Philosophical Rap Contest

[Mark Kohut]

Dear Thomas,

We had this conversation about Elizabeth Costello in October 2015.

My how time flies until I repeat myself. Wherein it loops back and slows.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 10:09 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> when I was a stringer for a newspaper, I got to go to cultural/author
> events and write about them.
>
> This was two first-rate philosophers talking about a paper by another
> philosopher on Coetzee's
> Elizabeth Costello.
>
> Yes, I overwrote. Like they said of Pynchon, I remark, laughing my ass off
> at that idiotic comparison. Deal with it or don't read it.
>
> Then read ELIZ COSTELLO, as I immediately did.
>
>
>
>
> One on philosophers and a Coetzee novel....
>
>
>
> This phenomenological, allusive, rendering is how I wrote many pieces......
>
>
>
> This one is OVERWRITTEN, i know.....edited i would have had to cut those
> sports metpahors and more.....
>
>
>
> BUT I love this one because of some of my connections........
>
>
>
> And because of what happened........poor Cavell, mute.....McDermott,
> leaning in and apologizing......
>
>
>
> Enuff,
>
>
>
> mark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Mark Kohut* <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 11:37 PM
> Subject: Philosophical Rap Contest
> To: Gary Shapiro <gshapiro at nysun.com>
>
> When are two philosophers' papers like a rap contest?
>
> When their mutual face-off ends like Eminem's *8 Mile*---one of them
> unable to
>
> respond.
>
>
>
> It was an amazing evening of thinking aloud. Two internationally famous
> philosophers, the legend emeritus, Stanley Cavell, philosopher of movies
> and art and Thoreau and Emerson and life in each and all; man thinking in
> Emerson 's phrase, in the So-American grain. And John McDowell, keeping the
> University of Pittsburgh in the top of Departments, lured from England for
> his stature and growing achievement.
>
>
>
> Last Thursday, they came together--standing and sitting room only at the
> Faculty House near Columbia's Heyman Auditorium---to read papers on a paper
> of Cora Diamond, third leading philosopher only present in her words on *Elizabeth
> Costello*, the latest novel by Nobel Prize-winning J. M. Coetze. (Yea,
> sounds more precious than watching Plato's famous shadows in a rear-view
> distorting mirror, but.......trust me, it wasn't. To be grounded in a
> superlative, subtle novel featuring a writer and intelligent thoughts on
> things that matter, mattered. When philosophers have all of 'reality' at
> their disposal is when we can feel in a funhouse.)
>
>
>
> Cavell led with a typical Emersonian-Cavellian essay, centering on the
> theme of the evening: why, should we, eat any animals and under what
> conditions and for what reasons?-- taking off from a section in *Elizabeth
> Costello*, a section separately published by Coetzee called *The Lives of
> Animals*. Cavell's piece was rich, associative, folding in Thoreau,
> squirrels as company, slavery, Schweitzer leaving sugar out for ants, loss
> and prophecy, Nietzsche--"that gentlest of men" screaming--- the social
> contract and private language and Wittgenstein, of course. Cavell''s
> paper centered on a key deep theme: "the mechanization of agriculture" from
> a famous passage in Heidegger..and in Cora Diamond's explication linked to
> "mechanized corpses [in the 20th Century]"...."like blockades leading to
> famine"....."like the effects of atom bombs'....
>
>
>
> Mechanization everywhere, how do we live?
>
>
>
> Cavell ended with riffs on Ms. Costello's "wounds" as Coetze writes of
> them, arguing that in the book, "a possessor of a [human] body has a
> stigma", that Elizabeth seemed to "welcome the effect she caused" and, if I
> got it right, that it is part of the human condition, which we must feel
> deeply, to eat animals, that Coetze wants to argue that to not feel our
> wounds, to embrace vegetarianism is to so distance ourselves--we are also
> animals--- from the human condition as for it to be ultimately an immoral
> act.
>
>
>
> The Knickerbocker went to the circus later that night but Cavell's piece
> was the best juggling act of the evening. A pro in his elements. Then it
> was Prof McDowell's turn.
>
>
>
> His rap began by quoting Cavell, sweet, " no one knows anything everyone
> else can't know", that old private language impossibility rephrased and
> then he surprised with this: Cora Diamond is using Cavell's themes, he
> argued. Nice homage.  He proceeded to explore some of these themes within
> other parts of Ms. Diamond's paper, alluding to cannibalism in *Soylent
> Green* and most particularly to this question: Elizabeth Costello's
> "reality", picking up on Diamond's Ted Hughes poem quoted, being
> 'shouldered out" of our reality, on Elizabeth's "unhinging perceptions", on
> whether we can get our minds around reality, her reality.
>
>
>
> Then McDermott threw a change-up curveball, or called a 'hidden football"
> reverse play and Costello's supposed perceptions became perhaps her
> "fugitive perceptions" and a shell game trick: The argument's over here
> now: Costello's words show us a dislodged woman, from which no arguments
> reasonably follow. Cavell's themes applied to a woman whose reality was
> "dislodged"; from whom her arguments were irrelevant.
>
>
>
> What a magic trick, I didn't see a thing.
>
>
>
> And, seemingly, neither did Stanley Cavell. When asked by the moderator
> for his response, there was a pause...then there was more silence...then
> Mr. Cavell said, "I don't want to say anything offhand".......then there
> was more silence....Cavell thought.......Cavell apologized for 'having no
> response; I want to"......the  room hunted silently for pins to
> drop.......there was more silence.......it was just like the end of *8
> Mile *when Eminem had anticipated the dissing he would take from his
> opponent and worked all the dissing and answers into his own rap and when
> the guy got the mike........he had nowhere to go and nothing to
> say.....then Stanley joked that he had had a "McDowell moment"......the
> paper reminded him of when he read *Mind and Matter *[McDowell's book]
> and "every other sentence seemed wrong".........
>
>
>
> McDowell was kind to Stanley. He leaned into him to show how close he was;
> he mumbled something about "not wanting to...." but I couldn't hear it.
>
>
>
> Later during some interesting Q & A (from some other international names
> which I could drop for you), Stanley said almost excitedly, recoveringly,
> "Now I recognize me" as one of his themes emerged more clearly in one of
> McDowell's answers.
>
>
>
> It was, in its way, as fascinating as anything at the circus;
> as interesting as the day Chekhov visited Tolstoy. A legendary philosopher
> is sorta refuted by his own themes, maybe, maybe not and the deep questions
> of a great writer start getting asked with unintended consequences.
>
>
>
> Read *Elizabeth Costello*. I am.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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