RE: AUT: Statist Thinking

[chris wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris H:
Now the concept of Negativity in Hegelian thinking, I have always found
deeply problematic.  While I try to reconcile my empathy with a critical
Hegelian analysis (a la Marx and Debord) with D&G's analysis, I always
find that Negativity is the sticking point.  But to what extent is a
critical Hegelian standpoint grounded in the Negative?

I am critical of Debord, to the extent that his analysis of the
spectacle does not seem to pay any attention to positive struggles and
consequently risks imploding in the myopic viewpoint of the spectacle.
Likewise, it seems at times that Marx falls into the myopic viewpoint of
Capital.

And yet I think one of the virtues of Marx's stuff is that he moves
towards a more positive position (contra Hegel).  Class struggle becomes
a positive force, pushing Capital to expel the working class in the
production process to the greatest extent possible through the
introduction of machinery, etc.  Likewise, the situationist's stuff
cannot be restricted to simply the spectacle, but rather they push
through all sorts of positive measures (workers council's, etc).  It
seems clear that capital will not simply generate irs own opposition.
This is fundamentally a backwards analysis.  Rather, capital itself
seems to be a sort of black hole generated by the positive activity of
workers.

Chris W:
First, what do you think is meant by 'negativity'/negation?  Have you
worked through Hegel's notion of 'sublation' (the better translation of
aufhebung)?

What I think is missing here is the relation of positive and negative,
in all dialectical work (and this is why Debord and Marx have such a
deep appreciation of Hegel.)  Hegel understood this as well, btw and it
is distinctly not where he differs from Marx and Debord.

However, I see not point in going into it here since I do not want to
lecture on negation when it is better to read Hegel and Marx to see what
is meant.  This is the source of many debates and much antipathy (see
the whole tradition of post-Heidegger French philosophy which seems to
hate nothing so much as negation/negativity in the dialectical sense.
One wonders if it is not that more than anything that upsets them about
dialectic.)

Chris H:
So then by beginning in struggle can the critical Hegelian perspective
be reconciled with D&G?  I have doubts.  Yet it seems like both projects
are opening onto a similar sense of praxis.

Chris W:
The object is not reconciliation, in dialectic, at least not in the
sense I think you are using.  'Does Deleuze's work have a place in the
movement of Spirit coming to know itself?' would be somewhat more
accurate, though that has little importance here.  For all of my
interest in Hegel, one cannot 'apply' Hegel or Hegelianize Marx.  Both
notions go against what Hegel and Marx were doing.  Dialectic is not
'applied'.  Negation is not mere destruction or opposition.  Of course I
say that having played around a bit with Hegel's notion of Understanding
in relation to the elections, but that was more shorthand for my own
purposes.  To write that out for analysis would require more work and a
different exposition.

Cheers,
Chris

ps - Hegel does write about spontaneity and his notion of spontaneity is
not causal.




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