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April 18, 2008

Yale Art

In case you haven't seen the latest university flap over academic freedom, here's this from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

A Yale University student's art project that portrays her as inducing her own abortions has drawn a firestorm of criticism from all along the ideological spectrum, but it is protected by intellectual and artistic freedom, said officials of groups that defend academic freedom.

The details of her "art" project are rather disgusting to say the least. At one point Yale denied it was a "real" exhibit, rather fictional. The student stands by her claim that she insemminated herself and induced multiple abortions. Don't they have a counseling office at Yale? On second thought.... Without such freedom, we will fail to learn everything there is to learn under the sun. What's a university for, after all?

Posted by James M. Kushiner at 04:37 PM | Permalink

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I'm almost tempted to walk about with a sandwich board stating, "The End Is Near!" I don't want to say things can't get any worse, for I've been wrong too many times on that account. But still...

Posted by: Bill R | Apr 18, 2008 5:04:07 PM

I found the student's explanation of her "art" here (http://yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24559). Art is becoming a vulgar thing. She claims she was trying to show how it is a "myth" that organs are designed to perform specific purposes and not others, among other things. Sad. Also, part of her "art" is not knowing whether the blood being shown is from menstruation or miscarriage/abortion. Another part of her "art" is not knowing whether she made the whole thing up or not. And fact or fiction, this "art" got approved for credit and she's getting a degree from, of all places, Yale University for it all. What is this world coming to? How can someone call this just an issue of free speech. Menstruation, miscarriage and abortive murder is not art. The womb is meant to carry children. I wonder what would happen if she declared the heart isn't really meant to pump blood or the lung is not really meant to allow breathing.

Posted by: Krista | Apr 19, 2008 10:16:00 PM

I know that the left holds equality as its top value. That's gone from equality of races to equality of sexes to equality of sexual preferences and equality of the work that students do. Searching for more areas to which to apply equality, this student came up with body organs!?

Posted by: Judy K. Warner | Apr 20, 2008 7:03:00 AM

It turns out that this "art" project is a complete hoax. Here is a link to a story that reveals it as such: http://www.nysun.com/news/national/yale-students-art-project-creative-fiction

Posted by: Fr. James Early | Apr 21, 2008 12:16:10 PM

It's just about as bizarre and disgusting that she thought this fiction was a valid project as if she had really done it.

“We have this huge f—ing institution telling us: ‘That’s what power looks like. That’s what empowerment looks like.’ It’s these patriarchal, heteronormative trappings of a voice, of a right to speak, but really I think we should think more about it,” the Yale student said, according to a video posted on YouTube but removed last night. “We need to stop being sheep.”

The student then added, "Baaaa."

Posted by: Judy K. Warner | Apr 21, 2008 1:10:28 PM

The latest news is that this may not be a hoax at all.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/apr/08041813.html

Posted by: john | Apr 21, 2008 3:29:14 PM

>>>The student then added, "Baaaa."<<<

A chorus of the Whiffenpoof song then followed?

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Apr 21, 2008 5:17:46 PM

Anyone who has been to school (HS or above) since the 1960's has met this chick. They are...how does one put it... self-consumed with a hefty dash of martyr complex. The "Man" is out to get them with a vengeance that makes you wonder how they've survived this long. The best punishment is to, first, take away all of the good wine, and then ignore them.

...this just in...

taking the good wine may be considered inhumane in this instance. Such a waste.

Posted by: Nick | Apr 21, 2008 6:40:48 PM

OK, stripping the jargon out of the quote, I infer that she is saying roughly this: "I am being encouraged to claim the rights and responsibilities of a free human being, but the people who tell me what those are are adults raised to believe that men are superior to women and/or heterosexuals raised to believe that only their sexual preferences are normal. I disagree with these assumptions and do not trust what people who hold by these assumptions tell me."

I can understand this argument. What I cannot understand is the rest of it: "Therefore I will put my own menstruum and/or the products of my abortions on display, call them art, and leave you to decide whether I really inseminated myself in order to kill embryos."

Okay, so she is also arguing against the idea that organs have a particular purpose, against the idea that an embryo is a human being in process of formation and for the idea that she may do as she pleases with her own body. I happen to agree with that third idea.

I don't agree that the validity of anybody's argument obliges me to look at their bodily fluids. If you can't express yourself without resorting to verbal or visual scatology, you wasted your tuition.

Posted by: Jenny Islander | Apr 21, 2008 9:19:19 PM

One unintended consequence of this sort of "banging-on-my-high-chair" exhibitionism: lay folks are entirely burnt out on art.

"Art Exhibit Features...Something Blasphemous, Unintelligible, Insulting, Gross!" Ho hum. Few civilized human beings any longer pay attention under any circumstances to "Big Art", although some hobbyists enjoy appreciating the products of past centuries' visual creativity, or hide their Mort Kunstler Civil War prints from their sophisticated acquaintances.

And some will still bother to offer a token protest when tax money funds the pretentious follies called "art" these days - in fact, that's one of the few ways these poseurs can get attention at all, outside their intellectually-inbred academic art circles.

Posted by: Joe Long | Apr 22, 2008 7:57:13 AM

There is a frightening truth revealed in this project - the terminal exit of radical autonomy is hideous brutality. "Constructing our own meaning" must permit the destruction of the other. Yikes.

Posted by: marie | Apr 23, 2008 10:12:10 AM

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