re: AUT: Progress

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

So Chris wants us to appreciate Hegel's and Marx's
conception of negativity, but will not deign to
present it to us.  Or rather, to present to us what he
is making of the concept, given that everyone who
reads Hegel seems to come out with a different
reading, and that most of those who read Marx do not
interpret him as a Hegelian at all.  So we are all to
wade through a half-dozen dense volumes of Hegel, not
to mention all 50-plus volumes of Marx, before
returning to the debate.  And we are to understand and
explicate the dense prose we encounter, entirely in
standard English and without any academic jargon.
Easy task indeed!

Chris also revives the very issue in the wake of which
he disappeared from the list, after I took seriously
his urging that I read some pieces on Hegel and after
I responded with a detailed and specific critique,
which Chris dismissed as absurd but did absolutely
nothing to rebut.

The basic line of the critique, some may remember,
was:  Hegel confuses language with existence, reducing
the totality of what exists to the conceptual forms of
language.  Hence the primacy of the Idea, which is
nothing but a misconceived representation of language.
 Because he confuses language with existence, and
denies that existence exceeds language (except perhaps
in the Lacanian sense that language itself contains a
lack which must then materialise in existence also),
Hegel projects the contradictions of language into the
entirety of existence - for instance, interpreting the
excess in existence over language (e.g. the
characteristics or functions of an object designated
as a chair over the concept "chair"), which is in fact
a matter of the inadequacy of representational
language, as problems in existence as such, i.e., as
contradictions internal to the chair itself.  And he
interprets features of linguistic representation (such
as the importance of differentiation in constructing
linguistic categories) as being present in all of
existence (in material things, in subjectivities, in
living entities, etc.), so that the excess of
existence over language comes to appear as a
contradiction within existence.  Finally, he
classifies resistance to existing categories as
negation, because this is the only way it can be
conceived if current categories of representation are
confused with existence as a whole.
But it is negation only in relation to this dominant
discourse; "in itself", it is something which is
affirmative, yet which escapes this dominant
discourse.

Chris's critique of my position was basically that I
have not constructed my categories in the same way as
Hegel's, since he would not for instance have accepted
that differentiation is primarily a feature of
language, and he would have dealt with various issues
in different stages of his book.  Which was an evasion
of the very critique by means of exegesis.  I am not
moving the same way as Hegel, so I must be moving "too
quickly, too sloppily".  And I'm supposed to believe
in mystified commodity-relations which are somehow
prior to their mystification in language.  And deny
that categories, or forms, are linguistic or
psycho-semantic constructs - instead giving them an
existence "in themselves".  And so on and so on.
(This being a generous reading of Chris's replies,
since I have left out the swearing about Kantianism,
moralism, metaphysics, lower levels of thought etc.
which make an absurdity of Chris's new-found hatred of
intellectual denunciations).

What he and I agree on is that I can't get my head
around certain of Hegel's concepts, such as forms
which become the way in which life is lived without
either being imposed by violence or being discursive
constructs or some combination of the two.  Where we
disagree is that he views this as automatically an
inferiority in my "grasping" skills, since I challenge
the Great Master Hegel, whereas for me, it indicates
that Hegel's formulae are in fact meaningless,
severely misguided, or both.  And I have demonstrated
the latter in terms of specific examples and in reply
to Chris's criticisms; there is simply no reason to
believe in forms which exist and yet which are
reducible to no combination of discourse and
corporeality, but which somehow have their own
metaphysical-ideal existence above and beyond all
those things which, in my Deleuzo-empiricist way, I
can "grasp".

Bergson's metaphor makes perfect sense to me.  It
seems to mean:  dialectics drags a set of general
categories (the net) through particularity (the sand)
- a gesture which is patently selective, doing away
with some particularities and capturing others - and
hopes by means of this reductive manoeuvre to
understand the totality or universality (the beach);
when in fact the method has subtracted from the
multiplicity of entities by means of running them
through general categories, the claim is to have
comprehended the totality above the level of such
particularities.  A valid critique in my view.

And yes, I'm one of the annoying idiots silly enough
to question whether "progress" in a Hegelian sense
exists, since I subscribe to a Foucauldian approach to
historical development, though I still use "progress"
as an evaluative criterion, i.e. as a way to say that
one kind of discursive development is in my view
preferable to another.  (Chris would probably call
this moralism, but it is better to be honest about the
fact that one is evaluating when using a concept such
as progress, than to pretend that some general theory
has enabled one to derive ought from is).

The only thing I don't understand is how Chris is able
to continue to produce astute and excellent analyses
of specific situations (the analysis of America and
now his critique of the ridiculous pro-Iraq War
arguments) despite being lumbered with such strange
theoretical baggage.  And what I suspect is happening
is that he is not actually using his specific
theoretical model to any great degree in his analysis.
 He is engaging in detailed specific analyses of
contingent specificities, just as a good Deleuzian or
Foucauldian would - with only an occasional aside
demonstrating a link to Hegelianism (which is also BTW
what people like the Situationists, Fanon, the News
and Letters group, etc., do in their appropriations of
Hegel, and why, again, their Hegelianism does not
impede their astuteness).  And all for the good, since
this still enables the analyses to be produced.  But
the only question is, where does this leave
Hegelianism?  And the answer would seem to be, that a
theory which needs to be left aside in
contingent/practical matters is a theory the
usefulness of which is almost entirely null.  That its
continued coexistence with specific analyses which
exceed it is in fact a barrier to developing theory by
expanding on and linking together the analyses of
contingencies.  And also that it operates as a barrier
to reclaiming those aspects of Hegel (and Marx) which
could be incorporated into an operative theory without
thereby rendering it a silly metaphysical dogma -
thus, in a Zizekian sense, a fidelity to Hegel (and
Marx)which is in fact the ultimate infidelity, since a
true fidelity to Hegel would have to be a critical
fidelity.

Andy


		
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