Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Smackdown? Not exactly...
Kenny Goldsmith takes on Al Filreis here. No contest. Note that Goldsmith makes each of his students buy a paper from a term paper mill and "present it as their final project as if they wrote it themselves." Is that post-avant, avant—or just stupid? In the end, Al throws the match and praises Goldsmith for "rigorous uncreativity." Now there's desperation....
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4 comments:
No contest, or just no real point? I can never get through these “discussions,” and am amused by the attention lavished on Goldsmith. I’m also amused that he must resort to typing out an original response to defend his ideas. The whole business strikes me as a used car spiel. But, to each his own. We all have our blind spots, and the universe laughs at us each in turn.
What would the poetry world be without irony? I keep trying to resist all mention of Goldsmith, but it's like "The Hands of Orlac"! I—just—can't—STOP myself!
I think it's an interesting thought that we are merely the sum of our research...or the sum of our shuffled-around information. I don't agree with it, but it's interesting. I think back to my thesis work this summer, and what if you had made me choose what somebody else concluded and take it as my own. I think back to what I learned in the actual research process--and I how didn't agree with every bit of every article. Sure, I "shuffled" through things to make my point, but I have a better understanding of what I was researching--and I'm more passionate about my conclusions because of it.
I think the heart of the issue for me is that Goldsmith is basically teaching that people are no longer able to create because it's already been done. This defeats a fundamental purpose ingrained in the human spirit!
I don't know, of course, Joel, but my guess is that Goldsmith would dispute the whole idea of a "human spirit" in the sense you mean. When you and I used to discuss the imaginal, we were talking about that purposive, creative impulse—and I think we agreed that it's both primal and necessary. Goldsmith is a child of Deconstruction and anti-foundationlism, which (in my opinion) represent a dead-end way of thinking about the human condition.
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