Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 18:14:37 +0100
From: Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau-AT-gmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Negri and Charleton Heston?


Nate,

Don't have time to look through all of this email right now... I'm
actually procrastinating from doing something else (as usual).

> > The problem as Negri would like to present it to you is not whether or
> > not he's right, but rather holding each singularity responsible for
> > the eternal (the eternality of the present... or of kairos, or the
> > Event).
> 
> Sorry, but I really don't know what this means. Can you unpack it for
> me please, preferably in terms of what it means politically?

Hmm.. not sure how to explain it simply. In philosophical terms kairos
is simply the "materialist" definition of time that he extrapolates
from D in the K,AV,M book I always cite from. The point of
recouperating this materialist def of time is that all the various
forms of Platonism allow one to view themselves as separate from and
mediated in their relations from time (i.e. the idea that one does not
particulate in construction of the world, the world is just "reality"
that we have to accept and understand (e.g. the search for the
truth... ). Eternity as a concept derives from his reading of the
Eternal Return. Eternity then is defined as the absolute singularity
of the present. I.e. whatever is done now resonates throughout
eternity as your decision. It doesn't return in the sense of some
abstract time warping thing. But insofar as time is not infinite, but
the present (i.e. we get no other opportunity to participate in it)
one's time, one's "decision" (which i won't go into here, but is
itself a separate concept that N gives meaning to) in the present is
the eternal.
 
So if I say he's not concerning with an issue or being right or wrong
(about communism's (transition's) fate or the coming development of
the multitude (and Empire)) it is because these concepts are not
developed around a platonic conception of time. They are defined by a
materialist telos that says that these particular dynamics (Being,
multitude, empire, etc) will be what you make them or allow them. Thus
they are qualitatively not presupposed (what are the qualities of
"cooperation"? what could they be?). Thus the responsibility of being
a singularity: you can't hide behind your "race" or your "party" or
some other signifier or group to represent you for eternity.

Sorry so many parenthesis (like this one here). Happens when i write fast.

I'll read over the rest later. 

Lowe

 
> I'd like to say that what I have found very exciting in reading Negri
> was basically a set of theoretical moves, not unique to Negri. These
> moves consist in the following-
> 
> 1. emphasizing subjective power (like how Deleuze says resistance is
> ontologically prior to power, but even more like how Tronti and others
> have argued that class struggle actually historically creates new
> changes, 'from below). I like this because it's a corrective to
> determinist and objectivist marxisms, which I used to be trapped in.
> It's also a way to reject all that while remaining marxist (a
> distinction of baby and bathwater, if you will), something I spent a
> long time not understanding. For me, marxism became relevant to
> 'political work' again, and in a new way, when I started reading this
> stuff.
> 
> 2.re-interpreting marxist categories to basically include nearly
> everyone - domestic labor, service work, student work, children's work
> within the family, etc. This relates to the first thing - it's been a
> way for me to still make use of marxian categories while rejecting
> certain aspects of the politics of much marxism (again, babies and
> bathwater).
> 
> On this last, though, it's not clear to me where this rethinking
> occurs. In some autonomist work, the re-interpretation is in our
> categories, it's read back into how we understand history (so, the
> productivity of domestic labor requires a new understanding of the
> history of class struggle). In Negri, though, it sometimes sounds like
> the change is not in our categories, but in the world: domestic labor
> becomes productive at a certain point, production becomes biopolitical
> at a certain point, the working class develops the possibility of
> being multitude (ie, of organizing ourselves in nonhierarchical [and
> still effective] ways) at a certain point in time. This is the source
> of our earlier disagreements on Negri and Lenin - I get the impression
> that Negri and Hardt are arguing, implicitly, that Leninism is over,
> exhausted. This requires no re-thinking of the history of Leninism,
> attention to alternatives exluded or exterminated by Lenin and co,
> etc.
> 
> Now, to try to graft this non sequitur missive back into the thread of
> our current conversation:
> I think this last point - is the change a shift in our interpretive
> categories (an epistemological shift, an innovation in our
> political-theoretical tools),  or a world-historical shift (a change
> in the production process, such that now things which weren't
> productive before are now productive, that folks without [potential]
> political subejctivity now have [potential] political subjectivty) -
> is directly relevant to how we understand HN on multitude. If the
> change is world-historical then the picture is different - the world
> today is in rough shape but there's a new possibility for human social
> being, a new absolute democracy in need of organization to bring it
> about.
> This means multitude is a change in class composition, and there are
> new organizational possibilities today.
> 
> If the change is epistemological (perhaps an epistemological shift
> brought about by changes in the world - given that caring is a part of
> waged labor now it becomes harder to maintain that caring work is
> 'unproductive' and so it's easier to see that unwaged caring work is
> also productive), if the change is epistemological then what we have
> is a possibility that has continually been present, and multitude is
> not a change in class composition, and the term offers less resources
> for understanding the composition of class today, and less resources
> for understanding organizational possibilities adequate to today.
> 
> In this latter case, the term is at best a critical term that helps
> clear away various debris that impedes our thinking about politics,
> affirms the general open-ness of possibilities (ie, the term can work
> against premature ideas and approaches which prematurely foreclose
> political/subjective possibilities), so that thinking about
> organization can begin. This is by no means unimportant, of course,
> but I think these are important distinctions.
> 
> I hope this makes sense. Thanks for provoking me to think hard about
> all this stuff, I feel clearer on it than before, at least in my head
> (though some of my simple enthusiasm for Negri is now more
> complicated...)
> 
> take care,
> Nate
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:31:27 +0100, Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
> > The problem as Negri would like to present it to you is not whether or
> > not he's right, but rather holding each singularity responsible for
> > the eternal (the eternality of the present... or of kairos, or the
> > Event).
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> 
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> 


-- 
"I am God most of the time... when I don't have a headache..." - Felix Guattari


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