Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 23:58:51 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Provisional Remarks on the Question of Violence


On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Paul Bryant wrote:

> It is indeed the case that there's a violence involved in thought,
> language, action and intercommunicative interaction that cannot be
> avoided.  Moreover, I think that violence is necessary.  The question,
> then, would be one of determining which violence we can live with, and
> which we would strive to avoid at all costs.

I question, very strongly, just how quickly we move to "necessary
violence". And how quickly we do at times! You shore up a final question,
based on a *tiny* moment of thought, bolstered by a very technical
language (suspicious for many reasons), and move to being ready to do the
cognitive work of "which and what". Doen't look good to me.


> 
> For me, this quasi-Levinasian ethics against violence seems to do too
> much work because it fails to give a differentiator between what
> counts as violent and unviolent.  In failing to make this crucial
> distinction-- a distinction which would itself be a form of violence
> --such an ethic becomes an abritrary knee jerk reaction such that any
> negative feeling or thought one senses gets deemed "violent" and is
> summarily dismissed as a form of colonial imperialism. Thus, this
> ethic becomes a sort of selective algorithm that allows one to do
> their own violence by positioning anything that comes their way making
> them uncomfortable as the violent.  This practice is a way of
> mastering and totalizing discourse that is highly disingenious and
> critically blind to its own functioning.  One would have to be dead
> not to be guilty of the sort of violence this definition implies, and
> even then they would still be suspect.

It's a bit presumtuous to just jump right into determing "what is and is
not violent". I generally agree with this, in certain ways. What I really
tend to want to say is not "violent! stop!" but "too violent", but also:
let's prevent some violence, let's ameliorate, let's find less violent
means, let's dance (I know, that must sound pretty faggy.) But always,
also, I am saying: If "violence", and I mean *bad violence*, can't by now
be *entered into thought as a datum, an issue, a ground, a condition,
etc.*, then something is wrong. You don't enter it into thought here, by
the way. Youre just flexing a rather technocratic muscle, and on the basis
of that, its range of resonance (which is not far by my standards), set
out now to make some decisions, presumably of who you deem fit to attack.

The interactions occuring here lately are just too violent, and it doesnt'
even take a very nuanced series of distinctions to be able to point that
out. Nor am I (assuming you mean me to some extent here) just issuing
knee-jerk reactions. You will notice (if you aren't too busy simply not
reading me even as you read me), that I *do*, in fact, include moments of
violence, reaction, reactivity, etc., in my resposnes. To me, the best
overall level of that is like about 5 percent of what is happening on here
in the main.

> 
> For me, the necessity of violence appears in the imperitive to provide
> a form and a content (Hjelmslev) in the process of posing a question
> and dealing with a problem.  Having an Idea-- and it's not really "I"
> that has Ideas, but Being itself --is already a violent moment because
> it makes a "cut" in the virtual space of the chao-strata and initiates
> the process of actualization through the spatio-temporal dynamisms of
> the question and the problem.  These dynamisms form limits and
> thresholds that individuate the cut from other flows and which limit
> the space of the question and the problem being dealt with.  At that
> point, negation, as the shadow of an affirmation, becomes possible
> because a selective mechanism is now in place that allows the relavant
> and the irrelavant to be marked...  Some elements fall inside of the
> space of the problem-question complex, others do not.  Which is not to
> say that the problem-question complex cannot be transformed through
> introducing new singularities and relations.  This marking is indeed
> violent, but I don't see how we can avoid it without falling into the
> trap of making no "cut" at all...  Which is to say, without being dead
> or silent.  

You did your thought, now you are done. You precipitated a full language,
and now you "go". Philosphy, thought, I don't know, I think it in a
certain way always exceeds this sort of language. 

But in some ways, at least, I guess I can say, maybe so. You don't see me
saying "everything has a gravity of viiolence, therefore every thing must
be stopped!" Nor "never criticize *me* or you are am imperialist fascist."
I am saying that everything has a gravity of violence and a concommitant
nonviolence. You don't recognize or even posit the latter, you just want
to shore up (or is it "sure up") the former, and carry on. It's a very
restricted basic range. I think that recognizing that gravity can enable a
great deal more than simply not recognizing it. The metaphor I am fond of
here is of a ballet dancer: the ballet dancer is not at war with gravity,
does not deny that there is gravity, yet her standing is, at the same
time, in a kind of continual opposition to gravity, even while being
always in its pull. That is the role of nonviolence as I see it. Your
take, here, is of a piece with that, but with a very definite agenda. Not
so much a dancer, but a football player. There is something called
philosophy, and it has been constituted like a football game and a war,
for a long time, and effectively does not render thought impossible, but
tends to make it bad, poor, crippled, boring, uniform, uncreative, a poor
teacher, unfriendly, vicious, garrulous, occasionaly fascist, unable to
open a wealth of possibilities, warlike, rather blind and ineffective in
either confronting war as historical conflagraion and even often
unconcerned about it, variously uninterested or strikingly ineffective in:
healing, helping, teaching, imparting talent, opening minds, etc. The
*themes* of these matters *do definitly inhere* in what I see of Deleuze,
but the *grounds* remain very much more of the same, in a lot of ways.
Your gestures, here, are a nearly perfect exemplification of this kind of
philosophy. This is a bit more of a direct attack than I would like to be
doing, but here I feel it is appropriate to be pitiless (not that I sense
much danger to you!) My pitilessness, here, is grounded on *some kind of
definite and free opening of nonviolence*, and *not* the kind of bare
shred of an opening you accomlish. The kind of cruelty I enact here is
what I think *is* appropriate, and is the sort of "sanctioned violence"
that you yourself call for so *very, very* quickly. I do them *after* a
definite and clear, *provisional* (and hence definitely not too specific)
inclusion of a moment of "ethics as first philosophY", even as the very
conception of "ethics" must be deconstructed into "violence/nonviolence"
for it to even be possible. 


> 
> As I see it, this list is composed of a number of problem-question
> complexes moving off in various directions, cutting in terms of
> distinctive questions that will certain actualizations. 

This langauge gets *very* systematic. Just thoght I'd point that out.


> Deleuze makes
> the claim that the question-problem complex always persists in the
> solution or actualization insofar as a real question can never be
> definitively answered.  Simply put, each problem-question complex
> admits of a number of different answers that are well formed or poorly
> formed.  A well formed answer would be one that can continuously
> mutate in terms of shifts in the environment of the question-problem
> complex, while a poorly formed answer would be one that gets locked
> into a particular mode without any hope of change or adaptation.
> 
> If we treat the different interactions on this list as actualizations
> of virtual question-problem complexes, then it becomes possible to
> read the various replies as diverse solutions to the question-problem
> complex being explored.  I think it's here that the value of argument,
> questioning, polemic and critique comes in.  Far from being an attempt
> to lock everything into a particular mode of discourse, argument,
> questioning and polemic would represent one way, among others, of
> trying to refine actualizations to determine whether they are well
> formed or not.  Insofar as these practices try to deepen the cut, to
> determine how the cut works, they are indeed violent...  But violent
> only in the sense that they will the actualization to take place and
> try to determine the scope of the particular actualization.

"Argument, questioning and polemic"...yet, there is also straightout bad
polemic. I.e., garbage. And these others, they are fine at times, I agree
(am I not doing each and every one of these, in a decent form?), but they
are hardly all there is. In this respect, I really think this is what is
going on with Unleash. He is almost deliberately refusing to tow the line,
and is stronly holding to a certain truth, even in what is poorly wraught,
because, I think, he senses that there is a real dominance at work here. I
am not equating all polemic with dominance. I do have to say, though, that
polemic is not so very good. At that point, though, it becomes a matter of
"how much", not just "inclusion". I mean, how much polemic? And, when
there is polemic, is it just a "neutrally good violence"? I have doubts. I
go to "five percent" as just a rule of thumb.

And, btw, why not just say, in the usual academoc voice, to Unleash:

"I'm sorry, but I can't go that far with this idea..."
"Some of your ideas sem to be interesting, but the overal rigor is a
problem..."
"your critiques have some good in them, but some of it is getting out of
hand.."
"can you maybe flesh this out more?"
"Isn't this getting a little too wishy washy?"

*And just leave it at that.* But no, that isn't what is happening. It's
much more like a kind of crazy, fascist attack. Yes, fascist. IN the form
of what has made *one move of thining and stopped*, and can now say: "The
greatest danger is what which wrongly accuses of fascisms when we are
enacting necessary violence". I don't want to this to turn into a simple
polemical "you're a fascist, no you're a fasicst", but you see, the
language to which *I* refer has a definite *inclusion of the theme of
polemics*, not just the passing reference made in order ot justify all I
do. This move is a crucial issue: whether or not polemics as such is
included as a *primary issue* in "broader thought". For you, broader
thoguht is the systematically desubstantialized language you demonstrate
here. For me, it is the inclusion of the issue of polemics as such, which
requires the opening of the issue of (non)violencee and a great deal of
"openings" that must remain provisional. Heidegger: "Thinking is on the
descent into the poverty of its provisional essence." Would that were the
case more often.


> 
> For me, the question to ask would be "under what conditions is
> questioning and argument merely a negative activity of trying to
> humiliate ones interlocutor, and halt their creative work of
> actualization?"  I think the answer would be found in those moments
> where one has read the other poorly, refusing to trace the cuttings
> they are attempting to make, and attempting to subsume them under
> their own categories.  That would be the sort of violence that I would
> deplore, and which seems to lead nowhere.  However, I'm also a little
> shocked by the replies or actualizations that seem to treat every
> question posed to them as an act of aggression and a personal affront. 

I agree that that is not good. Still in all, you open polemics as a theme
only in order to perserve it, but *not within a free moment of thought*.
That would be much more radical, and it is, as philosophy, a moment of
philosophy's radical nonviolence. No way around it, even as it may at
times include violence within it self, or even understand itself to always
have a gravity of violence. But at the same time, it has a moment of
nonviolence that is constitutive. There is, as you say, the "poor
readings, the cuttings, the subsumings" (or attempts thereof). But here, I
still wonder. Is a "YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE WHO KNOWS NOTHING AT AL TIMES"
really a "question posed?" I mean, what of this name calling shit (note my
inclusion of polemics) that makes wild generalizaytions and aspersions of
one's whole character? It is, truly, shit, through and through. Shameful,
embarrassing, stupid. 


> When someone reacts in this way, I'm led to wonder what
> question-problem complex this reaction is a solution to, and whether
> or not it's a good solution.  Such a reaction doesn't strike me as
> very creative or productive insofar as it marks a refusal to explore
> the dimensions of the problem that have been put before it. 

That looks fine to me. (Let us imagine a response, not from you but from
some of the polemicism that takes place here: "I don't care *how* it looks
to you, you self indulgent totally idiotic ans semi-retarted idiot." I
mean, come *on*!) Generally, though, I have to identify an overal move,
post Nietzsche, that is reactively antimoral. It reacts against: morality
as control and amortization. It reacts with a bit of sanctioned war. This
is founded in: transvaluation of values. It is of a piece with the
inevitable, and inevitably first, question: "but isn't some violence
justified?!" Ahh, but *what a dancer Nietasche was!* Sorry, ok, so
anyways:the move that transvalues values, breaks free of the "beautiful
soul syndrome" the returns to violence. That is one of its first moves.
that move is still rather close to that out of which it is attempting to
wriggle. This can lead into some better territory, or even, at times, in
to far worse territory. Much more to understand here, too.

> 
> Of the two forms of violence crudely outlined here, subsumption and
> refusal, the latter strikes me as much more dangerous because it's a
> subtle form of mastery, totalization, and dogmatism parading under the
> illusion that it's too free to be bothered with technicalities and
> nuances.

But let's not forget some other things: Sheer force, brutal attack,
retribution and revenge, etc. 


>  Such an attitude seems inevitably to lead to the worst sort
> of fanaticism and intolerance

The *worst* sort? Well I dont' know if I'd go that far, really. In
general, skepticism, even if it is not rigorous, and refusla of
subsumption appears to be a step above subsumption. But there are many
other categories to explore as well. 

No, wait. I'm thinking about this again. you can't be serious. Someone
builds some stupid edifice, and it is not terribly subsuming, but it is
full of shit in a lot of ways. Someone brutally qattackes them, making
obscenely generalized and totalized attributions of character, and just
"has it", not seeing *any* good in what they are doing, and goes so far as
to call them "the worst sort of fascist" while they simply try to keep
this attack at baay. You have got to be kidding. I'll tell you *quite
honestly*. I think it is *right here* that *you*, here, now, in this move,
these moves, are concealing what probably is in fact the worst form of
fascism, aside from what we all know to be the very worst. I dont' mean
this as an attack though it is a very serious charge, but what do I know?
I'm a pea brained idiont working in some quasi-levinassian kneejerk
mishmash. 

No, seriously. To see that: the poor edifice builder who is not
particularly subsuming, but who may react a bit hysterically to attack as
the *worst* for of fascism, I man, this is ludicrous. I'm sorry, but it
is.

 in reaction to the breakdown of the
> edifice that it has poorly constructed from the outset. 

But how of much of this isn't realy a challenge for *more finesse*,
indeed, of the dancer. My vitriol above, aside from *partly* being what I
think is true, is the shit I put on my feet or tongue simply in order to
keep up hopes that you will listen to me. The openings of such dancing,
the *artistry*, of *intervening* in someone's sandcastle, even if to
eventually lead them to understand that much of it is ill founded, seems
to elude you, as you are still fully concerned with categories of attack.
Generally, attack *is* pretty bad. War, and even polemics in the usual
discursive modes *are* not too good. Five percent is a decent rule of
thumb. And more than that: what ways are there for entering into, of
helping another, of dancing with another? Even of intervening? What ways
of *friendship*? Of offering help? Of simply changing the subject to other
things? Of introducing new ideas? Of pointing out whole new horizons? Of
inducing new understandings? Of *imparting new levels of growth and
discipline*? Of enjoining? Of seducing? Of pleasing and demonstrating
"actualizations"? What *demonstrations* of artistry? What *really*
captures the imagine of the other? Does the "bricoleur" that Deleuze talks
about realy run *right into the edifice of the other*, and not only "stomp
out the given edivice but kick sand in the other's eyes, spit him out like
garbage, slam his head to the ground, bloody his face"? Do you *really*
think that is the "viiolence of thought" that Deleuze was recognizing?
Isn't that violence much more on a conceptual level? So that when one
actually *enters* an edifice, one, already preconfigured elseise, does
feel this turbilence, this breaking apart of what one has had in mind?
Isn't this quite different from the attack and onslaught? And isn't the
very courage and capacity to carry on into the new not founded on a
certain frienship, joy, pleasure, enticement, a decent grounding in basic
needs? Isn't it an art of thinking that one is talking about? 



 It
> externalizes any deficiency in its own actualization in the form of
> spectral ghosts like "the institution"-- that are everywhere and
> nowhere like Heidegger's das Man --and never takes the time to
> critically evaluate the structurations that it, itself, has sought to
> construct.  The first form of violence is easy enough to spot, while
> the second is a micro-fascism that embeds itself within us where we
> least expect it.
> 

I really think you are going too far here. The case you draw up (of
unlease as you see him, apparently) can be drawn, and taken to extremes.
It can lead to the "bad edifice" that "never seems to subsum" but does do
so a great deal, and further vies all criticism as imperialism. It's a
nice picture, and one that is rather removed from what has been going on
here, which looks a lot more like some kind of straightfoward police
action. 

TMB