File spoon-archives/list-proposals.archive/list-p_1995/list-p_Jun.95, message 34


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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