Fascism!
- Thread starter josef k.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yes...
That the sorts of developments (the internet, for one) that we've made thanks mostly to math are disorienting and odd and produce all of these uncanny experiences says something about where math might take us. It may very well have a privileged position ontologically insofar as it, qua techne, seems to always hover outside and above our small discursive concerns.
It's also worthwhile to compare math in this sense to other techneis (e.g. the sciences) and their developments, which have, as Heidegger points out, paradoxically become both the cause of and the solution to the most daunting threats that we as humans face.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yup. I just knew all of this math talk would be relevant to the thread title eventually.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
That's all you got out of the last few pages of this thread?
In the end, and with the jargon snipped out, yes. I am very hostile to transcendental perspectives, and the idea that there exist realms of truth - be they mathematical or otherwise - separate from human experience. From that perspective, the last couple of pages seem frankly casuistic to me. "It is not obvious how we get from hammers to quantum physics." Granted: it is not obvious, but this is nonetheless what occurred. The fact that none of us in this thread - myself included - have the detailed historical knowledge to trace this narrative back through time does not mean we should conclude that it simply cannot be done, and that pure science in general, and maths in particular, must henceforth be recognized as a mysterious ("weird") deus ex machina that nonetheless still somehow holds the key to a science of being. This seems to me immodest, unwarranted, and basically magical.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Right, what you're saying is basically my most immediate reaction to the argument Poetix was making. I'm not nearly as convinced as he is about the ontological primacy (or its peerlessness, or exceptional status, whatever) of math among abstractions, but I do think he makes a very interesting and compelling argument.
Especially when he talks about math as a sort of extrusion. Think about how much advanced maths--geometry, calculus, trigonometry-- influenced/comprised the Enlightenment (e.g. the Newtonian revolution) and the Copernican revolution before it. Of course, this knowledge didn't drop from the sky, it had been in development for thousands of years, but the Enlightenment does seem to be the first stop on the train to the industrial age and ultimately the technological revolution.
There are theories about how most technological developments in human history are discovered in the search for better weapons of war. This makes sense if you think about technology in terms of tools, in a "haptic" sense, as ergonomics.
But math doesn't seem to fit so tidily into this story. In a certain way, math does seem to come from outside, from outside the discourse of philosophy, or religion, or the physical sciences, only to turn them all inside out. Enlightenment thinkers, perhaps the first to critically engage with advanced mathematic concepts and explicitly use them as influences on their philosophical principles/propositions/hypotheses, presented the west (or Europe if "the west" is too liberal-sounding for your liking) with an unprecedented challenged, and marked a break with its traditions that was, taken as a whole, more complete and radical than any other before it.
After math appeared on the scene and discomposed everything we thought we knew about the world, and subjects and objects in it, it wasn't too long until we were melting elements with fervent heat and making robots to replace human laborers. Without the Enlightenment can you imagine modernism, post-Fordism or post-modernism ever happening? I can't. And most (like Kafka himself) see the subject under modernism and post-modernism as essentially alienated, fragmented, fractal.
Anyway, I probably do believe in magic if I'm honest, but not the kind where rabbits are pulled from hats.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
For me these ideas are interesting, Josef, because I'd never really understood the appeal of Badiou. Poetix made a case for Badiou's mathcentrism that appeals to me, and he's probably the first who ever has.
I think you are right that Badiou's appeal is closely bound-up with the type of the claims which he is making. Central amongst these, the claim that mathematics possess an exceptional status, upon which a universalist philosophy (his own) can be grounded. Or to put it slightly differently, his basic claim is: there is an exceptional discourse, and we, the mathematically informed philosophers (the partisans of my discourse) possess access to it.
Badiou's avowed Platonism is quite apparent on this point - the philosopher must rule, because it is the philosopher who possesses knowledge of forms. His polemics against democracy belong to this register. I used to be very excited about Badiou, and I still find a lot of what he says himself (less so, his followers, who tend to deploy his theories extremely opportunistically) insightful. But ultimately, the "schwerpunkt" of his argument seems to me weak, and his rhetoric of "seizing" and "purity" mystagogic.
Badiou's avowed Platonism is quite apparent on this point - the philosopher must rule, because it is the philosopher who possesses knowledge of forms. His polemics against democracy belong to this register. I used to be very excited about Badiou, and I still find a lot of what he says himself (less so, his followers, who tend to deploy his theories extremely opportunistically) insightful. But ultimately, the "schwerpunkt" of his argument seems to me weak, and his rhetoric of "seizing" and "purity" mystagogic.
This has I think the potential to mislead. Nothing in Badiou supports the suggestion that we should seek to rule as, or be content to be ruled by, philosopher-kings. If he is scornful of the institutions of parliamentary democracy, it is not because they stand in the way of the rule of the wise.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
It is possible to disagree with a philosopher or theorist without insisting that they're malignant narcissists who stake their own claims only because these claims support a view of the world where they could, if they only had their way, justify appointing themselves as leaders in an elaborately conceived and implemented fascist state of their own creation.
Yes, absolutely. I wouldn't be making these points of, say, the Nouvelle Philosophes, with whom I'm not really in sympathy. But what is Badiou's positive model of politics? It is very authoritarian, a politics of truth, which takes all of its historical co-ordinates from groups of self-selected militants, understood to possess some unique historical insight: the Jacobins, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Mao, at one time, Pol Pot. I think the critique is fair in this case - and for that matters, Zizek's case.
PS - I also think that the issue of intellectual self-regard is not the exception, but the rule. Equally, I don't think narcissism is necessarily malignant, but I would say that it possesses the potential to mislead, sometimes significantly. I feel it is very important to remain alert to this aspect, and to appreciate how programmatic ideas that present themselves as politically neutral, if not simply benevolent, conceal darker psychological aspects and appeals that tend to manifest themselves, in particular, as they spread.
In the case of Badiou's thought specifically, I remember one time, at a bar in Camden, a friend of mine, a smart guy, very taken by Badiou, getting into a physical fight with someone, based on the idea that he (my friend) was a militant for truth, and the other man was, as he put it, a sophist. Imagine this on a grander scale... and I think you get some idea of how Badiou's philosophy would work itself out in practice. In general, I don't think you can say that this is just a misreading. Its a transmission.
PS - I also think that the issue of intellectual self-regard is not the exception, but the rule. Equally, I don't think narcissism is necessarily malignant, but I would say that it possesses the potential to mislead, sometimes significantly. I feel it is very important to remain alert to this aspect, and to appreciate how programmatic ideas that present themselves as politically neutral, if not simply benevolent, conceal darker psychological aspects and appeals that tend to manifest themselves, in particular, as they spread.
In the case of Badiou's thought specifically, I remember one time, at a bar in Camden, a friend of mine, a smart guy, very taken by Badiou, getting into a physical fight with someone, based on the idea that he (my friend) was a militant for truth, and the other man was, as he put it, a sophist. Imagine this on a grander scale... and I think you get some idea of how Badiou's philosophy would work itself out in practice. In general, I don't think you can say that this is just a misreading. Its a transmission.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
When I say "malignant narcissism", I'm using a technical term from psychiatry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant_Narcissism
Yes, some ideas are ideologically driven and can't exist (except nominally) outside of a very direct political application of them. Zizek's and Badiou's works are not full of such ideas.
I think what's happening here (which you've brought up before re Zizek and opinion journalism) typifies some of the problematic features McLuhan detected in contemporary media.
It seems you've fallen into a trap that journalism sets for all of us, and you're mistaking the effects of the "cult of personality" treatment given to celebrities (no matter how minor) on discourse for the causes of this phenomenon itself.
Zizek is not the only Marxist who's ever been published. It's much easier to dismiss his claims because he doesn't fit in well with what our ideal public figure is supposed to be, vis-a-vis what one is supposed to say and how they're supposed to say it, than it is to deal with the possibility that he could be correct.
Don't you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant_Narcissism
Yes, some ideas are ideologically driven and can't exist (except nominally) outside of a very direct political application of them. Zizek's and Badiou's works are not full of such ideas.
I think what's happening here (which you've brought up before re Zizek and opinion journalism) typifies some of the problematic features McLuhan detected in contemporary media.
It seems you've fallen into a trap that journalism sets for all of us, and you're mistaking the effects of the "cult of personality" treatment given to celebrities (no matter how minor) on discourse for the causes of this phenomenon itself.
Zizek is not the only Marxist who's ever been published. It's much easier to dismiss his claims because he doesn't fit in well with what our ideal public figure is supposed to be, vis-a-vis what one is supposed to say and how they're supposed to say it, than it is to deal with the possibility that he could be correct.
Don't you think?
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Is there a passage where Badiou says that people who read him should use violence to assert their own superior truths over others?
I am interested, most of all, in rhetoric. I believe that rhetorical, erotic, psychological charge of ideas is the key thing to consider with regards to them. I think that there is no clear line of separation between ideas, and their effects. It isn't reducible to a "cult of personality" issue - I don't believe people directly worship Zizek, or need directly worship him for this matter to still hold. It's isn't about that. It's about the precise constitution of political milieus on specific ideological premises, through the media (understood in the widest possible sense), and the ways in which those groups operate, based on how ideologies bend them together. The media isn't a trap - its the fabric of our world. All ideas contain mediological dimensions, which are affective dimensions, and which are divergent from their ostensible declaration. The history of Catholicism demonstrates this quite exhaustively.
PS - Having glanced at the "malignant narcissism" page which you linked to, I wouldn't say this is quite what I mean.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I didn't say the media was a trap, just that intellectually, it can be hard to parse differences and cause-effect relationships based on the way we are already conditioned to respond to them, due to the fact that the media is (at least part of) the fabric of our world.
I think there is often a very clear distinction to be made between ideas people have and a political imperative to act on them in the most extreme manner possible.
I'm pretty sure Zizek would contend that there's no such thing as a political milieu in the way you're describing them, and I would tend to agree with him. What is Zizek's "milieu" politically? A couple of seminars in a few very untraditional PhD programs? It's really hard to swallow this picture of Zizek as a recruiter for anti-capitalist paramilitary ops.
That being said, Zizek is also very aware of the effects of ideology. If you can look at the world right now, however, and see where the effects of Zizek's ideas will reverberate beyond a very small corner of the blogosphere/academia, you have powers of prognostication that I lack completely. If anything, it would be nice if there were MORE Zizeks, if there were some sort of critical discourse outside capitalism that was taken seriously by more than a small club of intellectuals whom no one takes seriously (except in their function within universities-as-degree-factories) and who are mostly seen as merely out-of-touch partakers in an academic circle jerk.
The "erotic" charge of Zizek's and Badiou's work I would think is mostly Lacanian in origin/nature.
Zizek's milieu is the audience which constitutes itself around his ideas... I'm not talking about paramilitaries. I'm talking about the way in which that milieu comes to interact with other milieus, in the service of creating larger milieus. As it happens, I think the problem with Zizek's ideas is they are sterile, and non-productive of greater assemblages. The reason I think they are sterile, is because they instill an unwillingness to negotiate, producing instead dogmatic conviction. This, I feel, is unproductive. On a wider scale, I feel that a party constituted on a basis would be undesirable were they ever to take power. I am a skeptic. I want to retain a place for doubt.
"I think there is often a very clear distinction to be made between ideas people have and a political imperative to act on them in the most extreme manner possible."
But on what basis could such a distinction be drawn. And, once you have done so, what then becomes of the materiality of ideas? Extremity is a matter of intensity. The extremity of, say, going onto into the streets and killing for Zizek is only an intensity of a conviction which his work, in a modulated way, might be understood as also expressing itself in other surroundings, under other condition. The distinction between the man with the machete in his hand, the man with the pen in his, is not a distinction which could be drawn within the idea itself. Social circumstances create great intensities. But let's say that the basic appeal, the affective appeal, is to, for example, adrenaline. Is a politics of adrenaline really what we want?
"I think there is often a very clear distinction to be made between ideas people have and a political imperative to act on them in the most extreme manner possible."
But on what basis could such a distinction be drawn. And, once you have done so, what then becomes of the materiality of ideas? Extremity is a matter of intensity. The extremity of, say, going onto into the streets and killing for Zizek is only an intensity of a conviction which his work, in a modulated way, might be understood as also expressing itself in other surroundings, under other condition. The distinction between the man with the machete in his hand, the man with the pen in his, is not a distinction which could be drawn within the idea itself. Social circumstances create great intensities. But let's say that the basic appeal, the affective appeal, is to, for example, adrenaline. Is a politics of adrenaline really what we want?
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I think there's one "milieu", really, and we all participate in it wittingly or not.
Zizek knows full well, and this consideration is largely constitutive of his thought, that it's very, very difficult to resist capitalism. But I believe this needs to be done. I don't necessarily agree with Zizek on how to go about doing this, but then again, Zizek is less of a prescriptive thinker and more of a descriptive one. He focuses less on how to think the new utopia, and more on waking people up so that they realize they need to think a new utopia, and quickly.
There's plenty of value in properly describing or setting up the impasses one is likely to face in attempting to resist capitalism, in my opinion. Zizek does this in spades.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Are you serious? Zizek? Adrenaline?
The affective appeal of Zizek is more based on his particular brand of perversity. He likes Hegelian reversals that are mildly irritating to the token left.