Re: List Moderation

[ken <kenneth.mackendrick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 23 May 1999 11:53:04 -0500 (CDT) Jamie Owen
Daniel wrote:

> Moderating a list is not at all the same thing as censoring it.

Moderating the list, on the one extreme, would involve a
single person sitting down with all the messages and passing
judgement on whether or not they are "worthy" of public
scrutiny.

On a less extreme edge, it would involve the willingness of
the list moderator to watch incoming mail with the explicit task
of safeguarding the list against spam and offense.  In other
words - a person entrusted with the responsibility to say who
and what gets posted.

Either way - it amounts to a kind of censorship - a person put
in an administrative position with the power to say yes or no
to participation.

> I regret that something that COULD be of immense
value--i.e., an international conversation on the FFm School--is
being squandered by a person or persons who want to use it
instead as a site for self-serving bullying.

Have *you* found the conversation being squandered.  At what
point was it squandered?  Which concepts where particularly
useless?  Which expressions did you find offensive?  What is
being wasted here?  Wasted on who?  The problem with the
argument of moderation is that it must always be retroactive
and ad hoc.  It is always in retrospect that certain points of
view appear to not be important, useful, or worthwhile.  There
is never an a priori argument that makes any sense.

One cannot determine, in advance, which forms of expression
are violent.  This is always retroactive.  So when one argues
for moderation of a list, it isn't the current conversation that is
to be moderated, rather, it is a conversation in the past that is
to be censored (ie. it is  tragic that such a violent expression
of views took place, traces of its existence should be
eliminated).

I've read all the posts with interest.  Nothing is squandered on
me.  But that's just me.  Perhaps I shouldn't exist.

> I can say through past experience with another listserv on
which someone decided to use it as his personal punching
bag that the majority of people who feel that their time and
energy are being wasted by having to decide whether every
post from a list is a serious engagement with the matters at
hand or simply another opportunity for some resentful person
to act out in virtual public space DON'T simply use the delete
key--we retire from the list and take our interest in the Ffm
School elsewhere.

In other words - listserv participants (does this include you or
not?) should be spoon fed.  Anything that might not be rapidly
digestible should be eliminated.  All engagements that are not
serious (serious as in Adorno?, serious as in Zizek?, serious
as in Rebecca West?, or serious as in Grocho Marx?) should
be eliminated.  This is interesting, esp. since it contradicts the
bulk of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory....  Should listserv's be
instrumentalized... jargonized for quick consumption and easy
understanding....

I know what you are getting at.  You simply want participants
to avoid being overtly hostile and, when they are hostile
(whatever this means) then they should be willing to take
responsibility for their actions and words.  Ok.  That makes
sense.  And sure, in an ideal world, I agree.  But moderation
isn't the key here and email is a medium where responsibility
is necessary and impossible.  So there is a paradox.  The
medium itself reveals the [impossible] idealism of the present
age.  Simply repressing the contrary elements of the paradox
isn't going to help.

> The effect of this, then, is to shut down the conversation the
list was suppose to facilitate. There have been a number of
issues I and my students would have liked to engage with on
this list, but none of us (especially the students with limited
access to university-library computers) has the time to
download, and then skim, and then delete the mass of
self-indulgent nonsense that seems to attach itself
parasitically to every attempt anyone makes to discuss
anything seriously here.

Isn't this a bit conformist?  I mean, are conversations and bits
of information to be packaged in an efficient and 'commonly'
acceptable way? or should there be room for dissent,
digression, and clowning (not to mention offense, aggression,
defense, play, earnest jesting, and swearing).  Whose
commonality?  I remember situations with friends where
communication was always mediated through insults.  It was
all very exclusive, as high school tends to be, but you knew
you were welcome when the first volley of "I hate you, you're
stupid" hit you square in the face (casually known as the
'smoting arena').  Who is to say that this is a more or less
authentic way of communicating?

Love and hate have a dialectical structure.  Every "I hate you"
reveals a deep seated love and passion for that object which
arouses the passions is such a way.  Each insult hurled on
this list is an open cry, "I care!"  Of course, should all of this
love be censored? (because its expression is inverted?).

> So, if the list can't be moderated, by which I mean the
subscribers agree to respect each others' persons even if
they think each others readings of Adorno, Marcuse etc. are
"die reine Scheisse," then you can count me and lot of other
folks out, and continue merely chatting amongst yourselves
without an audience.

What about those of us we disagree with the perfection of
Habermas's ideal speech situation?

Love thy neighbour?  I think not.

Teddie once noted that universal love bears the mark of
apathetic distance.  Is not Sade the truth of Kant?

Isn't the Sadean nightmare what it means to respect each
others' persons?  Are other people merely commodities that
love / hate corresponds to on a one to one basis?  Isn't there
a remainder?

If moderation is to be used, then its supporters should at least
acknowledge its truth.  List moderation is about power - the
power to control discourse.  Its aim is idealistic, its means are
strategic, and it is highly exclusive and relativistic.  It uses
standard conventions of expression as the norm and
eliminates and dissent from form (regardless of content).  All
contradictions are to be eliminated and other those who play
well with others are to be rewarded.

ken mackendrick