[Reader-list] For and against the nativist crowd etc.

[Namrata Kakkar]

Dear everybody,

               Thinking about the list is taking big
proportions than sometimes thinking through the list.
However, after reading this brilliant exchange between
Vivek and Prem on this and previously the piece of
Naeem mohamein, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Arnab
Chatterjee and Inder Salim as already established
icons of "thinking through this list", I propose SARAI
should think about bringing a collection of writings
titled as Best From the Reader's List. Yearly it would
be, and I'm sure the quality of list writing will take
care of itself.

Well wishing
Namrata





--- Vivek Narayanan <vivek at sarai.net> wrote:

> Dear Prem,
> 
> Thank you for your detailed and deeply informed
> riposte.  There are many 
> things to chew in it that do in fact relate to our
> little crisis on the 
> reader list-- the difficulty of comprehending one's
> relationship to 
> history, Gandhi as poet, the questions of lightness
> and scale, the 
> question of how to scale up as a network-- so on. 
> I'm not going to be 
> able to run with all your interrelated points, so
> I'm curious to see if 
> anyone else on this list might build on them or
> even, perhaps, link the 
> other discussions going on with this one.  I am
> going to pick some bones 
> with a few things you have mentioned here and there,
> but I want to do it 
> so as to open out your discussion and your questions
> in some ways, and 
> this is because we are pretty much in agreement.  I
> owe this to the 
> conciliatory but engaged tone of your riposte.  What
> I want to try to do 
> is make some minor contributions in places where I
> think I might have 
> something to add.  And, as I hope to suggest, my
> larger interest is 
> really in the idea of adding itself. 
> 
> I obviously have nothing against metaphors as a form
> of thought-- I use 
> them myself all the time.  And yet, this is
> precisely why I want to note 
> that they can be misleading as well as seductive. 
> As an aside, I think 
> that the notion that metaphors (while being,
> admittedly, indirect) are 
> the opposite of direct, rational thought is not
> quite true.  Moreover, 
> the commonly held belief that poetry, or poetics
> (while being, 
> admittedly, indirect) is purely a place for the
> "irrational" or the 
> "emotional" is also not quite true-- a poem's real
> charge (and I think I 
> could show this with examples) really comes from the
> interaction of the 
> rational and irrational within its structure, its
> mingling of "emotion", 
> "thought" and "logic", not to mention the words in
> which these things 
> are inseparable.  
> 
> That said, I want to note that, after thinking about
> it some more, I 
> find Tsvetkov's metaphor of the opera singer, while
> being powerful and 
> seductive, as you say, is deeply misleading  for our
> purposes here on 
> the list (and for understanding poetry's current
> crisis as well-- but 
> I'll leave that discussion aside for now).  Is the
> idea of an "audience" 
> really the most useful here?  Am I singing now to
> the rapt audience of 
> the reader list, whose duty is only to either
> applaud or throw tomatoes? 
> And is the idea of an audience of connoisseurs in
> the opera hall likely 
> to scale up well?  Does the idea of "audience" help
> us to productively 
> understand the idea of "noise"?
> 
> Keeping those questions on hold for a second, I want
> to turn briefly to 
> your idea of the "poetics of resistance"-- it
> fascinates me and I want 
> to hear more of course, but I'm a bit uncertain
> about that old bugbear-- 
> resistance, aka negation.  Again, resistance is
> important, of course, 
> and ever present; but the idea of resistance itself
> became its own 
> romance in the twentieth century; eventually, we
> became unable to think 
> beyond resistance.  Disagreement -- which is but a
> synonym of resistance 
> for our purposes-- is fetishized purely for its own
> sake, and the idea 
> of agreement is simplistically equated with the idea
> of power.  And 
> disagreement, when it becomes a singular and primary
> objective, turns 
> all discussion  towards the idea of winning, of
> replacing or 
> obliterating one's opponent, and this is done either
> by means of gleeful 
> point-scoring and one-upmanship, sometimes in the
> canon-thumping style 
> of sophomoric sophomores or, much worse, by
> ritualistic repetition of 
> one's basic position, louder and louder in the
> manner of a child seeking 
> attention, until all thought-- and emotion-- flees
> from the minds of 
> those assembled.  (Another metaphor, flawed.)
> 
> I have nothing against disagreement, obviously.  But
> I have a feeling 
> that we have something against, and
> misunderestimate, agreement.  
> Shouldn't agreement be the legitimate other side of
> disagreement's coin?
> 
> Can't quite unpack it fully yet,  but I have a hunch
> that the idea of 
> "audience" and the idea of "disagreement /
> resistance" are somehow 
> linked.  And a hunch that it is the conjoining of
> these two notions that 
> sometimes gives our list the flavour of a debating
> society, moreover one 
> with some bullies sitting in who might shout
> everyone else down or even 
> call the police on us.  Is there a way to move
> beyond both of these 
> terms in searching for an appropriate model for our
> list?
> 
> I would be the first to include myself among those
> who have been overly 
> seduced by the idea of disagreement as a model for
> productive talk on 
> this list.  And note that I am not saying we should
> "do away" with 
> fighting or point scoring or bullies; wherever we go
> from here, it would 
> have to be by consensus if it is to have any
> meaning.  I am only asking: 
> is there anything we can all agree on?  What
> protocols might we 
> establish and find consensus on?  And: what would be
> the best picture of 
> our list to adopt?
> 
> Prem, although I am also disagreeing with some of
> your minor points, I 
> am earnestly trying to add to what you are saying,
> and I hope that 
> others might add to what I have to say.  I am asking
> (uncertain, still 
> thinking) if it would be useful to start from the
> point where we all 
> consciously think of the reader list as something to
> add to, as opposed 
> to something to resolve.
> 
> This would mean that we think of the reader list not
> as a debating club, 
> or as a continuation of war by other means, but
> rather as an experiment in
> 
> collective collaborative writing. 
> 
> Which is exactly what it is!
> 
> Vivek
> 
> Prem Chandavarkar wrote:
> > On 14/02/2008, *Vivek Narayanan* <vivek at sarai.net 
> > <mailto:vivek at sarai.net>> wrote:
> >
> >     I bring this thesis up not as some kind of
> advice from the gods, but
> >     because I am not certain if it is true.
> Tsvetkov himself presents it
> >     only as a possible theory, and of course I'm
> still puzzling around
> >     that
> >     example (metaphor?) of the opera singer. I'd
> be curious to know what
> >     readers on this list think about-- am eager to
> hear both philosophical
> >     and pragmatic responses-- how to bring the
> muses back to this
> >     list. In a
> >     way this is to explore the inverse, positive
> side of the
> >     anti-censorship
> >     debate: what are the conditions for speech,
> what makes speech
> >     possible,
> >     how does one revive rich conversation?
> >
> >  
> >
> > Dear Vivek,
> > I do not have a specific answer to your most
> interesting 
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