Marvelous Possessions : The Wonder of the New World

Rating:
Summary: The Dream of Maoism Lives On
Review: Stephen Greenblatt, literary critic, research scholar, and professor at Berkeley shines the spotlight on various historical documents, and speculates that what accounted for the appropriation and colonization of the New World was the fact that Europeans had print literacy. The ethos projected by Greenblatt is a likeable one--a scholar who likes blues bars in Chicago and who was captivated by stories as a child. He weaves his own literacy narrative into his analysis of historical writings produced by the likes of Columbus, Jean de Lery, and others who were at the forefront of colonization. Ultimately, Greenblatt makes the point that the ways in which "wonder" and the "marvelous" circulated in European discourse become the strategies for colonizing practice. To tell his version of the ways in which peoples were conquered, Greenblatt uses the writing that tells of events, focusing especially on anecdote, feeling as he does that anecdote, though sometimes not valued in our fact-laden world, does the lion's share of the work, functions somewhere between what occurred and the formalized history that gets told. The book is a strong argument that "wonder" and more especially, written "wonder" functioned to elevate certain peoples and demonize others. It makes the equally strong point that writing, though in some cases works to the detriment of peoples and cultures, can also be the liberating force as well.

Texts that would work well in conversation with Greenblatt's would be Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Also useful would be Walker Percy's essay, "The Loss of the Creature," and Clifford Geertz's essay on Balinese cock-fighting.

Rating:
Summary: An historical and rhetorical examination of travel writing
Review: Stephen Greenblatt, literary critic, research scholar, and professor at Berkeley shines the spotlight on various historical documents, and speculates that what accounted for the appropriation and colonization of the New World was the fact that Europeans had print literacy. The ethos projected by Greenblatt is a likeable one--a scholar who likes blues bars in Chicago and who was captivated by stories as a child. He weaves his own literacy narrative into his analysis of historical writings produced by the likes of Columbus, Jean de Lery, and others who were at the forefront of colonization. Ultimately, Greenblatt makes the point that the ways in which "wonder" and the "marvelous" circulated in European discourse become the strategies for colonizing practice. To tell his version of the ways in which peoples were conquered, Greenblatt uses the writing that tells of events, focusing especially on anecdote, feeling as he does that anecdote, though sometimes not valued in our fact-laden world, does the lion's share of the work, functions somewhere between what occurred and the formalized history that gets told. The book is a strong argument that "wonder" and more especially, written "wonder" functioned to elevate certain peoples and demonize others. It makes the equally strong point that writing, though in some cases works to the detriment of peoples and cultures, can also be the liberating force as well.

Texts that would work well in conversation with Greenblatt's would be Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Also useful would be Walker Percy's essay, "The Loss of the Creature," and Clifford Geertz's essay on Balinese cock-fighting.

Rating:
Summary: The Dream of Maoism Lives On
Review: This book was written by the president of the MLA (this used to stand for Modern Literature Association but is now the acronym for the Maoist Literature Association). Greenblatt, like the entire MLA, is devoted to destroying western culture. The family is destroyed in favor of gay couples, the idea of liberalism is destroyed by Maoism, the notion of the individual is replaced by the notion of race, gender, and class. This comes out of Tel Quel and their interest in Maoism in the 70s. This viewpoint is old and tired, but nobody reads past that date in French theory.

That Greenblatt should happily respond to his duties to dig a grave for western culture before his own people are shot and made to lie in it is no surprise. What's surprising is his alacrity, and his absolute lack of suspicion! He loves what he is doing, and this comes through in clear, smart prose, and book after book after book.

In his own way, Greenblatt is as much of a traitor to his own people as Stephen Walker Lindt.

Greenblatt argues throughout this text that western culture has destroyed every culture it has come in contact with. However, the truth is that every culture that has come into contact with the west has benefitted from hospitals and real health care rather than mumbo jumbo, a real sense of democracy, rather than the divine right of sorcerer-kings, the idea of journalism, and rights for women. Western imperialism destroyed rotten cultures all over the world. But if they weren't rotten to begin with, they would have survived. When the sunlight of the west, and Christianity, touched these infected dismal worlds, they vanished, the way that demons vanish before an exorcism.

Greenblatt is implicitly arguing that just any culture is on an equal footing with the west. If this is so, then why is the misery index of all these other countries so high? Why is it that people are dying to get out of cesspools of corruption such as China and Haiti and Cuba and Mexico and Nigeria? Greenblatt thinks its because the west had destroyed these cultures.

If it was up to the Maoist Literature Association, we would all be living in Greenblatt's imagination. This has been tried before in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, in Mao's China. GReenblatt's sense of history fails to understand that there is a real world that will never correspond to human dreams of utopia.

The utter inanity of Greenblatt and the Maoist literature Association is equal to its parallel in China under Mao. Any kind of socialism leads to hooliganism of thought and action. We must stop thinking about race, gender, and class, and start thinking about individuals again. We must stop thinking about perfection, and deal with the gritty reality of a world in which evil is an active force that is not limited to one race, gender, or class. Greenblatt can't be expected to change: he's too well-paid and heäs too old to change his ways. But his way of thinking is pernicious, foolish, and has a bad track-record.