What is Deleuze?
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Apparently, analytic philosophy doesn't depend on this model so much... people have a much greater freedom to change their positions.
This is a problem which is perhaps especially pronounced for theory blogs, where much of the game (if you want to play that game) consists in harvesting links from people. The "Speculative Realism" brand indicates this especially well... notice how, at a certain point, a lot of people suddenly decided to board that train, thinking they could ride it somewhere. The effect is the subordination of philosophy to the contemporary and the culture industry... not so much time for "untimely" works, as Nietzsche put it, nobody is listening. Georges Bataille writes in the preface to the Accursed Share, that it took him 18 years (!) to write. This is almost unimaginable today
The deeper problem is the problem of rhetoric... the necessity for finding hooks, which is the domain of journalism and other forms of mediatic discourse. The wholesale "marketing" of theory/philosophy renders the pretenses of radical philosophy to genuine radical critique highly suspect... Badiou, for instance, was marketed (extremely brilliantly) as the man who would restore "truth" to a world gone postmodernist mad. From this, it seems clear that this desire for a radical philosophy of truth was internal to the system somehow... this system being the culture-theoretical mill that a lot of people are trying to work to their own advantage - not necessarily maliciously, but in a manner that is structurally deceptive. You see this a lot in the art world, but it is probably pervasive... contemporary art only conferring the purest and most visible form of it. The radical academy and the high-cultural industries perhaps show a difference in degree, not in kind - the mimetic competitiveness tempered by what remains of the disciplinary power structures which gave rise to the university in the first place. These are being dismantled now, but some of their lingering effects remain.
The statement "I am sick of hanging around boys and men who think that philosophy is some sort of ego-supplement" is unfortunate, because on a certain level it seems pretty clear that philosophy (literature, language, etc) is nothing else but an ego-supplement, in a Freudian sense; the term "ego" being not necessarily derogative. The real problem is maybe philosophy-as-narcissism: philosophy (or history, or anything) as narcotics shoring-up a self-image according to a wholly self-confirming procedure, ultimately coming down, I think, to a binary division: they are bad, and I am good, for the following fifteen ontological (a word that should be deleted from the dictionaries) reasons. The reverse would be better.
Affliate, disaffliate, kill again... I think, after a certain point, a different emotional complex took over and requested some justifications. There isn't anything necessarily opportunistic about this (it is quite mysterious when and how it happens) though there is a danger of opportunism... certain philosophies allow you to beef-up your rhetoric - Marx, for example, with his Messianic-salvation component, and also Badiou, with his tilts at the Truth - whereas others do not allow themselves to be used in this way so easily. The concept of philosophy-as-technology (Splinter-blogger, see his post on Badiou) is flawed I think, to the extent that it suggests a transcendent ego using the tools of theory impassively, whereas really the theory uses you.
four_five_one
Infinition
Good post. I suppose the apparent systemic inconsistency is also partly due to this: "It seems to me that there is a strong tendency within French inflected Continental philosophy to subordinate all questions of philosophy to political imperatives. As a result, one is supposed to choose their ontology, metaphysics, or epistemology on political grounds rather than grounds that directly pertain to these questions."
The consequence of this imperative being that questions of politics (of what it is) themselves remain (philosophically) unexamined... I declare myself Leftist (or radical or whatever...) as if this explained something very fundamental, and meanwhile I say no more.
There needs to be a politics of communication, of transmission, of rhetoric...
There needs to be a politics of communication, of transmission, of rhetoric...
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
High-five?
vimothy
yurp
I think that this is correct: blogospheric philosophy is subordinate to politics, a function of political affiliation. Start from a justification of communist revolution, and a narrative that says that this thought is suppressed, is unimaginable to the postmodern subject -- that its obsolescence is in fact proof of its virtue and relevance -- and we can plug our predispositions straight into an affinity group. It’s just like a market. They told you capital had won. They were wrong. And what's more, we have a secret, a language, a network, a series of exchanges, that proves it.
We need a blogospheric-philosophical enlightenment!
Or: blogospheric philosophy is subordinate to political-rhetorical imperatives... and there are two concepts of politics which are really in play here. Political labels, and political practice, with the former serving as shibboleths as passwords for the latter, in a totally non-direct and mystified sense...
The real political charge is located the rhetorical structure you itemize: this thought is suppressed, and this fact proves its vitality. You then hang whatever you want (whatever represses on you, or what bothers you) on this original sin of repression... the promise is an end to repression as such. Which will be ended when the things that repress me are ended... from the hardcore continuum to whatever you like...
Interesting the way ideas transmit, though, no? In a kind of fan, out from conflict.
More critically, they apparently need to pass through mediators (authorities) - people already plugged into milieus and possessing some status there - in order to be heard.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Actually I like that idea, if only because it finally admits that technological not "historical" progress is the driving force behind "revolutions" or social change...it needn't be some transcendent category, it's just the name for a process.
I also think he might be using the term in the more Greek sense of the "tekne"-logical...
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
This is why I find it hilarious when bloggers supposedly interested in "philosophy" get all uptight about disagreements and online arguments, the types who are from the "can't we all just get along" school of commenting. Philosophy IS arguing, then writing, then arguing-- that's what it's always been, if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Oh, sure, but most people aren't really interested in coming up against their imaginary "opposition", are they? It sort of shatters their perfect image.