david on category ness

there is always something slightly aggressive in an attempt to categorize another’s thought – david graeber

david graeber on category ness via öcalan as thinker:

there is always something slightly aggressive in an attempt to categorize another’s thought. In ancient Greek, the word “categorize” meant “to publicly accuse,” and even to “pin something down” suggests an act of violence—like attaching a dead butterfly to a piece of cork board underneath some kind of handwritten label. Generally, if you want to dismiss an intellectual, you place him in some category—oh, he’s just a positivist, a postmodernist, a neo-Kantian. If you want to really honor that same person, you create a new category out of their name: Foucauldian, Rawlsian, and so forth. It is thus fitting testimony to the success of Öcalan’s thought in Kurdistan and within the Kurdish diaspora that if one describes someone as an “Apoist,” everyone knows what you are talking about—but there is no larger category of thought in which to place Öcalan himself.

marsh label law.. label(s).. et al

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