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

[Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau@xxxxxxxxx>]

> 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.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. What does historical necessity
have to do with my "arguing"? As for whether socdem or liberal
politics are deterritorializing, I'd say that they'd have to be,
insofar as capitalism is deterritorializing in and of itself. Don't
confuse what I was saying earlier with saying that
deterritorialization equates wonderful world of utopia. No. The point
is rather to note that when deterritorialization occurs one has the
opportunity to reproduce *differently*. The person who goes around
waiting for god to fall outta the sky because nothing really changes
here on earth is a person who (in my experience) doesn't recognize
when and how they play a role in the maintenance or the transition
away from bad practices or bad, unsuitable conditions.

> 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.

Democratization and liberalization (if they are real processes) have
an "essence" only with respect to each thing they are differentiating
themselves from. I.e. If there is rigid hierarchy in economy or in
political decision, democratization has an "essence" only viz-a-viz
that basis of hierarchy from which it moves. If has nothing to do with
fantasy. Either it happens or it doesn't.

Deterritorialization mean only the uprooting of territorialized
processes. It has no essence in and of itself. You and I and everyone
here is a territorial being. For you or me to be changed in our
territorialization of our worlds requires deterritorialization. We are
always reterritorialized upon other things, but these are two separate
issues (processes).

> 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).

OK. So if "social democratic" and "liberal" politics as politicians
use these words are particular socio-historical forms of politics and
logics, then they are not and cannot be considered synonymous with
liberalization or democratization. Clearly if you look at socdem and
liberal politics in any one nation, or cross referencing two or
several nations, you see that not only would the meaning of these
terms vary over time, but that they would vary as well in their actual
politics and their actual logics (ways of thinking). Capitalism itself
is exemplary of this. It is not synonymous with any one of its forms.
It is all of them each and at the same time. Because it has no
"essence" unless that essence is both recognized as dynamic (meaning
measurable only by the changes it effectuates over time) and
relational (total abstract capital should represent nothing other than
the relation(ing) between individual capitals). You risk not
recognizing the significance of particular changes if you clump these
differences into the "platonic" One of capitalism (self-same...
'nothing new under the sun' etc). That one is precisely the thing
being changed.

> 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.'

Ok.

> 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.'

Ah... you're such a pessimist. All I'm asking is that this (possible)
"criminalization and tyranny" not be so messianistically announced in
advance. Perhaps it will if all the multitude did was sit around and
complain about life and theorists and blah blah... "The world sucks!
I'm gonna go watch MTV!". But I know that all the world isn't like
that. You I don't believe are like that. But part of what I see H&N to
be doing is precisely to give people the conceptual tools such that
they see that change is in fact possible, and not only that but that
it is and has been occuring all along. Maybe there is (as someone here
suggested many months ago) a bit of "cheerleading" in such an
endeavor, but I say much more of that than the tyranny of cynics and
"realists" who sit back and do nothing while those who really believe
go about reshaping and making the world (on both sides of the coin,
left and right). You ever see the confidence and the faith and the
belief a corporate big shot has that he can accomplish the impossible?
And the thing is they do... all the time. I've spent a great deal of
time in both Bxl and DC so I often running across them. And I've
learned a lot from them. Those rare people who accomplish rare acts
and feats are people who for whatever reason left themselves and the
world underdetermined. The 'anything's possible' slogan become the
anything's possible for *me* or for *us* as well slogan. I'd agree
that Empire was an "audacious" book, but I think Negri has always been
an audacious person. Not afraid to go out on a limb. I think that
should be applauded... critiqued when necessary, and appreciated for
what it is (positive or negative) at any rate. Maybe it does nothing
for you (as Zizek does nothing for me) but I think to say its
incapable of asking or addressing important questions reflects a prior
act of not taking it all that seriously.


Lowe



> 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
> :
> :
> :      --- from list
>
>
> : aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
> :
>
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>


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