tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post4237151699987532200..comments2024-03-17T18:57:54.001+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: The phantoms of ideologyRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-56234697691384934632008-05-23T18:35:00.000+02:002008-05-23T18:35:00.000+02:00"But one should never speak of the assassination o..."But one should never speak of the assassination of a man as a figure, not even as exemplary figure in the logic of an emblem, a rhetoric of the flag or of martyrdom. A man's life, as unique as his death, will always be more than a paradigm and something other than a symbol. And this is precisely what a proper name should always name.<BR/>And yet. "<BR/><BR/>and yet that's just what derrida's going to do. chris hani, an emblem. Chosen to be celebrated not for anything he did - for what he did and believed is reviled at length in the text - but for what was done to him: he was assassinated. the text is dedicated to him as victim of assassination. a mute communist evoked as convenient interlocutor; an illusion of his consent to the text, a repudiation of all he believed and did and struggled for, easily compelled. he can't resist, like a ghost at a quack seance, he must come when called.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-6259535461220910212008-05-23T17:59:00.000+02:002008-05-23T17:59:00.000+02:00Chris Hani, dead communist, could not say what he ...Chris Hani, dead communist, could not say what he thought of Derrida's project to "spiritualise" Marx and "annihilate" that which attaches it to "the body" of "Marxist doctrine", to parties, to the analysis of class, to a revolutionary struggle, etc.. Hani indeed can be identified as a Marxist in one of the spirits to be annihilated. That Derrida chose to dedicate the speeches to him does not authorise us to assume his consent to the role assigned him as dedicatee or agreement with the content of that which is dedicated; we can't assume his patronage of the content of the text. Is there anything in this text dedicated to Hani, as a dead communist, (and not to any of his living comrades, those who carry on the collective project to which he devoted himself), that pertains to his ideas, actions, commitments, struggle except to reject them and denounce them as criminal and embryos of "totalitarian monstrosity"? Isn't Derrida's choice of communist for honouring with this gift of his lectures in keeping with the anti-communist tradition and its preference for dead communists?Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-64047798263933896492008-05-21T13:52:00.000+02:002008-05-21T13:52:00.000+02:00AO 94 = [19 TROPICAL YEARS = 6939.602 DAYS] = ABOU...AO 94 = [19 TROPICAL YEARS = 6939.602 DAYS] = ABOUT INTERACTIVE FICTION = AN X RAY OF THE FORCES ENGAGED = BUT OTHER NUMBERS TELL A DARKER STORY (<EM>AO-107 THE GREAT FLY SPEAKS THROUGH US ALL</EM>) = CAUGHT THE EYE OF THE SULTAN = COMPLEXLY RESONANT SYMBOL = DESCENDING DIPHTHONG = DIOPHANTINE EQUATION = EXHAUSTS THEIR IDENTITY = IRREGULAR MOONS OF NEPTUNE = LADY COLUMBIA IN HER CHARIOT = OBLIGATORILY RECIPROCATED (p6, This current was the impetus of a two-pronged question that Mauss had formulated in an attempt to decipher the enigma of gift-giving: "What rule <EM>of law and of interest</EM>, in societies of a backward or archaic type, compels the gift that has been received to be obligatorily reciprocated. What power resides in <EM>the object</EM> given that causes its recipient to give it back? ¶ An odd question, given that Mauss would go on to show that the act of giving is actually a concatenation of three obligations: giving, receiving (i.e. accepting), and making a return gift once one has accepted. This was a simple, powerful hypothesis which, by postulating the interlinking nature of these three acts, seemed to forbid considering them separately. However, both of Mauss' questions focused on only one of the three obligations, that of reciprocating the gift, as though the other two were self-evident. Furthermore, the formulation of the second question seems already to contain the answer to the first: Mauss was obviously evoking the existence of a spirit in the thing which compelled the recipient to return it. In short, it is as if he did not regard the existence of a rule of law or of interest as a sufficient reason and felt the need to add a "religious" dimension. ¶ Lévi-Strauss saw the hole in the reasoning and headed for it, castigating Mauss for having strayed from his analysis and having failed to apply the same method to all three steps, which form a whole: this was a methodological error a structuralist would never have committed, and which stemmed from the fact that Mauss had let down his guard, had momentarily forgotten to think as a scientist, and let himself be "mystified" by an "indigenous" theory. At this point, Lévi-Strauss proposed a global explanation of social phenomena which made the entire social domain a combination of forms of exchange, the origins of which were to be sought in the deep-seated unconscious structures of the mind, in its capacity for symbolization. Instead of being presented with a sociological study on the origin of symbols, the reader was offered the sweeping vision of a "symbolic origin of society." AO-62 FALSE ETYMOLOGY, AO-88 THE ENIGMA OF THE GIFT) = PROJECT A SYSTEM OF REJECTIONS (<EM>AO-89 PHANTOMS OF IDEOLOGY</EM>) = SIMILARITY TRANSFORMATION = SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA = SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT = THE CHIEF WHITE EUNUCH (<EM>AO-30 KAPI AGHA</EM>) = THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE = THE REVOLUTIONARY MOMENT (<EM>THE TOTAL SOCIAL FACT</EM>) = UNFINISHED PYRAMID (NEBKA).<BR/><BR/>AO 235 = 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 582097 = LÉVI-STRAUSS' POSTULATE: THE PRIMACY OF THE SYMBOLIC OVER THE IMAGINARY (<EM>AO-88 THE ENIGMA OF THE GIFT</EM>) = <A HREF="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a03.shtml" REL="nofollow">THE CASE OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER, PHILOSOPHER AND NAZI - PART 1: THE RECORD</A>.<BR/><BR/>AO 285 = 40,329,146,100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = THIS IS THE BUNDLE OF CONTRADICTIONS AND INCAPACITIES THAT CONSTITUTES THE CONTEXT (<EM>AO-88 THE ENIGMA OF THE GIFT</EM>).<BR/><BR/>AO 345 = EVOKING THE EXISTENCE OF A SPIRIT IN THE THING WHICH COMPELLED THE RECIPIENT TO RETURN IT (<EM>AO-88 THE ENIGMA OF THE GIFT</EM>) = JAPANESE LANTERNS, MUSIC FROM A STRING ENSEMBLE AND AN ANIMATED INTERWEAVING OF COLORFUL FIGURES MARK A GARDEN PARTY (<EM>AO-28 LEO 12°</EM>) = PISCES 5° THROUGH THE SPACIOUS GROUNDS OF THE CHURCH ARE STRUNG JAPANESE LANTERNS FOR A BAZAAR OF MERRY HEARTS AND FACES.<BR/><BR/>AO 354 = DRENCH THE BRIDEGROOM BY TIME-HONOURED CUSTOM WITH LIFE-GIVING WATER IN THE BATH BEFORE THE MARRIAGE = TWO-PRONGED QUESTION THAT MAUSS HAD FORMULATED IN AN ATTEMPT TO DECIPHER THE ENIGMA OF GIFT-GIVING (<EM>AO-88 THE ENIGMA OF THE GIFT</EM>) = WHEN THE FUCK DID GOD GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO NAME EVERYTHING AND APPOINT YOURSELF THE SOLE SUBJECT?northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-24371066558973699192008-05-21T05:33:00.000+02:002008-05-21T05:33:00.000+02:00thanks Amie (have to get out my dave matthews band...thanks Amie (have to get out my dave matthews band cds now).<BR/><BR/>Berlin Wall falls <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall#The_Fall.2C_1989" REL="nofollow">09-Nov-1989</A>. 94 days later, Nelson Mandela released from prison <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#Release" REL="nofollow">11-Feb-1990</A> (<I>our march to freedom is irreversible</I>).northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-19589246068814584652008-05-21T04:31:00.000+02:002008-05-21T04:31:00.000+02:00Here is the above text in French:Mais on ne devrai...Here is the above text in French:<BR/><BR/>Mais on ne devrait jamais parler de l'assissinat d'un homme comme d'une figure, pas même une figure exemplaire dans une logique de l'emblème, une rhetorique du drapeau ou du martyre. La vie d'un homme, unique autant que sa mort, sera toujours plus qu'un paradigme et autre chose qu'un symbole. Et c'est cela même que devrait toujours nommer un nom propre.<BR/><BR/>Et pourtant. Et pourtant, gardant cela en mémoire, et recourant à un certain nom commun, qui n'est pas n'importe quel nom commun, je rappelle que c'est un communiste comme tel, un communiste comme communiste, qu'un émigré polonais et ses complices, tous les assassins de Chris Hani, ont mis à mort il y a quelques jours, le 10 avril. Les assassins ont déclaré eux-mêmes qu'ils s'en prenaient à un communiste. Ils essayaient alors de interrompre des négociations et de saboter une démocratisation en cours. Ce héros populaire de la résistance contre l'Apartheid a paru dangerereux, semble-t-il, et tout à coup intolérable au moment précis où, décidant de se consacrer à nouveau à un parti communiste minoritaire et traversé de contradictions, il renonçait à de hautes responsabilités dans l'ANC et peut-être à jouer un rôle politique officiel, voire gouvernemental, dans un pays délivré de l'Apartheid.<BR/>Permettez-moi de saluer la mémoire de Chris Hani et de lui dédier cette conférence.<BR/>-JD<BR/><BR/>AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-13096459036584838202008-05-21T01:17:00.000+02:002008-05-21T01:17:00.000+02:00oops, the italics disappeared as i posted this. It...oops, the italics disappeared as i posted this. It is communist which is in italics in the line "...a communist as such, a communist as communist..."<BR/><BR/>AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-19918238049874978782008-05-21T01:13:00.000+02:002008-05-21T01:13:00.000+02:00LI, i would like to take up one of your suggestion...LI, i would like to take up one of your suggestions, and briefly extend something from the post. I wrote that Capital - the text - can also be read as a response to 1848. By which I mean, that it is also a work of mourning for 1848, for the revolution and for the proletariat. It is also a text haunted by the revolution and the proletariat. In previous texts, the proletariat is "ever present". In Capital, remarkably enough, the name and the word proletariat almost disappears. Marx instead utilizes Arbeiterklasse (working class). What to make of this quasi-absence of the name and of the proletariat from Capital? As if they had become ghosts?<BR/><BR/>One other comment. I was looking at LCC's latest instance of what LCC calls a careful reading of Specters of Marx, and notice that it starts off thusly:<BR/>"Spectres of Marx opens with an exordium, and the appearance of a spirit. A ghost. It is not a ghost of Marx, but of the arch anti-communist, Nietzsche..."<BR/><BR/>Well, I'm not going to argue the point, but will anyone be surprised in reading the exordium (exorde) to find that Nietzsche is nowhere named in that section though Kant is. But maybe Kant is not enough of an "anti-communist".<BR/><BR/>My problem with this statement is a little different. Spectres of Marx does not open as LCC asserts with an exordium but with a "dedication". And in that dedication is named a "figure", the very first proper name to occur in Spectres of Marx. It is that of Chris Hani.<BR/><BR/>What to make of an assertion and a gesture that blatantly and violently effaces and erases Chris Hani's name from Spectres of Marx? So this is close reading? And it is Derrida who stands accused of cynicism?<BR/><BR/>Allow me to quote from the opening dedication:<BR/><BR/>"But one should never speak of the assassination of a man as a figure, not even as exemplary figure in the logic of an emblem, a rhetoric of the flag or of martyrdom. A man's life, as unique as his death, will always be more than a paradigm and something other than a symbol. And this is precisely what a proper name should always name.<BR/>And yet. And yet, keeping this in mind and having recourse to a common noun, I recall that it is a communist as such, a communist as communist, whom a Polish emigrant and his accomplices, all the assassins of Chris Hani, put to death a few days ago, April 10th. The assassins themselves declared that they were out to get a communist. They were trying to interrupt negotiations and sabotage an ongoing democratization. This popular hero of the resistance against Apartheid became dangerous and suddenly intolerable, it seems, at the moment in which, having decided to devote himself once again to a minority Communist Party riddled with contradictions, he gave up important responsibilities in the ANC and perhaps any official political or even governmental role he might one day have held in a country freed of Apartheid.<BR/>Allow me salute the memory of Chris Hani and to dedicate this lecture to him."<BR/>-JD<BR/><BR/>the italics are in the text.<BR/>AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-48464947170303583092008-05-19T20:36:00.000+02:002008-05-19T20:36:00.000+02:00thanks north hanger: "is the MARX BIFIDE (per roge...thanks north hanger: <BR/>"is the MARX BIFIDE (per roger) Marx dancing around his own "germanic-european adventure"?"<BR/><BR/>there's surely something like that there - it could not be otherwise - but its really cracked open and disrupted constantly by critical thinking. About British imperialism in China, for exmple, Marx says the attack will change the course of Chinese history and how the Chinese react will change the course of European history. He sees it always two way; national struggle and global class struggle.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-71975831954509153732008-05-19T15:04:00.000+02:002008-05-19T15:04:00.000+02:00DERRIDA AND AUTOBIOGRAPHYGod, I've still got a cop...<EM>DERRIDA AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY</EM><BR/><BR/>God, I've still got a copy of that.<BR/><BR/>Smith was a strange chap. Left academia to do something else, like make a lot of money. Either that or run a cult. Possibly both.<BR/><BR/>Ah, I see I wasn't <A HREF="http://www.stantonmarris.com/whoweare/consultants/robertrowlandsmith/" REL="nofollow">altogether wrong</A>...Dominichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17939466948420020186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-55111803738620347882008-05-19T10:58:00.000+02:002008-05-19T10:58:00.000+02:00AO 85 = DERRIDA AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Robert Smith; p...AO 85 = <A HREF="http://books.google.com/books?id=tbJEiRVptRsC" REL="nofollow">DERRIDA AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY</A> (Robert Smith; p77, Second turning :: Autobiographical self-representation from mouth to ear closes upon itself as circle closes upon itself, or like a serpent biting its tail, as a symbol of infinity (as Derrida notes in <I>Marges</I>: see below). In other words, as absolute non-loss and continuity, the circle symbolises presence. It is with a discussion of ideal mathematical objects such as circles that Derrida's first publication on Husserl concerns itself among other things (L'OG,36/TOG, 50-1), and the analysis of the circle is sustained throughout his career - as if he too were circling around it and had to keep coming back to it from an autobiographical compulsiveness - from 'Ellipse' in <I>L'écriture et la différence</I>, to the '<I>alliance</I>' in <I>La dissémination</I> and elsewhere, to the circle made around the neck by tie and noose in <I>Glas</I>, to the encyclopaedism of Hegel which he analyses, to the circumcised glans in <I>Schibboleth</I>, to the world-circuit of tourism and travel in <I>Ulysse gramophone</I>, and so on. And, under the pressure of this indefatigable analysis, in this example glossing Valéry, the circle shows signs of dysfunction: 'The existence of the speech from self to self is the sign of a <I>cut</I>'... The circle turns in order to annul the cut, and therefore, by the same token, unwittingly signifies it. The snake bites its tail, from which above all it does not follow that it finally rejoins itself without harm in this successful auto-fellatio of which we have been speaking all along, in truth (MDP, 344/MOP, 289) + p78, ...the circuit from mouth to ear is also an a priori open or public thoroughfare, the messages sent along it taking the form not so much of a sealed and esoteric letter as a postcard for all and sundry to read, 'at once hermetic and totally open' (DTA, 42/OAT, 15). Both at once: 'The circle turns in order to annul the cut, and therefore, by the same token, unwittingly signifies it.' what cuts also closes; what closes also cuts. It cuts both ways. The <I>annulment</I> creates the circle of the 'anneau', the ring) = ENCHANTED THE CLEVER WITS (<EM>Nonnus, Dionysiaca 41. 250 ff; AQ-17 118, AO-35 PEITHO</EM>) = SATURDAY, 14-OCTOBER-2006 (<EM>AO-17 118, AO-45 UNUNOCTIUM</EM>) = TEMPORARY ELEMENT SYMBOL (<EM>AO-17 118, AO-45 UNUNOCTIUM</EM>) = THE SANCTUARY OF PEITHO (<EM>AO-17 118, AO-52 118 PEITHO</EM>).<BR/><BR/>AO 45 = NEGROID STATE = OUT OF BOUNDS = <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununoctium" REL="nofollow">UNUNOCTIUM</A> (<EM>aka, AO-21 EKA-RADON or AO-44 ELEMENT 118, is the temporary AO-21 IUPAC name[10] for the transactinide element having the atomic number 118 and temporary element symbol Uuo. On the periodic table of the elements, it is a p-block element and the last one of the 7th period. Ununoctium is currently the only synthetic member of group 18 and has the highest atomic number and highest atomic mass assigned to a discovered element... On October 9, 2006, researchers from Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of California, USA, working at the JINR in Dubna, Russia, announced in Physical Review C[8] that they had indirectly detected a total of three nuclei of ununoctium-294 (one in 2002[18] and two more in 2005) produced via collisions of californium-249 atoms and calcium-48 ions:[19][20][21][22][23]; AQ-17 118</EM>) = <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_of_Life" REL="nofollow">WATER OF LIFE</A> (<EM>AO-13 JAMKARAN, AO-14 ARROW, AO-18 QOM, AO-24 AL-KHIDR</EM>).<BR/><BR/>AO 67 = EUCHARISTIC NARCISSUS = FOUNTAIN OF BAKKHOS = IRANIAN SPACE AGENCY = LANGUAGE OF REAL LIFE = SHINING ARTISTRY.<BR/><BR/>AO 71 = 2836 SOBOLEV (1978 YQ) = ASCENSION OF MUHAMMAD = BEFORE THE FOUNTAIN = HIGHBROW LOWBROW = INDIRECTLY DETECTED = NURSE OF THE BABY EROTES = PERVERSE TEMPTATION = SANCTUARY OF PEITHO = THE MEMORIAL OF KERDO = TRANSACTINIDE ELEMENT.<BR/><BR/>AO 73 = FORMING A CONTRAPARALLEL = THE MAESTRO OF EAST HARLEM.<BR/><BR/>AO 79 = HIGHEST ATOMIC NUMBER = INTO YOUR BOSOM A LOVER = THE HANDMAID OF MARRIAGE = THE LIQUID OF BAKKHOS.<BR/><BR/>AO 83 = #1 NEW YANKEE WORKSHOP = 3.1415926535 897932384 = 4597 CONSOLMAGNO (1983 UA1) = 67 + 71 + 73 + 79 + 83 + 89 + 97 + 101 + 103 (<EM>AO-30 CUPIDO, AO-41 763 CUPIDO, AO-208 763, SUM OF NINE CONSECUTIVE PRIMES</EM>) = AGANOBLEPHAROS PEITHO (<EM>AO-52 118 PEITHO</EM>) = CAN TAKE UP ONLY SO MUCH SLACK = CURSOR OPTIMIZATION = DISPLACEMENT AND REFERENCE = FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD = FORMULA FOR INTERCALATION = FOUR PRIVILEGE LEVELS = GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT = <A HREF="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080602/lindsay" REL="nofollow">HAITI ON THE 'DEATH PLAN'</A> (<EM>Reed Lindsay - May 15, 2008 - The Nation :: Thousands of protesters had paralyzed Les Cayes for nearly a week, beginning April 3, covering streets in rocks, broken-down cars and burning tires. Community leaders demanded the government lower food prices, set a date for the departure of UN peacekeepers and end the "death plan," a reference to the neoliberal economic policies that have prevailed in Haiti for more than two decades. Meanwhile, Port-au-Prince was overrun by bands of rock-throwing protesters, who set fire to gas stations, looted businesses and assailed the presidential palace. Similar demonstrations exploded in the cities of Petit Goâve, Léogâne and Gonaïves. The barricades were finally lifted when President René Préval promised to subsidize the price of imported rice by 15 percent and the Parliament sacked the prime minister</EM>) = HINDU-ARABIC NUMERAL SYSTEM = IDEALIZED ASSUMPTION = ILLUSIONSLOSIGKEIT = LAUNCH WINDOW ANALYSIS = MAINFRAME ENVIRONMENTS = MATHEMATICAL ROLE OF ZERO (<EM>AO-67 BRAHMASPHUTASIDDHANTA</EM>) = METHOD OF THE INDIANS (<EM>AO-50 MODUS INDORUM</EM>) = ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN = PROPOSITION III = SEVENTH PYRAMIDAL NUMBER = SEVENTH SQUARE PYRAMIDAL = THE ARROW THAT FLIES BY DAY (<EM>AO-28 PSALM 91:5</EM>) = THE DARKNESS OF THIS WORLD (<EM>AO-57 EPHESIANS 6:12</EM>) = <A HREF="http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/blogs/gotunicode/2007/02/the_schwa_upside_down_e.html" REL="nofollow">THE SCHWA (UPSIDE DOWN E)</A> (<EM>AO-21 DYEUS</EM>).<BR/><BR/>AO 89 = ACCEPTANCE OF THE UNACCEPTABLE = LAST ONE OF THE 7TH PERIOD = SHRINE OF FATIMAH AL-MASUMAH = SUBORBITAL SHAHAB 3S SPACE ROCKETS.<BR/><BR/>AO 97 = COMRADES AS THEY ARE OF PEITHO = DISPUTED STATUS AMONGST SCHOLARS = ENTERING THE TEXTS BY A BACK WAY = HIDEK AND EXDEK (OUT OF BOUNDS) = SPECTRE [IS] HAUNTING EUROPE = SPELLS OF MAGIC INCANTATION.<BR/><BR/>AO 101 = <A HREF="http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=9413" REL="nofollow">AUS DEM LEBEN EINES TAUGENICHTS</A> = DIONYSOS SOUGHT TO SEDUCE AURA = HOUSE OF SHINING ARTISTRY = LES CLASSES LABORIEUSES ET DANGEREUSES = PAPHIAN'S [APHRODITE'S] COMMAND = THE EAST CREATED GERMAN MYSTICISM.<BR/><BR/>AO 103 = DECEITFUL FOUNTAIN OF BAKKHOS = NATIONAL SCIENCE MUSEUM OF JAPAN = STATUS OF CONCEPTUAL GENERALITY = THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE UNACCEPTABLE = THE ELEGIAC POET HERMESIANAX.<BR/><BR/>AO 100 = 9413 EICHENDORFF (1995 SQ54) = PEITHO POINTED A FINGER = POOR MARX... DID HE EVER CONCLUDE? = <A HREF="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Negro's_Complaint" REL="nofollow">STILL IN THOUGHT AS FREE AS EVER</A>.northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-69391086438928324302008-05-19T08:45:00.000+02:002008-05-19T08:45:00.000+02:00roger, you may be interested in (1848 stuff echoin...roger, you may be interested in (1848 stuff echoing many themes in here), <A HREF="http://munism.com/melville.html" REL="nofollow">Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne And The Antemosaic Cosmic Man Race, Class And The Crisis Of Bourgeois Ideology In An American Renaissance Writer</A> (see note #301).northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-78435373602839754432008-05-19T08:33:00.000+02:002008-05-19T08:33:00.000+02:00roger, why do you like "Amie's schema"? why is it ...roger, why do you like "Amie's schema"? why is it so appealing?<BR/><BR/>re: <I>entering the texts by a back way</I> ("entering the labyrinth whose architect Derrida is"?): might work as computer metaphor (yes), but racism &c (no). back of the bus, servant's entrance, the voiding "back door" &c&c&c. btw, it amazes me that (at some point) "Europe... did not contain Germany". but, this gives me the idea of Germany finding a "back door" to Europe (that Yoko Ono thingy).<BR/><BR/>re: <I>the notion that Derrida is some kind of Eurocentric guy</I> + LCC's "<A HREF="http://mondediplo.com/2004/11/06derrida" REL="nofollow">caught between US hegemony and the rising power of China</A>" -- someone calls this Derrida "<A HREF="http://listserv.uri.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0412&L=theforum-l&T=0&P=28259" REL="nofollow">refashioning Europe into a fetish</A>" (& other comments there support, i think, LCC's pointing out Derrida's "greco-european adventure").<BR/><BR/>LCC, i think Amie directly lands at the <I>negroidity address space</I>: "It would then be a matter of demystifying the mechanisms of illusion and of "autonomization" by which a "fantastic" world replaces – substitutes for – reality. The matter is of course not so simple or reassuring. For one thing, as we shall see, the process of demystification, the reduction of the "fantastic" world and the access to historical reality for Marx is only possible through historical change – revolution. But in such a reading of ideology one can at least rest secure and be (re)assured that in the realm of real life and the realm of production there is no ideology. Nor, of course, any ghosts."<BR/><BR/>everyone's problem (as you state), including the production of racism, is "demystifying the mechanisms of illusion". if BIFID/BIFIDE means "forked" it's a great crossroads metaphor. is the MARX BIFIDE (per roger) Marx dancing around his own "germanic-european adventure"?<BR/><BR/>i think this comment of LCC's seems to sum up the DERRIDA BEFIDE (correct me if i'm wrong): "Derrida does not acknowledge exploitation at all, and his idea of domination is mystifying, a general oppression by modernity, by telecom technology, by financial technology, (he's pluralise all these) and his concern is not property relations in capitalism, but the attitudes of the bourgeoisie toward culture products. Marx' project was to overthrow bourgeois rule and put an end to exploitation, Derrida's is to justify it and reform the private ethics of the lower level of participants. So showing how insightful Marx was about ideology, and the importance he gave it to his analysis and the importance he thought it had for the maintenance of ruling classes and the reproduction of exploitative class societies, does not in itself prove or suggest that Derrida must be just as he says continuing what he terms the interminable self-critique that is the true "spirit" of Marx."northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-57496675064820076162008-05-18T23:30:00.000+02:002008-05-18T23:30:00.000+02:00and actually js mill does not say all men are equa...and actually js mill does not say all men are equal; he appeals to justice: <I>It is by analytical examination that we have learned whatever we know of the laws of external nature; and if he had not disdained to apply the same mode of investigation to the laws of the formation of character, he would have escaped the vulgar error of imputing every difference which he finds among human beings to an original difference of nature. As well might it be said, that of two trees, sprung from the same stock one cannot be taller than another but from greater vigor in the original seedling. Is nothing to be attributed to soil, nothing to climate, nothing to difference of exposure — has no storm swept over the one and not the other, no lightning scathed it, no beast browsed on it, no insects preyed on it, no passing stranger stript [sic] off its leaves or its bark? If the trees grew near together, may not the one which, by whatever accident, grew up first, have retarded the other’s development by its shade? Human beings are subject to an infinitely greater variety of accidents and external influences than trees, and have infinitely more operation in impairing the growth of one another; since those who begin by being strongest, have almost always hitherto used their strength to keep the others weak. What the original differences are among human beings, I know no more than your contributor, and no less; it is one of the questions not yet satisfactorily answered in the natural history of the species. This, however, is well known — that spontaneous improvement, beyond a very low grade — improvement by internal development, without aid from other individuals or peoples — is one of the rarest phenomena in history; and whenever known to have occurred, was the result of an extraordinary combination of advantages; in addition doubtless to many accidents of which all trace is now lost. No argument against the capacity of negroes for improvement, could be drawn from their not being one of these rare exceptions. It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom. But I again renounce all advantage from facts: were the whites born ever so superior in intelligence to the blacks, and competent by nature to instruct and advise them, it would not be the less monstrous to assert that they had therefore a right either to subdue them by force, or circumvent them by superior skill; to throw upon them the toils and hardships of life, reserving for themselves, under the misapplied name of work, its agreeable excitements. </I><BR/><BR/><BR/>he is replying to a pro slavery argument, one which inspired Nietzsche, whom derrida considered the great thinker of liberty. Stirner is not arguing for slavery or oppression or conquest explicitly; he is not very far from Mill actually - the negro is a child, not a brute, and he doesn't say it is due to intrinsic biological difference - he doesn't explain it, he takes it as "understood". It's another kind of discourse, the "philosophical" that is euphemistic as Bourdieu says - the kind of discourse that Derrida can approve, he can champion Neiztsche's rehashing of Carlyle, he can champion Stirner's idealised counterpart to Mill's perfectibilianism. Marx wants to get to the bottom of this kind of discourse production. Stirner uses "negroidity" as a trope; it is very difficult to pin down how much he means to refer to actual people or what he really is even saying. So Marx' task is different than Mill's, and had he actually written exactly what Mill wrote, he would seem to be in agreement with Stirner, or at least, not saying anything incompatible. Stirner is opposed to all despotism, all oppression; he's a kind of anarchist or libertarian. <BR/><BR/>Marx wanted not just to show that someone like Carlyle was wrong. He wanted to show <I>why</I> he thought the things he thought. And why Hegel and Stirner thought the things they thought. And why Mill's idea of justice was what it was. Because this idea of justice is dominant, and for this reason Carlyle has to invent racial kookiness, and Nietzsche even more elaborate kookiness, to justify violating that idea of justice. <BR/><BR/>Stirner is no more advocating the enslavement of negroes than he is advocating the enslavement of children.<BR/><BR/>His idea is that negroes are mental slaves anyway; slaves to things, dependent on objects; their minds are enslaved, but he doesn't say that justifies the institution of slavery. They are there as a fiction to contrast with the individual owner, the realisation of Man on a perfectibilian journey of the spirit; but these are different versions of bourgeois ideology, the english and the german.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-65452422794391192102008-05-18T21:09:00.000+02:002008-05-18T21:09:00.000+02:00"What is bifid"also, probably, bifide - i don't ha..."What is bifid"<BR/><BR/>also, probably, bifide - i don't have the french text - just "forked" like the tongue of a snake, following "perfidious", double-edged...there is some treachery here, Marx is disloyal, but to whom? what interests?<BR/><BR/>"What concerns him is not the racism, it is the lack of materialism"<BR/><BR/>okay; but these are one and the same. Because without idealism you cannot have "race" at all - it is ideal, it has no material content. It is not a conceptual abstraction, like "forces of production", it is a fiction, like "the devil." Derrida's inability to distinguish between different types of concepts, between fictions like "negroidity" or "european reason" and conceptual abstractions like "centre", "value" or "exploitation" - here we ought have a sense of the distinction in marx between ideology and consciousness which derrida and many later marxists discard - would be a handicap if his intent were really to pursue the critique of ideology marx and engels began, and which was followed by gramsci, lukacs, benjamin, adorno, horkheimer etc..Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-37740093632534164792008-05-18T20:40:00.000+02:002008-05-18T20:40:00.000+02:00but contructing plato as european, and making a ca...but contructing plato as european, and making a case for a "european universalism" stemming from plato - what could be more eurocentric? its about what you favour, its how you represent things. how you build and define europe, what is means. for derrida and hedeidegger it's the same thing; attitudes toward it are personal and nobody cares - these guys aren't anybody's priests, nobody cares what they like or recommend. their influence arises from their ideology not their political commitments, from how they frame and portray reality. plato was unknown in europe until the renaissance, and is scarcely known today. the neoplatonism that has had influence on european culture, christianity, is Palestinian in origin. And might there be a connection between Derrida's determination that platonism be european, exclusively, that ancient greece be european, connected to his inability, as praxis notes, to bring his famous concern for justice to bear on an understanding of what is going on in Palestine? perhaps there's no connection between expelling Palestine from the land o' Plato and Derrida's idea that the violence of the colonised in an asymetric conflct is "archaic", but there could be.<BR/><BR/>i'm not saying derrida's readings of idealist philosophy have no interesting things to say; for me its half observant, half blind; but to deconstruct "european universalism" one has first to construct it, and it survives it "deconstruction" stronger than it would survive an ideological historical critique. it would be better to stop rebuilding it, perhaps; to let it just go away. I disagree with your view that Marx is concerned with the same spiritual europe as heidegger and derrida, but if that were the case, then one can only say, just because marx jumped off the empire state building doesn't mean derrida has to...<BR/><BR/> This ruse of deconstructing European Reason, the greco-european adventure, is much like the interviewee who confesses to the terrible fault of workaholism.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-30492168942667115382008-05-18T17:53:00.000+02:002008-05-18T17:53:00.000+02:00I guess we must ask who (or what) does Marx betray...I guess we must ask who (or what) does Marx <I>betray</I> by quoting Stirner's text as he reads and criticises it? Against whom is the perfidy committed when Marx uses Stirner's own terminology to describe his ideological fetishes? With whom did Marx break faith here? What loyalty was defiled? A loyalty he owes his fellow German, bourgeois, philosopher, young hegelian, a causcasian caucasian, author of an "audacious original" racist screed worth reading "against" Marx, with whom he must have solidarity? Or is it Europe, civilisation, the greco-european adventure that Marx betrays? His own "spirit", spirit the führer, spirit as the will as the will to know as perpetual self-critique that Derrida gives the name of Europe? Which must preserve itself, its unique enlightenment, democracy, etc, against negroidity and mongoloidity, against China and Arab/Muslim despotism, etc?<BR/><BR/>Or what? It can' be negro people, since Marx makes <I>very plain</I> there are <I>no negro people concerned here,</I> that Stirner's "negroes" are fictional characters, the fictional "africans" he's copying from Hegel, not anybody Stirner, or Hegel, ever met, and not only that they are internchangeable with "the child", which is not to say Stirner seriously believes he was a "negro" when he himself was a child, or that all children are negroes, or that all negroes are children, but that "Man" when a child is a negro, in other words, what Marx says: "nonsense", that is to say these are all fictions, ideological images concocted to embody concepts ("materialism", "custom") and give them a veneer of something else, "world-embracing names".<BR/><BR/>So saying "all men are equal" is about as useful here as pointing out that "Negroes" also go through puberty, and "Mongols" age past adolescence as well. Since Stirner is not suggesting that "Negros" and "Mongols" as individuals do not reach biological adulthood, the critique of this "audacious and original" argument about their perpetual childhood and perpetual adolescence has to approach it as Marx does, revealing its thingification, its logic, premises etc.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-73339828951080902872008-05-18T15:57:00.000+02:002008-05-18T15:57:00.000+02:00I mean, you are saying the dominated "arent a blan...I mean, you are saying the dominated "arent a blank slate" so these ideas in hegel stirner and derrida are really based on perceptions of those people, for hegel africans, for striner negroes, for derrida noneuropeans and presocratics; they really are like this and this is where hegel and stirner get their ideas. What Marx is tryinbg to show is that these ideas have nothing to do with africans and negroes; they arise from their authors, from germans, in german situations; they are IDEOLOGY, they come out of experience operated on by interest. The empirical question - proving "all men are equal" - is not really relevant and it is liberal individualist anyhow, not what marx is after. Marx believes consciousness is determined by being; he believes people in different conditions think differently; stirner is not making the explicitly biologist argument of a gobineau, but the culturalist one of a heidegger; he is does not explicitly suggest that a "negro" in a physical sense cannot be a "caucasian caucasian" - its another kind of spectre, out of Hegel, who comes before Darwin. Marx is trying to show how this ideology, the German ideology, arises from the German condition. It is this that Derrida rejects and I guess you are rejecting, assuling there really is something, some real people, some observable something, who give rise to these theories of history. Marx is getting at the more important issue here in this text. Not all racism is biologism; not all ideology of domination hinges on some notion of genetic determination. Heidegger's racism did not, and was just as dangerous - it is this, ideology, which is not simply "mistakes", debunkable by empirical evidence, that Marx is trying to explain and account for. How "africans" nd "negroes" are ideas, elements of ideology, which are formed for the convenience of class domination, out of the experience of the producers of these ideas, out of their perspectives and their interests. Not simply erroneous misperceptions objective rational minds may have of real people which can be cured simply by better and more acquaintance, more facts, more scientific knowledge. <BR/><BR/>Marx was a bit Rousseuian. He saw people as having lost important things through civilisation; lost liberty and leisure. On the other hand, he saw the "development of the forces of production" which this allowed as a very big gain, that would really liberate people from the greatest necessity - want and scarcity, which cause competition and war and violence. So he saw the narrative of "progress", material development, as a mixed bag; but its a given, history is a given, a fact, and he thought now was possible to regain lost liberty and leisure - that it, abolish exploitation of the mass of people by a minority of appropriators - in circumstances that could make this rally ghood, people really really free, with no need to compete, because scarcity had been conquered with machinic technology and organisation, the socialisation of production. But this faint rousseauism also means in Marx a view of decadence of certain ways of thinking that is "the German ideology"; this secularised christianity. Its adherents put it forward as an advance, as the culmination of a progress, as improvement, a better way of thinking than materialism, which they caricature and then degrade with association with dominated people who are objects of contempt in an existing and developing discourse of race. This whole thing, the whole complex of assumptions, not just the racism, is rejected by Marx. And he sees it as a constellation, a clutch of ideas, as coherent ideology. And he is attackng it as such a complex.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-37429392404630311322008-05-18T14:53:00.000+02:002008-05-18T14:53:00.000+02:00I mean, derrida's prime example, in his oeuvre, of...I mean, derrida's prime example, in his oeuvre, of an <I>anti-racist</I>, anti-fascist, anti-Nazi, anti-totalitarian text is Heidegger's Rectorship Address. <BR/><BR/>Marx wrote sardonically. All the time. You have to catch the tone. I suppose Derrida could read his letter to his son in law informing him in all seriousness that grampa Karl has just been brought to understand by a very learned man that his son in law and grandchild are racial inferiors, and conclude that Marx believed this to be true. Or you could have half a brain and understand that this is sarcasm, assuming an audience that will understand it as such, sharing in the contempt and more importantly <I>recognising the references</I>. It always amazes me how people read snippets of Marx and Engels where they mockingly quote Gobineau and the racist press and conclude - look, they were maniacal racists. Perhaps it is because nobody reads Gobineau and Stirner anymore, so they just don't recognise this stuff, its been cleansed from our ideas of the context; but its as if someone a hundred years from now watched buffy the vampire slayer, and when she says something like "its a dessert toping, and a floorwax" takes that literally, not knowing it is an echo, a sarcastic reference to something well known which only has sense <I>as a quotation</I>.<BR/><BR/>Which is not to say Marx was <I>free</I> of the ideology of race; i doubt anyone is; not Derrida or anyone else, not I, not you. That Derrida fails to see racism in Heidegger and Stirner says a lot about his way of thinking, but that's no reason to give the Marx the "not as bad as nazis award". Still, Marx' participation in or "subjection to" the <I>dominant ideas</I> of the dominant class, despite his extensive critique of them, his substantial but not total liberation from them, is no excuse for Derrida's perfectly dishonest and distorting "reading" of The German Ideology.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-75947915087824565332008-05-18T14:04:00.000+02:002008-05-18T14:04:00.000+02:00I mean, Derrida completely misrepresents the sense...I mean, Derrida completely misrepresents the sense of the remark he quotes:<BR/><BR/>the remark is: "These general concepts appear here first of all in the Negroid form as objective spirits having for people the character of objects"<BR/><BR/>in context it is clear, it means "these general concepts appear here first in what Stirner calls the negroid form, that is, as objective spirits having for people the character of objects."<BR/><BR/>that is the sense. It is perfectly clear in the text. Derrida uses snippets first, then finally the sentence, and treats it as if the "negroid" form is not specificied by "having for people the character of objects". He treats it as if "negroid" is Marx' contribution and means "obscure, dark, superstitious", as if with "negroid" marx is <I>commenting</I>, himself, metaphorically, giving his view of what Stirner calls "spectres", instead of <I>quoting</I>. As if these are two seperate qualities - "having for people the character of objects" and "negroid" - when it is pergfectly unmistakeable that "having for people the character of objects" is a clarification of the meaning Stirner has given to the term "Negroid" which Marx is quoting. It's an outright manipulatin of the text for the purposes of misrepresentation and to obscure the content of the text which is provoking this response.<BR/><BR/>You say, why didn't Marx just say "the text is vile". Let me ask you: Why didn't Derrida just say that? Why did he instead say it was original, audacious and worth reading? (not racist, vile and stupid)? Marx clearly thought the text was dreadful and pernicious and wrong about people. False. Serviceble to imperialism. Derrida on the other hand does not see the text as wrong, false, pernicious and serviceable to imperialism. <BR/><BR/>"negroidity" comes up and Marx attacks it. It is Derrida who choses not to, who choses to implicitly apologise for it in Stirner, to treat it as acceptable in Stirner, and to obscure the racism in it's use, the whole of the racist argument, the racist argument in the theory of history, prefering to minimise it, see it as a "perfidious" but trivial outburst of Marx, a tasteless metaphor he makes use of, unrelated to anything else but Marx' personal desire to smear Stirner as supersititous and beighted. It's a gross misreading - Marx thinks Stirner is superstitious and benighted precisely <I>because</I> of his idealism, not his <I>lack thereof</I>, which is the quality Hegel and Stirner define as "negroid". So it misinterprets on every level. For an obvious polemical purpose - it is the kind of thing verging on propaganda. Reading Stirner, who is audacious, priginal, not racist, we glimpse the seamy racist unconscious of Marx in his metaphors. It's of a piece with the entire book, its consistent misreading, misrpresentation, misparaphrase and its determination to make Marx the father of Nazism. Thus to Marx is attributed that horrible nostalgia for "pure use value" that is actually found in heidegger and could not be more alien to Marx' text, phantasies about "Negroidity" and its dark superstitions are transferred from Stirner to Marx, etc etc. Derrida is purging his own dynasty of all this odiousness; he is dumping it all on Marx, and then declaring the "spiritualisation of Marx" as "messiancity" free of "ideology" and "the ideological", to which he proclaims himself heir.Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-44535189454023251272008-05-18T13:45:00.000+02:002008-05-18T13:45:00.000+02:00"now we are getting a little further. If in fact t..."now we are getting a little further. If in fact there are - as there are in reality - more ideas out there than are mysteriously produced by the dominant class,"<BR/><BR/>of course, just as there are more classes than the dominant class, there are more ideas than the dominant ideas. The ruling class is not the only class - it's implied in the phrase. Same with the ruling ideas. The ruling class, those who own everything and appropriate surplus, rule - that's the point; their domination is cultural, not simply a question of superior force, which would not be very stable. Marx' point is not that people are automatons, but that the way property is structured in a society puts groups of people in different positions, in order to reproduce the society, the whole way of life, the material stuff of life, and that these are objective pressues of objective conflict. You say, how can this be true about ideas if Marx had ideas diverging from the dominant ideas? <BR/><BR/>Why would this be any different if you assume the dominant ideas are dominant for some other reason than their convenience to the dominant class and the maintenance of the status quo of social relations? (Or are you saying no ideas are dominant?) Where's the puzzle? - Marx' ideas are not the dominant ideas, they are not dominant now, they were not then. <BR/><BR/>Marx writes that consciousness of course of new empirical relations precedes the transformation of society, that the consciousness of bourgeois power for example, preceeded the bourgeois political revolution in France, that is, bourgeois ideology achieved dominance along with the bourgeoisie's economic and social dominance before the achievement of its political transformation of the state. <BR/><BR/>But of course, Marx was not by any means free of bourgeois ideology - as you note several times in this thread, including some influence of the "civilising mission" and to some degree of perfectibility and "progess"; although all this is subjected to critique, more and more over time, Marx' ideas are not simpl free of all this, or of the dominant ideas about virtue and honour, beauty and irony, the ideology of his period and place, but informed and imbued, of course. How could it be otherwise? <BR/><BR/>Personally, I think ideas are produced pretty broadly, collectively, and enclosed by the dominant class and modified; i don't think intellectuals really are that especially idea productive, more like they brand, arrange, skew, ornament, and eliminate, prune, select, from all the ideas people produce and disseminate, making the ruling ideas out of something not just producing them independent of relations to everybody else. I think this may have been less the case in aristocratic societies when the majority of people were peasants and remote from the centres of high culture production. <BR/><BR/> "then we are in the presence of something graspable, a mechanism for selecting among them, and a mechanism for distributing them "<BR/><BR/>For Marx it's all about control of and influence over the means of <I>production</I> and <I>distribution</I> (for ideas, for other stuff); for Derrida, the dominance of ideas it's just about distribution, just as with all this thinking. <BR/><BR/>JD in Spectres recognises three seperate discourses, academic, politician/bureaucrat and mass media. They have a kind of joint monopoly on discourse production, he says, and were recently distinct but are now sort of consolidating, he faintly suggests the last is really altering the others and bringing them under its dominance. Their discourses are dominant. What Derrida rejects is that this is a feature of ruling class domination. He rejects the idea that a ruling class exists. He gives the technology a determining role in the content of and homogeneity of the discourses it disseminates, independent of its ownership. <BR/><BR/><BR/>"Of course, the production of them is still a sacred mystery. <BR/>"<BR/><BR/>If you mean consciousness, thinking, the production of ideas, is a mystery, yes it is. We know nothing about it. We have no explanation for consciousness. It is a mystery. I doubt it was any more a "sacred" mystery to Marx than to Derrida, but to some people it is <I>the</I> sacred mystery, that is, divine. <BR/><BR/><BR/>"I find your interpretation of Marx's innocence of racial bias curious."<BR/><BR/>You would have to, since I never asserted he was "innocent of racial bias". I asserted he was making fun of Stirner's grotesque and extremist racist idealist history. Which I think is very plain. This is not all we know about Marx' views on stuff of this sort - he laughs about it in a letter to his daughter and son and law.<BR/><BR/><BR/>"Derrida calls Marx bifid in this instance. What is bifid? It refers to cyphers, to a code that is 2 levels deep, I believe. First you code the message, then you code the code. So, there is a code here. But it is unclear what the code is about."<BR/><BR/>Well it's not going to be clarified by concealing that it is a quote from the text being critique, is it? That it has a meaning in the text under critique, that it is not appearing in Marx' text out of the blue? Why does Derrida do that? Conceal that "Negroid" means "dependence on objects" in the text Marx is quoting and that this is why is has that meaning in the sentence? Isn't it a puzzle what "Negroid" has to do with "objects" otherwise? <BR/><BR/>"But it is unclear what the code is about. Marx should be able to say, all men are created equal, thus, this nonsense about the negro state is vile and repulsive. He doesn't"<BR/><BR/>Doesn't he? ("this is nonsense") And why would a statement like that - ll men are equal - be a sufficient critique of racism in Stirner? Derrida surely believes all men are equal, nonetheless he finds Stirner's argument about negroidity and mongoloidity compelling, "audacious, original" and not racist, or so insignificantly so that it is not worth mentioning. He just decides they are metaphors whose source domain is of no importance. What Marx is out to show is that it is of importance, that the racist nonsense arises from the idealism, that for Stirner "people are only representatives of concepts" (that is racism - Marx is saying "people are not representatives of concepts", negroidness, chineseness, this is "nonsense") and that it arises from a whole way of thinking. For Derrida, in Stirner "negroid" is a spectre like any other. In Marx' text he treats it simple as a concept, the concept "blackness". This is why he conceals that in the text under critique it means "dependence on objects" and is paired with "the child".<BR/><BR/>Why did Marx find it funny and contemptible that Stirner's gives his own objects on which he is dependent, his own fetishised ideas, to which he has the relation he describes himself as "negroidity", the name "spuk"? Why did derrida not get this or choose not to mention it?<BR/><BR/>"Marx was so tongue tied that his copying of a copy was a form of deep mockery reflecting his universal tolerance."<BR/><BR/>Oh come on! First of all, we know what Marx thought of this racist stuff from his letters, where he mocks it. In his comments on Stirner, he has more fish to fry - he is not setting out to critique only the underlying racist assumptions with which Stirner builds his case, his metaphors. He treats them with contempt. They are not evidently what is attractive to people - it is not because of the racism that Derrida likes Stirner, is it? Is this what is appealing to Derrida in this book? I doubt it. Derrida considers it simply unimportant. That is why Marx has to show that it is important, not just seperable, something you can set aside and still consider the "argument" about consciousness, self and history as if it were not using <I>these particular spuks.</I><BR/><BR/>Would that suffice, in your view, as a critique of Stirner? To say - all men are equal? Doesn't Derrida know this? Then why does it not suffice for him? Why does Derrida find Stirner audacious, original and worth reading? Presumably he sees no connection between the race "spuks" in Stirner and his thinking in general, and simply sets them aside, or perhaps he finds something true about them - we know he believes that Plato invented a certain kind of reason, perhaps he feels this "negroidity" really has/had validity, as a reference to some consciousness yet to be transformed by Plato's european creativity. But I rather think he just thinks its trivial. Marx does not; he sees it is intertwined with the rest of the text, negro-mongol-caucasian; child-youth-man; all "nonsense" which Stirner's thinking produces, and which "transforms <I>people</I> [all people - he makes no distinction] into representations of concepts."Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-30797341489330676182008-05-18T05:31:00.000+02:002008-05-18T05:31:00.000+02:00Well, though we are all bound to have our views of...Well, though we are all bound to have our views of Marx, Derrida, and whatever, as is abundantly clear from this comment thread - which I've enjoyed and learned from, even if I, along with everybody else, seem stubbornly to hold my positions - after all, I only really know what those positions are after wrangling. I hope that this comment thread does show how provocative your post is, Amie. I only hope that you use it in a more ... well, status bearing place than LI. It would make a good essay for Angelika or Radical Philosophy or any number of publications you probably know better than I.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-53330726167523584212008-05-18T04:48:00.000+02:002008-05-18T04:48:00.000+02:00LI, it is sort of mind-numbing, to see that quote ...LI, it is sort of mind-numbing, to see that quote above about "ideological product" from the GI and how it is all about the "ruling classes" when precisely Marx has to change his take on such and not simply because of theory. Did I not try to raise this question in my post? Who am I, but one might want to read Marx on this, and its contexts and time and conflicts, and there one will find as did Marx that ideology is not simply of the "ruling class". In fact to do so, is to not to step out of it, but to succumb to it.<BR/><BR/>AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-82603623560452255342008-05-18T03:15:00.000+02:002008-05-18T03:15:00.000+02:00Mr. Spleen, you have a great knuckle sandwich of a...Mr. Spleen, you have a great knuckle sandwich of a name. I can't believe I fucked it up! My hunblest apologies.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-35346027374012412232008-05-18T03:07:00.000+02:002008-05-18T03:07:00.000+02:00LCC 1. ah, now we are getting a little further. If...LCC 1. ah, now we are getting a little further. If in fact there are - as there are in reality - more ideas out there than are mysteriously produced by the dominant class, then we are in the presence of something graspable, a mechanism for selecting among them, and a mechanism for distributing them - what Derrida is so wierdly concerned with in his focus on telecommunications, and what Marx, retrospectively nostalgic for the mission civilatrice in Germany, calls civilizing communication. Of course, the production of them is still a sacred mystery. <BR/><BR/>We enter, then, the real of social reality, instead of the comic realm of the dominant class somehow producing "chivalry" and "honor" by way of mind control. The comic, here, is that this is exactly Stirner's theory of representation, down to the Stoics "representing" the ancient period. <BR/><BR/>Which is the cool thing about Marx - unlike the Marxists, Marx pursues his half true ideas until he can either discard them or modify them in the light of experience. Which experience makes the notion that the dominant ideas are produced by the dominant class a non-starter for the serious material investigation of ideology. <BR/><BR/>Marx, more than most thinkers, is hurt when he is explained by collapsing the historical trajectory of his thought and simply producing an output, chalkboard tables of the "definitions" one has to memorize to understand Marx. <BR/><BR/>2. Re: Heidegger. Of course it is about celebrating. The binary of Kultur vs. Zivilization is precisely the focus of De L'esprit, the reason for the comparison with Valery, and the reason for the extension of some of those themes in Spectres of Marx. <BR/><BR/>In fact, the German experience, the Europeanizing of Germany, of which Marx is one of the great advocates, and the reaction to it, the return to Kultur, is one of the themes of post-colonialist cultural studies because it is part of the globalization process - an injected universal, you might say. Partha Chatterjee has shown how the culture vs. civilization binary plays out in India, with Indian nationalists borrowing from a tradition that goes back to Herder. <BR/><BR/>Getting a grasp on this binary is a great help to understanding some of the themes in the German Ideology. <BR/><BR/>3. And, a final remark about Marx, Derrida and racism. I find your interpretation of Marx's innocence of racial bias curious. The German ideology is six hundred pages long. If Marx was shocked by Stirner's racism, he surely could have fit some of that outrage into the book. The vocabulary was there for it. For instance, that great liberal, John Stuart Mill, was able to write a <A HREF="http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/millnegro.htm" REL="nofollow">fiery essay on Carlyle's racism</A> in 1850. But somehow, we are to believe that Marx was so tongue tied that his copying of a copy was a form of deep mockery reflecting his universal tolerance.<BR/><BR/>Derrida calls Marx bifid in this instance. What is bifid? It refers to cyphers, to a code that is 2 levels deep, I believe. First you code the message, then you code the code. So, there is a code here. But it is unclear what the code is about. Marx should be able to say, all men are created equal, thus, this nonsense about the negro state is vile and repulsive. He doesn't. What concerns him is not the racism, it is the lack of materialism - when Stirner rolls out the various peoples who "represent" ideas in the development of the spirit, it is funny both as a copy and as a ghost play. Marx knows that, instead, the level of civilisation depends on the level of production - it is the material conditions in which they live that count. That leaves plenty of room for racism if one wants to put it in there. Primitive accumulation by primitives can lead to a train of action of the most repulsive type. And, of course, at this time Marx himself has plenty of the "conventional ideas", as we can see by his essay on the Jewish question. Again, though, in this comedy of copying: Derrida copying Marx copying Stirner copying Hegel, what one wants to know is: why does Marx omit what, I think we can reasonably say, he believes by the 1860s - the kind of reference to human equality that made it easy for Mill to denounce racism? <BR/><BR/>The reason, I think, is that Marx is reacting so violently against "idealism" that he underplays such bourgeois themes. Given that he wants to armor himself in materialism to the extent that he distorts his account of labor to adhere to it, this is where Marx grows bifid, to his loss. It is here that the question posed by Amie, of the creation of ideology, proves most useful - for instead of using the notion that the dominant ideas are produced by the dominant class, a vague, non-empirical and ultimately valueless instrument for investigating social reality, Marx, over his career, changes his mind on it - much in the manner pointed out in this post.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-85143772014495761602008-05-18T02:08:00.000+02:002008-05-18T02:08:00.000+02:00"as anybody who reads Heidegger will know, far fro..."as anybody who reads Heidegger will know, far from celebrating this spiritual Europe, Heidegger thinks the technical-scientific Europe is lost - it has lost its gods,"<BR/><BR/>it's not about celebrating or denouncing, it is about concieving. The conception is the same. it's the same thing. derrida celebrates it, heidegger bemoans. This thing does not exist. But both derrida and heidegger believe in it, and share the definition, the contours; they create th same object of their different opinings.<BR/><BR/><I>Who, then, is speaking through Marx? And why should we believe him, if we believe him about collective ideology? Either he's right, in which case he is wrong, or he's wrong, in which case he could be right. The solution to this - that the dominant ideas arise from the dominant class - grossly lacks ... materiality. It seems like a call upon telepathy. </I><BR/><BR/>Marx says the <I>ruling</I> ideas are ideas produced by idea producers of the ruling class. He doesn't say the <I>only</I> ideas are the ideas of the single individual member of the ruling class(es) you happen to be reading.<BR/><BR/>Let's say NY lawyers have an average life expectancy of 82. You could still know one who died at 46. An individual cannot die at 46 and 82. But this does not invalidate the principle of the average life expectancy, because an individual is not a microcosm of a group. Groups have certain characteristics individuals do not have. The ruling class will have members who are infants. Some will be senile. Some often drunk. Few will have any theories of history. Some will be in comas. Nonetheless the class produces ideas, even if some individual members can't produce any, and some individuals are eccentric. The ruling class even has <I>professional</I> idea producers.<BR/><BR/>Here's marx' explanation of ruling idea production:<BR/><BR/><I><B>The ideas of the ruling class</B> are in every epoch the <B>ruling</B> ideas, i.e. the class which is the <B>ruling</B> material force of society, is at the same time its <B>ruling</B> intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, <B>has control at the same time over the means of mental production,</B> so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. <B>The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think.</B> Insofar, therefore, as they rule <B>as a class</B> and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as <B>producers of ideas, </B> and <B>regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age:</B> thus their ideas are the <B>ruling</B> ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the <B>dominant</B> idea and is expressed as an “eternal law.” <BR/><BR/>The division of labour, which we already saw above as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labour, so that <B>inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood), while the others’ attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive,</B> because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves. <B>Within this class this cleavage can even develop into a certain opposition and hostility between the two parts,</B> which, however, in the case of a practical collision, in which the class itself is endangered, automatically comes to nothing, in which case there also vanishes the semblance that the ruling ideas were not the ideas of the ruling class and had a power distinct from the power of this class. <B>The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class;</B> about the premises for the latter sufficient has already been said above. <BR/><BR/>If now in considering the course of history we detach the ideas of the ruling class from the ruling class itself and attribute to them an independent existence, <B>if we confine ourselves to saying that these or those ideas were dominant at a given time, without bothering ourselves about the conditions of production and the producers of these ideas, if we thus ignore the individuals and world conditions which are the source of the ideas, we can say, for instance, that during the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts honour, loyalty, etc. were dominant, during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc.</B> The ruling class itself on the whole imagines this to be so. This conception of history, which is common to all historians, particularly since the eighteenth century, will necessarily come up against the phenomenon that increasingly abstract ideas <B>hold sway,</B> i.e. ideas which increasingly take on the form of universality. For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class. ” </I>Le Colonel Chaberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18090919492176021408noreply@blogger.com