Quico

Quico

91p

1,316 comments posted · 2 followers · following 1

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Mental Health View Fro... · 13 replies · +1 points

Enough ideological combat...I'm off to play in the snow

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Subverting Chavismo\'s... · 3 replies · +1 points

It's really rare that you and I disagree about somethng this much, Juan. Which I guess means I screwed this up somehow. I can't really see it yet.

My sense is that, paradoxical as it may seem, the defense of a tolerant discursive order demands absolutely rigid inflexibility in marginalizing certain kinds of engagement in the public sphere, kinds of engagement that are incompatible with democratic decisionmaking. Greg Wilpert has to be fought, because he defends a system of rule that makes the kind of debate he offers impossible.

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Subverting Chavismo\'s... · 0 replies · +1 points

Oh, it's a desperate gambit, for sure. Nobody's disputing that. But then desperate times...

Listen, it's easy to moan. 20 years ago, regular people like you and me had no possibility to participate in these kinds of debates at all. The internet, within a fairly clear set of constraints, allows us to joint he fray and contribute something substantive. Obviously, it's constrained...but it's also fun, so it's worth doing!

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Subverting Chavismo\'s... · 0 replies · +1 points

Well, it's certainly a gradualist strategy - but then, the task I'm talking about here is the work of a generation.

But to the degree that even people in the Venezuelan elite often fail catastrophically at the basic rudiments of critical debate, I don't think starting online is preaching to the converted.

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Dictatorship means nev... · 1 reply · +1 points

Oh certainly. But Greg works actively, day in and day out, to try to bolster the Chavez regime. That's not sympathizing with some facet of chavismo. That's spending your working life buttressing a dictatorship.

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Dictatorship means nev... · 0 replies · +1 points

Oh for sure. Discursive standards are always a matter of degree. It's a continuum, really, with a socratic dialogue on one end and a nazi concentration camp at the other. Extremely few human interactions are at one extreme or the other. Which doesn't mean there aren't substantial differences between different positions on the continuum.

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Dictatorship means nev... · 1 reply · +1 points

Sorry, Greg, I'm sure you're a nice guy and genuine in your offer. But you support a government that is irreducibly opposed to the kind of engagement you're offering.

The extent to which you manage to engage people you disagree with is PRECISELY the extent to which you are unable to act as an actual spokesman for chavismo, because chavismo has left really no doubt as to its indefatigable opposition to any type of intellectual engagement with those who disagree with it.

Your PETA Meat Processing Company shtick is cute and all, and I bet it's heartfelt. But it's schizophrenic, and basically a distraction.

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Dictatorship means nev... · 0 replies · +1 points

Calling chavismo undemocratic is like calling the sky blue, Juan. And no, I don't have any interest in lending a fake patina of legitimacy to a fake debate with a personally nice guy who, through his own willingness to engage those he disagrees with, demonstrates he's far, far out of the chavista mainstream.

Sorry to get all torquemada on you here, but there IS a price you have to pay at the door to this debate: you have to disavow disqualifying, authoritarian discourses. Thing is, by the time Greg is finished disavowing authoritarian discourses, there's nothing of chavismo left for him to avow, because Authoritarian discourses are basically all there is to chavismo anymore!

I wish Greg all the fun in the world trying to work out the little laberynth his position has backed him into. By the time he's processed it, he's going to realize that he can either support the revolution or support discursive democracy, but he can't do both.

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Dictatorship means nev... · 1 reply · +1 points

I think you have a basic misunderstanding about what the post was about, Juan. This is not about engaging "the other side" at all!

That would be a hopeless endeavour, given that with the sole, individual and rather idyosincratic exception of Gregory Wilpert the other side is militantly committed to the rejection of reasoned debate.

Greg is a fun oddity at best, though really his shtick is more like a distraction. But chavismo as a political movement has really let there be no doubt that they are committed to the destruction, as an organized political force, of people who fail to snap to attention when the president barks out an order.

You can't engage an ideology marked out, from the ground up, by a militant rejection of the practice of communicative rationality. What you can do to such an ideology is resist it, and try to subvert it, by practicing communicative rationality around and about it.

The time for engaging "chavismo lite" is in the past, Juan.

14 years ago @ Caracas Chronicles - Dictatorship means nev... · 0 replies · +1 points

I can no more take seriously the concept of a "frank exchange of ideas" with a chavista than I can have a substantive conversation on the details of evolutionary theory with a creationist.

The virulent, insult-laden rejection of discursive democracy isn't some incidental frippery attached to chavismo. It isn't some stylistic flourish. It's what chavismo is about; its heart and soul.

I've thought about this a lot, but Greg's claim to want a frank debate from an unapologetically pro-Chávez perspective, even if it's put forward in good faith, is hopelessly self-contradictory. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all...but animal rights activists don't get to work in abatoirs.