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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