Author: logocentric

butler

Judith Butler Jews and ZionismOn Arendt: Origins of Totalitarianismb redemption from teleology

The very possibility of ethical relation: requires certain condition of dispossession from national modes of belonging, a dispossesion that characterizes our relationality from the start and so the possibility of any ethical relation: we are outside ourselves, before ourselves, and only in such a mode is it possible of being ‘for the other’.   we are in the hands of the other before we make any decision about with whom we choose to live

this way of being bound to one another is not a social bond we enter through volitional

it precedes contract as mired interdependency and is not entered as a through a contract of volitional individuals

Benjamin: Illuminations
messianic secularism: one time breaks into another, interruption of one time into another

universalisation: right of cohabitationon the earth, emerges as a universal that governs a social ontology that can’t be homogenized such a universalizing right has to break up into its non-universal conditions otherwise it fails to be grounded in a plurality

pluralisation: plurality implies differentiations that should not be overcome.

equality is not homogenization, commitment to process of differentiation itself.
everyone has the right of belonging, a universalizing and differentiating
political rights universalized in context of differentiated, differentiating population

The sense of belonging to that group (jew), means taking up a relation the non-jew To belong is to undergo a dispossession from the category, an exilic moment, the condition of an ethical relation, it’s only possible to struggle to alleviate the suffering of others if I am both motivated and dispossessed from my own suffering its this relation to the other that disposseses me from my enclosed and self-referential notion of belonging otherwise we can’t understand those obligations that bind us when there is no obvious mode of belonging and where the convergence of temporalities becomes the condition for the memory of dispossession as well as the resolve to bring that dispossession to a halt.

unchosen co-habitation

Feldner real of capital

Vighi, Fabio and Heiko Feldner. Žižek Beyond Foucault. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.  Print.

What emerges from all of Žižek’s writings is that there is no universal formula or practice which would instantly allow us to accede to the explosive Real of capital.  page 137

The Real, however, is not some kind of immutable Thing-in-itself “about which you can do nothing except symbolize it in different terms”.  it is rather “freedom as a radical cut in the texture of reality”, the point being “that you can intervene in the Real”  Žižek and Daly, 2004, 150, 166)

The act is Real insofar as it is not determined by the existing symbolic order and cannot rely on its normative support, it is free, for as a “mad” gesture it can only be made sense of retroactively; it is ethical inasmuch as “you assume that there is no big Other (Žižek and Daly 2004, 163) and revolutionary because it is the condition of possiblity for any radical break with the generative matrix of global capitalism. The ethico-poltical act, then, is the third manifestation (beside the subject and the Real) of Žižek’s key Hegelian motif of absolute self-relating negativity.

feldner masochism liberation

In Žižek’s Lacanian terms, the emergence of pure subjectivity coincides with an ‘experience of radical self-degradation’ whereby I, the subject, am emptied ‘of all substantial content, of all symbolic support which could confer a modicum of dignity on me’.  The reason why such a (humiliating and potentially perverse) position of self-degradation is to be assumed, Žižek argues, is that within a disciplinary relationship (between ‘master and servant’), self-beating is, in its deepest configuration, nothing but the staging of the other’s secret fantasy; as such, this staging allows for the suspension of the disciplinary efficacy of the relationship by bringing to light the obscene supplement which secretly cements it. Žižek’s central point is that the obscene supplement ultimately cements the position of the servant: what self-beating uncovers is ‘the servant’s masochistic libidinal attachment to his master’, so as ‘the true goal of this beating is to beat out that in me which attaches me to the master’ (Revolution at the Gates, 252)

Why is masochism the first necessary step towards liberation?

When a subject stages a masochistic scenario and says ‘I am a priori guilty, and therefore I want to be punished!’, it is the
law that, in effect, reveals its impotence and frustration, since its universalistic foundations are exposed as merely functional to the superego command (‘Enjoy!’).

If a subject does not need the law to punish him, for he can do it himself outside the remit of the law, the latter inevitably loses its coercive character and exhibits its fundamental lack of purpose, its being anchored in jouissance. The masochist, therefore, teases out and identifies with the libidinal (fundafundamentally irrational and self-destructive) kernel of the law itself. 119

chantal mouffe

New Statesman Published 19 November 2009

You argue that politicians should seek to create a “vibrant ‘agonistic’ public sphere”. What do you mean by that?

What I have in mind is not simply a space for the expression of any kind of disagreement, but a confrontation between conflicting notions about how to organise society. This does not exist in Britain at the moment, because no political party clearly challenges the hegemony of neoliberalism. There are, of course, disagreements about a variety of issues, but what is lacking is a debate about possible alternatives to the current neoliberal model of globalisation. We have been told by advocates of New Labour that politics now takes place at the centre and that the categories of right and left have become obsolete.

Did the BBC contribute towards the creation of such a public sphere by putting the BNP’s Nick Griffin on Question Time?

In such a situation, which I designate as “post-political”, an agonistic debate cannot exist, and it is not by inviting Nick Griffin on Question Time that things are going to change. That does not mean that he should not have been invited. Indeed, if the BNP is allowed to present candidates at elections, there is no reason to ban its representatives from taking part in public debates. To criticise the BBC for inviting him is typical of themoralistic attitude that has replaced the political confrontation between left and right. Instead of trumpeting their moral condemnation, Labour politicians should be inspired to examine why some of their supporters are being attracted by the BNP. But moral indignation is easier and more self-gratifying than auto-critique.

What concrete changes in British politics would get us closer to your ideal of agonistic democracy?

My agonistic model of democracy acknowledges the existence in social life of antagonistic conflicts, conflicts that concern the configuration of power relations and the way society should be organised. Those conflicts cannot be solved by deliberation, and they will never be eliminated. The aim of a pluralist democracy is to provide the institutions that will allow them to take an agonistic form, in which opponents will treat each other not as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries who will fight for the victory of their position while recognising the right of their opponents to fight for theirs. An agonistic democracy requires the availability of a choice between real alternatives and that is precisely what is missing in Britain today. What would be needed to foster an agonistic democracy is a significant break from Third Way politics by Labour or the development of a new party with a clear left identity, like Die Linke in Germany.

You talk about a “post-political” era. What do you mean by this?

When I speak of the post-political, I am not agreeing with Third Way theorists on the need to think “beyond left and right” and the demise of the adversarial model of politics. We have no doubt been witnessing a blurring of the frontiers between left and right in recent decades, but this is not something that I celebrate. In my view, such a post-political situation represents a danger for democracy. I have tried in my recent work to show that our inability to envisage the problems with which we are confronted in a properly political way is the origin of a widespread disaffection with democratic institutions. This is a disaffection that, in several European countries, has led to the growing success of right-wing populist parties.

How has the global economic crisis influenced your thinking?

There was a moment at the beginning of the financial crisis when it seemed that the hegemony of neoliberalism had received a serious blow. After decades of being demonised, the state was suddenly called to the rescue. However, instead of implementing redistributive policies, the intervention of the state has been limited to rescuing the banks. There is, though, a positive aspect. I think there is an increasing awareness that the current model of development is unsustainable.

Interview by Nina Power

Feldner

Vighi, Fabio and Heiko Feldner. Žižek Beyond Foucault. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.  Print.

act proper (radical agency)

performative activity within a hegemonic structure

What qualifies a free act, according to Žižek, is an intervention whereby “I do not merely choose between two or more options WITHIN a pre-given set of coordinates, but I choose to change this set of coordinates itself’ (Žižek, On Belief 2001c, 121).

For Lacan, there is no ethical act proper without taking the risk of … a momentary ‘suspension of the big Other’, of the socio-symbolic network that guarantees the subject’s identity: an authentic act occurs only when the subject risks a gesture that is no longer ‘covered up’ by the big Other (Žižek, 1993, Tarrying with the Negative 262-4).

Here is a crucial quote that pretty much sums up their (Butler and Žižek) respective differences, (okay its pretty condensed)

… only the Real allows us to truly resignify the Symbolic. (110)

Žižek maintains that for all Butler’s radicality, she remains caught up in a resistance at the level of the symbolic, that is, at the level of signification. Judy Butler’s work doesn’t touch the Real.

A quote by Žižek from the book:

we cannot go directly from capitalist to revolutionary subjectivity: the abstraction, the foreclosure of others, the blindness to the other’s suffering and pain, has first to be broken in a gesture of taking the risk and reaching directly out to the suffering other — a gesture which, since it shatters the very kernel of our identity, cannot fail to appear extremely violent. (Žižek, Revolotion at the Gates 2002a, 252)

dislocation and identity

Discourse Theory in European Politics., Howarth, David and Jacob Torfing, 2005 Palgrave.

The dislocation of the discursive structure means that the subject always emerges as a split subject that might attempt to reconstruct a full identity through acts of identification. … When it comes to the theory of the subject, post-structuralism has retained a rather structuralist view that threatens to reduce the subject to an objective location within the discursive structure … The idea that the subject simultaneoulsy occupies the position of being a worker, a woman, an environmentalist, and so on, might help us to combat class reductionism, but provides an inadequate understanding of the processes that lead to the formation of multiple selves. Here, the notion of dislocation provides a fruitful starting point.

The recurrent dislocations of the discursive system mean that the subject cannot be conceived in terms of a collection of structurally given positions. The discursive structure is disrupted and this prevents it from fully determining the identity of the subject. The does not mean we have to reintroduce an ahistorical subjectivity that is given outside the structure. The subject is internal to the structure, but it has neither a complete structural identity nor a complete lack of structural identity. Rather it is a failed structural identity. Because of dislocation, the subject emerges as a split subject, which is traumatized by its lack of fullness. The split subject might either disintegrate or try to recapture the illusion of a full identiy by means of identifying itself with the promise of fullness offered by different political projects. Hence a dislocated Russion party functionary might aim to reconstitute a full identity by identifying with the promise of Russion nationalism, neoliberalism, social democracy, or some religious movement. The split subject might identify with many different things a the same time. In this situation the hegemonic struggles will have to offer ways of articulating the different points of identification into a relatively coherent discourse. Social antagonism will play a crucial role for the attempt to unify dissimilar points of identification. The construction of a constitutive outside facilitates the displacement of responsibility for the split subject’s lack onto an enemy, which is held responsible for all evil. The externalization of the subject’s lack to an enemy is likely to fuel political action that will be driven by an illusionary promise: that the elimination of the other will remove the subject’s original lack 17.

dean don’t like butler

Dean, Jodi. Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies. Durham: Duke UP, 2009.  Print.

– – -.  Žižek’s Politics. New York: Routledge, 2006.  Print.

logic of desire to logic of drive, which means the discourse of the hysteric to discourse of psychotic

Žižek explans that, unlike desire, where the object emerges at the moment of its loss, in drive loss itself is an object.

Big other

logics of critical explanation

Course: Applying Discourse Theory

Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory
Published October 1, 2007 by Routledge, New York
Authors: Jason Glynos and David Howarth

Jason Glynos and David Howarth’s (hereafter: GH) have written a comprehensive theoretical tract outlining how one would go about investigating concrete empirical phenomena using a poststructuralist discourse analytical framework. Heavily influenced by a Lacanian inspired discourse analysis that emerged out of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s post-Marxist intervention Hegemony and Socialist Strategy back in 1985, GH’s intention is to illustrate how a robust, empirically grounded political analysis can be conducted using a combination of three different ‘logics’ of investigation. These three logics are, in order of application: a social logic which characterizes relevant social practices and clusters of practices or regimes. The social logic sets out to answer the query, what is the object of investigation? Next is a political logic which is a genealogical investigation that reveals why a social practice or regime became institutionalized (sedimented) in the social fabric and, alternatively, the possibility it can become ‘dislocated’ through counter-hegemonic struggles. Thirdly and to this reviewer most interestingly, there are fantasmatic logics that locate how subjects are ‘gripped’ by ideology and thus seemingly are attached to social practices that seem to work against their own interests.

So instead of prioritizing totalised and determining social structures on the one hand, or fully constituted subjects on the other, we begin by accepting that social agents always find themselves ‘thrown’ into a system of meaningful practices. However, we also add the critical rider that these structures are ontologically incomplete. Indeed, it is in the ‘space’ or ‘gap’ of social strucures, as they are rendered visible in moments of crisis and dislocation, that a political subject can emerge through particular ‘acts of identification’. Morevover, as these identification are understood to take place across a range of possible ideologies or discourses — some of which are excluded or repressed — and as these are always incomplete, then any form of identification is doomed to fall short of its promise (79).

In short, following Heidegger, subjects are ‘thrown’ into a world not of their choosing, but have the capacity under certain conditions to act differently. But more than this we need also to be able to explain the constitution and reproduction of the social relations into which they have been thrown, and we need also to account for the way in which subjects are gripped by certain discourses and ideologies. Our poststructuralist approach strives to unfold a social ontology adequate to these tasks.

Glynos, Howarth 2007: 79

We must develop a style of research that builds contingency into its very modus operandi, and which is open and attentive to possibilities disclosed by the research itself

Glynos, Howarth 2007: 155

genealogy of discourse theory

Jacob Torfing, “Discourse Theory: Achievements, Arguments, and Challenges” in Discourse Theory in European Politics. David Howarth, Jacob Torfing (eds). Palgrave, 2005. pp. 1-32.

As against Hume, it was Kant who argued that “perception and experience of empirical phenomena are made possible by some pregiven categories in the human mind.” Discourse theory agrees that we should focus on the conditions of possibility of our perceptions, utterances, and actions, rather than on the factual immediacy or hidden meaning of the social world.” (10)

There have been many attempts in the history of Western thought to explain the course of history, the structure of society, and the identities of subjects and objects by reference to an underlying essence which is given in a full presence and plenitude and not implicated in any historical processes of structuration. God, Reason, Humanity, Nature, and the Iron Laws of Capitalism are some of the celebrated candidates for this transcendental determining centre … Discourse theory aims to draw out the consequences of giving up the idea of a transcendental centre. The result is not total chaos and flux, but playful determination of social meaning and identities within a relational system which is provisionally anchored in nodal points that are capable of partially fixing a series of floating signifiers. (13).

Two differences between the classical transcendentalism of Kant and poststructuralist discourse theory:

1. The conditions of possibility are not invariable and ahistorical as Kant suggest, but subject to political struggles and historical transformation. As such, discourse theory adopts a quasi-transcendental view of the conditions of possibility.

2. Discourse theory does not see the conditions of possibility as an inherent feature of the human mind, but takes them to be a structural feature of contingently constructed discourses. Discourse theory focuses neither on observable facts nor on deep meanings, but on the historical formation of the discursive conditions of social being.

on the subject

When it comes to the theory of the subject, post-structuralism has retained a rather structuralist view that threatens to reduce the subject to an objective location within the discursive structure, or, as Louis Althusser phrased it: to a ‘mere bearer of the structure’. The idea that the subject simultaneously occupies the position of being a worker, a woman, an environmentalist, and so on, might help us to combat class reductionism, but provides an inadequate understanding of the processes that lead to the formation of multiple selves.

Žižek there is no big Other

Žižek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy Then as Farce. New York: Verso, 2009.  Print.

… the task is “merely” to stop the train of history which, left to its own course, leads to a precipice. (Communism is thus not the light at the end of the tunnel, that is, the happy final outcome of a long and arduous struggle — if anything, the light at the end of the tunnel is rather that of another train approaching us at full speed.)

This is what a proper political act would be today: not so much to unleash a new movement, as to interrupt the present predominant movement. An act of “divine violence” would then mean pulling the emergency cord on the train of Historical Progress. In other words, one has to learn fully to accept that there is no big Other

The moment the “big Other” falls, the Leader can no longer claim a privileged relationship to Knowledge — he becomes an idiot like everyone else. (152)