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i'll try this one more time.
in one of my earlier posts that fell by the wayside is tried to outline infinite loser's logic: it seems to me that he operates with some conception or another of natural law theory that he arbitrarily maps onto the american legal system. so you have certain ways of grouping, certain categories, that from his viewpoint must remain static because they correlate to this "natural law" assumption.
the problem is not just that this natural law business is arbitrary--and anyone who has looked at this kind of thinking can see that it is little more than a mapping onto secular terms of basically religious norms---but more that his claims cut back and forth without being up front about what they are doing.
here is something like the series of claims.
1. the american legal systems classifications concerning marriage are strangely unique amongst all classifications that the system relies upon because, unlike them, it is not defined and redefined through practice, through the history of the system itself as it reacts to changes in the context within which it operates. explanation: for infinite loser, the notion of marriage is a natural law category. breaking this down: il approves of the rightwing redefinition of marriage as it is emerging through the controversy about gay marriage. but because he position about marriage is also routed through natural law, it follows that he has no choice but to pretend that the conservative redefinition of marriage is in fact not a redefinition at all.
claims 2: when it suits tactical purposes (cut one) il will concede changes in other categories (so as to avoid being lumped in with segregationists in the early 1960s who reverted to this same kind of argument to legitimate their positions) but (cut two) will nonetheless argue that marriage is a natural law category and so should not be redefined in any way.
claim 3: at this time, the category marriage is defined in one direction and there are no negative implications of this because the category is as it is. any category operates more by exclusion than by inclusions so whaddya worried about? if you want categories, you have to accept exclusions. as a statement about logical categories, this makes sense, but as a statement about categories within the american legal system, it doesnt---simply becaue it treats categories as static and so ignores the basic constituitve feature of the american common law tradition, which is its fluidity (hedged round by a continual reinterpretation of the constitution)
inifinite loser's logic is blurry is you push at it, but these blurry claims are advanced wrapped up in the discourse of logic--except that he never actually discloses the assumptions that shape his own position (which would be typical of a natural law type argument--why disclose? its nature, damn it...)
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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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