victor->a plea for Mad-X comics

sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Thu, 17 Oct 1996 12:03:16 -0500


On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Tom Maddox wrote:

[much deleted]
> But it so happens that I ran across the following just today:
>
> ****
> As the developmental logics of contemporary architecture are built more
> and more for the mediation of audiovisual information than
> for the the en-framed location of speaking groups of co-present bodies, a
> mode of built environment as referentially big as the dataspaces which they
> ground, is mimiced [sic] globally.
> ****
>
> Which is very much the sort of thing that I have in mind. I can multiply
> such citations at will, but let me instead ask if you can bring in
> "beautiful" language from theory to demonstrate the wrongness of my
> "butt-ugly" claim.
>
> Tom
>

Tom, this is truly a ****Butt ugly**** sentence, if a sentence!

BUT, we can talk about Why it is ugly and can reach much consinsus (sic)
because we share some common criteria in assessing the suckcess or
failure of the sentence. In other words, Because we share the same
trained incapacities in making our judgements (Veblen, Burke).

BUT acknowledging this togetherness in seeing BUTT ughliness finally just
does not interest me at all. Why should it? What would I do with this
knowledge? Go around from student paper to student paper, colleague's
paper to colleague's paper, journal to journal, CFP to CFP, conference to
conference, etc. and look for BUTT UGHly linguistic expressions and when
they present themselves ... say

UGHly, UGHly, UGHly BUTT!

If I or another did this (and it is easy for me to do this), would I do
it because my interests lie in erasing all the UGHly BUTTs in the world?

These are not my interests! I really I can't believe that they are yours,
though the context in your exchange with stevohreno crass sugests so.

I think it was Eliz. Bruss who wrote the book ... _Beautiful Theories_.
It's definitely worth a read.

I am sorry to say, however, that I cannot remember who wrote the story of
the ugly duckling. Does anyone remember?

My question, though we are not interviewing you, is ...
Do you find any value in the Ugly sentence? or the ughly-anything, *other
than a negative value*?

My followup question is ... and I apologize for putting it in this
philosophical context, though I find it more rhetorical than
philosophical ...
In respect to Kant's 3rd critique, Do you find any value in
the beautiful sentence, in
the sublime sentence, in
the monstrous sentence, in
the demonstrative sentence, other than the or a negative value?

In the context of my questions, I hope that at least you understand that
I am asking a question that moves beyond the use of the word *sentence*
to mean a grammatical or logical structure. Yes, I am thinking of the law
(logos) and judgement (hence, full circle).

Victor