On Sat, 6 May 2000 09:03:43 EDT Apsken at aol.com wrote:
> [Zizek's] two characteristics. First, depending on the degree of a reader's
charity, they are either ignorant or defamatory of most leftwing activists
worldwide (who, in any event, owe Zizek no justification for our contributions
to political life, but legitimately ask Zizek what he has done to merit
anyone's respect).
Don't you see the authoritarianism inherent in the way that you are invoking the other? ie. On behalf of the majority of leftist worldwide, I say to thee, Zizek has offended you! "No, you masses - don't speak. I've got it covered." You've deployed a concept, "most leftwing activists" which is an abstraction (at best). This concept is being used to bully-forth the rest of your claim. In other words, you rbig Other (the socialist collective) is used here to impute moral disrespect to the work of an author with whom you disagree. This is very nasty. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply say, "Insofar as I understand the bastard, I don't like what I'm reading." I don't even mind if you say "we" - but sectioning off a specific political partisan group in your support...
> Second, they are duplicitous, misleading, and gratuitously obscure.
Unlike this sentence which, especially, avoids obscurity.
> So Angela's attempt to divert the discussion into an attack on me for
> allegedly having failed to comprehend Zizek is offensive, particularly in
> light of her failure to respond when I pointed out the specific frauds and
> lies in the posted excerpts from her hero.
Interesting that you target Angela for this, since I posted: "Let Ken Lawrence show that he has read Zizek, he will not because he can not" several posts ago.
> Which leads me to this thought regarding Angela's and Ken Mackendrick's
> common political faith:
> Suppose that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels had failed to embrace the
> Paris Commune, but instead had sought an alternative mass movement to
> support, basing this abstention on, as they recorded, the inevitable failure
> of the Paris proletariat; the inevitable victory of Thiers, with bourgeois
> power enhanced by the Commune's defeat; and the political abomination of the
> Commune's Blanquist/Proudhonist leadership. Who today would regard Marx and
> Engels as worthy of study had they pursued that course?
I have no idea what you are talking about. What's the Paris Commune? and is Thiers a typo? And who's Blanquist?
See what happened there? We lost a shared lifeworld. I guess I'm not part of the "most leftwing activists" signifier.
> For myself, I'm fascinated that those who disagree with me take flight
> from the fundamental strategy of dual power, basic Hegelian/Marxist
> dialectics (also Gramscian, Leninist, etc.) applied to political struggle,
> without discussing it or putting forth an alternative strategy.
For myself, theory doesn't recommend. But time and time again you've illustrated that you aren't interested in theory, which is a pity, because Marx was. Marx had a pretty neat understanding of theory too: theory becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. This doesn't mean compromising the truth or complexity inherent to theory, as correct thinking. It is not enough that thought should seek to realize itself; reality must also strive toward thought (and not be afraid of what thought thinks). Neither are simple, and both are - OBJECTIVELY - contradictory (I'm far too close to the Hegel in Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse to depart from this point - sorry, I'll take Angela Carter to Ernst Bloch anyday). Marx had unfailing faith in progress, a progress built-into capitalism - a seed that would overturn itself: through the univesalization of capitalism, exchange relationships, the unlimited growth of the productive forces, the ensuing intensification of economic crises and the production of a revolutionay working class - capitalism carries its own negation. For Marx, the idea of communism is a utopian idea of a society in which the associated individual will have brought their nature under conscious and rational control. One of the problems with this, which is a very nice idea, is that Marx suffered from a lack of a more difuse and complex understanding of rationality - as someone like Max Weber has illustrated - where we go depends on how we think about things: functionl, purposive, communicative, emphatic, dogmatic, strategic, instrumental, technical, practical, emancipatory... it's more complicated that socialism or barbarism today (and, likely, always). Basically, Marx's understanding of theory was fused with certain untenable premises. He was not able to fathom a communicative notion of reason, a theory of language or a hermeneutics which would have facilitated a bit more of a democratic and argumentative ethos in Marx's works. However, it is present, a ruthless criticism of everything existing - that's the necessary presupposition of a democratic practice leading to the possibility of democratic theory. Alas, I suspect you have lost interest now.
I'll depart with this:
"Just as philosohpy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy."
Which is really nice, but I wouldn't want to leave off the next sentence which we're uncomfortable with:
"And once the lightning of thought has penetrated deeply into this virgin soil of the people, the Germans will emancipate themselves and become men."
With masculinists like this, who needs feminists?
> This is the concept that one must create contexts of struggle in which the
oppressed and exploited masses begin to perceive themselves as potential rulers
of society, by exercising class power in direct opposition to and substitution
for official authority.
I agree, but this is the most fundamental starting point of any critical theory. Yes, the weak, oppressed and exploited *ought* to inheret the earth. Without this we've lost out humanity. However, we probably differ on what it means to be a ruler (the king has no clothes); class (unified at what expense); opposition (which requires sustaining the law); substitution (reversal / status quo).
in theoria, ken