Re: ancestral spirit speaks

Robert Johnson (johnsorl@COLORADO.EDU)
Thu, 20 Jul 1995 20:44:09 -0600

On Thu, 20 Jul 1995, Daniel A. Foss wrote:

> This list has existed for, oh, well, years now, and after all that
> time, it deserves a Tradition. I have Returned, you see, to Invent that
> Tradition, where any organism pertaining to the Past, such as myself,
> may be as Mythical as I please; and where Stephanie J. Nelson shall
> forever remain my Celestial Consort.
>
> Be it known, young Johnson, that when I Departed this milieu, I left
> behind a hole, an emptiness, which represented my Mythic Legacy. For most,
> indeed, that hole was nonexistent; for the remainder, it was indistinguishable
> from the vacuity of unreadable Professionalism which followed. Such is the
> nature of the life cycle. But on your account, I Returned. For it cannot be
> allowed that my niche, my rathole, should become occupied by something of
> your degree of Nothing. You are defiling whatever it was I represented.
> You are doing me far below the Inferiority consistent with what I should
> be remembered for.
>
> Robert Johnson, I cannot be remembered as you. I was infinitely better
> than that.
>
> Send your cops around to the family plot in the cemetery in New Jersey.
> As for what I meant, ask Stephanie J. Nelson. In one of her more painful
> knifetwistings she said, "You theorized it, now live it."
>
> In keeping with what you said about practical epistemology in academia,
> which was nothing but the most Inferior sort of Inferiority compared to how
> I put much the same ideas, "You theorized it, now you live it." The best
> you can ever be is an Inferior version of the Inferiority for which I stood,
> and you're getting more Inferior daily. Sure, insanity has its place, but
> one must know when to stop, mustn't one.
>
> You can take on 672 anthropologists, Johnson, but you can't take on *me*,
> because you'll never attain to grander station than a merely Inferiorly
> Inferior Inferiority of my own Inferiority, which makes you so Inferior,
> and understand me well, Johnson, I know one when I see one, I know what
> you *feel*, Johnson, *you are too INFERIOR to be Daniel A. Foss around here*,
> so GET OUT! Inferior Inferiority is all you are, Inferior.
>
> Daniel A. Foss
> <what do you say, Stephanie J. Nelson?>
>
This is one of the milder renderings directed at me. The mailings
are much more psychotic. The phone calls can be somewhat in the ball-
park, but at least they attempt to disguise themselves. All because
I choose to dissent from the mainstream thught in archaeology and
anthropology.