Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
It was ironic.
|
Oh, it was? What was the irony there?
Quote:
|
Yeah, I know the point was Sullivan is controversial.
|
That wasn't quite the point. It was the juxtaposition of how Sullivan and Coates each saw their relationship. Sullivan was deluding himself in thinking it was great.
Quote:
|
But where that fails is your proof of that being Coates, who is an unreliable source. You don't ask the man who has a hammer-and-nail view of the world, where the problem with everything is racism which must be assailed, if someone is a racist. Of course Sullivan is a racist. So is every living thing with which Coates comes into contact.
|
Whether or not you think Sullivan is racist, and whether or not you think that Coates is a good writer, you have to be struck that Sullivan bragged about the great intellectual relationship he shared with Coates, but Coates had a very different view.
Several years ago, Coates read a history of the Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood and blogged about it, for example in
this post and
this one. When I think about his stuff, that's the stuff that stands out to me. I read Wedgwood's book on his recommendation, and it was great. I defy you to read those posts and tell me that Coates has a hammer-and-nail view of the world. Now, maybe you've read his books (I haven't) and can tell me he's changed. But more likely, I think Coates often writes about race, and that's not a subject you're interested in, so you have dismissed him. Your caricature of him and his work is ignorant, but that's your problem, not mine.
Quote:
But here's some really fun stuff: https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...le-cornel-west
That's Colonel West blasting Coates, calling him a neoliberal anti-racist who ignores the intersectional interplay of class and race and instead assesses race in a vacuum, alone, because he doesn't want to get into the concurrent class issues. Why? Because to assess those issues along with race might put Coates at odds with the well-heeled members of academe and the woke capitalists who pay for his home in Paris.
|
Yes, that was a pretty big dust-up. If you are interested only in West because you found someone dumping on Coates, you will not care to read
this piece about their back-and-forth or
Coates saying he doesn't understand what West is on about.
