Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerwen
Note that the use of "complicit" is your own, tumhalad. It appears nowhere in the article.
So, much as I disagree with what he's saying anyway, I don't think he's saying what you think he is.
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My original words:
Does Tolkien's literature merely console? Should it challenge us (read: challenge notions of capitalist hegemony) or are we complicit in some exploitative bourgeois idyll?
I was inferring that Mieville is indirectly accusing readers of "complicity" with the values enshrined in the text as he perceives them; I don't think this is an illogical inference; when one reads a book, and regards it favourably, one does, to some extent, comply with its worldview. This is not to say one may disagree with it in certain respects, but taken wholistically one finds no trouble in it to the extent that one is driven to be heavily critical of it. Mieville makes certain assertions about the values of the text; assertions that I do not agree with. Nonetheless, in Mieville's view, I must in some sense be morally complicit, because I do not criticise the values that
he says are there. Regardless, my point was to enquire as to whether the text does, or does not, enshrine the values Mieville says it does. I apologise if my phrasing was leading you astray, but I think my point holds.