Jon,

I appreciate your thoughtful reading of my "mea culpa." Your interpretation
is very near what I intended. I was able to find the Foucault interview
online and I find his thoughts on polemics to be highly relevant to our
ongoing attempts at political/literary dialogue. Since we have so many
participants, the game at hand is deeply complex, with many sets of
rhetorical rules in play.

Some people are simply unwilling to challenge their own ideas, at least in
regards to certain subjects on which their minds are firmly settled. If I or
anyone else offers an opposing view, they go into automatic attack mode and
tear the interlocutor down by any means necessary. The typical pattern of
such individuals is to angrily list the core tenants of their belief on the
subject and then ridicule their "opponents" as unworthy participants in the
discussion. To paint someone a jingo, hawk or any other generalization is to
dismiss their ideological legitimacy before they have even had an
opportunity to make a full accounting of their beliefs.

Notice that Foucault said the game is both pleasant and difficult. To
discuss any issue as grave as war is bound to be difficult; such a topic
hardly lends itself to ambivalence.  However, serious discourse is also
pleasant, as it exercises brain cells and ferments new ideas. None of us
would participate if we didn't somehow enjoy the process. I am not as
closed-minded as some of you seem to believe. That is why I am here: to
learn new things. I cannot go to my local 7-11 and discuss Ezra Pound or the
finer points of polemics. For that I need a community of scholars and other
literary types.

To the extent that I have used subversive means to make my points, I have
done so because the rules employed by many of the participants have been
chokingly restrictive and even offensive. From the IBM executive who shouted
"SHUT UP," to the AOL subscribers so fond of mocking my intelligence, to the
sailor-tongued gentleman who accused me of gender swapping, to the man who
seems interested in vague references to the dimensions of my phallus, many
participants in this thread have not applied fair rules of engagement. I
would prefer to write plainly, admit when I'm wrong and question ideas that
intrigue me. Hopefully, future exchanges will allow me to participate
without fear of unseemly attack.

These comments are made in good faith and good spirit. I hope you will take
them as such.

Sincerely,
Brennen Lukas


>Brennan's recent outpouring of self-hate shouldn't really be taken at
>face value.  When he talks about his "cancerous respect for democracy,
>free speech, and worst of all, free enterprise", he seems to me to be
>playing a game whereby we who disagree with him (either by engaging his
>specific points or by simply calling him a jingoist) will recognize how
>far we are from the position of America-loving righteousness.  As for
>the people who dismiss him as a jingo, they have failed as well, in
>that they want mainly to stress their own a priori correctness as
>critics of American power.  In both cases, the discourse of this list
>suffers.
>
>Foucault made some comments on polemics that I find instructive: "In
>the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal
>elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in
>the discussion. . . Questions and answers depend on a game -- a game
>that is at once pleasant and difficult -- in which each of the two
>partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and
>by the accepted form of the dialogue.
>        The polemicist, on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges
>that
>he possesses in advance and will never agree to question.  On
>principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making
>that struggle a just undertaking; that person he confronts is not a
>partner in the search for truth but an adversary, an enemy who is
>wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. .
>. his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a
>difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has
>been manifestly upholding from the beginning.  The polemicist relies on
>a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied."
>
>I recommend this not because it is by Foucault and so somehow sacred.
>It applies, it seems to me, to numerous moments on this list when
>polemics become "a parasitic figure on discussion and an obstacle to
>the search for truth."  Calling someone a jingo is to assume from the
>outset that they're too blinkered by ideology to even process sentences
>for the truth they might point at.  In the same way, someone announcing
>disingenuously that he "ponder[s] self-flagellation" as a cure for his
>deep respect for democratic ideals is attempting to accuse his enemies
>of disrespecting something sacrosanct..
>
>American policies and their consequences for other countries are not
>obviously one thing or another, obviously good and benevolent, or
>obviously malicious and mean-spirited.  To find out the character of
>American interventions on foreign soil, people inclined to polemicize
>ought to hold their tongues, and consider what they have already taken
>for granted.
>
>I appreciate this list.  That does not mean however that I want to
>invite everyone to my lovely Oak Park apartment and sit them down for
>wife-made cookies.  I'll settle for thoughful, non-self-pitying,
>non-manipulative discussion.
>
>Happy Sunday to all,
>Jon
>
>On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 08:26  PM, Brennen Lukas wrote:
>
>>Furthermore, I am ashamed of my jingoist blithering. Last night I wept
>>openly as so many of you made clear that my soul is corrupted by an
>>unnatural urge to question the efficacy of pacifism in world affairs.
>>Even
>>now, I ponder self-flagellation. If only painful lashes across my back
>>would
>>rid me of my cancerous respect for democracy, free speech, and worst
>>of all,
>>free enterprise. Alas, I fear I am beyond repair, quite unworthy of
>>cleaning
>>Ezra Pound's sanatorium bedpan, let along posting to a list serve
>>dedicated
>>to his work.


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