Monday, August 02, 2010

File Under R

When governments justify war on the grounds of freedom from oppressive gender regimes, it helps to recognise that theses justifications have a history, to refuse to hear them as in any way ‘new’. As Gayatri Spivak taught us, empire itself was justified in these terms, with a description that remains extraordinary for its precision: ‘white men saving brown women from brown men’.


- Sara Ahmed, Problematic Proximities or Why Critiques of "Gay Imperialism" Matter

In Chapter 4, I introduced the idea of “social alexithymia” (Feagin 2006), Hernan Vera’s term for White Americans’ curious lack of empathy for the feelings of people of color. We can now see that this lack of empathy involves a chain of reasoning that goes something like this: “I am a good and normal mainstream sort of White person. I am not a racist, because racists are bad and marginal people. Therefore, if you understood my words to be racist, you must be mistaken. I may have used language that would be racist in the mouth of a racist person, but if I did so, I was joking. If you understood my meaning to be racist, not only do you insult me, but you lack a sense of humor, and you are oversensitive.” Notice that this entire chain of reasoning makes the speaker the sole authority over what her words shall mean. But this exclusive control is merely the common sense of personalist logic, and it is very hard to interrupt common sense….

Van Dijk argued that ‘knowledgeable minority group members’ are our surest guides to where racism is active. People of color have produced some of the most profound thinking about racism, and, while they pick their battles carefully, letting much that is offensive pass by without objection, both in small acts of everyday rejection and in deliberate public manifestations by entire communities, they have been active in resistance. When I have talked to people of color about “covert racist discourse,” I often find that they have understood this concept, in an informal way, since childhood. Among Whites, the idea of “linguistic appropriation” is a concept encountered, if at all, during university education. Among African Americans, it is a commonplace of everyday understanding. So, not only do people of color deserve civility and respect as fellow citizens, they deserve the attention of anti-racist Whites as knowledgeable experts in the analysis of White racism, which is surely one of the greatest challenges faced by American society.

Along with accusations of “oversensitivity”, the media ritual of moral panic over “gaffes” should cease. I have followed these affairs for about a decade. Their terms are rigidly formulaic. The exchange of blame and excuse is utterly predictable, with Harvard-educated Washington Post columnists and middle-western talk radio hosts alike invoking the same hackneyed formulas, knotting up once again the frayed ends of the folk theory of racism and the personalist rhetoric of motives to return to the same tired conclusions about decent people who somehow slipped. It is time to simply hold people responsible for their words. If victims claim that those words were hurtful and damaging, that alone should carry blame and bring appropriate punishment. Arguments about whether or not speakers are racist are not useful, and function largely to reproduce White racism’s central ideas.


Jane Hill, The Everyday Language of White Racism

19 comments:

  1. hey, looks promising ... you will drive pat up the hi-rise faces to prove his goes right up alongside the famed in earlier threads, flikkrsability of locale of his choosing (riiiiiiiite ... whoosh .... cover me in toxic ashes why don't you ... complain about iran non-stop, don't mention falluhah)

    http://www.switchnewmedia.com/RebootBritain/Video_Archive/preview.swf

    PE2P2P

    gets good and colourful burst of meaning in the sixth and 7th of 90 minutes

    he has had truck with frieze also

    i found it via peaceportal (lots of treasure in seattle lately) which points to a wsj bit by andy jordan (to be had with 4 caption flavors, 2 of which asian) on hubculture run by stan stalnaker -

    features a currency called ven ...
    andy (i guess) quotes him:
    rock = hard -- pebble = card -- sand = p2p

    i sent him a query:
    who inspired you to go for the mineral aggregation analogy pray tell?

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  2. flickr - hubculture
    yachts drinks and masked balls cover 1300 pics since 07

    am i gonna perform the following if they arsks it nicely??????

    A dab of fresh dust can adjust our soilbankbalance - crust we bust-lustily and thus thrust into dust cause we just must coin kindest currency - it does not take a pro-visionary to see that bullion's famed perfect incrementality pace was based on the widespreadiest of oxide reducing photosyntheses.

    The above is an improvement of an old attempt for the occasion, this one:
    A dab of fresh dust can adjust; soilbankbase our (crust we bust-lustily and thus thrust into dust cause we just must coin kindest) currency on oxide reducing photosynthesis.

    speaking of perfect shape, congealed, ripened and harvestable sunshine in the shape of 'currencizable' treecrops grow in soils which are in their turn fed by outcropping and powdered minerals come close enough and on time for all i hope.

    "Mountains of commodities are born on the rivers of money to the sea of consumption " J H Buechi

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  3. is he old hat and masques or what?

    bring on the credit floods ... eh .. oh .. guess we already got failing valvage all over us .. never mind after and before us

    yeah, trade wine picking skills .... why not cut this man a new arssconsehole lewdtenant pat

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  4. http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/against-money-relativism/2009/12/01
    stalnaker third and last Commentarier there (quite the many hat man eh?)

    he points here:

    http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbr-now/2009/08/a-new-approach-to-economics.html
    +31

    19.13 it is essentially taking that rock and making it sand bycause you are taking out another area of friction in the economy (referring to the greater flux and circ speeds within systems before having to tax for entry and exit only.

    there will be many like these type fellas ... i know monrobey annd michgels or migchels for starters

    the next step in watertight community foundage or candidate fasho cliqueists .. all ok with the camera pointed at them .. even if they sit behing a mac with nothing but empty seats around them (25th minute)

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  5. how can you go from praising a natural scene as the thing you hope will remembered and then go on

    just saw a trailer from somesso(.com/blog) on sevenload ..zurich 09 visible banking, evangelist something or other .. (slick use of rainbow reflections on modest height glass facades in the opening sequences)

    wait til i tell les visible about visible banking

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  6. piss poor whoredom steals the last shimmer sliver glimmer left of love for beauty and truth ... no sir .. we don't despise crumbs .. .we are dutch enough ... we mind (and brainwash) lite hail into liddull ones

    http://www.hubculture.com/store/london/view/280/


    Hub Culture is working with the World Land Trust to develop reforestation projects with Ven.

    For every $1 donated, the World Land Trust is able to secure one tree in rainforests around the world.

    So far, Hub Culture and the World Land Trust have saved over 2,000 trees and created a Hub Culture reserve as part of a project in Regua, Brazil.

    This item is in stock and available in London

    that's all folks .. no more fun

    this race (yacht vs tree-folk -- .. 2 miljon chinese govt money to be sunk into looking for them famed huger than huge ships - precedent for unhappy medians) is run

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  7. it is degenerating into a classroom style inventory dust-off for a while so i skip and run into waves of emotion past the hour mark ...

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  8. compulsory voting fanatic raises her arms .. 185 dollars fine for not showing .. .dunno what the Belgians charge for that minor misdemeanor

    70th minute a black chubber flaps arms

    i think his boat rock mention sparked it ... he now adds 'shadow voting' to the mix .. what's next, assasination politics ... wonder how the profrv is doing these days ... he got booted from livejournal last i knew .. must be a year by now

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  9. at 83 she repeats the cute dry pass


    watch 'first earth' to see what i mean if you don't already

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  10. for somebody who purports to offer alternatives, freeness and all that ... he sure gets irresistibly attracted to traditional money clots and clutters

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  11. .. wonder if that london place works for hubbers exclusively or if a Ven is merely one amongst many of the forms of acceptable payments .. guess my answer lies in the march future tense thing (which must be a different show from the one i have .. i will check in a moment) where Stalnaker goes: 'new jungle of currency' .. and trots out the aggregate allegory too. ... more specific:

    our currency is accepted tender in all of our pavilions. That means that as a business we actually only really operate in one currency, Ven, and all of our inventory is priced in Ven. You can buy anything from private jet service to a Coke, with Ven.

    cue Max Keiser's rant on Coke i guess...

    hubculture hosted hopenhagen which did that one brief brilliant thing i noted at the time

    the one with edie lush shows the Stanman there claiming he was first in facilitating meetings of (online community) minds .. by now we know they for sure this is just a tool for careening debauchery carnage .... shadow of doubt are cast by his gravitating to what may also be called protest prone prestige and 'protsy' hotspots.

    youtube title:
    Hub Culture COP15: Michael Nash and Justin Hogan discuss CLIMATE REFUGEES

    last observation on rebootbritain:
    closing adress by Rheingold who is showing slides .. the camera pans about (and actually shows one of them early on) so that's not the problem (it does not even pan up when he is on about back and forth in fluid motion - flow, not cue - the series maybe on slideshare or someplace, as is the Stan spiel illustration one)

    Perhaps he disallowed us freebootin skeapchates to see, if so, that would not be untypical .... i had a brief experience at his well community via a belgian digital artist.
    kinda aggravating ... He recommends Mwesch (youtuber) as group dynamizer

    Stalnaker sure aint afraid of dichotomies, i can see half of our remaining riches and wisdom disappear in the rifts, crack and shake outs between reputation and network size (mentioned in the future tense thing which, though i still haven't plugged in my BUHD (back up hard disk) must be the one i have and heard ... the man had an amnesiac effect on me at first obviously.

    Conclusion:
    not foregone but tentative and by no means foreclosed upon:
    A cunning sandman leads us to sleepwalk in deserts

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  12. apologies for off-topicness, not malicious, belittlin .. etc

    http://www.grassrootsfeminism.net
    neatest site deco .. really

    it implies good fathers deployed to arm (his) female( arm)s with strength enough to get themselves in that lofty condition.

    complete with curlycues for all the lasses who care little for books as yet ... shamefully .. though my collection is now set up and sorted ... not any trees on the premises .. .though there are some visible, as is a mill, across the roofs. i am perfectly willing to violate rent conditions and let interested parties camp there. tis a defunct bank

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  13. then again, why put a man between a female and her branches?

    a spear as first rape preventing tec (so drew hempel has it) and other easily grabbable remedials have gotten to be held out of reach for loads, loaded and overburdened females swallowing surrogated and watered down digitalienations worse than a simple rape now and then

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  15. Arpege, what is a hebfreudig lad? Piet is not extremely interested in giving direct answers to questions, I don't know whether he taught nicky to always be indirect or that nicky taught him. Most at Hyperstition had something of that obliqueness and refusal to be str8 with an answer. Finally, northanger decided she had to do it though, and changed Gematria styles, which is Greek to me, but it was fun if you didn't have to go too deep into it, and just read hers.

    What was strange was how seriously I took all of it, and how nobody still seems to understand why I would have, especially since I fully escaped from it due to survival necessity. And I did do so, once I had left behind Urbanatomy Bleug 100%. Maybe I'm just the same kind of 'American Pollyanna' that Dejan says Arpege is, but I just don't care about an 'irony-only' situation. It's not nourishing enough, and it's bad sex. I thought I was communicating with an actual person, but once was enough. That's not what was going on, I just listened to a clever malicious troll, and Dejan cooperates with this troll, who is lafayetc (who lafayetc is used to be important, but no longer is, he's bad enough just as lafayette, and always played on my weaknesses. There are some people who gave up on anything other than deceit long ago. So I found that out. By all rights, I shouldn't be still standing, but I always had the book, maybe it was good it took such a ridiculous time to do it. btw, I woudn't be surprised if the spouse wasn't heavily involved in all that business, she certainly didn't respond to my email. I don't care what they do, and if they did come through NYC, I hope they're gone by now.)

    I made the Sacher Torte yesterday, so I'll freeze some of it so traxus can have some when he comes back through. The little vixen complained that I hadn't made it for him the last time the way I had hoped to! Put some extra Intense Dark Orange on the top of it.

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  16. you will drive pat up the hi-rise "faces to prove his goes right up alongside the famed in earlier threads, flikkrsability of locale of his choosing (riiiiiiiite ... whoosh .... cover me in toxic ashes why don't you ... "

    Piet, that's so nice the way you are, you know. That one is even in 'piet-talk' and it's as good as anything of nicky's. I told Arpege about you back in 2007 when we spied on that thread where Robin and I had words and Nicky tried to 'stay above the fray' by vacuuming up the flattery that 'teacher's pet' was offering after being admonished for being a philosophe manque and a flourishing hack. Astonishing that that little scene made such a cyber-drama ensue. Rather sad, I say. I'm glad we're back at this point. Not that I can swear that Arpege will take us out to Dee-part-dues.

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  18. [this is the comment I deleted, because it referred to some stuff I'd written Arpege about privately and it probably ought to be kept that way. I'll await her answer, although it's no rush.]

    hi piet--some of the things are just not going to be understood, but much of it does stimulate pleasant reveries. Hebfreudig or heavefreudig lad? Google translate only gives me the 'heb-joyful'? I wonder if Arpege knows what that means.

    "not foregone but tentative and by no means foreclosed upon:
    A cunning sandman leads us to sleepwalk in deserts"

    Sounds a bit like Nicky, doesn't it? or at least his effect on me, which was worse than all others.

    I recently added a BOOK V, a short final chapter, that continues after the internet spell was thrown off in the malignant sense, and life went ahead on living in the metropolis after all. I don't know how we got through all this, because all the bleugers except traxus hate my work. Fortunately, I just don't care.

    Piet, I love all your off-topic stuff, although not quite the 'organic hippie' type you are. No wonder you paid so much less attention to Nicky, at such long distance he could say that under neoconservatism the 'poodles would be protected' and such stuff as that.

    Okay, it doesn't matter if we can't understand much of what you're saying, there are nevertheless fragments that are profound here and there. The Chopin pianist? did you mean Michelangeli? the elegant one? I may have posted that at Mikhail's, can't remember, otherwise the ballet board. Did you know that 'Martin' even followed me into the ballet board? and signed in as a 'lithuanian photographer'? I don't know whether he meant a real Lithuanian or a Lesb'an, which is what Lesb'ans on Fire Island used to call themselves (and maybe still do.) In the early 00s, Susan sontag asked Mikhail Baryshnikov about his ner arts center here, and she said something about a 'lithuanian play', and I don't know whether she actually thought Misha would think that was terribly clever or she meant something from Lithuania. Her sense of humour was none to titillating.

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  19. ​​​​​Avital Ronell, Judith Butler, Laurence Rickels: Arendt, Heidegger & The Role of Thinking 2009 8/15

    3.40m, part 9 of 16 is where larry opens his mouth a first time
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f2kAzty7TY&feature=PlayList&p=A3F0FFDB602D73C8

    in the playlist it is 9


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E7fydd4qGM&feature=channel
    11 (of 15 google count vs the 16 egs does and the playlist does)

    2.06 has a few words by him .. 2.57 avito goes "larry means ..."
    barely audible (3.16): suicidal ideation .. massenweise (vs ingroupification a la benjamin, relation to and through the gadget-love) .. massnahme

    hey, he uses my smoking argument in the fourth minute and waxes quite pynchonite in the rest of it.
    139 views since oct 1 09


    part 13 - 1.50 comes a one liner .. then avita agonizes over rootage ('roots' around ...and succeeds wonderfully in making it look unfun)

    15 of 15 is Arendt with spanish subtitles



    http://www.egs.edu/faculty/laurence-arthur-rickels/videos/psychoanalysis-and-torture/
    larry solo all the way, reading from his work - 641 views, up since march 07

    on schreber, derrida
    it plays no more than half the vid ... same problem the mp3 of this has (found over a year ago)

    texmexmix2 goes: this professor is torture (only comment) .... haha!! he does not know half of it.

    the thing is only half as long as he prolly feels it is.

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