Re: Political Correctness + Nobel Prize

[John King <fs6y097@public.uni-hamburg.de>]

On Mon, 10 Mar 1997, Thomas Friese wrote:

> > Sorry, but I think you minimize the phenomena. Political correctness
> > goes far beyond the university world. Its main weapon is the mass media
> > and tends to control the whole ideological production, not only the
> > academic discourse. And its centre is not the university, but the
> > political and economic power.
> > power in the world, unfortunately.
> > I agree with you that it's "an object of ridicule for most people
> > outside it", but the problem is how to go out of it. It's not easy.
> > 
> You are right - difficult indeed. Exactly the kind of problem that faces
> the anarch and that challenges him to find a personal solution! No? 
> Thomas Friese

Thanks for bringing the discussion back to the person and works of EJ. We 
ought at least to retain that perspective - there are plenty of other 
fora for general political discussion.

However, I am not sure how "political correctness" and the "mass media" 
phenomena coincide. "Bild Zeitung", "The Sun" - mass media, but 
xenophobic, sensationalist, mysoginist. PC? The link to technical and 
ecomomic production sounds on the other hand like a Marxist account of 
ideology as an attempt to conceal by various strategies the true nature 
of the conditions of production and thus deceive the proletariat.

On the contrary I would suggest that (post)-modern society quite easily 
contains a whole variety of conflicting discourse, ideologies, value 
systems, whatever. Hence, the comments I made drawing on Baumann, that PC 
discourses circulate essentially unheard in the "mainstream". I would 
seriously question the notion that there is a single common denominator 
to be detected behind all these multiple voices which can as such be 
resisted - unless it is an increasing medialisation of experience. 

Thus, the idea of the "Anarch" seems to be superfluous as a specific 
programme. If there is no "mainstream", no "metanarrative", then the 
"Anarch" merely becomes another voice in the cacophony of the present, 
yet another alternative. Is the retreat to "Innerlichkeit" any more than 
a deeper internalisation of previously existing structures of subjectivity? 
And thus not an escape?

John King.