As an extremely rude person, I consider myself something of an expert on the nuances of offensive language . . .
Carrol wrote:
> is engaged in precisely the kind of shit that first provoked my
>politicization several years before I dreamt of becoming a marxist.
>Apparently Ken's whole world revolves around put-downs of the
>bulk of the human species. He uses Lacanianism as a club. That
>is contemptible. It also brings out clearly that Lacan's theories are
>not only silly but aggessively corrupt and corrupting.
I think this is rather harsh.
>And while the incorrect technical use of "psychosis" as indicating
>a form of mental illness might possibly be excusable as due to
>invincible ignorance, its use as an ethical term puts it in the same
>category as n...... and c...
I think this is rather true.
Certainly, I got a bit of a twitch out of references to "God, Uncle Sam, voices in the head -- it's all the Big Other". And I think that "psychosis" should be at least in scare-quotes to indicate that it doesn't refer to the thing that was thought to be affecting mentally ill people.
Also, taking issue with Justin:
>>If I say that David Irving, the holocaust denying historian of Nazi
Germany, is a psycho or a psychopath, anyone who gets upset on behalf of
the mentally ill is missing the point. I am not insulting the mentally ill,
least of all by using a term which I am now told doesn't actually apply to
any mentally ill persons any more.<<
Yes, I think you are insulting the mentally ill in this case, and I think that the "least of all" clause doesn't really make it. If, for example, I were to say that your endorsement of Posner while maintaining left-wing views was a "schizophrenic" point of view, it wouldn't be much of a defence for me to point out that as well as being offensive, I'd said something incredibly ignorant from a scientific point of view. I don't see how "psychotic" is any different. You're using "psychopath" to mean "bad" -- if someone was equally deluded in a good cause, you would not say they were a psychopath.
And using the abbreviation "psycho" is akin to the diminutive "Paki" ie something that only from an Australian would I consider not to be necessarily offensive.
>>What about that "beyond the pale"--as a Jew, should I be offended that
the main surving reference to that episode of Russian anti-semitism is to
mean, in English, "unacceptable"?<<
Actually, "beyond the pale" refers to the Irish Pale (also known as the English Pale), the area around Dublin in which the English thought they could maintain colonial law and order.
In general, arguments over whether a phrase is offensive are pretty unproductive -- if you're having the argument, then it is.
dd
>
I don't quite understand, off hand, why clinical terms are inappropriate for
social theoretical discourse.
I'm with Ken here. People also use legal terms like "guilty" or "criminal" in a loose and popular sense rather than in a strict and technical sense, and they use old outmoded technical terms like "melanchonic" or "choleric," etc.
If I say that David Irving, the holocaust denying historian of Nazi Germany, is a psycho or a psychopath, anyone who gets upset on behalf of the mentally ill is missing the point. I am not insulting the mentally ill, least of all by using a term which I am now told doesn't actually apply to any mentally ill persons any more.
Granted, it's not a scientific term, but that doesn't mean using it puts one beyond the pale of civilized discussion. What about that "beyond the pale"--as a Jew, should I be offended that the main surving reference to that episode of Russian anti-semitism is to mean, in English, "unacceptable"? Come on, guys and gals, let's not overdose on PC here.
--jks
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