What is Deleuze?

[nomadthethird]

In fact, I don't know if anyone here is capable of hitting me back to my satisfaction. I keep trying, though, like a dog returns to its own vomit.

 

[massrock]

Yes you fools, you've been trying to think of ways to improve the world when the most important task at hand was always to work out how to kick nomad in the nuts!

 

[josef k.]

That might be difficult.

 

[Mr. Tea]

So he proposed a sort of approach to politics that privileged immanence, direct action, almost reckless action without thought, action toward something that you don't know what it is...

Dunno what I want but I know how to get it!

 

[scottdisco]

everyone on this thread is a fookin darling but can someone tell me and i apologise for ignorance: does Badiou apologise for Mao and Pol Pot?

please somebody clear this up for me

(i apologise that it would be inferred that i am slagging yer man off)

 

[josef k.]

He still apologizes for Mao, and was a supporter of Pol Pot at the time - in fairness to him, perhaps before all the facts were in, though I think it says something about his political judgment.

 

[nomadthethird]

Find me one.

See Josef's link above for an example from the horses mouth.

Apparently, according to Badiou, anything short of total transformation is simply another way to further the interests of profiteers and capitalists.

Even homosexuals, bearers in the century, as we've just seen with Gide, of a part of the protest, today demand their insertion within the familial frame, the tradition, citizenship. See how far we've come! The new man, in the real present of the century, stood first of all, if one was progressive, for the escape from family, property and state despotism. Today, it seems that modernisation, as our masters like to call it, amounts to being a good little dad, a good little mom, a good little son, to become an efficient employee, to enrich oneself as much as possible, and to play the responsible citizen. This is the new motto: Money, Family, Elections. Even if the money is that of the net-economy, the family that of two homosexuals, the elections a great democratic feast, I can't really see the political progress.

Aha. So the Civil Rights movement was an Event of Truth, but gay rights are bullshit? Funnily enough, the civil rights leaders were huge on family values and biblically-based traditional heteronormativity. They wanted blacks to have equal access to a decent living. But these facts are strangely elided in Badiou's account. Civil rights leaders, too, demanded inclusion within the white, middle class, capitalist, democratic, heternormative frame. This seems a rather startling inconsistency, Badiou's lauding of the civil rights movement and simultaneous pat dismissal of gay rights movements for reasons pertaining to their lack of interest in displacing the total social framework.

To this:

Our duty, supporting ourselves on Lenin's work, is to reactivate in politics, against the morose obsession of our times, the very question of thought. To all those who claim to practice political philosophy, we ask: What is your critique of the existing world? What can you offer us that's new? Of what are you the creator?

I can't help but turn it around. What can you offer us that's new, Badiou? Of what are you the creator?

 

[scottdisco]

He still apologizes for Mao, and was a supporter of Pol Pot at the time - in fairness to him, perhaps before all the facts were in, though I think it says something about his political judgment.

cheers Josef! (and translated by Toscano one notes - they stick together, eh.)

Badiou should go for a drink with Martin Jacques, he's another dozy cunt when the subject is China.

(i think you make a very good call on judgment and Pol Pot, BTW.)

 

[poetix]

(x-post from t'blog)

I'd like now to gather together Paul Bowman's "Scattered Speculations" on Badiou, and see whether a response is possible.

Bowman, in a spirit of playful speculation and gentle malice, makes a series of jabs and feints in Badiou's direction. Some can be blocked; some connect; some are entirely wide of the mark. The claim that Badiou "is a modern day Jung" is outrageously funny, and perhaps also the most interesting. What is the transcendental of a world if not its anima mundi, the manner in which it is mindful of itself? Can Badiou's political aims be justly summarised as changing the mind of the world? At the very least, Bowman has identified a potential "deviation" here, an idealist Badiouism that would be indistinguishable from Jungianism. We will have to see to what extent the "real" Badiou can be extricated from the clutches of this doppelganger.

Let's acknowledge the ones that hurt. First, this: "Badiou is an 'excellent' philosopher. His criterion is 'consistency'. In this, his is the philosophy of the 'university of excellence' (cf Bill Readings): it is non-referential and bears no necessary relation to reality or the real". In a way, the entire problem with which Badiou is concerned is that of how to draw "the real" and "the excellent" into each other's ambit. This problem has two faces, one on the side of the real and one on the side of the excellent. On the first side, the problem of "truth" is that of whether a consistency (unfolded by the faithful progress of a formal subject) can be installed in the real. Must we accept, on the contrary, that chaos is the only appropriate figure of the real, the alpha and omega of every (temporarily) stable form? On the second side, it is a matter of knowing whether the "excellence" of mathematical reason, or of art, can be brought under a "condition" so that it treats of some real points. Here we must agree with Bowman: there is no necessary relation, no stable referential system, that can ensure that "consistency" and "reality" mean anything at all to each other. For this reason, the idealist "Jungian" Badiouism of which we were just speaking is metaphysically impertinent, because it does not acknowledge - as Badiou, I think, does - the contingency of truths. It is always possible that no truth will ever come to pass, and that none ever has. This is why Badiou argues that "the philosopher" must keep "the sophist", the nihilist debunker, on hand: there can be no ultimate triumph of the one over the other.

Secondly, Bowman's analysis of the libidinal payoff, for educated middle-class Guardian-reading types, of Badiou's grouchy Maoist dismissal of most (but not all) of the cultural product they enjoy, has a definite ring of truth. The fundamental desire of the educated middle class is for "distinction" (in this context, a term of art drawn from Bourdieu). Badiou assures them that almost everything they and their fellows like is worthless dreck, but leaves open the possibility of an exceptional artistic excellence to which they, through the militant purgation of their own sensibilities, can attain - thereby separating themselves from their fellows, who remain mere middlebrows and in thrall to the spectacular productions of Empire to boot. I was especially amused by Bowman's evocation of middle class resentment of "those others that I see every day reading the Guardian and in art galleries next to us at weekends". I don't as a rule spend my weekends in art galleries, but on the few occasions when I've visited the Tate Modern, say, I've invariably found myself seething at the constant stream of cultured inanities emitted by some twittering prat with more money than me. Like, God! Just shut up, will you! I'm trying to detect the minimal difference between the two hues in this Kandinsky!

More presently...

 

[mistersloane]

Is Bourdieu worth reading or does he just say stuff everyone knows and gets paid for it? I'm thinking specifically of 'Field of Production' and 'Rules of Art'.

 

[luka]

this is terribly entertaining, but the level of intellectual discourse is more rarefied in the grime thread

 

[poetix]

Grime is excellent.

 

[martin]

Has anyone heard that experimental LP he did with Faust?

 

[scottdisco]

It is always possible that no truth will ever come to pass, and that none ever has. This is why Badiou argues that "the philosopher" must keep "the sophist", the nihilist debunker, on hand: there can be no ultimate triumph of the one over the other.

liking this.

was very amused by your observation about the Tate Modern

Luka: this thread would be far more rarified were it not for my swearing..

 

[massrock]

Has anyone heard that experimental LP he did with Faust?

Does it exist?

There's this which I like -

 

[nomadthethird]

Why am I not surprised that the sole pretenders to the throne of Philosophy and sophist watchdogging can't deal with their own inconsistencies?

It's always the most conventional people who make the most noise about being radical, isn't it? Married, straight, 2.5 kids, tax paying, church-going, scout master, but I'm RADICAL dammit!

 

[nomadthethird]

Must we accept, on the contrary, that chaos is the only appropriate figure of the real, the alpha and omega of every (temporarily) stable form?

Must we accept that there are "stable" "forms"? Are you joking or have you really read Plato? Just curious here...

 

[nomadthethird]

Is Bourdieu worth reading or does he just say stuff everyone knows and gets paid for it? I'm thinking specifically of 'Field of Production' and 'Rules of Art'.

You'd like him, I think... he's sort of that kind of post-Weber sociologist who is so popular and widely read that if you've set foot in academia for a day you've already heard most of his arguments and more obvious theses. (so you might not be shocked by what you read)

 

[mistersloane]

You'd like him, I think... he's sort of that kind of post-Weber sociologist who is so popular and widely read that if you've set foot in academia for a day you've already heard most of his arguments and more obvious theses. (so you might not be shocked by what you read)

It's so weird I've not heard of him before. Maybe I have and I just thought they were mispronouncing Badiou lol, thanks, I'll see if I can find em second hand.

 

[nomadthethird]

It's so weird I've not heard of him before. Maybe I have and I just thought they were mispronouncing Badiou lol, thanks, I'll see if I can find em second hand.

I'm pretty sure the courses I read him in were art history dept ones... Edward Said was another biggie on Orientalism... his sister went to my school and so they threw him a lot of bones...