The Erosion of Dissent

[luka]

i understand the rhetorical position perfectly because i've adopted it myself many times. but it's reductive isn't it. it's just rhetoric.

 

[Clinamenic]

I can't find it atm, but I read something the other day about Baudrillard pulling back from the simulation stuff for a while because he said it was making him ill.

Yeah, neurasthenia. I actually had reached a similarly intense state of hyperintellectual neurosis, whereby I could actually feel my body become more lethargic, as if gravity was increasing.

 

[luka]

Yeah, neurasthenia. I actually had reached a similarly intense state of hyperintellectual neurosis, whereby I could actually feel my body become more lethargic, as if gravity was increasing.

one of the things i learned from Prynne, well, i'm not sure i'm brave enough to follow him here actually, but the example he sets is that if you are serious, and if you value truth, then you take the punishment, and you submit to those more onerous conditions, and you live in the pain reality imposes. that you don't flee from it for pragmatic reasons of self-preservation.

 

[Clinamenic]

i understand the rhetorical position perfectly because i've adopted it myself many times. but it's reductive isn't it. it's just rhetoric.

I think this is largely true, even in my case. But where I suspect I am somewhat unusual, and not ripe for generalization, is that a good deal of my identity and psychic life has been enshrined in concepts and these concepts have either been integrated into larger structures or else left to gather dust in the archive.

I think it does genuinely get into the territory of autism spectrum disorder. I'm certainly no clinician and have minimal knowledge of formal psychology, but something about it just feels clearly similar.

Which is all to say, that in my case, concepts can be more integral than they can be for most people.

 

[luka]

or becasue you, as one of the lucky ones, are able to flee from it.

 

[Clinamenic]

one of the things i learned from Prynne, well, i'm not sure i'm brave enough to follow him here actually, but the example he sets is that if you are serious, and if you value truth, then you take the punishment, and you submit to those more onerous conditions, and you live in the pain reality imposes. that you don't flee from it for pragmatic reasons of self-preservation.

I do think of that time as a sort of psychic crucible, wherein the neurasthenic toll paid yielded a more expedient psychic advancement.

I've certainly swung away from it, but to say that I've fled is to assume that the larger dialectic is ersatz. No doubt it partially is, as I've mentioned pretentiousness comes with the territory here, building out scaffolding while under the delusion that it is structurally sound.

 

[luka]

when Mark died i came very close to starting a thread called miserablism and the mark fisher problem. i also share the discomfort with 'critique' as a default mode. but none of this is the same as abandoning refusal, reluctance, resistance and rebellion.

 

[Clinamenic]

The dialectic is between equanimity and psychic robustness, basically. I'm sure I can infinitely tack on caveats and elaborations.

 

[version]

Not sure what they mean by that. That people unconsciously seek the kind of order that is afforded by having someone control them?

"That is why the fundamental problem of political philosophy is
still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm
Reich rediscovered: "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly
as though it were their salvation?" How can people possibly reach the
point of shouting: "More taxes! Less bread!"? As Reich remarks, the
astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasional-
ly go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not steal
as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually
out on strike: after centuries of exploitation, why do people still tolerate
being humiliated and enslaved, to such a point, indeed, that they actually
want humiliation and slavery not only for others but for themselves?
Reich is at his profoundest as a thinker when he refuses to accept
ignorance or illusion on the part of the masses as an explanation of
fascism, and demands an explanation that will take their desires into
account, an explanation formulated in terms of desire: no, the masses
were not innocent dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of
conditions, they wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of
the masses that needs to be accounted for."

 

[luka]

i dont want to get tricked into making this thread all about you either particuarly! i think version wanted to talk about the culture at large!

 

[Clinamenic]

when Mark died i came very close to starting a thread called miserablism and the mark fisher problem. i also share the discomfort with 'critique' as a default mode. but none of this is the same as abandoning refusal and resistance and rebellion.

One strange thing about my approach is that the resistance in my case involves an ongoing attempt to subsume and transcend the capitalist mindset. Naturally this has involved, and will continue to involve, oscillations whereby I feel myself genuinely accepting some of the tenets of capitalism, donning some of the vices, etc.

In this case, the counter to capitalist greed is the transcendence of the phenomenal realm.

 

[version]

when Mark died i came very close to starting a thread called miserablism and the mark fisher problem. i also share the discomfort with 'critique' as a default mode. but none of this is the same as abandoning refusal, reluctance, resistance and rebellion.

'There is a gathering trend among neomarxists to finally bury all aspiration to positive economism (‘freeing the forces of production from capitalist relations of production’) and install a limitless cosmic despair in its place. Who still remembers Khruschev’s threat to the semicapitalist West—“we’ll bury you”? Or Mao’s promise that the Great Leap Forward would ensure the Chinese economy leapt past that of the uk within 15 years? The Frankfurtian spirit now rules: Admit that capitalism will outperform its competitors under almost any imaginable circumstances, while turning that very admission into a new kind of curse (“we never wanted growth anyway, it just spells alienation, besides, haven’t you heard that the polar bears are drowning …?”)'

-- Nick Land, Critique of Transcendental Miserablism​

 

[luka]

One strange thing about my approach

yes well we're not talking about you any more. try and think about the question version posed instead or he'll keep you back after class and give you extra homework

 

[luka]

-- Nick Land, Critique of Transcendental Miserablism​

the CCRU. and so Mark as well, started with a kind of disgust of critique and an impatience with moaning and miserablism. they took drugs and got excited and said lets make things, lets imagine stuff, let's have fun.

 

[luka]

maybe he weren't getting stuck into the drugs, probably not

 

[Clinamenic]

the CCRU. and so Mark as well, started with a kind of disgust of critique and an impatience with moaning and miserablism. they took drugs and got excited and said lets make things, lets imagine stuff, let's have fun.

Yeah that was maybe the big reason I was drawn to them. They seemed almost feral in their positive approach to theory. Not optimistic necessarily, but putting forward new possibilities and fascinating theoretical constructs.

 

[version]

Yeah that was maybe the big reason I was drawn to them. They seemed almost feral in their positive approach to theory. Not optimistic necessarily, but putting forward new possibilities and fascinating theoretical constructs.

One of the criticsms I've seen leveled at D&G is that it's creation for creation's sake, but I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

 

[Clinamenic]

'There is a gathering trend among neomarxists to finally bury all aspiration to positive economism (‘freeing the forces of production from capitalist relations of production’) and install a limitless cosmic despair in its place. Who still remembers Khruschev’s threat to the semicapitalist West—“we’ll bury you”? Or Mao’s promise that the Great Leap Forward would ensure the Chinese economy leapt past that of the uk within 15 years? The Frankfurtian spirit now rules: Admit that capitalism will outperform its competitors under almost any imaginable circumstances, while turning that very admission into a new kind of curse (“we never wanted growth anyway, it just spells alienation, besides, haven’t you heard that the polar bears are drowning …?”)'

-- Nick Land, Critique of Transcendental Miserablism​

I'm not that familiar with critical race theory, aside from a couple lectures, but if that discourse did inherit from critical theory, then its kinda strange that the woke transition led to a more progressive embrace of capitalism, no?

 

[Clinamenic]

One of the criticsms I've seen leveled at D&G is that it's creation for creation's sake, but I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

Yeah @luka has stated his disapproval of similar things, of building out immaculate machines just for their own sake. It's generative, it can produce insight amidst the junk.

 

[version]

I'd have thought Luke would be into that tbh. The use of the imagination. The 'immaculate' bit you've tacked on is probably where he disagrees.