I don’t feel the need to read Dworkin, but I decided to give her these 50 minutes. I’ve seen a long form talk of hers before about 3rd wave neoliberal feminism vs 4th wave progressivism infighting. I feel like a good amount of what she has to say in this is in bad faith, or at least is insufficiently grounded in reality. I’m also coming at this from having read Iceberg Slim’s Pimp: A Story of My Life.
“It’s the…
Held back by a good amount of stuff like “People make up their past. They remember what they want. They forget the rest.” That sounds deep but feels more like a placeholder for genuine insight. Trying too hard to be profound. Also not super into the "identity" theme with “I don’t think to myself as a folk singer, you know, folk music thing. I mean, I do sing folk music. When I do, it’s sort of a modified version.” and…
The Glass Harmonica was banned in the USSR as its central thesis (enlightenment through culture) opposes socialism's (that politics flows from material conditions). There are various symbols that rush by in a deluge of western 40s-to-70s abstract styles: a long-nosed moneygrubber through a keyhole, a woman propping up a table full of artifacts, the artifacts crashing to the ground after the woman wants to keep her money and becomes a hippo, a man with many feet and a small head…
