From R.Pearson@art.derby.ac.uk  Wed Apr 16 11:20:14 1997
From: R.Pearson@art.derby.ac.uk (R.Pearson)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:20:14 +0100
Subject: M-TH: Buffalo Bills
Message-ID: <0550b17.199704161125.00032724@art.derby.ac.uk>

The Buffalo Boyz assert:

>We are now getting to the core of the desedimented net-left: the
>(re)united club against "theory", "science", "analytical thinking",... all
>things intellectual.  

Thanks for pointing this out, I'd missed this little gem. I thought that
you'd merely found a twenty year old critical theory primer and you were
taking it out for a spin.

>The net-left has consequently ended up in a place in
>which nothing but its own pet topics are discussed endlessly and
>uselessly... 

Fair point, the current one being Buffalo shit.

>It has run away from new physics (it only knows how to mock
>"string theory"), it has run away from poststructuralism (it only knows
>how to ridicule Derrida's STYLE) it has run away from New Historicism (it
>only knows the actual in opposition to the REAL),...  The resistance
>against introducing anything other than what the club members are familiar
>with and feel comfortable with is, of course, a strategy of protecting
>the net-left mocks, shouts ("pretentious"!), and runs away... 

Well then, who is this *it*? 
Light is shed by the following remark:

>The upshot of being scared of the "other" is that now the net-left is
reduced to >dealing with the "other" in these "philosophical" concepts: 

For example:

>INFANTILIZATION: Buffalo BOYS (with all its racial connotations of "boyz"
>	and the POWER that it inscribes on the "other")

Are you not creating such an 'other' in this category of the 'net-left', an
act of epistemelogical violence that effaces difference? Or are you seeing
the other in Hegelian terms: an act of struggle which the poor Bonded (not
branded) Buffalo Boyz attempt to risk their _theoretical_ lives against the
Lords of the net-left. Or, is the other a celebration of difference, of the
infantile, of the Boyz, and all the power _inscribed_ in the act.
Now this is a nice'un. Inscribing power. Methinks of Kafka's tale where the
punishment is literally inscribed into the body of the offender. But what
would the text be?: a Z or an S (S/Z- the castratos sings a new tune) Boys
will be Boyz- hoodwinked, or winking at the Hood! Inscribed power. Name it
and the power will inscribe itself. What joy, what a tragedy of power. 

But what politics! You are the new Situationists! A Guy Debord for the
bovine! A manifesto for the bull, or should it be a Bill for the Buffalo?!

Ho hum, keep up the good work chaps. 
Just let me know when you want to discuss some recent theory. 


Russell Pearson.







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