File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0212, message 14


Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 20:02:43 -0500
From: shawn wilbur <swilbur-AT-wcnet.org>
Subject: Re: Bad Subjects are Sublime


The section of _Empire_ , "Symptoms of Passage," is admirably clear. The
"postmodernists" that are the target of critique are identified as "draw[ing] at
least indirectly" on the critiques of Baudrillard, Derrida and Lyotard, and by this
"clear call": "Enlightenment is the problem and postmodernism is the solution."
Much of the rest of their argument depends on the contention that "empire" as a
construction is an advance on the postmodern "politics of difference" that
accompanies that call, but i'm willing - whatever my reservations about "empire" as
a concept - to give them that. The "clear call" is pretty bad stuff, though pretty
common in academic circles in the US. This is precisely the postmodernism of which
i said i was willing to "make a scathing indictment" - some beginnings of which can
be found in my earlier comments on the misadventures of "political correctness."
The predominance of this stuff in academic circles has more than a bit to do with
why i work mostly in bars now, rather than universities.

But the clarity of Negri and Hardt allows us to say, fairly confidently, that if
postmodernism is defined by that "clear call," then what is drawn from Baudrillard,
Derrida and Lyotard is drawn very indirectly indeed. Derrida's has repeatedly
affirmed his commitment to the tradition of the enlightenment, not least in the
recent "return to Marx." Lyotard's "postmodern" is inseparable from the "modern,"
and, while the notion of "the enlightenment" gets a lot of ambiguous use in the
battle with Habermas, it is hard to find anything in "What Is Postmodernism?",
where Lyotard's more nuanced definition occurs, that suggests the notion needs more
than a kind of radical rethinking (analogous to the reworking of "truth" in Badiou,
and allowing the "continuation," perhaps radicalization, of the work of
enlightenment.) The notion that Baudrillard gives a "clear call," complete with
problems and answers, simply boggles the mind. If he is at times good to think with
and/or against - and i believe he is - it certainly is not because he is
forthcoming with answers. On more specific issues, i believe both Derrida and
Baudrillard have dealt seriously with the differences between economies of
difference and capitalist economies, noting that the emphasis on exchange value
over other values makes difference insignificant *except* in the realm of
marketing. In general, the "postmodernists" tend to differ from the figures they
borrow from in paying little attention to the complex of economic thought most of
them inherit from Bataille.

I wonder too if Hardt and Negri make sufficient distinction between the manichaean
and the dialectical when they are discussing what it is that "postmodernism"
attacks. I would not be surprised if some "postmodernists" were also careless about
the distinction, but it seems to me that there is a slide taking place in _Empire_
that is not entirely under the authors' conscious control.

-shawn


   

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