Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:13:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: benjamin rosenzweig <lumpnboy-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: AUT: RE: teleology


in this particular debate, I'm with JD

Lowe Laclau <lowelaclau-AT-hotmail.com> wrote:
Angela,

By "escatological" I meant "The End" as in some theologically determined finality, some dialectical resolution in which the good prevail over evil. What you're associating with Negri right now is exactly what Negri publicly criticized Derrida for. Negri's teleology is not separate from the common determination of whatever "end". Or put in another way, the "end" is not outside its temporal determinations, which means its not outside of US. There is no space in such a materialism then for prophecy. As for a neo-Platonism, I cannot see anywhere any space for that either. I think maybe its a bit difficult for people to get their hands around his materialism. He only formulates it properly in Kairos. In Time for Revolution it is (and he admits it) very in the moment, not very well digested, but there you can see more closely what he was in the process of digesting with respect to schools of logic, with "post-structuralist" thought, with the idea of "constructivism" and what all of
that meant vis-a-vis Marx's understanding of time, of praxis, of the tendency etc. But the essential idea is to put the subject back into the construction of the world. Which means that one can no longer subordinate time to space, construction to the existent. There are no Platonic ideas here, nor dialectical syntheses. I'm not quite sure about the discussion of "rights" with them. I've never read the labor of dionysus book and seem to have forgotten where they address it in Empire. So I can't quite respond to that now. I'll look at it when I get home. But the problem again I would think is less related to the concepts in and of themselves as understanding the concepts as they are proposing them. Most people that I find have these MAJOR disagreements with them don't really, but just don't understand what their arguments really are. Take the words "rights", "demand", "freedom" etc outside of their discourse --thus the space where the concepts are developed-- then they indeed
do sound quite silly. But this is a problem of their discou!
rses 
themselves, the literary machines that they've created (to use a Deleuzian term) function perhaps in counter-productive ways. But I'm not saying that this is also where your disagreement stems from because I don't know what exactly you are saying, just that this seems to be to be often the case. 

Lowe





>From: ".: s0metim3s :." 



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

>To: 

>Subject: AUT: RE: teleology 

>Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:46:11 +1000 

> 

>Lowe, 

> 

>I'm not sure what you understand by 'eschatology'; 

>but as far as I can tell, saying that the 

>multitude reveals a telos (their words) is the 

>announcement of an end, therefore both 

>eschatological and prophetic. And, sure, the 

>ontology is novel in relation to marxism. But 

>dispensing with dialectics for a dose of 

>neo-platonism isn't exactly novel in relation to 

>western philosophy. I'm not unfamiliar with 

>Negri's work, though I haven't read everything 

>he's written. What I will say is that the bit 

>which people seem to regard as his weakest 

>points -- ie., the recourse to rights in 

>_Empire_ -- isn't a momentary aberration but the 

>conclusion to a series of assumptions and claims 

>which have been present for some time. It's the 

>slippage between 'early' and 'late' Spinoza, if 

>you will; ie: the internalisation and diffusion of 

>the subject of rights as the correlate of the 

>internalisation etc of abstract labour. That's an 

>interesting analysis; but put to better use by 

>Lazzarato, Virno and others I think. But this, 

>Negri and Hardt claim, amounts to freedom, destiny 

>and a demand, again their words. Yuk. 

> 

>I'd be interested to know what there is in 

>_Multitudes_ that sheds any light on this, one way 

>or another. 

> 

>Angela 






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