Re: just saw yer posting Dnaiel/Filou

> > not the issues, but the actual situation, are
> > outside my
> > reach.
>
> isn't this an appeal to the distinction between theory
> and practice - as if theory was practice's little
> cousin, not to touch any of practice's special
> objects? if we can't stand on the front line and make
> Change ourselves, we won't think - as if only The
> Revolution mattered, and not the molecular revolutions
> that run through any issue? surely theory can open up
> possibility spaces - help us stop routing all possible
> solutions to a conflict through models of Statist
> thought.
>

but what _kind_ of practice is enunciating a theory or
carrying on a discourse _in absentia_?  just because it is
an "action" too (which it is - i am not distinguishing
between an immediate practice and a distanced theory) it
doesn't mean it is the action which is assumed in the
statement made, surely?  the _effect_ of my speaking/writing
is _not_ the same as the  _content_ of my statement/ its
meaning.  what i say (signify) is _not_ the effect of what i
say.  to my mind, therefore, to judge a discourse by the
significations at that level would be to miss everything?
we also have to look at the positions of the subjects, and
try to determine the social processes which allow these
statements to be made, which allow these particular
"subjects" to speak?  and also to look at the context in
which the statements actually circulate (eg. on a discussion
list) rather than taking them universally, as if
speaking/writing had no medium, no context, no tone, no
metaphysics? it seems to me that only after christianity,
the enlightenment, and capitalism's long machining of a
universal subject on the model of (consumer)christ (all
seeing-knowing, he suffers for the sins of others, pays for
them on credit) can we make statements of the kind made
recently on the list.  it verges onto a speaking-for that
assumes a particular sort of subject position.

the distinction i was making was not between theory and
practice, but between different kinds of subject-positions,
each with its own theory-practice.  one, i suggested, was
slavish and essentially christian-capitalist? its discourse
is largely imaginary?  it works from colonial assumptions
about the superiority and legitimacy of enlightenment
discourse and a guilty but fundamentally unquestioned
reliance of the west's general cultural and economic
dominance -- the world becomes its "troubled garden"...?  it
tries to position itself as a sort of sympathetic and
helpful (yet strangely ineffective) gardener?  "oh goodness,
aphids on the roses again..."

it's just TV. soap opera.  you might as well flagellate
yourself with sticks. same effect. ---that's not to say
"it's just theory" at all: no, it is a practice that
produces only a particular kind of effects: mostly,
discursive ones. but i don't equate discourse with theory
any more than with practice?

to attempt to speak from different subject positions - now
wouldn't _that_ precisely be to follow a line of flight? a
molecular revolution?

dan
--------
"A great problem, deserving acute attention.
 I solved it by turning out the lights and going
to bed."                 - John Fante, Ask The Dust