From: Tristan Riley <triley-AT-weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: SI (addendum) 
To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com
Date: Sat, 14 May 94 11:00:16 PDT
Cc: triley-AT-weber.ucsd.edu (me)


I meant to do this little bit of close reading in the last post as a
demonstration of how Tad Kepley's words had been amenable to a
reading with which he is unhappy enough to tell me that I cannot
read.  Forgot to do it there, but will do it here and will then drop
all this.  Here's the exchange on the SI's 'transformative' agenda:

>> >> >  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...

Here Tad Kepley seems to imagine he's made crystal clear what he's
arguing about the SI's position re: the original questions
concerning the possibility of radical social change and the most
appropriate sphere/s within which to carry this out--as he points
out in his subsequent post, he means here "No, the sits are not
resoundingly defeatist re: radical transformation because they do
not concentrate on the sphere of poetics, but instead understand
such transformation as being about the economic as well" but this is
not what he says.  Having come across more than one or two folks in
my time who seem to fit fairly straightforwardly in the "Generation
X, soi disant nihilist, nothin' ever changes but one can still be
hip by droppin' the proper avant-garde names at the right times"
social type and having heard more than a few of them rant about how
the SI was *really* much too hip to care much about revolution and
Marx and all that but were *actually* just a sort of cool 50s-60s
version of today's 'radical' and disaffected youth, I wondered if in
Tad Kepley's words above he was saying "No, the sits were not
concentrating on transformation" since he had already answered "yes"
to a question about whether the sort of work the SI was largely
engaged in (that is, 'poetics', making movies, writing essays/books, making
art), at least for a certain period of time, was "defeatist".  *This*
comment seemed just the sort of comment I have heard from the avant
garde radical chic folks I mention above, so I asked for
clarifications.  Tad Kepley responded with more murkiness.  

Tad Kepley may now rightly say that I was assuming his remarks might
fit to a mold which he might argue doesn't fit him well.  He will
however also perhaps notice the number of times I requested
clarification before making even any veiled accusations that he
might be one of those avant-garde hipsters and notice as well his
enigmatic responses to same.  He might then perhaps think for one or
two seconds longer the next time he contemplates accusing someone
(even an academician,  a group we know from Tad Kepley's righteous and
'unsullied by the evils of academia' earlier words merits only his
undying contempt) of being unable to read and instead wonder how
well he has expressed himself.

Tristan