I'm beginning to see the process, other than mere verbal sloppiness, that collapses the meaning of these two words. This and probably some later posts is an attempt to trace that process and identify its political and intellectual importance.
Consider the difference between Libya and Wisconsin as topics for discussion. Now either one _can_ be the subject of purely disinterested observation Anything _can_ be. The occupants high in the WTC could have carried on a disinterested debate over the best means of departure from the building. Perhaps even those who leaped could have first engaged in a disinterested discussion of means of suicide. So the possibility of disinterested consideration of these two topics is not in question. The question rather concerns the desirability (one might say the decorum) of disinterested debate. I think the two place quite different 'pressures' on debate, pressures that to a large extent determine the decorum of those debates, and hence the appropriateness of a _disinterested_ response -- the possibility of such a response becoming, objectively, an _uninterested_ response, which in turn, in some contexts, can be an indecorous response, a response that in effect excludes that person from the discussion -- or at lest makes his/her 'contributions' disruptive -- even a barrier, one might say, to solidarity.
Now Libya as a topic of conversation does _not_, I think, place pressure of this sort on those discussing it; a _disinterested_ response does not constitute a violation of decorum, a disrupter of community/solidarity. A joke from the early '50s points to the reason for this. The joke was one of a family of jokes of the form, "What is the height of X?"
***What is the height of arrogance? A flea approaching an elephant with intentions of rape.***
Can any u.s. citizen's opinion on Libya have _any_ influence on events there (or on the decisions of the U.S. state)? No. Of course not. And if we substitute "leftist" for or even "left organization" for "citizen" the answer remains the same. For us to fantasize making a difference would make us a flea approaching an elephant with intentions of rape. It even rings a bit hollow to speak of "solidarity" with the rebels: Solidarity is not a sentiment, and that is all it can be in reference to current happenings in Libya.
And as a result members of any real or virtual community can go on indefinitely expressing varying opinions on Libya with no resulting breach of community, no rhetorical indecorum. To put it another way, on Libya disinterest does not (or not necessarily) collapse into _uninterest_!
[Sort of a footnote. For (roughly) the last 35 years I have been repelled on the few occasions when a group sang "We shall not be moved." That song is indecorous in a context that does not include police dogs, fire hoses, riot clubs, rubber bullets, or the equivalent. Sung in other contexts it is an insult to our history. Its decorum is dependent on context. Similarly, the decorum controlling various topics of discussion often depends on context.]
Wisconsin.
In 2001 I submitted a post inquiring what various list members were doing in their local communities to organize opposition to the aggression against Afghanistan. Someone reacted angrily, objecting to the pressure that put on list members. (I don't remember the exact content, wording, or tone of his post, but this is roughly accurate.) After some consideration, I decided he was probably correct, and I desisted. Also at that time I posted to the effect that for the first time in a number of years I was feeling a bit optimistic about political affairs. But the optimism was misguided. The 130 people who turned out for the first meeting of the Bloomington/Normal Citizens for Peace and Justice (BNCPJ) soon began to fade away, twice reaching a low of about 4 or 5. It has recently increased to near 10 active participants. In other words, both the Afghanistan and the Iraqi wars remained in the context I described above for the issue of Libya: mere topics of chatter, though often intensely serious chatter, which enable one to develop his/her thought on a number of questions. Almost any tone, almost any content was 'safe,' i.e., did not challenge or disrupt the fundamental decorum controlling lbo posts.
Now Wisconsin has in a sereious way opened up legitimate hope of a political loosening, of emerging practice out of which something like a coherent left could once again come into existence in the U.S., of unknown potential. And that generates a pressure on what it means to be a "leftists." And that pressure, I am going to suggest, is such as to collapse "distinterest" into "uninterest." An objective or disinterested perspective (an academic or journalistic perspective) becomes offensive: it breaks unity, it rejects solidarity, it genereates distrust.
Jan attended the panel at which Michael Yates gave a vigorous speech urging that we join battle, and when she returned to our hotel room gave a rather exuberant account of it. One might say that the genre of Mike's peech was a Declaration of War, urging action on all possible fronts. A distinerested response to that speech would be a flat repudiation of left resistance to capital; it would be a declaration of aggressive (and offensive) neutrality.
End of Part 1
Carrol
Part 2 will begin with:
Let's turn to a post that the list has studiously ignored, both when it originally appeared and when I later called attention to it, jam's las post from Madison. I repost it at the end of this post, and dI requite here the first paragraph: .