I love the implication in your post ,Chris, that only professional and
qualified persons, and those they show favour on, can be capable of
understanding specific terms. It ties in very well with the consistent point
that came out of the recent threads: the abuse of the language in order to
obfuscate and thus preserve status by members of the professional
hierarchies, whether they be academic, business world, political, whatever.
If you look back at some of the posts you will see examples given by Liz or
Lawrence in such unrarefied and common areas as National Vocation Training
or 'A' levels. In effect, I gasp at myself using this word, your stance is
elitist, overlaid with a rhetoric of rural boy and colonial victim that ,
like other abuses of language, disguises its true meaning.

And as for this Royal Head of State (?????) and, best of all, the use of
'racist' in your accompanying post ( taken aback at that - all the sources
criticised were from England) which not only is ridiculous but also empties
a word which obtain to real issues, racism, and by that emptying out of the
word helps perpetuate the evil it condemns.


David Bircumshaw

Leicester, England

Home Page

A Chide's Alphabet

Painting Without Numbers

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "ccjones" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: Newbie


On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 09:03, you wrote:
> some really good points chris
>
> (watch me vacillate from one extreme to the other)

I must admit Doug to being a bit cheeky in my post and letting loose some
heavy technical language. As Stephen King writes: writers put together a
tool
box. He was never crass enough to command or even imply what those tools
should be. For me, some areas of philosophy I came across through
philosophers who were not very happy with academic philosophy and who were
generous enough to talk to me and help me became part of my tool box. It
took
me some 12 months of concentrated effort to learn their technical language
so I could understand what they were on about. Now words like the
transcendental eliding into the empirical are thought images which I can
use.
What I do object to is the Royal Command from a Man of State telling me what
I should do as a writer and hence what I put in my tool box. I am not
saying
that these Royal Commands are consciously done but I think it would be nice
if people did actually think about what they say. (Am I being utopian,
here?)
Being a stubborn bugger and colonial rural idiot I do refuse such Royal
Commands, of course. I can think of Proust who felt alien to his native
language when he wrote and Artaud does a fair better job then my other post
when it comes to this so-called respect writers should have for language.
Poetry is pigshit as Artaud did say. Funny you should mention the Hegelian
Butler, also. I was reading Hegel _Philosophy of History_ before that last
post.

best

Chris Jones.

(PS: Rudy R is into some heavy theory, square root of minus one stuff and
Mandelbrot. As for his melting drug: ever seen someone really stoned on
heroin?)