Ellen Willis
Ellen Willis
Ellen Jane Williswas an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, activist, feminist, and pop music critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth14 December 1941
CountryUnited States of America
art commercial cultural far form grasp itself seem taken
What cultural revolutionaries do not seem to grasp is that, far from being a grass-roots art form that has been taken over by businessmen, rock itself comes from the commercial exploitation of the blues.
casts imagine trauma
To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.
artificial discourse foreign nowhere politics separation
The artificial separation of politics and culture is nowhere more pronounced than in the discourse of foreign policy and international affairs.
diversion playing
I can't keep myself from playing roles. The emotionless decadent, looking for diversion from boredom, is a favorite.
cared technical
I was a 'Big Brother' fan. I thought they were better musicians than their detractors claimed, but more to the point, technical accomplishment was not something I cared about.
believe guess seems spirit though
I believe that body and spirit are not really separate, though it often seems that way. I believe that redemption is never impossible and always equivocal. But I guess that I just don't know.
politics separate
For the most part, Americans speak of culture and politics as if they were two separate realms.
artists awful corrupt courage dominated education face imperative modernist optimism religious romantics scorn secular supreme taught thinkers truth
My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.
appeal attraction committing freud glory god greater human limited mass nor perverse religious war
You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to surmise that war has a perverse appeal for the human race, nor is the attraction limited to religious fanatics committing mass murder and suicide for the greater glory of God.
lives people power shape souls
Give people the power to shape their lives to their liking, and their souls will take care of themselves.
contained easily encouraged expansive pushing
By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now, consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.
against democratic dissidents feminism freedom including individual islamic merely morality regularly religion religious struggle
The struggle of democratic secularism, religious tolerance, individual freedom and feminism against authoritarian patriarchal religion, culture and morality is going on all over the world - including the Islamic world, where dissidents are regularly jailed, killed, exiled or merely intimidated and silenced.