Re: Derrida/Deleuze

On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, JONATHAN RUBIN wrote:

> On 16th July TMB wrote :
> "If some guy comes in your academic session calling some apparently gay=
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> guy there a faggit who should shut his faggit mouth, you know damn well=
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> you will say something, and that is part of what "ethical" means. "   =09=
-=20
> and in what sense am I supposed to shut his mouth non-violently?=20
> When I write that violence is *necessary* I certainly don=92t imply that=
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> it is needed or wanted in some kind of weird historical a priori way. No=
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> its a genuine a priori - any situation where there is, to use the least=
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> war-like metaphor I can think of, a disagreement, a disparity of wills=20
> involves violence. And to think that such disparities do not exist means=
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> that you do not see sharply enough.

Ahh, but it is you who are not seeing sharply enough, I rejoinder,
polemically (or so it seems). The very idea that "nonviolence" means some
*total* lack of violence is quite naive. Nonviolence is founded oni the
very a priori you mention, one that extends much further than
"disagreement" (across orders and registers, not "out the continuum to the
extreme", though that, too, is the case).


> I think your point about the police really misses many points=20

It would if I meant for "police" to cover every and all instituted or
non-instituted apparatae, tendencies, possibilities, etc., that ameliorate
violence.

> 1/ although there has always been reliance on something to protect=20
> people from harm it does not need to be the police

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, depending, depending, depending.


> 2/ it is simply mistaken to believe that the police=92s primary function=
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> is to protect the public; they are there to define the public/private,=20
> to embody the despotism of the State. In England we have been reminded=20
> of this once more by an enquiry into the racism, incompetence and=20
> corruption of a police investigation into a blatantly rascist murder

Hahaha. You Brits. "A" blatantly racist murder?! This made me laugh,
really. We have so many of them here that one would look silly commenting
on such a thing, here, in the U.S., as though it were some signal event.
I.e., it happens all the time in the U.S. Doesn't make it any better, of
course.


> 3/ "Nietzche railed against "morality" and developed a powerful=20
> philosophy that played right into the hands of the worst bunch of fucks=
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> (and readers)  the world has ever seen, albeit inadvertently."=20
> Well to paraphrase you "Pulleeeze." *any* writing can be misused -=20
> including Deleuze and Guatarri's and Nietzsche knew the dangers of what=
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> he was writing. Its getting to the point where I may have to start=20
> wearing my "Psychopath, Sociopath - and Proud" badge

Did he really know the extent to which the Germans could go? I don't know.
Well, if he did, and wrote on, then, I'd have to say, that is no good.
That's a "philosophical dangerousness" that is genuinely no good. But I
don't think he did. He knew a lot, though, of course. Let me make this
clearer: if I write something, or read something, that "has a danger to
it", and one of the danger is that live children will be tossed in a
burning oven (this took place), or, more generally, 6 to 50 million people
willl be killed, then I have to say: "Too dangerous!" Of course, this is a
tricky point based simply on retrospect. But so is yours, in a way. What
danger. How much danger. Danger of what? Etc.=20

>=20
> "But that is only because giving a damn has already been *taken over*=20
> and larglely ruined by so many fucking moral machines."
> Couldn=92t agree more. But in what sense does giving a damn, without=20
> feeling pity, give us a non-violent stance?
> Jon

You suggest, first, and in due Neitzschean fashion, that the great problem
of giving a damn is pity. Pity is but one of many. But in general, a
nonviolent stance is possible and, if it has to be summed up, which it
probably can't, it would be something like: the decidedly anti-systematic
posture of working to bring about the conditions of possibility of the
absence of violence and positive flow of desire, and in the case of
occuring violence, the non-retributive and non-polemical amelioration of
violence through the fostering of the conditions of possility of authentic
remorse and amelioration. Innumerable other things may be involved. These
innumerable other things turn out to be, rougly speaking, the universe.

TMB