Greenberg on Pollock

He’s a much slower talker than I ever would have guessed (though he admits as much in his Bennington Lectures), but it’s fun to watch. (Hat tip, Robert Jackson.)

Bogost weighs in

HERE.

p.s. on the previous post

Once blog exchanges reach a certain point of fruitlessness, I tend to stop reading them. Hence it came as a shock to me to learn that anyone ever made the argument that if I say that corporations are real objects, I must therefore support corporations. What the hell?

I suppose that a “charitable” reading of that claim might run as follows: Politics must be grounded in truth. A politics of truth must eliminate that which is unreal and merely ideological. A corporation is a mere ideology, nothing real. Whoever says that they are real must oppose their elimination, and must therefore support them.

At least that’s the best face I can put on the logic. But it seems to me like a bizarre ontology that gets things backwards. The reason the Syrians are trying to eliminate the Assad regime is not because it is an unreal fiction, but precisely because it is very real, and simply judged to be very bad.

Levi’s post gives the example of atomic weapons. Let’s say you believe in nuclear disarmament (not a bad thing to believe in, incidentally). Wouldn’t it be best to start by admitting that nuclear weapons exist, precisely in order to bring an end to them? It certainly seems like the obvious Step 1 to me.

What would be gained by calling nuclear weapons unreal? I assume no one would say that. So why say it about corporations? In what sense does saying “corporations exist” imply “therefore, corporations are good”?

I can’t even begin to grasp the logic at work in that reading of OOO.

some very basic points about ontology and politics

Levi with a good post HERE. I have nothing to add; the points are so simple.