But my official position on responses to rudeness is… Talmudic ;-) As in, the story of the person who offers to convert to Judaism if someone will teach the entire Torah while standing on one foot: there is Hillel’s response, which is to give an answer patiently even to the most unreasonable request (“what is hateful to you, do not to your neighbour”) – but there is also Shammai’s, which is to drive the nuisance away by threatening them with a building implement… ;-P Both sorts of response have their place… ;-P

Joe – There is a possibility with online communication to step back and catch one’s breath, although, I have to admit, I spent some time working in conflict resolution roles, and find myself using somewhat similar orientations in teaching and in other forms of discussion – I’m not sure that the way I approach online discussions is that different from the way I approach public discussions in person. Personal interactions (and some public online interactions can have this quality for me) are those that don’t require this particular sort of orientation to interactions. Beginnings are often the trickiest parts of any sort of interaction – when people stay over time, relationships develop that have a strength to them that it’s no longer so necessary to worry about casual misunderstandings: people will stick it out, give the benefit of the doubt, forgive, etc. It’s nice when an interaction gets to the point when I can lose myself in it – not thinking about the interaction, but just expressing some aspect of myself within it.

I don’t find emails and blogs posts as constraining, maybe, as you do. I mainly email, of course, with people with whom I have some kind of ongoing conversation (except for occasional situational circumstances), and I think I usually experience blog posts as having an audience of “regulars” with whom I’m comfortable speaking – even if I know that other people will be reading on. This was actually a major issue for me, when moving from writing for the blog to writing for the thesis – although most of my thesis concepts have been worked out here (under a system, as you’ve discussed above, of “tricking” myself into writing ideas out in a less structured way), and although I’ve written other theses, I really struggled to discover my “voice” in this thesis, since I had already discussed many of the concepts in the somewhat different voice I use here. It felt very strange to try to write these concepts in that new way… At this point, I do find that I am “getting something” from the more formal writing that I wasn’t getting from the blog – although what I’m getting (mainly systematicity, linearity and conciseness) is something I’ll end up tossing up on the blog anyway once it’s done… ;-P

More real-time communications – chats and such – are not so well-suited to the sorts of conversations I have here, unless I know my interlocutor extremely well. Comments, which allow a good length of response, can be nice ways of doing the written equivalent of thinking out loud for me. And at this point I do find talking to someone else, more effective as a way of shaking loose my own thoughts, than writing to myself in notes or whatnot – this, though, is a product of blogging: I wouldn’t have felt this way starting out, at all… But I find at this point that I enjoy thinking through this and other blogs, far more than other media I might use when I’m trying to work out rough ideas…

What you write here reminds me of so much of what I’ve found in online discussion, though I’ve probably been doing it for a bit less time than you. Sometimes I don’t know what to think of how profoundly lucid I feel communicating in online discussion, especially those ranging from real-time instant-messaging to the more turn-based, as it were, exchanges of comment-threads like this one. Emails and straight-up blog-posts feel more like term-papers sometimes, and it’s these other modes of online conversation that I really see my ideas flourish.

I think it has to do with the an idea, like many, that I’ve taken from Zizek, though not really, since I was already doing it before knowing about it. In the “Zizek!” documentary, there is a moment where he talks about how he tricks himself into writing his many books. He says to himself that he’s just going to kind of take notes on his many ideas, and in the end edits them together and has a book. I think Jack Kerouac anticipate this when he writes in his list of “Beliefs and Techniques for Modern Prose,” “1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy.” You could say Emerson already saw something of this too in “Experience,” where he writes: “So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man’s genius contracts itself to a very few hours.” My point is that there is a certain kind of note-taking procedure that I think is more relevant to how we communicate, since what so many theorists are trying to distill is the immensity of the concrete world into the density of good writing.

I also don’t want to forget to mention how I appreciate and feel I can relate to you on the issue of not taking things personally in online discussion. I think this can tie back into an essay that I’ve only ever read in the Zizek reader called “Is It Possible To Traverse The Fantasy In Cyberspace.” There Z is arguing with the same material you are presenting, as far as distancing while engaging in online discussion is concerned. What’s really interesting about written communication on the internet, as opposed to live-speech, is that it’s just plain easier to catch yourself getting riled up over an bleedin’ web-comment and say, “Gosh, that’s dumb of me.” The hope would be is that enough to develop an orientation like that in live-speech, where it is harder to take this distance, since such distance is actually the product of returning to the text, as it were.

Aside from expressing my affirmation of you in light of those nasty things said by others, I’ll just say that what moments like those might be good for is noticing the very limits of this space on your blog. Of course, this whole post expresses how aware you are of their limits, so I say that more for others, but I think that’s pretty interesting and says alot about you. I emphasize that it’s about you because I see it as something you are doing – as opposed to, say, having gendered presuppositions foisted upon you by jerks who happen to know or think they know your gender. Contrary to what you say, though, I think that what you are doing on this blog, so far as it translates into your “real life,” is political, and not in the naive “the personal is political” sense either. There is empowerment in being allowed not to enjoy (the other person’s aggressive/objectifying assumptions).

Take care, and thank you…

That sounds horrible. I agree that the way in which you’ve conducted discussions here is exemplary – I’ve particularly enjoyed our conversation about Hegel – and am very sorry to hear that you were on the receiving end of such feeble and stupid behaviour.

Tom

While avoiding something else I should be focusing on I decided to search through the archives of social realist art. I often turn to places like this for some inspiration.

I stumbled across an interesting piece of writing, co-authored by Andre Breton and Diego Rivera. I particularly liked the idea that … we cannot remain indifferent to the intellectual conditions under which creative activity takes place.

I thought this was a nice take on your argument in a way. About the need sometimes to step outside the society in which we live in order to ‘free’ (of course, the freedom is relative) your creative and intellectual thoughts from the constraints of our socialisation and other political pressures.

Anyway, the piece goes on to argue much else. It can be found in full in the Diego Rivera section on MIA. It is called Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art

To think and enjoy this does not mean that we are lulled into a false sense in which gender does not matter in general. In fact, it is the opposite… that because we are so conscious of how our experience of the world is coloured by our gender, we want occasionally to feel what it might be like should this not be so.

This latest development just shows the truth of the adage that we cannot escape the world around us even when online; or at least, that any escape is only fleeting.

I think you are right to expose this kind of behaviour. Harassment should not be suffered silently.

I for one am outraged that this is directed at you. Your blog has touched so many, including many us who don’t agree with the entirety of its content.

And that’s the great thing about the blog – it’s a space for open discussion, to ‘think aloud’ so to speak. And to me at least, it has operated in the great traditions of comradely debate and discussion that have fostered important developments in left intellectual and activist approaches.