Re: AUT: RE: CLR James, Hegel, Deleuze etc.

["Chris Hurl" <munkah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, I am always sheepish about getting into this stuff with you group of theophiles, however, at this point I think I just gotta bite the bullet.  I am fairly new to Hegel, so my ignorance may show through.  I have only skimmed the smaller Logic and attained access through Marx, CLR James, and a few others, so forgive me if I am way off.

It seems to me that he has been bastardized.  Marx, it seems, overlooked the concreteness of Hegel's philosophy, and consequently overstated his idealism. Deleuze saw him as the theorist of the State in a very undialectical fashion, failing to recognize how Hegel was simultaneously pointing to a universal State, a State which became everything while at the same time becoming nothing.

Chris, I liked your overview, going over a history of the United States and the different tendencies running through over the past little while.  When you speak of the universal and the particular, it strikes me as very Hegelian.  I am specifically thinking of a passage, where Hegel rips into Understanding:

"You cannot escape the consequences of the Notion.  A Notion is a Notion.  It embraces all the parts and they are inseparable.  Understanding first of all gets Universalities lacking all colour, content, life and spirit.  But these products of abstraction which have scorned the Individual, the concrete, are individuals themselves.  Understanding takes the concrete and makes that into the Universal.  It therefore sees the Universal only as determinate Universality: and therefore the concrete, the Individual, which it has elevated into this position has taken upon itself the tremendous task of determining itself (self-relation).  For this the concrete thus pushed up into the situation of Universal is quite unfitted."

Now it seems Hegel is of use particularly in understanding the relationship between the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the particular terms that cannot be isolated from one another but also cannot be completely melded together.  They bleed into one another in dialectical fashion.  Yet there is a disjuncture presumed, a disjuncture that I don't think Deleuze and Guattari really get at.

So, Chris when you speak of a white, middle class universal being pushed into the world, it is like taking the concrete and making it universal.  The partial situation of this group is pushed onto the world and becomes an overarching reality defining not just their own situation but also the situation of others.  Understanding is unable to understand difference.  Understanding is the notion causght up in its own abstraction.

 but the notion is not just a thought, it is a concrete process ("these products of abstraction... are individuals themselves).  Dialectical cognition explores the movement to abstraction and its repression of difference (like capital represses labour in its fantasy of self-birth).  Hegel's thinking is often falsified in the simple formula Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis.  Thus, the Antithesis is often presumed to be an external and separate moment, when in fact the antithesis was always inside and against the thesis; it is all that the thesis represses.

am I on the right track here?

--chris







>From: chris wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>To: aut-op-sy <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>Subject: Re: AUT: RE: CLR James, Negri, etc.

>Date: 05 Nov 2004 11:03:35 -0500

>

>I have not yet read Difference and Repetition, and I hope to at some

>point in the near future, as it is clearly serious work.  Nonetheless,

>everyhing every Deleuze-influenced person has said on thi list over the

>last few years about Hegel has, almost without exception, been exactly

>the kind of twaddle one expects from generic academics and the little

>bit I have read of Deleuze has been on Hegel and it is insipid.

>

>Of course, having not read his masterwork, maybe I am unfair.  That is

>of course possible and if so, I will stand corrected.

>

>In the meantime, not everyone here who reads Deleuze is deleusional re:

>reality and as harsh as I am on certain matters, I appreciate the

>serious attention some people have given to current issues.

>

>Cheers,

>Chris

>

>On Thu, 2004-11-04 at 09:42, Lowe Laclau wrote:

> > > Firstly, just because Deleuze studied with Hyppolite does not mean that

> > > he understands Hegel.  That is a non sequitir, and an authoritarian one

> > > at that, Lowe.  Don't be stupid.

> > >

> > Well I wasn't suggesting that just because X necessarily Y. If you

> > read Deleuze you know that he's well versed in him. Everyone of his

> > period in France had to know him, because he was a part of the

> > intellectual insitution there at that time. Hence Hyppolite position.

> >

> > > Deleuze's work is simultaneoulsy serious, in so far

> > > as his own work is a serious matter, and infantile, in so far as he

> > > rehashes the same lame critiques of Hegel one could find from any range

> > > of academics who have not read Hegel.

> >

> > And yet again, you show this haste in judging him that isn't

> > supportable. Have you read him? Cause if not why would you try to so

> > hostilely critique him? It doesn't seem to me that you've read him

> > because you'd know how completely inappropriate such a comment would

> > be. What I'd recomment is that you go back and sit yourself in front

> > of Difference & Repetition and come back and tell me if this is the

> > argument of "any range of academics who have not read Hegel". Till

> > this day this book written in '68 has no equals (not with its dealings

> > with the issue of difference, the concept, representation nor with

> > this minor theme of Hegel). Plenty of this contemporary would also

> > critique Hegel (Derrida for one) but not in this way. And this book is

> > one that could not have been written without addressing Hegel, and

> > thoroughly. Rarely, later Hegel will come up in his work and in his

> > lectures, but if there is a silence, it is not because Hegel was such

> > a dumbass to him, but rather he's too busy constructing to repeat. He

> > was never one to simply critique without reconstructing something else

> > (its against his dislike of negativity).

> >

> > > Thirdly, the idea that one can do an end-run around Hegel by going to

> > > Kant (Hegel's daddy?  Really quite a stupid comment on several levels,

> > > even though Kant raises the issues which will play a vital role in

> > > Hegel's concerns, even as he completely breaks with Kant's approach) is

> > > indicative of a very different approach to the matters at hand.

> >

> > OK, OK. We get the point that I'm "stupid". Now lets move on.

> > What I was saying wasn't rather that Hegel wasn't his own individual,

> > but with respect to the "dialectic" the problem he inherits is Kant's.

> > Now it is you who were equating Hegel with the dialectic (insofar as

> > you equated the attack on the dialectic with an attack against Hegel)

> > so my "Hegel's daddy" comment was simply a joke vis-a-vis your

> > proprietorship of him.

> >

> > >Re: Nietzsche and Kant, IMO Nietzsche is

> > > essentially a neo-Kantian in relation to the notion of truth (see the

> > > very informative and well-written book by Maudemarie Clark.)

> >

> > "Neo-Kantian" would be heavily, heavily pushing it. But even Deleuze

> > acknowledges Nietzsche reading of Kant with his later approach that he

> > would in turn use against all the Kants and Plato's of the world.

> > (Nietzsche & Philosophy).

> >

> > > Fourth, how can you say that Deleuze does not go on a tirade re: Hegel?

> > > He refuses to deal with Hegel except to say tha he wans to fuck him in

> > > the ass.  Brilliant!

> >

> > lol.

> >

> > >As for Nietzsche, again, he is not so clearly

> > > against Hegel in his later work when he breaks with Schopenhauer.  But I

> > > would expect that you know these things, mastering the history of ideas

> > > as you have.

> >

> > :)

> >

> > > Fifth, I never equated Deleuze with Leftism, not in ths context.  My

> > > point is that the treatment of Deleuze is often Leftist, something which

> > > I have myself been guilty of from the point of opposing Deleuze, if

> > > indeed he has something worth listening to and which indicates something

> > > of importance.  However, I am not of course obliged to take crap

> > > seriously, but to ask then why crap is taken seriously, into which place

> > > I frankly would put (late) Negri and Hardt and Althusser.

> >

> > No, and nor would anyone expect you to take "crap" seriously. But if

> > something is indeed "crap" as a rule I always keep for myself, know

> > why it is "crap" and know why it is not and will not be relevant to

> > you. For too often I hear people critiquing something just because

> > they heard someone else doing it and even though they don't know why

> > they still associate that thing as a "crap". I don't like that very

> > much.

> >

> > > Finally, as for lumping all these in whit the SI, their sectarianism

> > > does not mean that one can ignore their deep attention to dialectic.  Do

> > > you people ever read Debord?  Please do not talk about my lack of

> > > knowledge of French intellectual and political history if you lump

> > > Debord and the SI in with the anti-dialecticians.

> >

> > I've read Debord, though not thoroughly.

> >

> > My point wasn't so much to critique your Hegelianism (which is fine

> > and well with me if you're happy with it). I don't support it, but

> > what you do with it is your business. The point was rather your hastey

> > judgment of Deleuze's relationship with him, which was just simply

> > inadequate imo. Maybe you can critique certain aspects of D's Hegel (I

> > reiterate the "maybe"!) but you don't do it the way you were trying to

> > go about it. I consider that "name calling" when you say "[insert name

> > here] is so... [insert negative adj.] vis a vis [blank]" but then you

> > say neither why nor how or provide any justification. What it does is

> > attach to the names only certain significations, certain connotations.

> > To the names only and not to particular arguments, not to particular

> > logics. That I find unhelpful and quite negative to the people under

> > discussion. So don't take my statements as being an attack against you

> > or your perspective. I didn't mean it like that.

> >

> > ciao,

> >

> > Lowe

> >

> >

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

>

>

>

>

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





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