Too Resist is All

[Steelhead]

Henry M., alias gravity, tries to bring the discussion back to earth:

>Is the list really debating "which type of loss is greater?" Culture,
>biological, personal? Cultural loss can't be turned back any more
>than the loss of a rain forest. Do we need to choose between a
>homogeneous "one world" culture and ecological hell? Steely, I
>appreciate that writing about ecological disaster might encourage
>people to "vote" with time, money, or political input, and is
>therefor useful beyond "entertainment" value, but that doesn't
>validate inconsiderate responses to cultural preservationists. If we
>"save" the world, but nobody who can appreciate it is left...

Henry, you miss the point. Destroying forests in the developing world *is*
destroying culture--and people, too. Have you read about the genocide in
Papua New Guinea or East Timor lately? Or perhaps the struggles of the
Huaroni people in Ecuador. The trends toward multinational corporatism is
destroying environment and culture (fuck, "culture," it's killing people)
at the same time. Big oil, big timber, big shoe companies. Benzene, dioxin,
clearcuts, and sweatshops. Diversity of language, religion, songs, music,
plants, and animals is being consumed by the same omniverous forces. It's a
global version of the Highland Clearances, where the English moved the
Scottish highlanders off their land, outlawed the wearing of kilts and
tartans, banned the use of bagpipes, forbid even the use of some
surnames, such as the hated MacGregor, and moved in their own large sheep
ranches. Crush the culture, steal the land. Read all about it in one of the
best chapters of Kapital, by that "old racist Karl Marx."

The kind of "one world culture" environmentalism that you are talking about
is certainly a big part of the problem--not the solution. Most environmentalists
are smug elitists who believe in a centralized government, burdensome
regulations, worship the gospel of efficiency, and dream of the day fucking
star
wars like satellites monitoring our every move. Check out the last scene in
Wim Wenders's neglected classic, Until the End of the World. The Greenpeace
space station--what a scary joke. This, of course, is one of the reasons
the Huaroni Indians threatened to kill that little twerp Robt. Kennedy, Jr. (a
so-caled lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council) when he
ventured to the Ecuadoran rainforests with an offer to "save" the Huaroni
by moving them out of their rainforest homeland and into some deathridden
city so that Conoco and Mobil could drill the hell out of the oil and gas
reserves there and NRDC could establish the area as a "national biosphere
reserve." Kennedy said the oil companies would set up a foundation on
behalf of the indians, who were--quote--"too ignorant to take care of
themselves." Joe Kane's wonderful book Savages tells the whole story.

Again and again the question that confronts us is about how to resist these
seemingly omnipotent forces. This seems central to any reading of Pynchon's
later work. Why was the Counterforce doomed? What internal betrayals led to
the downfall of the New Left? Well, it seems fairly clear that we are all
doomed. But still our resistance--the fact that we resist--unites and
redeems...though
such resistance probably won't save much in the long run. Once those oral
traditions are gone...how do you get them back? The Irish monks aren't
around to salvage them again, are they? Plastic culture, plastic plantation
forests, plastic food....

And what are you talking about when you say "that doesn't validate
inconsiderate responses to cultural preservationists?" I write about
preserving culture all the time. If you ask me, the critical theorists are
the ones who are assisting the cultural genocide that is sweeping the
planet. Post-modernism, itself, is largely a dismissive critique of
"culture" and a glorification of corporate kitsch. If Vineland nails
anything, it nails
that. So does Tinasky.

On this very list, you have academics who trot out, for example, Marge
Piercy as a writer worthy of study at the college level. I was asked by the
Guardian to review Piercy's new novel on the French Revolution. Jesus.
She's impossible to read. And not because she's stringing together
syllables ala J Joyce. But this book is a crime. Bad history (imagine, one
of Ms. P's heroes is Danton--Danton!, who would have thought after Wadja's
travesty of a film anyone would drag *him* up again (except, perhaps, to
justify his fate)--she disses that great moralist and battler for the
rights of the oppressed (including, working class women--if not the
superior liberalism of a Mdme. Lafayette) Robespierre, of course, and
totally neglects the incomparable Saint-Just). Bad writing. Brittle, trite,
rhythmless prose. No sense of irony. No demonstrable sense of humor. In a
word, an insufferable experience. Yet, under the constraints of
post-modernist feminist criticism, all this is swept away and Piercy (what
must Toni Morrison think?) is hailed as one of the great writers of the
20th Century. Bad prose-style? Of course, English is a phallocentric
language. Writing badly is a subversive act. Bad history? Natch. This is
feminist *fiction,* buddy. Bad reviews? Must be written by a sexist.

Tell me: who's destroying the culture? Post-modernism started out promising
to be a revolutionary critical movement. Now it's a useless play ground for
elites and intellectual onanists. Migod...look at poor Fred Jameson these
days, running around in his black leather, acting like a corpulent Michel
Foucault.

Steely