Subject: Re: SI
To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com
Date: Sat, 14 May 94 10:25:47 PDT
Cc: triley-AT-weber.ucsd.edu (me)


Tad Kepley writes:
>
>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-
>

All this could, I think, have been made quite clear from the start
by perhaps adding some of the actual information you provide here
(e.g., that you understand the sits to "NEVER [have] concentrated on
poetics for transformation") to the cryptic comments you were making
earlier.  Not everyone reads all of your posts to the list--some
looked at a few of your refined arguments during your recent
exchange with someone else whose name I cannot remember and decided
it wasn't worth the time to read much more of what you write.
 
 
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! 
>

Indeed it does need more spelling out than the degree you were
giving it and minus any reading of your other posts on the subject.
I don't think it's so difficult to make relatively simple points
like "the original poster is assuming the sits attempted to focus
only on "poetics" when in fact there were significant Marxist
elements in the SI theoretically and otherwise"--there, I just made
it.  You were instead making cryptic and very brief comments from
which I think my original reading was quite justified.

 
>> >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. 

It has much to do with it if one is uncertain about the motivations
for castigating the SI for its treatment of urban uprisings in the
US--there are *many* possible reasons for such a denunciation, and
you had been not at all clear in my view as to which reason/s you
were taking as your own.  My reading of your comments above coupled
with your earlier statements was that you dismissed the SI's work
here because it was overly and simplistically celebratory of largely
black urban rebellions and that it was "self-abusive" in a "PC"
fashion.  This made me wonder why one would seemingly want so
fervently to reject such a position being taken by white
intellectuals as "stupid" by definition (again, inasmuch as you
elaborated *not* *at* *all* when I asked you if you would do so).
 
> 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 don't really understand what you imagine you are accomplishing
with such attempts at wit.  I tried to make fairly clear what I
thought were the implications of your enigmatic comments here, you
have pointed out that there was miscommunication (whether one
imagines it is due to my poor reading skills or your refusal to
move beyond the cryptic in responding to my questions is another
question), end of story.  If you'd like now to engage in some more
of the ludicrous pomposity of the thread I mentioned earlier (and
which led me to understand that you could be profitably ignored from
then on), you are of course free to do so--I will at that point
return to deleting your posts unread.

I think at least a bit more of this interaction might have turned
out differently if, as another person mentioned, you and a few other
respondents to the original person's questions on the SI had
actually bothered to offer alternative readings and correction
rather than blustering and very brief assaults on the original
poster for being so lost (with the concomitant theme of course that
Tad Kepley is really HIP to the SI and other such avant garde stuff
as he's argued so persuasively and long-windedly elsewhere on this
group).

 
Tristan