Durham Wonderland notes that the impenitent 88 continue to make egregious asses of themselves in public. The absurdist academese in which Professor Grant “Far Out” Farred has to couch his slanderous attack cum self-defense demonstrates the depths of self-delusion to which the egoist is willing to descend in order to justify his hatred. From K C Johnson:
“It is because the law knows that it cannot achieve foreclosure, because it cannot be cannot be the last word,†remarked Farred. “There is something terribleâ€â€a hidden hint of terror in the language of the law.â€Â
Translation: Farred didn’t like Cooper’s decision. Therefore, the decision cannot be the final word on the case, and the law which rendered this decision must be in some way at fault.
Farred continues:
“In the event of Duke lacrosse . . . it was the players, those now innocent, who refused foreclosure, specifically Reade Seligmann,†said Farred, mispronouncing Seligmann’s name. “I quote Seligmann, ‘If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can’t imagine what they would do to people who do not have the resources to defend themselves.’â€Â
“Seligmann [the mispronunciation continued], in the act of being proclaimed innocent, in the act of being released, in the sovereignty of the law, by the law itself, intentionally turned the issue, the consequence of the law’s finding, to what it is conspicuous of the event: race, class, gender.†[emphasis in original]
Farred was just getting warmed up. The man who published a book declaring Houston Rockets center Yao Ming “the most profound threat to American empire†now contended that Seligmann (the mispronunciation continued)â€â€the “perfect white selfâ€Ââ€â€inserted “itself . . . into the location of the other. The selfâ€â€the white, male selfâ€â€in the act of rhetorical flourish, making common cause with the other. The white self speaking as, presumably, phantasmatically, the black other. The law, apparently, can make the self other, to itself.â€Â
To Farred, Reade Seligmann is not an individualâ€â€and, indeed, cannot be an individual. He is a white maleâ€â€no more, no less. Imagine the appropriate outrage that would result if a white Duke professor publicly denounced a black Duke student for the offense of being black.
The discourse, into which the professor has inserted himself, in the place of the law, in the figure of the judge, to overturn the idea that facts matter, when they impeach the authority of the professor, inserted into his institutional position by virtue of his abiliity to ape the jargon of the white European deconstructionist. What a jackass.
Meanwhile, a pair of white talk-radio morons instigates the on-air articulation of a rape fantasy against Condi Rice. I imagine that constitutes speaking truth to power. It’s all about race and gender, except when it’s not.
Good thing for them they don’t play lacrosse, usurped by the white male from the Native American.
An article from some months ago by Meadow at Liestoppers that I managed to overlook.
That’s extremely impressive, specially at this time of the morning.
In the event of Duke lacrosse . . . it was the players, those now innocent…
”Now innocent”?
*sigh*
I read stuff like this and I’m moved to consider the idea that those individuals who spoon this stuff up actually get a pseudo-sexual thrill from the shear edginess of it. This is academese language bolstering Mar*otte without the swear words. Young, immature lefties and dried up old hippies shiver in delight as they read the fire phrases, rife with the shaken fist imagery AT THE MAN!!
These people need to find a hobby and Farred needs to go back to the quiet, obscure life of a radical academic to whom nobody pays attention, being that he exists only to balance some secret idealogical diversity study.
I’d feel much better about Duke if I learned that Professor Farred was chosen at random out of a phone book for his current position on the faculty. I’d hate to find out that supposedly rational, thinking individuals deliberately selected him over, say, some nice homeless fellow who believes his body is covered with beetles.
Jeffersonian–
Have you ever considered the possibility that his body may indeed be covered in beetles?
You forgot to include “topos,” “liminal,” and perhaps even “heteroglossia,” but otherwise, spot on.
Speaking of spots, this one in the middle of my back—the topos of of pain that don’t hurt, since “hurt” is merely the Othering of pain through the gaze of an oppressor, and therefore an inauthentic maneuver intended to colonize “pain” in the active language of an imperialist culture (the substitution of proleptic verb for static noun marking the degree to which such presumptuousness extends, turning the very condition into an “into”)—is still fucking killing me.
Anybody know of any muscle relaxers I can find in the margins of the social text—that is, without a prescription? the entire transaction handled liminally, and in the ironized heteroglossia of the distinctly-meta subject group, balancing street cryptography with plain speak, such that only the initiated can suss its tensions and unpack them, revealing the “meaning” that represents their junction?
I have cash.
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How about a link to Durham Wonderland?
done.
Within the race- and class-privileged heuristic of my particular context, my Other-oriented hermeneutic give rise to the conclusion that the “beetle” of the oppressed-class Farred is not such at all, but simple nappiness.
TW: together45? I’ll pass, thanks.
My first thought, exactly. What a buffoon.
You are all well advised to be suspicious of the game of LaCrosse. It figured prominently in the destruction of the British garrison of Fort Michilimackinac.
Google it, People!
Besides, never in the history of EVER has a ball been made out of “Indian Rubber.”
ROSIE RULZ!
My first reaction, after coffee, was a lot like Maj. John’s about Mark Malloch Brown…
But Meadow’s piece made me think more along the lines of an inchoate little idea that what the Farreds and Mallochs of the world accomplish is to set one more little precedent which establishes a normative expectation that the left will not – cannot – should not ever be saddled with any duty of holding their own to account. And I think such intra-party accountability is a sine qua non of a healthy political system. I think if the right were to lose its ability to model this kind of self-criticism, things could go off the rails pretty damn fast.
In the absence of this impulse on the left, does this mean that the McCains and Specters and Grahams of the world are actually performing a service that transcends the substance of the often dubious critiques they get behind? Maybe. Or maybe I need more coffee.
– What? –
It made like scads of sense when I wrote it.
I think maybe the zeitgeist changed since then or something.
Wow, this Duke story is crazy. It’s almost like the story of some dudes who operate this stupid Denver-based weblog where, despite all evidence to the contrary, they continue to insist that Bush’s war of choice against Iraq was a good idea. I mean, you find yourself asking, are these guys stupid or just crazy? Or maybe worse they’re a bunch of liars and idiots who want to die in the same ditch as Their Leader, George Dumbya Bush, the worst President in American History.
Tough call, that.
Is anybody “now innocent”? That’s a new one on me.