Pain is Marxism leaving the body

by Helen

The anthropology blog Savage Minds has a post up about Richard Sennett, which, if nothing else, suggests that ex-Marxists can make good conservatives. (Come to think of it, put the staffs of National Review, The Weekly Standard, and Commentary end to end, and I'd still rather spend the afternoon with Eugene Genovese, Richard Sennett, and Dwight MacDonald.):

I mention Sennett’s book not only to give it a well deserved plug, but to contrast it with Coming of Age In Second Life, which we still have not talked about enough on this blog. One of the things that is central to Second Life is content creation—building new objects. I would argue that there is a strong sense in Second Life (and particularly in the work of Cory Ondrejka) that ideas of creativity are paramount—the human condition is conflated with the situation of the romantic artist, driven to exteriorize his subjectivity in works of art.

I think there are several things wrong with this point of view—not least of which is the way that it treats the world as full of inert objects that are infinitely plastic and submit to human manipulation. [...] Sennett might add that it misses out on what most designers in Second Life probably realize implicitly: that we are fascinated by the resistances our materials present. It is working with the ‘living edge’ of a problem, with all of the difficulties it affords, which is such a satisfying way of making something. For Cory Ondrejka, creation in Second Life is unique and important because it is easy. For Sennett, doing a job well for its own sake is enabled by and connected to the fact that the job is difficult.

To tie this into the ongoing Wendell Berry debate, it's interesting to note that, while Sennett's talk about difficult labor sounds most at home in the agrarian framework, Sennett himself is an urbanist to the core. One thing I like about agrarianism is the worry that the ease of white collar work will alienate men from their own bodies; I would add that the response to this alienation can look like Fight Club. I just think that I have a broader understanding of "physical" work—I would, for instance, call writing a physical activity—than they do.

More on The Craftsman here.

Comments

[Shane MacGowan's Teeth]

You're channeling Seamus Heaney:

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.