VersoBooks.com

In response to Unhitched

Fetishized contrarianism?

After giving Richard Seymour an audience by reading his essay, "The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens," I've decided that the purchase and investigation of his "Unhitched" effort will be worth neither my dime nor my time. Which is oddly a shame, because I chase a high that Seymour can only understand as fetishized contrarianism, but which bonded me to the Hitch, however briefly, as his student: it includes a passion for having new evidence infect your most cherished beliefs so that your former identity must evolve and so that your newfound "hypocrisy" must be reckoned with as a matter of intellectual rigor. One of my cherished beliefs, I'll admit, is that even when Christopher was wrong, he was principled. Despite sentimental personal attachments, Mr. Seymour MIGHT have persuaded me with evidence. Instead, he appears to think that Hitchens was an unprincipled scoundrel. I understand Mr. Seymour is praised for the extensiveness and exhaustiveness of his argumentation -- even his essays are brimming with footnotes. Taking a cue from Seymour and substituting amateur psychoanalysis for de rigeur analysis, I'm inclined to say that it's as easy to dismiss the author of this book as a person with a tribal bone to pick, and an education in fashionable nonsense that makes his bone picking sound more legitimate than it is. During the time that I studied with the late Hitch, my long term girlfriend was Afghan and Muslim. Seymour's readers would do well to hear her sentiments on the man's "blatant Islamophobia" and on the Taliban who had beggared her country. But if her opinions squared with his, whatever would they do? We have Ayan Hirsi Ali to reference, for a start. I hope Mr. Seymour and Verso enjoy the dimes this book reels in. The rarity of the condition to which I referred above--the addiction to the high of having your most cherished notions shattered by evidence and your tribe membership revoked as a result--is still a rare enough addiction.

In response to Unhitched by Richard Seymour

Joshua Strawn / 25 January 2013

1 response Post a response

1 response

Post a response Show all responses in full Truncate all responses

When first got interested in Hitchen's work, I thought him too good to be true. He reminded me of my father who always kept pointing out that it ain't [was not] neccessarily so. Being ostensaibly too good to be true, I tried very hard to check it all: mother Teresa, Kissinger, Obama (sic!), Clintstones, the whole set he had attacked. No luck. He always somehow managed to make it and find the most appropriate position. In fact, he proved to be the most decent human being I have ever heard of, including that I believed that certain Jesus of Nazareth existed. But then I stumbled acroos his introduction to a book full of false observations: Rebecca Wests Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and read his praise for the book. Then I knew: Gotcha, you are a shithead and no-good rifraf after all. You were lying all along. ... Unfortunately, he bashed West for the thing she wrote wrong and he made me have goosbumps when he with utmost perfection told where and why shem might have been wrong as if he lived my own life in my own country. And he asked for a clarification from an ultimately humanistic resource. He just had me there and I am almost ready to give any of his thinkings a carte blanche. However, similar to my father, he was sometimes to emotional and lambasted poor theists and deists to a level of public humiliation and quite a few of them did not deserve it.

Tomislav Patarčić / 31 January 2013 0 people think so

Fetishized contrarianism?

1 response

Add a response

Do you have an account?

Please login below to submit your comment.

Please register below to submit your comment.

Interests