File spoon-archives/blanchot.archive/blanchot_1998/blanchot.9803, message 5


Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 23:42:32 -0500
From: rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu (Reg Lilly)
Subject: MB: Clarification of List issues



Dear Blanchot Listers,
It may be helpful to contextualize the 'fork in the road' at which I find myself as moderator of this list so as to clarify my post regarding the 'fate' of this list.  Some have questioned my intentions and my sincerity.
        Administrators of the Spoon Collective (of which I am one) over the last months have been engaging in some real soul searching about the raison d'etre of the collective, its present condition, and its future course. These discussions have brought us to question which of the spoon lists are continuing by simple inertia, and for what lists real arguments can be made for their continued existence. Running the lists at Spoons require requires more time, sweat and tears than I could ever have imagined before I joined as an administrator -- it doesn't 'just happen.'  These conversations are not just healthy intellectual exercises, but have a fundamental practical
significance.  It is probable that more than a few lists that are part of the Collective will no longer be so.
        It is therefore important, both for myself and for the Collective, that this and the other lists serve some 'communal' need.  Obviously there are many possible definitions and criteria for what this would mean, but it is my judgment (as fallible as it may be) that this list has not, for
quite some time, been of much service; occasionally there have been 'outbreaks' of fine conversation, and certainly there are many individuals broadly and deeply read in Blanchot (and others) from whom we all could learn a great deal.  Unfortunately, conversation on the list has been
dominated by a discourse that I cannot argue serves any real communal need; indeed, this discourse has struck me as at best an incommunicative hermeticism.  A list that otherwise has a vibrant and open discourse can perhaps quite easily and without significant ill-effects bear such self-indulgent threads; unfortunately on the list in its present state this discourse *seems* to have all but colonized what otherwise would be silence and, in the process, tended to cacophonate other voices; a silent list is at least promising -- drivel punctuated only by spans of time isn't. Perhaps in the future this list can survive the latter -- at present it isn't.
        I obviously prefer *not* to have to reach the conclusion that the list is not worth the running of it, and am heartened to have received, both publically and privately, expressions from listers who want to make something of this list; the reading of "Literature and the Right to Death"
hopefully will be the first of many excellent exchanges.  If my 'threat' to close the list down inspires individuals to make use of this forum, then it will have had the best possible outcome.  However, if you find yourself receiving "MB" email, looking at the subject line, and almost invariably hitting 'delete' (and suspecting that most everyone on the list is doing the same), then it will be no surprise -- indeed, it would have to be a coup des grace -- when the list is subsequently closed down.
        In short, I wish this list to flourish, and will try to help it to do so.  But if it can't, then I'm convinced it must pass into that 'Other night' rather than languish in a space bearing Blanchot's name but not worthy of what that name is due.  At least such a passage might help open
up a space where another community of readers may form.
        To those who find these concerns and alternatives too suffocating, intolerable, or authoritarian, or who object to there being judgements of 'quality,' I can only apologize and offer a few suggestions about how they may be able to go about forming their own Blanchot group (please contact me).  And of course, if such a group forms elswhere, I'd be happy to announce on this list its formation.
        I suspect/hope that I will not have to write to this list as its moderator -- I'm not given to moderational intervention -- and I have an aversion for intellectual administrativa.  I hope to throw myself most immediately into "Literature ..." where I also hope to find many of you.

Regards,
Reg







   

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