>Yes. This would make "consensus" a matter of conventional law (and any
>baggage
>that goes along with that). Consensus as a social policy might sound nice,
>but
>it is little more than a club - a friend of mine used the following image:
>Habermas standing with a gun pointed at your head -- "Be rational!"
that's very good
>[cut habermas]... A more interesting, in my opinion, is
>Castoriadis's notion of democracy as regime: formal elements are present only
>as protective measure to guarantee effective human autonomy. Autonomy here is
>not necessarily the metaphysical autonomy of old ("free will") rather an
>"effective" notion of autonomy --> the capacity to make choices and carry out
>the implications of these choices. For Castoriadis, individual autonomy is
>completely caught up in institutional autonomy: one cannot exist without the
>other. For Castoriadis, the aim of a democractic society is not consensus,
>but
>freedom for all.
ok i haven't read the castoriadis stuff yet (tonight) but -- doesn't the idea of formal elements presenting such a protective measure require 'public'/'social' consent that they are 'guaranteed' and 'effective' the capacity to make choices is always under the constraint of regimes of discipline surely anything resembling the subject of free will has to be more than just fantastic but also constrictive insofar as it will not name anything but a 'public' subject of 'consensus'??
>[cut habermas again -- because we clearly 'agree' on that...]
>Wellmer puts it this way, which, I think, serves as a
>rejoinder to the Habermasian approach: when we approach a validity claim,
>with
>good and bad reasons, we move in two directions simultaneously: between
>internal and external understanding. Internal understand has to do with the
>fusion of horizons - where we adopt the languageo f the 'text' as our own.
>External understanding is where we interpret the claim from our own
>perspetive,
>with a critical distance. Internal or immanent understand lacks productive
>distance from that which is to be understood. External understanding lacks
>distance from its own language of critique.
ok. in what way is this different from positing that the self and the law/State are different relations to any 'understanding' (consensus, public truth-claim)?
>...> but it [consensus, KM] can't be shared or ethical in that sense when
>it is
>consented to, because that's the position of agreeing with an earlier
>position,
>if you see what i mean
>
>Consensus, in this sense, happens when the language used by all the parties
>involves is identical: "I say no means no." "I also say no means no."
>[both together] "We agree that no means no!" There is consensus present in
>the
>symbolic fomulations.
how about 'your yes means no'; 'I agree her yes means no'' [both together]; 'we agree she is incapable of saying yes or no'. that is -- the subject of consensus is not any or even The subject, and so lacan won't do...
>...However, there is an objective absence of meaning - which
>is precisely the criteria necessary to actually determine if an
>"understanding"
>truly exists. But, as we know, meaning is IMAGINED (it does not "ex-ist). So
>although there is agreement in the symbolic, the two people might very
>well be
>living in different worlds and attach completely different meanings to the
>language. This is what Lacan means when he talks about agreement being failed
>communication. When we agree, we stop talking (we consent) - our language
>"fails" because it stops. Consensus, then, is always based on a necessary
>misrecognition of what we say and mean in language.
this is way too Romantic. consensus is based on law about what can be agreed to. surely.
>...> what about foucault's version of ethos?
>
>According to Zizek, Foucault is a theoretical pervert. Transgression is
>constitutively necessary for sustaining the law. We wouldn't have laws if
>everyone agree (ie. we wouldn't think to pass a law if there wasn't already
>perceived violations). To transgress the law is simply to assign oneself
>knowledge of what the law means. This is perverted because the subject
>"assumes
>themself to know." In short: abiding by the law and transgressing the law
>both
>imply a subject "in the know" about the meaning of the law. This,
>effectively,
>negates any subjective relation to the imaginary (in the Lacanian sense).
which sounds really very useful to me. so we agree on much of what he says, but not on whether that is valid. valid meaning descriptive, which is why yes i (and foucault) agree it is about representation.
> > ok by ethics in general i would mean a relation to the other,
> relations with
>others, and practices of enacting relations with others -- so ethics can be
>really fucked, they don't have to be good for anyone. but then there's
>positive
>ethical practices, desirable ethical practices, from of course specific
>positions. my question is about what's desirable because you can't talk
>about
>ethics in the 'public sphere' without engaging that claim that they should be
>'good for...' X [the good society]
>
>I thought ethics was about good and evil?
morality is about good and evil. but i should have said the effects of practices of enacting relations with others
>If ethics isn't anything more or less
>than relations to one another, then what distinguishes ethics from politics?
politics very often if not almost always involves no others. only the subject of consensus and its inverse, the subject who does not consent
> From my perspective - ethics has to do with how we relate to our desire
> (which
>is always the desire of the other) [hence, intersubjective and relational]
>and
>politics is how this is duked out in relation to the law: politics <-> law
><->
>morality <-> desire <-> ethics <-> politics ... (my apologies for that...
>it is
>surely damnable)
but the law determines both who is 'we' and what is 'desire' and which we is capable of desire and what things will be relations to desire
>...[on lacan] Which is why
>understanding is always understanding of ones own fantasies (ie. we
>understand
>*our* sense of meaning not the imaginary of the other).
understanding is always understanding of our understanding of the other (more circle and less Romance)
> > i think you've lost me, at least on the question of why consensus is
> giving
>up desire but obviously this matters to me, so... do you really believe
>that in
>relation to that old public sphere, why was my/your/his desire at issue
>anyway?
>
>In Lacan, the psychoanalytic notion of desire is very much linked to
>non-satisfaction, which means that we desire things because they are
>unavailable; and to keep desire alive, the subject needs to prevent its
>fulfillment. If we actually desire consensus, then we had better damn well
>make
>sure that we don't agree! If we agree, we won't desire democracy anymore.
I mean 'her' desire isn't referenced in the law, because the law doesn't reference desires of selves only of the consenting Subject
> > >When we understand, we only understand our fantasies.
>
> > oh good. that's bullshit. thanks ken.
>
>Ah, so you understand what I've said and are able, in short order, to dismiss
>it as bullshit! You've understood nothing! which is why understanding is
>always
>understand ones own fantasy!
and you've been watching too many Lacan videos
Catherine