Wow. I don’t even know how to answer this, because it’s so bizarrely far off from what I said — and have said elsewhere — as to make me wonder if you’re actually responding to anything at all I wrote. You are seriously importing what you want to have seen here and not what I wrote at all.
I’m saying that the white male postmodern iconoclasts (the example I gave was a white German man, for crying out loud) have actively created a art that has had the effect of silencing the voices and stories of women, minorities, other cultures, and so on. Hinduism was the first example I gave of using icons.
I am saying it is absurd that we expect each group to stick to its own kind when it comes to creating art. I want to hear African-American voices talking about the African-American experience — and I want them to write about white people and Hispanics and Chinese and so on, if those characters are what are needed in their stories. Whites need to hear what African-Americans have to say about them, and what Chinese have to say about them, and what Hispanics have to say about them, and so on. Neurotypical people need to hear what autistic people have to say about them. Straight people need to hear what gay people have to say about them. But it works both ways. W. E. B.DuBois said that both groups need to learn from each other. And that cannot happen if we are silencing each other and proclaiming certain topics off-limits to each other.
The “progressive” leftist critical theorists are the ones who want to silence everyone who doesn’t follow the party line to the letter. They wish to silence anyone who disagrees with them. That’s why they’re fundamentally iconoclastic. Iconoclasm is what silences voices — and it silences all voices. I want to hear all voices, more voices, a chorus of voices. I have plenty of articles saying this, and I say it in this essay.
I mean, how could you possible have come to you conclusion after reading this:
“ Beauty means embracing heterogeneity. Beauty means accepting different cultures, men and women, different genders and sexualities, different ways of living, different world views, a variety of images and sounds — all working and living together under political equality and where we all treat each other as fundamental equals. It means loving each other’s culture as well as one’s own. It means fusion cuisine, fusion music, fusion dance, fusion art, fusion literature, and fusion theater. It means loving art, literature, music and so on regardless of who made them — men or women, gay or straight, your culture of some other culture, and on and on and on.”
The simple answer is: you can’t. It’s impossible. Did you even read this far? My condemnation of iconoclasm is that it is intended to silence voices, to simplify the world:
“ The bottom line is that all of this is a kind of iconoclasm promulgated by puritans in the past, and by today’s puritans. It doesn’t matter if your puritan is religious or secular, Christian or Muslim — the bottom line is to create a pure, simple, austere world, culture, and art. And that can only be created by destroying all real heterogeneity. A pure, simple, austere world — the dream of the socialists and Marxists, the dream of racists, the dream of the opponents of “cultural appropriation,” the dream of religious puritans and ascetics the world over.”
I condemn the very thing you accuse me of. In this case for certain it cannot be because I was not clear. What I quote is clear. You read what you wanted to read, nothing more and nothing less.
