Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 12:45:41 +0000
From: steve devos <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: Re: Why Badiou?




Shawn, Eric and all

As I stated earlier Badiou's targets are primarily the Glucksmann's and 
the Ferry's - the new philosophers - who have engaged in a direct use of 
 ethics as a means of maintaining and shifting the French philosophical 
debate to the right. Badiou's writing style is deeply polemical  - but 
is it on target? The end of metaphysics refferred to is an address of 
the argued end of enlightenment humanism and the questioning of the 
possibility of a western metaphysics claiming to be global/universal. 
Three things immediately spring to mind - 1)the current globalisation of 
western metaphysics (its true physical and specular representation 
'carpet bombing'), 2) the specificity of globalisation as a society of 
specularisation, 3) the denial of non-G20 perspectives as being 
important/real.

Western Metaphysics here is regarded as deeply interrelated to with capital.

It has always been an issue relating to the critique of the end of grand 
narratives - re the selection on the grand narratives that ended and 
those that remained active. Lyotard's selection - Marxism, the 
enlightenment descended version of humanism and so on seems as 
problematic today as always...  Considering the amount of time we have 
spent discussing, with varying levels of approval, Negri and Hardt's 
Marxist text Empire it is hardly suprising. Badiou's marxism means that 
he has to reject Lyotard's non or anti-marxist post-modern position...

However the problematic position remains the ongoing grand narrative of 
which neo-liberalism is the latest variety. Does avoidence of addressing 
the grand narrative of economics and 'capital' not cause a problem. 
Marxism and its sub-sets, its 'bastard children'  remains the most 
effective and accurate analysis of capital and globalisation... It 
remains necessary to accept that in some sense or other all the 
productive critiques of  recent western society, development and 
globalisation all have a direct or indirect relationship to marxist thought.

regards

sdv

Shawn P. Wilbur wrote:

>On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:
>
>>Badiou writes: "It is never really modest to declare an 'end', a
>>completion, a radical impasse. The announcement of the 'End of Grand
>>Narratives' is as immodest as the Grand Narrative itself, the certainty
>>of the 'end of metaphysics' proceeds within the metaphysical element of
>>certainty, the deconstruction of the concept of subject requires a
>>central category - being, for example - the historical prescription of
>>which is even more decisive etc."
>>
>
>Is this in any way on the mark with regard to Lyotard? I guess i wouldn't
>have associated, for example, the "incredulity towards master
>narratives" of TPMC with any "certainty of the end." As i've suggested
>before, "incredulity" seems to play differently than that. (Pardon any and
>all possible puns and linguistic short-circuits.) The possibility of
>something like "negative universals" ("we don't know" or "there is
>otherness") emerging as new master narratives is certainly a concern. Much
>of what has come to be known in the US as "multiculturalism" is probably,
>in the end, a kind of fundamentalism of "difference" (the metastatic
>version of identity politics), but that seems very much at odds with what
>i read in Lyotard, Derrida, Nancy, Irigaray - all the names commonly
>invoked. Reading someone like Derrida, who seems to have taken this
>problem very seriously, it's still sometimes hard to know how all this
>concern "helps," except as a guard against fundamentalism or the reduction
>of ethics to a technology. But that may be a pretty great help, assuming
>we can stand the insecurity of facing, again in Derridean terms, the need
>to "learn how to live" while we are nonetheless living. (Perhaps i should
>say, for the associated echoes, "in the modst of life.") 
>
>I haven't had time to put into Badiou, so perhaps the critique is more
>profound, but i'm not seeing it yet. 
>
>-shawn
>
>Shawn P. Wilbur       
>www.wcnet.org/~swilbur  | lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons
>www.wcnet.org/~paupers  | alwato.iuma.com         
>
>

HTML VERSION:

On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

Badiou writes: "It is never really modest to declare an 'end', a
completion, a radical impasse. The announcement of the 'End of Grand
Narratives' is as immodest as the Grand Narrative itself, the certainty
of the 'end of metaphysics' proceeds within the metaphysical element of
certainty, the deconstruction of the concept of subject requires a
central category - being, for example - the historical prescription of
which is even more decisive etc."

Is this in any way on the mark with regard to Lyotard? I guess i wouldn't
have associated, for example, the "incredulity towards master
narratives" of TPMC with any "certainty of the end." As i've suggested
before, "incredulity" seems to play differently than that. (Pardon any and
all possible puns and linguistic short-circuits.) The possibility of
something like "negative universals" ("we don't know" or "there is
otherness") emerging as new master narratives is certainly a concern. Much
of what has come to be known in the US as "multiculturalism" is probably,
in the end, a kind of fundamentalism of "difference" (the metastatic
version of identity politics), but that seems very much at odds with what
i read in Lyotard, Derrida, Nancy, Irigaray - all the names commonly
invoked. Reading someone like Derrida, who seems to have taken this
problem very seriously, it's still sometimes hard to know how all this
conc
ern "helps," except as a guard against fundamentalism or the reduction
of ethics to a technology. But that may be a pretty great help, assuming
we can stand the insecurity of facing, again in Derridean terms, the need
to "learn how to live" while we are nonetheless living. (Perhaps i should
say, for the associated echoes, "in the modst of life.") 

I haven't had time to put into Badiou, so perhaps the critique is more
profound, but i'm not seeing it yet. 

-shawn

Shawn P. Wilbur       
www.wcnet.org/~swilbur  | lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons
www.wcnet.org/~paupers  | alwato.iuma.com