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i think the problem that host raises runs parallel to the one i tried to raise (less eloquently, i might add) in that there is no agreement about types of argument that work here, nor on the relations of argument to evidence, nor on the ways in which disputes involving divergent types of argument are to be addressed. because there is no such agreement, what almost always happens is a kind of frame-switching in which an argument outlined in one register is countered by another in a wholly different register.
so positions simply talk past each other over and over again.
it gets kind of tiresome after a while.
you see this most obviously in arguments about economics, during the course of which factoids which are obviously and thoroughly embedded in very particular assumptions about the role of the economy in society, the relation between economic and state actors and so forth are simply presented as if the logic behind them required no explanation. routinely in these discussions, things tank quickly because posters, particularly those who work (often without knowing it) within a neoliberal framework seem to treat their ideology as a fact of nature, and so apparently have no idea how to either articulate their assumptions or defend them.
this too gets tiresome, but very quickly.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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