hey stephanie c'mere, explain somethin', ie if I meant it

Daniel A. Foss (U17043@UICVM.BITNET)
Wed, 6 Sep 1995 14:17:34 CDT

that was a long time ago, when they had a Thingie, called it "cyberspace."
Who now recalls "cyber"-anything, shows your age. Why, way back then, even
when I was quite certain that I meant no such thing as you inferred I did,
and how we reveled on the DERRIDA list on decentered meaning! Remember those
starry-eyed times when the two of us were part of a multitude growing mitotic-
ally, then oncogenetically, then metastasized onc, etc, to all of whom Meaning
itself would not last out the century? (Now look out there, a pretty pass
indeed, univocality is back, with jackboots on.)

Here's the problem, Steph, also your last chance to voluntarily collaborate
in resolving it. Else, I resort to King Saul's methodology in summoning up the
spirit of Samuel, an irascible insomniac even when alive. Enough tangential-
izing. There's a post I sent in last week wherein I proferred an explanation
of the "social sources" of a certain organism, whose name I sha'nt supply, not
entirely out of trepidation at the prospect of your engaging in "defensive
networking" (we never *conspire*, which is politically incorrect usage) with
this self-styled entity to my detriment, as you did with the fascist with the
Multicultural name, remember? The one who periodically fulminated against my
posts in support of your position *within seconds*, maintaining he was so
morally disgusted he deleted that one, whichever it was, as he had all my
other posts, as always, unread. (Both of you relying, correctly, on the nearly
certain prospect that only an obsessive-compulsive, and self-interested one,
at that, would notice the contradiction.)

The reason I mention this, old-timer, is that we certainly did engage in
personalities in the Old Days, didn't we. Yet nothing, in our e-Experience,
which was better than nothing, the only reason to indulge in suchlike poor
substitutes for whateveritis is lacking, prepared me for the extent of
psychologizing which is going on here around the [questionably existent]
personality of the nameless selfstyled entity adduced above. Now comes *your*
job, which is to tell me whether the paragraph-ish length passage I wrote
anent the "social sources" of this [impropriety deleted] was *meant seriously*
or was *just kidding*. Because, think about it. We are all social scientists
here. We do not bother with personal, psychological, psychopathological-etiolo-
gical, and other mock-explanatory devices of that ilk when we can resort to the
social level of analysis. Consider that it takes at least seven hundred
passively complicit social scientists to pay attention, express outrage, demand
the removal of this...*this*, or shall I say, Two Initials.

At my best/worst, I *never* got that sort of attention, putting full time
backbreaking effort into it. There's a higher-level-of-analysis explanation
for me, for you, for everyone who is or was here, and mind you, *anyone who
was here will always be the same*, if that brings back pseudomemories from
your fringes-of-the-Movement phase, if you had one; also, *nobody who was
not here will never be the same*.

We're agreed, then, that there is an explanation on the social, or socio-
cultural, level of analysis for anyone and everyone here with the possible
exception of Diane Bennett, which is itself a possible infringement of her
privacy. Why, then, not go ahead and do it. Explain Two Initials with such
brilliance it can't follow the explanation of itself. The reversal of
direction, the broken-field running, from explosion to implosion, will
confuse everyone, most of all us.

Congruent this surely is with the task of the day, which is to seek out
and destroy spurious sense wherever found. Meaning, I should think, has the
quality of what falls off the trees, requiring vast human effort toward its
disposal, this time of year.

Daniel A. Foss