Al on dialogue in Do the Right Thing
Al Filreis so eloquently stated:
Love is dialogue.
Hate is monologue.
In some sense then Kal's "fuck you alex," though uncivil, is the ultimate
form of respect. No kidding. We care enough about taking
these positions seriously to reply with such fervor. What
education is.
Alex Platt wrote:
Al, you're probably going to have to explain just about all of this, I
think none of us understand it. Especially the last sentence fragment.
We have been socialized to agree. Thus disagreement is thought, too often,
even in educational institutions, to be a form of disrespect. In my view,
on the contrary, disagreement and difference, articulated with fervor,
even an excess of it at times, is a form of intellectual respect. For
instance, we *respect* the great works of literature by asking seemingly
disrespectful questions of them, by doubting assumptions always already
assume, about, say, the greatness of Shakesepare. Here we are having a
dialogue with Shakespeare, built upon contention, rather than experiencing
the Shakespearean monologue. The hard admiration - or "love" in M.L.
King's sense of it - is won through dialogue with (stating differences
from) the people and texts and positions with which you're "supposed" to
want to agree. Universities, though supposedly committed to defending
difference, are structured to provide a series of monologues (lectures). I
was NOT endorsing Kallan's offensiveness; he was being cavalier and
thoughtless and rude and could have avoided it. I was pointing out the
relevance of Lee's quotation of King to our discussion. We must explore
differences through dialogue. It's not *just* a basic principle of free
speech and not *just* a basic way of learn (that is, to have one's rudest
views exposed to the hard light of counterargument). But, further, hate in
dialogue isn't quite fully hate any more; love in monologue is just
another instance of one person telling another what to think and feel.
Dialogue is hegemony! It's like love per Radio Raheem - it can't lose. It
k-o's hate. That's King. -- Al