I'm so grateful, happy, hopeful, excited - and also, in a way, relieved - to read this post. I have been meaning to reach out to Erec Smith about one of the main elements of this conversation because it's almost completely absent from current thinking about race and culture in the United States. Since I became aware of it, FBT has seemed like one of the places where it might find expression and root. We Americans need this element - here formulated so cleanly as a "reimagining of American identity" like we need air and water. We're hungry for it, and we feel its absence as a nameless void.
There is something foul in the current zero-sum framing of all things racial and cultural. But Americans are a practical people. We are moved by action, by bravery, by the sacrifices demanded by conscience, by work and initiative, by kindness, by generosity, by love expressed in doing; we are not so finely calibrated with respect to the ontological framing of identity which Al Murray addressed in his seminal work. Once we were a melting pot. It didn't get much thought. It just seemed a serviceable enough metaphor while we all got busy creating, building and reforming. But that metaphor is now gone. We need a replacement better than the endless war of oppressor against oppressed, which now appears to be slouching its way towards birth as our new orthodoxy.
Interestingly - and my example makes the very point I wish to emphasize - I haven't read either Al Murray or Stanley Crouch. However I did read a Stanley Crouch obituary or remembrance sometime in the last year or so. In that obituary the memorialist outlined Murray's notion of the Omni-American, which Crouch embraced and which at least informed his writing. I don't remember if the writer used the term, or whether he credited Al Murray. He did say that Crouch saw American culture that way.
The article floored me. It's hard to overstate how powerful Murray's idea is, how radical a challenge it is to the received and automatic manner in which Americans now think about race. And it's not something we should weigh because we need it, despite what I wrote above, or because it will make us happier or less fractious. It's something we should explore because our current metaphors and models have all the depth of crayon cartoons.
On several occasions I've undertaken conversations with friends where I took the little thread of an idea I read in that Stanley Crouch obituary and tried to weave it into a fully formed idea that I could express clearly. It hasn't worked once. The vocabulary we have (I have) for talking about the "Intersubjective" just isn't rich enough yet. It has a way of drifting into the lower right where familiar things have common names. This is so much more important and deeper than observing that Elvis Presley appropriated black musical forms, to use an example. That's more of the reigning framework. Some kind of poetry is required to talk about what an Omni-American is, something deeper than expository language. I downloaded the e-book and will finish it soon.
Anyway since I read that article about Stanley Crouch and the beauty of it washed over me, this is the first day I've encountered anyone who is writing about this now. It's great to know this inquiry is still alive.
Well said. I am curious about the figure by Ken Wilber’s AQAL (all quadrants, all levels). Where does the 'Other' fit in? Somewhere floating across the 'It' and 'We' boxes? The reason I ask is my own reflection on 'I and the Other.' It's an intimate part of this conversation and yet it's another angle. I would loved to have talked with Murray about it.
THANKS AGAIN, FBT!!
Beyond superb. Thank You to both-a Youse.
And TYTY for book as well. Happy fourth.
Thanks - Albert Murray was a great American thinker. As was Ralph Ellison, who also seems neglected these days.
Anyone who brings Albert Murray to the attention of the world gets a shout out from me!
Bravo, FBT! Finally had an opportunity to sit down and read through it.
I'm so grateful, happy, hopeful, excited - and also, in a way, relieved - to read this post. I have been meaning to reach out to Erec Smith about one of the main elements of this conversation because it's almost completely absent from current thinking about race and culture in the United States. Since I became aware of it, FBT has seemed like one of the places where it might find expression and root. We Americans need this element - here formulated so cleanly as a "reimagining of American identity" like we need air and water. We're hungry for it, and we feel its absence as a nameless void.
There is something foul in the current zero-sum framing of all things racial and cultural. But Americans are a practical people. We are moved by action, by bravery, by the sacrifices demanded by conscience, by work and initiative, by kindness, by generosity, by love expressed in doing; we are not so finely calibrated with respect to the ontological framing of identity which Al Murray addressed in his seminal work. Once we were a melting pot. It didn't get much thought. It just seemed a serviceable enough metaphor while we all got busy creating, building and reforming. But that metaphor is now gone. We need a replacement better than the endless war of oppressor against oppressed, which now appears to be slouching its way towards birth as our new orthodoxy.
Interestingly - and my example makes the very point I wish to emphasize - I haven't read either Al Murray or Stanley Crouch. However I did read a Stanley Crouch obituary or remembrance sometime in the last year or so. In that obituary the memorialist outlined Murray's notion of the Omni-American, which Crouch embraced and which at least informed his writing. I don't remember if the writer used the term, or whether he credited Al Murray. He did say that Crouch saw American culture that way.
The article floored me. It's hard to overstate how powerful Murray's idea is, how radical a challenge it is to the received and automatic manner in which Americans now think about race. And it's not something we should weigh because we need it, despite what I wrote above, or because it will make us happier or less fractious. It's something we should explore because our current metaphors and models have all the depth of crayon cartoons.
On several occasions I've undertaken conversations with friends where I took the little thread of an idea I read in that Stanley Crouch obituary and tried to weave it into a fully formed idea that I could express clearly. It hasn't worked once. The vocabulary we have (I have) for talking about the "Intersubjective" just isn't rich enough yet. It has a way of drifting into the lower right where familiar things have common names. This is so much more important and deeper than observing that Elvis Presley appropriated black musical forms, to use an example. That's more of the reigning framework. Some kind of poetry is required to talk about what an Omni-American is, something deeper than expository language. I downloaded the e-book and will finish it soon.
Anyway since I read that article about Stanley Crouch and the beauty of it washed over me, this is the first day I've encountered anyone who is writing about this now. It's great to know this inquiry is still alive.
Well said. I am curious about the figure by Ken Wilber’s AQAL (all quadrants, all levels). Where does the 'Other' fit in? Somewhere floating across the 'It' and 'We' boxes? The reason I ask is my own reflection on 'I and the Other.' It's an intimate part of this conversation and yet it's another angle. I would loved to have talked with Murray about it.