Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "What Really Happened on Whitehall on St. George's Day: Citizen Journalist's First-Hand Account" video.

  1. Yes, good, the question of "iterability" see Wikipedia "Citationality" on Derrida and his "Signature event context" Criticism of J.L. Austin idea of a non serious performance as parasitic on a real performance. and how Butler took this up. My example of the xmas Joe 90 episode from 1968 is better than any of their examples. In terms of "immediacy" of belonging verses mediation of inclusion see "BBC Radio 2: "In Our Time" on "Hegel's Philosophy of History". There they discuss the indexical "I" that as a use in self reference is not being use to pick myself out of crowd. I don't need such mediation, i don't need a regulative semantics that places "I" along side and in the same category as "them" or "they" or "you". Thus i might say i never sue the phrase "I am British" or wave the "flag" except when I'm in a foreign country or perhaps in London among a grope of people from different countries. I wouldn't use it to set up an opposition to Israel or Palestine or even to try and claim the authority to assert Solidarity with either of them. I just don't have the right or authority to do such a performance. The British thing for me is bound up with my teenage years and the Punk Critique of the flag back in the 1970's. That is a very British thing to Critique the flag and Britishness reflectively imminently and within belonging. that though a slightly ironic use but is entirely different from such mimicking Critique by people from other countries or from radical anti British ideologies. There is a certain parasitic use by "others to Britain" that trades on the internal freedom and right of Critique and consent, and uses this externally as not regulative and reflective but with aim to destroy it. The later use would seem to be a performative contradiction of drawing on an internal Right, even obligation to Critique, but with the aim of destroying the source of or condition of possibility of that very Right "see Arendt") What allows or affords the apparent total external Critique from opponents, without obvious self contradiction in immediacy, is they claim an international and external Right in International laws. This speculative external use of Right is seen as sue generic or independent of its meaning as locked into the internal Critique of Britain, even as priori to and higher right to imminent reflective rights of Critique. So is international Right parasitic on State Right or is it the other way around. It felt very different when i moaned about my mum to someone compared to a feminist activist criticising her from ideology when they were round for dinner. But i guess they have the right to do that. This was way back in the mid 1980's long before their march. Might also be worth looking at the "In Our Time" on "panpsychism" and disenchantment, but I haven't listened to it yet. The above for Emma Webb too perhaps following her talk at your recent conference.
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  2. So from 21:00 mins take say a slogan "No Anti White Racism Here". This on the one hand is mimicking a slogan like "No to Racism Here" but with a structural substitution or specification norm change. But these are not just free floating statements, the later is historically and institutionally prior to the former. i mean the Pro Palestine and anti racist marches have a long history going back to 1968 and before then even. There is a massive 50+ years edifice of academic and institutional work and entry and laws behind "No to racism". Legally of course it would seem any one can do the substitution its even constitutive of the rule of law at least formally. The structural approach would also seem to necessitate the "inclusion" if not "belonging" of white man into the structure of oppression. Helping this sort of project might involve such quick setting cement as White men are victims too of oppressive aggregated minorities plus women. There both numbers and instituional capacity and capability would seem to support this move. But remember what really supports the Social Justice project is not quick setting cement, but 50 years of concrete laying over concrete with institutional reinforcement. This sedimented concrete is not first here or specific in the UK but first laid internationally and the UK is a part of this whole. There is something very odd about a White guy in Britain Critiquing Britain for too much social justice while drawing on primarily internal rights, because the anti-racist critique is aimed at the State institutions and people for racism, but does so from a point out side by just data and wealth destructions. From this point of view there is no belonging only set inclusion and membership. "No to Anti white racism then" would only seeks to level that playing field at State level via international right. You know there's a big difference in terms of understanding history, an event, between between reading the event in a book or books with a narrative and actually seeing it live even on TV. that is because of all the context of the vent no longer available to experience from any number of books. This original context immediacy can not be reconstructed even though multiple narratives. Everyone knows this who was their at some real event even if on Tv that is completely lost on other people not there in time and place. The left have history and even the present over interpreted to subsume a event into a story for some purpose. the left talk much about history of their own movement and and Critique traditional histories and attempt to do dress up identity performances. Its odd to see white people do this in i guess opposition to opposition, negation of negation. This is not a double reflection or Critique of a critique it does not take you back to belonging or even inclusion or membership in belonging. That's an oxymoron. If it is tradition you are after, drawing on individual international rights will not work because there is no obligation or responsibility attached to it. You know a white business man might want to do this for access to funding say, but it is only mechanical in that if business is the reason then he will leave the country when elsewhere is more useful to himself. Also then someone claiming this via Social justice's own terms of structure and equality will have that right but will be conceptually drawn into obligations such as be pro BLM too. I think I'm after something other than mimicking the left more because of asymmetry of obligations and responsibilities, to an extent absent from the left's structure for Social justice membership. The left are multiple and legion but at the moment are not conscripts of international human rights and international justice. I guess that will come along later.
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  3. One way to pursue the "love of Country" other than as a kind of false inflation of human love to the absolute or as just a top down Gods real meaning as opposed to mans multiple finite even nominal or fabricated meanings might be to look at St Thomas Aquinas on analogy in the broad topic of the distinctions between God understanding and mans understanding. This leads into the Social Contract structure and cosmologies, which i guess is the context I am trying for in my above comments.
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  4. The second half draws in discussions of character. Now that is really the character and rules and relations verses institutional laws and rights projects. This can not be a simple dichotomy or a one or the other. One example might be that character friendships sharing meals and so on is not first mediated by laws and threat of punishment, its a different set of relations from being brought into a culture with rituals and habits. Here there is much immediacy and tradition and agency and responsibility. For the left this is viewed as a kind of legal system without the structure. they interpret norms we are within with intentions as if we are following formal rules of an institution but kind of informally with informal punishments and personal rewards. Its as if they view Ethical Life as a informal chaotically applied legal system, and asymmetric applications of the laws. This is to see ethical life a not legal morality or being imperfect legality. It suits the left as it gives them an "in" a friction upon which to talk of social and psychological change as mere legal improvements in efficiency outcomes. They see the ethical life as a deficiency of fully just laws from outside. it allows the description of norms to appear as if legal created rules, with intentions, and so then talk of legal and regulatory revision. It also explains why the left cannot understand the difference between a contextual habit of use and someone else doing the same or similar as a deliberate act. Habitual or implicit racism is an odd term as this implies jsut the racist intent without the intent. This then might say a deliberate racism back towards them is symmetrical and jsut, but of course this is a conflation by abstracting out intention and putting in institutionality where there are non. Indeed the entry of the left into institutions is more like the rise of theire ethical life into the structure rather than the claim to have removed their subjective attachments eg representatives of particular groups and activism for particular groups. The real difference is in institutional no one is responsible for anything. But this is a class distinction not identity difference. Class is more tied to the structure of the syllogism and top down punishment though laws. There is no real vertical return only the attempted bottom up use of rights and laws as critique but these rights are not ethical they are legal and owned by the very class the lower class would want to use. Imagine then creating a aesthetic ethical Critique of the middle class after the middleclass aesthetic ethical and moral critique of the lower classes. If you understand me at all you will realise that going around the offices of Whitehall you wont find people steeling cars or carrying knives, or sitting in an ally way drinking cheap cider in a public place. Do you get my wider point?
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