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POETRYETC  2003

POETRYETC 2003

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Subject:

Re: Sparrow&Spider, Poem Six

From:

Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and poetics <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 9 May 2003 23:17:48 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Parts/Attachments

text/plain (96 lines)

On Thursday 08 May 2003 11:48 pm, you wrote:
> Dominic
>
> I don't know anything about 'who you are' and none of my comments were
> meant to imply I did. I was trying to observe precisely what you so
> vehemently deny - that the position/perspective from which an observation
> is made, has an impact.

But you can't know a thing about the perspective from which a person makes an
observation without knowing, or presuming to know, a thing or two about the
person who is speaking. And here's what you said:

> I have
> > to say in short and in summary that only someone who is safely
> walled in on
> > the inside, could state so confidently that there is no outside,

This is not true. I state that there is no outside (because there is no
inside, because there isn't a monotonic Power that could sustain, always and
everywhere, the opposition); that is true. If what you say is true, then I,
who have said this, can only be "someone who is safely walled in on the
inside". And I say that I am not - *even on your terms*, which presuppose an
inside I could be walled in on - and that it is highly presumptious of you to
say that I must be, as you can know very little about me.

> I clearly disagree with you on that. I makes a
> considerable difference whether I am a woman talking about what it means to
> be a woman, or a man, a queer talking about what it means to be queer
> ....... I am not so confident that 'truth' can be established as you seem
> to be,

I tried to be clear about this, and obviously did not succeed: I make no
claims at all about what can or cannot be established. I do say that the
position from which one is speaking has no bearing whatsoever on the
veridicality (the - putative - correctness) of what one says; and that there
is some such thing as being right that an utterance might achieve or fail to
achieve. How sure one can be of which of these is the case is a separate
matter.

It's obviously true that you know things about yourself that I don't know.
It's less obviously true that it matters what you know about yourself when
you're talking about something other than yourself. In talking about the
nature of social space, the nature of power, the nature of oppression and so
on, one is necessarily combining the two: social theory always contains an
element of spiritual autobiography. And yes, some people have had some kinds
of power wielded over them that some other people have not had wielded over
them, and their social theories may very well be touched and informed by
this.

My social theory (this is "folk" theory, I don't have a grounding in sociology
as a formal discipline) is informed by the experience, not of easy mastery of
myself and of other people, but of having been in a state of emotionally
violent conflict with myself and other people from a fairly early age.
Collectivism of any kind, for instance, "feels" wrong to me because I can't
imagine a form of social solidarity that would in all cases be stronger and
more persuasive than that violent emotion I have encountered within myself.

Self-mastery, mastery of language, mastery of technique, are not for me
prerogatives inherited from a ruling class (my mother's family's traceable
genealogy comes to a dead end in the work house, a few generations back), and
in actual fact have very little to do with any imperative to dominate other
people: they have rather to do with the psychological necessity of staving
off humiliation, fear and loathing. "Confidence", that talismanic aura that
for so many people immediately announces the Oppressor striding arrogantly
into their midst, isn't always something that comes with money, status and
security. It can also be something you gather about yourself with a great
deal of care and industry, precisely because you don't have money, status or
security.

> and perhaps more inclined to the stance of listening when
> encountering experiences that are not in my own life.

I'm inclined to impatience with what seems most familiar to me. Tell me
something I don't know and I'm all ears.

> referring to your reply to Rebecca

I don't think I've replied to Rebecca at all so far. Peasant caution.

  you say 'I'm trying to drive off the
> synthesizing imagination,

that's from my reply to Chris, with whom I am inclined to wantonness.

 because I think it takes too many bleeding
> liberties' - well I enjoy the bringing together that imagination can work
> and I think it is an imperative to take liberties. Every kind of liberty
> imaginable.

In art, perhaps. In politics, not always, because liberties of definition may
translate into tyrannies of praxis. The Thatcher era was a tremendous work of
the imagination, politically speaking: it imagined a whole class of persons
into obsolescence. That is what I mean by metaphor "smirching its claws".

Dominic

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