Date: Tue Jun 13 15:41:08 1995 From: Tom Blancato <tblancato-AT-envirolink.org> Subject: Names, topics, what's the difference?... list-proposals-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu "The main problem that I see with these lists is that they are understood as extensions of the concept of _professional interest_, as an interest separate from life. What I am trying to say is that if this is the real source of our discontent -- Tom's, Dirk's, Fido's, Jason's, mine -- then I am not sure it can be remedied by means of judicious inventions of list-names or software". Maybe you're right, Malgosia, I don't know. You've opened up another direction altogether. I posted something in this direction to a list: The idea of a FPSP(NAME), which I would broaden to FPSP(TOPIC/NAME(S)) list, in which participants fill out with more first and second person reports, experience, writing, thinking. Perhaps the focus on the name is in the final analysis, which you may have presented, just a strategy. But I think it *can* work in some ways, sometimes, *depending on the topic*. You're saying, to get clear, that name *or* theme headed, the list will be constrained by certain protocols of professional interest and a separation from life (which I think occurs according to the stricture of the third person objective, something like that). To be clear, I want substantive, third-person (or first/second person general/universal, the generalized "I" or "mine" of phenomenology, for example), too. But, doesn't the proper name *automatically* throw is in certain ways into the third person? This is not to say that the theme (and mix'n'match names, depending) would release the first and second persons (single and plural), let alone the FPSP personal. The first and second persons have to break the rules in certain ways to "happen" on a list: i.e., through a flame war, "ad hom/feminem". There is no other place for the hominem. Well, there is, really: through stroking, compliments, and other kinds of interplay. But a certain happening of a more substantive interlogue is held back, and that's what I think you're pointing to. I.e., "Deleuze and my wife and friends the other day", etc. To which someone may say, "Oh, that's group *therapy*". Which, for me, would be grist for the mill, but not wrench in the works, for the question of how such a kind of discussion could happen. How about FPSP(NAME) for a try? And for that matter, how about some experimental lists? How about we collect all the different suggestions people are offering and try a couple, just to see. Experiment! Regards, Tom --- ************************************************************************ "It is only after one ceases to reduce public affairs to the business of dominion that the original data in the realm of human affairs will appear, or, rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity." -- Hannah Arendt Crises of the Republic; lying in politics, civil disobedience on violence, thoughts on politics, and revolution. Hannah Arendt [1st ed.] New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [1972] pages 142-143 Tom Blancato tblancato-AT-envirolink.org Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti) Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project) 521 Main Street PO Box 495 Harmony PA 16037 412-453-0211 ------------------
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