Re: AUT: RE: Fwd: [FSE-ESF] The Truth about Sunday

[Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau@xxxxxxxxx>]

Angela,

>forms of
> political control and repression aren't abandoned
> by liberal and socdem politics, they're
> refashioned (often made more internal or
> proximate). It's not a question of better or
> worse.  It's a question, imo, of different
> modalities.

I believe you are conflating two separate types of process when you
say this. On the one hand, you have the processes of liberalization
and democritization (which are in each case types of
deterritorialization -- I cannot think of another term that would be
equally suitable to explain this type of process here) and then you
have the erection of apparatuses of control and repression (which are
acts or processes of reterritorialization). They are completely
separate acts whose fomalizations do not necessarily follow from each
other.

For example, I could have a really shocking or dramatic experience...
immediately from the perspective of my body, a state or level of
comfort has been completely deterritorialized from thats states
possession of "me". [process type 1]. At this level there is yet no
qualitative character givable to the "what" of this experience. I.e. I
can't say what that experience was for me. Immediately after though
(the experience has ceased) I am called to respond, to give quality,
judgement, reaction to that experience. Historically I may tend to
respond to such events by becoming defensive, annoyed or hostile. Yet
there is only memory to say whether history repeats itself or whether
my capacity to think (to produce) overrides my natural impulse for
memory to continue acting itself out (to reproduce itself). [process
type 2]. Yet this act is entirely separate and in fact of a different
nature than the first.

A liberal or sociodemocratic politics (which are by definition
deterritorializing processes) very well might reproduce continually
political control and repression. But this happens all the more the
less one pays attention to what happens of the acts of "reproduction"
(as Balibar shows in Reading Capital... I think it was him.. or maybe
it was Althusser, I don't have that book any longer so I can't be sure
now, when they talk about transition). There is thus nothing that
necessitates ANY particular formalization of the reproduced, thats
being because while genres, culture, memory, fundamentalization etc
etc. might command repetition, the thing(s) being commanded is
ultimately open to its decision (which one could also call its
subjectivity or difference).

Lowe


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