Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 12:56:16 -0500
Subject: Re: presentation, representation


> Dear Arturo:
> Given your extreme antipathy for these discussions, one has to wonder why
> you persist in participating, or, for that matter, in reading all those
> pretentious books published by pretentious presses like Routledge. On the
> one hand, the tone and rhetorical address of your remarks seem to indicate
> that you want to have a voice that counts within an intellectual community,
> if only to remind us how ridiculous we seem to you. Don't be surprised if
> we don't find that very interesting. On the other hand, read in tandem with
> the expletives and concluding exhortation to a violent if clichéd sort of
> vita activa, your persistance bears the symptoms of some sort of
> masochistic relationship or fantasy. There are no doubt professionals who
> can help you with that. I'm afraid this discussion probably cannot.
> -Alan Smith


I read and write these posts precisely for the reasons I say I do. . .
as a distraction, a way to pass time or procrastinate, sheer
entertainment (about as good or bad as a "Brady Bunch " re-run) . . .
believe it or not I have fun (at least sometimes). . . not everybody
that posts seems ridiculous to me. . . if you had read carefully (which
I would expect a self-styled intellectual, part of an "intellectual"
community, to do) you would have realized that I attack only those who
take this sort of thing.seriously as a form of politics or as somehow
part and parcel of strugle and resistance. . . now for an intellectual
such as yourself, participating in a group on Lyotard nonetheless, I do
find it almost painful and hence gratifying to my masochism to point out
some of the most basic uncritical stupidities betrayed by your ad
hominem attack. . . Who is the "we" that you keep refering to in your
post ? I see only one name or signature. . .and what about that
pathologizing move at the end ? do you consider anything and everything
that is distasteful to you, or threatening or unlike yourself, deviant
and thus in need of "normalization" ?  I could go on and on but what YOU
write here is so childish and stupid (and notice carefully I mean you --
Alan Smith) in so many ways that more than this would no longer really
be entertaining. . . as for fantasy and masochism (are you taking an
undergrad. intro. psych class or something like that because it sure
sounds like it ? ) both seem to me to be very healthy in such a
pathological world. . . a world so pathological that somebody like you
is probably considered normel