Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 13:35:08 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: God help us, back to TMB


On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, John Appleby wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, TMB wrote:
> 
> > be something you care about, it may be thought, you may thing I am a
> > threat to that, for others
> 
> No, not really. As you said yourself nobody is forced to listen, I just
> wanted to raise the question of whether nonviolenec was perceived by you
> as some form of imperative in which case, as you point out

There *can* be an imperativity that arises from within violence, that is,
the violation of the precious (a term I much prefer over "the valued"). It
is a power and as such is usually converted over into to ethical captial
(and due to this ethics itself is, in the main, *already synonymous with
ethical capital*, perhaps even in Levinas) in paternalism, which always
ends up being a degradation of nonviolence.


> 
> > This is all degraded 
> 
> > But this does not mean that we therefore simply are no longcer concerned
> > about things getting hurt
> 
> But can we commit acts of violence to prevent greater acts of violence and
> still be ethical in your terms? For example, in _Plague of Fantasies_
> Zizek claims that their are certain types of speech which should not be
> allowed ('the Holocaust never happened', etc.). This is certainly a
> violent act, but is it an ethical one? 

I would say so. On the other hand, there are two basic ways the admission
of such acts can occur:

1. Out of a rich and full fledged developiment of thinking and action in
nonviolence

and 

2. As a cheap out and a kind of invariably first question for nonviolence
(when do we get to shoot someone? doesn't nonviolence entail violence in
its own name, how does it handle that contradiction, etc...)

The *understanding* and the develpment of both 1 *and* 2, together, and as
such, are a prt of 1.


> 
> > I'm saying, simply, that ethics is concerned with violence, and where
> > there is violence, there is also, to some degree, however minute,
> > nonviolence, a negation of violence, an orientation toward its prevention,
> > amelioration, etc.
> 
> This idea that things contain their own negation is very anti-D&G. How do
> you square it with your claims that their stuff is useful on this front? 

I don't know. I am not, in any event, talking about any sort of total
dialectical, Hegelian netation, opposites, or sublation by any means.
Something may have it's nonviolence, something violent, that is, that
doesn't mean its nonviolence is developed, opened up, acted upon, etc.
Even the most extreme violences, there can be and probably usually are
certain nonviolences that are there, in the background. The "non" of it is
tricky; it has to be there for the viiolence to be what it is in the first
place. All preciousness is a "non" to violence in the first place, I
guess. When the violence, of the Nazis, to take a big and clear example,
is enacted, it is understood that part of it is the "non" in the Jews or
homosexuals who are violated. How much of that is *in the violator*? Well,
in a poletmical setting, we say, "none", but I think there is some,
variously. 


> Before anybody out there starts howling about how I'm some sort of
> academic fascist trying to promote a 'correct' reading of D&G (hello
> elf-boy), this is a genuine question and not an attempt to get at anybody.

Oh, waht a breath of fresh air. Even your swipe at unleash is quite kind,
and quite cute. You are OK. BZut I am such a bad reader!


> 
> As to your thing about misreading Spinoza, that was not what I meant.
> Unfortunately I left a 'than' out of the sentence. I simply meant that it
> had more to do with Levinas than Sp.

I don't know about misreading Spinoza. I just never read more than a few
paragraphs of him. It's ulikely that we would be all too in sync, I
imagine, which I guess is what someone was saying. I'm not in sinc with
Levinas, though, in a rather big way, I guess I shoudl point out, thoguh I
have a lot of sympathy for him and make a lot of references in his
direction, there are resonances, etc., and he gets half of it wrong, in my
view.

> 
> Regards
> 
> John
> 
> ps any chance that you could bung a few paragraphs in your posts; they're
> bloody difficult to read.

Bung? The only meaning of "bung" I know is "bunghole", or shit hole,
usually in refference to anal sex. Bung might mean: shorten, but then I
thought, maybe he means: add a few so it becomes more explicit. You know,
short can be harder, longer can be easier. All depends. But I'm sorry they
are hard to read. At times, this is due to my poor style, at other times
it is dues to the opacity of what is, while not necessarily difficult,
simply generally unexplored. 

TMB