{"id":5941,"date":"2010-10-24T16:17:31","date_gmt":"2010-10-24T20:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=5941"},"modified":"2010-10-24T16:26:52","modified_gmt":"2010-10-24T20:26:52","slug":"from-politics-of-the-extimate-to-axiomatic-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/10\/24\/from-politics-of-the-extimate-to-axiomatic-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"From politics of the extimate to axiomatic politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ceren \u00d6zsel\u04abuk and Yahya M. Madra. \u201cEconomy, Surplus, Politics: Some Questions on Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u2019s Political Economy Critique of Capitalism<\/a>.\u201d 78-107<\/p>\n

[\u017di\u017eek] searches for exceptional social agents that would replace the proletariat in transforming capitalism. Slums, in \u017di\u017eek\u2019s recent work, seem to be the privileged site for such social agents. Marginalized and dispossessed of \u201call but their chains,\u201d \u201cexcluded from citizenship,\u201d slum dwellers, for \u017di\u017eek, hold the position of the extimate, the \u201cpart of no part,\u201d the torque that could unravel the capitalist system (2007, 56-58). We wonder, however, whether this political vision is not rendering \u017di\u017eek susceptible to the same critique that he has previously extended to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.<\/p>\n

We are referring here to \u017di\u017eek\u2019s critique of Hardt and Negri\u2019s politics of immanence and its reliance on a messianic awakening in which the dormant potential of the multitude realizes itself (2007). Is the politics of the extimate, at least in the manner occasionally articulated by \u017di\u017eek, not premised on a similar understanding of political agency that is simply asserted, rather than constructed\u2014although this time, the political agent refers to some exceptional social group (i.e., slum dwellers) rather than the multitude? 101<\/p>\n

Initially, \u017di\u017eek\u2019s notion of the extimate appears to differ from the Hardt and Negri\u2019s use of immanence. By rendering capitalism and its potential opposition as perfectly overlapping,<\/p>\n

a politics of immanence eliminates the theoretical space needed to actually construct a position of real difference from which economic transformation can proceed. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For \u017di\u017eek, the concept of the extimate refers precisely to such a political position that incarnates real difference. At a closer look, however, both Hardt and Negri and \u017di\u017eek are unable to situate difference. If all difference collapses into a (capitalist) sameness in Hardt and Negri, difference is introduced in a manner that remains arbitrary and
\nunwarranted in \u017di\u017eek. This common shortcoming does not come as a surprise
\nto us. \u017di\u017eek shares with Hardt and Negri a similar ontology of the economy,<\/strong>
\npermeated by the logic of self-driven and self-regulating capitalist accumulation.<\/p>\n

Limiting the constitution of the economy to the masculine logic of the capitalist-all<\/strong>, \u017di\u017eek is hard pressed to carve up a position within capitalism that is heterogeneous to it. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The latter, then, is arbitrarily assigned to a selected set of marginalized positions, such as slum collectives, with an alleged disposition to revolt. Slums could certainly be a potential site for social transformation, or they might not be. What we wish to question, however, is the political cogency of trying to locate the \u201creal\u201d social agents of change.<\/p>\n

After all, Marxian history is replete with stories of resentment when class-in-itself fails to transpire into class-for-itself (that is, when certain dominated and marginalized groups, anticipated to resist and mobilize due their marginalized position, fail to do so).<\/p>\n

Axiomatic politics<\/strong> enables us to extricate ourselves from limiting the potential of transformation to a privileged set of social groups, economic sectors or geographical scales. It displaces the agent of class transformation from a social group to an abstract principle <\/strong>that could insert itself into every occasion in which decisions over the use of surplus are being instituted, rendering each concrete class organization an inconsistent and failed attempt.<\/p>\n

Yet, it is also important not to confuse the communist gesture of refusal of an exception with the hysterical questioning of the Master. If the communist axiom fails to constitute an all, this is not because it has doubts about the authenticity, the legitimacy, the validity of that which occupies the position of the exception. By leaving the exception in place, such an understanding would remain blind to the radical commitment of the axiom. Rather, it is because the axiom, to repeat Joan Copjec\u2019s perceptive claim, is only \u201chalf-said\u201d (2002, 171, 175). That is, the potential of the axiom is only actualized as it encounters and engages with the function of exception in various concrete contexts, <\/strong>as its universalizing aspiration propels it to move beyond the cooperative workplaceto the local economy, beyond the local economy to the nation-state, and beyond the nation-state to a community of states, and so on. 101-102<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ceren \u00d6zsel\u04abuk and Yahya M. Madra. \u201cEconomy, Surplus, Politics: Some Questions on Slavoj \u017di\u017eek\u2019s Political Economy Critique of Capitalism.\u201d 78-107 [\u017di\u017eek] searches for exceptional social agents that would replace the proletariat in transforming capitalism. Slums, in \u017di\u017eek\u2019s recent work, seem to be the privileged site for such social agents. Marginalized and dispossessed of \u201call but … Continue reading “From politics of the extimate to axiomatic politics”<\/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":[21,24,72,15,106,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jouissance","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-subjectivity","category-the-act","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941","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=5941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5945,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941\/revisions\/5945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}