File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2004/anarchy-list.0409, message 36


Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 17:19:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: andrew robinson <ldxar1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: reply to Shawn



Hello again Shawn.

 

“We are, once again, NOT talking about "defending the enforcement of 

norms by and in-group." I've made it explicit that i am talking about groups establishing voluntary internal standards and sanctions.”

 

The difference being?

 

The point is that if a group of people all agree to do (or not to do) something, there’s no need for “standards and sanctions” at all.  If, on the other hand, there is a recourse to “standards and sanctions”, this requires that those sanctioned be implicitly excluded because they do not conform to standards which others have set, which they by their deviance have proven themselves either not to accept or to be unable to conform to, and which therefore make them excluded from the in-group which sets the “standards and sanctions”.

 

Furthermore, the “standards and sanctions” preclude voluntarity, since presumably the person who is sanctioned cannot refuse to be sanctioned by withdrawing her/his consent from the edicts and thus remain unsanctioned.

 

Even if there is no in-group/out-group division prior to the repressive normative order being established, this order itself, to the extent that it actually operates in social practice, necessarily produces such a division.

 

If X hits Y because Y does something X doesn’t like, this is X hitting Y, not Y hitting her/himself through X.

 

“That depends *entirely* on the process by which the standards were

established.” (Shawn)

 

Yeah right.  Let’s replace micropolitics with an appeal to Processes and Procedures which are justified above and beyond the social relations which result from them!

 

For me, on the contrary, the effects in terms of social relations of oppression and exclusion are precisely what render justified or otherwise the “processes” and “procedures”.

 

“Two, i'm going to say once again that i don't find it useful to

call any structure with legislative and/or enforcement powers a 

"state." A definition that can't cope with differences of scale, of permanance, of active mandate, or of intent is probably a hindrance in determining what real-world anarchist organization might look like” (Shawn)

 

I might take this more seriously if you’d tell me how you WOULD define a “state”.  And therefore what it is, as an anarchist, that you are against.

 

Calling two otherwise different entities “states” and opposing both to one degree or another is not a definition which “cannot cope with” the differences.  It simply concentrates on certain characteristics as the relevant ones in determining the application of this particular concept.   To take a similar example, I would refer both to well-paid computer programmers with high salaries and to sweatshop workers with barely subsistence wages and appalling working conditions as being “exploited” and as being “workers”.  And I would say that in both cases, I oppose exploitation.  It should, however, be instantly clear that this doesn’t mean I’m saying the two cases are “the same”, or that the opposition has the same intensity in both cases!

 

As for your claim about “real-world anarchist organisation”, well, excuse me for insisting on precise language!  If it involves statist forms, it isn’t anarchist by definition, whatever other positive characteristics it might have.  And I have no wish to excuse the “imperfections” of “real world” organisations by giving up precise language and attaching myself uncritically to others’ ideologies and commitments which are distinct from my own.  Rather, it is absolutely crucial to retain a critical sense towards even the best movements and not to throw oneself into adulation by blunting words and confusing categories.

 

It may well be that you and I are not arguing about words at all.  In fact we want quite different things in terms of social outcomes.  If so, then my precision is not at all a “hindrance” or “failure to cope”, it is a precise expression of a political project which happens to be different from your own.  And in such a case, the “real-world” rhetoric you resort to is also irrelevant, because the question is not about WHETHER one can engage with real-world issues, but HOW one categorises them in terms of one’s political goals.  Of course, your goals, which do not challenge normalism at its deepest levels and which don’t challenge what I would call “states” if these happen to be local, democratic and relatively impermanent, may well be more “achievable” than mine, because they break less decisively with the ideological coordinates of the present system and because they are more easily conceded by the system and are thus easier to “realise”.  This does not make them more able to engage
 with the real world, nor does it make my commitments a “hindrance”.  If anything, it shows your views to be a submission to dominant “realities” instead of a challenge to them.

 

“> Then by all means, give it a non-oppressive meaning and I’ll stop

> criticising it.” (Andy)

“I've already given you plenty of references for the kinds of thinking on "community" which appeals to me.” (Shawn)

 

Yes, with vague ideas such as coercion – oh sorry, “enforcement” – which is simultaneously “voluntary”, so that somebody can at once be part of a group enforcing a norm and at the same time be the one on the receiving end of its violent implementation.  Maybe clear to you, but not to me.

 

Besides which, my challenge was not to give references, but to give a definition (since the boundaries of your concept are ill-defined).  And not merely any definition, but a NON-OPPRESSIVE definition, since you object to my claim that the concept is somehow complicit in oppression.

 

Your claim that “community has a variety of meanings”, while true, is also irrelevant to my argument if all the meanings fall within a broadly oppressive range, differing only by degree.  “Fascist” also has “a variety of meanings”, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to smash fascism in all its forms.

 

In other words, you have not responded adequately to my claim that “the kinds of community which appeal to you” are in fact normalist, oppressive and implicitly statist (the claim which you criticised me for making).  You wanted to make the issue an issue of my alleged essentialism for insisting on precise definitions, when in fact the problem is that your position – as I keep trying to demonstrate – is implicitly normalist.

 

“If there is an authoritarianism, or normalist will-to-exclude, that is "demonstrably present" in my position, then feel free to demonstrate it. So far you are just projecting your unwillingness or inability to imagine voluntary constraints onto an argument with very different premises.” (Shawn)

 

Let’s explain for the umpteenth time.

 

Constraint = external; voluntary = internal.

 

The kind of constraint you refer to includes externalised norms and punishments.  The former depends on the operation of a superego and a splitting of the will which precludes voluntarity, while the latter is by definition against the will of the punished and as such is not voluntary.

 

To reject the idea of voluntary constraint is to reject logical self-contradiction.  Next thing you’ll be telling me I’m being authoritarian by refusing to accept that freedom equals slavery, war equals peace, repression equals liberty or that it really is possible to have a war on terror.

 

And why is it normalist to believe in “voluntary constraint”?  In practice the constraint will necessarily be of one group of people by another, i.e. of those unwilling or unable to conform by those who enforce the norms and punishments, so in fact the punished are excluded from the group which “volunteers” and a relation of oppression is established.  Because the deviance of the excluded group is treated as a moral or characterological flaw – an unwanted “behaviour” – instead of as an alternative choice or a psychological alignment or a socially meaningful action, this group is excluded from the inside of social meaning and is implicitly labelled as “abnormal”.

 

“In this particular case, there's the charge that "discourse

often operates with implicit or unstated [or unconscious]

assumptions." This charge, in the context of my debate with

Andrew, is either being levelled at me in a fairly noncommittal

way, or it is somewhat beside the point.”

 

You’d do well to pay more attention to your own arguments!  I raised this point because of your claim that no-one here or on StruggleDiscuss had used normalist arguments and that there was no way your own position could be normalist.

 

“What i'm not sympathetic to is the attempt to make Foucault -

or Nietzsche - the basis for some new moralism”

 

Given your alleged tolerance and your repeated accusations of intolerance against me, you’re very quick to start throwing anathemas against anything you disagree with.  First it’s elitism, now it’s moralism.  I notice you haven’t defined this term.  Also that YOU are the one who is advocating general moral norms, and therefore, YOU are the moralist in the sense of being in favour of imposing a “morality”.  Again, Orwell returns to haunt us;  firstly we have those who are voluntarily coerced, now we have resistance to morality labelled as moralism!!!

 

“If you assume others are "herd animals," without individuality and with a need for guidance, it's hard to engage with them as fellow anarchists (or citizens, or neighbors, or whatever designation pleases you most).”

 

And now you put political correctness before empirical evidence!  The point is that, unlike you, I do not ASSUME things about others, I DERIVE claims about others from observing their actions and discourse.  If people act like herd animals, and if they demand to be subject to overarching norms (hence by their own definition “in need of guidance”), and if they refuse to individuate themselves but instead fall back on arguments of the “us ordinary folk think…” type, it is not at all an “assumption” to conclude that, in their present state of thought (though not necessarily in their potentialities), they are an unthinking herd, unable to free themselves from the mastery of others (or of “the community”), and with a serious individuality deficit!  So that, as a precondition for engaging with them as fellow autonomous beings, it is necessary to challenge their slave moralities and their repressive assumptions!  Indeed, to challenge such repressive beliefs IS to treat them as individuals
 able to break free of their authoritarian attachments, rather than to reinforce their deindividuating herd attachments by reinforcing their own fantasies that they are more autonomous, free-thinking and anarchistic than they really are!

 

“I think you've taken one side of the poststructuralist analysis, which emphasizes - to a potentially paralyzing degree - how representation never quite captures the workings of active "differance," which always confuses issues, pushes us to defer decision, etc, but neglected the other side of that analysis which emphasizes that one must still make decisions, make representations, learn to address necessary legislations to an "ethics" that can not be fulfilled completely.”

 

You’re right, but again you insist on misportrayal.  This is not “neglecting” but disagreeing.  In fact I have written lengthy papers rebutting “constitutive lack”, “radical democracy” and the rest of the reactionary side of poststructuralism.  I am utterly opposed to the anti-revolutionary implications which stem, for instance, from Derrida’s insistence that Law cannot be overcome, from Mouffe’s demand for “decision” and therefore the state, and from the Lacanian commitment to an eternal return of lack at the heart of being.

 

Basically this side of poststructuralism is the repression/recuperation of the insights established in the other aspect, the critical aspect.  It is an attempt to nullify the awareness of contingency by re-imposing the order which has been disseminated, by worshipping the corpse of God.

 

I agree with the poststructuralist critique of fixity and essentialism, but I disagree with those strands within poststructuralism which try to combine this critique with an irrationalist and dogmatic affirmation of legislative politics – a legislative politics which they cannot justify, precisely because their approach has denied the very grounds which could potentially justify it.

 

The “necessity” is only ever asserted, never demonstrated.  It is a matter of faith for these authors.  As often as not, it is a stepping-back from the radical implications of their own work.  It is not an ontological necessity as they claim, but rather, is a psychological necessity resulting from their own commitment to reactive psychological structures.  In other words, it is an attempt to re-impose their own “normality”, in the face of the radical “madness” unleashed by their own critiques.  To keep their “sanity”, at the cost of their analytical consistency!

 

“In doing so, I think you run the risk of not really being able to *do* anything except protest exclusions.”

 

Well, what exists beyond the smashing of legislations is the free flow of desires.  I think there is plenty of “doing” which is extra-legislative in this way.  I do not need a master-signifier in order to act.  Neither do you, you just THINK you need one.

 

Of course it means in the present, I refuse the demand to play the games of the bosses, to construct a new order or a new society which will impose its order.  And it means the task of the present is above all to smash the legislative structures which have risen up everywhere!  It does not even preclude supporting partial measures and reforms, provided these are recognised as partial, as “lesser evils” or better still, “transitional demands” so to speak, and are criticised for their inadequacy.  In fact, until the present global capitalist system is smashed, it seems very silly to say that “not being able to do anything except protest exclusions” is somehow a limit in the present!

 

“The problem is that exclusion, however much

it hurts our gentle sensibilities to think so, may be unavoidable, at

least at the philosophical level where "legislative modalities" and

such matter.”

 

This is similar to the standard poststructuralist approach:  substitute macho “realism” for substantive argument.  I will not believe something just because it makes me sound more “realistic”.  If something offends my desires, I will resist it, and not repress my desires beneath a veil of machismo in order to conform to some in-group or other by not seeming “gentle” or unrealistic.

 

The point, however, is to PROVE that it is necessary.  In fact I suspect that the claim, given that it bears on future potentialities which have not developed and given that it is not possible to observe every possible set of social relations in order to determine that in fact all of them contain exclusion, is neither provable nor falsifiable, EXCEPT in the scenario that a society without exclusion happened to be reached, which would falsify it.

 

And the point, then, is to look at the discursive effects of asserting its necessity or its non-necessity.  The effects of asserting its necessity are precisely to blunt your “sensibilities” to the suffering of the excluded, and thus to reinforce domination.  The effects of asserting its non-necessity are precisely to generate a desire to protest and better yet, to resist exclusions wherever these arise.

 

“Anarchism attempts to deal with the need to choose and

differentiate by emphasizing voluntary association alongside mutual

aid (and recognition of some basic "equity"). It doesn't pretend

we'll just all get along, or all agree, or all hang out together in

one big happy family.”

 

This in fact involves two distinct claims which you confuse.  The second sentence seems to be the claim:

There is no guarantee that social conflict will not happen.

The first sentence involves the claim:

There is a need for social conflict to be regulated in the form of a decision, or a social form, which suppresses conflict.

 

And you assume the first claim implies the second.  Actually it does not.

 

The point about a world without legislative politics is that if conflicts occur, there is NO pretence that they are “resolved” by some fixed “procedure”, or that, because someone sticks a label on a conflict or some third party takes sides, the conflict no longer exists.  Rather, conflicts are simply conflicts – not something to be “decided”.  Both sides, in their unconditional pursuit of active desires, are equally justified, and equally unjustified.

 

While confounding the utopian statist desire for “decision, this provides a maximal situation in two ways.  First of all, because conflicts are not able to destroy the general context of voluntarity and freedom by producing a closure of space; rather, they burn out as localised occurrences, without destroying the generally free context.  Secondly, because the recognition of this basis for conflicts, and the resultant avoidance of the mechanisms of labelling, silencing, etc. which render conflicts insoluble and which disguise their basis, provides the best opportunity for open-ended strategies of conflict resolution which resolve conflicts by rearticulating the desires of those concerned.  

 

This is assuming, of course, that the conflicts are in fact between two active-desiring subjects.  And this suggests a third advantage.  Wherever legislative politics exist, superegos must also exist, and this necessitates a set of psychological structures which themselves render conflicts not only possible but necessary, because for every law there is logically a criminal, for every commandment a sinner.  The superego requires the external demonstration of the social morality which it expresses, and therefore, criminals and sinners must be found (or invented) and punished.  And of course, any one superegoistic morality must seem to any other superegoistic morality to be nothing more than immorality.  So legislative societies necessitate at least two kinds of conflict:  those between in-group and out-group (its own excluded supplement), and those between adherents of different master-signifiers.  In addition, they cause repression of desire which returns as “Real”, as a disruptive
 force which generates further conflicts.  So a context where legislation and the superego are taken away is a situation which maximises the possibility for avoiding conflicts in the first instance.  While it is a context where conflicts remain POSSIBLE, it is not (unlike the world of neurotic superegoist moralities) a context in which they are NECESSARY.

 

“I reject your notion of "normality" to begin with. And i reject your

assumption that any collective will come to be dominated by "the

normal." Communities which refuse fusion of interests and identities

as what they hold in-common simply will not develop in the way you are suggesting.”

 

You have “rejected” my suggestion.  I did not ask for acceptance or rejection, I asked for explanation.  I said, EXPLAIN WHY your kind of community would not end in normalist domination.  You have not explained how it would avoid the inexorable logic I have suggested motivates normalism.

 

I would suggest that if a community rejected fusion of identities and interests, it would also reject legislation, since, if there is no overarching general interest, there is no basis for laying down laws (which become no more than the will of one of two contending parties), and if there is no fusion of identities (no “collective will”), there is no-one to enforce the laws (since any enforcer would simply be a contending party arbitrarily enforcing a personal or in-group will against someone else).

 

“I assume that the "set of discourses" is "normalism," but it isn't

really all that clear that we are well served by this meta-ism, which

effaces the differences between circumstances under which "norms"

might be invoked.”

 

Who is this “We”?  I would suggest in fact that the “We” is the normal, since it is the normal for whom the differences between normalist regimes are significant enough to efface awareness of normalism.  Since normalism oppresses me, it “serves” me very well to oppose it.  Perhaps as a normal person it does not serve you, but this does not make you, or the “We” you invoke, any less complicit in its oppressive self-reproduction, and it does not explain how your implicit defence of normalism is compatible with your affirmation of emancipatory politics.

 

But the notion that you can label the position "lacanian" and then

brush it away with the name "Oedipus," as if the implications of

these things were clear, is disheartening...

 

Are you objecting simply to the excessive bluntness of my reply, or are you objecting to the whole idea that it is possible to draw patterns of how social logics operate?  I think discursive social forces have implicit logics which drive them, which produce effects in terms of social relations and practices.  However open they may be to deconstruction, their operation remains monological and predictable for as long as their basic logic is reproduced.  I think your invocation of the necessity of conflict and of decision reproduces the logic which arises in Lacanian theories such as those of Laclau, Mouffe and Zizek (of course with different nuances and components, but with certain unavoidable consequences which arise from the logic).  

 

“referred to in A Thousand Plateaus as a plane of consistency or plane of immanence, and as smooth (as opposed to striated) space.” (Andy)

“I'm not sure we're getting anywhere here except tangled up in the

specific word choices of the translators of D & G.” (Shawn)

 

The point about all these concepts is that they express an affirmation of the possibility of a non-legislative kind of social “doing”.  A smooth space, for instance, involves connections (and possibly conflicts) between rhizomes which are not reducible to any tree-like structure, and hence which have no transcendent/legislative dimension.  A plane of consistency suggests a social and material world which is absolutely immanent, and which therefore, again, does not involve legislation, but rather, the interconnections of a multiplicity of machines of desire.  Whatever their lapses on occasion, I simply do not buy your claim that Deleuze and Guattari partake of the politics of lack and the “necessity” of legislation.

 

“You think the "evidence" is there for your judgment. Fine. I think you've shown plenty of evidence that you place the holy war against "normalism" above understanding the positions of those who you seem to judge "normalist-until-proven-otherwise." “

 

If you use the same language as other people, don’t be surprised if people think you are thinking the same way.

 

Your attacks on my alleged arrogance run up against three huge obstacles.  Firstly, the fact that you utterly ignore the context in which your intervention took place, and that you have never made any attempt to distance yourself from the flaming and personal abuse I was subjected to on StruggleDiscuss.  Apparently it is only MY language and assumptions which are open to criticism in line with your standards of tolerance, because all the others agree with your position and their intolerance is therefore tolerable.

 

Secondly, your arguments have repeatedly demonstrate either that you do in fact hold the positions I attack as normalist, or that you engage in self-contradiction (such as the idea of voluntary coercion) one pole of which confirms my claims.

 

Thirdly, that your own defence of legislative politics relies on a refusal to engage with any argument which rejects the core dogma of the necessity both of conflict and of decision.  Hence, for instance, your implication that if I refuse to accept your claim that people will always and of necessity fight each other, this must be because my “gentle sensibilities” are easily offended.

 

“As i said, if you have any evidence of coercion in the

process, please make it known.”

 

A slightly strange request, given that your use of the concept of “sanctioning” implies coercion (unless you’re limiting “sanctioning” to positive sanctions and disapproval).  You refer to “enforcement” – how can there be “enforcement” which is not coercion?

 

In any case, here’s an excerpt from the latest diktat of the Zapatista Councils of Good [sic] Government (there’s no such thing as “good government”);

"The Good Government Junta in zapatista territory still completely prohibits the cultivation, trafficking and consumption of drugs, those who do so shall be expelled by zapatista laws. Zapatista support bases who plant these narcotics shall be rejected by the organization and the community where that person resides. The same shall apply to those who consume.

 

"If a parcel is found which has been planted, those plants will be burned and destroyed. The person who has done the planting shall be responsible for the costs of the destruction, such as the cost of the gasoline to burn them, and he shall be expelled from the organization. The person who is consuming shall be punished with ten days of work and six months out of the organization. By accord of the Good Government Junta, each municipality in its territory shall make a survey every year in order to be certain that there are no people who are engaged in this illicit work."

 

Explain to me if you will, Shawn, how those who are subject to this repression, who are banned from consuming substances of their own choice, who are subject to the disciplinary surveillance of survey teams, who are not only subject to the violence of having their private crops destroyed but who are also robbed in order to meet the costs of other people’s vendettas against them, who are forced to work against their will and expelled against their wishes from their homes, and who are denied a political voice in the very organisations which attack them, through being excluded from “the organisation – explain how these people are VOLUNTEERING to be persecuted, how this is all a matter of VOLUNTARY prohibition, even though the text refers explicitly to laws, fixed and imposed penalties, and to a prohibition from above by a governmental organisation!  And even though it is written in the style of bourgeois laws everywhere!

 

Notice also that these laws are not voluntary for the communities involved.  The communities are themselves threatened with penalties for defying the edicts and are under orders to conduct surveys whether they want to or not.  And remember, an individual or community expelled by the Zapatistas is left at the tender mercies of the Mexican army.

 

Enough of this doublethink.  There is no such thing as voluntary coercion.

 

“Right... Perhaps you're about to tell me that Dave or Carp or Ilan

or myself have made "aggressive demands for conformity." “

 

I’ll reproduce the list of insults I was treated to for my unorthodox positions on StruggleDiscuss as evidence not only of a few such demands, but of a concerted pattern of attempted normalisation through verbal abuse carried on over a period of several weeks, in which, in addition to plain abuse of the “you’re an asshole” type, my motives were impugned and I was repeatedly portrayed as unworthy of even arguing with:

 

"Certainly one of the things that has highly effectively derailed a whole generation of activists is this descent into bullshit" (Krossie)

"It is not "censoring unusual and creative ideas" - it is exposing the king new clothes and the wish to con people." (Ilan)
"some sort of mystifying, gelatinous fog who’s
only purpose is to give you some sort of pseudo intellectual cred for what ever it is you may be saying." (Krossie)
"This is little more than you being an elitist asshole who wants to feel different and special and smarter than and better than " (David Grenier)

"Any one who is not in the service of libertarian communism
and monger words in the "intelectual sphere" is in the service
of themselves and the class society." (Ilan)
"Well shit, I couldn't really care less about tha nonsense you spill" (NikeChiapas)

"the language you use is VERY CAREFULLY "dumbed up" and I'm just pointing out it means nothing to nobody, possibly, I suspect,
even yourself?" (Krossie)
"it meens that either you paddle a stale merchandish or not wise enough to express it in plain language." (Ilan)

"The great thing about simple language is that it
exposes sloppy thinking. A very mild example from
Andrew's last post" (Chekov)

"Your long-winded newspeak is beyond brain numbing." (NikeChiapas)
"He he get over yourself. It is possible for ANYBODY with even a modicum of intellegence to fire off crap like "vangaurdist strata" or what ever." (Krossie)
"this is just a recipe for evading
scrutiny of your ideas," (Chekov)

"Only an inflated ego think hir wisdom is so
great that it is worth for the people to make
extra effort to decifer that wisdom that was not
good enough to be expressed in a way people
understand." (Ilan)
"If people do not understand what you say it means
you either do not know what you say or do not know
how to express what you want to say in plain language....
or you just want "to take people to a ride" into
the miror world of Alice." (Ilan I think)

"his whining like a suburban 14 year old about "conformity" is *not* worth my time," (David Grenier)

"in marked contrast to yours which is so
far up itself that it is almost funny." (Chekov)

"I still insist that if you cannot describe your wisdom
in the language of the common person in the street, your
wisdom and motivation are questionable." (Ilan)

"I mean if you want to have a fake erudition contest or a bit a psuedo intellectual wankology" (Krossie)

"I can't believe this hole thread got started cuz some one wanted to show how many words they know." (Nike Chiapas)

"I've become bored with dredging through this
elitist drivel." (Chekov)

"Inventing new words is just super elitism claiming
your wisdom is bigger than the comprehension of
regular people and the words they use." (Ilan)

"the use of such language is typical of the bullshiter." (Chekov)

"the bullshit Andrew regularly spews on this list" (David Grenier)

"the real motivation for using specialised language and
complex constructions is that you have actually got
nothing to say or you are merely repeating obvious
facts that even the smallest child would know." (Chekov)
"You need lot of words to camoflage and deceive people." (Ilan)
"It requires NO thinking within ANY framework the spew out a meaningless fog of bullshit" (Krossie)

 

Yet you insist on portraying this kind of verbal abuse as serious concerns which I am somehow arrogantly brushing aside (despite the fact that I repeatedly tried to respond to the accusations and to justify my position, only to face more of the same name-calling and motive-impugning).

 

Given your objections to my discussion of unconscious motivations – which, unlike a lot of these claims, is based on a careful analysis of the implications and elisions of concrete instances of discourse – perhaps you could clarify why you presumably see it as “serious concerns about the practicality of certain kinds of language” to suggest that I am out to con people, to evade scrutiny and/or to show off, when the only flimsy evidence for these insulting claims is that I happen to have used a few words – in the context of a radical discussion list – which these individuals happened not to understand?  Or why exactly my alleged lack of personal wisdom, of a sense of humour or of a sufficiently working-class background are issues of “serious concern” in assessing my claims on concrete subjects?

 

Or why, indeed, the whole issue of language became such a hot topic, at just the time when the attempts to rebut my arguments in the piece under discussion (my attack on social cleansing) were starting to look increasingly threadbare?  Or why so many people felt such an urgent need to expend so many words and so much bile just to attack something they admit to not understanding and that most of them declared to be not worth their while?

 

“And if, as appears to be the case, you find that you're not drawing constructive engagement very many places, perhaps the fault is not with us poor benighted agents (conscious or unconscious) of "normalism." Maybe, whether or not this *should* be the case, it simply isn't useful to approach the questions of organizing for a free society in the way that you are going about it.”

 

Yeah, right.  The herd reject it, so it isn’t “useful”.

 

Perhaps you should ask, “useful to whom?”

 

In fact the response I’m getting simply demonstrates how deeply entrenched normalism is among those who call themselves radicals, and also that I must have touched a sore spot to get the kind of hostility I’ve encountered.  People would have to change their ways of thinking to go along with my critique, and they are resistant to doing this.  But then again, people would have to change their way of thinking for normalism to be overcome.  So this doesn’t prove any inadequacy in my position, it simply proves a continuity between what I was attacking in the argument and the positions of those who have attacked me as a result of the argument.

 

It is just typical of normal people to blame the excluded for their exclusion!  But, pray tell, how exactly should I go about overcoming normalism, if I’m not to challenge others’ normalist beliefs?


		
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