On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Iain Thomson wrote:
> Tom, One should not accuse others of being naively totalitarian without
> some reasoned justification. Although, since you seem to be watering-down
> 'totalitarianism' just as badly as 'violence,' it is hard to see what the
> charge even amounts to coming from you. Still, if not violent, very rude.
> (Given your obvious proprietary feelings about the whole Q of violence, I'd
> have thought you'd at least be a little more sensitive to the way in which
> this faceless interaction foments hostility).
Iain,
I'm sorry if this offended you. I was identifying the totalization
implicit in the question: "who is wholly without violence". I think it is
necessary to handle that totalization. It's a *moment of totalization.*
That doesn't mean that I'm calling you a totalitarian. I'm sorry if you
think this is rude. Your back-swipe has been felt. But it hurts. Perhaps
we could communicate some other way.
I'm not sure I was rude in the first place, but you took it that way.
Perhaps announcing your perception first, maybe in the form of a question,
and letting me respond is a way to deal with the facelessness of this
medium, rather than rushing to a back-swipe. But, on the other hand,
perhaps you really do think my view of violence is watered down and
proprietary, to the point of making my comments of dubious worth in
general. (I'm not quite sure what proprietary means here.) Even then, I
don't want to be swiped or slapped for not being up to your standards.
I stand by my view, thus far: in framing the question of "ubiquitous
violence" in the form: who does not dash against the rocks of the ideal,
who among us does not accept some violence in discourse, in thinking,
dialogue, questioning, etc.?, an adequate distinction between something
*like* "biolence" and "violence" is not made. I think this remains a kind
of stalemate. And the framing of the question does have a totality
involved: the individual who is posited is *totally* without violence.
Again, my apologies if I offended you. How do you propose we identify
totalizations (as conceptual operations)? Do you think that any such
identification amounts to an accusation of totalitarianism? The schema is
totalitarian, or totalistic, or totalizes, I think. The schema, not you.
And it is an omnipresent schema, no? One which, in particular, tends to
ground "liberal leftism" in some very important ways. One such grounding
is as follows: a first moment of nonviolence is braoched: it is better to
be nonviolent. This becomes difficult. Then a second moment is developed:
well, who can be *totally* nonviolent? That's about it. Not for *you*, I
scarcely know you. I mean, in the general nonviolence subtending, for
example, the United States foreign policy with regards, for example, to
Iraq. In this case, our attack of Iraq, adjudicated by precisely this
totalizing moment (I believe) meant the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
people. And furthermore, the ongoing "nonviolent" (and naively so!)
embargo or "sanctions" against Iraq have killed more than the bombings.
Who is to drop the first smart-bomb? How does the embargo hide its severe
violence? In part, in a series of totalizations inherent in the
prevailing power-knowledge regimes of nonviolence.
Of course, I'm not blaming you, Iain, for these bombings. I am, however,
trying to identify the conceptual operations involved. These involve
totalities, among other things, and, I will here admit, my casting of the
schema as "totalitarian" was a deliberately polemical/provocative gesture.
Or else, it is simply the truth: the regimes of nonviolence determing
things like US foreign policy might in fact be *totalitarian*. I think
it's possible.
Regards,
Tom B.
>
> > Interestingly, the totalization in which you form
> >your question (I guess it's an implicit totalization) is one that rises
> >often out of, especially, what I'm calling "naive nonviolence". It can be
> >found in the term "pacifism" in the most ubiquitous case. The question you
> >ask of "us" is: who doesn't accept some such violence? This asks of a
> >character who might in fact *totally* rid him or herself of all "analyst
> >style" violence. This remains "naive" (and the violence of the term
> >"naive" is beginning to bear on me) in that it does not stop to question
> >its own totalitarian schema
>
And I continue to stand behind this statement: there is, as I said above,
an "implicit totalization". It *does* appear to me to operate in
"pacifism", and I think it is one of the *primary breaking or "falling"
points* of such pacifism. I.e., pacificism such as that developed buy the
Quakers tends to be framed in impossibly totalistic (I'll hold off on
saying "totalitarian") terms. This, in turn, disables the pacifism: most
are alienated by its psychological problems. In turn, then, when the
question of pacifism is asked, it is squashed like a bug, and the ensuing
violence, in extradiplomatic contest, is often extreme. It is not
undertaken by the Quakers, of course. With regards to the
>
>
>
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