Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 21:00:04 +0100
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: Re: one more try: milk and stuff




Diane

grading - yuk rather you than me - though since I've just delivered a 
eight/nine month project we may be feeling the same about 'grading'...

Synonymous...  well - the relation is within the structural of the 
'historico-social experience of our time is that of on originary 
partition.... a  destiny that does not originate in any foundation.... 
the community into which we are thrown-cannot be a community of 
something into which we are appropriated and from which we are 
subsequently seperated. Community is from the beginning a community of 
parts and parties....' (Agamben)

However I was about to quote Lyotard Fom Just gaming) - but thought 
better of it -

' A paradoxical community is emerging, made up of foriegners who are 
reconciled with themselves to the extent that they recognise themselves 
as foriegners. The multinational society would thus  be the consequence 
of an extreme individulaism, but conscious of its discontents and 
limits, knowing only indomiable people ready-to-help-themselves in their 
weakness, a weakness whose other name is our radical strangeness..' 
Kristeva last paragraph in Strangers to ourselves -  one of the  most 
interesting texts on the multitude...

So considering the above its not that they are synonymous rather that 
they are inextricably linked both in the 'real' but also in Nancy...

(happy grading)
regards
steve

Diane Davis wrote:

>Hey, Steve. I'm glad yer not a pragmatist. :) (kidding!...sort of)
>Materiality may be a way for us to talk when we have more time, since I
>agree that finitude, while avoiding the metaphysics of presence, is as
>material as materiality gets. I don't understand how you're using "real"
>and "reality," though...but maybe that's for later. About this:
>
>>Yes to the first question - It is precisely what Nancy is calling
>>community and society and yes to the second question we do disagree
>>about what Nancy is calling community...
>>
>
>So you're saying that community and society, in your reading of nancy,
>are synonymous?
>
>Back to grading..................
>
>Best, ddd
>
>___________________________________________
>  D. Diane Davis
>  Division of Rhetoric (UT Mail Code B5500)
>  Department of English
>  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: Thursday, May 09, 2002 5:47 PM
>>To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>>Subject: Re: one more try: milk and stuff
>>
>>Diane/Eric
>>
>>Replying to Diane has proved to be as impossible as I imagined - there
>>is no imaginable way to bridge the difference that is established
>>between us in our different readings of Nancy. Perhaps at some stage
>>when time is available to engage in a longer more discursive piece
>>
>using
>
>>Nancy, bt until then difference will have to be accepted.  All that is
>>left of the initial attempts to respond is the following:
>>
>>I have thought a great deal how to respond and expand the discussion
>>around Nancy and human subject/community/society. It is by no means
>>clear to me that this is addressable - but perhaps it can be
>>
>approached
>
>>by my defining to a greater extent what the objects in question are.
>>Prior to that though - pragmatism is a specifically American/Liberal
>>intellectual virus - appealed to and engaged in by Rorty amongst
>>
>others
>
>>who desire to justify some completely spurious notion of liberal
>>democracy . The reading I am interested in relating to Nancy is much
>>more discreetly materialist - perhaps more a constructive empiricism
>>than a pragmatics, which intends to utilize the post-Heideggerian
>>perspectives of Nancy to re-interpret and understand the reality of
>>currently existing communities - which are in some sense all equally
>>penetrated by the destructive traditions that are the histories of our
>>communities and of course the social we exist in. (I suspect we would
>>make more progress if we discussed Agamben's work but never mind
>>later...) Earlier we established that the primary difference between
>>
>our
>
>>readings was the acceptance or  refusal of the 'originary nature of
>>being-in-common and communion' - the refusal of  origins and originary
>>moments engages a materialist reading and a working with and against
>>
>the
>
>>real or reality (in this case the same thing)  beyond this at that
>>earlier moment we also identified the different understandings of what
>>constitutes a 'subject'  a psychoanalytically understood subject or
>>being... With these starting moments - continued in this latest batch
>>
>of
>
>>mails it is not clear to me how we could reconcile the different
>>
>readings.
>
>>So - originally you asked :
>>
>>So I'm wondering again--eric, steve, anyone--when you're talking about
>>community here, are you talking about what Nancy's calling community
>>
>or
>
>>what would better go under the name society or even neighborhood or
>>something like that? Or do we disagree about what Nancy's calling
>>community?
>>
>>
>>Yes to the first question - It is precisely what Nancy is calling
>>community and society and yes to the second question we do disagree
>>about what Nancy is calling community...
>>
>>regards
>>steve
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Diane Davis wrote:
>>
>>>Thanks, Eric! Here's one more try sending the response I originally
>>>
>sent
>
>>>to steve last week. Wonder what happened? Anyway, I'll send you the
>>>lyotard piece.
>>>Best, ddd
>>>
>>>--------------------------
>>>
>>>Steve, I'm happy to affirm whatever (mis)reading of J-L Nancy works
>>>
>for
>
>>>you, since every reading, including mine, is in some sense a
>>>
>misreading.
>
>>>But I do want to note that Nancy is a (post)philosopher and not--by
>>>
>any
>
>>>stretch--a (neo)pragmatist. His efforts in that book (IC) may
>>>
>certainly
>
>>>be used pragmatically, but it is not in itself a "how to" book. You
>>>
>may
>
>>>read it pragmatically, iow, but it seems important to keep some kind
>>>
>of
>
>>>distinction there. Nancy's work is an engagement with (what Lacan
>>>
>would
>
>>>call) the real--yes, definitely. But this is not at all the same
>>>
>thing
>
>>>as an engagement with real*ity*, which amounts to webs of little
>>>hermeneutic fictions. Nancy: "Community understood as a work or
>>>
>through
>
>>>its works would presuppose that the common being, as such, be
>>>objectifiable and producible (in sites, persons, buildings,
>>>
>discourses,
>
>>>institutions, symbols: in short in subjects). Products derived from
>>>operations of this kind, however grandiose they might seek to be and
>>>sometimes manage to be, have no more communitarian existence than the
>>>plaster busts of Marianne" (31). The community Nancy is affirming is
>>>
>not
>
>>>society nor any kind of product. There is no common-being, as he says
>>>over and over, but there is being-in-common (community), which is not
>>>
>at
>
>>>all the same thing.
>>>
>>>The Sense of the World surely is more inclined toward pragmatic
>>>interventions. I totally agree. And the piece you mention, "Politics
>>>II," has been very important to me. (Interestingly, I got to talk
>>>
>with
>
>>>him about this piece last summer [over wine] when we were in
>>>Switzerland, and he was kind of stunned by it; and I was stunned that
>>>
>he
>
>>>was stunned. But he wrote it ages ago, and he was shocked to hear
>>>
>some
>
>>>of the English translations of his words and also to revisit some of
>>>
>the
>
>>>thoughts he did indeed write back then.) At any rate, his sense of
>>>community doesn't seem to me to change from one work to the next. And
>>>btw, the distinction b/w community and society is HIS; I'm simply
>>>repeating this distinction that he articulates in IC, Birth to
>>>
>Presence,
>
>>>"Being-in-Common," Retreating The Political, etc. I got it from him.
>>>
>>>What he's suggesting in the "Politics II" piece, as I understand him,
>>>
>is
>
>>>that there may be a social praxis for accommodating (rather than
>>>effacing) community. This would be a praxis of ty-ing, a praxis which
>>>would only be possible, btw, *because* there is always already
>>>community, originary being-toward(-others) and the "infinite lack of
>>>
>an
>
>>>infinite identity." In this work, he's noting that rediscovering
>>>community is not enough--that a praxis that affirms it and that
>>>
>promotes
>
>>>social organizations based on it is necessary (he's at his most
>>>pragmatic here, it seems to me). Though, of course, the whole thing
>>>
>is
>
>>>dizzyingly complicated.and he ends his thoughts in the next section
>>>contemplating clouds.
>>>
>>>Tying entails a non-appropriative encounter with the other. But this
>>>means, first, that tying involves welcoming the other as Other
>>>
>because
>
>>>the one who is coming--whether or not one has a "pre-existing"
>>>relationship with her/him--necessarily would be unknown and
>>>
>unknowable,
>
>>>without valid Identity papers. Precisely because s/he has not (fully)
>>>arrived, because s/he is (be)coming, emerging, s/he is (at least
>>>temporarily) homeless, a refugee in a sense--which is why s/he needs
>>>
>to
>
>>>be welcomed.  And/But second, to extend oneself toward this other is
>>>also to expose oneself to otherness and so to present oneself
>>>exposed--or ex-posed, posed in exteriority, outside of one's Self or
>>>
>of
>
>>>one's "proper" I-dentity. Offering my "I" (ipseity) up to the other's
>>>effraction, I am left no way to recover expenses: tying names a
>>>departure without the assurance of return, an ek-static (gift) event
>>>that, in opening toward the other, leaves "me" homeless, depropriated
>>>and de-situated.
>>>
>>>Incidentally, one of the things I mentioned to Jean-Luc last summer
>>>
>was
>
>>>that I frequently hear a Levinasian echo in his work. He said "of
>>>course!" ;)  A Blanchotian echo, too.
>>>
>>>I think we're doomed to disagree on this one, Steve. Though I can
>>>
>affirm
>
>>>what you want to *do* with J-LN, I just can't hear that pragmatic
>>>approach *in* his work.
>>>
>>>
>>>best, ddd
>>>
>>>___________________________________________
>>> D. Diane Davis
>>> Division of Rhetoric (UT Mail Code B5500)
>>> Department of English
>>> 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, May 01, 2002 5:03 PM
>>>To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>>>Subject: Re: Give me some milk or else go home
>>>
>>>
>>>Diane
>>>
>>>As before when we previously discussed Nancy's work/thought - our
>>>readings of Nancy and the use that we intend to make of his work,
>>>
>which
>
>>>is highly significant, varies considerably.  I am afraid I still
>>>
>believe
>
>>>that a more realist reading of the Nancy's 'inoperative community' is
>>>more sensible and useful. The abstraction you are engaging in by
>>>
>reading
>
>>>Nancy in this way disengages the text from the everyday and prevents
>>>it's usefulness in addressing and perhaps engaging in the very many
>>>
>real
>
>>>and virtual communities that we exist, usually painfully within. The
>>>
>way
>
>>>Lyotard is using Nancy's work/phrase - is in my view the correct and
>>>most useful interpretation to make of the work because of the
>>>
>necessary
>
>>>engagement with the real.
>>>
>>>Difference here is inevitable.
>>>
>>>Perhaps we can compromise on the use of the word 'community' in
>>>
>Politics
>
>>>11 in 'the sense of the world' where Nancy discusses community in
>>>
>terms
>
>>>that are directly related to how "subject, citizen, soveriegnty,
>>>community - organisizes, saturates and exhausts the political space
>>>closing itself today...."  I recognise that our readings of  Nancy
>>>
>may
>
>>>not be reconcilable - and indeed in this virtual community it's
>>>
>harder
>
>>>to arrive at a position of mutual agreement and understanding than it
>>>would be normally. But nonetheless in this use of community Nancy is
>>>directly proposing an understanding and an engagement with the
>>>
>political
>
>>>apparatus that constitutes the West and consequently globalisation.
>>>
>>>consequently in your last paragraph the distinctions you are drawing
>>>
>out
>
>>>are unnecessary.
>>>
>>>regards
>>>steve
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
>

HTML VERSION:

Hey, Steve. I'm glad yer not a pragmatist. :) (kidding!...sort of)
Materiality may be a way for us to talk when we have more time, since I
agree that finitude, while avoiding the metaphysics of presence, is as
material as materiality gets. I don't understand how you're using "real"
and "reality," though...but maybe that's for later. About this:

Yes to the first question - It is precisely what Nancy is calling
community and society and yes to the second question we do disagree
about what Nancy is calling community...

So you're saying that community and society, in your reading of nancy,
are synonymous?

Back to grading..................

Best, ddd

___________________________________________
  D. Diane Davis
  Division of Rhetoric (UT Mail Code B5500)
  Department of English
  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: Thursday, May 09, 2002 5:47 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: one more try: milk and stuff

Diane/Eric

Replying to Diane has proved to be as impossible as I imagined - there
is no imaginable way to bridge the difference that is established
between us in our different readings of Nancy. Perhaps at some stage
when time is available to engage in a longer more discursive piece

using

Nancy, bt until then difference will have to be accepted.  All that is
left of the initial attempts to respond is the following:

I have thought a great deal how to respond and expand the discussion
around Nancy and human subject/community/society. It is by no means
clear to me that this is addressable - but perhaps it can be

approached

by my defining to a greater extent what the objects in question are.
Prior to that though - pragmatism is a specifically American/Liberal
intellectual virus - appealed to and engaged in by Rorty amongst

others

who desire to justify some completely spurious notion of liberal
democracy . The reading I am interested in relating to Nancy is much
more discreetly materialist - perhaps more a constructive empiricism
than a pragmatics, which intends to utilize the post-Heideggerian
perspectives of Nancy to re-interpret and understand the reality of
currently existing communities - which are in some sense all equally
penetrated by the destructive traditions that are the histories of our
communities and of course the social we exist in. (I suspect we would
make more progress if we discussed Agamben's work but never mind
later...) Earlier we established that the primary difference between

our

readings was the acceptance or  refusal of the 'originary nature of
being-in-common and communion' - the refusal of  origins and originary
moments engages a materialist reading and a working with and against

the

real or reality (in this case the same thing)  beyond this at that
earlier moment we also identified the different understandings of what
constitutes a 'subject'  a psychoanalytically understood subject or
being... With these starting moments - continued in this latest batch

of

mails it is not clear to me how we could reconcile the different

readings.

So - originally you asked :

So I'm wondering again--eric, steve, anyone--when you're talking about
community here, are you talking about what Nancy's calling community

or

what would better go under the name society or even neighborhood or
something like that? Or do we disagree about what Nancy's calling
community?


Yes to the first question - It is precisely what Nancy is calling
community and society and yes to the second question we do disagree
about what Nancy is calling community...

regards
steve









Diane Davis wrote:

Thanks, Eric! Here's one more try sending the response I originally

sent

to steve last week. Wonder what happened? Anyway, I'll send you the
lyotard piece.
Best, ddd

--------------------------

Steve, I'm happy to affirm whatever (mis)reading of J-L Nancy works

for

you, since every reading, including mine, is in some sense a

misreading.

But I do want to note that Nancy is a (post)philosopher and not--by

any

stretch--a (neo)pragmatist. His efforts in that book (IC) may

certainly

be used pragmatically, but it is not in itself a "how to" book. You

may

read it pragmatically, iow, but it seems important to keep some kind

of

distinction there. Nancy's work is an engagement with (what Lacan

would

call) the real--yes, definitely. But this is not at all the same

thing

as an engagement with real*ity*, which amounts to webs of little
hermeneutic fictions. Nancy: "Community understood as a work or

through

its works would presuppose that the common being, as such, be
objectifiable and producible (in sites, persons, buildings,

discourses,

institutions, symbols: in short in subjects). Products derived from
operations of this kind, however grandiose they might seek to be and
sometimes manage to be, have no more communitarian existence than the
plaster busts of Marianne" (31). The community Nancy is affirming is

not

society nor any kind of product. There is no common-being, as he says
over and over, but there is being-in-common (community), which is not

at

all the same thing.

The Sense of the World surely is more inclined toward pragmatic
interventions. I totally agree. And the piece you mention, "Politics
II," has been very important to me. (Interestingly, I got to talk

with

him about this piece last summer [over wine] when we were in
Switzerland, and he was kind of stunned by it; and I was stunned that

he

was stunned. But he wrote it ages ago, and he was shocked to hear

some

of the English translations of his words and also to revisit some of

the

thoughts he did indeed write back then.) At any rate, his sense of
community doesn't seem to me to change from one work to the next. And
btw, the distinction b/w community and society is HIS; I'm simply
repeating this distinction that he articulates in IC, Birth to

Presence,

"Being-in-Common," Retreating The Political, etc. I got it from him.

What he's suggesting in the "Politics II" piece, as I understand him,

is

that there may be a social praxis for accommodating (rather than
effacing) community. This would be a praxis of ty-ing, a praxis which
would only be possible, btw, *because* there is always already
community, originary being-toward(-others) and the "infinite lack of

an

infinite identity." In this work, he's noting that rediscovering
community is not enough--that a praxis that affirms it and that

promotes

social organizations based on it is necessary (he's at his most
pragmatic here, it seems to me). Though, of course, the whole thing

is

dizzyingly complicated.and he ends his thoughts in the next section
contemplating clouds.

Tying entails a non-appropriative encounter with the other. But this
means, first, that tying involves welcoming the other as Other

because

the one who is coming--whether or not one has a "pre-existing"
relationship with her/him--necessarily would be unknown and

unknowable,

without valid Identity papers. Precisely because s/he has not (fully)
arrived, because s/he is (be)coming, emerging, s/he is (at least
temporarily) homeless, a refugee in a sense--which is why s/he needs

to

be welcomed.  And/But second, to extend oneself toward this other is
also to expose oneself to otherness and so to present oneself
exposed--or ex-posed, posed in exteriority, outside of one's Self or

of

one's "proper" I-dentity. Offering my "I" (ipseity) up to the other's
effraction, I am left no way to recover expenses: tying names a
departure without the assurance of return, an ek-static (gift) event
that, in opening toward the other, leaves "me" homeless, depropriated
and de-situated.

Incidentally, one of the things I mentioned to Jean-Luc last summer

was

that I frequently hear a Levinasian echo in his work. He said "of
course!" ;)  A Blanchotian echo, too.

I think we're doomed to disagree on this one, Steve. Though I can

affirm

what you want to *do* with J-LN, I just can't hear that pragmatic
approach *in* his work.


best, ddd

___________________________________________
 D. Diane Davis
 Division of Rhetoric (UT Mail Code B5500)
 Department of English
 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, May 01, 2002 5:03 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Give me some milk or else go home


Diane

As before when we previously discussed Nancy's work/thought - our
readings of Nancy and the use that we intend to make of his work,

which

is highly significant, varies considerably.  I am afraid I still

believe

that a more realist reading of the Nancy's 'inoperative community' is
more sensible and useful. The abstraction you are engaging in by

reading

Nancy in this way disengages the text from the everyday and prevents
it's usefulness in addressing and perhaps engaging in the very many

real

and virtual communities that we exist, usually painfully within. The

way

Lyotard is using Nancy's work/phrase - is in my view the correct and
most useful interpretation to make of the work because of the

necessary

engagement with the real.

Difference here is inevitable.

Perhaps we can compromise on the use of the word 'community' in

Politics

11 in 'the sense of the world' where Nancy discusses community in

terms

that are directly related to how "subject, citizen, soveriegnty,
community - organisizes, saturates and exhausts the political space
closing itself today...."  I recognise that our readings of  Nancy

may

not be reconcilable - and indeed in this virtual community it's

harder

to arrive at a position of mutual agreement and understanding than it
would be normally. But nonetheless in this use of community Nancy is
directly proposing an understanding and an engagement with the

political

apparatus that constitutes the West and consequently globalisation.

consequently in your last paragraph the distinctions you are drawing

out

are unnecessary.

regards
steve