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In a message dated 1/20/99 7:34:26 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Writers don't just write to be understood;
they write for the future readers who may someday understand what they
were trying to say. Adorno said somewhere that the only thoughts worth
thinking are those which do not fully understand themselves, i.e. do
something new and unexpected, which hasn't yet fully emerged into its
content, and is therefore open to history and dialectics. >>
Let me get this. Writers do not necessarily write to be understood today
thinking that they are so advanced and so brilliant that only at some
amorphous time in the future, when consciousness has evolved to the level of
this "obermensch" thinker, will he/she be really understood. In the meantime,
just write and indulge yourself and your groupies, calling yourself
"progressive" while caring nothing about whether or not the inferiors really
understand you or whether or not your words make a difference in helping to
effect concrete change and resistance and hoping that at least a few followers
will realize how brilliant you are and keep your books around to be understood
by the more highly evolved masses of the future.
Sounds like megalomania, narcissism, and pretentious shit to me. But then
again, I am nowhere near being "one of the ten smartest people on the planet.
This Judith Butler seems to me to be a reincarnation of Ayn Rand--arrogance
and pretentiousness shallow groupies and all.
There was a time in Germany when some counseled Jews, Gypsies, Trade Unionists
etc not to let the hate speech of the nazis get to them--not to let the "power
structures" turn them into "subjects" and submissive victims of speech. They
counseled to mock the hate speech of the nazis, to turn the hate speech of the
nazis into a counter-force against them as in Aikido. Most of these people
were far removed from the actual effects and the mounting movements of hate;
they said words really don't mean that much. Most of them wound up leaving
with their wealth and/or became nazis as their egos and abstractions from
comfort were used and indulged while the real effects and consequences did
indeed take real tolls on real people.
I have lived and worked (read, write, speak) in five languages other than
English so I think I have acquired some sensitivity to language in terms of
shifting content, contexts of meaning, how words can be used for different
purposes and can have very subtle but profound effects depending on how words
and phrases are expressed, understood and acted upon. But I just don't see it.
Even the passage you quoted above, you'll have to deconstruct for me (not the
case with Edward Said for example) because as of yet, I just see shit and a
slick hustle where people with philosophy degrees of English Lit degrees,
normally unemployable, get this new gig and market niche going by putting on
superficially elegant or convoluted syntax to say nothing or even worse,
pretend to be actually saying something worth reading, creating a new field
called "Cultural Studies" and creating a whole new movement of groupies
addicted to contrived syntax and metaphysics like so many neoclassicals are
addicted to convoluted math to give a phony appearance of "rigor" and
"scientific method" to contrived syllogisms, empty tautologies and bourgeois
apologia.
Sorry that's my opinion. As for being aware of the sources of my alienation, I
know of no one truly aware of all of the sources of his/her alienation. But
pretentious, narcissistic semantic/mathematical masturbators and their
sycophantic groupies pretending to be progressive ( on a narrow range of self-
interested issues; e.g. gays who only care about gay stuff but want non gays
to unite to fight against gay bashing--which I am happy to do as homophobia is
indeed an ugly form of oppression--but you never see them when their anger is
needed against other forms of oppression not directly tied to gay issues) is
indeed one of my sources of "alienation".
Sorry, just chalk it up to my stupidity and failure to see the brilliance of
this Judith Butler whose brilliance awaits discovery but future and much more
highly evolved species.
Bullshit is bullshit no matter how elegantly dressed up in math or
polysyllabic and tortured syntax. By the way, I say the same about ultra-
formalistic/ritualistic/mechanistic "Marxism" and the quote mongering of some
Marxists as well.
Jim Craven
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Wed,
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 19:30:30 -0800 (PST)
From: Dennis R Redmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [PEN-L:2375] Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.
In-reply-to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, James Michael Craven wrote:
> I wonder how many working class women or women on Reservations could
> relate to or understand the rhetoric in the example of Butler's
> writings given in the Doublespeak award? I suspect few if any.
So what? Are all those scientists who use mathematical tools
noone else understands just wasting their time? Are people who read
foreign languages we can't read indulging in nonsense? If Butler
claimed to speak for the people on the Rez, then you could slam her for
yakking away. But she's not. Writers don't just write to be understood;
they write for the future readers who may someday understand what they
were trying to say. Adorno said somewhere that the only thoughts worth
thinking are those which do not fully understand themselves, i.e. do
something new and unexpected, which hasn't yet fully emerged into its
content, and is therefore open to history and dialectics.
-- Dennis
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