Re: AUT: RE: antiwar movement

[chris wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 14:49, Nate Holdren wrote:
> 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).

Possibly, indeed.  A good thing to look out for.

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)

A notion, like Spinoza's Substance, which is used in a quite
metaphysical way, just as one could critique Nietzsche's use of the
notion of Life as fundamentally metaphysical, too.

 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 am not sure that immanence is so much better for this than the
dialectic.  Both lay claim (and how credibly is really the content of
many debates here) to achieving what you find valuable in the idea of
immanence.  Anyway, a good point.

> it gets
> so tiresome to have to discuss the identity of identity and difference or
> the monad of monads or 'whatever singularity' before one can have a
> discussion about the labor process or barricade building and stone throwing
> [not to reify or impose that particular model of action, but it is somewhat
> dear to my heart as a young romantic].) *sigh*

A discussion about the labor process is not quite the same thing as
building barricades.  The former involves an engagement with the
dominant ideas and some form of critique of them, whether the Deleuzian
buggering or the Marxian immanent critique.  Neither one is required to
a) build barricades b) support revolutionary transfrmation or work in
particular struggles c) be a communist.

There is no reason to counterpose critique in practice and critique in
theory, but they aren't the same either.  The hope, IMO, is that in
critiquing ideology, we help to clarify what is being done or not done,
maybe not to help communicate it to others (though that is not a bad
goal, but not one which will in any way guarantee that someone wants to
take up arms alongside us, so to speak), but to communicate to ourselves
within a particular situation (maybe this is a singularity or a
collective situation), to clarify our movement.

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Chris



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