Is "jargon" jargon, was Re: dead topix

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Dec 14 12:53:27 PST 1999



>From Doug to Carrol:
>> > It amazes me that anyone thinks that people
>> > will be persuaded by such jargon at this late date.
>>
>>I'm a little confused by this. Who were they trying to persuade? People
>>in general? Or just the comrades at the meeting? If the latter, is it not
>>common for people who share a certain perspective to speak in some
>>sort of shorthand when they are speaking only to each other?
>
>They were trying to persuade the other people in the meeting, and
>advocating their position as a way to speak with the larger world.
>Shorthand is fine among intimates, but it's not a way to persuade the
>unconverted.

So, what was the topic of discussion? Who was trying to pesuade whom on what issue? Are you going to tell us? Or is the Labor Party run on the basis of centralism that doesn't allow you to discuss such things in front of non-members?


>Practically everything I write on political economy is influenced by
>Marx, but I rarely use the received language. (I do like throwing in
>"bourgeoisie" or "capitalist hyena press" every now and then, for
>shock value.) I find people listening to me, and maybe even agreeing
>with me, who might well have stopped listening if I'd sounded like a
>party paper.

One must modulate one's rhetoric according to the audience, occasion, purpose, etc. of discourse, of course, but you stand on a non-existant aesthetic high ground when you try to lecture veterans of the freshman composition front like Carrol on Rhetoric 101.

Further, rhetorical discretion, when fully internalized, can create a superego that censors you without your knowing that you are submitting to it. That's the making of TINA, or Marxism in the closet. As your Verso comrade Zizek says, it's not that they know not what they do -- they know what they are doing, but they are still doing it.

Yoshie



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