tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post7122574723390323916..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: The rote in thy brother's eyeskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-12252177437610375572010-07-06T20:08:52.000-07:002010-07-06T20:08:52.000-07:00Second your feelings re: Badiou. Something like fa...Second your feelings re: Badiou. Something like faith animates the core of my political convictions. Here Badiou has utterly convinced me. But when acting in the world, there are so many possible paths, and so many conflicting actors that compromise is clearly necessary. Personally, I don't feel like one ought to elevate these political compromises into ethical theories, or, a la Rawls, to in the abstract work out the "most just" compromise. No, at my core there is an animating desire for egalitarianism and a conviction that such a desire is correct. But I can't appeal to God and I can't appeal to thought experiments, so I guess it's something like faith, yeah.Colemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14531787851607955545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-87291352168201716152010-07-06T08:26:47.196-07:002010-07-06T08:26:47.196-07:00Coleman~~ Welcome, and thanks. I make use of dro...Coleman~~ Welcome, and thanks. I make use of dropped phrases and shorthand all the time, but as the Analytic crowd like to say, these have to 'cash out' (note the capitalist ideological undertones). I tend towards contextualism, so I don't have a strict account of <i>how</i> (or in what terms) any such set-piece must cash out, but I try to use terms or names in a way that lets folk see what it means when I do. This isn't just wearing my Humpty-Dumptyism on my sleeve, because at root it's making sure that <i>I</i> know what I mean. There's another method, Derrida's which is to keep shifting your signifiers so that people can't get too used to saying "supplement" before it transmogrifies into "differance" or "hymen", but I'm not sure even Derrida pulled that off without just adding a bunch more minor set-pieces to the repertoire.<br /><br />Most people I know "on the left" (or on the right for that matter) haven't even read Marx, or have read the <i>Manifesto</i>, and remember a line (not from the Manifesto) about not describing the world but changing it. I don't necessarily fault them for this, some of them are very smart and honest and committed. Critique of capitalism is a non-negotiable with me-- "if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention" (how's that for a modern-day "fleet-footed Achilles"?)-- but I am open to pretty much anybody's suggestions about where we [ought to] go from here, and read Hayek with as much interest as I read Zizek, and Subcomandante Marcos back-to-back with Soros. It isn't that I value lively conversation more than either solid conclusions or actually getting something done, but I am pretty persuaded that the way things do get done is not by everyone finally agreeing <i>in toto</i>. Politics is clearly inexact and practical. If I agree with Badiou, it is in his evaluation of the role of "faith" (speaking of using words in ones own way) in political conviction and militancy. If I disagree, it's in his disdain for the messy and approximate and parliamentarian, in short, for compromise. <br /><br />I've more I could say on Marxism, but these comment boxes are small, and it's more or less summed up in: Marx is dead, long live Marx.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-75449586373842776712010-07-05T20:14:09.648-07:002010-07-05T20:14:09.648-07:00Very nice post here.
Philosophy needs some set pi...Very nice post here.<br /><br />Philosophy needs some set pieces, to be sure, but I'm with Bogost when it seems that so many of them are shoddy and overused. Like you say, they're stand ins for actual thought. They're the very definition of dogma.<br /><br />Who <i>is</i> a Marxist without a list of caveats a mile long? And, at the very same time, who <i>isn't</i> (second list of caveats required)?<br /><br />I'll admit that I get a little let down when I am reminded that someone as brilliant and funny as Bogost isn't 100% on Team Left. But, honestly, it only takes a minute to realize that there are very few plausible scenarios on my horizon (political or otherwise) where this single aspect of Bogost makes a lick of difference.Colemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14531787851607955545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-48004735352638711872010-06-30T22:23:54.696-07:002010-06-30T22:23:54.696-07:00Follow-up posts at Archive Fire and also at Networ...Follow-up posts at <a href="http://conflictions5.blogspot.com/2010/06/rundown-with-levi-bryant.html" rel="nofollow">Archive</a> <a href="http://conflictions5.blogspot.com/2010/06/bourgeois-academy.html" rel="nofollow">Fire</a> and also at <a href="http://networkologies.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/sr-and-politics-response-to-levi-and-ian/" rel="nofollow">Networkologies</a>.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-23974453716502036252010-06-30T20:38:32.234-07:002010-06-30T20:38:32.234-07:00David, thanks for coming over to post this. As yo...David, thanks for coming over to post this. As you can probably tell, I am uneasy, to a fault, with convenient either/ors. As you rightly say, anti-academic stances are all too frequent in the academy (as well as out); I frequently find them in poetry circles, where people are constantly debating the virtues and vices of MFA programs. Moreover this is not strictly an academic problem at all; as the context from the Voegelin quote (above) indicates, V. did not think that rote-theory was a noetic affliction unique to modernity-- he was talking about the sophists, the gnostics, the positivists. What I like about your point is that it points to the possibility of being in the academy but not of it, even as one avows quite expressly that one is indeed in it. I rather think-- and perhaps this is what you are intending-- that this possibility could profitably be considered with regard to all sorts of contexts, not least of which the nation-state. Obviously, being employed by the university as a concrete institution is different from, say, being a citizen of the United States, or being just a <a href="http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com/2010/06/business-as-usual-critique-of-cynical_19.html" rel="nofollow">consumer of fossil fuels</a> in the industrialized west, but the point is the possibility of being, as you say, "imbricated in everything and still be[ing] against it, with integrity." (This is a stance I often need to articulate myself with regard to the church). Newmann's "idea of the university" remains noble, and while I didn't love everything about Allan Bloom's book about the American Mind (OK, I threw it across the room a few times), he was right about this. We do indeed need models that show us how to stage such an immanent critique. Later, perhaps, we outgrow some of them, but we oughtn't to sneer at those who profit by them. (I don't, by the way, mean 'outgrow' in some linear developmental way). What I like about your emphasis on generosity is that it reduces the likelihood of sneering-- which, I think, is a very un-philosophical facial expression.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-21586223504753111562010-06-30T19:25:57.612-07:002010-06-30T19:25:57.612-07:00Skholiast: This is David R. from over at Ian's...Skholiast: This is David R. from over at Ian's. Great post and thanks so much for the strong engagement. I left some further comments over at Ian's blog that probably extends on my issues with the orthodoxy of critiquing orthodoxy in the university and how we need a category change in practice, not more 'interventions'. I really couldn't agree more with all this - and it's wonderfully, evocatively written, to boot. The only quibble I might have is that I think Ian's caricaturization of academia was less about the Ivory Tower as a place of too much thought but, rather, the Ivory Tower as a place 'not in the real world' - that hideous place that intellectuals are always castigated with not being enough in. The idea of any shelter for the pursuit of radical thought is soon enough turned into accusations of time-serving and being out-of-touch. As an undergraduate myself, however, one thing I appreciated about theorists and teachers who, today, where I am better read, I might be tempted to call rote theorists, is precisely how they modelled radicality for me in a way I basically got <i>nowhere else</i> in my life up to that point, or since. I'm not talking here in terms of role modelling - rather, it was the idea there was a possibility to be imbricated in everything and still be against it, <i>with integrity</i>. Now, what troubles me about the histrionics of attacks on academic orthodoxies is precisely that the counterintuitive move is one that has been an orthodoxy of the humanities for quite some time now, and it tends toward its fiefdoms precisely because it sees itself, in some key way, as <i>extra-academic</i>. I feel the much more radical - and truly 'theoretically practised' position - would be a kind of defence of the academy, an academic solidarity. It's not that I'm trying to shut down a concept like 'rote theory' which - I very much agree, has great appeal - much like the term 'folk psychology' - in applying a term to what you so greatly call "some kind of swamping <i>mauvais foi</i> that I need to make sure I'm outside of and untainted by". But I'd probably take this one step further and insist there is no such thing as 'rote theorists' only 'rote theory' - as a time of activity we can all become mired in, and will, at certain points. It's something we want to be outside of, but the first step toward exteriority is to apprehend how we're not exempt by virtue of our own theories of succumbing to it, whether temporarily or more permanently. Being an academic is more precarious than many are willing to admit, I think, most especially academics.slatted lighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12435196168070869276noreply@blogger.com