tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post6849153926493232802..comments2023-12-31T13:47:05.758+00:00Comments on Fat Man on a Keyboard: Culture and conflictThe Plumphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09244528534476387323noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post-60302008018317208782009-04-19T20:28:00.000+01:002009-04-19T20:28:00.000+01:00The straight proposition, as I understand it, is t...The straight proposition, as I understand it, is that rather than thinking in terms of religion or lack of (Islam v Christianity, Islam v Atheism, Christianity v. Atheism) one might consider Islamism, say, as a cultural aspect of a specific religion. Not all Islam has to be Islamist, in other words, but there is a kind of culture in which Islamism can flourish as "a repressed that returns with a vengeance". (I always tend to worry about that particular repressed).<br /><br />The terms are awkward of course and he goes by his own definitions, which is, I think, the chief problem. It is fascinating how this kind of reversal, in which you point to a phenomenon and call it A, then becomes the definition of A.<br /><br />Nevertheless.<br /><br />What I think he was trying to identify, if I want to be picky about it, were some differences between two kinds of <I>culture</I>: one that works on passion and concentrated group identity, another that works on irony and diffuse individual identity.<br /><br />Don't you think that such a distinction exists? I watch these two ways of going about life creating havoc in Hungary, and some such distinction seems reasonable to me.<br /><br />How far civilisation and culture are the best terms I don't know, and may be less important than the phenomena themselves.<br /><br />The conclusion he draws at the end is, I suppose, a continuation of the spat with Amis, but when he says -<br /><br />"The distinction between Hitchens or Dawkins and those like myself comes down in the end to one between liberal humanism and tragic humanism. There are those who hold that if we can only shake off a poisonous legacy of myth and superstition, we can be free. Such a hope in my own view is itself a myth, though a generous-spirited one. "<br /><br />- I cant help thinking there is something in this. That, if you like, the conflict isn't between the religious sense and the anti-religious sense, but between the liberal and the tragic.<br /><br />I would like to think the liberal has the last word, but I have a certain apprehension that the tragic usually has its say, and telling people that religion is a lot of rubbish is not going to solve it.<br /><br /><BR>George Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post-84360434244659639772008-05-21T22:21:00.000+01:002008-05-21T22:21:00.000+01:00I think you're right that he's continuing to kick ...I think you're right that he's continuing to kick Martin Amis.<BR/><BR/>"Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt;"<BR/><BR/>That's Amis, and Barnes, and McEwan, and British literary intellectuals in general.<BR/><BR/>"culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational."<BR/><BR/>Bunch of religious nutters jumping up and down burning books and shouting Death to Rushdie.<BR/><BR/>But he's the usual slippery Eagleton and he's not going to be that explicit. So he takes those notoriously difficult words, "civilisation" and "culture" and says that they mean what he has decided what they will mean in this instance.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post-36397220315656884592008-05-21T18:11:00.000+01:002008-05-21T18:11:00.000+01:00Civilization and culture used to be on the same si...Civilization and culture used to be on the same side? Not in World War One they didn't. I may have got this the wrong way round but didn't the court Professors of the Hohenzollerns (ie a very large proportion of the German professariat of the time) argue that World War One was a war between Anglo French Zivilisation and -the far superior - German Kultur. So good old Terry seems to have reached back to Troeltsch and the others who put out the manifesto of intellectuals in favour of the German War effort. Well, that's entertainment.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post-54632547542554473922008-05-21T18:07:00.000+01:002008-05-21T18:07:00.000+01:00Indeed. See what's happening in Gambia in relation...Indeed. See what's happening in Gambia in relation to gays for 'culture' in Eagleton's terms at its, possible, worst. In the light of which, the old CNT/FAI road with religious obscurantism appears even more attractive.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com