errors, clarifications, distinctions

Errors, clarifications, distinctions

1. No, the discourse of powerknowledge does not yet
attain to substantive nonviolence. One such discourse I
know of, itself occuring in the space of thoughtaction,
is Gandhian amisha satyagraha.

2. I am distinguishing the thoughtaction concerning
nonviolence from the example of the "activist
intellectual", e.g. Chomsky or Foucault. Chomsky's
philosophical work operates at a very far distance from
his political work. Foucault's conception of the specific
intellectual, articulated in a *most* general discourse,
supports a very strong thought/action distinction and
stylistic continuity (hence, in part, the call for
"avalance"). Thoughtaction concerning violence, where it
treats in discourse the substantive theme of violence,
can or should attain to the fullest possible ideals
concerning thought. The entire discourse on thinking,
examplified by the history of philosophy, by the writings
of Heidegger and Arendt, would have to be a provisional
guide for what constitutes thematic-substantive
treatment.


3. I wrote "The position of the academic is the
continuous ground of the freedom to engage directly in
action concerning violence in favor of the payoff of
sustained research." "To engage" should read "not to
engage".

4. In alluding and sketching out conditions of choice in
the torture example, I failed to include what I consider
to be the cheif means by which the Satrean rigidity and
innumerable other rigidities maintain themselves: the
quesiton, roughly, of "how": skill, talent, fluencies,
methods, training. My feeling is that the capitalism of
the academic space systematically hides the question of
"how", or even perverts it by characterizing the
situation of the breaking down under torture as a "how",
rather than a "what". This capitalism permeates the moral
sphere to alarming degrees, it seems to me.

---
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.

Tom Blancato
tblancato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)




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