From: Erik Hoogcarspel <jehms-AT-globalxs.nl>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 21:01:49 +0100
Subject: Re: epistemic violence


Op 24-apr-97 schreef D. Diane Davis:

>Doug Henwood wrote:
>> 
>> At 6:01 AM -0500 3/24/97, D. Diane Davis wrote:
>> 
>> >Epistemic or epistemological violence: dragging the discourse/language
>> >game/phrase universe of the Other across another one that it should not
>> >be held responsible for in order to clobber it. Example: when an
>> >Enlightenment spokesperson calls a post-structuralist a RELATIVIST in
>> >order to dismiss her, this is epistemic violence. Because the
>> >post-structuralist does not recognize the distinction between the
>> >'absolute' and the 'relative.' For her, there is nothing BUT the
>> >relative, and the question is about how to go about negotiating it
>> >ethically.
>> 
>> Doesn't this characterization do "epistemic violence" to the
>> "Enlightenment"? Don't all those post-structuralists create a myth of a
>> unitary Enlightenment discourse when in fact Western writers of the 18th,
>> 19th, and early 20th century have spent a lot of time controversializing
>> over the nature of the subject, our understanding of the world, etc. etc.?
>> 
>> Doug

>You're kidding, right? This example has nada to do with what I think of
>the "Enlightenment." It has even less to do with who's 'right'--pomo-ers
>or enlightenment-ers. It has to do with the notion that some discourse
>arenas are not commensurable. Epistemic violence: judging one genre of
>discourse across the rules of another. It's probably inevitable. Maybe
>not, but Lyotard decides it is. At any rate--your example is as good as
>mine. In both instances, someone got clobbered 'unjustly,' got clobbered
>because the rules of cognition by which the 'case' was judged were not
>ones that the clobbered party recognized or validated. 

>ddd
>-- 

what's wrong with violence? thinking is violent, philosophy is violent: it
kills stupid thoughts (poor things!). the problem is: if you're afraid of
violence you avoid your opponent and you take a projection of her instead.
that's safe, that doesn't hurt. so you start a monologue, you don't care a
damn thing about what someone else's got to say as long as you can convince
yourself that your right. Charles Taylor f.i. thinks he's right because he's
trying to rescue western civilisation and has the pope's blessing, so he
doesn't want to understand Foucault's position. he's not violent enough
because he doesn't attack F, but makes himself looking good by taking instead
a dummy of F he made for himself.

erik (hoogcarspel)