Harvard Law Review cites Pynchon

Paul Mackin paul.mackin at verizon.net
Sat Apr 30 10:38:13 CDT 2005


On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 22:08 -0700, Bekah wrote:
> At 4:05 AM +0200 4/30/05, Otto wrote:
> >To fresh up an old quarrel:
> >
> >>
> >>   it inaccurately describes Zoyd as "a former '60s activist"
> >>
> >
> >Why inaccurately? It seems to me that the term "'60s activism" includes more
> >then just the SDS, the Black Panthers or the the Civil Rights Movement. Back
> >in those days music and drugs were part of the political scale.
> 
> 
> 
> In the late 60s, early 70s, the saying was  "Everything Is Political" 
> and the radicals, the leftists, the movement people saw it that way. 
> It was due to the polarization over the war.
> 
> The way you wore your hair and the kind of clothes you wore was 
> political.  If you did any kind of drugs,  or if you didn't; if you 
> ate meat or if you didn't; it was all a political statement.  The art 
> on your walls, or that you made, was a political statement,  the 
> music was political,  the sex was political.  The TV shows you 
> watched were a political statement.   In the minds of the radicals, 
> people were living statements of their politics.  There was nothing 
> outside the political.
> 
> So by the definition of the radical minds,  Zoyd was a political 
> being in the same way that everyone was a political being.  Even 
> Brock was a political being (well of course he was).
> 
> But were Zoyd  and Brock activists?  This takes the term "political" 
> a step further, transforming it into a conscious effort to be 
> involved in actions directed at opposing the war.    Brock is 
> obviously not an activist in that sense.   He was probably a 
> reactionary while Zoyd  was probably in the "stoned and I missed it" 
> category  (as the old song went).
> 
> Bekah
> ex wanna-be theoretician (sigh)
> 


Zoyd's activism (such as it is) isn't confined to the sixties.

The opening incident at the Log Jam is as gay activist as it gets.

Or maybe feminist activist.

I guess I was a mild form of activist in the sixties.

Marched on the Pentagon and such things.

P.






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