X-Sender: rmcdonel@popmail.ucsd.edu
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Fri, 20 Nov 1992 15:51:58 +0000
From:         rmcdonell%ucsd.edu@SDSC.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Last (?) thoughts on lurking/Reason.Argggh!

>On Wed, 18 Nov 1992 09:20:58 -0500 Angela Murphy-Walters said:
>>     Margaret referred to the literature in which "to have comments and
>>especially questions met with silence is supposedly deadly."  Recently for the

>>fourth (fifth?) time since I joined about 2 years ago I posted what I thought
>>was a particularly useful message specifically because it came from an
>>"outsider," only to have that message completely ignored. [...]
>
>This hit home with me, as I felt this way too when I first joined MBU, far
>more than on any other list (probably because MBU is just so busy; in the
>rush of reading so many postings, we have to be choosy about what we reply to).

  Some time ago Irv asked
>how people keep up with the huge volume of mail on MBU; one way that people
>do it is by using programs to screen which messages they will read.   [...]
>My question is, what role do these programs play in the
>dynamics of the electronic community?  Do certain issues and voices become
>hegemonic because the least-known writers and the least discussed issues
>are selected against?`[...].
>Wes Chapman
>Illinois Wesleyan University
>weschap at uiucvmd

As a new-netter whose first-day-on, first-message-up, was ignored as i saw
irv and james and jim and mer and wes and david and fred and gary and tim
and jeff -- and, oh yes, sharon and mary and ann (women out-gunned 3:1
name-wise, maybe twice that in posts) cross-talk, I wondered if there was
some intiation rite or rush one had to go through to gain acceptance as an
interlocutor.  At the same time, I thought, well, maybe broaching the
"political" was a mistake--a faux pas--for which I  was being forgiven by
being ignored.  But then, of course, the political reinserted itself to
provide a less reflexive analysis of this social-electric moment.  Other
messages began to meta-communicate a micro-version of the ideology of
pluralism, as if POWER were not at play here, too, at every level.  The
ongoing discussion of REASON and ARGUMENT (with reasonable arguments), as
well as of lurkers, multi-media and hypertext, to name a few, provided
clues for getting to the inside (or at least how to make the request to
those already engorged  there).  Display leading to recognition by someone
already recognized is one way.  Accepting a sufficient number of terms of
someone already recognized (i.e., insider) and then offering something
within an already accepted context is another.  Asking a question of the
already recognized--one s/he would find interesting and worth the display
of an answer (which is counted)that, depending on the response, opens
further dialogue or shuts it down.  Luck--you keep throwing stuff out and
you attract the attention of an insider(more easily sooner, before you been
labeled, than later ).  You can stand at the gateway and confess to
lurking, hoping you will be rescued by an invitation to intellectual dinner
(without becoming one of the courses).  And any number of other seemingly
free modes of entry.  Nevertheless, inclusion includes exclusion as (one
of) its identifying other.  Who owns the inside?  Reason or those who
dominate the inside?  Perhaps both insofar as the power of reason resides
in its (ab)use by hummin beins empowered to use *it* by powerful others who
recognize their use of it as legitimate.  etc.  As for disourse keeping
violence at bay, that city-on-the-hill attitude re: reason ignores the
power of those inside to define their discourse as non-violent because they
agree that it is.  brrrrrr, it's cold outside.

 Alternately, if argument is a club, then reason is a shield--folks in
uniforms have more of and more skill with both.

i suppose, since centers do not hold, several can be established, even some
"outside"--though this raises the question of colonization.  In this case,
of our minds?  It's also appropriate in this context to note the recent
death of Audre Lourde, who gave us the insightful "You can't dismantle the
master's house with the master's tools."  Still sounds "reasonable" to me.

knock-knock

robert mcdonell/ucsd
rmcdonell@ucsd.edu
rmcdonell@ucsd.edu
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