File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/96-10-27.132, message 84


Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 03:03:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Greg J. Seigworth" <gseigwor-AT-marauder.millersv.edu>
Subject: labor of dionysus



Just tossing something into the mix of the violent/nonviolent thread if it
has been mentioned already I apologize (I've been skimming and deleting
mostly: not because from lack of interest but because of personal time
constraints).  Has Hardt and Negri's _Labor of Dionysus_ been brought up? 
They have a discussion of 'the practical critical of violence'
(pp.289-294) toward the end of their book that brings together the
thematics of Walter Benjamin's "Critique of Violence" essay with the idea
of Deleuze's Spinozian constitutive practice (that Hardt develops also in
his book on Deleuze).  Terrorism and nonviolence are read as occupying
opposite poles on the representational plane: a plane that, Benjamin says,
is cast almost always in relation to the law (so that forms of violence
take on either law-preserving or lawmaking functions).  Against such
conceptions of violence and non-violence, Benjamin poses 'divine violence'
(which, well, you'll have to read for yourself in Hardt and Negri--they
call it, rather, 'constituent power'): a violence [and I would want to
make sure to include 'a non-violence'] that "does not look outside itself,
to any representations, for its effects" (293).  Anyway ... that may not
be much to go on but it might be worthy of further investigation if you
haven't had a peak at it already.  I'd be curious to know what others
think of this conjuncture in Negri and Hardt (especially Tom: since his
elaboration of nonviolence is more nuanced than, I think, he has sometimes
been given credit for ... but, then, I *have* been skimming mostly ... 
also wondering--more specifically in Tom's direction--about his notion of
thoughtaction and what it might share with Foucault's "biopower"). 

Oh, also of interest in Negri and Hardt is a footnote to the above 
section where they write: "Jacques Derrida, in his interpretation of 
Benjamin's 'divine violence,' seeks to isolate the divine from the human, 
posing it in purely mystical terms, "inaccessible to man," "Wholly Other" 
("Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority,'" pp.55, pp.57).  
We find it more useful, however, to read Benjamin's divine as a sphere 
that interpenetrates the sphere of the human.  In other terms, if we 
accept Derrida's interesting suggestion that divine violence be read 
primarily as a Judaic notion (as opposed to the Greek character of 
mythical violence), we would choose to do so not in line with the Judaism 
of Emmanuel Levinas, which Derrida seems to prefer, but the heretical 
Judaism of Spinoza" (p.329).

Finally, since Hardt and Negri provoked me to go back and re-read 
Benjamin's essay tonight and, then, I proceeded to read the next chapter 
(a fragment) in his _Reflections_, the chapter called "The Destructive 
Character."  I was struck by what this essay might have to contribute 
too.  I like its conclusion: "The destructive character lives from the 
feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the 
trouble" (p.303).  

Okay, again not much but pretty much all I can do at 3 in the morning 
(and with the melody of the latest Weezer single in my head the whole 
time too).

Greg


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005