Self-Hatred and the Politics of Kicks

You ask for my top-of-the-head thoughts on “the enrages or the beat or simply the deviant,” and one of the first things that occurs to me is that it is precisely that sort of question—and the purpose for which it is asked—that enrages the enrages and induces the confirmation of the beat. I do believe (and in this respect I may be beat—though I doubt it) that conferences of the kind in which you (and I) are engaged are significant less for providing a solution to the problems that occasion them than for what they reveal about the way in which problems are “handled.” Probably the very best thing they do is come up with what J. K. Galbraith called positions of “permissible originality.”

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