friendly fire, but to get attention these days you have to be outrageous, so why not write a defense of terrorism? The academic culture practically begged for it, and --since Ward Churchill can't use two words when eleventy-two would do-- the moldy idea took hold in the loaf between Gatliff's ears.
But I don't need to read it. For my last piece I read and briefly analyzed an earlier essay of his. It was from hunger, and I couldn't see his "thinking" developing any further from the forlorn ideas --Kantianism and utilitarianism, and virtue ethics without the virtue-- presented in that earlier tract. (For the definitive demolition of those outdated ideas, please see Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Chapter Sixteen, "On the Origin of Morality," and Chapter Seventeen, "Redesigning Morality.")
The scariest aspect of the presentation of this whole arc is that Gatliff knew that in this culture, the essay was a sure bet. He knew damn well he couldn't lose.
But we do, as the rebarb gnaws, gnaws, gnaws away at every civilized thing.
Posted by Jerome at March 16, 2005 05:17 AM | TrackBack