File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1999/lyotard.9910, message 14


Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 15:57:52 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: methodology and the differend


Lois Shawver wrote:
> 
> hugh bone wrote:
> >
> > Lois,
> >
> > I just got a little book titled "Postmodernism" by Ray Linn, published
> > by National Council of Teachers of English, c 1996.
> >
> > The author finds that the spirit of Post Modernism is that nothing
> > substantial exists independently of external socialization and an
> > internalized collective language.
> >
> > While I think this is a reasonable assessment of Postmodernism as we
> > know it, it describes a philosophy of victimization.  Consider all the
> > oppression and violence which "progress" has brought, i.e. unspeakable
> > horrors of the 20th century.
> 
> I wish I had more time to answer your thoughtful note, Hugh.  Maybe
> later today.  Let me say though that Judy's wonderful note on this
> captures my undestanding as well.  Our language makes it look as though
> feelings, desires, and internal states occur in distinct ways apart from
> our naming of them, but a closer look will challenge this presumption.
> 
> I wonder if you would explain how this relates, in your mind, to a
> "philosophy of victimization"?  I am not challenging you, but asking you
> what is your reasoning here. You gloss over this point as though it's
> obvious, and it isn't obvious to me.  It might be, of course, that
> people do victimize each other with the language of feelings, much as
> Judy described, but it isn't clear to me that this is inevitable.  I
> think our world would be very different indeed if we didn't have this
> langauge.  I think, that in addition to victimizing each other, we can
> use this langauge to create the imagery that allows for empathic bonds.
> 
> I'll try to get back to the rest of your note later.
> ..Lois Shawver
-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-

Lois,

Maybe I took to much for granted.

A little anecdote:  A brain surgeon interviewed on PBS TV explained 
how his mother, a young black woman from Tennesee married a man from
Detroit who, as luck would have it was already married.  When she found
out, she took her two small boys and left.  She did not have the
psychology of a victim.  The person being interviewed was at one time at
the bottom of his class.  His mother insisted that he and his brother
read two books a week from the public library, and give her a written
reports on them. This they did. Later he learned that his mother
couldn't read.  But he became interested in the world of books, went to
the head of his class.  With this recognition he thought well of
himself, (not a victim) and became an achiever.

It may or may not be a true story.

If human beings have their God-given selves deconstructed, think of
themselves as scientifically-proven primates, whose lives are 
constrained from the outside by uncontrollable social forces, and from
the inside by the a language which controls their thoughts, it may
translate into a lack of self esteem.  

They become victims of their own opinions of what they are and what
their fellow-humans are.

Hugh


   

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