Re: [PEN-L:6783] susan fleck on Shawgi

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Regarding the proposed exclusion of Shawgi Tell from this list, I endorse
Susan Fleck's position with a loud and clear AMEN.  While I do not
necessarily share the views expressed by Shawgi or find his rhetorical style
palapable, the cost of silencing an unpopular voice on this list far
outweighs the benefit for a very simple reason: such benefits are close to nil.

While we are discussion the subject of excluding people from the e-mail
discussion groups, the readers might find useful a reflection on that
subject I posted to anohter group.  The text is attached below.

attached text:
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IMHO, the attempts to "censor" some of the voices on the net have less to do
with the perception of the content of the speech, but with the perception of
the space where the act of speech is taking place.  If the space is
perceived as "public" -- people automatically turn their  "filter mode" on
and become very selective in what they even pay attention to.  Two examples
illustrate that.

Venice Beach in Los Angeles is walkway filled by aspiring performers,
peddlers, pan-handlers etc.  Assuming that art, including commercial art, is
a form of speech, most of what is being "said" by those characters is
kitschy, if not obnoxious.  Manhattan streets are also filled with speakers
of different sorts -- from pan-handlers, to peddlers, to to people
distributing commercial leaflets, to political speakers regularly featuring
on the Times Square.

What those two places have in common is that nobody seems to mind what is
being said there.  Since both the Venice Beach and Manhattan are public
spaces par excellence, nobody wants to exclude or silence anyone.  People
simply pass by the "obnoxious" forms of speech, and pay attention only to
those very selectively perceived as "worthy."

For some reason, however, some people do not seem to perceive the net, or at
least parts of it, as public space.  Whether consciously or not, they tend
to view discusion groups or chat rooms as semi-private spaces or virtual
communities with its usual boundaries and rules of exclusion.    This seems
to be ubiqiutous on the net, although I am not sure why.

This attenmpt to create a virtual community explains, in my view, the
ubiquity of the debates on who should be excluded form the least, that
appear to be endemic to most lists I subscribed to.  People tend to view
internet discussion groups not as communicative acts but as virtual
communities or groups.  Everyone can participate in a conversation, but what
makes groups is boundaries.  Not everyone is let in, some are excluded.

The attempts to exclude some subscribers from the list has less to do with
the content of what they have actually said, althought that may serve as the
rationalization of the attempt, but with the simple fact that in order for a
group, real or virtual, to maintain a distinct identity -- someone has to be
excluded, otherwise the group will become an amorphous public gathering.
Who is excluded is less important at this point --although it becomes the
central issue of identity politics -- what really matters is that someone
has to be.

I am not quite sure at this point whether the ubiquity of this sort of
behaviour is the testimony to the so-called "human nature", perhaps the
tribal instincts embedded in it or, more along the Marxist and Durkheimian
traditions -- a proof that the form of social organization determines the
content of individual consciousness.  The fact that our society is built on
the inclusion/exclusion principle inscribes that principle, so to speak, in
the minds of the individual members.  So when they have an opportunity to
what seems as acting on their own, they in fact reproduce the distinctions
embedded in their consciousness by the form of their social organization.
My own preference is, of course, for the second explanation, but who knows...

wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax:   (410) 516-8233


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|   Wenn ich Kultur hore, entsichere ich meinen Browning. -Hanns Johst   |
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|   When I hear the words 'family values,'  I reach for my revolver.     |
|                     (no apologies to Hanns Johst)                      |
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