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Subject: Unity, dissent, and abstraction Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 04:12:11 -0400 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Freedom, evil, justice, unity, darkness, terrorism, economy. The rhetoric flinging must either stop or be thought. It makes no sense to act otherwise and might not ever make or find sense anyway. Yet it does conceal a perfomative intention which I find quite dangerous. I don't think that it would be going too far to say that claims go haywire and become more intense and emphatic when self-consciously under threat (from within, so to speak). In fact, that they would be claimed betrays any pretense to stability that they might wish (with blood and iron) to stand on. But we find now not claims which seek ground, but rather claims to ground. Through their repetition such claims loose any substance we might have been able to have unpacked from them. As such they shift from meanings (already mathematically fuzzy) to a kind pure functionality in which they seem to mean (while not indicating anything) and as such can be freely moved to justify or demonize anything (and it is always best if this 'anything' is as empty as the terms applied to it). Unity is the term which bothers me most. Being almost always mentioned with the collective pronoun ('we') phrased temporally as already done ("We, all of us, stand in unity...). It is like when you read a slogan phrased in the first person: it seems as if you say it yourself. Untity, in such space, exiles dissent, which we need now more than ever. Now, dissent need not be abject, dialectical opposition, for making such an assertion is much the same as a proclaimation of good against evil, that is, bankrupt. The dissent I mean follows more like this: we open spaces (and not only on listserves) where dialogue (or rather pluralogue) is possible, and not only that, efficacious and affective. It should touch and make ripples. And yes we should demand that, especially on a federal level, pluralogue (long needed) begins now. It is insulting that I am expected to believe this fairy tale, knight-in-shining-armor bullshit, and even more so that 'we' have for so long. Pardon my bad spelling Rod T

Freedom, evil, justice, unity, darkness, terrorism, economy. The rhetoric flinging must either stop or be thought. It makes no sense to act otherwise and might not ever make or find sense anyway. Yet it does conceal a perfomative intention which I find quite dangerous. I don't think that it would be going too far to say that claims go haywire and become more intense and emphatic when self-consciously under threat (from within, so to speak). In fact, that they would be claimed betrays any pretense to stability that they might wish (with blood and iron) to stand on. But we find now not claims which seek ground, but rather claims to ground. Through their repetition such claims loose any substance we might have been able to have unpacked from them. As such they shift from meanings (already mathematically fuzzy) to a kind pure functionality in which they seem to mean (while not indicating anything) and as such can be freely moved to justify or demonize anything (and it is always best if this 'anything' is as empty as the terms applied to it). Unity is the term which bothers me most. Being almost always mentioned with the collective pronoun ('we') phrased temporally as already done ("We, all of us, stand in unity...). It is like when you read a slogan phrased in the first person: it seems as if you say it yourself. Untity, in such space, exiles dissent, which we need now more than ever. Now, dissent need not be abject, dialectical opposition, for making such an assertion is much the same as a proclaimation of good against evil, that is, bankrupt. The dissent I mean follows more like this: we open spaces (and not only on listserves) where dialogue (or rather pluralogue) is possible, and not only that, efficacious and affective. It should touch and make ripples. And yes we should demand that, especially on a federal level, pluralogue (long needed) begins now. It is insulting that I am expected to believe this fairy tale, knight-in-shining-armor bullshit, and even more so that 'we' have for so long.

File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2001/lyotard.0109, message 110

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