Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 23:01:52 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: re:  Ethics as a figure of nihalism]


Diane
It's true we are reading Nancy's work differently - the difference seems 
to be that I believe that one can directly apply, perhaps even 
understand the practically existing communities within which we live, 
through the work. This is especially feasible because of  Nancy's use of 
existing real-world examples to justify and expand his theoretical 
perspective. He takes the notion of community and attempts to construct 
a new extended figure of secular resistance - but does not deny the very 
real problems that constitute a community.  '...Community means, 
consequently, that there is no singular being without another singular 
being, and that there is therefore, what might be called an orignary or 
ontological  "sociality"  that in principle extends far beyond the 
simple theme of man as a social being... for on the one hand it is not 
obvious that the community of singularities is limited to "man"  and 
excludes for example, the animal... On the other hand if a social being 
is always posited as a predicate of man, community would signify on the 
contrary the basis for thinking only something like "man". But this 
thinking would at the same time remain dependent upon a principal 
determination of community, namely that there is no communion of 
singularities in a totality superior to them and immanent to their 
common being...' (see page 40 of the inoperative community)

In these terms it is possible to maintain the recognition that in a 
society, whilst the community is constituted out of the consumption of 
 social - it is in turn constituted out of  the 'finitude of singular 
beings'.  In other words the reading we are differing on is founded 
differently (a singular being is always already social) - but the 
starting point remains the consciousness of death/finitude. Identities 
do not unravel, they are not singular as such but split, forever 
fissured.  The initial definition of singularity (p6) reads like a 
redescription of Deleuze and Guattari's BWO - it is the subject as Nancy 
says of 'ecstasy' - of passion - with the introduction of such terms 
desire is implicitated.  Community is always revealed through death and 
extreme events, it is only at these moments that community is revealed 
to others,  it always instantiates itself through others and for others. 
 The 'loss of community' which he links to the nostalgia for communion 
is the illusion that somehow our communities have suffered a greator 
loss than other societies. It is not a  question of communion but the 
impossibility of community, the communal loss, which is understood as a 
nostalgic desire for a communion which is forever non-existent, except 
in the nostalgiz for belonging to a singular community.  The 'reversal 
of the nostalgia for a lost community into the consciousness of an 
immense failure of the history of communities' is continued in the 
failure of the communties of 911 as they began to bomb those they had 
refused to save and of course are continuing to refuse to save...

The enormous specular and emotional reaction to the event, the 
reestablishing of a nation-state-sized-community.... 'My fellow 
Americans...' The exclusion of the other, a fascinating misrecognition, 
ecstatic and desirous. Haunted endlessly by torrid christian desires and 
genocide. This is why the implosion 'in the face of finitudes 
exposition' was impossible to imagine... The being-in-common that 
emerged was the renewed saftey of the spectacle of American soverignty.. 
. (as it crumbles)

The spectacles our societies produce represent our societies dangerous 
desires - 007, the full monty, middlemarch, victoriana, stories of the 
english working classes, the endless fascination with india, africa, 
emotions and cuddly stories of animals we exterminate by the millions.

 I do not believe  a "just" politics is possible, just politics...

regards
steve

Diane Davis wrote:

>Hmm. I dont know, Steve. First, I'm not sure if we understand what
>nancy is talking about in the same way. In my understanding,
>being-in-common is not a function of desire, nor is it a product--it
>cannot be produced. It is an originary "community," and it is
>*originarily* inoperative: by definition, it does not work. A
>"community" that always already is, it has nothing to do with social
>bonds, and identifications can only efface it--it is from this
>originiary community that subjectivity extracts itself. Though it can't
>be built/produced, it can be exposed--not exposed in any work (any
>representation or figuration) but in that which exceeds, interrupts, or
>incompletes both the work of subjects and the subject as a work (of the
>dialectical process). 
>
>It is exposed, yes, most explicitly in the death of the other, or rather
>in the others relation to her/his mortality--which teaches me my own
>mortality and my singularity: my "infinite lack of an infinite
>identity." We share finite existence, thats probably all we share, and
>we share it in a radically passive way; it is not a function of agency.
>In the exposition of finitude, i experience an unraveling of identity,
>identity's unworking: dsoeuvrement. In Heideggerian terminology but
>with a Nancian (?) refusal to re-gather, it is this experience of
>unworking and depropriation that introduces Dasein to itself (as
>Da-sein) and to community (as Mit-sein) and that confirms for Dasein
>that what (and all) "we" share is precisely what divides "us": our
>finitude, which is both our mortality and our inability to be-One and to
>be-at-One, with others or even with ourselves.
>
>What you're calling a nostalgic desire for community is really a
>nostalgic desire for *communion,* a fusional desire, which is certainly
>what got manifest with a vengeance after 911 but which is also precisely
>not what nancy is talking about. Do we disagree?
>
>The exposition and experience of finitude is not akin at all to
>totality; it is precisely what interrupts ANY totalistic effort, any
>work, any attempt to exclude since it exposes the non-belonging that
>precedes and exceeds any and every *condition* for belonging. This
>exposition of finitude and so of community does not and cannot found a
>"new totality." It cannot found or institute *anything*, not a politics
>nor a mode of sociality. What it does, though, according to nancy, is
>expose the limit, the ectopical between-us space or ethical zone
>where any politics or social organization ought to begin (and end). A
>politics that does not want to know anything about this is a mythology,
>Nancy observes, or an economy. 
>
>What I was trying to suggest in my last post is that there was this
>fragile moment, this ever so tiny opening that presented itself on 911
>in which the oppressive representations, the exclusionary practices,
>etc., might have imploded in the face finitude's exposition. But what
>happened instead was the opposite, a kind of furious backlash, an
>insistence on mythology, on economy, on identity over and against the
>experience of community. The "United We Stand!" stickers pretend to be
>an exposition of community, but they actually articulate exactly what
>effaces it. Avital Ronell once noted that it is precisely when finitude
>gets infinitized, when the other's finite singularity gets erased or
>ignored or obliterated (through stereotypes or whatever), that "we"
>start bombing the shit out of them. And of course, it's also when the
>self-appointed "we" starts othering those "within the ranks" who will
>not "fall in" or "unite," filtering them out and excluding them. I agree
>with you that this is what's happening now, that "sense of exclusion for
>the greater whole of America - is greater than ever before." I just
>disagree with you, I think, about what sparked it.
>
>And I still want to hold onto the question I posed in the last
>post--because the only "just" politics, if there is one, would have to
>be one that refrains from infinitizing finitude, that avoids the
>question of essence but without nixing the possibilities for an/other
>kind of solidarity. 
>
>Best, ddd
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of
>steve.devos
>Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2001 1:12 PM
>To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: [Fwd: re: Ethics as a figure of nihalism]
>
>Diane,
>I was interested in your mail because it hinted at many issues and
>experiences that we must have lived through over the past few months.
>
>It seems as if the nostaglic desire for community and the communal
>being/existence is only achievable through the desire, the sudden
>appearence of death. Jean-Luc Nancy refers to how Batallie was
>concerned with the thought that human sacrifices seal the destiny of the
>human communities. Community is drawn out more strongly into the public
>realm through the death of others-in-the-community. It is this which
>constructs the new 'totality' and perhaps the new 'finitude' the
>experience of community which immediately defines itself against those
>who do not belong. In this, admittedly more negative response, I differ
>from your initial analysis for the new being-in-common always results in
>the appalling treatment of the 'Others' which communities derive from
>their sharing of a moral and singular experience... In this sense the
>extraordinary coming-together of the being-in-common inevitably results
>in exclusion. The primordial myth of the community is founded on the
>original notion of a people that proposes a communal identity purifiying
>the image of a population whilst also blocking any productive
>interactions of difference.
>
>I'm not sure how it can be otherwise when we live in a society in which
>traditional cultures and social organisations are endlessly destroyed,
>deterritorialised, by capital's endless trajectory through the world
>creating new networks and paths which results in a single cultural and
>economic system.
>
>Certainly the USA has been drawn together into a greater sense of
>community by the events of 911 and Afghanistan - however as a simple
>European visitor the sense of exclusion for the greater whole of
>America - is greater than ever before... 
>
>To construct a new notion of community, to produce one that is
>operative, rather than being endlessly flawed and founded on specular
>commodification, exclusion and violence is the challenge...
>
>regards
>steve
>
>Diane Davis wrote:
>
>A few years ago I was on the search committee in my dept, and we brought
>
>in a candidate who used the term "community" in every other sentence.
>
>When I got my one-on-one meeting with him, I asked him what he meant by
>
>this term. He waffled, smiled, blushed, and said something like:
>
>"um....well, you know, it's really hard to define...but it's one of the
>
>few concepts that doesn't have any negative connotations--no one can say
>
>anything bad about community." I was thinking: wow, those were the
>
>days--before psychoanalysis, feminist theory, poco theory,
>
>post-structuralism, deconstruction, etc. He didn't get the job. 
>
>
>
>But steve, though I don't really disagree with what you're saying, I do
>
>think I would add a little texture to it or something. I think that it's
>
>possible to experience community, to suddenly experience it through all
>
>the oppressive crap (not just consumerism's crap, either). Today I
>
>noticed out my kitchen window t
>his giant SUV proudly displaying the
>
>typical post-911 kitsch: an American flag and a big passenger side
>
>window sticker saying, in bolded caps, UNITED WE STAND! And it hit me
>
>that in the first moments/hours/days after the 911 tragedy, that phrase
>
>seemed descriptive, a genuine attempt somehow to express the
>
>inexpressible, to indicate the overwhelming feeling of concern and care
>
>and support for one another that "we" were suddenly experiencing, the
>
>urge or imperative to pull together locally and nationally. This had
>
>nothing to do with consumerism and at that early point very little to do
>
>with nationalism (though, I do think nationalism may have imposed some
>
>limits to the experience). And the news media was as dumb-struck as the
>
>rest of us; it was their dream story, but they were caught totally off
>
>guard and were scrambling around, stuttering, stammering, giving
>
>unprepped, unpolished accounts of what they saw or heard. The spectacle
>
>machin
>e that's usually so smoooooth and sleek, bumbled and fumbled.
>
>Nobody knew what they were doing. And/but still this experience of
>
>community, of being-in-common, as nancy puts it, was palpable. We had
>
>very suddenly and very violently been reintroduced to something that
>
>most of "us" have a tendency to forget: that we are indeed fragile, that
>
>we are finite after all. And the experience of finitude *is* the
>
>experience of community, the experience of sharing a mortal and singular
>
>(unsharable) existence. 
>
>
>
>That lasted for about 48 hours in most of the country, I'd guess. Longer
>
>in NYC. And then...then "we" forgot again precisely what we'd just
>
>relearned. The radically passive and depropriating experience of
>
>finitude, of community, gave way to the reassertion of identity and
>
>sovereignty, in all its nasty forms. You're with us or against us. The
>
>damn flag became a big money-maker. And this morning that phrase--UNITED
>
>WE STAND!--exclamation-
>pointed as it was, struck me not as a descriptive
>
>but as a prescriptive, as a command. Especially after lynn cheney's
>
>goons at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni put out that
>
>McCarthy-ish report citing academics as the "weak link," etc. A kind of
>
>tyranny of consensus now runs rampant in the so-called land of the free
>
>to an extent that I haven't experienced in my lifetime--evidencing yet
>
>again the incredibly shitty side of "community," the fact that the
>
>experience of being-in-common is obliterated in the very instant a
>
>project is established by which that community might define and express
>
>itself (in this case revenge is the major project: war). By which it
>
>might include and exclude. Meanwhile, consumerism came rushing back with
>
>unbelievable force, backed as it was this time by nationalism--or,
>
>excuse me, (ahem) patriotism: Buy a gas-guzzling SUV and support your
>
>country's economy!!! No interest for a whole year! Etc. 
>
>
>
>The
> question for me, though, is not so much how to "win" against
>
>consumerism b/c I think we just saw that the latter in fact does fall
>
>off the register when "we" are exposed to our irreparable finitude. I
>
>don't think it's primarily a problem of the loss of common myths,
>
>either--myths tend always to be associated with the establishment of
>
>some kind of Volk. The question for me, rather, is how to hold onto the
>
>intensity equal to the level of death, as bataille put it, which the
>
>experience of sharing-existence demands, without resorting to violence
>
>and sacrifice to do it. 
>
>
>
>Best, ddd
>
>
>
>
>
>___________________________________________
>
>  D. Diane Davis
>
>  Rhetoric and Composition (UT Mail Code B5500)
>
>  University of Texas at Austin 
>
>  Austin, TX 78712-1122 
>
>
>
>  Office: 512.471.8765  FAX: 512.471.4353
>
>  ddd-AT-mail.utexas.edu
>
>  http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>
>From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu [mailto:owner-
>
>lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of steve.devos
>
>Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2001 5:06 AM
>
>To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>
>Subject: Re: [Fwd: re: Ethics as a figure of nihalism]
>
>
>
>
>
>Mal
>
>
>
>the issue started because of Hugh's belief in communuties having some
>
>value and worth
>
>
>
>"... a continuity of personal relationships and institutional support
>
>for those relationships  they affect significant others, parents and
>
>children, extended families, tribes, communities."
>
>
>
>Given that the stru
>cture of the communities in question, and perhaps
>if
>I used the equally specular but different communities of this side of
>
>the atlantic it would have been clearer, is predominantly one that
>
>oppresses and excludes rather than includes and liberates. In this
>
>specific society community is used to place the human subject into a
>
>place where they belong. In previous, equally unpleasent societies, a
>
>common language placed the subject into its community,  but now the
>
>commodity spectacle constructs an artificial reconstruction of
>
>community.  Our societies have lost the community that the common
>
>language, the myths had been able to maintain. In place of the
>
>unpleasent communities founded on death and sacrifice, our communities
>
>are founded on commodification, spectacle and division. The divided
>
> nature of our communities constitutes them as inactive because the
>
>common language of community is derived from its commodification.
>
>
>
>False communities and neighbourhoods are generated 
>everywhere - for
>
>example - at work 'teams' and 'communities' are built to enable the
>
>business to maximise its use of human resources through the false
>
>community it constructs. The currently suspended (because of 911)
>
>refugee and economic migrant issue in europe, is founded on the myth
>of
>refugees and migrants being welcomed and this being a society which
>
>tolerates difference. The reality is of course different for the
>
>spectacle uses the former myth to hide the oppression of difference.
>The
>use and glorification of redundent and oppressive cultural norms based
>
>on cultural, racial, sexual and local stereotypes is normal.
>
>
>
>If 'community' is being used to oppress and control - which is the
>
>result of the excessive commodification - then on a day to day basis
>we
>need to be careful before we accept the idea that it is in itself a
>
>positive value...
>
>
>
>regards
>
>
>
>steve
>
>
>
>