>Sometimes when a person -- politicians especially are good at this --
>is caught in an uncomfortable position, say an extramarital affair,
>that person might claim something like, I had a lapse of judgment,
>*I'm not the kind of person who has extramarital affairs*. Well,
>that's obviously bullshit: they *are* the kind of person who has an
>extramarital affair because, um, they had one. What that person is
>trying to do is separate their actions from some being they inhabit.
>They think that their being and their actions are separate things,
>that they have some say in which actions really apply to their being.
Not to defend lying philandering politicians, but let's move this to another context.
If you're convicted of a crime other than a violent or similarly harmful crime-- but to some extent even then--- and you have never committed a crime before, then that is supposed to go a long way in mitigation. In that context not only can being and action be thought of as separate things, but they are *supposed* to be thought of as separate things.
I think this is an interesting example you chose because it loops back to the Michaels debate from last week. Not to open that up again, but I think something you said then is interesting and worth some more discussion. Here's what you said:
>I'm at least as skeptical of class politics as I am of identity
>politics, and I think there are lots of problems with calls by
>Michaels and others here for a "return" to heroic class politics,
>which is frequently insisted on but rarely defined.
You mention Deleuze a lot. I've just started reading Anti-Oedipus for the first time and I get the impression that book could help here. Do you think that's right?