Forty Years Judith Levine Summary

Experimental Essay-2, (unfinished)

A feminist beacon

While reviewing a woman, an extraordinarily brilliant and uncompromising thinker, a leftist feminist considered it as the order of the big doctor and an often underestimated and aloof “irrepressible crank”-as she puts her in describing herself; Judith Levine’s choice in her “Boston Review” forty years celebrating article was more than obvious. As a radical cultural critic who never really sounded dogmatic and a journalist Allen Willies was one of the great public intellectuals of her generation. It didn’t take a long for her fondling left-leaning parents to realize that they brought a genius into this world of division, oppression, sectarian divide and domination which would clearly capture the thoughts of this special child. She was already a thinker at the age of
four and a pride and protégée of her father who was actively engaged in deep colloquy with his daughter; said by one of his childhood friends. By the age of six Allen was sophisticated in her language and authoritative at her delivery.
Allen never failed in fascinating her readers and followers through her anthologies, which more than often were tapestries than mere shedding of light on issues central to realpolitik, embellished with a brilliant display of language sense and riveting insights. Two phrases combined, though a having a semblance of mismatch, can adequately contain her intellectual gamut- “optimism as spiritually necessary” and “intellectually suspect”. In her attempt to rescue her equally talented twin brother who was about to join an orthodox Jewish sect telling her “I’ve had my lack of faith shaken”, she took a trip Jerusalem, chronicled her magnum Opus “Next year in Jerusalem” demonstrates her lack of faith was more influenced by optimism, emancipation of oppression, embracing freedom rather than by her New York life of drugs, sex and existential doubt. Her portrayal of god as an infinite source of energy, an immutable reality and producers of miracles in which she believed in- obviously not that usual of a modern day secular thinker, never really proved her being a believer for she championed optimism and
utopia as firearms directed toward the gnarls of reality. She never liked the nudity of materialists and nihilistic approach in understanding the fundamentals of being what, why and how we are and hence though attracted to Marxist- Freudian Frankfurt School her very gift of intellectual suspect persuaded her to suspect it. By the dilemma was later clarified by Freud’s renegade student Wilhem Reich. The questioning such as Marx’s proletarian revolution’s (promising to uproot all socio-economical burdening) inability to cure sexual problems, emancipate women from the patriarchal aggressors led him to believe that libido was anarchic and destructive and thus needed to be restrained. And there Willies found her brother and found a way to proceed with her optimism as she said “ I know that the connecting with reality was the crucial business of life , the key to freedom, sanity and happiness but I didn’t know how to proceed”.
It was a brilliant narrative of women, a feminist going through her contradictions and questioning every possible stratagem to the ultimate goal of humanistic development. Yet it was more of a love and compassion and optimism as opposed to dissecting our identity with economics, Freudian tools or Marxist scissors.