God And Taliban At Yale

If conceptual art has a point at all, it is to get a rise out of aesthetes who know what's not art before they’ve seen it. Tom Piatak detects none   in the work of a Yale arts major he wants expelled for raising the artistic yuck factor beyond the realm of pickled sharks and plasticized cadavers, but thinks her case grounds to remind that:

"Chief Justice Story, the chief constitutional theorist of his day, explained the purpose of the First Amendment" thus: “The real object of the amendment was ...to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”

 It is hard to criticize  the uncreated. Moss Schvarts art  exists in part only in her imagination, and in this case even shee seems unsure of what would go on display .But this much is clear- she does not favor the overthrow of Roe V. Wade, and the responses to her position-- and this article---  illustrate that rivalry between Christian sects, and schools of art is alive and well.  Many evangelicals, and traditionalists today are not famously devoted to the separation of powers, let alone church and state, and were Chief Justice Story still on the earthy bench; his constant vigilance might be greatly exercised in curbing their zeal, especially since Miss Schvart’s stunt is calculated to inflame it . But let it not be said that her performance is original - let us not forget the Sokal Affair.

A decade ago, cultural relativists fell for physics professor Alan Sokal's fish slap to the credulity and incoherence of post-modern literary theory. Contempt for Deconstruction as an academic way of life, led him to draft, a paper entitled

"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
which appeared in the “Science Wars" issue of Social Text in 1996. The same month, in another publication, Lingua Franca, Sokal announced the Social Text article was a hoax, calling his own paper:

"a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense", which was "structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics"

 The response was outrage - and laughter. A dozen years later, a sophomoric version of the same wheeze has come out of Yale, and the literally, or rather apocryphally, gory details have driven cultural critics on the right to heights of apoplexy worthy of Captain Ahab, witness Tom Piatak's April 17 piece in Taki's Magazine  “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up To Be Yalies"

 Thinking it a fair cop that  Anne Coulter's anti- understudy at Yale should succeed in rumbling the cultural apparat, left , right and center, I commented :

"Tom, what part of “Sokaled” don’t you understand? As the e’patered party you may now challenge Ms. Shvarts to a pie fight, but along with a barely passing grade in conceptual art, she gets an A for successfully transgressing the boundaries of credulity. Mencken would love it."

 But my fellow columnist would have none of it

"Mr. Seitz:

Shvarts doesn’t deserve an “A” for anything. She either attempted the serial murder of her own children, or is a publicity-seeking liar. What she did is not “art” in any reasonable definition of the term. Indeed, the only thing she “transgressed” are the standards any civilized institution would uphold. I agree with Yale alum John Zmirak: she ought to be expelled."

 My objection merely incensed him into arguing that the scientific terms on which Roe v. Wade in part hinges  are subject to redefinition in the service of religion and law alike- in other words, he began to slide into the cultural relativism -- and legal activism--he customarily decries:

"There is no need to amend the Constitution each time the Supreme Court misinterprets it. Under Article III, Section 2, Congress has the power to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court (and to abolish all inferior courts). Congress also has the power to impeach justices and judges, and issuing an unconstitutional decision, as Roe v Wade was and is, is a proper grounds for impeachment.... as I’ve argued

I don’t quite understand your comment about religion, either. The fact that my views on abortion are informed by my religious beliefs do not make them illegitimate, nor would they make illegitimate any properly enacted legislation inspired by those beliefs. The ACLU’s interpretation of the First Amendment has more in common with the French and Bolshevik Revolutions than the American Revolution.

 .. Chief Justice Story, the chief constitutional theorist of his day, explained the purpose of the First Amendment: “The real object of the amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”

 I agree with Chief Justice Story, and not with the leftists who have perverted the First Amendment to advance what Story termed “infidelity.”

  am of course relieved that the ACLU is not the arbiter of constitutional law, but I am not so sure about Chronicles of Culture either.

 It is hard to say how Story and Marshall would view Miss Schvarts’ bizarre fiction, since ‘novels’ were as new-fangled to the Founders as conceptual art is today.   The Chief Justice’s name on a granite plinth in the Harvard Observatory suggests he might find astrophysicist Sokal’s antic amusing-. Story’s last public act was leading the subscription that bought the faculty of arts and sciences  the world's most powerful telescope in 1845- an instrument whose continuing  utility amazed Russell Kirk in 1971.

 Wondrous was the wisdom of the founders, but today one fears for Princeton Observatory as much for Yale’s art department. Some dark and  cloudy night, well-wined Federalist Society students might  converge to look through the wrong end of the telescope in hope that the resulting broad  view of man's place in the universe will improve their prospects of a clerkship under Justice Alito.

Stimulating as some find Chronicle of Culture, Taki’s plays a different role. It is a salon des refusees in the face not just of PC, but the intellectual captivity of National Review ,and the aesthetic dominion of The New Criterion. Besides, other proponents of conceptual minimalism, like the Taliban, have put Miss Schvarts efforts at reifying  obscenity to shame. It pales before the demolition of the Great Buddha of Bamiyan, in which the performance artist known as Mullah Omar overthrew Althuserian conceptions of the linearity of time’s arrow by showing  that dynamite artistically deployed can not only transform featureless rock into monumental art, as at Mount Rushmore , but vice versa. Now that’s deconstruction!

 It would be unfortunate if by amplifying Miss Schvarts fame , Tom Piatak’s essay were to overshadow her Yale classmate Mr. Hashemi, the former Taliban PR man, when a timely grant might enable them to devise a joint installation. But that is for the MacArthur Foundation to decide--let others be friends to philistinism everywhere. We are guardians only of our own.  Can we look forward to Chronicles giving The New Criterion a run for its money? As a metric, forget  the Yale fiasco- count the  galleries voluntarily running ads in its pages.

 

Comments

[Scott P. Richert]

Since Mr. Seitz's post, and my response to it, has disappeared from Takimag.com, and only Mr. Seitz's post has reappeared here, I'll simply paste the text of my original response below:

One wonders what part of “Sokaled” Mr. Seitz doesn’t understand.

Yes, Miz Schvarts is now claiming that this whole thing was a hoax, but that’s where the similarity between her case and Alan Sokal’s ends. Sokal was attempting to show the intellectual shallowness of those who claimed to be the intellectual avant-garde. And he did a pretty damn good job of it.

The parallel here would be if Schvarts believed that art should be beauty in the service of truth and goodness--if, in other words, she held to a traditional understanding of art. Then, she might have announced that she was engaging in this barbaric performance art in the expectation that the artistic avant-garde would praise it as, well, avant-garde. After which she would announce that, of course, the whole thing had been a hoax and point out that this whole sorry episode shows that the “art” that is praised today is really nothing of the sort.

Of course, she has done no such thing. Instead, she’s simply claimed that she--a supporter of abortion--wasn’t really going to do what she said she would do. The hoax had no point to it, as Sokal’s did.

Tom Piatak is exactly right, and the fact that Mr. Seitz can’t see that probably explains why he is incapable of reading the magazine formerly known as “Chronicles of Culture,” a magazine of which Mr. Seitz’s benefactor, Taki Theodoracopulos, wrote on this very website less than three weeks ago:

I am now an associate editor of Chronicles magazine, America’s by far leading cultural journal, a monthly based on the outskirts of Chicago, and one which looks at the fundamental questions first, with elections and legislation being secondary. The way it should be. Changes in culture and religion are more important, and Chronicles is as liberal in allowing its columnists to attack the baddies as any publication in the land.

Ah, but perhaps this is all just another elaborate ruse. Mr. Seitz has undoubtedly “Sokaled” us. Surely, he wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds him?

Posted by Scott P. Richert on Apr 22, 2008.

[Scott P. Richert]

In fairness, Mr. Seitz's final big, bold, blue remark (obviously added in a fit of pique, since it wasn't part of the post when it resided at Takimag) is absolutely correct: Chronicles has not had art gallery ads in its pages for a while.

How Mr. Seitz would know, however, is beyond me. The fact that he refers to the magazine by a title ("Chronicles of Culture") that it has not used for almost a quarter of a century is, a think, a fair metric of Mr. Seitz's familiarity with the contents of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

[Russell Seitz]

Mr. Richert is too modest--the circulation and influence of "America's by far leading cultural journal " today easily exceed that of The American Mercury, Ramparts ,and the Historical Journal of The University Of Chandargath combined.

Nobody reads them anymore either,and lack of reader demand consigned the survivors or successors to the Harvard stackslate in the last century.( Buck up, guys- the Radcliffe shelf copy disappeared because they closed Hilles Library-

What I have since seen of it on line has not inspired an expedition to retrieve a hard copy so far in this century,but that is true of some tens of thousands of the other small magazines down there.

With Taki on board , I trust you'll escape their fate if you can make the content more memorable than the title in future. It would scarce qualify as a Palaeo-anything publication if some readers did not insist that it isn't what It used to be.

You might begin your editorial renaissance by lambasting the decline of The Alternative -- you know the magazine I mean, the one with the very small turkey on the cover that you can actually find on newsstands. The blue ink is merely Typepad software squawking , but I'll leave it that way to spare us both.

[Tom Piatak]

The notion that Roe v Wade in any senses "hinges" on the definition of "scientific terms" is nonsense. Roe v Wade remains what Byron White called it in his dissent, "an excerise of raw judicial power." Why Mr. Seitz would wish to defend Aliza Shvarts, or Roe v Wade, is beyond me.
-- Tom Piatak, 4-23-08

RESPONSE

What ever is Mr.Piatak talking about?

The piece does not defend Roe v. Wade, but the case's opinions and amici briefs discourse learnedly, and at length, on complex questions of biology.

I find the quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes that prefaces the majority opinion more germane than Byron Whites'--
"[The Constitution] is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States."

How does Mr. Piatak judge my accusing Miss Schvarts of " raising the artistic yuck factor beyond the realm of pickled sharks and plasticized cadavers" as evincing a wish to defend her work ?

[Tom Piatak]

I point out that the only portion written by me in the above post is the first three lines above "RESPONSE," and what follows is by Mr. Seitz.

RESPONSE

I have amended the format of Mr. Piatak's response accordingly. It would not do to have an editor of the world's foremost critical journal confused with a reprobate like Oliver Wendall Holmes .

[Tom Piatak]

Unfortunately, I do not have the honor of being an editor of Chronicles, though I am glad to be a contributor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes was not always heroic. Read Buck v. Bell. It's therefore very appropriate that the moral cretin who authored Roe v Wade would quote Holmes, but it's ironic that Blackmun cited Holmes' dissent in Lochner rather than his majority opinion in Buck.

The opinion Holmes dissented from in Lochner is based on the same theory of substantive due process that animated Roe v Wade. If Blackmun had actually followed the logic of Holmes' dissent in Lochner, the Supreme Court would not have usurped the authority of state legislatures to protect unborn human life.

By contrast, Buck v Bell was animated by a warped and perverted science perfectly consistent with the result of Roe.

[Scott P. Richert]

"It would not do to have an editor of the world's foremost critical journal confused with a reprobate like Oliver Wendall Holmes."

Mr. Seitz continues to insult his patron, Taki Theodoracopulos, by making light of Taki's praise of Chronicles. Why he would engage in such behavior is beyond me.

Even if Mr. Seitz is uninterested in Taki's recommendation, he should be able to understand that good manners requires that one not bite the hand that feeds him.

[Russell Seitz]

All that manners demand is a caution to the reader: Mr.Richert confuses the previous passages' subject-- Mr.Piatak with another.

Once the tendentious begin such threads, they seldom leave off.

Those indisposed to tolerate the ironically challenged may , for the moment, be happier reading elsewhere.

[Scott P. Richert]

"Mr.Richert confuses the previous passages' subject-- Mr.Piatak with another."

No, in fact, I did not, Mr. Seitz. I was referring to your continual snide dismissal of Taki's comments regarding Chronicles. He, after all (not me), was the one who wrote "I am now an associate editor of Chronicles magazine, America’s by far leading cultural journal . . . "

You may disagree with him (though, as you cheerfully admit, you haven't bothered looking at it), but the point still stands: good manners requires that one not bite the hand that feeds him

[Russell Seitz]

I look forward to the appearance of anything worth reading, and am saddened that so little answering to that description has appeared in Chronicles in the last decade. I hope its next is more memorable.

Meanwhile, Kyoto University researchers have genetically transformed adult human skin cells to emulate embryonic stem cell functionality by inserting four genes—Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and Myc present in embryonic stem cells, causing the dermal cells to revert to the embryonic state. These induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are a development the President has hailed as the happy ending of the stem cell wars.

In a related advance injecting mouse iPS cells into mouse blastocysts has been found to create chimeric mice, with iPS cells incorporated into the developing mouse embryo forming part of the organ tissue the resulting mice. The Whitehead Institute here in Cambridge has even created a mouse comprised entirely of iPS cells--the cells form an embryo when embedded into tetraploid embryonic cells that grow into a placenta. There is no apparent reason why this generic in vitro technique wouldn't work on any other mammal, species, including the one to which Yale's egregious Miss Schvarts belongs.

If, switching majors, she becomes a born again Biology & the Arts grad student, switching off these four theologically correct genes would allow her to create artificial placental tissue to expand what she conceives to be the dernier cri in yucky conceptual art using federally approved techniques. Credit is due the Herculean labors of her patrons on the President's Panel On Bioethics, for it is their artful shifting of the broad and shallow flow of research funding in molecular genetics that have put such new means at the muses disposal.

.If Al Gore deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for declaring victory in the Climate Wars, only liberal philistines will cavil at the nomination of Miss Schvarts fellow Yale alumnus in the White House for advancing the arts while winding down the stem cell wars.