At 02:28 PM 06/04/2004 -0700, you wrote:
>However, saying that Newton, Mozart, Beethoven,
Bartok or
>Art Tatum was a genius is not to say any of those
things.
>The question of institutionalization,
credentialism,
>condemning people to failure by measuring and
ranking, and
>other socially created ills should be treated
separately
>from inordinate capability. Individual genius does
exist.
So do we agree that predicting genius (or measuring it, as
Miker says) is largely bogus? I think that implies that
describing it would be somewhat difficult too. Your one word
answer (Beethoven) credits individual accomplishment, in
hindsight. That's cool, though clearly there is a strong
element of social acceptance here too, even if that requires
long periods of time. We don't apply the label "genius" to
someone whose similar leaps of intellect are now forgotten,
or uncorroborated.
Anyway, my original point was that I think hardboil, and more
probably noir, would be inclined to question such labels.
Psychological mysteries may indulge in criminal geniuses and
the even smarter folks who catch them, but noir is more
likely to reveal and call into question the use of
categorization and rank to sustain power systems.
Or maybe I'm just imposing my own values on the genre. But
why not? As we've already discussed, genre is another form of
categorization that can be defined to promote a particular
point of view, and determine the rank of anyone who holds
it.
Kerry
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