File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-07-10.220, message 3


Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 09:41:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Santiago Colas <scolas-AT-umich.edu>
Subject: Re: DROMOLOGY QUESTION


I'm getting in on this discussion late, but have the benefit of Rahul's 
very sharply pointed question.  I've not read the Virilio book in 
question but I was briefly interested in others guilty by their 
association with Semiotexte.  Quite directly:  the sentence you quoted 
makes no sense to me; indeed I have a hard time imagining that even a 
clarification or explanation of it would make me comfortable with its 
form of expression.  But, and especially since I don't know the work in 
which it appears (and maybe you, Rahul, are), I wouldn't feel comfortable 
condemning the thought of this man, or even this book, in its entirety.  
Then again, maybe that's not what you're saying at all.  But if this is 
just about this sentence fragment, I'm partly thinking "so what?"  Who 
hasn't written a fucked up sentence at one time or another that they 
either thought was dynamite at first glance (and perhaps later regretted) 
or didn't even notice?  One last proviso to my comments:  as I missed the 
earlier discussion, I know it's possible this ground has been covered and 
if so I'm sorry to rehash it; but it does seem like the issue of the 
bankruptcy of certain form of contemporary so-called theory should rest 
on more than the patent absurdity of one sentence (fragment) of it.  No?
Santiago

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Santiago Colas					e-mail:	scolas-AT-umich.edu
Asst. Professor					phone:	(313) 763-4352
Latin American and Comparative Literature	fax:	(313) 764-8163
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1275
USA

On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Rahul Mahajan wrote:

> Jon:
> 
> >I read Virilio's _Speed and Politics_ a while ago, and found it
> >interesting--though I wasn't over the moon about it.
> >
> >Lots of stuff, as I recall, about ships, navigation, trade, and the impact
> >of the invention of latitude and longditude etc. on the conception of
> >space.  At least, that's also what Deleuze and Guattari pick up from that
> >book.
> >
> >It's simply not trying to do the same thing as physics.
> 
> Jon, the way you guys close ranks never ceases to amaze me. I don't care
> that Virilio isn't trying to do physics (actually, I'm happy he's not). I
> wouldn't even care if he was working on a massive monograph on religious
> iconography among 14th-century Languedoc peasants and its significance to
> modern international currency markets. The point is, why does this
> egregious sentence fragment appear in his work:
> 
> "the dromospheric space, space-speed, is physically described by what is
> called the 'logistic equation,' the result of the product of the mass
> displaced by the speed of its displacement, MxV."
> 
> Somebody give me an alternative to egregious stupidity or charlatanry. If
> he's talking about a completely different sphere, then why does he need to
> throw in not only  a reference to special relativity, which could not
> possibly be of any relevance, but one that is completely nonsensical. Why
> does everyone keep trying to slip this point? Is it true, as I've believed
> for quite some time now, that even obvious, deliberate fraud is not
> considered a serious matter in the modern academy?
> 
> The unwillingness to condemn this kind of thing that many have shown makes
> me question their own intellectual integrity.
> 
> Rahul
> 
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 


     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005