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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Watching the World

In the blog Advances In The History Of Psychology: Who Prevails When Academic Freedom Threatens the Bottom Line? http://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/?p=709#more-709 there is an article which I briefly quote and summarize: Haworth Press announced amid heavy criticism that its Journal of Homosexuality wouldn’t publish [Rind's] article or book chapter about sexual relationships between men and boys in antiquity. Critics had learned of a particularly controversial piece in the forthcoming collection, which would argue that such relationships “can benefit the adolescent” in certain circumstances, prompting allegations that the author was advocating child molestation. Those allegations were trumpeted first and loudest by the Web site World Net Daily, whose readers vigorously complained to Haworth. Since I learned Latin as a teen, and taught myself Greek shortly thereafter, I am not unfamiliar with the subject. I have read ancient who have written about or around the topic. Socrates mentions it, although I can't remember where, nor do I wish to at present. It is not my intention to argue for one side or the other. I could care less. I have no use for such abstractions as "academic freedom" when the greater freedoms: from Want, from Fear, are still pipe dreams. Back in the old days, when topics came up which were to be for the eyes of the learned, and not the general populace, not politicians, not opinion wonks, they would be written in Latin. In Victorian times, it was the way one referred to ancient erotica in translations: the offending terms and expressions never quite made it to English; there was always a side track into Latin to prevent such expressions ever being seen by genteel eyes. What do I think of the controversy? I don't think. I do know that children will remain subject to violent abuse. The controversy is not about violent abuse. I know children will continue to kill each other and themselves with unsecured firearms. I know that many of us will continue to favor cheap products made by child labor in other parts of the world. I know that one of the "benefits" of Globalization was the world-wide network of the child sex trade. I say to the present Generation as General McAuliffe said to the Germans encircling Bastogne: Nuts!

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I know about this stuff from antiquity also. I didn't teach myself Greek, but had to learn it in high school. Academics are academics. They are going to read and discuss things that your ordinary Joe and Jane don't discuss. My reaction is who in the hell cares what gets published in the Journal of Homosexuality except people who read the journal.

Alas, any red meat available to throw to the mob in our day of instant and ubiquitous information is immediately thrown.

Montag said...

It is a subject that I've paid attention to closely, because it is so revealing of us.

Going way back to "recovered memory" and the McMartin School scandal of the early 90s - possibly late 80s - it astounded me that I was looking at latter day witch trials.

I guess I realized how thinly we wear our disguise of rationality.

There are certain topics that are fetishes, they are taboo, they have so much power that we cannot deal with them.

That's what I mean by the power of the symbolic: stories that render us dumb and mute... accounts and narratives that cannot see the light of day, because they are so heinous that they overwhelm us!

I doesn't matter to me what the topic is. What I am interested in is the fact that the mere mention in writing cannot occur - the outcome would be devastating.
That is interesting.

Unknown said...

We don't have to be revealed in this fashion to realize that we're far from rational beings. Was it not these same Greeks who taught us about the dark undercurrents of human existence, the undercurrents that are really in charge of us?

I just find our pretensions to any kind of moral existence laughable for the most part. These same people who are ready to gag scholars because they find their interests obscene, are perfectly okay with the everyday obscenity of violence and hatred that is the foundation of their lives.

Montag said...

Righto.
But...
the undercurrents are not necessarily "dark" in any moral sense.
The unconscious is the source of saints and sinners.

Anonymous said...

It is always interesting, I think, when society indicates its new scapegoat. Since 9/11 there's been a war raging on whether this pharmakos would be the pedophile or the terrorist. Suffice it to say one has won out over the other...

And I don't think we should be shocked that it is such a dostoevskian figure.

Montag said...

I don't think I ever thought of Dostoevsky in conjunction with the present age, but it seems very appropriate.

Thanks.