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<p>Gary,</p>
<p>'trap of existing discourses' :: thank you for the passage from
Merleau-Ponty! But there is something strange in it, an assumption
that we can do anything else, can ever do, other than 'writing on
events.' <br>
</p>
<p>The alternative is that we cannot do anything else, never can do,
other than repeat existing discourses.</p>
<p>The one trap is by sensibility, the other entraps by way of
sentiment.</p>
<p>There is a lure to the sentimental, with which I think the Bryant
article is in some ways lurid. Some of these are particular to my
reading, at a distance. <br>
</p>
<p>But there is also the talking down which makes me wonder about
the audience he intends in his readership.</p>
<p>As for politics, what is strange, in this event, is the power
being wielded by governments against themselves, as if power over
<i>economies</i> had been repressed, and now there is this <i>sentiment</i>
on show of political <i>sympathy</i>, in the apologetic exercise
of politics. <br>
</p>
<p>And this 'despite themselves' of what governments are doing, well
it is apparent in the global strategy of self isolation, but is
not this the pathos suffusing the communicative realm? An
unmanageable hurt to our means of conducting politics.</p>
<p>What was impossible, or possible for markets, is now a
demonstrable possibility, but against politics and its 'political
events.' And all the more reason to be writing about them.</p>
<p>So I would want to raise this little doubt, rather than any great
hope, about writerly ethics lured into the trap of sentimental
moralising; that this may indeed be something of what
Merleau-Ponty is engaging in autocritique with and renouncing: the
luridly styled imperatives of political possibility--</p>
<p>these all start the same way:</p>
<p>with We must...</p>
<p>or follow in the same way the lures of existing responses and
responsible discourses:</p>
<p><i>In light of </i>this event<i> we must... </i>as if any of
this [event] can be taken for given.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Simon<br>
</p>
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