From: "Dan Haines" <dan.haines-AT-ntlworld.com>
Subject: Re: Deviants and the State and so on
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 11:44:26 +0100


> Who are you to claim that Brian Massumi has a liberal
> humanist agenda?

i said this first, not chris, and i am someone who has read
a fair bit of massumi and has great respect for his work.
and who thinks he has a liberal humanist agenda, is aware
that he does and thinks that he is happy to have such an
agenda.  the world needs liberal humanists to do things like
desire to overtax the rich and provide free healthcare.

luckily, i don't have to worry about shit like that, as i'm
too poor to even pay taxes, and can feel bohemian and
anarchic about such things.

you, monsieur, on this list, of the people who contribute,
of late, are very rude!

keep it up.

perhaps we will have government ministers who haven't
actually read the list but only "a clear description of its
contents" trying to close it down?

cheers,
dan
p.s. the "yeah? well you're a big baudrillard-reader!" cuss
is hilarious. - and yes, i do sometimes perpetuate this sin.
shame he's such a reactionary, though.
----------
"A great problem, deserving acute attention.
 I solved it by turning out the lights and going
to bed."                 - John Fante, Ask The Dust
----- Original Message -----
From: guillame debord <guydeborder-AT-yahoo.ca>
To: <deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: Deviants and the State and so on


> Who are you to claim that Brian Massumi has a liberal
> humanist agenda? You show no proof of this in your
> text. Your lines of thought do not go outward, but are
> a ll self-referential. For instance you say Only
> having read a few paragraphs" That means nothing to
> readers. Did you understand him at all? Did you tackle
> the text? Who are you to decide what this obvious
> genius is or is not, you are a self-righteous
> thinker....
> "I can only concur" What a stiff cliche! Why did you
> bother to send that one to us, what is it you wished
> to prove, that you are clever? Better than the French
> at our game?
>  Now as for the others who are upset over nature
> reserves well I am sorry. It is terrible to be a
> post-coloniale parke. I have met some writer from New
> Zealand she was very smart.
> It is more evident to any student here that your
> "radio genet" is a farce and a simularcrum. I suspect
> you are both biggest readers of Baudrillard
> --- Chris Jones <ccjones-AT-turboweb.net.au> wrote:
> >
> > I simply have to say it was nice to read on this
> >  And look at this self-referential self working
> ideas that do not think at:
> >
> > I realise(You do? Well very good; to whom are you
> talking Monsieur Jones?? andfor what may I ask) that
> those new to D&G and materialist
> > analysis and perhaps those
> > not so new would have some difficulty following the
> > schizoanalytic line I am
> > making on this thread and I feel a tinge of
> > responsibility to attempt to
> > smooth out what may appear a rather bumpy ride.
>
> I will not cut and snip your whole text, if we can
> call it that -- your "honours memoire??" you must be a
> joker.  You claim an insiders view sir, and show
> nothing to your readers and this means you are proably
> a novel and fiction writer, but not a student of
> philosophy or an expository stylist. Forive my own
> english, it is not my langage. But surely, there are
> others who are sick of your loud nonsense. Are you not
> ashamed to pretend so.
>
> And
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  (An
> > aside to Shane; doing an
> > honours thesis is from my experience is anything but
> > nice. My approach was to
> > take what I could understand of D&G and run with it
> > like hell before adding
> > it into my thesis. Sure, I may not have demonstrated
> > the sort of academic
> > understanding of D&G required for a doctorate, but
> > it was enough to score a
> > first class. I still remember those sleepless
> > nightmare ridden nights.)
> >
> > It is old hat to me to understand what is called the
> > Gay Identity and even
> > the gay and lesbian communities as (the public
> > appearances of)
> > reterritorialisation. This can be said of most gay
> > and lesbian movements on
> > an international scale. This is a manifestation or
> > the real affects and
> > outcomes of homphobia. The problem is this has
> > become a repetiton which
> > claims a dogmatic mantra-like claim to truth which
> > fails to understand that
> > homophobia can be ended. This line of flight is
> > clearly blocked. However,
> > there is another aspect of the gay and lesbian
> > movements in Australia which
> > is specific the the national conditions in
> > Australia. These factors include
> > the relative success of the more militant political
> > sections of that movement
> > informed by Marxist materialist theory, including
> > Trotskyite and the left
> > opposition in the Australian Communist Party who
> > found themselves in the
> > political leadership of a mass gay and lesbian
> > movement after organising the
> > first and following Sydney Gay Mardi Gras and the
> > various riots around that
> > event in 1978 and 1979. So in Australia the
> > situation is very complex and
> > elisive assumptions made on these specific
> > conditions often lead to dogmatic
> > misunderstandings. When Massumi was in Australia he
> > was confronted by what
> > may appear to be a more militant gay and lesbian
> > movement to those in Europe
> > and the United States which had cut its teeth on
> > Marx, Lennin, Trotsky,
> > Foucault and D&G. Foucault and D&G were in (large?)
> > part imported in
> > Australian academia by queer (often underground)
> > magazines and journals which
> > translated and published Foucault's and D&G, both
> > with and without copyright
> > clearance. Jumping a decade or so, gay men who
> > visited Australia from
> > overseas in the 1990's were shocked and surprized
> > with what we could get away
> > with after this history. For example, we could do
> > things considered
> > pornographic and which would have been heaviliy
> > censored in other countries.
> > This also has connections with the specifics of the
> > Australian national state
> > which is geographically very different to the
> > striations imposed upon both
> > European and American nations. In Australia the
> > state has historically
> > concentrated its striation on the coastal high
> > population urban areas. The
> > rural areas are far less striated, although the
> > state is more and more
> > imposing itself into rural areas. In short, the
> > outcome is a gay and lesbian
> > movement in Australia which moves also much further
> > on lines of
> > deteritorialisation and the lines of flight appear
> > greater in number and
> > appear with greater frequency. Many of the lines are
> > blocked much later then
> > in Europe and America also. (In D&G, of course,
> > there is not just one or two
> > lines of flight and deterritorization, but many.)
> > Also, at various academic
> > conferences which feature D&G and Foucault, you were
> > often likely to find a
> > lot of quite vocal weird looking people, S&M dykes,
> > who are very militant
> > politicos, gay activists and so forth which can both
> > outnumber and be quick
> > to silence any academics who get up with a liberal
> > humanist be nice to dykes
> > and faggots speech. (Them words tolerance or
> > acceptance of gays and lesbians
> > will get right up our noises, in fact, and may
> > threaten to become another
> > riot.) I have often seen frowns and scrowls at the
> > mention of Butler and _GT_
> > also, and with good reason. (Shove yr normativity up
> > yr cunt lady, on which
> > ever flip side it may be on. . . more or less, from
> > the SM dykes.)
> > Unfortunately, Butlerite queer theory with its
> > reactionary normative
> > political agenda still has to be thoroughly murdered
> > once and for all, in
> > Australian lesbian and gay politics, but it is not
> > getting an easy time.
> > There is vocal opposition and those conned by this
> > dialectical normativity
> > are learning it has its dangerous limits, very
> > quickly.
> >
> > Unfortunately, I have too much going on to continue
> > the sort of detailed
> > explanations, indicated by this introduction. But I
> > have posted this to at
> > least begin to demonstrate where I am coming from in
> > an attempt to make the
> > ride a little smoother. Liz Grosz is worth reading,
> > although I would post
> > warnings on some of her stuff too, in part, perhaps,
> > because Liz has a very
> > seamless style of writing which also has its own
> > particular elisive dangers,
> > if mis-read. (I have also seen Liz frown at the
> > mention of Butler, so would
> > be interested to see if she has written anything on
> > this Hegelian idealist
> > capture which goes under the title of queer theory
> > and which misreads
> > Foucault as a dialectic of repression.) So. . . I
> > have often thought that
> > what Massumi ran into when he was in Aussie land,
> > especially the militant
> > sections of the gay and lesbian movements which seem
> > to come in swarms at the
> > mention of D&G, may have gave him the impression
> > that this was the gay and
> > lesbian community in Australia, as a whole. There
> > are some very conservative
> > full on identity types in this country too, very
> > liberal humanist types, who
> > do not accept that the strategic undertaking of the
> > gay and lesbian movement
> > is the abolition of the category of homosexual, gay,
> > lesbian, and hence the
> > ending of homophobia, as militant materialist
> > sections would argue, in brief
> > summary. That is a line of absolute
> > deterritorialisation.
> >
> > Hope this helps. Obviously, this is only very
> > partial. The situation is very
> > complex. Of course, the state finds quite a few
> > fleas to squash yet the more
> > fleas found, the bigger the swarm.
> >
> > Chris Jones.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thursday 26 July 2001 19:29, Shane wrote:
> >
> > > in massumi's user's guide, he writes that "every
> > > formation is defined by thresholds of movement
> > beyond
> > > which... it ceases to be itself." i'm with him so
> > far.
> > > then he says that one of the two big limits of the
> > > liberal nation-state is "molar humanity", and that
> > the
> > > state is "stretched to [the] limit when confronted
> > by
> > > sexual minorities". (all on page 126.)
> > >
> > > so what's the big deal about sexual minorities?
> >
> >
>
>
>
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