Malcolm Dunnachie Thompson wrote:
>
> First of all, the caricatured conspiracy theory that someone proposed was
> simply an exagerration of my position is *not* Chomskyism - and second,
> even if it were, what would be wrong with that? I'm very interested in
> Foucault as a theorist of "conspiracies without conspirators" - just
> because no conspiracy can hope to unilaterally determine the outcome of
> things doesn't mean that there are no conspiracies.
Any conspiracy worth the name has conspirators. The only conspirator
that's not human is the invisible hand.
> Also, I never said that history was little more than a dominant group's
> attempts to shore up its power. Quite the contrary, actually. I said that
> competing forms of history, in the process of their discursive
> elaboration, come to function as tactics within political struggles. Now,
> a political struggle implies at least two sides, and either side will
> have its form of history. Only certain histories function as attempts to
> shore up dominant regimes (and this very notion has certain problems) -
> other histories have liberatory aims and effects. And this is the
> criteria I think one should use to decide between histories - not their
> more or less skillful use of a certain set of historiographic criteria -
> since every such set is already irretrievably ideologically laden.
If a particular event in the past served the present interests of no one, would
the epistemic status of that event differ from that of a past event which is a point of
political conflict?
> The writing of history is always a
> "making" of meaning, and this operation on traces of events really has to
> do with the present. It is, after all, "making meaning" - so who makes
> it? Not the events themselves. In whose interests? Mine or theirs?
But are all events the object of present interests?
> Finally, why do you need an "objective" reason to care more about
> yourself than about obscure 19th century European sex-guys? Of course you
> don't have an "objective" reason - but you don't need one. You don't have
> an objective reason to do anything, but that doesn't stop you.
Two things. First, "Pavarotti is not a famous car racer." Second and naturally,
I care more about myself than I do about most everyone I've never met -- they are
abstractions in my mind (Altantan, Jew, microbiologist) but they are also real.
But what about these obscure sex-guys? I don't inderstand.
Also what about there being an objective reason not to do something?
********************************************************
Nicholas Dronen
Carpe Ya-ya.
http://w3.servint.com/cognigen/f/fci.cgi?dr2864423
********************************************************
>
> First of all, the caricatured conspiracy theory that someone proposed was
> simply an exagerration of my position is *not* Chomskyism - and second,
> even if it were, what would be wrong with that? I'm very interested in
> Foucault as a theorist of "conspiracies without conspirators" - just
> because no conspiracy can hope to unilaterally determine the outcome of
> things doesn't mean that there are no conspiracies.
Any conspiracy worth the name has conspirators. The only conspirator
that's not human is the invisible hand.
> Also, I never said that history was little more than a dominant group's
> attempts to shore up its power. Quite the contrary, actually. I said that
> competing forms of history, in the process of their discursive
> elaboration, come to function as tactics within political struggles. Now,
> a political struggle implies at least two sides, and either side will
> have its form of history. Only certain histories function as attempts to
> shore up dominant regimes (and this very notion has certain problems) -
> other histories have liberatory aims and effects. And this is the
> criteria I think one should use to decide between histories - not their
> more or less skillful use of a certain set of historiographic criteria -
> since every such set is already irretrievably ideologically laden.
If a particular event in the past served the present interests of no one, would
the epistemic status of that event differ from that of a past event which is a point of
political conflict?
> The writing of history is always a
> "making" of meaning, and this operation on traces of events really has to
> do with the present. It is, after all, "making meaning" - so who makes
> it? Not the events themselves. In whose interests? Mine or theirs?
But are all events the object of present interests?
> Finally, why do you need an "objective" reason to care more about
> yourself than about obscure 19th century European sex-guys? Of course you
> don't have an "objective" reason - but you don't need one. You don't have
> an objective reason to do anything, but that doesn't stop you.
Two things. First, "Pavarotti is not a famous car racer." Second and naturally,
I care more about myself than I do about most everyone I've never met -- they are
abstractions in my mind (Altantan, Jew, microbiologist) but they are also real.
But what about these obscure sex-guys? I don't inderstand.
Also what about there being an objective reason not to do something?
********************************************************
Nicholas Dronen
Carpe Ya-ya.
http://w3.servint.com/cognigen/f/fci.cgi?dr2864423
********************************************************