Criticism
Gray’s Straw Dogs has been criticised by Terry Eagleton. Danny Postel also took issue with Straw Dogs. Postel stated Gray's claim that environmental destruction was the result of humanity's flawed nature, would be "welcome news to the captains of industry and the architects of the global economy; the ecological devastation they leave in their wake, according to Gray, has nothing to do with their exploits." Postel also claimed that too much of Straw Dogs rested on "blanket assertion", and criticised Gray's use of the term "plague of people" as an outdated " neo-Malthusian persiflage about overpopulation". Postel strongly condemned Gray for outlining "complete political passivity. There is no point whatsoever in our attempting to make the world a less cruel or more livable place."
Read more about this topic: Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he can divide.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)