Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:53:59 +0200
From: "Tahir Wood" <twood-AT-uwc.ac.za>
Subject: Re: AUT: re: Deleuze and fascism


>>> lowelaclau-AT-hotmail.com 08/30/04 04:01PM >>>
I'd say that you'd have to understand the complexities of their theory a little better to do so, because you're not coming from such different perspectives. You might actually find that you'd agree with much of what they say. But if it doesn't suit you, then fine. No problems. D&G were people who literally always said that if you don't like the direction they're taking things, then leave it, they are fine with that. 

Well, that's very likely in my case. But what I was trying to find out was not simply whatever it is that they say about fascism - after all lots of people have written on the topic - but what it adds to conceptions of fascism that people like myself already have. I guess I need to be convinced as to why it would be worth my while plodding through work whose style of writing I find abominable and alienating. But if the 'complexity' precludes any sort of paraphrase or synopsis of any kind in email messages, then, I would say, that simply heightens my suspicion that there is nothing to be gained. Which brings me back to my conception of gibberish, i.e. complexity whose relevance is so hard to explain that no-one can do it. 

But let me give you an example of what I had in mind: If fascism is inside all of us, then: Why are some people rabid nationalists and others not? Why are some people racists and others not? Why do some people like to see violence against people who are different to them and others not? These are pieces of the puzzle missing from my definition at the moment. I take it that these impulses are not universal and that they are also not reducible to common human emotional responses, like aggression or anger, but rather they are shaped by the specific context of ultra-nationalism. Otherwise everyone is indeed a fascist and will always be. I think, rather, that it is well known phenomena of identification that convert ordinary frustrations into fascism, and those are god, country and family. 

Tahir



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---