blinkandwheeze posted:

Crow posted:

here is the response you both deserve:

when did i do any of this, crow? if i did i certainly apologize for doing so. but i'm not sure i did. and yeah, okay, emotionally charged language from the male perspective against women almost necessarily fall into chauvinistic structures, that's hugely problematic, jools should be more conscious of how his posts appear to others. but i'm not responsible for what tone jools takes but this is a playground for ideas and i think i am capable of getting past his rhetoric and sympathizing with the content of his ideas. what problems do you have with what i actually said?

at this point i am kind of drawing to the end of my shock & outrage and just falling into apathy, so i'll try to be brief:

there is a huge moralistic component to "criticism" i have seen in these sorts of internet spaces, maybe its interlocked with the first world, but it's actually pretty demoralizing to go through these motions over and over. it's basically a very deep well of resentment, and of course it doesn't have to do with particular individual figures per se, not even institutions or system designated 'capitalism' / 'imperialism' / 'patriarchy' (or 'socialism or 'misandry' for that matter), but it's a kind of generative of personal traumas. that is, it's a deployment of personal misery, circumstances beyond ones control, etc. this is the how the self-loathing in wddp played out alternatively between ego-stroking of self-destructive habits and, more importantly, hysterical denunciations of perceived wrongs, in reality ambiguous at best.

the fact that it took on a certain nature, while indicative (as nietzsche points out with socialists), is not actually determinate. the kind of 'leftist' form it took probably has more to do with the particular historical instance of symbolic (eg. obama darkhorse, terminal anticommunism) & economic crisis (2008 crisis), rather than an actual 'essence' of communism or leftism in general. so you have people sort of 'play-acting' revolutionary communist party, where it's important to attack certain individual tendencies in other members, when in fact this is a faulty fantasy. ie. it isnt in the space of like life-or-death struggle, but pure virtuality that's more about fighting your own personal demons rather than moderating a healthy (or for that matter, flagging) political organization.

so you have intentional (or, worse for me to admit, unintentional) misreadings, you have these sort of impassioned public denunciations of friends, sidewipes kind of brought up obliquely (where only two or three people actually know what it means), calculated to cause maximum damage. and all of this takes place in the space of ambiguity. this is crucial, in the space of ambiguity in language (particularly the large gap left open in textual communication, free of physical cues), you kind of see a play of psychological drama. a projection. so like, you take a small little tv show article written on a website that has a real dearth of content, and then attack it for what it DOESNT say, for what content DOESNT exist on the website, and attack the person for NOT MENTIONING WHAT IT DOESNT SAY, and make it an essential, symptomatic 'thing-of-that-person'. that's indicative of this psychological drama being acted out in these sorts of broadsides.

or like when you talk about the carnegie foundation, there's alot of like completely constructed assertions about what discipline was saying, like "Oh since you think palestinian identity is rooted in the countryside, well then you must be saying this and this dismissively about urban palestinians". when its like, this person 1) has lived in palestine, 2) has done research on the way palestinian identity is rooted from the countryside, and 3) how NGOs and developers are working with the Israeli authorities to basically re-make the palestinian identity in an urban neoliberal landscape. and then linking the outrage or cynicism that the (very brief) article contextualizes the sneering ideology at play in the CF with 'condescension towards Russians & Caucasians' is a leap that boggles my mind, a Russian-Caucasian. like it's at the point when, to make your point on what discipline DIDNT say, one has to dismiss the *very idea of communist propaganda*. bWUH?!

i remember the thing mistersix was saying shortly before he stopped posting. i think it was during another wave of denunciations and when people were at each other's throats. everyone was complaining about the lack of content, or the quality of the writign and the posts, and kind of dragging each other through the dirt and it had its tinges of self-loathing and whatever. and he was like, well, if you don't like that there is a lack of content, why dont you write something, why dont you fill in the gap with what you want to see in this forum. you know, instead of dragging each other through the dirt for the sake of 'criticism', how about relaxing a little and trying to generate these new forms of what you want to see, enact your critique rather than try to stifle it. because people are paralyzed as it is with their personal struggles, and it seems to be sometimes not only is something written just for the sake of contention, but frequently with a huge ego investment, a written gesture of resentment through the veil of illness. like, i really have no will to write anything for this website with the sort of mean-spirited shit i see. its no longer even in the stages of 'oh, I should write something about this on the rhizzone', and more of a 'i should go start an anonymous blog'.

otherwise, i seriously suggest kind of settling down, and taking a much more kinder view of people that arent auspiciously your enemy. especially ones that honestly try to strive towards worthy goals. because, otherwise, truly youre only lashing out at yourself. PEACE.

Crow posted:

\so you have intentional (or, worse for me to admit, unintentional) misreadings, you have these sort of impassioned public denunciations of friends, sidewipes kind of brought up obliquely (where only two or three people actually know what it means), calculated to cause maximum damage. and all of this takes place in the space of ambiguity. this is crucial, in the space of ambiguity in language (particularly the large gap left open in textual communication, free of physical cues), you kind of see a play of psychological drama. a projection. so like, you take a small little tv show article written on a website that has a real dearth of content, and then attack it for what it DOESNT say, for what content DOESNT exist on the website, and attack the person for NOT MENTIONING WHAT IT DOESNT SAY, and make it an essential, symptomatic 'thing-of-that-person'. that's indicative of this psychological drama being acted out in these sorts of broadsides.

ugh okay to further add to what jools has said already the problem i have with this is that you're reducing the argument that has taken place for quite a while to the little slights that jools started making relatively recently, as if the basis of this tension is the few sentences of bickering about discipline's reading of deadwood. but that isn't the case, i think it's clearly not the case, we have both posted extensively about the theoretical positions we hold that these tensions stem from, i think it is far from ambiguous what these positions are. jools wrote a roughly eight thousand word post. i elaborated sentiments we share on this issue extensively in this thread. it is true he has taken a roughshod and emotionally charged approach lately but jools has been expressing himself quite clearly in the jodi dean thread, as have i. while you also entered into discussion in the previous zizek thread and now in the dean thread, which i appreciate, i can't say the same for you. you have repeatedly replied with pithy little sentence long snipes, posted pictures of animals in place of saying anything, and you have a pretty disarming tendency of changing the subject of conversation. which look, okay, i should make myself clear that i don't actually have a problem with that. your snipes are often funny, so are the pictures, and i see no fault with approaching a question from a number of different angles. what i have a problem with is you accusing us of ambiguity and the veiling of resentment, identifications of misreadings when no alternative is being offered, bringing up the dearth of content when we are active in establishing what little it has.

which brings me to the other problem i have with this post, like look, you're going to bring this be the change you want to see in the world shit to me? who has taken more initiative in establishing discourse here than i have? who edits the front page? who on this forum writes as much as i do, besides discipline, and while she is of course entitled to, even herself has moved her productivity to a personal blog? who started the reading group which repeatedly brings in a larger number of visitors to this site than almost anything else and, despite the expressed interest of so many people here, was repeatedly the sole contributor to discussion? who else is earnest enough to be accepted to postplace, despite an incurable affliction of fail aids? and i'm not fishing for compliments here, i don't need thanks, i absolutely write for my own sake. i like posting here. i have enough self-control that if i had a big enough problem with the way discourse works here i would stop posting. to be even clearer, i don't have a problem with the fact that other people here conduct themselves differently, getfiscal could say more with a paragraph than i could with an entire essay, tpaine, Keven, Meursault or yourself are able to make this place a billion times more bearable with just a handful of words. but to come at me with this why dont you write something shit? and then you peddle this garbage, 'i really have no will to write anything for this website with the sort of mean-spirited shit i see', as if this negative charge has always existed, as opposed to something that emerged entirely in the last few months or so? as if you were writing fucking novels here before jools decided to castrate zizek? what was your excuse then? i think your a great poster crow but please stop pretending with this shit. peace

blinkandwheeze posted:

it is true he has taken a roughshod and emotionally charged approach lately

im not as smart as any of you guys and i generally hate to post earnestly, or purport to speak on anyone's behalf BUT

it seems to me that what you've stated right here is 99% of the basic problem and what has "triggered" the reaction from discipline. it would be cool if jools would take a different (dare i say?) tone, and yet keep on keepin on with the substance of his criticism and even keep on sneerin to some degree from his various manors

ok well cya

cargojorts posted:

i lurk because the long downfall of red ken becoming the whitest person in the world is really interesting to me

Lol