What is Deleuze?

[four_five_one]

The sophists weren't "trolls" by any stretch of the imagination, they were simply the established "professional" philosophers (sort of like modern-day academics) of their time.

Plato, of course, charged anyone who didn't believe philosophy was about eternal "truths" and "forms" with Sophism. And Badiou tries to do this too, as if "sophist" is still an insult thousands of years later. He might want to turn his critique on professional academics such as himself, who were the real target of Plato's antipathy.

Right, you're right. I just thought the comparison was apt; given, as you note, the shared metaphysical beliefs and disdain for relativism of Socrates/Plato/Badiou and the usual display of rhetorical irony (and concomitant disregard for 'truth') that the Sophist (as characterised by Plato & others) employed, and which trolls often aspire to, given the usual 'devils advocate' performance of yr typical troll.

 

[josef k.]

[W]hile you are paralysed by an inability to decide on what is best or assert your 'values' as a thoughtful aware person...

I am a cynical nihilist. I am continually asserting these values!

 

[four_five_one]

I think you're just making unnecessary humanistical demands of a discourse that has no obligation to humans and humanity as such.

Much like Infinite Thought today: "Alex calls for, against the supposed 'purity' of Badiou, 'a kind of metaterrorism of conspiratorial management, infection, contagion, and pestilence, a weaponised non-dialectical negativity wielded in the name of the highest value our times will admit to: Betrayal.'

I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather be as healthy as I can be (cure this ulcer, not catch swine flu, hope I don't get any deafer, etc.) rather than suffer any kind of 'contagion' or 'pestilence'. I'm sure that people in much more serious physical trouble - heavy addiction, sickness exacerbated by poverty, those who have suffered bodily abuse - are unlikely to celebrate their oh-so-exciting degradation and would probably prefer access to free, high-quality healthcare. There is something horrible, truly horrible, about people who have access to clean water, enough food and adequate shelter celebrating 'the rot of the flesh' and 'contamination' as if it were sexy. Go and lick open wounds and tube seats if you think it constitutes an interesting philosophical position."

In response to: http://splinteringboneashes.blogspot.com/2009/06/for-greatest-betrayal_11.html

I think I roughly understand this SBA post... Surely it's just a poetic way of expressing the inevitable consequences of eliminitavism? And yet there's no chance a new subject will emerge from this, a pure subject, liberated from the "contamination of the flesh"? Can anyone suggest any background reading relating to this? What does "limitropic " mean?

 

[josef k.]

The idea that you need to swing into total corruption... what is total corruption? Not the opposite of purity, and not the Marquis de Sade necessarily, but the fact of your *real* conditions in this world, which are: solitude, loneliness, sometimes a kind of savage joy, half-remembered desires and things too vague to even be called desires, talking to random strangers on the internet, each one of them talking to other strangers (you are alone, you are not alone) a fate all the more remarkable because repeated all across the planet, and why are you doing this? for what reason? why? because of a shame and a pain and a mystery - which is real - and that kind of stuff.

 

[josef k.]

smiling like a mad person.

 

[Tentative Andy]

K-punk pops up to tell us what it all means:
http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/

There are some genuinely interesting ideas here (and I'm not just saying that in patronising/grudging 'give him his due' way), but I think this post brings to the surface one of the strongest and most problematic presuppositions that unites the discourse of k-punk, Badiou and (even though I find his work much more interesting and useful) Zizek: namely, that the form of a belief is far more imporant in determining its value than the content of the belief. Better to be commited to something rather than nothing, no matter how seemingly ludicrous, and the more resolute/reverent the commitment the better. I find this stance deeply troubling, not least because it appears to follow from existential notions which are similar to ones that I myself hold.
(Of course, this post is maybe redunant/preaching to the converted as almost no-one here now accepts k-punk's views without some suspicion. In fact, I'm probably at risk of falling into the 'libidinal attachement to yer adversaries' problem that he often talks about. But w/e, I thought it was worth saying).

 

[four_five_one]

The idea that you need to swing into total corruption... what is total corruption?

There is no purity, yet because we still hold that there's a place where such purity is to be found, we're not as yet totally corrupt... We're like Willard, halfway down the Nung River...

 

[nomadthethird]

Much like Infinite Thought today: "Alex calls for, against the supposed 'purity' of Badiou, 'a kind of metaterrorism of conspiratorial management, infection, contagion, and pestilence, a weaponised non-dialectical negativity wielded in the name of the highest value our times will admit to: Betrayal.'

I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather be as healthy as I can be (cure this ulcer, not catch swine flu, hope I don't get any deafer, etc.) rather than suffer any kind of 'contagion' or 'pestilence'. I'm sure that people in much more serious physical trouble - heavy addiction, sickness exacerbated by poverty, those who have suffered bodily abuse - are unlikely to celebrate their oh-so-exciting degradation and would probably prefer access to free, high-quality healthcare. There is something horrible, truly horrible, about people who have access to clean water, enough food and adequate shelter celebrating 'the rot of the flesh' and 'contamination' as if it were sexy. Go and lick open wounds and tube seats if you think it constitutes an interesting philosophical position."

In response to: http://splinteringboneashes.blogspot.com/2009/06/for-greatest-betrayal_11.html

I think I roughly understand this SBA post... Surely it's just a poetic way of expressing the inevitable consequences of eliminitavism? And yet there's no chance a new subject will emerge from this, a pure subject, liberated from the "contamination of the flesh"? Can anyone suggest any background reading relating to this? What does "limitropic " mean?

Nice use of the old humans--clean/bacteria--dirty binary here!

Sorry kidzzz but organic life forms evolved from bacteria! Bacteria are actually stronger, more populous, more adaptable, and harder to force into extinction than humans are. We should be taking notes from them, not vice versa I would think. In all likelihood, they will outlast us.

 

[nomadthethird]

K-punk pops up to tell us what it all means:
http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/

There are some genuinely interesting ideas here (and I'm not just saying that in patronising/grudging 'give him his due' way), but I think this post brings to the surface one of the strongest and most problematic presuppositions that unites the discourse of k-punk, Badiou and (even though I find his work much more interesting and useful) Zizek: namely, that the form of a belief is far more imporant in determining its value than the content of the belief. Better to be commited to something rather than nothing, no matter how seemingly ludicrous, and the more resolute/reverent the commitment the better. I find this stance deeply troubling, not least because it appears to follow from existential notions which are similar to ones that I myself hold.
(Of course, this post is maybe redunant/preaching to the converted as almost no-one here now accepts k-punk's views without some suspicion. In fact, I'm probably at risk of falling into the 'libidinal attachement to yer adversaries' problem that he often talks about. But w/e, I thought it was worth saying).

I don't know-- I understand the sentiment, and I like the way he draws out the figures of new internet archetypes, but he's kind of ignoring the way fandom (in the "fanboy" sense IT invoked) operates according to the imperatives of the market's logic.

I'm always really suspicious when people try to deny that there's a dimension of entertainment value in both philosophy/theory AND the internet (no matter how you're using it).

(The last couple of paragraphs are awesome, tho.)

 

[nomadthethird]

I wish he'd develop this notion of the internet having a performative dimension.

This is, I suppose, what Grey Vampires deny. Trolls don't, but their performance can end up being merely narcissistic (like most art works are I guess), if it doesn't 'communicate' anything.

I think all of the best internet presences find a middle ground...or at least a posture with some kind of equilibrium...

 

[four_five_one]

namely, that the form of a belief is far more imporant in determining its value than the content of the belief. Better to be commited to something rather than nothing, no matter how seemingly ludicrous, and the more resolute/reverent the commitment the better. I find this stance deeply troubling, not least because it appears to follow from existential notions which are similar to ones that I myself hold.
(

Yes, it bothers me too. Well - for me - it's like, I did have the naive belief that philosophers were committed to the truth (I don't mean 'the truth' lol), for instance, whatever the given evidence, or potentiality, that we discover in our research of the ontic (i.e. what science throws up), philosophers should interrogate fearlessly, looking to extrapolate, project & explicate, regardless of any political, moral or personal consequences. (This is something Splintering Bone Ashes looks committed to)

But what's become clear to me in the past few days especially (it probably would've been clear well before, but I haven't been interested in philosophy for very long, as you can surely tell); philosophy seems to be more of a lifestyle choice, either it's like an intellectual kind of self-help, or you chose your ontology because of the consequences it'll have for your politics, your ethical status, or at least how it'll aid you in 'grounding' either or both of those things, or - as I think Joseph K pointed out earlier in the thread - just as an aid to rhetoric...

This Shaviro post sums it up:

"...But it is precisely in such a situation that Kant's injunction, that we must believe in, and have hope for, the prospect of an improvement of the human condition even in the face of all empirical evidence for the contrary. Our deepest moral obligation is to be faithful to this hope, even though its fulfillment cannot be foreseen, and even though it is something that can be promised "only indefinitely and as a contingent event."

Anyway, I haven't read the K-Punk post yet, looks pretty long. Could be crucial.

 

[nomadthethird]

Right, you're right. I just thought the comparison was apt; given, as you note, the shared metaphysical beliefs and disdain for relativism of Socrates/Plato/Badiou and the usual display of rhetorical irony (and concomitant disregard for 'truth') that the Sophist (as characterised by Plato & others) employed, and which trolls often aspire to, given the usual 'devils advocate' performance of yr typical troll.

The sophists weren't really "relativists" as much as they focused on man-centered, polis-tical "problems" (largely ignoring questions of "ontology", e.g.), they worked for profit, and they had a sort of proto-Nietzschean focus on the divine right of the strong/powerful.

 

[four_five_one]

The best thing that's come of this thread for me personally: "...Laclau, the universal is indispensable to the political, but only in its function as an empty place, an empty signfier that is in every instance filled through a dynamic process of highly contingent political-differential articulation-- a universal that takes shape in the form of a contextual unification of seemingly incommensurable political disunities."

I've ordered the book Emancipations. I do believe the universal is crucial, I mean it's obvious that, for instance, any movement toward solving ecological crisis, must be tied into a wider leftist project. The ethical issues, current and imminent, that biotechnology throws up, for instance, transcend the particular. They must be tied into a hegemony. That's why I was interested in Badiou, even though I knew beforehand that I could never subscribe to any Platonist revival. But now I think I'll definitely Laclau first.

This interview is very good: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article563.html

 

[josef k.]

But what's become clear to me in the past few days especially (it probably would've been clear well before, but I haven't been interested in philosophy for very long, as you can surely tell); philosophy seems to be more of a lifestyle choice, either it's like an intellectual kind of self-help, or you chose your ontology because of the consequences it'll have for your politics, your ethical status, or at least how it'll aid you in 'grounding' either or both of those things, or - as I think Joseph K pointed out earlier in the thread - just as an aid to rhetoric...

but lifestyle choices are important, and so is intellectual self-help... and so are all of those things... i cannot really pursue this point for reasons that should be obvious -

there are certain shapes that cast shadows.

this website is amazing: http://omegle.com/

 

[josef k.]

k-punk's rhetoric is amazing:

"Year zero very definitely does mean a 'clean slate'. It means a cleared space. It is not a pristine space; far from it, as Alex himself memorably put it, it's a space strewn with 'ideological rubble'. The 'neoliberal reboot' that Dominic fears is one way - the dreariest - that the space could be used. Yet it isn't the only way. The neoliberal mind paralysis is over, even if we are only just, fitfully, reviving from its pacifying effects. To take advantage of the ideological dereliction that we're in the midst of entails not ascending into some sanitised high ground but - quite to the contrary - dirtying our hands with the problem of organisation. We must also dirty our hands by fighting over the popular terrains - media, cyberspace - that Badiou, at his high-handed worst, is wont to a priori dismiss.

From year zero!

"We need to take him at his word here. Badiou has led us through the desert of the hyperreal, but the promised land turns out to be a scorched earth where the raddled old communist ideas, terms and histories cannot take root. Time for the last of the 68 fathers to be ushered offstage. Time for speculative realism to come to the centre. And I'll return to this in the long-promised eliminativist Marxist post."

to the promised land!

 

[josef k.]

I liked the grey vampires too...

 

[josef k.]

There's a lot of good stuff there - but what is he responding to?

 

[josef k.]

isn't k-punk himself kind of a grey vampire?

 

[josef k.]

Betrayal is just as important a cultural engine as fidelity; hate is just as important as love. But only the fan can betray, only the lover can hate. That's why betrayal and hate are as alien to the Troll as they are to the Grey Vampires.

This passage is from the bible - it's the betrayal of Judas, with a kiss...

Also, saying that hate is alien to the Troll seems strange, given the evidence.

 

[josef k.]

The problem with Badiou and Zizek is not any totalitarianism, but the fact that their politics are postmodern simulations played out for an academic gallery...

So where is the real?