The Melting Blog

Cornel West's "Eccentricities of Tone"

I like Cornel West, I really do. When I approached him several years ago at a conference, he graciously -- and genuinely -- opens up to you. The brother loves to banter. But apparently he's no fan of TMB. From Caleb Crain's New York Times review of West's upcoming polemic "Democracy Matters":

Then there are West's eccentricities of tone. For the ''soul murder'' of American youth, West blames cocaine, Ecstasy, oral sex and -- Weblogs.

Who knew that blogs were so vile and potent?

For those unfamiliar with West's schtick, this graph from the book review gives you a glimpse into his intellectual, and ideological, eclecticism:

Writing in the aftermath of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles triggered by the Rodney King verdict, West was concerned about what he called black nihilism -- ''the profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness and social despair so widespread in black America.'' He felt that the psychology of despair was a better way of explaining the black predicament than either ''liberal structuralism'' (i.e., blame socioeconomic conditions) or ''conservative behaviorism'' (i.e., blame lapses in morals). West's language had a Marxian flavor, but his answer was predominantly Christian: he proposed a ''politics of conversion.'' And he seemed uninterested in playing the race card. He made a point of disowning misogynist and anti-Semitic strains in black political culture, unsqueamishly contemplated black and black-and-white sexuality and criticized what he called the ''closing-ranks mentality'' threatening to homogenize black political thought.

Despite the bad review, I'll still pick up Democracy Matters. West never fails to at least tickle the mind. Read the whole review.

Posted by thomas at September 12, 2004 03:09 PM | TrackBack