From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: God help us, back to TMB
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 11:23:12 -0000


> What's wrong with the violence of a discursive approach?  Are we to
> stand idly by, allowing words to wash over us, unflinchingly
> submitting to them, without trying to exercise a counter force; or
> rather, an active force of our own? Language is a pretty violent
> thing...  Foucault, among others, showed us this.  So to speak,
> already, is to exercise a certain sort of violence. 
> 
	Yeah, but Foucault also insisted upon some sort of ethicality which
was not so much focussed on the creation of rules to govern conduct as it
was on certain notions of care and curiosity for that which is different.
And Foucault was also strongly opposed to politics and discourse built upon
a model of war which created a friend/enemy opposition.

	And Derrida is also clear on the necessary violence of discourse
while maintaining that there is an ethical promise which necessarily
purdures in it.  My guess is that Tom is simply calling this promise
'non-violence' while insisting that it is implicated everywhere and so can
always be cultivated.  I think, also, that he's just asking everyone on the
list (I'll accept that this is directed at me too) to try to cultivate it.

	Nathan
	n.e.widder-AT-lse.ac.uk