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PARTISAN REVIEW
failed politically and economically, they now retreat to the cultural
ground, to the epistemology, and generalize that what one believes is a
function of one's sex; or a function of one's ethnicity; a function of one's
opinion when approaching a work of art or historical data. They share in
common a denial of objectivity even as a goal of inquiry and reduce the
search for truth to a defense of ideology. Incidentally, I find no relation–
ship, no resemblance, between this movement and the skepticism of
David Hume or Emmanuel Kant. It is the current challenge to reason and
science and enlightenment which represents the twilight of reason and
gives rise to the topic of this symposium, since the movements involved
repudiate the sum of reason on which they are so clearly dependent.
Our first speaker is Stanley Crouch. Among his many and diverse ac–
complishments are a forthcoming epic novel,
Snow in Cocamo,
and a
biography of Charlie Parker.
Stanley Crouch
Blues to be Redefined
Do not blaspheme. It is the gods who weep. They have watched us killing each
other since the beginning of time. They cannot save us from ourselves.
(RAN,
Kurosawa's variation on
King Lear)
How You Like Me Now? A Long Overture in Black and White, in Seared Resh
and Spilled Blood
Things have become so chaotic that we might sometimes think that
we no longer live in the United States. Sleazemongers, from the world of
politics to the public entertainments, symbolize our national ills and our
difficulties with perceiving ourselves as a whole nation, the many who
make the one, the rich set of improvisations and traditions that are so eas–
ily recognized as American by anyone from outside of this country. The
very complex interplay between politics and society, each influencing the
other only as fast as attitudes become digestible, demands that we address
the influence on our sensibility of the high speed with which images suc–
ceed one another. Once ideas have become platitudes, or slogans that
soak up enough emotion to affect what happens in voting booths, we see
how things too often work in our society. "Don't Tread On Me,"
