Most creative systems
assert superiority by exclusion; a song must be
a song, rather than a
painting, or a sentence must be spliced and enjambed
into poetry rather than
written straight. The form an idea takes is an implicit
rejection of all others
it might have taken.
Sometimes forms can work
well together. Music videos are great! And most
intelligent art anymore
makes reference to, if not use of, the breadth of expression
available (walltext
lol). Critical theory is different. A creative system if there ever was
one, it claims something
much more ambitious; it asserts superiority over other
systems by using them as
mere material for a greater project. All of art is reduced
to substrate for the
thought it inspires, so that the theorist appears to command
both his own work and
whatever other creative system it describes.
Critical theory
insinuates itself at the top of the flow chart without any real authority.
I think it because of
guilt for this hijacking that the master/slave dialectic gets invoked
so much. More on dat
nonsense later.
