Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:01:29 -0800
From: "Wilkerson, Richard" <rcwilk-AT-dreamgate.com>
Subject: Re: totalizing



Hi Lois and Hugh,

  I have a somewhat similar take as Hugh.

   Keeping with my D&G  theme, I would suggest that the definition of 
totalizing offered can be best judged by viewing the definition as a brick 
whose trajectory may either 1. get captured by forces that render it 
impotent  or 2. it may break into other flows, create new connections and 
distribute a firework of resonate intensities across which we may skate.

  The definition seems to work as far as it extends.  But I wonder about 
basing the whole process on writers and writing, which may be a nice 
metaphor (that all totalizing is authored, so to speak, or that everything 
is a text) but missing the asignyfying and non-signifying powers at 
work.  That is, were Afgan women really worried about the taliban authoring 
totalizing propaganda, or did they find the it was the enforcement through 
getting stoned to death?

I also am thinking about how totalizing all forms of representation can be 
and something in the nature (nurture?) of all organization.

  Maybe we can re-work the definition to have some guts.

  -Richard

>>See **
>>
>>Lois wrote:
>>
>>Thanks Richard and Hugh  (did anyone else respond to my request that 
>>people talk about totalizing). I think I'll contribute some quoted words 
>>and see if you like them.  They're not mine, but I'd like to let the text 
>>stand on its own for a moment. It's from a book you might recognize:
>>
>>"The function of the term totalizing, as I understand it,is to point to a 
>>'process' (hence the awkward 'ing' form) by which writers of history, 
>>fiction, or even theory render their material coherent, continuous, 
>>unified - but always with an eye to the control and mastery of those 
>>materials, even at the risk of doing violence to them.  It is this link 
>>to power, as well as process, that the adjective 'totalizing' is meant to 
>>suggest, and it is as such that the term has been used to characterize 
>>everything from liberal humanist ideals to aims of historiography."
>>
>>Like that?
>>
>>**Can't quarrel with it, but I associate totalizing with control freaks, 
>>politics, dictators, Marxists of all flavors, those who know what's best 
>>for everyone (totally) and are willing to kill to make it happen.  If its 
>>only a lot of talk it's philosophy, and squabbling about alternative 
>>points of view  keeps it alive.**
>>
>>regards,
>>Hugh
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>

HTML VERSION: