--- Forwarded mail from joseph@xxxxxxxxx
From: "Karl Carlile" <joseph@xxxxxxxxx>
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 23:33:20 +0000
Subject: (Fwd) JOANNA AND NEANDERTHAL BEINGS
Karl: This is the message I was expelled from the foucault list for
writing. It is this that Malgosia and friends called disruptive. I
was also called an asshole. If it is this kind of stuff that an
arsehole writes then I want to be an asshole. If
you want a better idea of my views consult the papers section of the
marxism list for a copy of a piece I wrote on Terry Eagleton's The
Ideology of The Aesthetic, a list I have been on for some time.
If anybody thinks what I write is "crap" then I challenge them to
show me what is crap about the brief piece below or the piece
referred to above
I just cannot believe the juvenile character displayed by the Spoon
Collective. I am attacked for my anger. No wonder I am angry. I am
the victim not you. I am the one who is prevented from expressing my
views on the Foucault. I am the one that has been mailbombed. And I
am almost certain that some people connected with the Spoon Collective
interefered with my Internet provider in Dublin either through
getting inside the Provider or by stopping any mail coming from it.
All its mail goes through Boston. This means if I send mail to myself
it still goes through the States. Someone may have stopped it at
Boston. It is interesting that the Ireland On-Line internet provider
was not interfered with on Sunday. This is becaause its mail has more
outlets than the States. Its mail does not have to go via the States.
In the process of stopping mail going through to the States where
Spoon is located either at its source site in Ireland or its next
stop Boston or some other American site that follows Boston(Indigo
mail goes through about 12 sites most of them I think are in the
States) these wiseguys screwed up large parts of the system.They did
not just stop my mail. They stoppped all Indigo mail and other mail.
I have not known this to happen while I have been on the Net. It
should be seriously investigated. Foucault talks about the
Panopticon this is it a miillion times over: the Pancybopticon. And
these people claim to admire Foucault.
Indeed my cybercution on the foucault list has many of the
characteristics described in Foucault work. I will leave you to
identify the book I am referring to.
I say this in all sincerity: I never thought for one minute that I
was going to receive such a disappointing response from the foucault
list. I subscribed to the list to check it out. It was reasonabnly
acitve. I studied the messages and thought that there were prospects
here for developing both my thought and the thought of the list.
I never for one moment thought this was going to happen. I have seen
nastiness in the Left much of which was predictable. But the response
I got on this list was stunning. I cannot believe that the members
can let some few people tell them what they are going to read and
interact with. I understood the Spoon to be a means of overcoming
this kind of problem faced with in the conventional world of
capitalist communication. My esteem for the Spoon Collective has
plummeted. You have lost a friend. Given the way the Spoon and some
of its Lists have turned out I know it wont care. After all I am just
one more of those anonyomous email addresses. The alienation that can
exist in cyberspace.
I am actually seriously considering leaving cyberspace now. I am
really disappointed. I have seen this kind of nastiness in the
radical left and I despise it. But I hoped that perhaps this
nastiness was mainly peculiar to Ireland, its parochical conditions.
But now I find it exists on a world scale. After long years of work,
suffering and expense I am now at a stage where I will just drop out
like so many others. The capitalist class does not need to undermine
serious revolutionaries the radical left do it for them.
I know many of you dont just care one way or another. I do. But there
is only so much I can take. Why should I be punished for my honesty
and desire to seek truth even if it means looking into a hooror. One
could almost be forgiven for subscribing to Nietzsche's nihilism.
Mail message below:
Joanna: Part of the problem, indeed, may be that the subjective has
been irrevocably blurred with the objective.
Karl:To say that "the subjective has been irrevocably blurred by the
objective" suggests that there was a time when the subjective was not
blurred by the objective. If this is true then it needs to be
explained why or how this happend? If there existed a radical divorce
between subject and object why and how did the subjective become
irrevocably blurred by the object? And if it became blurred by the
other why is "the poor unfortunate" subjective now <irrevocably>
blurred by the objective? If at one point there was a divorce why then
can there not be a return to this condition?
Even the language used by you is questionable: "blurred". What does
this mean?
Joanna: I think Adorno said as much in an essay entitled 'Subject,
Object'. A very intersting source on a socially constructed
objectivity is Helen Longino. In her book, _Science as Social
Knowledge_, she shows in a very rigorious way how objectivity can
incorporate a great deal of subjectivity, and still come up with lots
of facts.
Karl: Does she? How wonderful. Aren't you the clever boots to have
spotted this?
Joanna: This, however, is a very different objectivity than the one
demanding a god's eye point of view, one that refuses to see how the
observer can influence what is observed.
Karl: But your very initial observation is "a god's eye point of
view": "Part of the problem, indeed, may be that the subjective has
been irrevocably blurred with the objective." You are being
metaphysical in making this transendental statement concerning the
state of being or reality or whatever you want to call it. (Some
might use cetian longwinded postmodernist shibboleths to try to
describe it. Occam's razor is not fashionable in Gulliver's Laputa
List).
Joannna: While I think that Longino bases her reading of Foucault too
much on what Dreyfus and Rabinow have to say, he project seems to be
very friendly to his kind of critique.
Karl: So what!
Joanna: Just trying to stay on the topic and avoid those pesky
ad hominem attacks, as 'Karl' has so patiently advised.
Karl: Perhaps you ought to stick to the latter since it merely
requires neanderthal intellectual skills.
Crypto racists on this List beware!
'TIS ME Karl Carlile
Yours etc.,
Karl
Yours etc.,
Karl
--- End of forwarded message from joseph@xxxxxxxxx
From: "Karl Carlile" <joseph@xxxxxxxxx>
To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 23:33:20 +0000
Subject: (Fwd) JOANNA AND NEANDERTHAL BEINGS
Karl: This is the message I was expelled from the foucault list for
writing. It is this that Malgosia and friends called disruptive. I
was also called an asshole. If it is this kind of stuff that an
arsehole writes then I want to be an asshole. If
you want a better idea of my views consult the papers section of the
marxism list for a copy of a piece I wrote on Terry Eagleton's The
Ideology of The Aesthetic, a list I have been on for some time.
If anybody thinks what I write is "crap" then I challenge them to
show me what is crap about the brief piece below or the piece
referred to above
I just cannot believe the juvenile character displayed by the Spoon
Collective. I am attacked for my anger. No wonder I am angry. I am
the victim not you. I am the one who is prevented from expressing my
views on the Foucault. I am the one that has been mailbombed. And I
am almost certain that some people connected with the Spoon Collective
interefered with my Internet provider in Dublin either through
getting inside the Provider or by stopping any mail coming from it.
All its mail goes through Boston. This means if I send mail to myself
it still goes through the States. Someone may have stopped it at
Boston. It is interesting that the Ireland On-Line internet provider
was not interfered with on Sunday. This is becaause its mail has more
outlets than the States. Its mail does not have to go via the States.
In the process of stopping mail going through to the States where
Spoon is located either at its source site in Ireland or its next
stop Boston or some other American site that follows Boston(Indigo
mail goes through about 12 sites most of them I think are in the
States) these wiseguys screwed up large parts of the system.They did
not just stop my mail. They stoppped all Indigo mail and other mail.
I have not known this to happen while I have been on the Net. It
should be seriously investigated. Foucault talks about the
Panopticon this is it a miillion times over: the Pancybopticon. And
these people claim to admire Foucault.
Indeed my cybercution on the foucault list has many of the
characteristics described in Foucault work. I will leave you to
identify the book I am referring to.
I say this in all sincerity: I never thought for one minute that I
was going to receive such a disappointing response from the foucault
list. I subscribed to the list to check it out. It was reasonabnly
acitve. I studied the messages and thought that there were prospects
here for developing both my thought and the thought of the list.
I never for one moment thought this was going to happen. I have seen
nastiness in the Left much of which was predictable. But the response
I got on this list was stunning. I cannot believe that the members
can let some few people tell them what they are going to read and
interact with. I understood the Spoon to be a means of overcoming
this kind of problem faced with in the conventional world of
capitalist communication. My esteem for the Spoon Collective has
plummeted. You have lost a friend. Given the way the Spoon and some
of its Lists have turned out I know it wont care. After all I am just
one more of those anonyomous email addresses. The alienation that can
exist in cyberspace.
I am actually seriously considering leaving cyberspace now. I am
really disappointed. I have seen this kind of nastiness in the
radical left and I despise it. But I hoped that perhaps this
nastiness was mainly peculiar to Ireland, its parochical conditions.
But now I find it exists on a world scale. After long years of work,
suffering and expense I am now at a stage where I will just drop out
like so many others. The capitalist class does not need to undermine
serious revolutionaries the radical left do it for them.
I know many of you dont just care one way or another. I do. But there
is only so much I can take. Why should I be punished for my honesty
and desire to seek truth even if it means looking into a hooror. One
could almost be forgiven for subscribing to Nietzsche's nihilism.
Mail message below:
Joanna: Part of the problem, indeed, may be that the subjective has
been irrevocably blurred with the objective.
Karl:To say that "the subjective has been irrevocably blurred by the
objective" suggests that there was a time when the subjective was not
blurred by the objective. If this is true then it needs to be
explained why or how this happend? If there existed a radical divorce
between subject and object why and how did the subjective become
irrevocably blurred by the object? And if it became blurred by the
other why is "the poor unfortunate" subjective now <irrevocably>
blurred by the objective? If at one point there was a divorce why then
can there not be a return to this condition?
Even the language used by you is questionable: "blurred". What does
this mean?
Joanna: I think Adorno said as much in an essay entitled 'Subject,
Object'. A very intersting source on a socially constructed
objectivity is Helen Longino. In her book, _Science as Social
Knowledge_, she shows in a very rigorious way how objectivity can
incorporate a great deal of subjectivity, and still come up with lots
of facts.
Karl: Does she? How wonderful. Aren't you the clever boots to have
spotted this?
Joanna: This, however, is a very different objectivity than the one
demanding a god's eye point of view, one that refuses to see how the
observer can influence what is observed.
Karl: But your very initial observation is "a god's eye point of
view": "Part of the problem, indeed, may be that the subjective has
been irrevocably blurred with the objective." You are being
metaphysical in making this transendental statement concerning the
state of being or reality or whatever you want to call it. (Some
might use cetian longwinded postmodernist shibboleths to try to
describe it. Occam's razor is not fashionable in Gulliver's Laputa
List).
Joannna: While I think that Longino bases her reading of Foucault too
much on what Dreyfus and Rabinow have to say, he project seems to be
very friendly to his kind of critique.
Karl: So what!
Joanna: Just trying to stay on the topic and avoid those pesky
ad hominem attacks, as 'Karl' has so patiently advised.
Karl: Perhaps you ought to stick to the latter since it merely
requires neanderthal intellectual skills.
Crypto racists on this List beware!
'TIS ME Karl Carlile
Yours etc.,
Karl
Yours etc.,
Karl
--- End of forwarded message from joseph@xxxxxxxxx