Date: Tue, 20 Jun 95 14:53:59 EDT
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
Subject: Re: moribund setup


I am reading Foucault's  _Remarks on Marx_, where he says about his 
prison book:

   When the book came out, various readers -- particularly
   prison guards, social workers, etc. -- gave this singular judgement:
   "It is paralyzing.  There may be some correct observations, but in any
   case it certainly has its limits, because it blocks us, it prevents
   us from continuing our activities."  My reply is that it is just this
   relation that proves the success of the work, proves that it worked as
   I had wanted it to.  That is, it is read as an experience that changes
   us, that prevents us from always being the same, or from having the
   same kind of relationship with things and with others that we had
   before reading it. 

This also describes very much what I really want from lists, from
discussion.  Now it seems to me, from this point of view, that it makes 
no difference whether the list can be considered a community in some
sense, whether I know anything about the other people, whether there
is warmth or hostility -- an awful lot of things don't matter. But
there is another, altogether different set of things, that _does_ matter, 
although I have no idea what these things are, and they seem to happen 
very rarely.  But that's how I think of lists: in terms of their potential
for preventing me from being the same. 


-m 

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