From: "E.M. Durflinger" <bc05319-AT-binghamton.edu> Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 08:06:43 +0000 Subject: Re: X-files makes Diane wonder Although I don't have time to comment on this whole exchange, I do feel that I should point out that pace Butler, Foucault, Deleuze, the nonessential nonmateriality of the body is by no means equal to it being 'just a fantasy.' Stating 'there is no "reality" that is not the fantasy of a certain system' is not a statement that can be usefully applied to, at least, Deleuze and Foucault, who consistently have worked to destabilize the ideology/reality, fantasy/reality, mind/body type dualisms with the analysis of the multiple materialities of power. To be more specific, your final example of the ideological cold (a rhetorical rhinovirus, indeed) implicitly still presumes a fantasy/reality distinction--you attempt to place the Butlerian position into a Frankfurt-style system/realtiy dichotomy, framing it in a colonial discourse where the substrate 'body' is overlaid/infected/whatever by the ideological 'cold.' Again, this is the wrong brush to be tarring Butler/Foucault/Deleuze with, as this is not their argument, *especially* when you take the sort of subjectivist voluntaristic position that the cold can be seen to be a fantasy of *mine* and not a shared social reality. And I'd like to if possible bring the rhetorical level down a few notches. There's a truism on the Internet that trotting out the Holocaust/Hitler/Nazis during a discussion is an instant discourse-stopper, a 'trump' that tends to render discussion moot. Rather than continuing to be a discussion over concepts, discussion tends to get sidetracked into arguing over the value of the Holocaust/Hitler/Nazi example and whether or not it really applies, etc. ///Connor _________________________________________________________ E.M. Connor Durflinger Philosopher for Hire "Have Forestructures, Will Travel" Reverend, Universal Life Church bc05319-AT-binghamton.edu PIC Program at B.U. _________________________________________________________ inspiration STATION: http://philosophy.adm.binghamton.edu/durflinger/inspiration/
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