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RE: [xmca] Banners of Brazil [without oppositions]



Philip, thank you very much. I sincerely believe that me and you are talking maybe not about the same things, but with a more important and deep agreement in the essential ethical values. Because this, please accept my apologizes because my aggressive way to talk,  and my real respect in relation to your patience and solidarity inside your critical thinking... I guess after some time all we will can understand better what is going on, in the eye of the hurricane is not so easy. But you give us some important insights - I will reflect about all your tips. Sincerely, my best wishes for you and all people that have the dignity for don't leave another strange person talking alone, only because different forms of disagreement epistemological, ethical or political. This is an actual aptitude of an international scholar. Thank you. I hope to see you soon. Achilles.

From: Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 07:22:57 -0600
Subject: RE: [xmca] Banners of Brazil [without oppositions]

 
Achilles - i wasn't thinking of "theories" and "ideologies" as begin oppositional - i was thinking that ideologies can be inflexibly intrenched in simplistic dichotomies, while a theory can always be tested and retested, and like the human condition, be found to be fallible.  of course, i've little understanding of what you as a citizen are going through in Brazil - i imagine a time of great hope and exhilaration and pain.  this i can partly understand from my own experiences in Berkeley in the 1960's.  but, still, there is no comparison - Berkeley was a flea on the shaggy ox of america.
 
today, 144 years ago, June 27, 1869, Emma Goldman was born in the lithuanian city of kaunas - once part of the russian empire, both czarist and soviet.  
 
Goldman was inspired by Kropotkin and Bakunin - and was a social organizer here in the states.
 
Goldman believed in the use of violence to achieve positive social goals.  after she lived in the soviet union in the very early 20's she disavowed violence when she saw the violence the communists employed against the bourgeoisie and non-communist intellectuals, not to mention poets.
 
she died in 1940.
 
here is an article she wrote for the Denver Post newspaper in 1912.  (i hope that it's not too lengthy.)
 
Denver Post
April 21, 1912
Suffrage Dealt Blow by Women of Titanic
Emma Goldman Inquires to Know If Equality Is Demanded Only at Ballot Box — Human Nature Came Into Own in Men.
By Emma Goldman.
Barring all sensational and conflicting reports of the Titanic horrors₁ there are two features which seem to have been overlooked altogether. One is, the part woman has played in the terrible disaster, which to say the least, is in keeping with centuries of her training as a mere female.
With all the claims the present-day woman makes for her equality with man, her great intellectual and emancipatory achievements, she continues to be as weak and dependent, as ready to accept man’s tribute in time of safety and his sacrifice in time of danger, as if she were still in her baby age.
 “The men stood aside to let the ladies go first.” What about the ladies? What about their love superior to that of the men? What about their greater goodness? Their demand to equal rights and privileges? Is this to be found only at the polls, or on the statutes? I fear very much that the ladies who have so readily accepted the dictations of the men, who stood by when the men were beaten back from the life-boats, have demonstrated their utter unfitness and inferiority, not merely to the title of man’s equal, but to her traditionary fame of goodness, love and self-sacrifice.
It is to be hoped that some there were among the steerage victims at least, who preferred death with those they loved to life at the expense of the loved ones.
The second feature is this: To die for those we love is no small matter in a world where each is for himself and the devil take the hindmost. But to die for those far removed from us by a cold and cruel social and material gulf — for those who by their very position must needs be our enemies — for those who, a few moments before the disaster probably never gave a thought to the toilers and pariahs of the ship — is so wonderful a feat of human nature as to silence forever the ridiculous argument against the possibilities of human nature. The average philistine forever prates of how human nature must be coerced and beaten; how it must be kept in check and disciplined. How little he knows of the grandeur of human nature has never before been so magnificently demonstrated as by the crew of the Titanic, the sailors, stokers, workers, and drones belonging to the disinherited of the earth!
With neither club or statute to compel them, I wonder what induced these men to go to their death with greater fortitude than do soldiers on the battlefield? Why, it is human nature, stripped of all social artifice, of the deadening and dulling chase for material gains. Human nature, come into its own! Into its deep social kinship which so far has only expressed itself in great stress but which points to still greater possibilities for the future, when man shall no longer his brother maim!
 1. The White Star luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on 14–15 April 1912, resulting in the loss of over 1,500 passengers. Although the survival statistics indicate that women were allowed into the lifeboats first, there is debate over whether it was the male passengers who allowed the women to go first or the crew who refused to allow men to enter the lifeboats. The discrepancy between first- and third-class passengers was evident in the survival statistics, suggesting that the wealthier passengers had been given preference in the limited assignment of lifeboats, although eyewitness accounts are rather unclear and contradictory on how this happened.
Denver Post, 21 April 1912, p. 8.
 
my best wishes for your nation and you.
 
phillip
 
 
 
 
 
________________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Achilles Delari Junior [achilles_delari@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:45 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: [xmca] Banners of Brazil [without oppositions]
 
And Philip, note that you, by yourself, just made a surprising dichotomy and/or *opposition* between "theories" and "ideologies" (true x false? scientific x political? logical x non-logical? cognitive x emotional?). What is the actual limit in concrete terms between this to "opposites"? If there is no clear opposition in all the others fields of social making-sense, how you justify a so clear opposition in such human semiotic process? Are you aware of this incoherence in your discourse? We must take care only when is for our own rhetorical interest and self ideological defense? For me this is not so helpful. And don't know if all people at xmca can believe, but we are, in Brazil, inside the multiple crossing of diverse kind of oppositions and his intermediary terms. A tense, very tense and intense state of things, not in any kind of Carnival of the Celebration of Democracy... There struggles in all the places. People losing their life, people exploding bombs in their opposites... The police using violence to disperse the "celebration of equality"... Violence is not any kind of opposition to peace and justice? We must chat up and theorize that all kind of oppositions are good for democracy? Do you understand? There no problems in your country? Do you surprised with new kind of "pacific social manifestations in Brazil"? This is not a problem of science stricto sensu, this a problem of citizenship. It is as a Brazilian citizen that I talk about my own reality that for you all seems to be only any kind of scientific subject of research... This is painful... I'm sorry. My "feelings" can not be expressed, this is a "cognitive" cyberspace, but there is no oppositions I'm learning... Good bye.
 
Achilles Delari Junior from Brazil.

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