French post-structuralism/postmodernism

[anomaly]

I'm curious of folks' general thoughts on the French post-structuralist school of thought. This includes thinkers such as Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida and others. In addition, simply because of his influence on several of the above, I would be interested to see what folks think of Nietszche.

Incidentally, are there any post-structuralist anarchists (or "post-left anarchists") on this board?

[Sacrificed]

*raises hand*

I am a Nietzschean. That'll leave a bitter taste in the mouths of those dialectitians who feel the need to pigeon-hole 'enemy' philosophers as 'bourgeois' or 'liberal', but I consider Nietzsche to be the most revolutionary philosopher (I do not consider Marx a philosopher) in history. It is Nietzsche who gives us the ammunition needed to challenge the liberal understanding of 'humanity' as something based on a static essence (consciousness, which Locke based his capitalist theory of rights on - thus opening an avenue to a radical non-Marxian critique of capitalism from a philosophical vantage point), minus the mystical dialectical hogwash. The scope of his knowledge is breathtaking, his philosophy represents a radical break from everything that had come before, and his is one of the few ideological critiques of the existing system which are coherent.

Productivity is but one form of power.

[Monty Cantsin]

I think that post-modernism while serving to embolden debate – which is always a good thing-, is largely intellectually bankrupt. It’s denial of the search for truth and resultant cynicism, perpetuate a “hedonist retreat from history” and “horror of discourses”. If no discourse can claim truth, then all have more or less equal validity. Academics selling their commodities can endlessly produce ‘ideas’’ without much rigor. Darwinism or Historical Materialism or any other discourse which aims at definite truths, tries to gain knowledge and understanding of the essentials is a threat to the postmodernist discourse.


Anti-essentialism undermines intellectual rigor and progressive politics. Postmodernism, should be something the left wing opposes. I read somewhere that Perry Anderson expressed the opinion that Paris was the centre of intellectual reaction.

[Sacrificed]

Originally posted by Monty [email protected] 17, 2007 07:39 am
Anti-essentialism undermines intellectual rigor and progressive politics.
And it also undermines liberal capitalism. Until the Marxists are willing to get into the sandbox with their less uptight brethren and stop pretending to have some sort of mystical dialectical insight into the 'progress of history', there's a reason they'll be excluded from serious academic debate: they're no fun to talk with, especially when the bulk of their philosophy relies on a spiritual process adapted from a nineteenth-century mystic.

[anomaly]

Ah, interesting! Have you read any Deleuze? I ask because I am currently reading a book about him written by Todd May (a post-structuralist anarchist). Deleuze, like Nietszche, destroys any static understanding of humanity (or anything else, for that matter) by forming an ontology of difference. That is, what exists are not static entities but complete and utter difference, a difference which only manifests itself into definable "identities" for a moment, in the perceived "now."

He suggests a coiled difference lying hidden within every identity, and this makes the reality of these "identities" much different than we perceive. In reality, there are no identities, only pure difference. This means that nothing is fixed and stable, thus opening the door for possibility, becoming, and change. It is little wonder Deleuze was an anarchist.

The ontology of Deleuze would also require a denial of the concept of objective truth. You being a Nietszchean, I would assume you reject the concept of objective truth as well?

Incidentally, because so much Marxist theory requires some objective view of humanity, I outright reject most of it (besides Marxism-humanism and other "autonomous" variants).

[Sacrificed]

I'm not a big fan of Deleuze's phraseology (I prefer a more down-to-Earth style), but Deleuze is in many ways a successor to Nietzsche's initial project of reinterpreting the world through a variety of perspectives. I don't think Deleuze's thought has ever been applied to a political project, but I think it would certainly be interesting to hypothesize about. His work touches on the blurred line between sociology, psychology, and economics, and destroys it entirely - fitting, somehow, for a philosopher who rejects identity.

Bataille, Foucault, and Stirner have also been tremendous influences on me.

[Monty Cantsin]

Originally posted by Sacrificed+June 17, 2007 07:43 am--> (Sacrificed @ June 17, 2007 07:43 am)
Monty [email protected] 17, 2007 07:39 am
Anti-essentialism undermines intellectual rigor and progressive politics.
And it also undermines liberal capitalism. Until the Marxists are willing to get into the sandbox with their less uptight brethren and stop pretending to have some sort of mystical dialectical insight into the 'progress of history', there's a reason they'll be excluded from serious academic debate: they're no fun to talk with, especially when the bulk of their philosophy relies on a spiritual process adapted from a nineteenth-century mystic. [/b]
I have no idea where ‘dialectics’ came into this discussion, your point to me seems rather irrelevant.

There are quite a lot of serious (neo-) Marxist and Marxian intellectuals – their really quite propionate. The materialist conception of history can be separated from dialectical materialism; it stands or falls on its own merits. The ascription of `some dialectical determinism on Marx part is a clear demonstrable falsehood -



In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their labour power, and on the other, in order to exploit this labour, those who held all the acquired wealth in possession. What happened? The Roman proletarians became, not wage labourers but a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former “poor whites” in the southern country of the United States, and alongside of them there developed a mode of production which was not capitalist but dependent upon slavery. Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...7/11/russia.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm)

[Sacrificed]

I didn't attack it for being deterministic. I attacked it for being a religious belief of a sort with creationism, a teleological metanarrative based on rubbish ontology inherited from Hegel.

[anomaly]

Darwinism or Historical Materialism or any other discourse which aims at definite truths, tries to gain knowledge and understanding of the essentials is a threat to the postmodernist discourse.
The problem with any brand of essentialism is that it assumes stability amongst a dynamic world. The search for some human nature, for example, assumes that there is someway to "identify" humanity. Identitarian logic puts dynamic concepts into a box from which they are unable to escape, in addition to freezing these concepts in time.

Historical materialism would imply an objective "theory of history" which posits that certain technological innovations objectively give rise to certain societies. But this is simply untrue. Many primitive societies, for example, had/have notably anarchist or anarchist-like forms of governance (consensus-based decision making, for example). Humanity cannot be understood objectively, because those trying to understand humanity are themselves human! Social "scientists" like to pretend that they are far from that which they study, that they can be on the moon and objectively study humanity. But they are themselves produced partly by the very thing which they attempt to objectively study, rendering any objective study impossible. (Deleuze says that the subject is both produced and productive)

Capitalists, for example, will tell us that we are living in capitalism. Thus, capitalism simply is. But does this adequetely describe reality? Capitalism means class struggle, which means that every day the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletarian will be felt. Thus, can capitalism really be anything other than struggle, and if this is the case, how can this struggle be frozen in time as the verb "is" would imply? In truth, it would seem, capitalism is and is not, depending on particular situations and particular moments.

Interestingly, the above is written with ideas borrowed from the Frankfurt school, not from the French post-structuralists. However, the two schools, though they had little contact with one another have very interesting similarities, noticeably on insisting upon a dynamic ontology that deals with change, not is-ness. Foucault famously commented that he wished these two schools had had more contact with one another.

[Monty Cantsin]

Essentialism is the doctrine that the intrinsic or fundamental qualities of an entity can be differentiated from mere accidental or non-inherent futures. If human-nature appears as constant flux, change then IS an essential feature of that nature, it’s the fluidity that characterizes it. If we can’t agree on that point, then all discourse is pointless.

[anomaly]

Well, yes, I suppose change would be the essence, just as difference would be the ontology. Nothing can be observed of human nature other than that difference.

[Monty Cantsin]

Well, if you agree with that, then postmodernism’s anti-essentialism becomes self-defeating.

[anomaly]

That is an interesting question which requires more thought. Can change or difference truly be an essence?

If we cite change as the "essence" of human nature, it would seem that that essence would itself change within moments of our labeling it as such. Even Deleuze recognized that, for moments, concrete identities do take shape. Deleuze simply argued that within these identities lied difference and thus possibility.

Deleuze spoke of a "dogmatic image of thought," characterized by representational thinking. Essentialism seems clearly along these lines by speaking of "intrinsic qualities" of an entity.

It is certainly an interesting question, though.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Anomaly, why do you think the verb "to be", or as you put it "is", suggests things are frozen in time?

What about these:

1) This is changing faster than anything I have ever seen.

2) This week's strike is growing quickly.

3) Your coffee is cooling rapidly.

4) What I like is sudden change.

5) The police line is shrinking fast.

6) Jane is now running with Peter in the marathon.

7) This list is growing by the minute.

8) So is the evidence against Anomaly's rather odd claim....

There are countless uses of this verb that do not remotely suggest stasis.

It is only a myth put about by philosophers (influenced by Hegel!) who think otherwise.

A sophisticated user of English like you should not have to be informed of this.

[funkmasterswede]

I am actually somewhat of a post-structuralist anarchist if I am honest with myself.

For me, it is less extreme, then many of the post-left anarchists. My post-structuralism leads to an ideal that society is as malleable as possible or a sort of morality based on radical historicism or collective subjectivity if you will. Rather than an entrenched idea of objective morality. Intuitively I agree with much of the traditional anarchist movement, but I cannot apply that and defend my own subjectivity as the guiding stone for all societies.

On the idea of a malleable society, I see the ideas of deconstruction as an interesting one. We need to analyze how seemingly non-hierarchical institutions in an anarchist society function and see how they create an "economy of power", to put it in a Foucaultian sense. If we can do this we can change them and alter them according to the ideals of collectively agreed upon goals. We cannot hold onto a notion of truth or justice and make it entrenched in a society.

I have not read much post-left anarchy stuff, but my thought is very much a synthesis of Lyotard, Foucault along with the classical anarchist movement.

[BreadBros]

Historical materialism would imply an objective "theory of history" which posits that certain technological innovations objectively give rise to certain societies. But this is simply untrue. Many primitive societies, for example, had/have notably anarchist or anarchist-like forms of governance (consensus-based decision making, for example).

This doesn't make sense. Historical materialism is a theory of history that posits that the economic structure of a society is it's determining feature. I don't see how that or any overall theory of history precludes the existence of anarchist forms of government in the past. If I remember correctly, Marx even postulated something similar himself although that has been challenged by modern archaeology/anthropology. Have you ever read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel? It's a very deterministic theory of history that explains differing rates of development based on several key economic and geographic/natural features present for societies. He vividly describes the features of early communal or anarchistic population groups and their transition into more complex societal forms through economic changes. So I don't really see how your point changes anything.


Humanity cannot be understood objectively, because those trying to understand humanity are themselves human! Social "scientists" like to pretend that they are far from that which they study, that they can be on the moon and objectively study humanity. But they are themselves produced partly by the very thing which they attempt to objectively study, rendering any objective study impossible. (Deleuze says that the subject is both produced and productive)

The problem with this is that you are extending the faults of a singular individual to social efforts. It may be difficult for an individual to look beyond their own circumstances to analyze something that they are related to, but through collective effort knowledge has can be gained. If I am unable to see how my own bias or viewpoint is hindering my attempt to objectively analyze something then its fairly common for someone to point it out and revise my attempts and then for someone to update theirs. Is it possible to achieve some ultimate pure truth? Probably not, but unless you yourself were focused on and guided by the desire to attain such truth (something which I'm assuming you are not focused some, since you are ostensibly a post-modernist) then I don't see why it would matter. The goal of all sciences, even social ones, is to attain knowledge for its practical benefit. In the case of social sciences that usually means correcting elements of social structure that are negative for human beings and things of that nature. Practically, despite Delueze's proclamations, we're pretty damn good at that. So good that capitalism itself has co-opted a great deal of social analysis as it's personal tool for expanding markets psychologically and socially where physical expansion is maxed out.


Capitalists, for example, will tell us that we are living in capitalism. Thus, capitalism simply is. But does this adequetely describe reality? Capitalism means class struggle, which means that every day the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletarian will be felt. Thus, can capitalism really be anything other than struggle, and if this is the case, how can this struggle be frozen in time as the verb "is" would imply? In truth, it would seem, capitalism is and is not, depending on particular situations and particular moments.

But thats a wholly semantic argument :P. The fact that class struggle is not occurring at every moment doesn't mean it isn't the dominant defining feature of a time period. Your argument is the equivalent of saying something like: warfare doesn't exist. Why? Because warfare consists of human conflict and in most "wars" there are periods of quiet or off-time in the interval, meaning that it is wrong to say that this "is warfare, it "is" warfare and "is not". :rolleyes: No offense, but this is about as superficial a critique as you can get. Most people are able to understand what words like that mean without having to caution everything with a clause or undermining language as a whole. Its things like this that cause lay-people to assume post-modernism/post-structuralism is either 1. superficial word-games 2. stupid and laughable.



And it also undermines liberal capitalism. Until the Marxists are willing to get into the sandbox with their less uptight brethren and stop pretending to have some sort of mystical dialectical insight into the 'progress of history', there's a reason they'll be excluded from serious academic debate: they're no fun to talk with, especially when the bulk of their philosophy relies on a spiritual process adapted from a nineteenth-century mystic.

I can't really comment on the dialectics, it seems kind of like an arbitrary point (there are many anti-dialetic Marxists). It also seems to me that the belief in objective analysis you criticize is itself in conflict (or at least in tension) with dialectics, so I'm not sure exactly what you're saying, but then again I'm no expert on dialectics.

I'd like you to explain how you think anti-essentialism undermines liberal capitalism though.