Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 17:57:30 +0100
From: james <spatium-AT-gmail.com>
To: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] Celebrity Deathmatch: D&G vs Badiou


Glen

I have heard numerous complaints about the scale of Badiou's events. 
Maybe the problem is that his what counts any given situation as
"One", is always on the scale of the State.  In this way, the event
can only render visible what is repressed by the State?

You said: " In this case the 'State' would be a closer
approximation to Badiou's event." Wouldn't it be closer to say that
the event re-presents the void of the State?  I guess I'm seeing that
void as a point of subjectificaiton, in that it is an organization of
power that serves as the origin of a passional line, or fidelity.  The
State serves as a kind of analyst for the militant, allowing him/her
to express (as subject of enunciation) but only insofar as he/she also
becomes the subject of the statement: "the more you obey the
statements of the dominant reality, the more in command you are as
subject of enunciation in mental reality, for in the end you are only
obeying yourself!  A new form of slavery is invented, namely, being
slave to oneself..."  Truth is subjective: enuciation; and it is
universally valid: statement.  Fidelity as self-slavery.

And so: "precisely because the sign breaks its relation of
significance with other signs and sets off racing down a positive line
of flight, it attains an absolute deterritorialization expressed in
the black hole of consciousness and passion.  The absolute
deterritorialization of the cogito." (Beckett's cogito?)  However,
subjectification always "repudiates the absoluteness" without falling
back on the old regime.

Sorry this is so long, and probably full of holes.

I am intrigued by your idea of fear as part of the event.  Can you say more?

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 11:32:33 +1100 (EST), Glen Fuller
<g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au> wrote:
> Hi James,
> 
> I think you may have something there. Two sides of the same
> enunciation. Badiou's militant is D&G's legislator-subject? Though I
> dunno if it is absolute deteritorialisation in either account, can you
> say more about this please. And what do you mean by negative and
> positive?
> 
> Something that bugs me about Badiou's approach is the question of
> scale. Why should an event necessary be on such a normatively
> miraculous scale? That is one difference between badiou's event and
> D&G's point of subjectification. I still don't understand how Badiou
> escapes from the problem of his militant's constant (micro-fascist)
> becoming-majoritarian or maybe it isn't a problem for him?
> 
> "The subject of enunciation recoils into the subject of the statement,
> to the point that the subject of the statement resupplies subject of
> enunciation for another proceeding." (ATP, 129)
> 
> This cyclical movement, resonating around a point (of subjectification)
> captures the active-passive swing (moving and being moved, ala 'tool'
> and 'weapon' of nomadology) between denotating a state of affairs to
> becoming expression. The self becomes its own 'state' (a simulacra
> of 'itself') that resonates with the State (or whatever vertical
> hierarchy in question). In this case the 'State' would be a closer
> approximation to Badiou's event. What I don't understand is how
> this 'State'/event is necessarily a good thing. Why can it not be lived
> by reactionary right-wing nutters as much as being immanent to the
> experience of exploited 'third-world' workers? Both experience a
> perceived injustice, the experience of injustice is collective, both
> can be mobilised into action, and so on...
> 
> If 9/11 could be considered an event, which fidelity to this event --
> militant material practice -- axiomatises the truth of a universal? The
> neo-con response -- neo-colonial business as usual -- does not attempt
> to do this at all, but they deploy the conservative refrain running
> through popular culture synthesising heterogeneous affective elements
> into hegemonic stratifications. Is fear not part of the event? Which
> leads to the question, paraphrasing Deleuze from LoS, are the people of
> New York and the US not worthy of what happen to them?
> 
> Ciao,
> Glen.
> 
> PS Chris, I am still thinking about Massumi paper!
> 
> 
> > Has the Badiou-Deleuze comparison died out?  In any case, I wanted to
> > ask: has anyone noticed that Badiou's event seems similar to Deleuze
> > and Guattari's "point of subjectification" mentioned, for instance, on
> > page 127 of ATP?  It leads to the negative deterritorialization of a
> > postsignifying semiotic.  Could one say that both Badiou and D&G are
> > formulating the revolutionary potential of absolute
> > deterritorialization, Badiou=negative D&G=positive?  Or is that
> > pushing it too far?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 09:09:18 -0500, Chapman <chapman0603-AT-rogers.com>
> wrote:
> > > Glen, I've just read your post. It's given me much to chew on,
> Merci. I'm
> > > going to take the wekend to find LoS and do some reading.
> > >
> > > In the meanwhile I have to ask you if you've read
> Massumi's 'Involutionary
> > > Afterward'? There he unpacks a bit of the virtual / actual
> relationship. To
> > > be gross abt it, I think the distinction has to do with the
> difference
> > > between two acts of interpretation: sorting out 'actual'
> differences through
> > > forming royal analogies by noticing similarities that differ and
> empirical
> > > veridity or the virtual differences held together by common
> analogies,
> > > things that sample a common, measurable property.
> > >
> > > I see you discuss traffic between the actual and the virtual in
> your last
> > > post, intuit that they are in some manner connected and informing,
> but I
> > > think that this passage / connection is still indebted to Lacan, a
> way of
> > > entering into language as the subject making surplus? My gut tells
> me that
> > > the 'passive syntheses of conjugation' necessary for the 'schizo'
> (good) is
> > > in dismantling this connection between the actual and the virtual,
> allowing
> > > them to run parallel and in themselves. I probably owe that thought
> to
> > > Massumi.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Chris.
> > >
> 
> --
> PhD Candidate
> Centre for Cultural Research
> University of Western Sydney
> 
> Read my rants: http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/
> 
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