re: AUT: Progress

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Something which seems to be going missing from both
Chris's (Hurl and Wright) uses of Hegel is, how is a
post-revolutionary society possible?  If negativity is
primary, this means that the problems of the present,
or something similar, will necessarily recur.  So
while, for instance, a chair may no longer be
determined by commodity fetishism outside of
capitalism, it is still the case that, following the
Hegelian language=existence approach and the
insistence that negativity is primary, it is also the
case that it must be repressively configured by some
such overarching form.  And so, crucially, must all
human agency, social arrangements, etc.  So the
question cannot be liberation, but only the
replacement of one oppressive system by another,
equally oppressive system.  Because the escape from
the primacy of the negative, the resultant
construction of subjectivity as aspiration after
absent fullness, and the whole Sisyphean labour of
pursuing the impossible can never be eliminated.

And OK, Chris, I understand you have better things to
do than argue with me and everyone else on this list,
and also that both you and Harald don't have the
specialist knowledge of Deleuze to follow up some of
the specific points (though I don't have the
specialist knowledge of Hegel either BTW...) - but
there are a couple of things I was hoping you'd reply
to...

You said in our earlier exchange that commodity
fetishism is not a product of language or psychology,
nor is it imposed by violence (nor some combination of
these).  So what is it?  And how come Tahir, whose
reading of Hegel you seem to accept, implies precisely
that it IS a matter of language/meaning?  (Otherwise,
the fetish of the chair can be specified as a
socially-effectual feature of its linguistic
representation).

On more philosophical matters:

"It is correct that Hegel regards the Negative as
basic to Reality -- it is not simply the opposite of
Being, it is part of Being.  That is, the Negative is
the opposite of *abstract* Being, but it is part and
parcel of concrete, Real Being."
Abstract Being surely referring to the *concept* of
Being (as distinct from what it represents), and the
suggestion that Real Being is not expressed adequately
by this concept (in effect, that the
entities/phenomena/events subsumed by the category
"Being" are not reducible to it, so that the division
Being/Nothingness is inadequate in expressing them).
Except that Hegel then wants to pretend that *he* can
nevertheless express Real Being (outside its abstract
category) directly, *in language* - thus replacing one
inadequate representation with another!

"Many materialists fail to understand Hegel here, and
that is because naive materialism, like naive
idealism, is one-sided, dualist, and ultimately
Aristotelian in logic."

The structure of language is "dualist".  The concepts
of Being and Nothingness are meaningful because of
their mutual opposition.  Of course, they thereby do
not fully or adequately capture what they represent.
This means one should be fully aware of the limits of
language and representation, and maybe that one should
look for non-"dualist" ways of conceiving.  But what
Hegel seems to want to do is to retain the concepts
involved in the "dualism", to maintain their implied
binarity and differential logic, and yet *still claim*
to be able to go beyond this "dualism", while still
using the same concepts!

"The dualist thinks of Being on one side, and
Nothingness on the other side.  Hegel thinks of both
*together* in concrete Reality."

And as far as I'm concerned, it's simply not possible
to do this.  Because the moment one "thinks" Being and
Nothingness (or any other binary couplet or extended
series of concepts) "together", they lose their
meaning as concepts and simply become radically
indeterminate.  Of course, one can "play" with such
indeterminacy in order to undermine representation and
think in less representational ways, but this is
surely not what Hegel is doing.  Otherwise, as regards
the concepts, they cannot be "thought" together, even
if in fact, in reality, they *are* together (because
of the inadequacy of the concepts).  So Hegel is
trying to do the impossible.  And not only that - he
is claiming to have done it, and people are believing
him!!!

"Accordingly in  Hegel's  Science of Logic,a thing
must be in itself the negation of something else[which
is also negatively determined] if it is to have any
determinate characteristics and indeed be
differentiated from anything else-at all, The notion
of something real or specific which is not negatively
determined or mediated,is precisely what dialectical
philosophy shows up to be an impossibility."

And here is the confusion of language with
existence... The molecular structure of an object does
not depend on its being defined as different from some
other object, nor do the physical characteristics of
an organism depend on the definition of these
characteristics as different from those of other
organisms.  It is only the *linguistic representation*
of the object or the organism which depends on such
differentiation.  But Hegel projects this feature into
existence itself, as if the definition in language of
(say) a cat as not-a-dog is in fact part of the
constitution of the being referred to as a cat (when
in fact it is part of an observer's conceptualisation
of the word "cat").

"Deleuze  fails to see Hegel's point"

No; he disagrees.  Simply reducing every disagreement
with Hegel to a lack in the other's
understanding/grasping does absolutely nothing to
prove Hegel's validity, and simply confirms the
dogmatism of Hegelianism!

Now, Chris Hurl:
"I certainly find the statement "language is
negative, existence is positive" problematic from a
Hegelian viewpoint.  As Chris W. pointed out, there is
a relationship between the negative and the positive
that is covered over in this statement."

Covered over?  A typical device of theorists of
negativity - respond to others' disagreement by
reinscribing it in your own framework, as a lack.
It's problematic from a Hegelian viewpoint; that
doesn't mean it's wrong.


		
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