Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 20:18:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: aka bookish <swilbur-AT-bgsuvax.bgsu.edu>
Subject: Re: moribund setup


Laurie, speaking of the "sadness" of silent lists, more or less concluded:

>Well, if you don't think there is nothing there, make sure there is
>something there.

Why "make sure"? If we think there is something other than this "nothing
there," how should we proceed? The means of proving that there is
*something* there would almost certainly have to involve producing
*something else* - or the proof of something else - which would only prove
that something else had been added to whatever was there before
(presumably either nothing or not-nothing.) You can't prove the virtual.
To insist on proof is always to leave the virtual behind. You enter the
actual when you demand proof, representation, a certain sort of production
or development. Silence is only sad if you must understand it as a lack. 

This is a "philosophical" argument, perhaps not inappropriate for a group
of list largely devoted to philosophical matters. It does not address the
practical questions about the "costs" of maintaining silent lists, or
about how one discerns the difference between a dead list and one that is
perhaps just sitting and thinking. But neither, i think, does any attempt
to carve up a list into its necessary components, which we can then
inventory. 

Personally, i mistrust "communication" and models of explication and
dissection. This is perhaps another reason to go slowly in proliferating
niche lists. i do not want, for instance, to see my role in Spoon as
simply a canny target-marketeer. For me, one of the most wonderful things
about early Spoon lists (before i joined the collective) was the way in
which the lists were allowed to develop a shape to fit their sometimes
shifting subject matter. Difficult topics may mean difficult lists, in all
sorts of ways. Personally, i wouldn't have it otherwise, would be sad if
that possibility was dismissed.

-shawn



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