From: ".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s-AT-optusnet.com.au>
Subject: RE: AUT: RE: teleology
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 17:42:31 +1000


Lowe,

Let's take a step back in the thread.  The problem
I have being persuaded is this, over and above the
specific details below: How do you explain N&H's
explicit recourse to global citizenship in
_Empire_ and rights in the Magna Carta thing?

At best, it seems to me that people are
embarassed, regard it as the weakest points of
their arguments or, at worst, think of it as some
kind of lapse into insanity.

I'm not persuaded by that.  I don't think it's an
aberration; I don't think they're insane, even
though I disagree with them; I think it's been
implicit for some time and needs to be explained
according to this.  I don't think it's a
description, rather than a prescription -- this
has been made more than clear.  I don't think they
are unaware of what rights mean, or such bad
writers that they put these clumsy words in when
they meant something else.  And, there is no sense
in which they qualify what they mean by rights
that might distinguish it from, well, rights.

In short: How do you -- or anyone else -- explain
their increasing resort to rights?

I'm happy to hear the argument put; but evasions
in terms of 'that's not what they mean' without
specifying exactly what they do mean *in resorting
to rights* isn't really persuasive.  Nor are
assertions about the complexity of their work.

Yes, their work is complex; but it seems to me
you're saying is that it's so complex that it's
possible to dispense with the letter of what they
say.  On the contrary, it's because it's complex
and because I think they are capable of thinking
and writing in a complex manner, that it is
necessary to actually read them and not pretend
those aspects which seem embarassing don't exist.
The detail (of rights, global citizenship) can and
should be explained within the complex.  It needs
to be explained because it has become more
pronounced and because it forms the conclusion of
_Empire_ -- not some small bit somewhere in the
middle, in passing.

And, please don't tell me that you imagine global
citizenship does not assume a global state.  That
really wouldn't be persuasive. It might make it
more palatable to anyone who doesn't want to look
too closely; but it isn't persuasive.

: By "escatological" I meant "The End" as
: in some theologically determined
: finality, some dialectical resolution
: in which the good prevail over evil.

Ok, then; so if for 'good' one substitutes
'freedom;' and if the choice that is posed is
between death and this freedom, then does this no
longer follow that schema?

: What you're associating with Negri
: right now is exactly what Negri
: publicly criticized Derrida for.

You mean in _Ghostly Demarcations_?  You mean the
joyful spinozian embrace of an ostensibly new
ontological consistency which is supposed to take
over from mourning the obsolescene of an
ostensible marxian ontology and so on?  I don't
really buy it.  Anyway, I'm not so sure that this
is quite so joyful: seems at times that it's a
kind of surrealpolitik ('Empire or Death' -- see
_Empire_, Hardt on Afghanistan, their Magna Carta
call).

: 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.

That may be so. But N&H make this space, however
much you might insist otherwise, *they say it*:
the multitude reveals its end, destiny and freedom
in global citizenship.  How do you explain this?
A momentary lapse?  And, no, they do not see this
as a tendency.  We all know the difference between
a discussion of tendencies and the embrace of a
destiny.  None of us, including N&H, is so stupid
that they would talk about the latter when they
actually mean the former.

Angela
_______________

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