re: AUT: Progress

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Chris, Chris, Tahir, Peter et al

NOTE:  I reply below to Chris Hurl and Peter as well
as Tahir, who seems to have appointed himself as Chris
Wright?s bodyguard.  If you don?t wanna read all the
other stuff, please at least seek out ?your own? bits
:-)

?I strongly feel that in these
kind of circumstances at least some things happen in
the psyche that
don't happen in terms of language.? (Peter)

And I strongly feel you?re absolutely right here!
Though Tahir is also right that emotions can be
triggered by meanings, it?s also clear that emotions ?
and much else besides ? does not operate purely on a
level of meaning and symbolism.  Guattari for instance
refers to transversal connections, which are
interpersonal and corporeal/material attachments
arising primarily on an unconscious level.  Flows of
desiring-production occur as becoming/flow and not as
being/representation, and there are certain structural
features of language which are not necessarily present
in desiring-production ? the centrality of otherness
in identity, the role of a transcendental signifier
and the primacy of negativity being among them.

BTW Peter, your research agenda sounds very
interesting, and similar to some stuff I?m working on,
and have worked on in the past, around issues of
constructing revolutionary subjectivities? I?d be glad
to exchange articles and/or reading lists if you?re
interested!

?I find your
statement that "no-one can say they understand such an
event" rather
peculiar. Do you mean any understanding at all, or do
you mean something
like the one and only, definitive understanding??

We?re coming back to the repressed Real of Tahir?s
(and Harald?s) humanism here, which I exposed long ago
? the impossibility of making sense of the claim, ?I
don?t know why I did that?, from within a framework
which accepts a molar self who is ?responsible? for,
or intentional in, all actions.  I would take ?no-one
can say they understand such an event? to mean, ?even
the actors themselves say, I don?t know why I did
that?.

?What would be
interesting in the example you mention, would be not
so much whether language
"captures" the event, but rather to listen HOW
different individuals
talk about it, in other words how they understand it.
What frames of
reference do they bring to bear on it.? (Tahir)

This is indeed one aspect which should always be
explored when interpreting social phenomena, and it is
certainly often the case that subterranean meanings
among those who resist operate in ways which escape
dominant significations but which nonetheless are
meaningful to agents, so that the image of
revolutionary ?moments of madness? appearing out of
nowhere is a misleading image resulting from an
excessive concentration on dominant significations at
the expense of ?hidden transcripts? and ?little
traditions? (I?m getting all of this from James Scott
by the way).  I?ve a lot of praise for the methods and
approaches of empirical phenomenology in the social
sciences (Goffman, Lemert, etc etc).

On the other hand, it seems to me that the
transversal/unconscious attachments involved in
forming social action are not necessarily transparent
to the agents themselves, let alone in the transcript
they give to social-scientific researchers, and also,
that sometimes, the motivations are of an
?exceptional? kind in the lifeworld of the resisters
themselves.  Take for instance David Matza?s classic
study ?Delinquency and Drift?, which is part of the
phenomenological field in many respects.  The concept
of a ?mood of fatalism? is absolutely crucial, but not
in that it is a specific meaning; rather, it is an
emotional state which suspends the dominant meanings
(premised on humanist ideology) accepted by the agents
themselves, and which thus produces social action
which is inconceivable in this framework ? i.e.,
within the ordinarily-functioning lifeworld of the
agents themselves.  Does this make a ?mood of
fatalism? meaningless, akin to a Zizekian Act?  Not at
all.  Rather, the agent is split at the level of
meaning-formation, with different meanings articulated
in divergent ways and actualised in different
emotional contexts.  But the emergence of a mood of
fatalism may be experienced by agents themselves as
meaninglessness, and it may operate on a predominantly
unconscious level.  And I think this makes sense of
what Peter is saying ? the language used does not
capture what happened, because it re-inscribes it in
the dominant framework.

It may well be that, for language to express and build
on what happened, the framework of the agents
themselves would have to change.  And maybe, the very
function of language (its representational/repressive
relation to existence) would have to change also, for
the desires involved in the ?event? to ?find voice?.

?I was trying to get at D&G's analysis of the 'event'
as
somehow irreducible and external.? (Chris Hurl)

Actually, Deleuze on the Event reminds me of Matza?s
mood of fatalism a lot; I think they?re talking
basically about the same kind of experience.  You
might find Matza?s work of interest in

?Having said all that, where I do find myself going
along with the dialectic idea is in terms of building
- like Harald described, building the kind of
infrastructure. I've lived through some pretty
powerful events over the last few years, and one thing
I've learnt is that while we cannot capture or hope to
recapture or rekindle these events, it makes sense to
have infrastructure (in terms of trusted comrades,
networks of resources) to support whatever is going to
happen next - to amplify a moment, in a way.?  (Peter)

What this has to do with the dialectic I don?t know?
It reminds me of social movement literature of a very
concrete type, such as Fantasia?s ?Cultures of
Solidarity? and Scott?s various works, and a little
bit of Walter Benjamin (and hopefully we?re not gonna
have some bright spark try to explain how Benjamin?s
messianism is really ?Hegelian?).  And yes, you?re
right about this, with a qualification ? that social
production should operate to serve
desiring-production, not the other way around.  Or, to
translate from Deleuzoguattarian, the point of
creating cultures of solidarity and organisations of
resistance is to amplify and express the emancipatory
energies of the ?events?.  We should aim to avoid a
situation where the ?events? instead become simply a
subordinate element of the growth of the organisation
? an opportunity to party-build, to sell more papers,
to recruit people to a union or party or whatever ?
or, worse still, where the organisation becomes the
justification (or not) of events, so that an event
outside of control is perceived as a threat (e.g. the
reaction of the French Communist Party to the 1968
events).

?I would say they [emotions] are mediated through
language - i.e. the
emotions like anger, joy, etc., are probably
universal,? (Tahir)

Oh here we go again? So clinical depressives feel joy?
 People feel anger, even if there?s nothing to be
angry with?  And no doubt Tahir?s gonna say ?that
isn?t what I meant?, even though it is obviously what
he SAID? Universalism makes me go grrrrr

Yeah, emotions are irreducible to language in the
sense that there is an excess in emotion which is not
conveyed in language (i.e. one does not directly
transmit to another an emotion when one describes or
expresses it), and in the sense that an emotion can be
indescribable or difficult to describe.

?What I would
mention though is the debate that arose in the wake of

post-structuralism between an instrumental view of
language and a constitutive role. The
first is associated with the expressive subject. In
other words
language is just the instrument or the means whereby
the subject expresses
thoughts that have their source in the subject itself.
The second
(preferred) view is one in which received language
actually constitutes
subjectivity.?

A Deleuzoguattarian view would be that language is
indeed expressive or ?instrumental? ? but not for a
?subject?.  Rather, the ?subject? is a product of
language (as in other poststructuralisms), and what
language is instrumental for, is desire (which is both
pre-linguistic and pre-subjective).

?This hoary critique seems to me to miss entirely the
speculative
nature of Hegel's thought.? (Tahir)

Yeah right.  Or maybe it challenges the usefulness of
speculative thought by defying the philosophers?
arrogance in believing that, while all they can use is
language, and while they can themselves show its
limits, they can nevertheless carry on talking about
everything else as if it were outside language in
their discussion?

?Firstly, there is no way for
existence to be thought at all other than through
language,? (Tahir)

Only if ?thought? means the same as ?language?.  And
supposing it does, then, why is it so important that
existence be ?thought? (for which read, REPRESENTED),
instead of being lived, or done, or experienced?

?but any
linguistic representation of the world will in time
reveal its inadequacy
and be superceded by another through a process of
negation? (Tahir)

Leading to a constant movement of ?supercession? of
inadequate formulations by equally inadequate
formulations, along the Lacanian hysteric?s typical
logic of, ?no, THAT?S not it??  And no progress
whatsoever, since the new formulation will itself also
be necessarily inadequate.  So why participate in the
whole charade, especially when you realise the new
ideology must be as flawed as the old, and must
inevitably itself be superceded?  In what sense is it
?progress?, when it does not resolve the deadlock but
simply moves it elsewhere?

?But when one looks
at human, that is, social, existence, this existence
is in fact only
possible at all through language.? (Tahir)

And again with the essentialist crap.  So babies who
do not (yet) speak, autistics who do not speak, etc.,
are not ?human??  Any relations they enter into,
whether with others who speak or others who do not,
are not ?human? or ?social??  And relations between
social animals are not ?social? because there is no
?language? involved?

A few counterpoints.  Firstly, Tahir knows that the
Deleuzian way of conceptualising existence beyond
representation has to do with desire,
desiring-machines, etc., and that the language used to
articulate such concepts is far from the usual
representational use of language, so that it
subordinates language- and meaning-production to
desiring-production.  Secondly, that the Deleuzian
objection to language is primarily to the
representational function of language, which Tahir
embraces openly.  Hence, an attempt to impede the
operation of essentialist formulae and repressive
social roles and so on, which is central to the
Deleuzian ?beheading? (so to speak) or cutting down to
size of language, is unthinkable in Hegelian terms,
since Hegelianism inscribes the necessity of the
return of the repressive structure ? the inadequate
representational language must be replaced by a better
language with a different inadequacy.  An altering of
the relationship between language and existence, a
reduction of language to an instrumental role in
relation to desire and its articulation to active
instead of reactive desires, is unthinkable in
Hegelian terms.  Thirdly, that the point in Deleuze
and Guattari is not a ?radical separation of existence
and language? but an affirmation that existence
without or in excess over language can exist, and that
it is not at an ontological level a ?lack? or
?negativity?.

Note this, folks:  Tahir is here admitting that
Hegelianism is based on an elevation of language into
a driving principle of theory, so that existence is
identified with language and an analysis of language
is taken as functionally equivalent with an analysis
of all of existence.  Hence, what exceeds and escapes
language must be conceived as ?contradiction? and
?negativity?, because this is how it is inscribed in
language ? even if these labels massively distort
one?s perception of the generative logics operating in
the social operation of this excess ? even if it is
more accurately depicted as an affirmativity which
exceeds representation.

(And a slight clarification:  The point in D&G as I
understand their work is not to stop using language,
but to stop treating its imperfection as an
imperfection IN EXISTENCE, but rather, to see it as a
limit in this particular ?tool? ? thus leading to a
quite different, and less obsessive, relationship to
language and meaning which puts desiring-production
before language and uses language to
express-actualise-articulate rather than to represent.
 Thus confining representational language to a limited
role, if any.  Schizoid speech, childish babbling and
postmodern poetry are all examples of uses of language
which are non-representational.  For me, the most
important thing is that ?I/we don?t know? not be
confused with nonexistence or even the impossibility
of perceiving, living, doing, or feeling something ?
so that this excess need not be inscribed as trauma or
lack or as a problem to be rectified.  c.f. also
Korzybski?s general semantics, which seems to me to
dovetail with the Deleuzian project in many respects).

?Thus a formulation like
"existence exceeds language", while obviously true
(trite) in one sense,
is quite wrong in another, where language is indeed
the very condition
of possibility of (social, human) existence.? (Tahir)

yadda yadda yadda.  Hey Tahir, tell us what a
?condition of possibility? is.  This sounds like
Hegelian gobbledegook to me.  Do you mean that people
without language would die out, even though many
animal species survive without language?  Do you mean
that no social relations can exist among humans
without language, even though (for instance) the cases
of children raised by animals blatantly disprove this?

I don?t believe in ?conditions of possibility?, which
seem to me to be a typical philosopher?s blackmail ?
?well, you may be very happy with your naïve
pre-philosophical believes, but look ? your EXISTENCE
is CONDITIONED by what we study, even though only WE
know this!?

And I?m the one being accused constantly of jargon for
fucks sake.

?Forget 'chair' (I don't mean to imply that you are
altogether
correct regarding the chair matter), rather tell me
how 'capitalism'
exists independently of language.? (Tahir)

I never said it did.  In fact, I argued against Chris
that commodity fetishism is a semantic phenomenon and
not some vague metaphysical ?form? which somehow
exists without anywhere being present (as well as
disagreeing with his assumption that a chair is
somehow reducible to its representation as a
commodity).  But I did say that capitalism, because it
is principally representational, is not inescapable.
And I?ve argued repeatedly against the Hardt/Negri
kind of line that there is no outside of capital,
because one can always pose against a representational
system, either an alternative set of representations
or non-representational forces.

To the extent that capitalism is a product simply of
language, overcoming capitalism is a matter of
developing alternative meanings and developing
distrust in dominant meanings.  Thinking differently.
The Situationist ?reversal of perspective? for
instance.  And if this is not enough to overthrow
capitalism, then it is because capitalism also has
extra-linguistic aspects ? first of all, libidinal
(emotional/psychological) attachments which operate
unconsciously and which have to be combatted at the
level of the development of libidinal attachments and
not only at the level of meaning, and secondly, an
apparatus of coercion which attempts to IMPOSE
capitalist representations by using physical violence
to suppress attempts to actualise alternatives.

What any of this has to do with Hegel is not very
clear, especially given that, using the Santa Claus
example, Tahir must capitalism is transcended the
moment a worker sees something which doesn?t work the
way capitalist ideology says it does and feels a
resultant ?cognitive dissonance?, causing the adoption
of new beliefs.  (Or rather, since I very much doubt
he means this, that there are contradictions in his
own theory of contradictions LOL)

?It IS a contradiction within existence - that's
exactly what it
is. Do you honestly want to tell me that existence
does not include a
subject/object relation?? (Tahir)

Again, Tahir shows that his own Hegelianism falls
directly into the perspective I?m critiquing, thereby
confirming the accuracy of my depiction!  Except I?m
not sure Tahir?s Hegelianism is very clear, because it
doesn?t sound much like Chris?s.  But anyway:  Tahir
knows damn well what I think about subjects, because
we had the whole ?molar self? debate ages ago.  So
yes, I DO honestly want to tell you that existence
does not include a binary between subject and object.

?Differentiation is involved in all processes - things

fall apart, they really do! - think about embryology
for example, or,
equally, social movements. Your rejection of
differentiation (by consigning
it to some autonomous sphere of 'language') would
imply a snapshot
world, a static world of objects that are (a)
unchanging and (b) without
subjects,?

You are utterly distorting the idea of differentiation
which it was bloody obvious I was using, i.e. the idea
that the identity of an object is defined by its being
different from other objects, rather than its simply
being what it is (or becoming what it ?is?-becoming).
And this has nothing to do with embryology or movement
breakdown or anything else of the kind.  Rather, the
splitting of an object is its becoming-other, which is
part of its affirmative-immanent process of becoming.
It does not generate a dependence of the being or
becoming of the object on otherness, lack, negativity,
etc etc.  This arises only in language.

?I suggest you think a
little more about the interesting topic of emergence.
How something
emerges from another and then enters into a
contradiction with that from
which it emerged, consciousness for example.?

It is only emergence relative to an external
perspective which abstracts the before/after of two
separate beings.  What actually exists is not
emergence but simply immanent flow.  Becoming is very
much a part of Deleuzian theory, but it is not a
becoming driven by contradiction, because the
contradiction only emerges when becoming is
represented as being.  Consciousness I will ignore,
because I?ve no idea what you mean (i.e. whether you
are referring to waking up from sleep, to child
?cognitive? development, to the evolution of humans
from apes, to the self-becoming of the Idea, or
something else entirely).

?It IS a negation. The only way that categories change
is through
speculative thought, which involves both the
affirmation and negation
of certain propositions.? (Tahir)

yadda yadda yadda?  And speculative thought CANNOT
deal with the excess in existence over the categories
OF SPECULATIVE THOUGHT, but nevertheless goes around
claiming to ?grasp the totality?.  And the point is
that the negation of existing propositions emerges
from the affirmation of something which
exceeds/escapes these propositions, and which is
expressed/channelled in the new propositions, even if
they are ?negative?.  A point you don?t address with
your depiction of discourse.

Tahir: ?There is no escaping without negation. The
simple invention of
new categories in place of this is a futile exercise,
a game of
pseudo-semantics, which simply leaves the prevailing
discourse untouched.?

Oh look, Tahir has turned into Slavoj Zizek, complete
with distinction between Authentic Act and False
Hysterical Shirking.  In any case, he again misses the
crucial point, which is not that there is no negation,
but rather, that negation emerges from affirmation.
For instance, that if someone wants to smash
capitalism, the chances are it is because they either
believe in some specific alternative arrangement, or
because they have some desire or need (conscious or
unconscious) which is frustrated or repressed by
capitalism.  They DON?T go off and invent an
unsatisfied desire, because for some strange reason
they have already refused capitalism.  There is no
negation without prior affirmation ? though it can
seem that there is in language, because, if the
affirmed desire, need, etc. is not expressible in the
existing language, it will be expressed in language
simply as negation!

?For Hegel the universal only escapes pure abstraction
through
its unity with particulars.  This is abc.? (Tahir)

Or maybe, bca.  Or more likely, gobbledegook.  The
particulars are at once part of the universal and
separate from it, so they can unify with it; the
universal, which contains all particulars, can
nevertheless be in unity with particular particulars,
or with all particulars, in their particularity? Make
sense?  No, I thought not.

?He is precisely able to produce those analyses
because he is
able to engage with the Hegel-Marx tradition of
thought. You, on the other
hand never produce interesting analyses because you
don't have the
theoretical resources.? (Tahir)

Fuck you.

You have NO idea whether I produce interesting
analyses, anywhere except this list; nor whether my
analyses here are ?interesting? to anyone except you.
Though you at least had the opportunity to read my
joint paper with Athina on the subject of the world
since 911, and you know where you can find my critique
of militarist discourse.

?Instead what we get is hysterically moralistic
denunciations (favourite object of denunciation: the
working class),? (Tahir)

Fuck you with brass knobs on.

You again use this swear-word ?moralism? without
defining it.  To be a ?moralist? is to disagree with
Tahir, Chris Wright or Harald.  I have yet to discern
any other distinct content of this ?concept? (or
better, this boo-word).  You have morals (for
instance, you denounce my position on so-called
?crime? on very moralistic grounds, and I still
remember your ?I live in a working class area where
everyone shoots each other? diatribe), yet your morals
somehow avoid being ?moralism?.  On the other hand, a
critique of morality is ?moralism? if it happens to
come from someone you don?t like.  I notice you?ve
evaded the substantive point that I don?t pretend to
derive my ethical positions from the self-becoming of
the Idea, and that I don?t pretend that the latest
changes in computer technology can somehow provide an
objective basis for an ethics reproducing the
structure of such developments ? both moves in the
spirit of Hegelianism.

?You?re either with us, or with the moralists.  Those
who aid and abet moralists, those who flinch in the
war against moralism, are moralists themselves.  We
must destroy the moralists before they destroy us?
(the Tahir/Bush hybrid monster)

?And the reason I think that these emotions / feelings
are important is
that they sometimes rupture the meaning that people
have constructed.? (Peter)

?I would ask the question, "what happens when that
recuperation
fails?" This is precisely where I turn to the notion
of contradiction. I
think that some events, traumas, etc. create a
contradiction in the mind
which demands resolution - it demands it because a
kind of cognitive
dissonance occurs, something that doesn't leave you in
peace?
This kind of experience I call bumping against
reality, and I think that somewhere in Hegel this is
referred to as a contradiction between the definition
and the experience.? (Tahir)

Well, I?m sure Chris Wright is about to rip you apart
for such a clumsy empiricist appropriation of Hegel,
right after he finishes mauling me, or ignoring me as
the case may be, for reviving the old issue of Hegel
and language (which, if it?s old and hoary, is
certainly not an argument I?d come across before I
formulated in response to Chris?s posts and the
articles he suggested I read).

As for content rather than exegesis, I can only say
that this is the crudest, most basic kind of
positivism which Tahir is proposing and passing off as
Hegel.  As if realities, which are just out there,
outside of meaning, intrude and disrupt meaning, and
this is what necessitates meaning to change!  Well,
isn?t it often the case that systems of meaning
operate by mobilising precisely these kinds of
traumas, which are repressed and thereby turned into
the basis for constant activity to sustain the system
of meaning?  What about the phenomenon of ?learned
helplessness? for instance, where trauma/harm is
accepted because it is treated (at the level,
presumably, of meaning) as inevitable?  What of
?fetishism? in the Lacanian sense, with the formula,
?I know very well, but still?? (I know there is no
Santa Claus, but still I feel it?s important that
children believe it? I don?t believe in God, but still
I feel guilty when I sin against my former religion? I
know very well that commodities are simply objects
used in social relations, but still I keep acting as
if they set their own value?)  And isn?t it also the
case that the trauma Tahir discusses ? which he so
blithely reduces to an individual, social level in his
little Oedipal example ? is in fact constructed by
others, whose own systems of meaning produce the
outcome ?gift? or ?no gift??  And since these other
meaning-productions are also part of what constructed
and what continues to reproduce the beliefs which are
damaged by the trauma, clearly the issue is not one of
individual psyches but one of social relations, in
which the outcome (gift or no gift) is itself socially
produced in order to alter the beliefs themselves!

?Finally, I've got no idea what you mean by "language
is negative,
existence is positive".?  (Peter)

That?s because it?s trollbait directed at Deleuzians,
or else some kind of test for you, trying to ?out? you
as a Deleuzian by testing your reaction to the red
rag.  Obviously it is affirmation (and understanding,
or faked understanding) of this statement which makes
you a Deleuzian.  If I was to lower myself to the same
level, I could start on about whether it makes more
sense to refer to the self-becoming of the Idea or
some such, but I won?t.

Of course it doesn?t mean anything outside the
theoretical context in which it arises.  And in fact,
Tahir has repeated it incorrectly, since the word
?positive? is misleading (the Deleuzian slogan would,
rather, be, ?language is negative, existence is
affirmative?).  It has to do with whether negativity
is in some way ?constitutive? of existence, which
Hegelians and Lacanians like to pretend.  Basically,
Deleuzians argue that existence is affirmative because
elements of extra-linguistic existence do not depend
on lack to motivate them, but rather, operate as
creative forces of flow and becoming.  Whereas
language, having a Saussurean structure (each concept
is constructed as different from other concepts, and
therefore is defined in some degree by what it is
not), and even more so because of its Lacanian
structure (the role of despotic signifiers in
repressing the excess of existence over language so as
to make language seem complete, thereby necessitating
the repression of the Real and the logic of forced
choice), is primarily negative, and introduces
negativity into affirmative existence.



		
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