tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post7865076981088000586..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Why Is Science Fiction A Literature of Ideas?Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-28022806656540646792014-11-03T00:31:17.707-08:002014-11-03T00:31:17.707-08:00It's funny, I think Heinlein is a better write...It's funny, I think Heinlein is a better writer than thinker (I prefer his later comedies of manners to his juveniles, not that I can forgive the sexism suffusing most of his work, from beginning to end), and I happen to think Dick is overrated both as a writer and a thinker. But that's a matter of taste, and I've enjoyed movies adapted from his works like everybody else, after all.<br /><br />My sense of the relation of art and propaganda is influenced by the early twentieth century debate between Lukacs and Bloch. Lukacs valued as "realistic" art that informed audiences of their circumstances according to orthodox Marxist historical analysis, Bloch (and to a certain extent both Brecht and Benjamin on Bloch's side) defended expressionist and other avant garde aesthetic movements that intervened in norms in ways that sometimes but not always align with Marxist orthodoxy and which were dismissed by Lukacs in consequence as nihilist and irrationalist and reactionary. His charges eerily mirrored Nazi criticisms of expressionism, by the way, even as he assimilated expressionism to fascism in his critique. <br /><br />Anyway, an easy way to get at the problem with Lukacs is that he insisted only art that was legible as orthodox Marxist propaganda was politically progressive -- a reductive analysis that repeatedly lead him to misconstrue as reactionary anti-militarist anti-consumerist aesthetics.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-81973154146667702452014-11-02T21:13:48.599-08:002014-11-02T21:13:48.599-08:00It is interesting that when I have asked friends f...It is interesting that when I have asked friends for SF recommendations, I am often told that writers like Dick or Heinlein (both of whom I have not yet read) "aren't very good writers, but their <i>ideas</i> are good."<br /><br />I'm also interested to hear how you would differentiate propaganda and art, thinking specifically of the Orwell line "All art is propaganda."bahlstromhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10259486027206276245noreply@blogger.com