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

[".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lowe,

I'm not persuaded that the essence of socdem or
liberal politics are deterritorialising, by
definition or whatever.  I'm a little perplexed as
to why you would argue as much, and then wonder
whether I'm the one arguing for historical
necessity.

Democratisation and liberalisation as
deterritorialising processes is a fantasy about
essential qualities, imo; and a progressivist one
at that.  What those politics are is what they do
(the formalisation, the practices, the
apparatuses); not the idealised pose they strike.

In capitalism, socdem and liberal politics are the
*distribution* of liberalisation and
democratisation (& criminalisation and tyranny) as
quantifiable degrees of such and, more often than
not, the formalisation of this distribution in
spatial or physical terms (ie.,
territorialisation).

Which is, by way of continuing a related
conversation, precisely why it remains important
to point out that the New Deal presupposed unpaid
domestic labour and a docile 'Third World.'

So while I don't doubt that there isn't necessity,
I do doubt that a project which is as eurocentric
and gendered as that propounded in _Empire_ is
capable of asking any interesting questions about
the (possible) re-distribution of criminalisation
and tyranny that accompanies the 'forward march'
of 'progressive capital.'

Angela
_______________

<end message>


: >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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