frouella, 9/12 post-class post

So, according to Lyotard, "Artists and writers must be brought back into the bosom of the community, or at least, if the latter is considered to be ill, they must be assigned the task of healing it." Wow, that's a pretty tall order, no? I'm not trying to make any hasty generalizations here, but of the rather sizeable group of "artists" that I know, there aren't that many that I'd trust with that job. Half the time they can't find their keys, let alone heal a community. That's not even going into how whacked-out some of the really famous artists are/were. I'm sure they'll get to the healin', once they finish lobbing off their ears or drowning themselves in the river Ouse...

To answer the question posed in class, if I had to pick, I think I'd rather attend a dinner party with Habermas, if only because he seems a bit more straightforward in his views. Lyotard seems a bit...flighty, and his parenthetical asides would get old after a while. Unless, of course, he was also gifted at snark, in which case I might reconsider, but I digress. The biggest reason why I'd want to go with Habermas would be because then we could discuss his "culture of expertise." I've thought about this subject quite a bit myself (albeit without the grandiose terminology), especially since I've been going back to school. As Dr. Rog mentioned, it seems the longer you're in, the more microscopic your specialization is supposed to be. While I was beginning work on my senior project, the head of the department e-mailed me some examples of topics from past papers, one of which was "The subject of venereal disease, as explored through the novels of Jane Austen and Hogarth's etchings." Mmmm, venereal disease! Forget trying to forge some kind of synthesis between Eastern and Western Humanities, that's what I've always dreamed of as the culmination of my years of study!

Personally, I want to know everything. Which, now that I think about it, is more in keeping with Habermas' (Habermas's?) idea of a "reified everyday praxis." When people specialize too narrowly, it's like putting blinders on; they can no longer see the big picture or the larger connections between seemingly unrelated subjects. In that sense, I want to be like Abulafia, the computer from Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum." In the story, the characters feed various and sundry bits of information into it, and out pops connections you never knew existed between things you would never otherwise put together. Granted, in the story, much of the info they input is patently false, but I'm talking about emulating the idea, not the literal plot. Good thing, too; otherwise, I'd likely be hunted down by rogue Rosicrucians and be forced to flee into the sewers of Paris. Which are likely full of venereal disease.