Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 04:28:09 -0600
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: Curse words


Siddharth:

>Dear Mr. Dumain,
>
>
>On Thu, 29 Feb 1996, Ralph Dumain wrote:
>
>> Your cause, comrade asshole, is masturbating in a closet by yourself.
>> Nobody here is interested in your harangues, so please cease and desist.
>>
>
>In a previous message, you suggested "extermination" of some people. In the
>one above, you again excel yourself. Do you see any contradiction between
>this and your reading of all the esoterics works that you often publicize
>on this list? How can you talk about Feuerbach, Bauer, Althusser, "Nature,
>Society and Thought" with one breath and then then with the other,
>dehumanize with fascist-type slogans. The ferocity of the bourgeois
>intellectual, when cornered, apparently is boundless. I request you
>to please not engage in this type of slander, for it is this which causes
>people to lose interest and leave the list.

"Bourgeois intellectual," huh? You may think that's a penetrating analysis
of Ralph's subject position, but actually it's just another insult like
"snotnose," "asshole," "fake leftist" (applied to our own Uncle Lou). One
thing "asshole" and "cockroach" have going for them is that, although
undeniably crude, they're honest insults, not attempts to mask the smell of
shit with perfume. Among intelligent people, calling someone a bourgeois
intellectual without cause is much more slanderous than calling him an
asshole -- after all, nobody believes the latter is meant literally, right?

Rahul




     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------