Steiner Chapters 3 and 4.

Chapter 3
Fetish or Fatwa?
In this chapter Steiner dicusses Salman Rushdie's novel, "The Satanic Verses." The novel is fictional and written with the same "aesthetic liberties taken by thousands of other writers." Steiner talks about how Rushdie's novel started an international debate dealing with the artistic license. When the novel was first published, the Muslim world saw it as having rediculous and outrageous references. As result the novel was banned in India and burned in the United Kingdom as a demonstration. Rushdie then was forced to go into hiding because of fear that the Muslim community would find him because of what he wrote. How could a fictional novel be so controversial and cause so much havic? Everyone is going to have a difference of opinion when it comes to art, writing being one of those arts, and because of this anything and everything can be interpreted in a negative way that could cause so much controversy and distress. Even though his piece was fictional and in a sense "not real to life," it is a piece of art and effects the person who reads it in an aesthetic way.

Chapter 4
Caliban in the Ivory Tower
In this chapter Steiner discusses the academic world and all that involves it. She dicusses what is acceptable and what is not within the academic field and educational world. She goes on the say, "Whichever side of the fence one stands on, 'Political Correctness' is an intellectual virus spewing out mind-numbing contradictions--an ideological gene gone wrong." She speaks of the 'Political Correctness' as a virus, when the universities talk about free speech. She goes on to say that there should be no restraint on free speech on campus'. Since last class I just learned that universities could designate a "free speech area" where it would and could be tolerated to use your right of free speech. So, how is this really free speech? They are telling you where you can and cannot use your right. I don't understand how they can do this with the constitution giving you the right of free speech. Doesn't the right of free speech give you the right to speak in any arena at any time? Are there restraints on that as well? Are there things that I don't know about our "right of free speech?" Is it really a right or just a clause of what you could potentially be allowed to do if given the right "zone or area," to speak within?!