Date: Fri, 02 Jan 1998 12:16:52 -0500
From: Arturo Cherbowski <artche-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Politics


Mark:


Sure, formally and in principle, politics does not have to bedefined in
militaristic and economic terms. . . it can, as the Lyotard that writes
after the terror inspired in him by percieving the beast too directly in
his "Libidinal Economy", as the Lyotard of "Le Differend", be defined in
terms of justice. . .but this again is only sheer formalism and one
which priviledges simplistic view of the will. . .a certain naive
voluntarism. . . as if politics depended only on what a will makes of it
("I will it to be about justice and hence it must be so. . .you will it
to be about what you want but we are all entitled to our opinion. .
.")   Wouldn't it nbe wonderful if it was just so simple. . . the fact
is that politics, its logics and operations, are not what any given
subject makes of them, at leastnot now. . . I can not make justice
happen just by willing it nor by discussing it endlessly. . . the
domination ofand by capital defines politics in its substantive and
concrete reality. . .whether we like it or not. . .  the violence of my
posts, the expletives, the polemics come from a compulsion to makes us
face this square on whether we like it or not, much as Lyotard once did
before turning away. . .(why turn away I do not know and any guess would
end up being an ad hominem attack so I won't. . .he does call "libidinal
Economy" the most evil of his books and it stands almost as the disowned
offspring within the body of his work. . .again why the exclusion,
sacrifice, turn or whatever ?  What is being repressed that will return
and which is always there, even in "le Differend", if only in its
absence ?  And I think that my posts caused such reaction not only
because of their style. . .I think there is something here we, and I
include myself, would rather not face. . . both about politics and about
what we do as scholars or whatever given this. . .