Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:57:41 +1100
Subject: Re: terrorism


----- Original Message -----
From: Fuller <fuller-AT-bekkers.com.au>
To: <lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: terrorism

Glen,

Thanks to you antipodean hi-jackers we get tomorrow's news before midnight.
Canberra passed on the good news that Odyssey achieved Mars orbit as
planned.
see:  http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Camus philosophized (Caligula):  "Man is unhappy and he dies.".

Heraclitus opined:  "Mortals and immortals, living in each other's death,
dying in each other's life."

Wittgenstein wondered:  "If forced to give up one's beliefs, which would one
give up last.?"

A new movie, "K-Pak" deals with the prospect of giving up belief systems.

Each believer embodies a unique odyssey from past beliefs to the "is it
happening".


Regards,

Hugh






> Eric,
>
> I am going to hijack this email.
>
> > There is always terror to some degree.  It happens because we are
> > organisms who are born and must die.  It makes us fragile and vulnerable
> > to others more powerful than we are.  Since an organism needs air,
> > water, food, shelter, those who can withhold such things inspire fear in
> > us. A certain baseline of terror is hardwired into the nature of things.
>
> I will relate a story to the above. One of my professors was talking about
> Weber's social contract theory and Freud's primal horde. He was talking
> about in a context of conspiracies. Where he believed that for there to
have
> been a 'meeting' held in secret to establish the second 'original'
meeting.
> The purpose of the first clandestine meeting was also to make sure no one
> was going to murder each at the second 'original' meeting. This was driven
> by a fear of being murdered (or having the necessary life giving things
> withheld as above). However, in the first instance how would they know of
> this fear? (I ask this in full realization that this model is only
> analogous, and humans evolved over tens of thousands of years:) Are we
born
> into the world not-having?
>
> > I say that the ethics needed today in the face of terror requires both
> > resistance and tranquility.  We must recognize our weakness, but also
> > recognize we can endure their haughty power through Kynicism and pagan
> > laughter.
>
> I thought of Haraway's Situated Knowledges, was that she speaks of a
> 'translation' and of 'communication'. If you replace the word Truth for
> Knowledge then what she says is very similiar to Badiou. Although she does
> not have an ethical bent, rather she just describes the process.
> A translation of knowledges from the Other's subjectivity/context and also
> at the same time a translation of your own knowledges (of the same
> 'knowledge') to something that can be deciphered by the Other to something
> that can be. That is, for resolution you should try to understand as well
as
> be understood, rather than assume 'right-us-ness'. Although it is far from
> that simple, and to undertake this process on an everyday level I think
> would be excruciating. But like another feminist said the personal is
> political...
>
> The commnication is in a sense of a dialogue between fluid subjectivities
> (and hence knowledges). But not only the subjectivity of the Other (and
it's
> Othered concepts) is held from the panoptic but the Self as well. An
> unstable process of holding the Self (and your concepts) as Other.
> Haraway attempts to recover objectivity, without falling for the Modernist
> God-trick. The only ethical way to hold anything as object is to place
> yourSelf there also.
>
> From an identity politics standpoint my use of the word hybrid (in my
> previous message) was intentional, for I was taking my leave from H. Bha
Bha
> (I can never spell it:). I would argue that the hybrid identity all comes
> into being once the conflict over Self as Other is pragmatically resolved.
> But here I am reading like I vouch for a concrete Self, I am trying not to
> seem like I am.
>
> Perhaps, it is like choosing video with a group of friends. You know what
> your tastes are, you know what your friends tastes are. The point is not
to
> fight about choosing a video, but to watch a video. How is this problem
> resolved? I don't know about you but I don't always get my way.
> What if a friend wanted to get out something you found offensive? If
someone
> suggested a pornographic video, and this was not to your tastes, and you
> levelled it to sexual exploitation of women which was 'evil' (in the
Badiou
> sense), then how do you communicate and translate this? What if you had no
> theoretical basis for your objection and it was just because pornographic
> images make you sick? To you your tastes are 'true', but so are not your
> friends' tastes? How about if it was a friend of a friend who had come
along
> for the night? We never get out one video.
>
> Perhaps likening the process of choosing a video to world politics is a
bit
> crass, and unlike world politics they are your friends for a reason (that
is
> you may have similiar tastes to begin with). Hmmm..
>
> Glen.
>