Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 12:18:02 -0800 (PST)
From: Paul Bryant <levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: God help us, back to TMB


And in this associative linkage that TMB practices so artlessly, isn't
there something of a Hegelian beautiful soul to be discerned, a sort
of venom that parades itself as the mask of the "ethical"?  The logic
of identification is so easy to discern here.  "You are not it,
because I am it!" is the murmur that can be seen hiding beneath the
wave of imposing names and terms, moving about in a disjointed pattern
of the most vapid free association imaginable.  Thus, the voice of the
other, of the interlocutor, is used as a mirror whereby the
master/slave dialectic can repeat itself in the form "I am good
because you are bad!"  But in the end, what ought to be Difference--
and that is indeed an ethical "ought" --falls apart into mere
diversity by virtue of a refusal to stand anywhere and attend to what
is being said.  A banal self-rightousness indeed...  For it attempts
to point at the universe and ultimately points at nothing.

Paul



---Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, TMB wrote:
> 
> > > And what about Deleuze's insistence on the role
> > > of violence in thinking?
> > 
> > Cheap, easy capitalism, Heideggerian-style "return to the Greeks"
(in a
> > way), while ignoring that the Greek society was founded on slavery.
> 
> A bizarre charge, as Deleuze develops the point by
> way of criticizing Heidegger.  The flag of capitalism 
> makes no sense either, since the violence of thought
> is tied to unrecognizablility, and capital rests on
> recognition.  And Deleuze's awareness of slavery in
> antiquity has no revelance here whatsoever.
> 
> 
> > Lazy
> > failure to develop things better, amidst so much *production*.
> > Capitalization of talent, etc. A failure to think issuing from the
very
> > closure of thought he cited, but was too close to. 
> 
> I am amused by the way that the majority of 
> TMB's ponderous posts about "ethics" consist
> of associatively linked strings of ad hominem
> assertions.
> 
> 
> > But, in any event the
> > "violence in thinking" thing testifies for the extensiveness I
attributed
> > to "the ethical", and likewise serves as a founding condition for a
> > thinking that has nonviolence as well as desire and "freedom". 
> 
> Your capacity with style and sense in English
> rivals that of George Bush.  How does the 
> "violence in thinking thing" testify to your
> turbid notion of the ethical?
> 
> 
> > Your
> > version of thought, by my standards, is rather like a man who must
beat
> > his wife every time they make love, and insists that that is the
"only way
> > to do it, baby!" But look at the black and blue marks over this
"thouht".
> > Well, you probably can't even see them by now.
> 
> What a touching parable.  N.b. the utter
> passivity implicit in TMB's lurid scenario.
> But then, I imagine that he's never had a 
> thought that could fend for itself.
> 
> 
> > > I'll take Herakleitos' brevity, wit
> > > and polemos over you any day.
> > 
> > I know. But what if I had some really cool stuff?
> 
> I'd pinch myself and go back to bed.
> 
> 
> Cordially,
> 
> M.
> 
> 

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