Uncivil Disobedience

[Mark Kohut]

The, to me, simple unassailable truth of this woman's thesis is why I can
not believe OBA EVER condones a single act of 'violent disobedience" in AtD...

To me, when read right--lots of layered 'right' meanings BUT many "wrong' readings of AtD [any book]...."Against the Day" is a book-length working out of two (or more) wrongs [varieties of deeply unjust fascism/ power-mongering vs. "violent disobedience] NEVER making a 'right'. 

Some think otherwise, maybe?....


--- On Thu, 9/25/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Uncivil Disobedience
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 3:45 PM
> Uncivil Disobedience:
> Studies in Violence and Democratic Politics
> Jennet Kirkpatrick
> 
> Paper | 2008 | $22.95 / £13.50
> Cloth | 2008 | $40.00 / £23.95
> 152 pp. | 6 x 9
> 
> 
> Uncivil Disobedience examines the roles violence and
> terrorism have
> played in the exercise of democratic ideals in America.
> Jennet
> Kirkpatrick explores how crowds, rallying behind the
> principle of
> popular sovereignty and desiring to make law conform to
> justice, can
> disdain law and engage in violence. She exposes the hazards
> of
> democracy that arise when citizens seek to control
> government
> directly, and demonstrates the importance of laws and
> institutions as
> limitations on the will of the people.
> 
> Kirkpatrick looks at some of the most explosive instances
> of uncivil
> disobedience in American history: the contemporary militia
> movement,
> Southern lynch mobs, frontier vigilantism, and militant
> abolitionism.
> She argues that the groups behind these violent episodes
> are often
> motivated by admirable democratic ideas of popular power
> and autonomy.
> Kirkpatrick shows how, in this respect, they are not so
> unlike the
> much-admired adherents of nonviolent civil disobedience,
> yet she
> reveals how those who engage in violent disobedience use
> these
> admirable democratic principles as a justification for
> terrorism and
> killing. She uses a "bottom-up" analysis of
> events to explain how this
> transformation takes place, paying close attention to what
> members of
> these groups do and how they think about the relationship
> between
> citizens and the law.
> 
> Uncivil Disobedience calls for a new vision of liberal
> democracy where
> the rule of the people and the rule of law are recognized
> as
> fundamental ideals, and where neither is triumphant or
> transcendent.
> 
> Jennet Kirkpatrick is lecturer in political science at the
> University
> of Michigan.
> 
> http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8774.html
> 
> Introduction: Warts and All
> 
> http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8774.html
> http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8774.pdf