File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1997/lyotard.9706, message 21


Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 07:25:36 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: paralogy and the Vortex


yahpgill-AT-lisp.com.au wrote:
> 
> This thread is a fascinating. My 5 cents worth (from a political history
> viewpoint) is to note how labile 'left' and 'right' were in the high
> modernist period (1900s-1940s). I've been struck in researching literary
> life of the 20s and 30s how often close friends suddenly diverge
> politically  - one becomes a communist, the other a fascist.Sometimes they
> manage even to remain friends afterwards. Or the same person veers from one
> exteme to the other. There are many examples - Mussolini, who before WW 1
> edited of the Italian communist party newspaper, is only the best known.
> 
> Two Australian expatriates, Jack Lindsay and P. R. Stephensen, were close
> associates in the late 20s when they co-edited a London magazine called The
> London Aphrodite and ran an up-market publishing house, Fanfrolico Press.
> The poet and classicist Jack Lindsay moved from Nietzschean elitism in the
> mid twenties to becoming a communist in 1936. Over precisely the same
> period Stephensen shifted from being a communist in the early 20s (when he
> was expelled as a Bolshevik agitator from Oxford University) to supporting
> fascism; he ended up being interned for most of WW 2 by the Australian
> government, not for his vicious anti-semitism, but for allegedly
> undermining the war effort against Japan.
> 
> >From 1914 till 1943 it seemed clear to the majority of thinking people that
> bourgeois democracy was a rotten system, almost certainly doomed. The times
> seemed urgent (cf how most of the the surrealists suddenly join the CP -
> Aragon, Tzara, Eluard etc). But which of the going alternatives to
> bourgeois democracy you chose was a more arbitrary choice than it looks
> today. Only the naive could believe that either extreme was pure and
> innocent - it was for most a Realpolitik choice, not necessarily in the
> sense of the least worst, but in the sense of accepting that the ends
> (replacing rotten bougeois democracy with something workable) to *some*
> extent justified the means. At this stage few realised how horrific those
> means were: what they had on their minds was the horrors of the war, and
> later the depression. These horrors were clearly results of the status quo
> and they were clearly true, while news of the Nazi or Bolshevik show trials
> and gulags could be dismissed as the rumour and propaganda.
> 
> This configuration both culminates in and is given a big jolt by the
> blatantly opportunist pact between Hitler and Stalin (which no one believed
> could last), and then suddenly dissolves with Hitler's invasion of the
> Soviet Union and Japan's attack on Pearl harbour. The subsequent alliance
> of the USSR with bourgeois democracy, the defeat of fascism, and the Cold
> War, decisively changed the terms of the geopolitical debate.
> 
> Paul Gillen~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````A neat summation. 

This forum was a void until a few weeks ago.  It's supposed to be 
about Lyotard, and if you have visited the Lyotard archive you 
know there are a lot of other modern philosophers in the system.

Also, if you have visited many of the other forums you know they are 
mostly noise and trivia, especially re politics.

Lois has made a good statement about defining our terms, which brings
to mind the larger purpose of how we can help each other advance 
particular interests.

There was concentration on "paralogy", but we are losing the 
concentration.  

In art class, an individual would put up his/her latest work, the 
entire class would observe.  Like a Quaker meeting, those so moved would
speak.  Everyone had a turn, everyone had a voice. The teacher's role
was guidance, encouragement, technical information.

If we want to expand, integrate, round out, each person's philosophical 
views (with the help of Lyotard and participants of this forum) we can 
post a "picture" and take turns commenting.

hb



   

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