>JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>> 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.
>
>I disagree. You are using the term in a pejorative fashion when you
>disagree with his views. You don't know that he is "psychotic," you may
>know that he is wrong. To plug in a mental state is particularly
>inappropriate even if the term psychotic still had meaning.>>
The reason why Ken & other followers of Lacan & Zizek don't want to renounce the recourse to the use of the word "psychotic" must be that while they want a word that damns their objects of criticism, they can't bring themselves to using such words like "bad," "wrong," "untrue," "incorrect," "ideological," etc. It would be very un-postmodern to suggest that there are such things as the distinction between "good" and "bad," that "true" is preferable to "false," and so on; it's also supremely un-postmodern to argue explicitly that the theory one is advancing is superior to & closer to truth than competing theories. Therefore, "psychotic" has to do the work of derogation for them. (Forget the effects of such usage on the mentally ill.) If that fails, postmodern writers must argue, "you can't read, you haven't read," though what they really mean by that is actually, "I don't like your interpretation, my interpretation is better, but I'm not going to say it in case I sound metaphysical...". Ah, a dilemma of an epistemic fallacy. Very chicken-wing (an apology to chickens everywhere).
As for Justin, I would simply say to him, "what would Rawls (or Kant for that matter) say?" Is it ethical to use the word "psychotic" as an epithet, based upon Justin's own moral philosophy? That the term doesn't in fact apply to the object of attack doesn't serve as a moral excuse for using it as an epithet. I get called "Bitch, Chink, etc." That I am neither a female dog nor a Chinese person doesn't mean it is OK for someone to hurl such epithets at me or anyone else.
Yoshie