Apropos of the perennial Locke-run-amok conversation, consider Noah Berlatsky’s piece at the main site :
the American spirit galumphs and galerks through every one of the Doctor’s works. Like his fellow citizens, Seuss is boisterous, hearty, optimistic, profligate in invention, and not too heavy on the thought. [ . . . ] In “The Sneeches,” the sneeches with stars dislike the sneeches without stars. The solution? Not understanding, or non-violent resistance, but simply a machine which removes stars! In Seuss’ universe, there is no problem that cannot be solved by old-fashioned practicality, good will, bizarre new-fangled machines, or some combination of all three.
In Seuss’s soul, Berlatsky argues, capitalism and sensualism merge in an erotic celebration of ever-more-preposterous stuff — and the ever-more-outlandish things that that stuff can do. But the stuff of Seuss’s imagination are inventions , see. The manner that Berlatsky identifies in which at least some Seuss stories seem to take on the character of extended product placement ads, more about the inventions that dictate events than the characters who live among them, calls to mind the way in which the democratization of Locke turns advertisement into the site of pride. In a Seussian economy, who needs Arendtian politics? I add only that this may be — especially in America — an actually quite appealing and successful trade. How often are our criticisms of Locke really just criticisms of the democratization of Locke driven by the logic of equality?
