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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