>>> <kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca> 12/17/99 07:01PM >>>
On Fri, 17 Dec 1999 14:04:15 -0500 Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
> Charles: I don't exactly understand what your questions have to do with what
you clip from what I said. The reason to lock my doors is that there is a
permanent state of widespread crime in late capitalism. It is not the result of
a conspiracy, but a a systematic effect. I mean the individual crimes are
either by an individual or may be a conspiracy , in the sense of an agreement
among more than one person to commit a crime. But these "conspiracies" are not
epistemologically interesting, or whatever.
I think that Zizek point is this: why would you tell me that you are locking your door, so that I'll think that you are leaving it unlocked, when all along you are really locking your door! That's the paranoid structure of enlightenment...
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CB: Sorry, I still don't follow. What is the door analogized to ?
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> What does not debating have to do with what I said ? The reason to debate is
to win people to revolutionary and other feminist struggle.
Well that explains one of the things that Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, once said: "Doesn't it seem like everybody just shouts at each other nowadays? I think it's because conflict is ddrama, drama is entertaining, and entertainment is marketable. Finding consensus and common ground is dull! Nobody wants to watch a civilized discussion that acknowledges ambiguity and complexity. We want to see fireworks! We want the sense of solidarity and identity that comes from having our interests narrowed and exploited by like-minded zealots! Talk show hosts, political candidates, news programs, special interest groups... they all become successfful by reducing debates to the level of shouted rage. Nothing gets solved, but we're all entertained."
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CB: Don't quite see what your point is.
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> All attempts to formulate an effective crtical theory or secure some sort of
> epistemology are paranoiac
> CB: Speak for yourself
!!! Really? You *know* all the answers? Again, I am prompted to ask, why debate then?
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CB: What I said does not imply I know all of the answers. It just means all attempts to formulate an effective critical theory , etc. are not paranoiac.
> Charles: Kant was a bureaucrat. He worked at a desk (bureau) didn't he ?
Zizek is a bureaucrat too.
So you are what you get paid to do? Isn't that a nasty piece of work. No wonder people go to the movies.
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Charles: Wasn't Zizek or whoever calling someone a "bureaucrat?" Was it because that it what they are paid to do ? Why did he call them a "bureaucrat" ?
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> Here's Hegel's answer to Kant on epistemology ( from _Logic_) paragraph #10)
> "A main line of argument in the Critical Philosophy bids us pause before
proceeding to inquire into God or into the true being of things, and tells us
first of all to examine the faculty of cognition and see whether it is equal to
such an effort. We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument,
before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the
instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain. The
plausibility of this suggestion has won for it general assent and admiration;
the result of which has been to withdraw cognition from an interest in its
objects and absorption in the study of them, and to direct it back upon itself;
and so turn it to a question of form. Unless we wish to be deceived by words,
it is easy to see what this amounts to. In the case of other instruments, we
can try and criticise them in other ways than by setting about the special work
for which they are destined. But the examination of knowledge can only! be
carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the
same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as absurd as
the wise resolution of Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until he had
learned to swim"
Of course, but Hegel doesn't make any sense at all unless you read him *with* Kant. Kant is the water Hegel is swimming in. And if we read the logic as a theory of ideology, we realize that we're back to Kant... the "thing in itself" is precisely what is forbidden, and Hegel's logic provides an analysis of the symptom. In other words, Hegel is the analyst of Kant's critique.
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CB: Sort of.
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> CB: Didn't Zizek support the NATO war on Yugoslavia ?
Not in the way NATO would have liked him to.
> Charles: So, do Kantians think the SU should have gotten the bomb because the
U.S. had it and had dropped it on people ? What does the categorical imperative
teach about the Rosenbergs ?
I have no idea what Kantians think. Zizek isn't Kantian.
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CB: What is he ? and does he think that the idea that Kennedy was killed in a coup d'etat is some kind of illustratio of his theory of conspiracy theories ?
> CB: The objective human condition today is the struggle to replace capitalism
with communism.
This is... hilarious. You're not serious are you?
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CB: Actually it is very depressing. Humanity is failing in that struggle.
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> CB: All power to the workers.
Power is, by definition, incomplete.
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CB: What definition of power are you referring to ?
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So wishing all power to the workers is nonsensical.
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CB: No it's not.
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In any event, if "all the power" means anything, I vote that we give it to people who don't do anything. They'll be the least likely to abuse it.
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CB: Is it possible not to abuse power ?
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> the self is an other,
> ken
> CB: The self is a unity and struggle of opposites. Oh would some power the
gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.
Right, the self is a *unity* and *struggle* of opposites, in other words, the self is NO THING, it is nothing more than its own self-relating negativity. At least we can agree on that, even if we express it differently.
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CB: How does it follow from " the self is a *unity* and *struggle* of opposites" that the "self is NO THING or nothing more than its own self-relating negativity ?
CB