I didn't say I didn't have a gun. The possibility of nonviolence (in the
active sense of contestation) is founded on the possibiltiy of violence.
I should point out that the whole "affair" could be tossed off easily
enough. I have opted to pursue it in part because I am interested in
understanding and developing practices of nonviolence in a way that is
informed (to some extent) by Heidegger.
Let me, for the moment, imagine that in the face of this comment, someone
comes in with a swipe of some kind, a witty remark, an apt, or a
mis-characterization, which misses the main "substance" (in a provisional
sense of "stuff") of what I'm saying in this post or in others. Or, I can
simply note that this "stuff" has been systematically ignored (publicly
speaking). Most of the substance of my previous comments has gone unattended.
Jumping around quite a bit, the general concern I have here is that, in a
world full of violence, how is it that this issue, and a given case, does
*not* interest people? Why is it that the major themes of Heideggerian
philosophy (Death, Care, the constitution of the self, mitsein, etc.) do
not prompt us for a reading and thinking that opens itself to the
possibility of violence, to the call of the other? Yet, perhaps that is
there, supposedly taken care of in some way...
If I imagine *who* I'm addressing here, I see a kind of visage: an angry,
resentful other, the child of a tyrant in a fierce stance of refusal. "I
don't HAVE to do X"... I could, of course, pin this imagining on someone:
"you, poster X, are a resentful thild of a tyrant!"
Is this not *interesting*? It is very intersting to me. Isn't this
experience, the struggle concerning "freedom" and "have to do", the
problem of "pinning", etc., the stuff of conflagration? Isn't
conflagration, violence, polemos, something we *should* be interested in?
Isn't it something that belongs in a discussion of Dasein, in so far as it
should be pursued?
I won't say, "I'm a 'guilty' party becuase I have such thoughts as can
play a role on conflagration", if that means we don't many of us have
such thoughts. I deliberatly place my body, doused with a certain water,
in this fire, the better to understand.
Yet anything I say here of course can be taken as: "you're perpetuating
the conflagration, Kurt", which I suppose was Iain's point. I think,
though, that this brings us to a problem of the *stance of
non-perpetuation* as a species, among a range of species, within a class
of *responses to violence*. Keeping with broad strokes and big leaps,
perhaps simply for myself and at a certain expense of the reader, I see
this "non-perpetuation" as a distention of the range of possible
responses in favor of a certain *retention* of a space of discourse, a
"home" of philosophy, etc., which is characteristic of many thoughtful
discourses, one of which is (our, variously and nontotally) Heidegger's.
A troubled discourse, engaged in a certain contortion which has grown
greater and greater in the face of violence, in many theoretics. A
discourse at issue with itself and its place in the world, which, having
found the "whereabouts of its presence", sees that it is "guilty", or,
before that, responsible. Responsible for taking action, and for having
taken action, as in Heidegger's Rectoral Address. For example.
Which leads to the distention in question: across the range of possible
action, one action is exploited more than others: non-perpetuation,
usually by way of noninvolvement. This stance is characterized by various
dis-involving logics: "all involved are guilty of shooting". Or, "US
imperialism caused the damage, so today, I practice *noninvolvement* as a
way of countering the bad tendency to get involved". Or, "Heidegger
rushed in with the Rectoral thing, tragically, and with a vastly naive
positivity. This *positive* can only be counteracted by the *nevative* of
noninvolvement, or sustained negational critique without involvement.
This is the fitting role of the intellectual."
A remark concerning distention: I regard these preferred action stances
(nonperpetuation through noninvolvement, negative critique) as being
among a range of possible action. I am not calling for their elimination
or for a wholly different kind of action stance by calling them into
question in this way.
What manages the logics of action stances? One position I take here is
that part of the problem I am circling around is that there is a
preference for those action stances which at the same time preserve a
certain comfort, a certain "home", those action stances which support the
smooth functioning of this list, and more broadly, one's participation in
the academy, getting tenure, completing the dissertation, etc.
I allow myself to be touched by Heidegger here, in many ways, and suggest
that the discourse concerning authenticity, concerning the "theyself",
the "everyday", etc., is deeply concerned with the tendency to simply
move along nicely in line without hearing a certain call to action,
without recognizing the worst dangers, remaining blind to the world
around one. The distension in question is one *practice of blindness*.
Which is to say that Dasein doesn't simply *fall* into inauthenticity,
but rather that it *makes a home there*, and surrounds itself with logics
which support this "home".
Perhaps Dasien gives a certain nod to that which threatens this home. A
nod, as opposed to a true embrace and favoring, to the problem of
violence, in part, and the problem of death in certain ways. A nod is a
truncation of a gaze, an engagement, an entry. This "nod", today, is
characterized by the various ways in which many important issues are
treated. I have pointed out a few statistics concerning violent deaths. I
should point out that violent assault rates have risen much greater in
the US than violent deaths. And currently underway is a kind of
"manufacture" of biochemical illness in the field of psychiatry which has
so many parallels to the Nazi "manufacture of corpses" that it is scary.
The nod, then, is characterized by those treatments we know so well of
matters of life and death: COPs shows, political capitalization on life
and death issues, crime, etc., to get votes, 2 minute soundbyte
commercials and songs, etc. It is characterized as well by a certain
mechanical comportment, a crude systematization of logics and conditions
which need to be embraced, it would seem obvious, with the *infinite
posture of the artist*. An "art" of nonviolence.
As I write these words, I fell anxious. Can one report anxiety? I feel
*activated*, in a certain space of action, which never arises to some
grand deciding event, but which is full of events, actions, action
possibilities, potentialities for being, projects, etc. A diverse,
multiple play. The truncated, distended range of action is at work to
either eliminate this play or to mechanize it and capitalize on it. At a
certain furthest range of speculation, or perhaps thinking, we can say,
minimally, that any ill-treatment of such a space will lead to greater
violence, to something worse.
This question of *treatment* (mechanize? as an art?, etc.) becomes a
fundamental issue of posture.
So activated, I am *interested in violence*. I take the things that are
close to me, such as events, transcations, etc., on this list as grist
for the mill, and invite others into this practice. I allow myself the
broad strokes and leaps taken in this post, which I think I can
substantiate and fill out, within this space of e-mail posting, as a
place within which, at times, one may sketch (for such is the work of the
artist, and such is the issuing of the art of nonviolence).
On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Iain Thomson wrote:
> >Really, I resent being cast as a fellow shooter in this odd thing. I think
> >my responses to Babich have been, on the contrary and in the main,
> >examples of non-shooting. Such "non-shooting" does not mean that one is
> >therefor not involved in something that has tension, aspects of conflict,
> >and so forth. What counts as shooting? I don't *want* to shoot
>
> "And I swear that I don't have a gun..."
> (Kurt-of course.)
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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