"Health?" Are we speaking socially or psychologically? And more to the
point, are you sure you are not overlooking the problems of modernity as
reactions to imposed fluidity? Are you sure that the psychological
health of a people can be measured strictly in terms of their tolerance?
In the discourses which brought to our attention the definition of
community, c. was a potentially authoritarian conception which had
little tolerance for or interest in the outside world. Society was
fluid and tolerant, but bereft of affective bonds and deep emotional
comforts (Specialists without spirit, said Weber). While the writers
who established these concepts in sociological language were ultimately
ambivalent about the relative merits of community and society they
desired, like good Hegelians perhaps, that some sense of this previous
pre-intellectual feeling could survive amid the coldness of "modern
society." Your discussion of the community seems to presuppose that
this has really happened in a sense other than ironic. While I agree
that no-one who lives off the trappings of modernity ought to turn
against it by imposing intolerance we must be ever-cognizant of
premodern "communities" whose health, defined strictly among themselves,
can be argued to have been extremely high even though they frequently
built this "health" upon scapegoating that which lay outside them: The
(e)scape(d)goat, literally, or other tribes, races, etc. "Communities"
have historically nearly always been ethnocentric (a word whose value
orientation is somewhat debatable, but in present discourse negative);
yet they are not without their charms to those within them and
particularly to those recently removed from them. But to use this
particular term to denote either blacks or the Ku Klux Klan is somewhat
erroneous, since finding a common Weltanschauung indigenous to each (as
opposed to one imposed by colonism or paramilitary/charismatic
leadership) and exclusive of all others is as spurious as seeking
virgins in maternity (modernity?) wards. David Duke is Klansman, but
also businessman and talk show host; Billy Bob Gunrack is Klansman and
tobacco farmer: They share an imposed delusion but not a Weltanschauung.
Jesse Jackson is not Jesse Owens, and neither is Glen "Rodney" King.
Don't you dare compare these three to Mobuto, although it is curious to
note that the last received a fairer shake from the U.S. government than
the first three. That David Duke derives the same peace trying to
reinstitute slavery as, say, Jackson receives fighting for civil rights
is troubling, perhaps, but does not refute my contention that the
psychological health of the individual is in conflict with most visions
of a better society. Hence your use of the term community is fraught
with peril and I humbly request that you clarify with regard to this
dilemma.
MT
>From owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mon Jan 11 09:24:18 1999
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>From: henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx>
>To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: re: commentary is a minstral show
>In-Reply-To: <19990111153854.17309.rocketmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Message-ID: <SIMEON.9901111118.I@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 11:38:18 -0500
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>
>Well, I don't think a community is "defined by shared beliefs."
>I think a community is of a group which has shared cultural practices,
>some of which may be "beliefs" but most are practical skills that
>enable shared coping and caring (of the environment & of others) in the
>community. Most are unarticulated, even transparent to the members of
>the community.
>
>To doubt, or even to challenge cultural practices most often does not
>"drain" the shared life of the community. Most often they are ignored.
>Sometimes they are accepted and amalgamated-- interpreted by the
>culture. Works of art, political movements, and even consumer products
>are simple ways that communities embrace new interps, ways they change.
>
>These challenges (or simple cultural re-interpretations) reveal also
>that communities are not composed of fixed frameworks like grammatical
>rules. The stability of communities is a much looser, intuited
>membership. Perhaps the ability to be flexible is one way of measuring
>the health of a community, ie, those that are open and flexible are
>much healthier than those which call for rigid and alledgedly
>unalterable cultural practices.
>
>is this the kind of "commentary" you're looking for?
>kindest regards,
>henry sholar
>
>
>On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 07:38:54 -0800 (PST) Tony Roberts
><fdrtikol@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Commentary works to drain the shared life of some community of
meaning
>> and reality. This community is defined by shared beliefs which are
>> deeper than assumptions in that they "go without saying" for everyone
>> in the community. To doubt this belief is precisely to become
>> alienated from this community, is to stop constructing ones immediate
>> lived experience exclusivly within the limits of this communitys
>> perspective. Alienation from a community is finally an ability to see
>> the limits of that communitys' perspective. These beliefs which go
>> without saying are grammar rules which structure a shared space of
>> experience where many important meanings are fixed and stabilized.
>> Commentary works to unfix and destabilize this common sense or
>> conventional wisdom which "everybody knows" in the community by
>> bringing these contexting beliefs into question ,by telling an
>> alternative story about what's going on. This story claims to be the
>> "real truth" behind the delusion the poor benighted souls of the
>> community live, in their ignorance, as truth. Imagine a modern day
>> minstral show put on by David Duke and Company. Imagine it filmed and
>> distributed through Dukes' website. This minstral show would bring
>> into question everything that must go without saying if being black
>> means what most black people feel the need to think it means in order
>> to feel comfortable in their skins. To the extent that it succeeded
in
>> doing so, it would drain the black experience of all meaning and
>> reality. It would define the point of view of the black community as
>> delusion. Part of the neccessary ideological arsenal of any
community,
>> Jesse Jackson's or David Duke's, consists in commentaries which
>> convincingly define the perspective of the other as pathological
>> delusion. Power is finally the power to make ones' commentaries true
>> for the people they are about. Resistence is finally resistence to
the
>> commentary of the other. In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be
>> eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined. Power is
>> the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
>> without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
>> commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
deviance.
>> Any Comments,
>> Tony Michael Roberts
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ==
>> "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face.
Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to
our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order."
Michel Foucault
>>
>> _________________________________________________________
>> DO YOU YAHOO!?
>> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>>
>
>----------------------
>
>henry sholar
>hwsholar@xxxxxxxx
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
point, are you sure you are not overlooking the problems of modernity as
reactions to imposed fluidity? Are you sure that the psychological
health of a people can be measured strictly in terms of their tolerance?
In the discourses which brought to our attention the definition of
community, c. was a potentially authoritarian conception which had
little tolerance for or interest in the outside world. Society was
fluid and tolerant, but bereft of affective bonds and deep emotional
comforts (Specialists without spirit, said Weber). While the writers
who established these concepts in sociological language were ultimately
ambivalent about the relative merits of community and society they
desired, like good Hegelians perhaps, that some sense of this previous
pre-intellectual feeling could survive amid the coldness of "modern
society." Your discussion of the community seems to presuppose that
this has really happened in a sense other than ironic. While I agree
that no-one who lives off the trappings of modernity ought to turn
against it by imposing intolerance we must be ever-cognizant of
premodern "communities" whose health, defined strictly among themselves,
can be argued to have been extremely high even though they frequently
built this "health" upon scapegoating that which lay outside them: The
(e)scape(d)goat, literally, or other tribes, races, etc. "Communities"
have historically nearly always been ethnocentric (a word whose value
orientation is somewhat debatable, but in present discourse negative);
yet they are not without their charms to those within them and
particularly to those recently removed from them. But to use this
particular term to denote either blacks or the Ku Klux Klan is somewhat
erroneous, since finding a common Weltanschauung indigenous to each (as
opposed to one imposed by colonism or paramilitary/charismatic
leadership) and exclusive of all others is as spurious as seeking
virgins in maternity (modernity?) wards. David Duke is Klansman, but
also businessman and talk show host; Billy Bob Gunrack is Klansman and
tobacco farmer: They share an imposed delusion but not a Weltanschauung.
Jesse Jackson is not Jesse Owens, and neither is Glen "Rodney" King.
Don't you dare compare these three to Mobuto, although it is curious to
note that the last received a fairer shake from the U.S. government than
the first three. That David Duke derives the same peace trying to
reinstitute slavery as, say, Jackson receives fighting for civil rights
is troubling, perhaps, but does not refute my contention that the
psychological health of the individual is in conflict with most visions
of a better society. Hence your use of the term community is fraught
with peril and I humbly request that you clarify with regard to this
dilemma.
MT
>From owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mon Jan 11 09:24:18 1999
>Received: from [128.143.200.198] by hotmail.com (1.0) with SMTP id
MHotMail3093528255529413506532496215690669446460; Mon Jan 11 09:24:18
1999
>Received: (from domo@localhost) by lists.village.virginia.edu
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> by internal-gw.email.uncg.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id LAA20589
> for <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Mon, 11 Jan 1999 11:37:24
-0500 (EST)
>From: henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx>
>To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: re: commentary is a minstral show
>In-Reply-To: <19990111153854.17309.rocketmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Message-ID: <SIMEON.9901111118.I@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 11:38:18 -0500
>X-Mailer: Simeon for Mac68k OT Version 4.1.2 Build (32)
>X-Authentication: none
>MIME-Version: 1.0
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>Sender: owner-foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Precedence: bulk
>Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>Well, I don't think a community is "defined by shared beliefs."
>I think a community is of a group which has shared cultural practices,
>some of which may be "beliefs" but most are practical skills that
>enable shared coping and caring (of the environment & of others) in the
>community. Most are unarticulated, even transparent to the members of
>the community.
>
>To doubt, or even to challenge cultural practices most often does not
>"drain" the shared life of the community. Most often they are ignored.
>Sometimes they are accepted and amalgamated-- interpreted by the
>culture. Works of art, political movements, and even consumer products
>are simple ways that communities embrace new interps, ways they change.
>
>These challenges (or simple cultural re-interpretations) reveal also
>that communities are not composed of fixed frameworks like grammatical
>rules. The stability of communities is a much looser, intuited
>membership. Perhaps the ability to be flexible is one way of measuring
>the health of a community, ie, those that are open and flexible are
>much healthier than those which call for rigid and alledgedly
>unalterable cultural practices.
>
>is this the kind of "commentary" you're looking for?
>kindest regards,
>henry sholar
>
>
>On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 07:38:54 -0800 (PST) Tony Roberts
><fdrtikol@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Commentary works to drain the shared life of some community of
meaning
>> and reality. This community is defined by shared beliefs which are
>> deeper than assumptions in that they "go without saying" for everyone
>> in the community. To doubt this belief is precisely to become
>> alienated from this community, is to stop constructing ones immediate
>> lived experience exclusivly within the limits of this communitys
>> perspective. Alienation from a community is finally an ability to see
>> the limits of that communitys' perspective. These beliefs which go
>> without saying are grammar rules which structure a shared space of
>> experience where many important meanings are fixed and stabilized.
>> Commentary works to unfix and destabilize this common sense or
>> conventional wisdom which "everybody knows" in the community by
>> bringing these contexting beliefs into question ,by telling an
>> alternative story about what's going on. This story claims to be the
>> "real truth" behind the delusion the poor benighted souls of the
>> community live, in their ignorance, as truth. Imagine a modern day
>> minstral show put on by David Duke and Company. Imagine it filmed and
>> distributed through Dukes' website. This minstral show would bring
>> into question everything that must go without saying if being black
>> means what most black people feel the need to think it means in order
>> to feel comfortable in their skins. To the extent that it succeeded
in
>> doing so, it would drain the black experience of all meaning and
>> reality. It would define the point of view of the black community as
>> delusion. Part of the neccessary ideological arsenal of any
community,
>> Jesse Jackson's or David Duke's, consists in commentaries which
>> convincingly define the perspective of the other as pathological
>> delusion. Power is finally the power to make ones' commentaries true
>> for the people they are about. Resistence is finally resistence to
the
>> commentary of the other. In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be
>> eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined. Power is
>> the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
>> without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
>> commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
deviance.
>> Any Comments,
>> Tony Michael Roberts
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ==
>> "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face.
Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to
our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order."
Michel Foucault
>>
>> _________________________________________________________
>> DO YOU YAHOO!?
>> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>>
>
>----------------------
>
>henry sholar
>hwsholar@xxxxxxxx
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com