Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 20:39:22 -0500
From: mab207-AT-psu.edu (Mark Bower)
Subject: Re: [Fwd: The scandal of obligation]


Arturo,

> How is all of this
>stuff about "witnessing" etc. really a politics or a political response
>to all of this. . . to call it a "politics" seems to me an act of bad
>faith. . . As I said before it seems to me to be a desperate attempt to
>imagine one as having clean hands even after one recognizes that the
>dominant social logic makes that impossible. . .

I would argue that this bearing witness to the differend is "a" politics
(and not merely apolitical).  

How does one explain the inability of individuals who have common interests
to organize around those interests? In other words, why don't people speak
for themselves?

False consciousness?

Too many "free riders"  (a standard liberal political science response)?

A differend?


To respond to this question by pointing to a differend is to engage in
politics.  I think that you are right in saying that this is one way of
imagining clean hands, but it doesn't have to be.  There is, however,
another problem that arises in this act of  "witnessing."  In calling
attention to a differend, one is tempted to "speak for" the silenced and
unintentionally perpetuating their silence.

Mark Bower