Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 11:41:41 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: SI
To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com
Cc: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com, me <triley-AT-weber.ucsd.edu>





On Fri, 13 May 1994, Tristan Riley wrote:

> >> >  Isn't it slightly defeatist
> >> >> to concentrate on the sphere of poetics for transformation at the expense
> >> >> of the "real" substrate of economics/politics?
> >> >
> >> >Resoundingly yes.  
> >> 
> >> Could one request elaboration on this?  Should one take this as a
> >> claim that the SI was "resoundingly...defeatist"?  In what sense?  
> >
> >"concentrate on the sphere of poetics for tranformation" ??!! Maybe we're 
> >not talking about the same sits, here, guys...
> 
> Again I would ask what argument about these "sits...we're...talking 
> about" is hiding behind lots of question marks and exclamation points.  
> Are you claiming there was no theme of Marxist revolution and social
> transformation in SI writings and practice?  Or that this theme was
> something unimportant in SI theory? If so, what is the
> evidence for this claim (beyond the exasperation of question marks
> and exclamation points)?

DOES someone else want to take this thread? I'm exasperated. YOU NEED to 
re-read his question, and then my answer. Maybe I should go through his 
question word by word, and see if it helps any. He asked if it was 
slightly defeatist of the sits to "concentrate on poetics for 
transformation" while ignoring socio-economic substrata. I said 
"Resoundingly Yes"-  a simple answer, 'cause the sits NEVER concentrated 
on "poetics" for "transformation". I also made enough Marxian references in 
my posts on this subject for anyone (nearly) to easily infer _MY_ position-
My _new_ position is that your reading and comprehension skills need to 
be improved dramatically... I answered "Yes" to a simple question  
without elaborating for chris'sake! No wonder all my professorial friends 
are always shaking their heads in dismay. FIGURE IT OUT- the question and 
its answer, that is. It shouldn't have to be spelled out for you, damnit! 

> 
> >No, one shouldn't take "resoundingly yes" as a claim that the SI was 
> >"resoundingly...defeatist". You'd better re-read his question.
> >
> 
> Q: Isnt' it slightly defeatist to...?
> A: Resoundingly yes.
> What am I missing in this reading and what am I to learn in
> re-reading?
> 
>   
> >> > These guys weren't 
> >> >late-twentieth century self-hating collegians (even though they _did_ write 
> >> >some pretty stupid stuff about the Newark and LA riots).
> >> 
> >> Perhaps more elaboration here on the connection between "self-hating
> >> collegians" and SI writings on Watts? And why "stupid stuff"? 
> >> 
> >> 
> >
> >The sits wrote their stuff on those riots from a position of more than 
> >relative ignorance about the actual conditions in those respective cities 
> >and America in general (an ignorance that turns up elsewhere in their 
> >work). They also were tempered with the Frogs' fascination with American 
> >black folks- a fascination bordering on the racist.
> 
> What of their "fascination" with other such urban upheavals about
> which they might have been better informed--e.g., Paris '68,
> Algeria--and about which they also wrote such "stupid stuff"?

WHAT? What does that have ANYTHING to do with what I just said above? 
Nothing, that's what. I'm speaking of three specific texts, dealing 
exclusively with the subjects mentioned above. You may be asking a 
specific question, but you're asking it from false assumptions gained by 
a misreading of the entire original post, so I won't answer that here 
until we get you unconfused. 

 That
> is, is this what it appears on the surface (a rejection of the
> celebration of specific violent class- and race- based upheaval 
> by the SI on the grounds of their ignorance of local situations) or is it
> something else (e.g., rejection of *any* such thread in the sits in the
> larger service of selectively reading the vanguard Marxist politics
> right out of their work)?
>

Yeah, that's what I want to do. Let me help. The sits never read Marx! It
(the sits work) was all revisionist tripe! The Frog C.P. and Danny
Cohn-Bendit were the true radical elements in the '68 fiasco! Me and
Stewart Home think Jorn was the only _real_ situationist! There, have fun
with that. 
 
> 
> >I was drawing an allegory between that stuff and the reams of stupid shit
> >written by bored PC ivy league undergrads after the recent LA
> >conflagration...  which is stupid not just cause it's stupid, but because 
> >it's self-abusive...
> 
> It's "stupid...cause it's stupid...[and] because it's self-abusive".
> Less than clear to me, I'm afraid, precisely what all this means.
> One possible argument lurking beneath this is that *any* sympathetic
> treatment of uprisings of largely non-white, non-middle class,
> non-intellectual class groups by largely white, middle class or
> intellectual class groups is to be dismissed as merely "stupid" or
> "self-abusive".  There are other readings which would make Tad
> Kepley's comments less trivial--I'm eager to believe that one of
> these others is what Tad Kepley intends.
> 

Good lord. 


Tad "My Negation is Negated" Kepley
AUTONOMIST NECHAYEVISTS FOR A FRIENDLY TOMORROW