What is Deleuze?

[nomadthethird]

Sure, maybe that's a truth that people have decided to act upon. And?

Isn't this just a platitude about how things obviously work on the level of political commitment?

Haha, Badiou is the Left's Obama.

 

[nomadthethird]

but isn't it dangerous that the left should slip into nihilism and identity politics, whilst the right has the monopoly on 'truth and values'?

By the way, anybody who thinks the Left has cornered the market on identity politics and "nihilism" (whatever that means) isn't looking too hard at the world.

 

[massrock]

Isn't this just a platitude about how things obviously work on the level of political commitment?

Maybe so. It does seem to wind people up though.

The stuff about the next big political Event being a state communist revolution sounds ridiculous and short sighted, not to mention lacking in imagination. I haven't actually seen anyone say that here or in blog posts either for that matter though.

 

[nomadthethird]

Maybe so. It does seem to wind people up though.

The stuff about the next big political Event being a state communist revolution sounds ridiculous and short sighted, not to mention lacking in imagination. I haven't actually seen anyone say that here or in blog posts either for that matter.

I have.

As for "winding people up"--maybe people don't realize this about philosophy, but the entire point of it is to read it critically and never take it at face value. The fact that Badiou invites criticism is not particularly unique to Badiou. It's the same with Deleuze, whom Badiou staked his entire career on misreading and firing misplaced shots at about things.

For example, having read and agreed with Difference and Repetition, and enjoyed the more poetic middle works of D&G, but still having no particular allegiance to Deleuze or Guattari whatsoever, it is still the case that every last word I type on the internet somehow gets attributed to "Deleuzian" influence by Poetix and company. Nothing I say is my own intellectual property--it's all only some attempt to bring myself closer into alignment with Deleuze. When people respond to you this way, you can pretty safely assume that they are accusing you of this because this is how they read philosophy.

I read philosophy like a giant text that makes for a more interestingly complicated language game. I have no particular allegiances to anybody in it. Why anyone should have to do so to enjoy philosophy is beyond me, but this is what happens when journalists take over.

 

[Sick Boy]

It is entirely possible that philosophy is not the most politically viable or efficient activity.

Yo Socrates where you at

 

[poetix]

I have.

Links please.

 

[nomadthethird]

Links please.

You know all the links already, they're most likely all in your favorites.

I do remember you calling someone who worked for the ACLU a "shill" apparently because she was not a comrade in fighting for total transformation. I can't think of any other reason why fighting for the legal rights of women would be a bad thing.

See, this is where the misplaced polemics against "identity politics" becomes threadbare. The Civil Rights movement was the original movement of identity politics that all of the rest have based themselves on, and to which the rest of them look for inspiration.

The only reason why, say, the gay rights movement would be bad or not as "true" as the civil rights movement is...? The only reason I can think of is because it's not about overthrowing capitalism. But then, neither was the civil rights movement. The Truth of the gay rights movement is that gay people are as equal in their selves and citizenship as everyone else is, and deserve all the rights this should afford.

 

[four_five_one]

Guilt--yes, that will fix everything. Just what the world needs. More witch hunting and priests to tell us what to feel guilty about.

Well, at least I could be certain about what to be guilty about. But it seems, the current default state is one of low-level anxiety becoming (political) inertia. I would rather feel guilty about not upholding some important ideal rather than being totally uncertain, knowing that there might be something wrong, but not knowing whether it's me that's sick, or society... Hence many people seek authority figures, firm values, strong rules etc, even if it inevitably leads to them feeling guilty. At least there is redemption.

I mean to think, ethically, 'for yourself', especially at any level above the personal, is nearly impossible given all the contingencies in the causal chain that lead to and from your actions. It would require all sorts of analytical powers which very few people possess. So you're certain to look elsewhere, at least for some ground for values, some direction in which to work from, if not for explicit moral direction.

Anyway the least we could say is that everyone philosophizes in some way, or at least thinks. People do think thinking is important. Every ideology has its philosopher(s), so would you rather people turned to Glenn Beck, or Alain Badiou?

 

[nomadthethird]

Anyway the least we could say is that everyone philosophizes in some way, or at least thinks. People do think thinking is important. Every ideology has its philosopher(s), so would you rather people turned to Glenn Beck, or Alain Badiou?

Neither.

But at least Glenn Beck knows he's a performance artist and not much more.

What I think is that the problems the world faces now are so intractable, and will have such devastating effects for all of us up and down the political spectrum, that we don't have time for anything but finding a way to come together to share intellectual resources.

Mindblowingly not ideologically Leftist, I know.

 

[four_five_one]

"nihilism" (whatever that means)

Simply that there seems nowhere to go once each individual, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation possesses equivalent freedoms. After that there won't be anything left to do. There is no universality which we could gravitate towards.

 

[nomadthethird]

That's what happened during the Civil Rights movement, after all. People saw a huge, intractable problem. And they decided to put their petty differences aside, and they decided they needed all the resources available to fight discrimination and racism, especially institutionalized racism. So white people and black people and everyone came together and did what was necessary, but without violence.

My Calabrese* grandfather who had nothing to gain by doing so made local stands against discrimination and hired black people to work in his stores. Others like him did the same, until these small isolated acts became a movement.

Identity politicians believe this work is not completed yet, and so they continue their efforts to keep this issues visible and in the public eye, and to push for greater equality--political, social, economic.

*in large part known for their anti-black, homophobic, and sexist sentiments

 

[nomadthethird]

Simply that there seems nowhere to go once each individual, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation possesses equivalent freedoms. After that there won't be anything left to do. There is no universality which we could gravitate towards.

I thought nihilism was the belief that there's nothing we can do to make things better.

As far as what you're saying goes--nobody believes that, especially not liberals. They believe society is a dynamic process that will always require revision. It's neo-cons who tried to pull that shit.

 

[four_five_one]

I thought nihilism was the belief that there's nothing we can do to make things better.

So did I. But as far as I've won my 'freedoms' there remains nothing left for me to do but allow others theirs. Hence there's nothing I could do to make things better.

 

[nomadthethird]

So did I. But as far as I've won my 'freedoms' there remains nothing left for me to do but allow others theirs. Hence there's nothing I could do to make things better.

Says who? There's always something better to strive for. Everyone knows that. Nobody believes that the world is perfect insofar as their particular group has more freedom than another.

There's no such thing as perfect freedom. That is the problem with comradism. They think that if state communism reigns supreme, there will be nothing left to fight for, because freedom will be perfect.

 

[four_five_one]

I'm just saying - I don't believe in absolute values or 'moral progress' either - but it's lamentable. I wish I did. I wish I could. And if Badiou tries to give metaphysical grounds for the possibility of universal truths, then that is laudable, and I can certainly see why it's very attractive...

 

[four_five_one]

. Nobody believes that the world is perfect insofar as their particular group has more freedom than another.

I don't think anyone believes the world is perfectible. That might be one of the problems.

 

[nomadthethird]

I'm just saying - I don't believe in absolute values or 'moral progress' either - but it's lamentable. I wish I did. I wish I could. And if Badiou tries to give metaphysical grounds for the possibility of universal truths, then that is laudable, and I can certainly see why it's very attractive...

But what makes you think that's what he's offering? See, this is where it gets complicated. Because what you hear from the admirers is not always what you get from his work.

Why need there be metaphysical grounds? This is the issue. Is this not a parlor game that is secondary to the large and intractable political problems at hand, and therefore a kind of petty identity politics (within leftist academia) unto itself?

 

[nomadthethird]

I've never heard anyone say that things can't change, just that the machinery in place is not good at promoting it. This is not the same as saying change can't happen.

(Ok, this is the last time I'll quote myself or post consecutively. I promise.)

This was exactly D&G's entire point: that change was possible, but very difficult because the machines in place that we'd have to fight to make change were difficult to break down. So he proposed a sort of approach to politics that privileged immanence, direct action, almost reckless action without thought, action toward something that you don't know what it is, based only on where certain energy flows might take you and then how far you can channel them towards something good, without regard to tradition but with the power of creative potential at the center.

This is not some sort of strange celebration of capitalism. It's the farthest thing from it. But because that one Nick Land guy who liked post-structuralism eventually turned neo-con on some weird acid burnout trip about "annihilation", everyone in the UK has decided that D&G were conservatives.

Dumb.

 

[nomadthethird]

Something is going right over my head here. Or maybe under my feet, I'm not sure. I'm slightly regretting drinking as much as I did earlier as things seem to have got interesting (to me) here again.

I certainly agree with nomad when she says things like:



but I don't think that implies "as little thinking as possible".

Maybe there's a distinction to be made here between what Kuhn calls "ordinary science" - working within an accepted paradigm to fill in gaps in our knowledge, to isolate this or that gene, cure this or that disease, discover this or that particle; and then the "extraordinary science", that precipitates paradigm shift. Is this what you're getting at, nomad? Like the former is more to do with rigorously following a programme, or something...well I think that only gets you so far, even in ordinary science.

Edit: slight x-post with poetix a page or two back.

Yes, well, we called it "basic science" at my institution, but funnily enough some of the major insights that bore paradigm shifts in science were discoveries in basic science. (Yeast reproduces sexually for example...)

That was the entire philosophy of praxis that my institution espoused--better basic science = better science general. Sir Paul Nurse the President wrote a lot about it, I think he has a paper in Nature or something about this that was considered grounbreaking.

 

[nomadthethird]

Anyway, I can't believe there's anybody on here defending the "what I do is Thought, what you do is just ideology" brigade.

Laaammmeee.