Date: Fri, 5 May 1995 13:08:06 -0700
From: marin-AT-uclink2.berkeley.edu (Steve Martinot)
Subject: Re: "Letter on Humanism"--Reading 11


Of bunkerphil, who says: 
"i'm saying that the history of Being is now, as "we" speak, 
 Being is still being squeezed out of this kernel, at a very particular point
in H's career.  It is an OBJECTIVE process.  it is not anything we can get
out of, ... " 

     --- But does this mean that we then are SUBJECTS over and 
apart from this? Then we're already out of it. But this is Being. 
If it is objective, it cannot be Being, since it is being-in-
process; and it cannot be non-Being, since it is being squeezed 
out by (our) history. And who are we? Are we the sqeezers, or the 
sqeezees. Are you putting the squeeze on Being? Like the man 
said, you got a big job. 


     --- therefore, a question please. What is "dasein world?" I 
mean, I've got to know, because I want to get out of it. I like 
"geometrical shapes, fractal paintings, curved solids, [and] 
networked neurons." But those "charts of the future" have got to 
go. Let's just say I'm allergic to the pre-ordained. But I do 
agree, they do always seem somehow to get back to "arms 
explosions" and "metaphysical lust." 

"today, the sheer speed of history is opening up a big space for new
metaphysical conceptions of man."  

     -- but why, then, is this day unlike all other days? Is 
metaphysics avoidable if we are to speak to each other? Well, 
only if we misunderstand. Like Deleuzian schizoproduction. But if 
we talk to each other, under the canopy of a common experience 
(Heidegger's Letter, in this case; or Heidegger's critique or 
destruction of metaphysics, in general; or even the poem of the 
"world-wide" in which we ask the crazy questions about the hydra-
headed "now," the cyber-space that is never empty because there is 
nothing there to fill), then in understanding each other (however 
gross we wish to make that assumption), then we are making a 
metaphysics -- perhaps just us two. Heidegger warned about this, 
but only in an egotistical way, about how he would be 
misunderstood, and re-metaphysic-ed. Derrida gives the means for 
understanding it in greater generality, for embracing it, and 
living in it. The speed of history, indeed. 

"we're all greek now."  

     -- no, we are not all greek. Some of us are not white. 

Cheers, 

Martinot




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