Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 12:55:29 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: God help us, back to TMB


On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, John Appleby wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, TMB wrote:
> 
> > 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. 
> 
> I don't understand this at all. Are you saying that the Jews and
> homosexuals are negated by Nazi violence and thereby become nonviolent? Is
> the nonviolence suuposed to be in the act or lurking as some sort of
> substrate in the actors? 

The violence of Nazi violence is founded, in part, on an original "non"
inherent in the preciousness of human life. This "non" was expressed, for
exampple, when people said, "no!" when being carted off. It gave some
Nazis a rush, to be sure. And even that was a rush of a violation that
inhered in a grounding "law" of nonviolence, a "law" that is other than
the mode of the "imperative", which makes a continual reference to a
father: "thou shalt not..." This is what, of couse, Levinas was saying
when he said that the face of the other exresses this commandment. I feel
that the commandment in general is a derivative and primary abstraction
from a more original condition of nonviolence. This nonviolence is prior
to "law", imperative and command. If you read Derrida, this nonviolence
would be part of what the juror enters into in the "epochal" moment within
legal justice. While Derrida is about retaining that epochocal moment of
the "spirit of the law", what I'm saying here is about what happens when
one doesn't view this as "spirit" or "ether", but enters into that
epoche.It is at the same time the deconstruction of the epoche and, in a
certain way of what is usually meant by "law", "justice" and, of course,
"ethics", but not in the manner of how this is done in "deconstruction",
which is all about aporia and "preserving authenticity, unpredictability
and indecideability" (as if prediction and decision were all that is at
stake here). 

To *become* nonviolence is something else. Becoming nonviolence is
becoming who on "is". I take this movement of becoming as the
"primordiality of nonviolence", a *primordiality* that is characterized by
several things, including the *simple choice of thematic/substnative
inclusion of nonviolence as such within thought*. But this inclusion isn't
the imposition of a theme, but the undertaking of the hermenutic that
unfolds the nonviolence that one always already is, and standing in that
more, well, authentically. To be sure, this is a buttfucked Heidegger.
Thank god.


> 
> Initially I assumed that what you were claiming was that thinking either
> violence or nonviolence entailed the thinking of the opposite, but now it
> sounds as though an act is both violent and nonviolent at the same time
> depending upon one's perspective.

Depending on conditions, which is partly always depending on perspective.
Yes, an act is always already both violent and nonviolent, or has a
violence and has a nonviolence, etc.


> 
> As for 'bung', it's slang for 'throw' over here. 


Throw as in: clip off or add more for clarification. Somethings can't be
expressed (at least by me) in a few lines. But then, when we notice how
people like D and G write whole books, this would seem to be, well, kind
of how it is at time.

TMB