Badiou

[ex_next_worker]

Is this guy hard to read generally, or just without advanced knowledge in Western philosophy? If it's the latter , where should I begin before getting into Badiou? Plato? :cool:;)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I'd not bother. No French philosopher (other than Rousseau) has been worth reading since Jean Buridan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Buridan

[gilhyle]

I found him quite dfficult to read - but not impossible. A bit ofmaths background (Cantor) is quite useful. But even Being and Events is understandable with a bit of effort. I found The New Century (think that is the name) particularly straightforward but rather slight. Nevr read his stuff on St Paul. That might be a good startingpoint...or his book of essays.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


A bit ofmaths background (Cantor) is quite useful.

Ah, yet another mystic.

[Rascolnikova]

I'd not bother. No French philosopher (other than Rousseau) has been worth reading since Jean Buridan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Buridan

I'm no philosopher, but I liked Simone de Beauvoir. . .

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Indeed, but she wasn't a philosopher.

[Rascolnikova]

^^^Indeed, but she wasn't a philosopher.

So. . . what field of study does ethics of ambiguity fall under?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In her case, wishy washy social theory, I suspect.

[Rascolnikova]

In her case, wishy washy social theory, I suspect.

?

In her case?

It's a specific text, generally taken to be about existentialist ethics. . . and I have to say, it didn't seem wishy washy.

[Hit The North]

Rascolnikova

Rosa, like all adherents of analytical philosophy, is notoriously chauvinistic about French philosophy and social theory, so I wouldn't waste you time trying to convince her otherwise.

[Rascolnikova]

Rascolnikova

Rosa, like all adherents of analytical philosophy, is notoriously chauvinistic about French philosophy and social theory, so I wouldn't waste you time trying to convince her otherwise.

Awe, thanks.

I'm not, actually. I'm more trying to learn what is said about French philosophy and social theory by analytic types. . . all the background I have (not much) is continental.

:)

[ex_next_worker]

Stick to Badiou, please :)

[Rascolnikova]

Stick to Badiou, please :)

Yes sir.

Though I have to say, I think this is as likely to reveal useful insights on how to approach Badiou as anything else one could ask Rosa.


If I may ask, what background do you have? I've not tried to read him myself, but I can only suppose a background in ontology would be handy, and ontology seems to be one of the more difficult topics to get background in, if you don't have a strong background in philosophy generally.

As far as I can tell, if you wish to get a strong background in philosophy generally, a good way to start is: Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and Descartes--and some sort of summary text/s that give you a clue what you're missing in between.

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Rosa, like all adherents of analytical philosophy, is notoriously chauvinistic about French philosophy and social theory, so I wouldn't waste you time trying to convince her otherwise.

That's a lie; the vast majority of analytic philosophers would disgree with me, and list many French philosophers they like (including Descartes and Sartre).

And how can you call it 'chauvinistic' when I do not have such a dislike of German, Dutch or Italian philosophers (to name but a few)?

And it can't be anti-French, since I have already indicated I like Rousseau and Buridan.

So your post should in fact be ammended to read:


BTB, like all adherents of mystical philosophy at RevLeft, is notoriously boorish about Rosa's ideas (so much so he can't even read what she posts with any accuracy), so I wouldn't waste your time trying to convince him otherwise.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

R:


?

In her case?

It's a specific text, generally taken to be about existentialist ethics. . . and I have to say, it didn't seem wishy washy.

Fine; I am just reporting my impression. I am glad you found otherwise.

[gilhyle]

I think it does help in reading Badiou to read his French contemporaries (Derrida, Deleuze etc) But it doesnt help so much that its worth the effort, if you dont want to read them anyway. Sure Badiou uses ontological concepts in the characteristic french way, but its not so culturally specific that, if you dont keep reading or check some of the growing secondary literature you would get lost. Its manageable. Just read it....not that I agree with him: I think he is trapped in a convoluted, sentimental structuralism, but that is another story.

As to Simone.....very fine writer. Any definition of philosophy which excluded her would only, thereby display its own ignorant arrogance.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Any definition of philosophy which excluded her would only, thereby display its own ignorant arrogance.

On the other hand, any definition of philosophy that admitted her would display its own naive gullibility.

You see, us non-mytics can also cast aspersions.

[gilhyle]

The difference being my point stands....yours is just rhetoric, it being quite untenable to suggest that definitions of philosophy should exclude from philosophy, by definitions, points of view which are attractive to the gullible. But I know that small detail doesnt bother you at all.....as long as you have a response which meets your own standards of wit, you are content.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


The difference being my point stands....yours is just rhetoric, it being quite untenable to suggest that definitions of philosophy should exclude from philosophy, by definitions, points of view which are attractive to the gullible. But I know that small detail doesnt bother you at all...

The difference being: you'll accept any old ruling-class crap so long as it's by a 'philosopher'.

And who has used a 'definition' here? Not me.


as long as you have a response which meets your own standards of wit, you are content

Anything to put you mystics down is OK in my book -- and, numpties that you are, you are all natural targets. The day you repent, and become materialists is a sad day for me.

I'll have to start picking on higher life forms -- cheese rolls, for example...

[gilhyle]

Anything to put you mystics down is OK in my book --....... The day you repent, and become materialists is a sad day for me.


I think you have summed yourself up quite nicely there. :laugh:

[ex_next_worker]

Just read it....not that I agree with him: I think he is trapped in a convoluted, sentimental structuralism, but that is another story.


Could you talk more of this, please?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


I think you have summed yourself up quite nicely there

Ah, I see we can add comprehension problems to your predilection for mysticism -- these are probably not unconnected.

[gilhyle]

Could you talk more of this, please?Well its nto really possible without putting a bit of serious work into pinning down his point of view and criticising it. But just a few words. Badiou is a Maoist, starting from its voluntarist methodology which counterposes the will to the situation and beieving that the act of will can transcend the situation. The counterposition of will to situation is a mystification of the will. This is inherent in any structuralism which takes a political stance - it hypostasizes the subject as something which creates itself. This is a circularity which encompasses an irrationalism.

To give a different example: there is an important sense in which Sartre's later dialectics of the subjective collectivity came to be seen as having been a complement rather than a contrast to the structuralism which led in French thought to Althusser - this is because it is a dialectic of inter-subjectivity, to the extent that the subjective is 'free' and not contained within the always already given social structure......

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^And that is why modern French philosophy is a load of hog-wash.

Well done Gil for parodying it...:rolleyes:

[gilhyle]

I'll never match your parodic efforts....its turning into life as art

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


I'll never match your parodic efforts....its turning into life as art

Well, we already knew you were a wimp.

[Tribune]

Since Deleuze was mentioned - does he (Badiou) write the same dense and opaque prose as is to be found in Anti-Oedipus?

I've read nothing of his work, and only one piece by his intellectual compatriot, Zizek (which seemed, to me, to be rambling commentary on movies).

[gilhyle]

Badiou is more serious than Zizek - who in my opinion is a clown, a philosophy journalist mixing ideas up into a useless melange, which is nothing more than a sound scape. Badiou is also more straightforward to read than Deleuze

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^ At last, something we agree about, Gil!

[Rascolnikova]

I can't speak of him as a philosopher, but I have found Zizek to be useful in my understanding of the need for class struggle, and I often use his insights to good effect in discussion with others.

[black magick hustla]

Well its nto really possible without putting a bit of serious work into pinning down his point of view and criticising it. But just a few words. Badiou is a Maoist, starting from its voluntarist methodology which counterposes the will to the situation and beieving that the act of will can transcend the situation. The counterposition of will to situation is a mystification of the will. This is inherent in any structuralism which takes a political stance - it hypostasizes the subject as something which creates itself. This is a circularity which encompasses an irrationalism.

To give a different example: there is an important sense in which Sartre's later dialectics of the subjective collectivity came to be seen as having been a complement rather than a contrast to the structuralism which led in French thought to Althusser - this is because it is a dialectic of inter-subjectivity, to the extent that the subjective is 'free' and not contained within the always already given social structure......




What does it mean "a subject creates itself".

Or the "act of will can trascend a situation".

And what does it mean for the subjective is "free".

My science head hurts.

[black magick hustla]

By the way Einstein said that anything that cannot be simplified to the point that a kid will find it understandable is not worth saying. Can you simplify that to that extent?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Rascolnikova:


I can't speak of him as a philosopher, but I have found Zizek to be useful in my understanding of the need for class struggle, and I often use his insights to good effect in discussion with others.

I think Chris Harman's comments on Zizek are apposite in this regard:


‘Sit at home and watch the barbarity on television’ seems to be Slavoj Žižek’s new slogan for fighting capitalism. He writes of the million-strong demonstration against the war on Iraq: they ‘served to legitimise it.’ All that happened was that ‘the protesters saved their beautiful souls.’ Žižek’s brilliant dialectical insight allows us to see that all struggles that do not fully achieve their objectives sanctify the status quo. So the events of May 1968 in France must have legitimised the Gaullist regime, the Cuban revolution continued US domination of Latin America, the independence of India the British Empire, the revolutions of 1848 European reaction, the civil rights movement American racism. And if the US now attacks Iran we must at all costs not take to the streets against it. Perhaps the philosopher should go beyond interpreting the world in confusing ways and try to change it.

Chris Harman
International Socialism Journal, London E8

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n24/letters.html

The original article by Zizek was entitled: "Resistance is surrender", and can be found here:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html

[gilhyle]

On Zizek, look anyone who even talks about Lenin these days seems attractive. But his graspo of philosophy is undermined by his own constant re-invention of philosophy as a vocabularly in which to discuss putative common psychological and cultural conditions - thus ambiguity pervades everything he writes. He might mean this, he might mean that, he might mean both depending on whether you prefer the banal truth or provocative untruth. His understanding of dialectics cliched, not because he is stupid but because he is devoted to constituting dissent as a comfortable condition of reconciliation within imperialist society. However, enough generalisations from me. Roscolnikova, you say what you have actually found good about him then then those of us who cannot see his usefulness can reflect on whether your experience invalidates our perception.

Marmot, I dont agree with Einstein, for this reason - a child is a narcissistic subject for whom 'I' is an unproblematic term, and one also entirely beyond reflection. What he said sounds good.....but its wrong. And his own theories prove it....he may have thought he could simplify it so that children could grasp it, but I suspect you would have to agree that so much is lost in the process that the theory is not grasped in any meaningful sense by the listener. No ?

As to what I just said in very rough summary, no it cant be reduced to stuff a child would understand....believe me, I have tried. With substantial effort, it is possible to teach this stuff to thirteen and fourteen year olds, younger than that...cant be done. WIth the very unusual exception you can teach it to eleven or twelve year olds, but that is rare.

But let me try this which might reduce it to the familar: this is about the same issue as the old debate about determinism versus free will. Is the agent who decides on actions anything more than a reflection of the circumstances within which he she or they act ? Are the actions, then any thing more than mere events within a stable, self-reproducing system ?

Structuralism, generally (there are exceptions) sees societies as stable systems, self-reproducing. When structuralism is 'Marxist' in then has the puzzle of introducing instability into its model. It tends to do this by simple fiat: assume an agent who is not merely a reflection of his/her/their circumstances.

Marxism takes a different approach. It for the beginning refuses to conceive of society as a stable self-reproducing system. Rather it analyses society as being alwasy in dynamic disequilibrium....thus for Marxism the problem which arises for the structuralist Marxists (like Badiou indirectly) does not exist.

As to freedom, well I wont go on much- Sartre (to be simplistic again) believed a subject always has an option - thus is always free. That for him is what constitutes a subject. Any help Marmot ? How is the scientific head now ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Marxism takes a different approach. It for the beginning refuses to conceive of society as a stable self-reproducing system. Rather it analyses society as being alwasy in dynamic disequilibrium....

Quite right, but then why do we need the obscure jargon of dialectics to tell us this? Indeed, you managed to do so without it!

[black magick hustla]

Obviously Einstein's idea was an exaggeration, I think his point was explaining things in laymen terms. Certainly, every physical achievement can be understood conceptually by most people. The mathematics are another can of worms but I dont think most laymen are willing to derive einsteins theory of gravitation with tensor calculus anyway.

Thanks for that. Although I believe in argument on free will vs determinism is silly at best. How can someone expŕess something in words that deeply comes from the heart and call it philosophy. I never got this, perhaps it is possible to express the this private objects as literature of art because there are not any pretensions on looking for what is true or false, rather for expressions of ones emotions, regardless if these words or pictures constitute a meaningful argument or not. Thus if I can choose or not is a meaningful question, it would require that every one of us is deeply familiar with everyone's brain to the point to even understand what each of us mean by "choice" when we are concerned with questions like this.

Do you think this questions can be succesfully answered with any pretension of creating a true or false statment? How?

[gilhyle]

Philosophy is not really a defensible discipline. It is so full of unanalysed concepts and unargued conceits that, really, philosophy does not amount to much......but what does amount to a lot is ideology. Our minds are full of ideas that in many complex ways reflect our class divided society and misrpresent reality in fundamental ways which suit various class interests.

What would be naive is to think that you or I or anyone can just stand outside those conventional ideas, that any of us can just 'think clearly', the way Descartes thought possible and many early analytical philosophyers.

You cannot just wipe away ideology, we are all mired in it. Thus when people started claiming in the early 1920s that the Second International had believed that socialism was necessary and therefore not necessary to fight for, that (false) claim is itself is an expression of the way the ideology of the freedom/determinism debate seeped into revolutionary politics in the 1920s. In response, some writers like to argue that we must just eschew all teleology, i.e all conceptions of any sense in which society is moving towards a socialist society. This is an equally corrupting and false view which aims to cripple Marxist theory.

In that kind of debate we are caught between various false ideas and we must try and create a space for Marxist thinking by the critique of the various false ideas.

We would be entirely naive if we believed we could just stand aside from that and find the concepts to think clearly in a rationally compelling way as if ordinary lanugage was somehow not a reflection of the class divided and ideologically distorted society and social practices which generates it.

Thus my answer to your question is that philosophy is both flawed and unavoidable. We do not have to practice philosophy, i.e. we do not need to construct philosohical perspectives which claim to be true, but we do need to be familar with the mire of confusion that is philosophy in order to create the concpetual space for Marxist theory - a space that does not exist naturally or spontaneously and a space which constantly disappears if not tended.

Marxist theoreticians need constantly to go back into those debates and again and again route battle with the false ideas which either promise that there just is a clear space for a positivist Marxist sociological theory or which deny Marxism the possiblity of a distinctive theory at all.

This battle, however, is not a persoanl one so that you or i can inthe privacy of our individual minds find that space. It is a social struggle so that political groupings can find that space collectively. When you refer to a possibility of an aesthetic expression of the private experience of choice, that is true, but it does not deal with the question of theory which communist groupings face which is, in summary, what it means to think that there is a collective agent of political action called the working class.

That turns out to be an extremely troubling and problematic idea within the ideological framework of the dominant class.....but that is hardly surprising now is it. ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


You cannot just wipe away ideology, we are all mired in it.

No we're not. For every ideologically-compromised sentence you can think of, there exists its negation -- hence we can all reject the ideologies we have forced down our throats, as many of us manage to do.

But, it doesn't help when comrades like you try to peddle ruling-class ideas straight from Hegel and other boss-class dupes.

[Hiero]

Do you thikn Zizek is aiming to do something else with his work? Maybe he is purposefully mocking acadamia or he attempts to undermine modern academia with intended ambiguity?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I think Gil has got Zizek bang-to-rights here; coupled with Chris Harman's recent comments on Zizek, I do not know why comrades waste their time reading him:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1303064&postcount=33

Except perhaps for entertainment -- but then, they should read Harry Potter. They'd probably learn more...

[gilhyle]

Do you thikn Zizek is aiming to do something else with his work? Maybe he is purposefully mocking acadamia or he attempts to undermine modern academia with intended ambiguity?

I think you may be right, but so what ? I called him a clown......so, in different words, do you in this comment - the court jester prospers by finding a safe, entertaining way to tell an uncomfortable truth....and in Zizeks case it doesnt even amount to a 'truth'.

BTW Rosa, I think my comment on ideology and your response goes to the heart of the differences between us.....it is about the potential of clear thinking.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


I think my comment on ideology and your response goes to the heart of the differences between us.....it is about the potential of clear thinking.

And the difference being that you prefer the obscure thoughts of ruling-class hacks, whereas I do not.

[gilhyle]

I would put it slightly differently - you prefer to have faith in the potential of language to grant us the grace of clear thinking - I prefer to recognise that we must always struggle through the cloud of unknowing for any temporary, vulnerable moment of clarity. You have a god, I dont.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


I would put it slightly differently - you prefer to have faith in the potential of language to grant us the grace of clear thinking - I prefer to recognise that we must always struggle through the cloud of unknowing for any temporary, vulnerable moment of clarity. You have a god, I dont.

Where on earth did you get this odd idea? Clarity of though has to be won with hard work -- something you seem to be incapable of, preferring the sloppy thought of boss-class hacks.

And, it is you who accept ideas from mystics and god-botherers like Hegel, not me, sweet cheeks...

[Rascolnikova]

Wait. . . help me out. I will try to give a more complete response to this soon, but for the moment--how does this


‘Sit at home and watch the barbarity on television’ seems to be Slavoj Žižek’s new slogan for fighting capitalism. He writes of the million-strong demonstration against the war on Iraq: they ‘served to legitimise it.’ All that happened was that ‘the protesters saved their beautiful souls.’ Žižek’s brilliant dialectical insight allows us to see that all struggles that do not fully achieve their objectives sanctify the status quo. So the events of May 1968 in France must have legitimised the Gaullist regime, the Cuban revolution continued US domination of Latin America, the independence of India the British Empire, the revolutions of 1848 European reaction, the civil rights movement American racism. And if the US now attacks Iran we must at all costs not take to the streets against it. Perhaps the philosopher should go beyond interpreting the world in confusing ways and try to change it.

In any way line up with this?

The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.--the conclusion of the original article you linked to.


Whatever else may be said of him, I don't understand how it's possible to interpret Zizek as advocating inaction. What he's advocating is violence to counter violence, rather than "free speech" in approved zones to counter violence.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

So, what was he proposing in 2003: "Only kill 10,000 Iraqis"? Or perhaps, "Some blood for oil?"

I think Harman has got it spot on.

[Rascolnikova]

So, what was he proposing in 2003: "Only kill 10,000 Iraqis"? Or perhaps, "Some blood for oil?"

I think Harman has got it spot on.

What?

I'm sorry if I seem obtuse, but--while I may at times know more about a subject than my questions would suggest, when I ask a question I am, generally, genuinely trying to get at some information I don't know.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I am sorry, what question are you asking?

[Rascolnikova]

What is the connection between the first quote--the commentary you agree with--and the second quote, which it's ostensibly commenting on?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, here is the entire article (with the sections I think Harman is commenting upon highligted in bold):


One of the clearest lessons of the last few decades is that capitalism is indestructible. Marx compared it to a vampire, and one of the salient points of comparison now appears to be that vampires always rise up again after being stabbed to death. Even Mao’s attempt, in the Cultural Revolution, to wipe out the traces of capitalism, ended up in its triumphant return.

Today’s Left reacts in a wide variety of ways to the hegemony of global capitalism and its political supplement, liberal democracy. It might, for example, accept the hegemony, but continue to fight for reform within its rules (this is Third Way social democracy).

Or, it accepts that the hegemony is here to stay, but should nonetheless be resisted from its ‘interstices’.

Or, it accepts the futility of all struggle, since the hegemony is so all-encompassing that nothing can really be done except wait for an outburst of ‘divine violence’ – a revolutionary version of Heidegger’s ‘only God can save us.’

Or, it recognises the temporary futility of the struggle. In today’s triumph of global capitalism, the argument goes, true resistance is not possible, so all we can do till the revolutionary spirit of the global working class is renewed is defend what remains of the welfare state, confronting those in power with demands we know they cannot fulfil, and otherwise withdraw into cultural studies, where one can quietly pursue the work of criticism.

Or, it emphasises the fact that the problem is a more fundamental one, that global capitalism is ultimately an effect of the underlying principles of technology or ‘instrumental reason’.

Or, it posits that one can undermine global capitalism and state power, not by directly attacking them, but by refocusing the field of struggle on everyday practices, where one can ‘build a new world’; in this way, the foundations of the power of capital and the state will be gradually undermined, and, at some point, the state will collapse (the exemplar of this approach is the Zapatista movement).

Or, it takes the ‘postmodern’ route, shifting the accent from anti-capitalist struggle to the multiple forms of politico-ideological struggle for hegemony, emphasising the importance of discursive re-articulation.

Or, it wagers that one can repeat at the postmodern level the classical Marxist gesture of enacting the ‘determinate negation’ of capitalism: with today’s rise of ‘cognitive work’, the contradiction between social production and capitalist relations has become starker than ever, rendering possible for the first time ‘absolute democracy’ (this would be Hardt and Negri’s position).

These positions are not presented as a way of avoiding some ‘true’ radical Left politics – what they are trying to get around is, indeed, the lack of such a position. This defeat of the Left is not the whole story of the last thirty years, however. There is another, no less surprising, lesson to be learned from the Chinese Communists’ presiding over arguably the most explosive development of capitalism in history, and from the growth of West European Third Way social democracy. It is, in short: we can do it better. In the UK, the Thatcher revolution was, at the time, chaotic and impulsive, marked by unpredictable contingencies. It was Tony Blair who was able to institutionalise it, or, in Hegel’s terms, to raise (what first appeared as) a contingency, a historical accident, into a necessity. Thatcher wasn’t a Thatcherite, she was merely herself; it was Blair (more than Major) who truly gave form to Thatcherism.

The response of some critics on the postmodern Left to this predicament is to call for a new politics of resistance. Those who still insist on fighting state power, let alone seizing it, are accused of remaining stuck within the ‘old paradigm’: the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left.

Simon Critchley’s recent book, Infinitely Demanding, is an almost perfect embodiment of this position. For Critchley, the liberal-democratic state is here to stay. Attempts to abolish the state failed miserably; consequently, the new politics has to be located at a distance from it: anti-war movements, ecological organisations, groups protesting against racist or sexist abuses, and other forms of local self-organisation. It must be a politics of resistance to the state, of bombarding the state with impossible demands, of denouncing the limitations of state mechanisms. The main argument for conducting the politics of resistance at a distance from the state hinges on the ethical dimension of the ‘infinitely demanding’ call for justice: no state can heed this call, since its ultimate goal is the ‘real-political’ one of ensuring its own reproduction (its economic growth, public safety, etc). ‘Of course,’ Critchley writes,

history is habitually written by the people with the guns and sticks and one cannot expect to defeat them with mocking satire and feather dusters. Yet, as the history of ultra-leftist active nihilism eloquently shows, one is lost the moment one picks up the guns and sticks. Anarchic political resistance should not seek to mimic and mirror the archic violent sovereignty it opposes.

So what should, say, the US Democrats do? Stop competing for state power and withdraw to the interstices of the state, leaving state power to the Republicans and start a campaign of anarchic resistance to it? And what would Critchley do if he were facing an adversary like Hitler? Surely in such a case one should ‘mimic and mirror the archic violent sovereignty’ one opposes? Shouldn’t the Left draw a distinction between the circumstances in which one would resort to violence in confronting the state, and those in which all one can and should do is use ‘mocking satire and feather dusters’? The ambiguity of Critchley’s position resides in a strange non sequitur: if the state is here to stay, if it is impossible to abolish it (or capitalism), why retreat from it? Why not act with(in) the state? Why not accept the basic premise of the Third Way? Why limit oneself to a politics which, as Critchley puts it, ‘calls the state into question and calls the established order to account, not in order to do away with the state, desirable though that might well be in some utopian sense, but in order to better it or attenuate its malicious effect’?

These words simply demonstrate that today’s liberal-democratic state and the dream of an ‘infinitely demanding’ anarchic politics exist in a relationship of mutual parasitism: anarchic agents do the ethical thinking, and the state does the work of running and regulating society. Critchley’s anarchic ethico-political agent acts like a superego, comfortably bombarding the state with demands; and the more the state tries to satisfy these demands, the more guilty it is seen to be. In compliance with this logic, the anarchic agents focus their protest not on open dictatorships, but on the hypocrisy of liberal democracies, who are accused of betraying their own professed principles.

The big demonstrations in London and Washington against the US attack on Iraq a few years ago offer an exemplary case of this strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance. Their paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls: they made it clear that they don’t agree with the government’s policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it: not only did the protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they also served to legitimise it. Thus George Bush’s reaction to mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London, in effect: ‘You see, this is what we are fighting for, so that what people are doing here – protesting against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!’

It is striking that the course on which Hugo Chávez has embarked since 2006 is the exact opposite of the one chosen by the postmodern Left: far from resisting state power, he grabbed it (first by an attempted coup, then democratically), ruthlessly using the Venezuelan state apparatuses to promote his goals. Furthermore, he is militarising the barrios, and organising the training of armed units there. And, the ultimate scare: now that he is feeling the economic effects of capital’s ‘resistance’ to his rule (temporary shortages of some goods in the state-subsidised supermarkets), he has announced plans to consolidate the 24 parties that support him into a single party. Even some of his allies are sceptical about this move: will it come at the expense of the popular movements that have given the Venezuelan revolution its élan? However, this choice, though risky, should be fully endorsed: the task is to make the new party function not as a typical state socialist (or Peronist) party, but as a vehicle for the mobilisation of new forms of politics (like the grass roots slum committees). What should we say to someone like Chávez? ‘No, do not grab state power, just withdraw, leave the state and the current situation in place’? Chávez is often dismissed as a clown – but wouldn’t such a withdrawal just reduce him to a version of Subcomandante Marcos, whom many Mexican leftists now refer to as ‘Subcomediante Marcos’? Today, it is the great capitalists – Bill Gates, corporate polluters, fox hunters – who ‘resist’ the state.

The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html

So, Harman is commenting on the other unacceptable things Zizek says, not so much the ridiculous last paragraph.

The last paragraph was in fact parodied effectively by Prof CLark (in a way similar to my attempt two posts ago, but far better):


From T.J. Clark

Convinced, nay, chastened by Slavoj Žižek’s arguments for a new realism on the left, I shall be campaigning over the next months to dissuade those planning to ‘save their beautiful souls’ in street protests against the bombing of Iran from doing any such thing (LRB, 15 November). And I have written a letter to my congresswoman (she’s a bit of an anti-war firebrand, so Žižek will forgive me if my intervention fails to have immediate results), along the lines: ‘While respectfully recognising the US state’s representation of my interests, and its right and duty to protect them by force of arms, might I propose that you propose that the strike against Iranian facilities be limited to 50 bunker busters per nuclear installation, with a total TNT not exceeding, say, half the Hiroshima device per site? And could I put in a plea for restraint in the use of depleted uranium? I realise this may be intruding too far on the administration’s prerogatives, but would you perhaps suggest, to those in the know, double-checking of intelligence before the targets are finally decided on? Oh yes, collateral damage . . . Couldn’t we make a strictly between presidents offer of undercover medical help, Quds force to Quds force, in the unlikely event?’ These seem to me ‘strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands’. They’re sure to do the trick.

T.J. Clark

University of California, Berkeley

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n24/letters.html

[gilhyle]

Roscolnikova

I still think it would be helpful if you could articulate something Zizek has articulated clearly that should be articulated. Rosa has posted an article by Zizek that is quite superficial.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Rosa has posted an article by Zizek that is quite superficial.

Are there any that are much different?

[Rascolnikova]

Roscolnikova

I still think it would be helpful if you could articulate something Zizek has articulated clearly that should be articulated. Rosa has posted an article by Zizek that is quite superficial.


I have been thinking about this, I'm not really sure what to say.

I am nothing like an expert on Zizek, and among those who are actually well read in it I have virtually no background in philosophy. I had been hoping to get some examples out of his most recent books, which would take me a few more days to get a hold of, but I'm not sure I could explicate or defend them to any of our satisfaction.

The insights I take from Zizek seem to be very straightforward ones; his stance against pluralism (http://difficultjane.blogspot.com/2008/11/word-from-zizek.html), for example. It's not an original idea; I'm sure plenty of other people have said it. To me, neither of those factors mitigate the fact that Zizek says it frequently and well, and that in our present culture it badly needs saying.

Similarly, his definition of seems a useful bit of analysis to me. Is it deeply relevant to most historical notions of fascism? I'm not sure and I don't find it incredibly likely. However, to diametrically oppose those who see systemic problems as stemming from systemic flaws (socialists) with those who see systemic problems as external, and therefore as excellent fodder for xenophobia (fascists) is, to me, revealing and interesting. It's like I've been describing social problems with a memorized quadratic formula all my life and I finally learned how to factor polynomials. . . it explains something satisfyingly deeper about the way things work.

Here's a bit on class structure* (http://difficultjane.blogspot.com/2008/10/freely-choen.html) that I'm told is (partly) from him, though I don't know where from and didn't read it myself.

Even that "ridiculous" last paragraph seems quite sensible to me. The parody is a straw man, as he's clearly not advocating letters to one's senate. When he quotes "one is lost the moment one picks up the guns and sticks," perhaps it would do to bear in mind one of his most recent titles, a defense of that which is already lost. The suggestion that protests serve to legitimize the war is not unfounded--in fact, after the famous Stanford Prison Experiments the professor who carried them out described this as one of the key ways unjust systems of power legitimize and maintain themselves: offering a way for the betrayed to voice the injustice. . . without, of course, offering them any power towards fixing it.

Whether finite demands are the wrong ones to make depends, of course, on how one defines things--but to suggest, rather than that all troops must come home now, that they must be withdrawn from some particular region by some particular date--does not seem even slightly absurd to me--particularly if that's the amount of leverage one actually has.


Are these ideas of philosophical import or uniqueness? I have no idea--I'm in no position to say. I can only stand by my original statement--they've been useful to me.


By the way, thank you very much, Rosa, for the explanation. Much appreciated. :)


*I should mention that my blog is written mostly for my local friends and family, an extremely conservative audience even by national standards in the US, and that both of these entries have elicited a substantial number of positive or open-mindedly-questioning emails from people who generally think communists ought to be burned at the stake.

[gilhyle]

Thank you for this. Much appreciated. Dont think the links are working.

However since the links dont work for me, I cant really assess what impresses you

[Rascolnikova]

You're welcome. The links aren't really that substantive; they're just examples of my using Zizek at a conservative audience. At any rate, you might be able to get to them by going to www.diffficultjane.blogspot.com (http://www.diffficultjane.blogspot.com) and clicking on the topic "Zizek."

Edit: I did try them, and they worked for me, so I don't know.

[gilhyle]

OK I got to 'Maybe we need a different chicken.....' Zizek says he is against 'tolerance'......in this analysis he picks holes in the dominant ideology. He accepts it as a rational world view and then shows the inconsistencies in it. At first sight, that is interesting; I can see that - particularly in a conservative context. But it is interesting primarily from the perspective that the way to deal with a conservative environment is to point out the internal inconsistencies in the dominant view.

But what happens when you have uncovered such inconsistencies. I accept that it can make your own life more bearable. You can relate to those around you, without succumbing to them - you can measure a distance between you and them in a way that they might acknowledge, in the sense that they and you can find common terms of reference in standards of reason. They can deny the inconsistency of their positions and you can use Zizek to assert that inconsistency or incredibility of that position.

It is particularly desirable to have these kind of standards to situate yourself when you are isolated.

But at another level there is something abusrd in this kind of analysis. Zizek takes superficial targets, like the popular idea of nature as a balanced equilbrium to which we should return. Grant that Zizek wins this argument, but more articulate environmentalists can easily assimilate his argument and restate their conclusions. Where to then ?

And the same goes for most of his arguments. The paper tiger of popular cultural concepts are deconstructed to reveal paradox or complexity.....and then Zizek stops

"I know very well that its a fake what Im saying, but none the less in a sense I believe in it" Circa Minute 19 of the talk by Zizek

[Reclaimed Dasein]

Well, here is the entire article (with the sections I think Harman is commenting upon highligted in bold):

One of the clearest lessons of the last few decades is that capitalism is indestructible.

These positions are not presented as a way of avoiding some ‘true’ radical Left politics – what they are trying to get around is, indeed, the lack of such a position. This defeat of the Left is not the whole story of the last thirty years, however. There is another, no less surprising, lesson to be learned from the Chinese Communists’ presiding over arguably the most explosive development of capitalism in history, and from the growth of West European Third Way social democracy. It is, in short: we can do it better. In the UK, the Thatcher revolution was, at the time, chaotic and impulsive, marked by unpredictable contingencies. It was Tony Blair who was able to institutionalise it, or, in Hegel’s terms, to raise (what first appeared as) a contingency, a historical accident, into a necessity. Thatcher wasn’t a Thatcherite, she was merely herself; it was Blair (more than Major) who truly gave form to Thatcherism.

The response of some critics on the postmodern Left to this predicament is to call for a new politics of resistance. Those who still insist on fighting state power, let alone seizing it, are accused of remaining stuck within the ‘old paradigm’: the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left.

Simon Critchley’s recent book, Infinitely Demanding, is an almost perfect embodiment of this position.
... ‘Of course,’ Critchley writes,

history is habitually written by the people with the guns and sticks and one cannot expect to defeat them with mocking satire and feather dusters. Yet, as the history of ultra-leftist active nihilism eloquently shows, one is lost the moment one picks up the guns and sticks. Anarchic political resistance should not seek to mimic and mirror the archic violent sovereignty it opposes.

Their paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls: they made it clear that they don’t agree with the government’s policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it: not only did the protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they also served to legitimise it.


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html

So, Harman is commenting on the other unacceptable things Zizek says, not so much the ridiculous last paragraph.

The last paragraph was in fact parodied effectively by Prof CLark (in a way similar to my attempt two posts ago, but far better):



http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n24/letters.html
Is it hard being this mendacious? Did you actually read the article in any substantive way? I've added italics to relevant sentences that are often IN THE SAME GOD DAMN PARAGRAPH AS THE THING YOU'RE CRITICIZING. For example, you highlight
Yet, as the history of ultra-leftist active nihilism eloquently shows, one is lost the moment one picks up the guns and sticks. Anarchic political resistance should not seek to mimic and mirror the archic violent sovereignty it opposes. Maybe it might be salient to point out IT'S CRITCHLEY WHO FUCKING SAYS IT AND ZIZEK IS CRITIZISING IT. Maybe we are mystics for holding the Materialism is a controversial philosophical subject and intellegent people can have differeing views on it, but at least WE GENERALLY READ THE FUCKING THINGS WE CRITICIZE. Your use of this essay is especially stupid since, if you actually read the fucking essay in anyway, you would know it has a very specific context. He's criticizing the post-modern left. He makes that point several times. We all know how much of a big fan you are of the post-modern left.

As for the question of the protests, he points out there is a seeming paradox. Both sides were satisfied. It seems then, that goal of the protests weren't to stop the war if both sides were satisfied. I don't mean to sound like a mystic, but do you think it's possible that someone could take enjoyment from something besides their stated goal? Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, these protesters doen't actually give a shit about Iraqis, but really just want to make themselves feel better about themselves? Could Zizek be right, that if they really did give a shit they would enter a true campaign of disruptive actions against the military, government, and corporate interests involved? It seems that if Americans and Britons actually gave a shit about the things their governments were doing, they wouldn't march in the street. They'd fire bomb. It's a gross simplification, but I'll leave it to you to misunderstand it as best you can. I'm confident it's quite well.

As for his online lecture, he's lecturing to a bookstore. He's not presenting a paper to philosophers. He's trying to convince the people in the audience that ideology isn't dead. I'll be perfectly honest. I agree with him in this context. We'd get a hell of a lot better response, action, and motivation towards communism if we handed out copies of John Carpenters "They Live" instead of Rosa's overwroght essays against dialectical materialism. If you're going to make criticisms of Zizek I want to see them come from his texts with the context of that text.

As for Alain Badiou, I haven't read much of his works. I have being and event, but until I know set theory I'm not going to approach it. His work on politics and ethics has been very influential so I'm very interested in his ideas. When I finish up some of the work I have outstanding, I'd be more than happy to have a Badiou reading group with whomever is interested.