File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2004/anarchy-list.0408, message 219


Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 21:16:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: andrew robinson <ldxar1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: re: Zapatistas and drugs (belated reply)


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Sorry about the belated reply folks.  I've only just found some of the emails towards the back of my inbox, so I hadn't realised there'd been more discussion on zapatistas and drugs.  Here's a few miscellaneous replies to stuff I've not replied to yet:
 

“I think a good rule of thumb is: when you feel the need to drop names (Stirner, Godwin, et al.), you're using a crutch.” (Mat)

“Oh, and by the way, you quote Godwin, Stirner, and somebody

called Gilles Dauve (whoever he is) as "proving" your idea

of anarchism is the "right" one.” (Dave)

 

Well, it’s pretty hard to discuss whether a view is in line with a particular tradition without dropping names, isn’t it?!  I’m just saying that certain of my views are in continuity with elements in anarchism which have a history behind them.  And if certain aspects of anarchism are lost, is it still anarchism or does it become something else?

 

“so how is normalcy repressing people? goths laugh at

> jocks just as much as jocks laugh at goths.” (Greg)

 

The problem isn’t some specific trait labelled as “normal”, it is the gesture of labelling.  If you have a “community” which sets its “norms” and excludes others who violate them, then the norms define what is “normal”.  The norms can, of course, be anything.  The important thing is to make sure that neither the jocks nor the goths manage to seize power over the other group and impose its norm.

 

“Andrew Flood correctly pointed out that your posturing

was only possible for somebody with zero experience

of living in a working class ghetto,” (Dave)

 

Which no doubt also means that people who live in working class ghettos never engage in so-called “anti-social behaviour”, no?  In any case, all this speculation about my origins is ad hominem nonsense, and it’s equally the case that the rejection of my arguments is only possible for someone with zero experience of normalist persecution.

 

The subtleties of my position are lost on many critics, who don’t seem to be able to get outside the decent/criminal binary.  Well, the whole point of “victory to the anti-social” is that the victory is the destruction of the binary (and not simply the continuation of the present activities of the excluded), a destruction which can only come from the side of the excluded, or at least from those who reject the label of the in-group (the decent, the law-abiding, the pro-social).  This is a wilful or “symptomatic” misreading which allows people to cling to this binary and ignore the challenge I was posing.

 

“It is dishonest to pretend that those who disagree with you have an "uncritical" attitude.”

 

Only if they haven’t.

 

The line of argument most popular in StruggleDiscuss regarding the Zapatistas seems to go, “you aren’t going through what they’re going through, so you can’t criticise them for reacting to the realities which they (not you) face” – a position which logically precludes ANY criticism of the Zapatistas except from within their own ranks.  And of course, this argument expresses the same refusal of reflexivity which arises in the idea that so-called “experience” can somehow yield an even minimally valid understanding of so-called “crime”.

 

“You probably won't admit this, of course, but, as a result

of criticisms aimed at you on the StruggleDiscuss list,

you seem now to be making something of an effort to try

to express yourself in understandable English, instead

of in the long-winded jargon which you usually favour.”

 

Do you mean that I’ve been trying to explain what I meant by the previous posts which people have so blatantly misunderstood?  Or just that I’ve been swearing a lot in response to some of the normalist abuse I’ve been taking?



 

But liberation of the psychologically different is no laughing matter, and I’ve yet to see any of my critics come up with any worthwhile ideas as to how this liberation is going to be achieved without harming the norms and the “pro-social” conformity of the included.

 

“Hey, Andrew. Nobody, and that's NOBODY, here has said anything 

even REMOTELY like "something is right because it is normal." “ (Shawn)

“The problems come, it seems to me, when you project this "defense of the normal" onto everyone who disagrees with your particular program.” (Shawn)

 

But isn’t this a logical implication of the idea of a “community” which sets “standards”?  Is it possible to defend the enforcement of norms by an in-group without becoming a defender of the normal against the abnormal?

 

I happen to think that discourse often operates with implicit or unstated assumptions which may even be unconscious, but which are demonstrably present in the way arguments are constructed.  The implicit exclusion of the “abnormal” from “community” is one such unconscious implication.

 

“If you have some reason to believe that these particular EZLN

decisions on drugs were not voluntary, then that would be a useful

bit of information.”

 

The article I reprinted on StruggleDiscuss suggested that those who use drugs are punished with forced labour and threatened with exile.  Is this “voluntary”, or is it statist control?

 

If it looks like a state, smells like a state, and acts like a state, then why call it anarchy?

 

and the speed with which you project

your pet image-of-the-enemy makes me think you're not very interested

in dialogue.  

 

On the contrary, I’m plenty interested in dialogue.  I’m just not going to engage in “dialogue” on the terms of someone else’s monologue.  I will not, for instance, play the “have you ever…” game (where the validity of one’s arguments are determined by the number of instances of victimisation one can list, or the quantity of suffering one can pile up as a basis for one’s right to speak).

 

“"Community" is a word, and one with a variety of meanings.”

 

Then by all means, give it a non-oppressive meaning and I’ll stop criticising it.  But there’s a big problem with “community” when it’s linked to legislative modalities (which are incompatible, by the way, with a recognition of virtuality or ambiguity of words, since such ambiguity makes the rules necessarily open to infinite variation in interpretation and therefore renders every “enforcement” arbitrary and invalid).

 

“I disagree. I'm not convinced that "legislation" is the problem, nor

that it is entirely avoidable.”

 

Then, explain how it’s possible to reconcile legislative modalities of action with inclusion of the psychologically-different.  Explain how the replacement of dialogue and understanding with judgement and condemnation can construct any kind of inclusive society which is not a dictatorship by the (self-defined) normal.

 

“The Deleuze-Guattari references aside, it looks like you are defining statism and normalism as more or less the same. In doing so, you remove yourself from the specific struggle against specific state

forms which anarchists have engaged in. You can't, under those 

circumstances, make a very convincing appeal for your presumably

purer anarchism.”

 

So there is no continuity in different struggles against different states?

 

If a set of discourses reproduce themselves across many different contexts and reproduce a particular type of repression (in this case, normalism – the social exclusion and persecution of the psychologically different – i.e. of those labelled as “abnormal” or “mad” and those whose actions seem incomprehensible to the self-defined “normal”), is it not necessary to be “purist” in the rejection of the set of discourses which reproduce this oppression, however they might weasel their way into different contexts?

 

“Poststructuralism has come to focus on ethics a great deal

because of a recognition that we can and must choose restraints, within other restraints of course.”

 

That sounds pretty Lacanian to me.  Lacanianism is the last bastion of Oedipus.

 

Thinking the possibility of a world beyond the master-signifier, and thus beyond legislative modalities, is one of the ways in which Deleuze and Guattari go beyond Lacan.  There is no pure opening or deterritorialisation, but there is nevertheless the possibility of a different kind of relation, referred to in A Thousand Plateaus as a plane of consistency or plane of immanence, and as smooth (as opposed to striated) space.

 

“You're dismissing, rather than

rejecting, precisely because you can't be bothered to understand.”

 

Bullshit.  Granted, this last post of yours raises some serious points about my position.  But are you really claiming that there is enough substance to much of what has gone before, that there’s anything to grasp onto in order to “understand” my critics’ positions?  When Dave says, for instance, that I obviously don’t understand the real world because if I did, I not would hold the positions I do, what exactly am I supposed to derive from this ad hominem and circular claim?

 

I have to consider and debate the arguments provided.  I can’t consider and debate the cards which are kept face-down on the table, or the defences which could be mounted but haven’t been.  The kinds of aggressive demands for conformity which have been a marked part of the debate both here and on StruggleDiscuss (e.g. “that must be wrong because if you said it in a working-class ghetto the locals would punch you”) are open only to two responses:  acceptance or rejection.  There is simply no room in the grammar of their expression for anything else.

 

And carp was flaming rather than arguing, possibly because he’s jealous of my penis, which, due to his inferiority complex, he is afraid of and has to portray as smaller than his own as a compensation.  And because large sections of his reply are given over to describing the process of wanking that he is performing in order to produce the ideas he put in his post.  (see I can flame back, and I can say FUCKING as well, see:

FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING)

 

That was a funny flame though..


		
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Sorry about the belated reply folks.  I've only just found some of the emails towards the back of my inbox, so I hadn't realised there'd been more discussion on zapatistas and drugs.  Here's a few miscellaneous replies to stuff I've not replied to yet:
 
“I think a good rule of thumb is: when you feel the need to drop names (Stirner, Godwin, et al.), you're using a crutch.” (Mat)
“Oh, and by the way, you quote Godwin, Stirner, and somebody
called Gilles Dauve (whoever he is) as "proving" your idea

of anarchism is the "right" one.” (Dave)

 

Well, it’s pretty hard to discuss whether a view is in line with a particular tradition without dropping names, isn’t it?!  I’m just saying that certain of my views are in continuity with elements in anarchism which have a history behind them.  And if certain aspects of anarchism are lost, is it still anarchism or does it become something else?

 

“so how is normalcy repressing people? goths laugh at

> jocks just as much as jocks laugh at goths.” (Greg)

 

The problem isn’t some specific trait labelled as “normal”, it is the gesture of labelling.  If you have a “community” which sets its “norms” and excludes others who violate them, then the norms define what is “normal”.  The norms can, of course, be anything.  The important thing is to make sure that neither the jocks nor the goths manage to seize power over the other group and impose its norm.

 

“Andrew Flood correctly pointed out that your posturing
was only possible for somebody with zero experience

of living in a working class ghetto,” (Dave)

 

Which no doubt also means that people who live in working class ghettos never engage in so-called “anti-social behaviour”, no?  In any case, all this speculation about my origins is ad hominem nonsense, and it’s equally the case that the rejection of my arguments is only possible for someone with zero experience of normalist persecution.

 

The subtleties of my position are lost on many critics, who don’t seem to be able to get outside the decent/criminal binary.  Well, the whole point of “victory to the anti-social” is that the victory is the destruction of the binary (and not simply the continuation of the present activities of the excluded), a destruction which can only come from the side of the excluded, or at least from those who reject the label of the in-group (the decent, the law-abiding, the pro-social).  This is a wilful or “symptomatic” misreading which allows people to cling to this binary and ignore the challenge I was posing.

 

“It is dishonest to pretend that those who disagree with you have an "uncritical" attitude.”

 

Only if they haven’t.

 

The line of argument most popular in StruggleDiscuss regarding the Zapatistas seems to go, “you aren’t going through what they’re going through, so you can’t criticise them for reacting to the realities which they (not you) face” – a position which logically precludes ANY criticism of the Zapatistas except from within their own ranks.  And of course, this argument expresses the same refusal of reflexivity which arises in the idea that so-called “experience” can somehow yield an even minimally valid understanding of so-called “crime”.

 

“You probably won't admit this, of course, but, as a result
of criticisms aimed at you on the StruggleDiscuss list,
you seem now to be making something of an effort to try
to express yourself in understandable English, instead
of in the long-winded jargon which you usually favour.”

 

Do you mean that I’ve been trying to explain what I meant by the previous posts which people have so blatantly misunderstood?  Or just that I’ve been swearing a lot in response to some of the normalist abuse I’ve been taking?

 

But liberation of the psychologically different is no laughing matter, and I’ve yet to see any of my critics come up with any worthwhile ideas as to how this liberation is going to be achieved without harming the norms and the “pro-social” conformity of the included.

 

“Hey, Andrew. Nobody, and that's NOBODY, here has said anything 

even REMOTELY like "something is right because it is normal." “ (Shawn)

“The problems come, it seems to me, when you project this "defense of the normal" onto everyone who disagrees with your particular program.” (Shawn)

 

But isn’t this a logical implication of the idea of a “community” which sets “standards”?  Is it possible to defend the enforcement of norms by an in-group without becoming a defender of the normal against the abnormal?

 

I happen to think that discourse often operates with implicit or unstated assumptions which may even be unconscious, but which are demonstrably present in the way arguments are constructed.  The implicit exclusion of the “abnormal” from “community” is one such unconscious implication.

 

“If you have some reason to believe that these particular EZLN
decisions on drugs were not voluntary, then that would be a useful

bit of information.”

 

The article I reprinted on StruggleDiscuss suggested that those who use drugs are punished with forced labour and threatened with exile.  Is this “voluntary”, or is it statist control?

 

If it looks like a state, smells like a state, and acts like a state, then why call it anarchy?

 

and the speed with which you project
your pet image-of-the-enemy makes me think you're not very interested
in dialogue.  

 

On the contrary, I’m plenty interested in dialogue.  I’m just not going to engage in “dialogue” on the terms of someone else’s monologue.  I will not, for instance, play the “have you ever…” game (where the validity of one’s arguments are determined by the number of instances of victimisation one can list, or the quantity of suffering one can pile up as a basis for one’s right to speak).

 

“"Community" is a word, and one with a variety of meanings.”

 

Then by all means, give it a non-oppressive meaning and I’ll stop criticising it.  But there’s a big problem with “community” when it’s linked to legislative modalities (which are incompatible, by the way, with a recognition of virtuality or ambiguity of words, since such ambiguity makes the rules necessarily open to infinite variation in interpretation and therefore renders every “enforcement” arbitrary and invalid).

 

“I disagree. I'm not convinced that "legislation" is the problem, nor

that it is entirely avoidable.”

 

Then, explain how it’s possible to reconcile legislative modalities of action with inclusion of the psychologically-different.  Explain how the replacement of dialogue and understanding with judgement and condemnation can construct any kind of inclusive society which is not a dictatorship by the (self-defined) normal.

 

“The Deleuze-Guattari references aside, it looks like you are defining statism and normalism as more or less the same. In doing so, you remove yourself from the specific struggle against specific state
forms which anarchists have engaged in. You can't, under those 
circumstances, make a very convincing appeal for your presumably

purer anarchism.”

 

So there is no continuity in different struggles against different states?

 

If a set of discourses reproduce themselves across many different contexts and reproduce a particular type of repression (in this case, normalism – the social exclusion and persecution of the psychologically different – i.e. of those labelled as “abnormal” or “mad” and those whose actions seem incomprehensible to the self-defined “normal”), is it not necessary to be “purist” in the rejection of the set of discourses which reproduce this oppression, however they might weasel their way into different contexts?

 

“Poststructuralism has come to focus on ethics a great deal
because of a recognition that we can and must choose restraints, within other restraints of course.”

 

That sounds pretty Lacanian to me.  Lacanianism is the last bastion of Oedipus.

 

Thinking the possibility of a world beyond the master-signifier, and thus beyond legislative modalities, is one of the ways in which Deleuze and Guattari go beyond Lacan.  There is no pure opening or deterritorialisation, but there is nevertheless the possibility of a different kind of relation, referred to in A Thousand Plateaus as a plane of consistency or plane of immanence, and as smooth (as opposed to striated) space.

 

“You're dismissing, rather than

rejecting, precisely because you can't be bothered to understand.”

 

Bullshit.  Granted, this last post of yours raises some serious points about my position.  But are you really claiming that there is enough substance to much of what has gone before, that there’s anything to grasp onto in order to “understand” my critics’ positions?  When Dave says, for instance, that I obviously don’t understand the real world because if I did, I not would hold the positions I do, what exactly am I supposed to derive from this ad hominem and circular claim?

 

I have to consider and debate the arguments provided.  I can’t consider and debate the cards which are kept face-down on the table, or the defences which could be mounted but haven’t been.  The kinds of aggressive demands for conformity which have been a marked part of the debate both here and on StruggleDiscuss (e.g. “that must be wrong because if you said it in a working-class ghetto the locals would punch you”) are open only to two responses:  acceptance or rejection.  There is simply no room in the grammar of their expression for anything else.

 

And carp was flaming rather than arguing, possibly because he’s jealous of my penis, which, due to his inferiority complex, he is afraid of and has to portray as smaller than his own as a compensation.  And because large sections of his reply are given over to describing the process of wanking that he is performing in order to produce the ideas he put in his post.  (see I can flame back, and I can say FUCKING as well, see:

FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING)

 

That was a funny flame though..


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