Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 00:57:52 -0500
From: "Shawn P. Wilbur" <swilbur@bgsuvax.bgsu.edu>
Subject: Re: Relevant text
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Message-Id: <Pine.3.07.9602202329.A12044-d100000@bgsuvax.bgsu.edu>
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu

I wonder how far it gets us - or, more to the point, how far from the
point i think Kenn was trying to make with the text - to talk about "free
speech" as it is "guaranteed" by a political constitution. The problems
with such "guarantees" is that they are only a promise, unable without
some sort of enforcement - and such enforcement must be based on an
interpretation of what "free speech" is and ought to be (the problem that
Reich seems to have been addressing in his comments to the ACLU) - to
maintain the space in which speech would be clearly and fully "free."
(I'll try to give a clarifying example here in a bit.)

It is a rare occasion, given the number of occasions where the question
of our freedom to speak could arise, when the power of the state is
called upon to intervene in these matters. It seems that most of the time
fidelity to the idea of a guaranteed freedom of speech is sufficient to at
least prevent the raising of further questions. I suspect that a certain
sort of "freedom" of speech comes mostly from habit and custom, and
automatization of interactions as much as an active defense of values. It
would be silly to pathologize all habitual behavior, but just as silly to
pretend that habitual acknowledgement of a right to free speech is any
better able to actively deliver on that promise than a constitutional
amendment. 

Isn't it the case that the freedom to speak is meaningfully gained or lost
only in the context of specific attempts to speak? Isn't that freedom
necessarily something worked out in specific social situations? And wasn't
all of the emotion unleased in the recent exchanges largely a matter of
energies expended to open or close particular spaces for speech, responses
to the sudden need to establish dynamic criteria for what sorts of speech
ought to be free? and, more specifically, based on individual senses of
what sorts of speech themselves shape the spaces available for other
attempts at speech.

If i accuse you of a horrible crime - or several - are you simply "free"
to respond, or are you now constrained - in part by habit and custom
again, if by my speech act i can make you into The Accused - to respond on
the ground laid out by my accusation? Certainly, you can ignore the
accusation, you can respond a year from now, you can suggest anatomically
impossible sex acts i might get a kick out of - but you can only make
these responses at the cost of not responding in a serious, rational and
timely manner to the challenge i have set for you. And in a public forum,
that may be enough to constrain your speech - or the ability of others to
give it a free hearing (depending on the degree to which they have
accepted my characterization of you - which may be the extent to which
they have habitually extended a freedom to me which may constrain you) -
not just on this one topic, but generally. To the extent that i am
successful in establishing the ground on which you must now speak in
response - to the extent that i can impose constraints, armor you from the
outside - i can limit your options to one: meet me on my own terms, with
all the handicaps that i have built into them. Although i'm obviously
drawing on recent conflicts, this sort of communicative gambit ought to be
familiar enough, even common. 

The question raised is whether or not "freedom of speech" can be genuinely
protected by anything other than the ongoing, active creation and
protection of free spaces for speech and reply. Free speech is a matter of
social organization, constantly. Any sort of "democracy" which neglected
the need for actively maintaining these spaces of freedom would be
something of a sham - is something of a sham. Look at the way that freedom
of speech degenerates into the right to reply and then to an ethic of
equal time, mostly where the time allotted is equal to no position worth
articulating. You don't have to look very far - at the television, around
the net, in nearly any institution or business - to wonder if there is not
a conflict between the freedom of speech that is guaranteed and the
ideology of "free speech," habitualized as it is, that governs most of our
interactions. Could this be the sort of direction we might want to take
Reich's question? Do we really want to say that fascist speech -
specifically speech which inposed constraints on the freedom to speak of
others - should have the same protection, receive the same welcome, as
speech which respects the rights of other speakers? And, if we accept that
such a constraining speech exists, do we want to deny ourselves and those
with whom we share potential spaces of freedom, the right to cry out
against it? (I don't want to try to justify anger, which others will
either share or not - particularly since freedom seems to me to demand
room for a variety of responses which could be respected. On the other
hand, i would hate to feel constrained to be (outwardly) "always
conventional and correct.") 

It seems to me that this question is one which is immensely complicated
from any standpoint, but perhaps particularly for anyone who acknowledges
the workings of something like the Emotional Plague. As Chris pointed out,
there aren't too many unarmored folks out there - assuming there are any,
assuming that such a state would be desirable - so we work with a
handicap, are complicit, dwell in the belly of the beast. These are not,
perhaps, the best of working conditions - but they may be ask good as it
gets...

-shawn




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