Sublimity or Bust!
(soundtrack: Sleater-Kinney, Call The Doctor)
In a comment thread, a couple of days back, Mitch from Blogfonte took issue with my basic interpretation of Heart of Darkness. Specifically, he objected to my introduction of the sublime into the discussion, a term, he argues, which is "best suited to obfuscation"... And of course he's right--although I would say rather that the sublime itself obfuscates... and that it does no good to pretend that there aren't things in this world that defy human comprehension. Mitch has already demonstrated, elsewhere, that he is morbidly fearful of nihilism--well, I'm not, and I think that's the real source of our disagreement...
Mitch claims that "civilization was itself the monster eating the heart out of Africa" in Heart of Darkness. No way man! There is no "Africa" in Heart of Darkness, and no "civilization". This is no realist tract against "imperialism", or portrait of "savage customs"--Conrad's book is a complex allegory, and nothing in this text can be abstracted from the structure without losing its significance...
In the comments-thread, I replied:
I don't think HOD is about "abominations" of any sort--and no way is it about Africa at all (which explains why Chinua Achebe's "critique" of the book is the most asinine thing ever written!)...
You have to understand where I'm comin' from here--I take people like Berkeley (& Fichte) seriously, when they take subjectivity to the limit... on the other hand, I know from personal experience that there are things in this world that pose a visceral (as opposed to an intellectual) challenge to the Idealist position--I describe those things (always other people, as far as I'm concerned) as sublime, because they just cannot be accounted for in any rational way (we know nothing about what caused Kurtz to go round the bend, we aren't meant to know, he is sublime, not "Africa"!!)...
You seem to feel that "nihilism" is the worst problem a human mind can face--for me it's solipsism... HOD is about Marlow's encounter with the sublime, and his decision to live with contradiction!
Okay, so what does this have to do with The Dark Knight Returns? A great deal, I think! First of all--does anyone really think that Miller's Gotham City is an accurate portrayal of a real place? (I'm not being snarky here, I'd be arguing the same thing if he had called it New York) Ditto his portrait of America in the eighties? Come on! This is a control-freak's nightmare vision of urban sprawl... Whenever Bruce feels that he can't keep the lid on things, he pops the top off a cold one and puts his desire for mastery on ice... Why does he come out of retirement? Seems to me it's because he wakes up bleary-eyed one day and notices that the "Mutant Leader" has done a good job of power consolidation... Bruce wipes the drool off of his cowl and hops in! No more void hoovering his self-respect, just a muscle-guy with crazy fuckin' teeth and a strange power over the red-visored element! Now that's a job for The Batman!
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Fascinating if complex. Thanks David!