AUT: spinoza/lacan - reply to Nate

["David McInerney" <borderlands@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nate,

This might be a digression from the current thread, but I just thought I'd
ask these simple questions and make these comments in response to your
latest post while it is still fresh in my mind.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 6:19 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: RE: antiwar movement


> Hi Peter-
> Sorry for the rough and schematic character of this (as usual) hasty post,
> I'm pressed for time (as usual). Well put and I like the references to the
> Colectivo Situaciones and Precarias a la Deriva. What's the problem,
though,
> with communicability? Sure, there are no communicative guarantees -
> conversational misfire can always happen - but isn't incommunicability
just
> another unpleasant cousin in the same family as transcendence? It's like
> talk about absolute difference from certain anti-hegelian camps, one moves
> away from some of the sillier excesses of the tradition but still retains
an
> absolute, a foundationalism (or a despair over the lack of achieving a
> viable foundation). The reason I'm drawn to the Spinozist approaches to
> Marxism is precisely because in the idea of immanence (which I don't
pretend
> to really understand) it seems to me there's an affirmation that the
> hacienda can always be built, in theory speaking, that is, that
> relationships are always constructed and at least potentially
constructible.
> One may fail in a project, communication may not occur or may break down,
> but that doesn't mean it was impossible, that failure was guaranteed from
> the outset.

I wonder what you think of Etienne Balibar's more recent (since his split
from the PCF in the early 1980s) works, such as _Spinoza and Politics_?  He
has added a chapter on 'Politics and Communication' to the expanded english
edition (1998).  His work differs from Negri's in interesting ways, and in
many ways is less of a 'system' philosophically and perhaps less optimistic
politically.  One of the great things about his work - and this goes back to
the reasons for his split with the PCF, namely their racist immigration
policies - is its engagement with issues of race and nation in relation to
class and also he has done some very interesting stuff on the
intellectual/manual division of labour in relation to racism.

> I'm not sure incommunicability is even a coherent concept, simply by its
> being articulable in language - if one can hang the term 'incommunicable'
on
> a given referent one has just demonstrated that the referent is subject to
> description and communication and has a relationship with all those other
> things termed 'incommunicable'. I'm not trying to grind any hegelian or
> davidsonian axe here, I'm not all that invested in the various
philosophies
> of language and philosophies of mind floating around (implied or explicit)
> in political discussions. Rather, I think this may not be the most
> productive avenue of thought (much like interminable and boring
discussions
> over sameness and difference) for political inquiry. (Just as certain
> conversations I've had with Lacanian folks serve to my mind as a reductio
ad
> absurdum argument against the idea that Lacan is politically useful.)

I have never read anything by a Lacanian that would be considered
politically useful at all.  The most "political" of those writers (by
popular account) is Zizek, but his work seems to boil down to the answer
"Lacan (as Zizek imagines him) is always right", and every political
situation presents itself not as in need of concrete, open-ended analysis of
relations of forces but rather simply a demonstration of it manifests the
triptych of Symbolic-Imaginary-Real.  How droll.  It's like a giant sausage
factory.  All sorts of interesting and different material go in, but the
same bland Lacanian sausages always come out.

I was a fan of Zizek et al many years ago (1994-95) but soon came to the
realisation that, like Anthony Giddens, he simply writes the same book over
and over again with new examples.

DM




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