{"id":10854,"date":"2013-04-18T19:28:46","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T00:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=10854"},"modified":"2013-10-08T22:05:48","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T03:05:48","slug":"zizek-derrida-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/04\/18\/zizek-derrida-3\/","title":{"rendered":"\u017di\u017eek Derrida 3 concrete universal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. “A Plea for a Return to Diff\u00e9rance (with a Minor Pro Domo Sua)” Critical Inquiry.<\/em> 32.2 (2006): 226-249.<\/p>\n

This logic of the \u201cminimal difference,\u201d of the constitutive noncoincidence of a thing with itself, provides the key to the central Hegelian category of concrete universality.<\/p>\n

Let us take a \u201cmute\u201d abstract universality that encompasses a set of elements all of which somehow subvert, do not fit, this universal frame.<\/p>\n

Is, in this case, the \u201ctrue\u201d concrete universal not this distance itself, the universalized exception?<\/p>\n

And, vice versa, is the element that directly fits the universal not the true exception?<\/p>\n

Universality<\/span> is not the neutral container of particular formations, their common measure, the passive (back)ground on which the particulars fight their battles, but this battle itself, the struggle leading from one to another particular formation.<\/strong> 236<\/p>\n

Take a look at this 2004 YouTube clip where \u017d talks about universality\/particularity<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cConcrete universality\u201d is a name for this process through which fiction
\nexplodes from within documentary, that is, for the way the emergence of
\nfiction cinema resolves the inherent deadlock of the documentary cinema. 237<\/p>\n

This brings us to the very heart of the concept of Concrete Universality<\/span>.<\/p>\n

It is not merely the universal core that animates a series of its particular
\nforms of appearance; it persists in the very irreducible tension, noncoincidence, between these different levels.<\/p>\n

Hegel is usually perceived as an \u201cessentialist historicist,\u201d positing the spiritual \u201cessence\u201d of an epoch as a universal principle that expresses itself in a specific way in each domain of social life; say, the modern principle of subjectivity expresses itself in religion as Protestantism, in ethics as the subject\u2019s moral autonomy, in politics as democratic equality, and so on.<\/p>\n

What such a view misses is what one is tempted to call temporal parallax. In the complex dialectic of historical phenomena, we encounter events or processes that, although they are the actualization of the same underlying \u201cprinciple\u201d at different levels, cannot occur at the same historical moment.<\/p>\n

Recall the old topic of the relationship between Protestantism, Kantian philosophical revolution, and the French political revolution. Rebecca Comay recently refuted the myth that Hegel\u2019s critique of the French Revolution can be reduced to a variation of the \u201cGerman\u201d idea of how the Catholic French had to perform the violent \u201creal\u201d political revolution because they missed the historical moment of Reformation that already accomplished in the spiritual sphere the reconciliation between the spiritual Substance and the infinite subjectivity sought after in social reality by the revolutionaries.<\/p>\n

In this standard view, the German ethico-aesthetic attitude \u201csublates\u201d revolutionary violence in the inner ethical order, thus enabling the replacement of the abstract \u201cterrorist\u201d revolutionary freedom by the concrete freedom of the state as an aesthetic organic whole. However, already the temporality of this relationship between the French political revolution and the German spiritual reformation is ambiguous.<\/p>\n

Three possible relations seem to overlap here. First, the idea of sublation points towards a succession; the French \u201cimmediate\u201d unity of the Universal<\/span> and the Subject is followed by its sublation, the German ethico-aesthetic mediation.<\/p>\n

Then, there is the idea of a simultaneous choice (or lack thereof), which made the two nations follow different paths: the Germans opted for Reformation, while the French remained within the Catholic universe and had thus to take the tortuous route of violent revolution.<\/p>\n

However, the empirical fact that Kant\u2019s philosophical revolution precedes the French Revolution is also not just an insignificant accident; in the spectacle of revolutionary Terror, Kantian ethics itself encounters the ultimate consequence of its own \u201cabstract\u201d character, so that Kant\u2019s philosophy should be read retroactively, through the prism of the French Revolution \u00a0which enables us to perceive its limitations:<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Jameson\u2019s critique of the notion of alternate modernities thus provides a model of the properly dialectical relationship between the Universal<\/span> and the Particular; the difference is not on the side of particular content (as the traditional differentia specifica) but on the side of the Universal<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The Universal<\/span> is not the encompassing container of the particular content, the peaceful medium background of\u00a0 the conflict of particularities<\/strong>; the Universal<\/span> as such is the site of anunbearable antagonism, self-contradiction, and (the multitude of) its particular species are ultimately nothing but so many attempts to obfuscate, reconcile, master this antagonism.<\/p>\n

In other words, the Universal<\/span> names the site of a problem-deadlock<\/strong>, of a burning question, and the particulars are the attempted but failed answers to this problem.<\/p>\n

Say that the concept of state names a certain problem: how to contain the class antagonism of a society? All particular forms of state are so many (failed) attempts to propose a solution for this problem. 241-242<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. “A Plea for a Return to Diff\u00e9rance (with a Minor Pro Domo Sua)” Critical Inquiry. 32.2 (2006): 226-249. This logic of the \u201cminimal difference,\u201d of the constitutive noncoincidence of a thing with itself, provides the key to the central Hegelian category of concrete universality. Let us take a \u201cmute\u201d abstract universality that encompasses … Continue reading “\u017di\u017eek Derrida 3 concrete universal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,103,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concrete_universal","category-universal","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10854"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12135,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10854\/revisions\/12135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}