Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 14:17:25 -0500 (EST)
From: "Shawn P. Wilbur" <swilbur-AT-wcnet.org>
Subject: Re: We've gone Suth'rn


Quoth carp:

> I only have one question:  How long before we get thrown off of this
> state-sponsored server?  The dutch seem a much more tolerant folk than any
> I have ever met in Virginny.
>
> I mean can we say "fuck" and make references to sexual use of various
> orifices not necessarily designed for such?  How about excretory
> functions?  Will Virginny tolerate the posting of the obscenities of the
> unmentioned one?
>
> I think we need to start a gambling pool on how long befroe we're
> homeless.  I've got five bucks on 11 months.

Here's the situation at virginia.edu. The anarchy-list is hosted by the 
Spoon Collective - an all-volunteer group of anti-authoritarian 
academics, programmers, puppeteers, booksellers, etc - which is hosted as 
a "networked fellow" by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the 
Humanities, which is a semi-autonomous unit hosted by the University of 
Virginia. As it stands now, Spoon does most of the upkeep on the 
majordomo server, and hosts enough high-profile philosophy lists to be a 
real asset to the institute, and thus the university. The set-up is about 
as secure as you could find in a state-sponsored setting, and the 
institute has taken a pretty strong free speech stance. 

Spoon originated within a group of philosophy lists called Thinknet, 
which was hosted on a commercial server. The guy who ran Thinknet had 
particular ideas about what constituted appropriate content for "his" 
lists, with the result that he tried to play "sheriff" on the Deleuze 
list when some folks started using precisely the kind of language carp is 
asking about. Now, Deleuze had been known to write in a colorful manner 
himself - most infamously describing his relationship to various 
philosophical predecessors in terms of a kind of critical buggery - 
"getting up behind them to give them monstrous children" (the french have 
such a way about them...) The attempt to enforce standards of expression 
on the deleuze-list crowd resulted first in some memorable flames and 
then in the creation of a small collective to manage a couple of 
"naughty" lists, still more or less within Thinknet. The commercial 
provider started charging to host lists, Thinknet moved, and the Spoon 
Collective lists went looking for a separate new home - preferably one 
without would-be sheriffs. At that time, i wasn't a member, but was 
administering a couple of other Thinknet cast-offs. I negotiated the move 
to virginia.edu, since the director of the institute was someone i had 
worked with on a couple of other online projects. We've been there for 
several years now. 

The collective membership has changed, with folks coming and going, 
fighting amongst themselves, dying, etc. Because a couple of members lean 
in an autonomist/revolutionary communist direction, and because a number 
of us were interested in the connections between the philosophies 
discussed on our lists and various sorts of socialism, we experimented, 
over several years, with a series of marxian lists. We finally parted 
company when it was clear that the ecumenical approach wasn't going to 
satisfy the usual left partisans. (This was the point when some Trot 
denounced us on the anarchy-list, and all over usenet, as "stalinoids." 
Go figger...)

The collective is presently a group of folks i feel quite comfortable 
with - both in terms of savvy when it comes to using the resources we 
have custody of and in terms of general politics. If i didn't feel that, 
i wouldn't have suggested the possibility of hosting the list to Jack. 
I'm guessing that we'll all last longer than 11 more months at UVa. 

-shawn