From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: RE: Zizek
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 23:07:49 -0600


Hey Louis, thanks for the wonderful opportunity.  (Oh, and next time I will
remember to spell check when I am being a smart ass.)

The comment referred to the problem raised by Marx's notion of alienation.
You see, if we are alienated, we have to be alienated from something, right?
We are alienated from our humanity.  But what does Marx mean by humanity?
We have two choices.  A.  Marx posits a positive, already-existing
'humanity' that only needs to be found.  This view has two basic problems.
Firstly, it ascribes to a Platonic (some might say Kantian, but I don't
think it matters all that much) underlying 'really human', which is an a
priori construction.  Secondly, it is positivistic and Marx had nothing but
hostile contempt for positivism.  B.  Marx thinks of humanity as
possibility, as ek-static (possibly but not yet existing, according to Ernst
Bloch); or as negative, as the negation of that which exists as oppressed
and exploited.  From this viewpoint, Marx's reference to alienation is
grounded dialectically in a not-yet-existing-but-possible humanity grounded
in the struggles of the oppressed and exploited.  Those struggles signify a
possible humanity, a humanity which is yet to be, but which rears its head
in struggle in a variety of ways.

This second humanity is the only one that Marx could be reasonably referring
to when he talks of alienation, since it is non-positivistic, non-a priori,
non-reductive and non-teleological, hence dialectical, notion of humanity.

So, I am afraid that in the context of a discussion of alienation and Marx's
notion of the human, my discussion is appropriate and sensible, even if one
disagrees with it.

Now, I am not a defender of Zizek in many ways.  His recourse to Lenin
follows from his dead-end attachment to Althusser and Lacan.  He may think
himself too clever by half, but compared to you, Louis, he is at least worth
the effort.  For whatever reason, but like most Leninist dogmatics, you
refuse to seriously engage with any ideas that don't fit your preconeptions.
Just please don't pollute our space with your boring, tired, thread-bare,
but oh-so-personally-offensive bullshit.

Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 8:13 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: RE: Zizek


> >Angela,
> >
> >Personally, I like Proyect's completely assinine anti-intellectualism and
> >jackass mentality. Hey Louis, been threatened by those violent News and
> >Letters economists lately?
> >
> >Cheers,
> >Chris
>
> Hi, Chris. I meant to ask you. What does this mean:
>
> "Some people have read alienation as 'alienation from what is possible',
from
> an ecstatic humanity, a not-yet-but-possible humanity.  Rather than see it
> as something pre-defined, we could argue that we have had, for the
entirety
> of human existence, seen glimpses of this possible, from this humanity as
> its own end.  In that sense, I think that the humanity underlying
alienation
> is a negative humanity, a negation of humanity-against-itslef which does
not
> claim to know exactly what humanity for itself will mean just yet, merely
> that it is possible."
>
> Isn't this just word salad? Here, let me give it a try:
>
> "Only through praxis can the subject transcend the self-negating object.
> Commodity production in the post-Fordist realm has been articulated with
> the reified self. But in a post-Lacanian project that transforms
> *ungespritzlitchzetzen* (a term coined by Adorno that is
untranslatable--it
> roughly means existential emptiness bordering on heartburn) into
libidinous
> self-actualization, the proletariat can achieve multitudinization."
>
>
>
> BTW, asinine has one "s".
>
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>
>
>
>
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