John's quote is quite appropriate. I find it curious that Doug Henwood,
who on other LISTSERV"S is quite interetsing and subtle, feels he must
polemicize with the best of knee-jerk ideologues in this one. Go
figure.
Andrew Herman
John Ransom wrote:
>
> Reading Dallmayr's _The Other Heidegger_ last night reminded me of this
> passage:
>
> The polemicist . . . proceeds encased in privileges that he
> possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On
> principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war
> and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he
> confronts is not a partner in the search for truth, but an
> adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful and whose
> very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then, the
> game does not consist of recognizing this person as a
> subject having the right to speak, but of abolishing him,
> as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final
> objective will be, not to come as close as possible to a
> difficult truth, but to bring about the triumph of the
> just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the
> beginning . . .
> Perhaps, someday, a long history will have to be
> written of polemics, polemics as a parasitic figure on
> discussion and an obstacle to the search for truth. Very
> schematically, it seems to me that today we can recognize
> the presence in polemics of three models: the religious model,
> the judiciary model, and the political model. As in
> heresiology, polemics sets itself the task of determining
> the intangible point of dogma, the fundamental and necessary
> principle that the adversary has neglected, ignored, or
> transgressed; and it denounces this negligence as a moral
> failing; at the root of the error, it finds passion, desire,
> interest, a whole series of weaknesses and inadmissible
> attachments that establish it as culpable. As in judiciary
> practice, polemics allows for no possibility of an equal
> discussion: it examines a case; it isn't dealing with an
> interlocutor, it is processing a suspect; it collects proof
> of his guilt, designates the infraction he has committed, and
> pronounces the verdict and sentences him. In any case, what
> we have here is not on the order of a shared investigation;
> the polemicist tells the truth in the form of his judgment and
> by virtue of the authority he has conferred on himself. But
> it is the political model that is the most powerful today.
> Polemics defines alliances, recruits partisans, unites
> interests or opinions, represents a party; it establishes the
> other as an enemy, an upholder of opposed interest, against
> which one must fight until the moment this enemy is defeated
> and either surrenders or disappears.
> Of course, the reactivation, in polemics, of these
> political, judiciary, or religious practices is nothing more
> than theater. One gesticulates: anathemas, excommunications,
> condemnations, battles, victories, and defeats are no more than
> ways of speaking, after all. And yet, in the order of discourse,
> they are also ways of acting which are not without consequence.
> There are the sterilizing effects: Has anyone ever seen a new
> idea come out of a polemic? And how could it be otherwise,
> given that here the interlocutors are incited, not to advance,
> not to make more and more risks in what they say, but to fall
> back continually on the rights they claim, on their legitimacy,
> which they must defend, and on the affirmation of their
> innocence? There is something even more serious here: in this
> comedy, one mimics war, battles, annihilations, or unconditional
> surrenders, putting forward as much of one's killer instinct as
> possible. But it is really dangerous to make anyone believe
> that he can gain access to the truth by such paths, and thus to
> validate, even if in a merely symbolic form, the real political
> practices that could be warranted by it. Let us imagine, for a
> moment, that a magic wand is waved and one of the two
> adversaries in a polemic is given the ability to exercise all
> the power he likes over the other. One doesn't even have to
> imagine it: one has only to look at what happened during the
> debates in the USSR over linguistics or genetics not long
> ago. Were these merely aberrant deviations from what was
> supposed to be the correct discussion? Not at all: they were
> the real consequences of a polemic attitude whose effects
> ordinarily remain suspended.
>
> "Polemics, Politics, and Problemizations: An Interview"
> in _The Foucault Reader_, pp. 382-383
>
> --John Ransom
> Dickinson College
who on other LISTSERV"S is quite interetsing and subtle, feels he must
polemicize with the best of knee-jerk ideologues in this one. Go
figure.
Andrew Herman
John Ransom wrote:
>
> Reading Dallmayr's _The Other Heidegger_ last night reminded me of this
> passage:
>
> The polemicist . . . proceeds encased in privileges that he
> possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On
> principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war
> and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he
> confronts is not a partner in the search for truth, but an
> adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful and whose
> very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then, the
> game does not consist of recognizing this person as a
> subject having the right to speak, but of abolishing him,
> as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final
> objective will be, not to come as close as possible to a
> difficult truth, but to bring about the triumph of the
> just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the
> beginning . . .
> Perhaps, someday, a long history will have to be
> written of polemics, polemics as a parasitic figure on
> discussion and an obstacle to the search for truth. Very
> schematically, it seems to me that today we can recognize
> the presence in polemics of three models: the religious model,
> the judiciary model, and the political model. As in
> heresiology, polemics sets itself the task of determining
> the intangible point of dogma, the fundamental and necessary
> principle that the adversary has neglected, ignored, or
> transgressed; and it denounces this negligence as a moral
> failing; at the root of the error, it finds passion, desire,
> interest, a whole series of weaknesses and inadmissible
> attachments that establish it as culpable. As in judiciary
> practice, polemics allows for no possibility of an equal
> discussion: it examines a case; it isn't dealing with an
> interlocutor, it is processing a suspect; it collects proof
> of his guilt, designates the infraction he has committed, and
> pronounces the verdict and sentences him. In any case, what
> we have here is not on the order of a shared investigation;
> the polemicist tells the truth in the form of his judgment and
> by virtue of the authority he has conferred on himself. But
> it is the political model that is the most powerful today.
> Polemics defines alliances, recruits partisans, unites
> interests or opinions, represents a party; it establishes the
> other as an enemy, an upholder of opposed interest, against
> which one must fight until the moment this enemy is defeated
> and either surrenders or disappears.
> Of course, the reactivation, in polemics, of these
> political, judiciary, or religious practices is nothing more
> than theater. One gesticulates: anathemas, excommunications,
> condemnations, battles, victories, and defeats are no more than
> ways of speaking, after all. And yet, in the order of discourse,
> they are also ways of acting which are not without consequence.
> There are the sterilizing effects: Has anyone ever seen a new
> idea come out of a polemic? And how could it be otherwise,
> given that here the interlocutors are incited, not to advance,
> not to make more and more risks in what they say, but to fall
> back continually on the rights they claim, on their legitimacy,
> which they must defend, and on the affirmation of their
> innocence? There is something even more serious here: in this
> comedy, one mimics war, battles, annihilations, or unconditional
> surrenders, putting forward as much of one's killer instinct as
> possible. But it is really dangerous to make anyone believe
> that he can gain access to the truth by such paths, and thus to
> validate, even if in a merely symbolic form, the real political
> practices that could be warranted by it. Let us imagine, for a
> moment, that a magic wand is waved and one of the two
> adversaries in a polemic is given the ability to exercise all
> the power he likes over the other. One doesn't even have to
> imagine it: one has only to look at what happened during the
> debates in the USSR over linguistics or genetics not long
> ago. Were these merely aberrant deviations from what was
> supposed to be the correct discussion? Not at all: they were
> the real consequences of a polemic attitude whose effects
> ordinarily remain suspended.
>
> "Polemics, Politics, and Problemizations: An Interview"
> in _The Foucault Reader_, pp. 382-383
>
> --John Ransom
> Dickinson College