> Matthew King wrote:
> Surely you're being ironic here, right? There's not much question of this.
> For evidence, see the Mational Security Archive,
> <http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm>. From their
> summary:
Thanks for the references. Rest assured that I feel suitably chastened
(although it seems that nothing you posted suggests that anyone from the
U.S. actually told Pinochet to commit human rights abuses--implicit
support would not be relevant to a trial).
Thanks for the lawyerly input, esq., but again you are splitting hairs.
> Is it a Foucaultian spirit that encourages this turn-the-other-cheek
> attitude towards this criminal Pinochet?
Who is advocating turning the other cheek? Must I end every sentence
with: ... but still, PINOCHET SHOULD BE PROSECUTED?
No, but it would be nice of you had something intelligent or germane to say
about why anyone -- save a solipsistic aesthete -- might object to the
potential trial, or to the former victims's (or anyone's) desire to see
Pinochet prosecuted. I am myself even more tired of your fighting
imaginary battles with the French CP or other tyrants in your head. Your
persecution complex -- about Big Brother asking for "pledges of allegiance"
-- would be quaint, reminiscent of aesthete circles around Wilde or Breton,
were they not so self-parodic.
I repeat myself: No one is asking you for a pledge. Did you fall esleep
with a PBS pledge-drive on, I wonder. I *believe you* when you say you are
*for* the trial.
Here is the problem, and the source of my own irritation at least:
At 02:27 AM 30-11-98 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Nov 1998, Daniel F. Vukovich wrote:
>
>> That the families and friends of former victims of Pinochet's rule want the
>> man arrested and brought to trial, even if this means using international
>> law and foreign courts, is good enough warrant for me to fully support
>> their efforts and desires.
>
>It's their celebrations--and the bloodlust they seem to betray--that
>bother me.
With all due respect, this is *stupid.* Might I suggest you are reading
too much into -- i.e., projecting onto -- those video snippets on the TV?
Or is your reaction simply ideology-at-work: you know perfectly well what
you are saying, but still you say it? You are certainly entitled, a/c to
us vulgar marxists, to have your "opinions" and "impressions" about what
blips across the telly, etc etc.
But to dress these up as anything else, and to get quietly hysterical about
being persecuted over your politics -- whatever these are, though Ive *not*
made some summary judgment of them myself -- this to me is just a bit much.
If you feel like saying Why you are bothered by their perceived bloodlust
and (evil?) celebrations, go right ahead. Or don't. I'm not persecuting
you, but I am saying that I find your imputations and judgments (in this
specific case) to be politically "conservative" and wrong. Do you need to
know why? I swear I've answered that before, but let me say, in short,
that I think it means you are "keeping company with" the bad guys (and
gals, like Thatcher). *Of course* there always a lot of grey areas, but I
dont see how this is one such case, and moreover, the moment of politics is
also the monent of reduction, in which one bravely ventures forth a
generalization and/or a "position." I do not, however, suggest you need
to be excommunicated from the Party, and -- depsite my irritation and
disgust -- I do not actually think this all materially amounts to too much
more than a trivial "discussion" amongst several intellectuals rather
removed from the real players in the "game." But, if only symbolically
(again), the question of "Which side are you on?" (sing the old song here,
loud and proud) still matters.
But anyway: Where in the sacred name of the uber-man do you see bloodlust?
They were *wrong* (?!) to drink champagne after the decision of the House
of Lords to pass the buck?? Just who in the hell are you to pass judgment
upon these people, whose experiences you cannot possibly or even remotely
"relate to"? And why is it that you have such a strong desire to police
their own desires for some type of symbolic justice for Pinochet's murders
and tortures? Pardon my old English, but what the fuck is so complicated
or questionable about their "desires" here? I still don't get it, because
to me this moral-handwringing over some imaginary or projected "vengeance"
is, shall we say, dubious.
Ergo:
>I don't think that the one exercise of bloody power is all that easily
>separable from the other. History seems to show that once the taste for
>blood is acquired, it can't be extinguished. (In a couple of later
>interviews (Remarks on Marx being one of them), Foucault even points out
>that it is a short step from intellectual bloodlust--the polemic
>attitude--to physical bloodletting, if the appropriate conditions present
>themselves.) Which is why the anti-Pinochet celebrations bother me--I
>find their vindictiveness threatening. People who cheer at executions
>scare me. It is sometimes necessary and sometimes justified to visit
>misfortune upon others--but I wish that would always be undertaken with
>regret, no matter how justified.
I think it is relatively easy to keep them separated. Certainly in regard
to the ongoing Pinochet scenario. Talk about totalizing, and
anthroplogizing human nature to boot: "bloody power is essentially bloody
power, over and over again in some anarcho version of the eternal return";
like sharks during a feeding frenzy, or vampires at an orgy, only more so,
once us humans taste blood we dont wanna stop, b/c it is in our nature --
or b/c History's Spirit deems it so.
The Foucault I know (or prefer, at any rate) says that, Just b/c power is
everywhere, this does not mean it is the same everywhere, nor has the same
effects, the same bloody mindedness or spirit, the same forms, etc. (I
myself dont care for the "power is everywhere" thesis, or for the "where
there is power there is resistance" one; I would agree with the recent post
that suggested these are misleading, too-easy soundbite versions of F's
work, even if he wrote them himself. I should hope these references fall in
the same group -- sorry I dont have the text with me right now.) And to
equate the polemical attitude with "bloodlust", and then to say, under
certain conditions this attitude (or is it an innate drive again?) gives
you murder, torture, showtrials, etc., strikes me similarily as the above:
sloppy totalizing and anthropologizing/psychologizing. Or as
historically-informed analysis/theory, all too formally akin to the
McLaughin (sp) Group's "thinking" on Sunday mornings on PBS. In other
words, stupid and politically dubious.
bloodymindedly Yours,
Dan
-------------------------------------------
Daniel Vukovich
English; The Unit for Criticism
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
-------------------------------------------
> Surely you're being ironic here, right? There's not much question of this.
> For evidence, see the Mational Security Archive,
> <http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm>. From their
> summary:
Thanks for the references. Rest assured that I feel suitably chastened
(although it seems that nothing you posted suggests that anyone from the
U.S. actually told Pinochet to commit human rights abuses--implicit
support would not be relevant to a trial).
Thanks for the lawyerly input, esq., but again you are splitting hairs.
> Is it a Foucaultian spirit that encourages this turn-the-other-cheek
> attitude towards this criminal Pinochet?
Who is advocating turning the other cheek? Must I end every sentence
with: ... but still, PINOCHET SHOULD BE PROSECUTED?
No, but it would be nice of you had something intelligent or germane to say
about why anyone -- save a solipsistic aesthete -- might object to the
potential trial, or to the former victims's (or anyone's) desire to see
Pinochet prosecuted. I am myself even more tired of your fighting
imaginary battles with the French CP or other tyrants in your head. Your
persecution complex -- about Big Brother asking for "pledges of allegiance"
-- would be quaint, reminiscent of aesthete circles around Wilde or Breton,
were they not so self-parodic.
I repeat myself: No one is asking you for a pledge. Did you fall esleep
with a PBS pledge-drive on, I wonder. I *believe you* when you say you are
*for* the trial.
Here is the problem, and the source of my own irritation at least:
At 02:27 AM 30-11-98 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Nov 1998, Daniel F. Vukovich wrote:
>
>> That the families and friends of former victims of Pinochet's rule want the
>> man arrested and brought to trial, even if this means using international
>> law and foreign courts, is good enough warrant for me to fully support
>> their efforts and desires.
>
>It's their celebrations--and the bloodlust they seem to betray--that
>bother me.
With all due respect, this is *stupid.* Might I suggest you are reading
too much into -- i.e., projecting onto -- those video snippets on the TV?
Or is your reaction simply ideology-at-work: you know perfectly well what
you are saying, but still you say it? You are certainly entitled, a/c to
us vulgar marxists, to have your "opinions" and "impressions" about what
blips across the telly, etc etc.
But to dress these up as anything else, and to get quietly hysterical about
being persecuted over your politics -- whatever these are, though Ive *not*
made some summary judgment of them myself -- this to me is just a bit much.
If you feel like saying Why you are bothered by their perceived bloodlust
and (evil?) celebrations, go right ahead. Or don't. I'm not persecuting
you, but I am saying that I find your imputations and judgments (in this
specific case) to be politically "conservative" and wrong. Do you need to
know why? I swear I've answered that before, but let me say, in short,
that I think it means you are "keeping company with" the bad guys (and
gals, like Thatcher). *Of course* there always a lot of grey areas, but I
dont see how this is one such case, and moreover, the moment of politics is
also the monent of reduction, in which one bravely ventures forth a
generalization and/or a "position." I do not, however, suggest you need
to be excommunicated from the Party, and -- depsite my irritation and
disgust -- I do not actually think this all materially amounts to too much
more than a trivial "discussion" amongst several intellectuals rather
removed from the real players in the "game." But, if only symbolically
(again), the question of "Which side are you on?" (sing the old song here,
loud and proud) still matters.
But anyway: Where in the sacred name of the uber-man do you see bloodlust?
They were *wrong* (?!) to drink champagne after the decision of the House
of Lords to pass the buck?? Just who in the hell are you to pass judgment
upon these people, whose experiences you cannot possibly or even remotely
"relate to"? And why is it that you have such a strong desire to police
their own desires for some type of symbolic justice for Pinochet's murders
and tortures? Pardon my old English, but what the fuck is so complicated
or questionable about their "desires" here? I still don't get it, because
to me this moral-handwringing over some imaginary or projected "vengeance"
is, shall we say, dubious.
Ergo:
>I don't think that the one exercise of bloody power is all that easily
>separable from the other. History seems to show that once the taste for
>blood is acquired, it can't be extinguished. (In a couple of later
>interviews (Remarks on Marx being one of them), Foucault even points out
>that it is a short step from intellectual bloodlust--the polemic
>attitude--to physical bloodletting, if the appropriate conditions present
>themselves.) Which is why the anti-Pinochet celebrations bother me--I
>find their vindictiveness threatening. People who cheer at executions
>scare me. It is sometimes necessary and sometimes justified to visit
>misfortune upon others--but I wish that would always be undertaken with
>regret, no matter how justified.
I think it is relatively easy to keep them separated. Certainly in regard
to the ongoing Pinochet scenario. Talk about totalizing, and
anthroplogizing human nature to boot: "bloody power is essentially bloody
power, over and over again in some anarcho version of the eternal return";
like sharks during a feeding frenzy, or vampires at an orgy, only more so,
once us humans taste blood we dont wanna stop, b/c it is in our nature --
or b/c History's Spirit deems it so.
The Foucault I know (or prefer, at any rate) says that, Just b/c power is
everywhere, this does not mean it is the same everywhere, nor has the same
effects, the same bloody mindedness or spirit, the same forms, etc. (I
myself dont care for the "power is everywhere" thesis, or for the "where
there is power there is resistance" one; I would agree with the recent post
that suggested these are misleading, too-easy soundbite versions of F's
work, even if he wrote them himself. I should hope these references fall in
the same group -- sorry I dont have the text with me right now.) And to
equate the polemical attitude with "bloodlust", and then to say, under
certain conditions this attitude (or is it an innate drive again?) gives
you murder, torture, showtrials, etc., strikes me similarily as the above:
sloppy totalizing and anthropologizing/psychologizing. Or as
historically-informed analysis/theory, all too formally akin to the
McLaughin (sp) Group's "thinking" on Sunday mornings on PBS. In other
words, stupid and politically dubious.
bloodymindedly Yours,
Dan
-------------------------------------------
Daniel Vukovich
English; The Unit for Criticism
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
-------------------------------------------