Cuckoldry, Bankruptcy and Utopia
The peculiar experience of reading Fourier now, at this moment in human (and economic) history, is that both sides of Fourier speak to you — the constructor of utopian alternatives to the vapid ‘way things are’ and the ludic, sometimes explosively vituperative, sometimes self-mocking humorist. This suggests to me that, rather than Fourier being divided between the system builder — from whom later socialists such as Victor Considerant excavated a more sober system of thought — and the quasi-lunatic who spoke of lemonade oceans and mutant tails, both were complimentary strands, and were part of the same project. In order to set oneself against society in the way Fourier did, one had to take a risk and unfetter the imagination. Fourier is not our contemporary — he’s weirder and more challenging than that. Nevertheless, his work has something cryptic and discomforting to tell our faulty contemporary world.
Karl Whitney reviews Charles Fourier‘s The Hierarchies of Cuckoldry and Bankruptcy.
Microethical Issues
His view is that playing it safe and sticking to traditions and conventions is hopeless. The contemporary world is no longer a world that makes such an approach reasonable. There is too much happening, too many different kinds of people, purposes, aims, too much difference, to suppose that we can in our day to day ethical decision-making have universal knowledge of what we should do. Sticking blindly to a general principle like ‘killing is wrong’ seems to give us stability but even seemingly rock solid maxims have exceptions. Westacott is arguing for a subtle and nuanced approach to moral matters, an approach that understands fully how conflicted and confused many people feel most of the time about ethical decisions.
Richard Marshall reviews Emrys Westacott‘s Virtue of Vices.
The Amis Papers
I’d say my views on modernism are similar to Kingsley’s. Martin and I disagreed on that too. He thinks that Ulysses is one of the greatest novels ever written. In my view, were it not for the elitism of academia – that is, a wish to protect the self-indulgent and inaccessible from the vulgarity of the marketplace – it would have gone out of print many years ago. I argue that Martin is responsible, in part, for making the avant-garde more saleable and reader friendly, without dumbing it down.
Max Liu interviews Richard Bradford, author of Martin Amis: The Biography.