From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,misc.legal,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Date: 23 Jul 92 14:43:18 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU

In article <1992Jul21.162535.26597@Princeton.EDU> mgflax@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Marshall G. Flax) writes:
>>Wittgenstein, but the more theoretical legal critics are directly
>>inspired by French theory.
>
>Since when was Wittgenstein a *french* theorist???

Reread the posting.  No such claim was made, instead a claim of
influence and dialog was made.
>
>>Many French theorists (Montefiore 1983)
>>acknowledge a debt to the analytic school of which Wittgenstein was more
>>or less a part, a debt which is repaid by AngloAmerican analytic types
>>by incomprehension and mockery.
>
>Irrelevant; I was asking how the essentialistic MacKinnon addresses W's
>questions, not how "AngloAmerican analytic types" did or did not address them.

Here's your mistake.  You use Wittgenstein (whom you appear not to have
read) as a club with which to beat MacKinnon.  You accuse MacKinnon of
using "essentialistic" language including concepts like "gender."  You
say Wittgenstein condemned this.  However, what Wittgenstein said (in
the Philosophical Investigations and other later works) was that even
relatively trivial terms like "game" APPEAR to speak of a Platonic
essence of "gaminess" whereas "game" is part of a network of what W
called "family relationships."  Certain activities we call "games" have
certain features; for example, some games include physical activity
(like baseball) and others do not (like chess.)  To say, well games
ESSENTIALLY involve competition is of course to ignore solitaire.
Wittgenstein shows how NO essence can be provided for "gaminess" and
indeed the very need for the word indicates the absence of an essence
for otherwise we'd substitute a term referring to the essence.

On W's analysis, even workaday concepts like "table" can be subject to
this corrosive analysis which Henry Staten shows (in his book
Wittgenstein and Derrida) is a form of "deconstruction", which is of
course the monstrous activity that MacKinnon's theoretical allies are
accused-of.  Such an analysis can even be turned against white male
subjects like Edward Nilges or Marshall Flax, showing them to be quite
different people, say, at age 18 and at age 42 (whem for example,
Marshall is 42, he shall probably be a "different" person and
acknowledge the truth of what old man Nilges (der alte) posted in '92.)

This means that MacKinnon is no more and no less warranted to use
"gender" as a working tool than you are to talk about "games", "tables",
or "Marshall Flax."  You explore the behavior, not the language, of the
Nazi to verify his Nazi-ness, and "essentialistic" terms like (to take a
Balkan example) "Serbia" and "Croatia" are no indicators of the virtue
of the term users.  "Serbia" is a term used by bloody murderers, yet
"Bosnia" attracts the loyalty of supporters of a multicultural and
multiconfessional entity.  Fashionable antinominian thinking, of course,
has been responsible for "balance" in the Balkans with the result that
the good guys are being brutalized by the bad guys.
>
>
>Yup.  Because grouping people into arbitrary categories is fascistic.

As I've shown, if this is so, then speech is always fascistic.  
>
>
>You just zoned out for a moment.  *What* did you mean to say here?

No, you did.  Reread what I have said until you understand it.  Also,
read the references I have included, readily available at Firestone
Library.
>
>Survey says BZZZZZ!  You claim a termininally unique individual in the
>marketplace is powerless.  Justify this emotional assertion, please, or
>retract it.

7.9% unemployment; 16% union membership.  Nuf ced.
>
>
>Yup, computer prices for the masses have become affordable, for instance.

Oops, you used "the masses" and thereby you stand self-indicted for
using "essentialistic" language.

And the price of a computer that is usable in terms of the state of the
art has been remarkably constant; between one and three thousand
dollars.  This would be the Apple II in '79, a skinny Mac in '84, and a
486 or Mac II* today.  
>
>
>>What's missing is the old liberal acknowledgement of a common humanity.
>>That's Fascistic.
>
>I'm sure she would respond that some humanity is more common than others.

Clever and elitist equivocation on "common" which prior to the Second
World War never had its English connotation of "dweadfully common", as
the upper-class twit of the year might say.  In America, our tradition,
far from condemning that which is common to us all, is to write
Coplandian "fanfares for the common man."  The fact that this is sexist
should not blind us to what is laudable about this.  Let's please not
emulate the English.
>
>>Wittgenstein's
>>"language games" were liberating in the 1930s, a time when Fascism was
>>insisting on revealed Truth.  But in a community which has been itself
>>debased, to say that truth must be conditioned on the needs of that
>>debased community is enslavement.
>
>We weren't debased 60 years ago?

In many ways, no.  Let's see, that was 1932.  Ten years of idiot
Republican administration had nearly destroyed the economy, so we got
rid of the bastards, and there were no polls to tell us how to vote.  In
moldering copies of the Nation, we read how ordinary people, concerned
about the crisis of capitalism, were founding, not twelve-step groups
(which apart from their undoubted usefulness have a certain "blame the
victim" cast) but groups to discuss how to bring about socialism and
other overhauls of capitalism.  
Xref: sparky talk.politics.theory:3089 misc.legal:15032 rec.arts.cinema:112