Desacralisation
I've just read these words by Flusser,
“The immigrant becomes even more unsettling to the native, uncannier than the traveler out there, because he reveals the banality of the sacred to the native. He is hateful; he is ugly, because he exposes the beauty of home as nothing more than pretty kitsch.”
and I related them to the ongoing discussions on literary analysis (I was going to post a few links, but I realised the posts are f-locked... Except for this post by sistermagpie).
Here's the analogy: maybe for those who are too emotionally invested in a story, an analysis can spoil the fun by revealing its inner workings, or even its "banality", if the reader "buys" what the reviewer says. I usually love analyses, and I believe a text can be enriched by a good analysis, but I also understand the feeling of having something you consider "sacred" desacralised.
(I said that I understand the feeling, not that anyone has any "right" to complain about the existence of analyses -- which would be a pointless thing to do, anyway, because analyses are everywhere. And I may even say that every text contains its own analysis. Even this one ;-)
“The immigrant becomes even more unsettling to the native, uncannier than the traveler out there, because he reveals the banality of the sacred to the native. He is hateful; he is ugly, because he exposes the beauty of home as nothing more than pretty kitsch.”
and I related them to the ongoing discussions on literary analysis (I was going to post a few links, but I realised the posts are f-locked... Except for this post by sistermagpie).
Here's the analogy: maybe for those who are too emotionally invested in a story, an analysis can spoil the fun by revealing its inner workings, or even its "banality", if the reader "buys" what the reviewer says. I usually love analyses, and I believe a text can be enriched by a good analysis, but I also understand the feeling of having something you consider "sacred" desacralised.
(I said that I understand the feeling, not that anyone has any "right" to complain about the existence of analyses -- which would be a pointless thing to do, anyway, because analyses are everywhere. And I may even say that every text contains its own analysis. Even this one ;-)