[AUT] Re: Revelation Vertigo

[Anthony Hayes <antyphayes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stevphen, I have a few comments to make in regards to your
article 'Revelation
Vertigo.'



 





I your believe your argument is unfounded and at times
downright confusing. Particularly the paragraph beginning "Whether
a statement or conception is in itself true or false does not mean that cannot be useful to ongoing struggles” is a corker, and is
indicative of the poverty of contemporary autonomist/postmodern theory. 




Certainly people that have described themselves as
Marxists, i.e. most of the Stalinist and Trotskyite Marxists, have posed the
notion of an "unalienated" essence to human nature and human
relations. It is arguable if Marx ever did this. Check out chapter 12 from Kostas
Axelos' 'Alienation, Praxis, and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx'
conveniently available at: 


http://www.point-of-departure.org/Lust-For-Life/AlienationPraxisAndTechne/AlienationPraxisAndTechne.htm


Axelos argues that one can posit an "unalienation"
in the absence of an alienated essence.


 


I take the most important sense of alienation, as put
forward by Marx, as the development of labour-power as an alienated and
necessarily social aspect of the individual i.e. the social individual
alienated for sale. Certainly this is foundational for modern radical notions
of alienation, and I would argue that practically we can restrict the notion of
alienation to this sense. This sense of alienation is pivotal for Debord's
theory of the spectacle.


 


Which brings me to "totality." Debord never poses
the spectacle as a closed totality. Your argument is frequently made re: the
spectacle and Debord, but it is wrong. He describes the spectacle as a false totality,
one which "totalizes" on the basis of the fragmented bourgeois
individual, i.e as "pseudo-totality." Again, it is dubious that
Debord is positing a "true" totality lying beneath the false. Nonetheless
there is a truth, but it is no more eternally true than the falsehoods of the
spectacle are i.e. at least in regards to human relations it is historical and
contingent.


 


There is a totality that we can have access to, conceptually
and other ways (particularly through revolutionary theory and practice). In regards
to the theory of the spectacle, it is important to say that the totality that
the agents and instruimentalities of the spectacle present is false. There is a
truth lying beneath the falsehoods of the spectacle, and that truth is one of
exploitation and oppression. However this totality is made up of necessary
*and* contingent truths, i.e. parts of a changing totality.


 


Finally I would ask you to put forward some concrete
examples of false statements and conceptions that are or would be useful to revolutionary
struggle.


 


Take care,


 


Anthony Hayes 





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