This essay is based on a number of literary and artistic works that cross the bounds of good faith, and cause considerable consternation among the culturally and politically conservative. At the same time they raise real issues about respect for one another in a communal setting.

More soon . . . but meanwhile, links that we'll include in this discussion:

• The Networks and the Bounds of Taste New York Times article suggesting that the issue over unpleasant sights, sounds, language is still as strongly with us today as ever.

• Andres Serrano's Piss Christ Notice that this image is part of a website for an art history class at a leading university.

  • Andres Serrano Many images and explanation of the Piss Christ, which Serrano exhibited in North Carolina in 1988. The image is of a religious icon submerged in bodily fluids and photographed. The artist, a Catholic, was pursuing both a series of photographs of religious icons and of bodily fluids, and says that he meant no disrespect.

  • Comments on Andres Serrano by Members of the United States Senate. Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato and Senator Jesse Helms express outrage over the Piss Christ, "This artist received $15,000 for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts, through the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art."

  • On the Edge with Andres Serrano, Contemporary Photography’s Artist Bad Boy. December 20, 2000, New York, NY. Art Reviews Online.

  • Serrano, Andres USC Web Course. Excellent Site.

• Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary, 1996, with spattering of elephant dung that so outraged Mayor Giuliani of New York.

• Paul Beatty's White Boy Shuffle which uses a literal sprinking of four letter words and postmodern anger over racism.

• Wiliam H. Auden's declaration of his pederasty in the 40s to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor would result today in his arrest. This an Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers suggest that the sense of propriety alters over space and over time. We'll want to examine this in terms of dominant discourse.