A Question Of Discrimination Essay, Research Paper

A inquiry of discriminationThink, wrote the cultural critic Eunice Lipton, & # 8220 ; about Michelangelo, new wave Gogh, Rodin, Picasso, Pollock. Could these creative persons be tribades, Asiatic Americans, Native Americans? & # 8221 ; Her point was that if they had been any of these things, they would non hold been recognised as & # 8220 ; artist-geniuses & # 8221 ; ( her term ) ; and this by deduction shows that the impression of high civilization in the western tradition embodies everything that is sole of other civilizations and elitist within its ain. To authors such as Lipton, quality is non a distinguishing characteristic of the objects and activities which the term & # 8220 ; high civilization & # 8221 ; standardly denotes. The art critic Robert Hughes explains why: & # 8220 ; Quality, the statement goes, is a secret plan. It is the consequence of a confederacy of white males to marginalize the work of other races and civilizations. To raise its presence in plants of art is someway inherently repressive. & # 8221 ; Can people of left-liberal political understandings believe that high civilization has particular and superior value which justifies province support for theater and expansive opera, but non for dad concerts or darts competitions? On the face of it the reply is certainly & # 8220 ; Yes & # 8221 ; ; even if, after the characteristic British mode, left-leaning votaries of high civilization & # 8211 ; of opera, Shakespeare, Rembrandt exhibitions, Beethoven concerts, modern-day art and dance, & # 8220 ; serious & # 8221 ; literature whether modern-day or classical & # 8211 ; on occasion mask their involvement under an visual aspect of sarcasm, given the hazard that such involvements run of being branded affected or pretentious. Undoubtedly, facets of high civilization lend themselves to such stigmatization, particularly when entree to them becomes restricted by cost to a privileged stratum of society, as with all but the worst seats at the opera ; for wealth and gustatory sensation are non automatic bedfellows, and some go to the opera non so much to see it as to be seen at it. But pretense aside, the really thought of people who enjoy Renaissance picture or classical music irritates those who place all ingestion of high civilization in the same basket, if non as the mannerism of the conceited ( the low-brow rightwing ailment, opposed to what it brands as Islington trendiness in such things as the championing of modern-day art and music ) so as the diversion of the privileged ( the anti-highbrow leftwing ailment, opposed to the disbursement of public money on the Royal Opera House alternatively of on grants to cultural dance groups in disadvantaged countries ) & # 8211 ; both of which in their different ways explain why inquiries of civilization have a political border. To see this more clearly in connexion with the relation between liberal-left sentiments and high civilization, put the original inquiry another manner. Is at that place a difference in intrinsic artistic virtue between a Rembrandt and an Australian Aborigine picture? Suddenly other ideas imperativeness. If a European or American says & # 8220 ; Yes & # 8221 ; to this excessively, is he or she being guilty of ethnocentrism, of favoring the culturally parochial productions of Dead White Western Men, and therefore of cultural, racial and gender prejudice? Or convey the inquiry closer to place: if one says that Iris Murdoch & # 8217 ; s novels are literature and Agatha Christie & # 8217 ; s novels are non, is one doing an unfair and indefensible comparing on the evidences that to assume to rank these writers is in fact to rank their readers in a manner that is clannish in one way and condescending in the other: for if the latter & # 8217 ; s readers enjoy her work, and happen the former & # 8217 ; s novels a test to read, who has the right to state they are taking the worse? In Matthew Arnold & # 8217 ; s definition, civilization is & # 8220 ; the best that has been said and thought & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; and, it should be added, done & # 8211 ; in regard of all that affairs in rational and artistic life. The term & # 8217 ; s 2nd and broader anthropological significance is really different ; it neutrally embraces everything about the manner things are done in a society, among which its most highbrow involvements are merely a little portion. These latter have consequently come to be called & # 8220 ; high & # 8221 ; civilization to distinguish what is most valued and esteemed by those supposed to be in a place to justice ; and the term is hence expressly prejudiced. The inquiry hence becomes: does an enjoyment of high civilization involve a justifiable signifier of favoritism? I think most would still believe that the reply is & # 8220 ; Yes & # 8221 ; , but it no longer suffices to state so without remark. Since the 1960s the political relations of civilization have been embodied in the argument about criterions and relativism. This argument, astringent and crabbed, is one corner of the larger modern-day conflict over & # 8220 ; political rightness & # 8221 ; , whose primary concerns are gender, ethnicity, oppressive linguistic communication, & # 8220 ; cultural imperialism & # 8221 ; and elitism. The Personal computer conflict has made it harder for people of leftwing and broad positions to be votaries of high civilization without experiencing the demand to support the penchant. One good consequence of that, at least, is that it obliges them to believe more carefully when they do so. The larger Personal computer statement is a triangular one, between the political Right and two versions of the Left. The Right onslaughts a leftwing orientation which aims to valorise all cultural activities, no affair whose they are, favoring no enterprise, and no gender or ethnicity, above any other, in the involvements of giving everything and everyone a topographic point in the Sun. A different leftwing orientation, holding with this finding to universalize justness and common regard, sees with discouragement that the multicultural equalitarians have made themselves easy marks for rightwingers by being guilty themselves of a sort of subjugation, hunting those who fail to follow conscientiously undiscriminatory attitudes and linguistic communication in chase of their otherwise admirable purposes. A good trade of absurdity and name-calling has resulted, particularly in America, where what have mattered most to the battlers are, on the left, the multicultural jussive moods, while on the right this is seen, in alarmist and sometimes hysterical manner, as a menace to the political and moral cloth of the state. In The Shutting of the American Mind, Allan Bloom summarised the Right & # 8217 ; s position by stating that the Left & # 8217 ; s chief belief is that all truth is comparative and all civilizations of equal value, and that the Left & # 8217 ; s resistance to the attitudes and linguistic communication involved in racism, sexism and the privileging of western civilization, sum to onslaughts on free address. Perceivers of this affray can be forgiven for wishing a pestilence on both houses, because the occasional shrill absurdnesss of one side are more than good matched by the other signifier of & # 8220 ; PC & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; what Robert Hughes called & # 8220 ; Patriotic Correctness & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; which a well-funded and well-organised rightwing anteroom in the US has concerted, non merely against these occasional absurdnesss, but in resistance to a mostly fanciful Marxist-lesbian-multicultural & # 8220 ; antifamily & # 8221 ; alliance allegedly taking over America & # 8217 ; s universities and passing 1000000s of National Endowment for the Arts dollars on lewdness and irreligiousness. Blatant buttonholing from this one-fourth about persuaded the US Congress to shut the National Endowment of the Arts, mentioning among other things the fact that it had given money to the creative person Andres Serrano, who made the controversial Piss Christ, dwelling of a rood immersed in a jar of his ain piss. In one corner of this battle lies the inquiry of high civilization in literature and the humanistic disciplines, automatically defended by the Right & # 8211 ; who, it is clear, sometimes do non cognize what they are speaking about, since much in high civilization is deeply insurgent of what they cherish: think of the anticlerical Voltaire, the fornicatresss Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, Madame Butterfly life in wickedness with Pinkerton, the prevaricator Odysseus, the communistic New Testament, and eternal illustrations besides, which, if they knew of it, would surely frighten America & # 8217 ; s gun-and-family-loving right. However they defend high civilization by physiological reaction ; it is they who raised an call when a rumor was started that Shakespeare was to be dropped from school course of studies and the literature course of study of universities such as Stanford & # 8211 ; the rumor was false, and about surely a canard of the Right itself, who by the same item smartly defend the impression that civilization is basically a affair of the canonical great books ( and by extension great art and great music ) of the western tradition. Their defense mechanism, whatever its earnestness, of high civilization poses a slightly awkward job for those on the left who do non wish to be seen, like them, as elitist, Eurocentric, or committed to aesthetic impressions which appear to bump by comparing the value of humanistic disciplines and literatures in non-western civilizations, or so in Demotic western traditions either & # 8211 ; chiefly common people and working-class civilizations. But there is an of import difference between inquiries of the intrinsic value of literary or artistic plants in any civilization and their societal significance to the people who produce them. A cairn of rocks, or a statuette of a caprine animal or a goddess might hold spiritual significance for a community, and be venerated by it, without holding or feigning to hold artistic virtue. But an attentive oculus can see the difference between a unsmooth carving and a all right one, whatever its societal or spiritual significance. The latter typically shows more observation and attention, and evinces more accomplishment or conscientiousness in the working ; in short, manifests the Markss of quality. A difference in societal or spiritual significance does non impact, still less negate, differences in quality. Those concerned to esteem the productions of other civilizations are disposed non to separate these things, believing that societal significance is adequate to confabulate artistic virtue, and hence declining to let comparings on the mistaken land that making so implies discourtesy. Take, for illustration, roods as objects of fear and topics of art. Most representations of Christ on the cross are abhorrent things, picturing as they do a blood-covered dead or deceasing organic structure nailed to an executing scaffold. Anyone would be thought bizarre who liked to hold on his walls word pictures of hanged felons or corps

es sagging from an electric chair, even if the victim in question had done him a good turn; but Christianity being what it is, depictions of an executed man represent one of the chief icons of its faith. Sometimes, in the work of great artists, the figure of the crucified Christ can have dignity, pathos or beauty, despite rather than because of its sanguinary character. But if one tossed a crucifix into a rubbish bin on the aesthetic grounds that it was a crude and displeasing lump of extruded plastic of the kind sold in Catholic shops, one would be sure to offend someone. Defenders of multiculturalism who are sensitive about giving that kind of offence are keen to promote the adoption of undiscriminatory language and attitudes in order to avoid it. Their motives are admirable. But adopting undiscriminatory attitudes and language does not mean having undiscriminating tastes and standards. This is the key: a sense of the quality of any work, of fineness of observation, of skill in production, of wit, insight, and psychological acuity, of inventiveness and discernment, is not the special endowment of any class, or ethnicity, or of either gender. A capacity to see these qualities in human cultural productions, especially a developed or (which is the same thing) critical capacity, does not automatically amount to an offensive and exclusive cultural snobbery. It simply means a heightened awareness, and a concomitantly increased enjoyment of what it encounters when it encounters quality; and when quality is at issue, the capacity in question tends to be general and inclusive. This last point is demonstrated by the multiple roots and catholic embrace of western culture, which is very far from being monolithic despite currently being the only culture that blames itself for excluding and disvaluing other cultures. The example of literature is apt to mislead in this regard, because literature is more annexed to a particular place and people than other art forms, given that something is always lost in translation. But almost all other art forms are capable of transcending barriers, and appreciators of the high culture of their own tradition are for that very reason well placed to appreciate that of other traditions. Consider the enjoyment of Chinese porcelains, textiles and ink paintings in the west, and the Chinese passion for Dickens and European and American music in return. Consider western relish for Mughal miniatures, Indian dance, African carving, and Japanese netsuke. Consider the excellent practitioners of western classical music who come from China and Japan; and consider the admiration felt by western visitors to the exquisite Forbidden City treasures displayed in the National Museum in Taipei. The belief that high aesthetic standards are somehow culturally exclusive is readily refuted by the existence of the institution, which any reflective society has to have for the sake of its own cultural health: a serious museum. A truly great museum, such as the British Museum or the Louvre, is a beacon offering light and insight to the society it serves. If one wished to learn about Roman antiquity, Chinese bronzes, cuneiform brick inscriptions, near-eastern seals, sculptures on the south west palace of Sennacherib, Gandharan figures, pre-telescopic astronomy, German Renaissance prints, early Islamic glass stamps, medieval embroidery, Burmese lacquer, Iznik pottery, excavations in the metropolis of the Kingdom of Alwa, Javanese magic coins, music in Peru, Attic red-painted ware, Egyptian funerary practices, or any other of the riches in its purview, one need only visit the British Museum. There are of course those who see in the museum not a magnificent institution containing one of the world’s great collections, together with a first-class staff of scholars to interpret its rich holdings, but a monument to imperial robbery and insensitivity, as controversy over the Elgin Marbles is standardly invoked to show. But the fact is that the British Museum and institutions like it express by their existence an important truth: that a mature culture is one which wishes to know more about other cultures, and which values the best examples of what it has of them, and which is better able to appreciate them because it has standards and insights developed in appreciation of its own. It was the African figures in the Louvre that inspired Picasso. That one fact alone could serve to remind us how porous high culture is, in both directions, and how symbiotic the existence of all cultures is, especially in the globalised world. When receptive sensibilities engage with the artefacts of the past and other civilisations, they are nourished by them and learn from them, not least how to be discerning. “It is only the dullness of the eye that makes any two things seem alike,” Walter Pater said, and the idea of the uniqueness, particularity and value of things carries over from objects to the circumstances of life. In that way art and education civilise those who, intelligently addressed, respond intelligently: an interaction one can see any day of the week in museums, galleries, bookshops and concert halls. These considerations should be enough to dispel the impression that valuing the high culture of the west is somehow tantamount to disparaging other cultures by comparison. The remaining problem is the belief – more accurately, a usually unstated instinct – held by some on the left that cultural aspiration is itself a form of betrayal, either of working-class roots or the battle for equal respect in one’s own society. This view is at curious odds with an important phase in the history of lefwing politics in the west, for there were many among those whom the left championed – the disadvantaged – who discovered books and the arts for themselves, a heroic army of men and women who refused the state of ignorance and by self-cultivation put themselves in a position to help the rest of the educationally and culturally disenfranchised from whose ranks they had come, at last thereby winning the argument that no one should be discriminated against in this most fundamental of ways. The children of bourgeois parents, with educational opportunities commensurate with the kind of home environments where cultural familiarity is readily absorbed, might sometimes fail to appreciate the extraordinary delight felt by the self-taught when first stumbling across Ruskin or Marx, Beethoven or Rembrandt. One imagines the eager glance of an intelligent eye, unblinkered by conventional education, seeing the value in things without having been told to expect them there – and therefore seeing them truly. Ruskin was a great influence on MPs in the early Labour party, almost all of them men from working-class backgrounds who were substantially, if not wholly, self-educated. An Oldham millworker who became Lord Privy Seal, JR Clynes, encountered Ruskin when young, having bought The Seven Lamps of Architecture for a shilling he could ill afford. “For many weeks,” he later wrote, “I read and re-read this one book, and so illumining was the love I held for it that, before I had perused it the third time, its every subtlety of meaning was as much my own intimate possession as a young lover’s memory of his virgin kiss.” It did not matter that the subject in that case was architecture. One book leads to another, breeding a consciousness of debate, of ideas unfolding into further ideas, inviting agreement or controversy, raising questions which further books are needed to answer. Working people in this way learned of their oppression and their rights, and formed new hopes accordingly. Women learned about their own bodies, and how to control their fertility. A worker in the Swindon railway factory taught himself Greek and Latin and thereafter published translations of Ovid, Pindar, Sappho, Plato, Menander and Horace; this was Alfred Williams. But after 1945 the culture of self-improvement declined, partly because of increased formal schooling, partly because of television and other distractions, and partly because increasingly rapid changes in cultural fashion have made self-taught classicism look conservative. In any case, it was always an avocation for a minority, and remained so even as the working class grew in prosperity and political confidence, taking with it a long ingrained mistrust of high culture and a natural loyalty to its own tastes, transfigured by the new medium of television (itself subserved by the tabloids) into a now familiar and characteristic demotic view of the world. But although the masses do not choose to be interested in high culture, it is not undemocratic to promote it at the public expense. Nor should one regard it as somehow inimical to the interests of the majority on the grounds that it is elitist and exclusive. The autodidact’s tale is just one example of how, on the contrary, it is neither of these things, being readily permeable to anyone who acquires an interest in it. The paternalist remit of the BBC’s great Lord Reith was premised on just this view; he thought that if you took horses to water, many of them would find how good it is to drink. Although the paternalism is no longer acceptable, he was otherwise right. It cannot be expected that high culture will soon, if ever, become a majority interest. But as populations increase, so do the numbers in minorities. As a result, more people than ever before in history now enjoy literature and the arts. Exhibitions are crowded, concerts fully booked, literary festivals multiply, which means that in absolute terms more people have the pleasure and insight that cultural avocations bring. Most would agree that instead of opposing or deriding such avocations, the right thing to do is to make them even more accessible. Viewed from that angle, quarrels over PC-ness, putative canons of Great Books and Art, and multiculturalism, are a mere distraction, and no one on the left should therefore think that a taste for high culture – which means, in short, a taste for the best things in all arts – is anything but as conducive to the general good as it is to their own.