Conversation with John Searle, Well, it looks as if Prof. Searle won't be coming to Kent State. But if anyone developed a hankering to see the man after I discussed him in class, you may be able to satisfy some of that here here.  ¶ #

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  In class, I've noted that CBG, aka The Comic Book Guy, from the
Simpsons makes a fine example of someone who's fixated on the
thingly aspects of the work of art. Alan Moore has
often been quoted as calling comic books "a slab of culture". CBG puts his culture slabs into a poly-styrene bag and protects it from the light and the air. He doesn't take any account of how that slab of culture might break up the frozen sea within him.

Somehow, I don't think that Heidegger would accept Moore's slab of culture as art: the very notion of a comic book already involve a significant commercialization, the comic book as a cultural artefact had depended on a fairly specific set of economic circumstances to be viable, the comic author often fails to be specific. Worst of all, the distinctions between high and low are either irrevocably blurred or completely inverted by raising the comic book to high art. (Caveat, I am talking about American and British books here.) The comic book may open a world in the sense of breaking a frozen sea, but it doesn't provide a way for the people's historical existence to find a home. Rather, it tends to find a home for those who are outside the progress of the historical progress of a people. I'm not talkning about the disenfranshised struggling for dignity. That struggle is part of the historical unfolding of a place. I'm talking about those on the edge of dropping out of history, the slackers and the loners.

On balance, I think this shows a problem with Heidegger's analysis in "The Origin of the Work of Art", but then I'm not exactly the intended audience. Some distinctions are worth up-ending for the sake of knocking something over.  ¶ #

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