From: "Lowe Laclau" <lowelaclau-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: RE: More on Fascism (and Flows) (Agamben - Benjamin - Schmitt)
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 11:59:18 -0400



Martin, 

Although I have yet to see State of Exception, if I understand Agamben well enough I think your reading would be right. In this he is repeating the lesson Deleuze struggled with and that Foucault in his latter seminars would explore. Being "enemies" so to speak of transcendence, transcendental ways of thinking, (social) laws, justice etc. are not to be trapped in something higher than oneself. They are to be decided in the reckoning of the case. Schmitt in noting that the State's sovereignty is this ability to DECIDE at each moment the law of the case, to DECIDE what is justice, notes something that the bourgeois liberals couldn't articulate or accept. Why? Because the masses must believe that the law is decided by contract or concensus or what ever. For no second should we think that law and justice reside within our immediate, "immanent" relations with our situations. 

That's really what intrigued the left, not fascism. That's also what intrigued Foucault about Nietzsche and Sade and which made "soviet socialism" and the versions of "marxism" popular in france during his time so abhorrent to him. There was nothing liberating or free there. There was nothing expressive of the singularity of an individuals productive capacity there, as there was non in bourgeoise democracy. 

This would also correspond to Derrida's reading of Benjamin's "Violence". The richness of these analyses shouldn't be collapsed on simple arguments about intrigue with fascism. I agree with Angela that most of these critiques are slanderous than anything digestive of their messages. I see Derrida as well as others who've appropriated the discourse of Schmitt on the left (e.g. Zizek and Mouffe and Negri) as a challenge to the left to abandon their complacent attitudes vis a vis the political and to life in general. From Virno's perspective he would say that the challenge of the transcendentalization of law and justice is simultaneously a call for the virtuosity of the individual --i.e. a call for the indivual to name, to shape the present. 

Lowe

 

>From: Martin Hardie <z3118338-AT-student.unsw.edu.au> 



>Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU 

>To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU, s0metim3s-AT-optusnet.com.au 

>Subject: Re: AUT: RE: More on Fascism (and Flows) (Agamben - Benjamin - Schmitt) (Deleuze& Guattari ) 

>Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 10:42:30 +0200 

> 

>Angela 

> 

>.: s0metim3s :. wrote: 

> 

>sometimes .... the fire dance? 

> 

>> 

>>Seems more than plausible to me; much more 

>>plausible than the attempts to collapse every 

>>reference to Schmitt as a nod to fascism.  What's 

>>at stake in that manoeuvre seems fairly obvious 

>>(slander takes the place of argument):  Which is 

>>to say, I'd be interested (irrespective of who one 

>>cites as the textual authority) in any persuasive 

>>argument as to whether the state of exception is 

>>indeed an exception (or, rather, an anomaly). 

>> 

>>Angela 

>>_________ 

>> 

>It seems the slander take might be spot on ... regarding the 

>exception or anomaly  you are going to have to help me a little. I 

>just finished The Savage Anomaly and think as always I need to read 

>it again. I took on hardt's thesis which has helped it sink in a 

>bit. But from my reading of the state  of exception is that what is 

>revealed in a way is "bare law" stripped of its transcendental 

>trappings. I just  packed the excerpts from the book translated by 

>anthony's gang so its a little hard to go back to it just now (and 

>the server wont let me access it online at the moment) ... but try 

>and help me what you are geting at here vis a vis exception compared 

>with anomaly. 

> 

>Martin 

> 

>>______ 

>> 

>><end message> 

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> 

>>     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- 

>> 

>> 

>> 

> 

> 

>-- 

>http://www.auskadi.tk/ 

>"the riddle which man must solve, he can only solve in being, in 

>being what he is and not something else...." 

> 

> 

> 

> 

>     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- 




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