Pulling together a couple of this week's threads -- I'm trying to sort out some of my irritation at the late Susan Sontag and at George Lakoff.
I ought to mention that on a human level, I'm sorry that Sontag is dead, and that she had to deal with long, serious illnesses. But her death brings me up against the work, and I've never been comfortable with it, and I'm still not.
It's not just a matter of the specifics of her commentary, though there are those. It's also the tone and the packaging -- the measured phrasing, the cheap parallelisms and oppositions... the compulsion to comment importantly on important matters... the sensibility that comes neatly packaged in a box marked "Public Intellectual."
Consider, for example, "On Photography." And contrast, for example, Garry Winogrand -- who was, first of all, a truly great photographer. And who, second of all, managed to compress a whole revolutionary aesthetic theory into a three-sentence knockout punch -- "The photograph isn't what was photographed. It's something else. It's a new fact." Or a one-sentence knockout punch -- "there's no particular way a photograph should look." Or, in explaining why he worked, said, "I photograph out of terror." And in applying for a Guggenheim, said this about his project:
I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and what is to become of us just doesn’t matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the columnists, some books. I look at the magazines (our press). They all deal in illusions and fantasies. I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn’t matter, we have not loved life. I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue this photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project."
Walker Evans helped him a little with that. Nevertheless -- wow.
Or maybe it's just my character note. Give me directness, give me economy, give me the vernacular every day.
You tend to get the vernacular when you're dealing with people who are doing the work. They're also thinking great thoughts, but they're too busy to package them as Great Thoughts. Winogrand isn't a public intellectual. He's a master, operating under intense pressure, trying to do and figure out what he's doing at the same time. So, for me, Winogrand yes, Sontag no.
Which brings me to Lakoff. Again, there are specifics in his work that bother me (and there are good specifics, too). And I continue to think that he's focused on solutions that are superficial and facile because he's focused on linguistics, as opposed to the real, flesh-and-blood audience. But there's also this -- Lakoff is a fine theorist, but he's never actually been in the trenches, has he? He's never actually had to persuade anyone of anything. Oh, in an academic setting, sure. But he's never actually counseled a campaign, or a business. Which means he's never really had to dig deep into audience motivations, or client motivations, or to change the whole approach on the fly because the theory that sounded so good falls apart in the field. I do things differently -- not because I'm smarter than Lakoff (I'm probably not), but because I've been forced to. It's a messy world out there, and it fights back, and it makes you simultaneously a lot more succinct, and a lot less certain, and a lot more submerged in the deep dark waters of what's actually going on.
The bad news is that there continues to be a huge gulf in American life between knowing stuff and doing stuff. Theorists live in universities and journals; practitioners live out in the world and don't benefit from theory. It's a loss on both sides. Sontag would have written a much less formal and much more insightful version of "On Photography" if she'd spent a really frustrating couple of days out on the streets with Winogrand. Lakoff would come up with different, better, richer stuff if he took on a couple of political or corporate clients and wrote some statements and messages and Q's and A's. I'll guarantee you this -- he wouldn't stay fixated on framing for too long. He'd be way, way, way deep in the picture.
The good news is that the Internet likes to blow up separations. The blogosphere may take care of the knowing stuff/doing stuff gap. I haven't had a direct argument with Lakoff yet -- only by proxy. But if we ever have one, there's a pretty good chance we'll both come away thinking differently, and maybe better. Which would be good for all concerned. So how about it? No more intellectuals, and no more engaged people, and no more "engaged intellectuals." Instead, only engagement.
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