Dan wrote:
>I am also not taking sides -- I think I might disagree
> with Angela for once, though I am suspicious of myself for that very
>reason -- and I am not saying Carl is a baddie)
I wasn't commenting one way or another on whether Carl is a baddie (though if I recall his position on 'clear writing' accurately, he's pretty darn close to being Beelzebub); but that it's not quite going far enough to ask the question about interpellation in one sense -- ie., whether or not such postings work to affirm a readers' positioning as 'more civilised' -- and not ask it of the implicit or explicit perspective from which such a question is posed. To put it another way: who speaks this question and is this interpellation a matter of self-evidence?
>They will tell you the latter refer to an
> epistemological, real problem, as well as to the material movement of
> people and bodies across space. They are world-building projects and
> a part of colonial practice. The ideational stuff -- as if these
> referred to "stereotypes" or some such -- is just a sideshow in
comparison. It
> doesnt matter what is going on in people's heads-- not at this level.
Marx
> told me so.
I agree. Which is why it matters less whether Carl (or Zack, or you or me) is a baddie, and more how those material movements and world-building projects over the last fifty or so years have transformed the questions we might pose of 'we'.
Btw, I haven't gotten round to reading Ahmad's essay in _Ghostly Demarcations_ yet, but I thought special honours for embarrassment should go to Tom Lewis. I liked Hamacher's and Montag's essays; and am inclined to agree with Derrida quite amicable question to Negri: 'Why ontology?'
Angela