----------
>From: Jon & Anne Weidler <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Mea Culpa
>Date: Sun, Feb 16, 2003, 1:18 PM
>

> 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.