I have just been introducing my own Zoomer bf to the classic seasons of drag race (4, 5, AS2), so these footnotes seem right to me!
I'm also working on a big essay on Butler motivated by the sense that the frustratingly joyless autistic weirdness of her reading of Paris is Burning is the real indictment of her thinking...she has a theory of performance, but no account of serving...
I'm new to Substack and the whole community so I'm feeling everything out; I read your review of Becca's book first (currently reading her book and I love and adore it and maybe that's because I'm still in dumb liberalism territory as a young thinker but also I am primed to enjoy essays on maximalism as I am, myself, a maximalist in thought and aesthetic, and I feel Becca and I are kindred spirits), and then I read MJE's post, and I want to say, coming from the vitriolic spaces of Discord, Insta, and Tumblr (I was never on Twitter), your lovely response to criticism of your work is just... so inspiring. Seeing people being respectful in an online space, I just didn't think it was possible. So like... thank you? And even though I disagree with your assessment of Becca's book, I enjoyed reading it and seeing a different perspective on it.
Also, season 5 is objectively the best season of Drag Race, except for perhaps All Stars All Winners. Jinkx is Mother.
Thank you! What a kind comment. I should emphasize that I am lots of the time very vitriolic lol. I'm glad that you could enjoy both my review and Rothfeld's book--which double enjoyment is indeed its own sort of maximalism!
Excellent! I disparage scientism as Murdoch does, but I can't deny the power of a good graph. I hope you don't mind if I take the occasion to self-diagnose.
I think "Existentialism (sad)" might be my ego ideal, or maybe my superego, but I'm just not sad enough. I like to think "Romantic Realism" is actually my ego. But (as you aptly observed when you described something I wrote as "Chu-adjacent") I have very strong "Existentialism (horny)" tendencies. When Simone said, "on peut aller à Dieu par l'amour, non par l'avarice ou l'ambition," I thought, "Are you sure!?" thus illustrating the many meanings of "horny." (Surely one can come to God through ambition.) "Dumb Conservatism" at least of the Trump variety is probably the degraded form of "Existentialism (horny)," Chu's and Sartre's commie tendencies notwithstanding. This explains the Nietzschean-to-Republican pipeline in which Paglia, BAP, and Red Scare (also Peterson to some extent) are implicated. (The explanatory power of a good graph!)
If you can identify your shadow by what you most hate/fear in others, my shadow must be "Dumb conservatism with a dose of mysticism" and "Romantic Realism (dark mode)," which latter would of course have to be my shadow! The poets and anarchists becoming priests and fascists: this is the Romantic-Existentialist's nightmare potential. I don't like the reactionary centrists either (most on your list are technocrats), but I grudgingly concede they're probably right about some practical matters.
This may be a hangover from the Major Arcana YouTube/TikTok "spiritual girlie" research, but I'll defend "Mysticism (skimming the surface)"—my anima?—as our time's actual viable version of what Tao Lin is talking about re: dominators and cooperators, hence my advocacy for its middle- and highbrow avatars in late-20th-century peak "multicultural-feminism" texts like Toni Morrison's novels, Neil Gaiman's comics, Jane Campion's films, Tori Amos's music, etc. We were better off when this was what counted as "Dumb Liberalism," though I obviously agree with your Paglia-esque caveat about reading too much beneficence into the Great Mother, as would some of the artists I just listed.
And on the Nietzschean-to-Republican pipeline, the Boomers obviously showed a similar tendency on the other side. I remember looking up the singer from Jefferson Airplane and she was talking about a painting she made of Woodstock that included Barack Obama, because even though he wasn’t there, she thought that he would have liked it.
Glad to have provided the mirror for the entertaining self-reflection. On ambition as a way to God, Weil said we cannot take a single step towards Him. Granted this is an extreme position, but do not most religious traditions teach that it is impossible to reach God through effort alone and something like Grace is necessary?
I get the Grace aspect, but doesn't that imply that it doesn't matter what you do? I think that's how some Protestants reconciled themselves to capitalism. I like God's possibly even more Protestant line in Goethe's Faust: all who strive will be saved.
Yes, the Nietzschean Boomers—I think I commented somewhere on the disorientation of Patti Smith's Instagram, pictures of Burroughs next to pictures of Kamala Harris.
I guess it depends on what one takes 'God' to be (or to represent) and what it would mean for Their Kingdom to come and Their Will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Weil's commentary on the Our Father at times outdoes Nietzsche in its amor fati (something I've always had trouble reconciling with the Will to Power): "Il faut désirer que tout ce qui s'est produit se soit produit, et rien d'autre. Non pas parce que ce qui s'est produit est bien à nos yeux ; mais parce que Dieu l'a permis, et que l'obéissance du cours des événements à Dieu est par elle-même un bien absolu."
Right, I am more Romantic or willful or whatever than this. "God" hasn't fully happened yet, so no wonder what has already happened is so difficult to love. "God" is a latent potential we are always bringing into being, or failing to. (But as Stephen says of big abstractions like "God" in Ulysses, "I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.")
I have just been introducing my own Zoomer bf to the classic seasons of drag race (4, 5, AS2), so these footnotes seem right to me!
I'm also working on a big essay on Butler motivated by the sense that the frustratingly joyless autistic weirdness of her reading of Paris is Burning is the real indictment of her thinking...she has a theory of performance, but no account of serving...
I'm new to Substack and the whole community so I'm feeling everything out; I read your review of Becca's book first (currently reading her book and I love and adore it and maybe that's because I'm still in dumb liberalism territory as a young thinker but also I am primed to enjoy essays on maximalism as I am, myself, a maximalist in thought and aesthetic, and I feel Becca and I are kindred spirits), and then I read MJE's post, and I want to say, coming from the vitriolic spaces of Discord, Insta, and Tumblr (I was never on Twitter), your lovely response to criticism of your work is just... so inspiring. Seeing people being respectful in an online space, I just didn't think it was possible. So like... thank you? And even though I disagree with your assessment of Becca's book, I enjoyed reading it and seeing a different perspective on it.
Also, season 5 is objectively the best season of Drag Race, except for perhaps All Stars All Winners. Jinkx is Mother.
Thank you! What a kind comment. I should emphasize that I am lots of the time very vitriolic lol. I'm glad that you could enjoy both my review and Rothfeld's book--which double enjoyment is indeed its own sort of maximalism!
Excellent! I disparage scientism as Murdoch does, but I can't deny the power of a good graph. I hope you don't mind if I take the occasion to self-diagnose.
I think "Existentialism (sad)" might be my ego ideal, or maybe my superego, but I'm just not sad enough. I like to think "Romantic Realism" is actually my ego. But (as you aptly observed when you described something I wrote as "Chu-adjacent") I have very strong "Existentialism (horny)" tendencies. When Simone said, "on peut aller à Dieu par l'amour, non par l'avarice ou l'ambition," I thought, "Are you sure!?" thus illustrating the many meanings of "horny." (Surely one can come to God through ambition.) "Dumb Conservatism" at least of the Trump variety is probably the degraded form of "Existentialism (horny)," Chu's and Sartre's commie tendencies notwithstanding. This explains the Nietzschean-to-Republican pipeline in which Paglia, BAP, and Red Scare (also Peterson to some extent) are implicated. (The explanatory power of a good graph!)
If you can identify your shadow by what you most hate/fear in others, my shadow must be "Dumb conservatism with a dose of mysticism" and "Romantic Realism (dark mode)," which latter would of course have to be my shadow! The poets and anarchists becoming priests and fascists: this is the Romantic-Existentialist's nightmare potential. I don't like the reactionary centrists either (most on your list are technocrats), but I grudgingly concede they're probably right about some practical matters.
This may be a hangover from the Major Arcana YouTube/TikTok "spiritual girlie" research, but I'll defend "Mysticism (skimming the surface)"—my anima?—as our time's actual viable version of what Tao Lin is talking about re: dominators and cooperators, hence my advocacy for its middle- and highbrow avatars in late-20th-century peak "multicultural-feminism" texts like Toni Morrison's novels, Neil Gaiman's comics, Jane Campion's films, Tori Amos's music, etc. We were better off when this was what counted as "Dumb Liberalism," though I obviously agree with your Paglia-esque caveat about reading too much beneficence into the Great Mother, as would some of the artists I just listed.
And on the Nietzschean-to-Republican pipeline, the Boomers obviously showed a similar tendency on the other side. I remember looking up the singer from Jefferson Airplane and she was talking about a painting she made of Woodstock that included Barack Obama, because even though he wasn’t there, she thought that he would have liked it.
Glad to have provided the mirror for the entertaining self-reflection. On ambition as a way to God, Weil said we cannot take a single step towards Him. Granted this is an extreme position, but do not most religious traditions teach that it is impossible to reach God through effort alone and something like Grace is necessary?
I get the Grace aspect, but doesn't that imply that it doesn't matter what you do? I think that's how some Protestants reconciled themselves to capitalism. I like God's possibly even more Protestant line in Goethe's Faust: all who strive will be saved.
Yes, the Nietzschean Boomers—I think I commented somewhere on the disorientation of Patti Smith's Instagram, pictures of Burroughs next to pictures of Kamala Harris.
I guess it depends on what one takes 'God' to be (or to represent) and what it would mean for Their Kingdom to come and Their Will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Weil's commentary on the Our Father at times outdoes Nietzsche in its amor fati (something I've always had trouble reconciling with the Will to Power): "Il faut désirer que tout ce qui s'est produit se soit produit, et rien d'autre. Non pas parce que ce qui s'est produit est bien à nos yeux ; mais parce que Dieu l'a permis, et que l'obéissance du cours des événements à Dieu est par elle-même un bien absolu."
Right, I am more Romantic or willful or whatever than this. "God" hasn't fully happened yet, so no wonder what has already happened is so difficult to love. "God" is a latent potential we are always bringing into being, or failing to. (But as Stephen says of big abstractions like "God" in Ulysses, "I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.")
Honored to be here ! Great post.