The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.2352  Monday, 18 December 2000

[1]     From:   Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 15 Dec 2000 08:52:54 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.2345 Re: Julie Taymor's TITUS

[2]     From:   Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 15 Dec 2000 10:19:23 -0800
        Subj:   SHK 11.2345 Re: Julie Taymor's TITUS

[3]     From:   Ed Kranz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 15 Dec 2000 20:14:26 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.2345 Re: Julie Taymor's TITUS


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 15 Dec 2000 08:52:54 -0800
Subject: 11.2345 Re: Julie Taymor's TITUS
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.2345 Re: Julie Taymor's TITUS

Hi, Eric.

I'm pretty sure that Mike didn't mean to imply that you have to go to
graduate school to develop a valid opinion.  I think that what he is
saying, though, is that all communities maintain certain norms for
discourse that allow communication to take place.

Dag Hammerskold complained once, to Martin Buber, that nobody in the
General Assembly ever talked to each other.  Instead, they talked past
each other "out the window," in Hammerskold's phrase.  Not all talk, in
other words, is actually an effort to communicate.

The risk "of losing the opportunity for free exchange", actually comes
from two directions.  We can become so censorious that not everything
can be spoken, or we can become so outspoken that nobody is really
talking to anyone else.  Most scholarly and professional communities, of
any type, make the rules of their discourse overt, in order to avoid
this second danger.  An example would be the rules of order of a
courtroom.  Another would be the various (minor) rules under which we
operate on this list.  But as a further extension, there are usually
unspoken rules of discourse that also are necessary if any sort of
communication is to take place.

I don't think Mike is aiming for an extension of the rules of the list
to abolish postings by non-scholars, just like we abolish postings from
conspiracy theorists.  What he is, I think, suggesting is that the
scholars on this list present actual arguments along with their
opinions, as you have just done.  Then we can disagree, but at least
continue to have a discussion which doesn't decline into name-calling,
self-righteousness and offhand insults.  We can have a discussion, in
other words, that survives our differences.  Merely airing our opinions,
in every more intolerant terms, doesn't produce that.

Cheers,
Se     

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