Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 00:07:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Tom Blancato <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com> Subject: Re: violent nonviolence/du sang impur Sorry if this is a repost, my mailer (pine) is acting up again... Tom B. On Fri, 18 Oct 1996, John Morss wrote: > Come on folks. The only genuine nonviolence is JC's "turning the other > cheek", which is at the same time an incitement/invitation/entrapment to > violence (the turning of the cheek is a provocative act) > the only strategic use of nonviolence is to attract some violence to > oneself as object in the (often *vain*) The joke here is that violent resistance is also often in vain. In fact, it is often *more* fruitless/hopeless than nonviolence. *But to understand this requires that one be able to push foward the projection of nonviolence with a similar freedom as one pushes forward the projection of violence*. Otherwise what happens is that one typically has a very low criterion for *dropping* nonviolence if it doesn't work and if it isn't understood better, wherease one sets a very high criterion for violence (working/being understood/developed, etc.) One then turns around and says, "see, nonviolence is in vain", when in fact it is neither understood nor adequately projected. When it *is* adequately projected (and I can't do it here for want of space), generally, it is more effective than people realize. But to see this requires that one think more, since the stellar "natural indexes" (read: dead bodies, for example) of violence are *absent*. Absence. But it takes something like weaving a whole world in order to see how this is so. Any invitation to nonviolence is an invitation to the other to enter into a certain weave of the world, a weave that is "there" already. hope that it will reduce the > amount/intensity of violence imposed on some others . I take Christian nonviolence to be totalist/totalitarian, and of course as a result it often spawns greater violence, psychical violence, distantial violence (i.e., Iraq bombings and embargo), radical and violent reversals ("antichristianity"), etc. Further, it can't be divorced from its philosophical underpinnings (which in Christianity are theological, monarchical, totalistic, generalizing to an enormous degree, retributive, etc.) and viewed simply as a strategy of "turning the other cheek." Indeed, nonviolence, where there is serious nonviolence, happens precisely when the simple arena of the *hit*, the hand-to-cheek in *focal contact*, or any simple *arena-within-which* is itself *problematized*. The setting of the arena in certain ways is part of what is *essentially violent*, while nonviolence as *action* is *more essentially philosophical*/thoughtful. That's why I say "thoughtaction". And grasping thoughtaction is not the same as reciting "turn the other cheek" and the whole dreary but resplendent parade of icons one most offens finds "speaking" "for" nonviolence. If you want to say that a contestational problematization is "violent", you have to bear in mind, I think, that it is contesting a more original violence. Still, there is this gesture of "turning the other cheek", of saying, "ok, go ahead, hit me...I won't fight back." Again, there is a first violence there already: that of the attacker/state/agency, etc. Even if one announces a nonviolent resistance, this must be adequately understood in the *overall context of violence*, not whether at t1 (and what arena must be installed to restrict our vision this way?) there was no actual attack by the oppressor. Anyhow, of course, even if there were no attack, if it is to ensue simply due to nonviolent demonstration, what then? And you, John, likely feel the possibility is there to assemble at your University were something to go down which was not tolerable for you there. Will you say, "this is not really nonviolent? at a demo? And would such a demo's violence/disruption be on the order of killing the children of your opponent, torturing someone, shooting someone? Do you refrain (I assume you do) from doing such things simply because it's not feasible? If you say yes, I will say "get real (2)!" :) Are you still looking for the absolute absence of violence? I'm not. Part of nonviolence, perhaps the major part, is working, even in the midst of *contestation*, to create the conditions of possibility of nonviolence. This work is possible and is done all the time. Nonviolence "proper" denotes something like extra-diplomatic contest. But a first and foremost stipulation about this granting of violence within nonviolence, and a burden for *thought*, is that adjudicated or unavoidable violence within a general orientation of nonviolence does not mean a falling of nonviolence into violence or using this recognition, this non-naivete as an excuse for violence. There is world of difference between adjudicated violence within nonviolence and straight-out violence. For example, I cultivate within myself a capacity for revenge *because* in cases where one must attack, one *can not do so* without a retributive force of desire for revenge, even a pleasure in "the kill". This does not mean that I simply let myself take revenge on anyone who has angered or wronged me, that I satisfy myself with revenge's illusion freely, but in some instances, I must be free to *attack* (i.e., I see a man raping a girl), provided, of course, that I am up to the task and take it to be an authentic event. Everyone knows this kind of revenge. It is in movies in which the "simple Amish person is driven finally to attack" (the audience cheers). When the movie does this, it does so in the manner of basically affirming an ethos of revenge, crucifying the ideal and its violent totalizations, and establishing the metacorrupt ethos we have come to know and capitalize on. When I grant this violence within nonviolence I do so *explicitly, substantively, thoughtfully (I hope), and in a ground of dialogue-possible speech*. That is part of the becoming-substantive of nonviolence. Anyhow, that is what I mean by "non-naive nonviolence". But this is founded on, or occurs within, an *ethos of nonviolence* which (ideally) is freely capable of sustained *nonviolent contestation* where this is appropriate. That's an *ethos*, not a strategy or tactic. But this still > collaborates in violence. How *much* does it collaborate? It sounds as if you are looking for something that is absolute without violence. But, nonviolence as such is not simply a path of less violence (i.e., cut off just your opponent's finger, not his head). This is where one can sort of sort the thinkers >from the non-thinkers, I guess. There is a genuine and *reasonably clean and independent moment* in which there is a practiced eschewing of violence on a *number* of levels. If you want to say "violent nonviolence", this is a poor designation, I think. I would say non-naive nonviolence. "Violent nonviolence" might rather be likened to, say, a community's silencing or excommunicating an individual, thereby driving them insane and passing it off as "nonviolent" because they simply didn't physically touch that person, perhaps within a philosophy/religion that proclaims itself to be "nonviolent". Somehow, one has to grasp a sense of *rupture, killing, tearing* associated with violence. The only nonviolent nonviolence is death (being > dead... not dying or causing to die .. however/whyever ... Deleuze's death > was violent ... who [concierge?] had to clean up the broken (?), bloody (?) > mess on the pavement ... not deleuze .. not the army of > translators.................. > Tom B, if you respond to this (& I hope you will), please do so concisely? > multipage posts can be violent.......... > John, what makes you think that I would respond to this? Heh. Well, only if you promise not to overlook the various distinctions I'm making here and not to reframe this back in totalist terms... :) Tom B. > > John R Morss PhD > Senior Lecturer, Education Department > University of Otago, Box 56, Dunedin > NZ > tel (0)3-4798809 > fax (0)3-4798349 > john.morss-AT-stonebow.otago.ac.nz > > > > __________________________________________________________________________ "The sanctions are not spectacular, and operate slowly, but they kill and maim as remorselessly as bullets and bombs, and are destroying a generation of Iraqi children." Brad Lyttle, delegation to Iraq member. "The characteristics of the treatment that caused people to be outraged and shocked are now kind of masked so that the procedure looks rather benign," said New York psychiatrist Hugh L. Polk. As many permutations of molecules used in making psychiatric drugs can be developed today in 2 hours as used to take a lifetime for a researcher. __________________________________________________________________________
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