The gossip as the arsonist. Very good image! There's the oft-told story of the feathers shaken out of the pillow around town, but fire is perhaps a more fitting image given the moral object of gossip.
Thank you Hannah! I think the old story applies well to the lighter forms of gossip ("Well, word about town is that [insert unimportant information about someone here]") but in our age the term has generalized, swallowing up actual scandal and detraction as though, because they are similar in form (and because we have a fetish for what we think of as 'truth' and can tell ourselves that because it is true that we heard or thought something, we have a right or even an obligation to pass it along), they are all the same fundamental thing.
The gossip as the arsonist. Very good image! There's the oft-told story of the feathers shaken out of the pillow around town, but fire is perhaps a more fitting image given the moral object of gossip.
Thank you Hannah! I think the old story applies well to the lighter forms of gossip ("Well, word about town is that [insert unimportant information about someone here]") but in our age the term has generalized, swallowing up actual scandal and detraction as though, because they are similar in form (and because we have a fetish for what we think of as 'truth' and can tell ourselves that because it is true that we heard or thought something, we have a right or even an obligation to pass it along), they are all the same fundamental thing.