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I resonate with gift giving in Alice's sense and dissing in Anne's sense. These seem to me essential to an atmosphere of openness and growth, and togetherness. And what a wonderful atmosphere that is! Their posts bring up issues of "how" we should or might want to engage with each other and what the spirit of our interactions can be.

I have been thinking about "what" our interactions are about. It seems to me that we have been resisting or avoiding this issue of the content of our group (or is it only that it hasn't come up yet?).

Can a person or a group think or act without standing for something? Can thinking and acting happen independently of commitments and power structures? I think the answer is no. (It seems to me that this is one of the powerful lessons from feminism, queer theory and post-colonial studies... as well as Feyerabend, Foucault and Rorty … and of course others).

So when we gather in a room or talk on the web, which commitments and structures are we for and which against? What is the group for? What is it trying to achieve? Without addressing these issues, it seems to me like the group might drift rather than emerge (a valid distinction?).

“Against” can be taken as how or what. Taken as how (against_how), it is angry, angst-ridden, disempowered, opponents as enemies. Taken as what (against_what), it is progress, clarity, empowerment and standing up for what one values.

Sontag and Feyerabend mix together against_how and against_what. They are not only against something (interpretation, method), but they are against it in a dismissive, annoyed way. Stallybrass seems to have less of the against_how.

Can we avoid altogether the against_how while bringing more to the surface the against_what? That is, can we be joyful, playful, gleeful while standing resolutely for something beautiful, good, important and difficult to achieve?

In fact, I wonder if joyfulness and playfulness come from the ease of conscience from knowing that one is standing for the right things.