Dominic
I don't know why you are so keen to caricature my thinking, nor do I know
why you think you have the right to tell me to 'behave' - seemingly because
I dont agree with you and questioned the positition from which you were
dictating your version of what I believe and think.  I am not trying to
impress you, I am trying to engage with what  you say.

I am not someone who enjoys or wants to engage in lengthy and wordy abstract
discussions, but I felt I had to respond to your mails because they touched
on things that matter to me.  The crux of this seems to me still as it did
before.  You say you believe oppression and exploitation exist but in your
discussion power disappears in a series of tricks with mirrors.  Everything
is splintered down to individual experience.  It reminds me of Margaret
Thatcher's statement that 'there is no such thing as society, only
individuals'.  Well, I disagree.  For me the very nature of individual
experience is made by the experience we have of power working in society.
And part of the point of poetry is to engage at the reaction point of those
two forces.  To 'speak truth to power'

I find a puzzling contradiction in what you say - you assert that you
believe in oppression and exploitation but you also say "I don't believe
that one can profitably spend one's time trying to analyse the complexities
of something that isn't there."  You seem to be tangled in a knot.

Liz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Dominic Fox
> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 9:45 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Sparrow&Spider, Poem Six
>
>
> On Tuesday 06 May 2003 12:03 am, you wrote:
> > I haven't called anyone a bastard, or taken the position you ascribe to
> > me.....
>
> I don't ascribe a position to you. I describe an outsider
> poetics, a wider
> phenomenon that perhaps involves you. If one wanted evidence of such an
> involvement, one might consider what you say below.
>
> > What is clear to me, though it seems you want to deny it, is that power
> > makes a difference.
>
> Just the one?
>
> > The difference may be complex, and difficult to
> > accurately describe
>
> I think this is because one is not dealing with a single thing,
> even a very
> complex one, but with many things - possibly very simply things -
> that do not
> add up into one big thing. To speak of "a different position"
> that one would
> be in just by virtue of being female, or queer, and would not be
> in if one
> could be said to be neither of those things, is to speak as if
> they added up:
> as if, in sum, there were one way to be and then another, and
> some sure way
> of knowing which of those ways was one's own.
>
> Now the homophobe and the misogynist know very well that there is
> one way to
> be - theirs - and then another - the other's - and that they can
> be very sure
> which is which. But that is bigotry. It is epistemologically
> valueless: it
> says nothing that is true about the world, except that there are
> bigots in
> it.
>
> > (though I would say Alison is doing a pretty good job
> > in her recent mails)- all the more important to try. I deliberately used
> > the word 'negotiate' to try to swiftly convey some of that.
>
> > I didnt talk about inside and outside - but now you have used
> them 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,
>
> Oh behave (and don't expect me to be impressed by this kind of ignorant
> adhominising). I don't believe that the world we live in admits
> of a division
> into inside and outside, a straight or jagged cut through one or many
> dimensions. I don't believe that one can profitably spend one's
> time trying
> to analyse the complexities of something that isn't there.
> Perhaps you think
> that I am saying that oppression and exploitation don't exist;
> I'm not. I'm
> saying that there is no one oppression, no one power, no one
> language, no one
> difference. The mirror is broken: there are no sides to it.
>
> Dominic