From: "Lowe Laclau" <lowelaclau-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: AUT: RE: teleology
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 08:24:15 -0400




Angela,

 


>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? 


I'm assuming N&H's rationale for these types of proposals is to 1) further Development at the global level... thereby challenging capital's relations with 'states of exclusion'. If one believes as they do that struggles no longer are able to spread in terms of the 'international cycles' of class struggle as they used to, then one can see what relevance this might have for "liberating" masses of people from the material conditions of their imposition in work, land, industry etc. 2) As for the Magna Carta, I think one has to see it in terms of the long term development of States, the democratized, aristocratized, oligarchized Despot was ALWAYS much better than its absolute predecessors no? Why? Because in all of those process of deterritorializing the State, putting checks on it, diffusing it etc, the "economization" allowed for the development of the "masses". It precisely allowed the masses to become people, then multitutdes. Just think about these in concrete terms. There is much more to the liberation of the working classes than overthrowing something. One can't just overthrow the monetary relation by denouncing it or taking over a state. Though I'm not sure how Negri would put it, perhaps one could say that demeasure, not sure how to translate that into English, but Negri's concept is only relevant vis-a-vis "representations". Its PERHAPS, the internalization of demeasure within representation itself that he considers the means for developing class struggle today. 


>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. 




OK. But my point earlier was that this very concept becomes challenged by them. This given notion of "rights". They DO challenge it. They do challenge the relationship rights hold with representation. And you're right it is precriptive, but no description is merely a description either. Description is a form of commanding in my perspective. One commands adherence in a description. Such that if I describe something differently, it is immediately a political act. But still, I had no time to reread them last night, so I can't respond more specifically to what they've said. 

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

Well, there's several things here. The first is that talk about rights, demands for guaranteed wage, global citizenship etc are not unique to them. Much of Europe is talking about things like this. Or at least the Left. So, taking up these themes is perhaps for them just a way to give their take on how such demands should be made and what these issues should be linked with. But also, are not such proposals necessary with respect to increasing demands against capital's downward pressure on collective goods? If the working class stopped making demands what would happen? One of the few areas of Zizek's thought that I agree with are also along these lines... where he talks about demanding the impossible, because all of the working classes accomplishments were at one time 'impossibilities'. So the aspect of demanding rights I would think obviously come from there, but as for rights in an of themselves, if I say they do not leave this concept unchanged it is because they've so heavily attacked anthropocentrism, humanism etc. Right, yes, but rights for what and for whom?

>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. 

Referring to the complexity of there work is merely meant to encourage people to not be hasty in prejudging them. I'm no expert on any of these issues, so I'm in so position to say anyone is wrong and I'm right, I'm only writing to see if not there is more behind there assertions than a lot of the highly dismissive and prejudging pseudo-critiques that a lot of people make. And not just of H&N but lots of people. The question for me is whether or not one has anything to lose by reopening these closures that are made when judgment is passed. E.g. 'Yeah Negri's theory is blah blah... or yeah, what a vulgar form of Marxism' or whatever... My assumption most of the time is that we tend to highly simplify things so that we can get our minds around something with minimum work. So, against such simplifications, I believe asserting complexity is the better option. 

>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. 




Right. I agree. But are not the ideas of rights and global citizenship taken up in more detail in other areas of their work? I think the problem in Empire was the desire to make such a meta-theory out of it, that they could only appropriate these dominant themes, leaving more everything except the central concept of Empire itself elided. I would say again thats a problem with Empire as a literary machine. It doesn't function all that well.

>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? 




No, because to be eschatological (sorry about the mispelling, didn't mean any association with scatology) means a FINAL event. And it also means that something exterior to the circumstance determines the finalities in and of themselves. 

>: 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). 




Yes, thats what I was referring to. Well, thats an interesting interpretation. I don't see such surrealness in their politics, but maybe thats just me. 

>: 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. 




Yes. I see. That is a pretty 'prophetic' type of statement. But it presupposes a political element thats not and which I think cannot be determined a priori. It's prophetic in the sense of an 'I hope'. But one of the good things about the concept of the Multitudes is that it is so general, so heterogenous that one can only "represent" its sigularities. Or the class as a class of heterogeneous singularities. Well, I guess I was a bit hasty in saying there was no room for propheteering. But the tendency/destiny distinction need not be mutually exclusive does it? If I frame the development of a class in an NECESSARILY tendential sense (because the realization of a global multitude must first be realized globally, and not simply in the minds of a few, just as capital had to be socialized globally as a viable relationship which we can equally define on the same type of "political" level), I can still justifiably say in Hegelian fashion that that class's realization (its destiny) is only achieved with its "relations" become socialized globally. Otherwise it is merely the underside of a much larger series of dynamics, something forever tendentially becoming, like Capital's historically tendential relation to the "World" market. I'd be interested in knowing how Negri would respond to the epithet of "propheteering", when he criticized the theological moments of Derrida. In absence of such a response I'd have to look again at how he wanted to distance himself from Derrida, but I've never owned that book and only read it once in a bookstore in London. Ah... actually I just found a copy of that online in Spanish. I'll rehave a look. 

Lowe

>Angela 







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