File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2001/lyotard.0110, message 13


Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 13:42:42 -0700
From: Judy <jaw-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Quick reply


Hi you guys, hugh, steve, eric, whoever
reading your conversations has been intense, and aesthetically 
appreciated.  I like reading how you all put things.

hugh you said
>
>**There is a crisis, there is action, hope it achieves its purpose, but
>doubtful.
>Will reading philosophy help?  If so, please explain.


Agreed, doubtful that the actions i'm aware of so far will achieve 
their  purpose, if the purpose is prevention of more attacks.  Old 
paradigm, not addressing newly apparent anomalies, nor not so newly 
apparent anomlies either. coming from old paradigms, showing a 
blindness to those anomalies, but of course. I think only the school 
of hard knocks may lead to fundamental change under  such 
circumstances.

first eric, then hugh, says

>  >
>>  I write to you both with the awareness that I seem to know less today
>>  than I did yesterday, yet I am more committed than ever to honoring
>>  justice.  I see justice not as something we know, but as something we
>>  create. It is not a measure, but remains measureless.
>**Prevention today, justice tomorrow.


Prevention today justice tomorrow in this temporal order presupposes 
certain meanings of these terms and not others, a certain phrase 
universe, where I so far haven't been able to find a home.  I find 
myself occupying one of those other genres, with presuppositions 
incommensurable with that sequencing and distinguishing, or 
prevention and justice, in which first must come justice, and the 
result will be prevention.

  alternatively, only with justice may there be hope of prevention, 
creates a different universe, and that's where i find myself.

 From there i come with words like: to create what justice is, talk 
and listen.  Cry out to the globe, "OK, what's up with this?   Why 
did this happen?   Let's talk.  We want to stop the  killing.  How 
join with all who want to stop the killing  and do our part?"

i don't know what justice is, even locally and provisionally.  But 
the discourse that shapes me, causes me to be the voice of certain 
presuppositions, and has me saying ok, we need to talk.  We need some 
answers that we don't have, we need them from you the attackers of us.

I use the term 'we' of course with many qualifications.  it's just a 
figure of speech, to imply the American targets of attack.

I can't seem to find my way out of this hopeless conviction of what 
needs to be, this need for talk in good faith.

Whenever I say anything in conversations about the Event, like now, I 
have this paranoid imagry of myself being perceived as lobbing a 
grenade into the crowd, and in in proverbial metaphorical imaginary 
way, I hold my arms over my inner head as of to shield myself and 
block the poison spears of hostility i may have just provoked.  I'm 
having a weird and alienated feeling time, more than the usual level 
that's always there.  I haven't had any weird dreams at night, but i 
have them a  lot while awake in the day time, particularly when 
trying to join conversations about the Event.



>  >
>>  Justice today is a case where no rules apply and yet we still must
>>  judge.  That in part is what I meant when I said in my previous post
>>  that we are all postmodern now.
>**Yes.  But count the terroist killings in repeated incidents, decide if you
>want to invite more killings. Call it postmeodern or historic, or modern or
>epic, whatever.
>

what might this mean, 'to invite more killings', what courses of 
action would invite more killings?   and what could 'to prevent more 
killings' mean, in this conversation, as we grope our way around in 
this weird pscyhological landscape which is the effect of the Event.
judy
-- 





   

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