File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0306, message 134


From: "Lois Shawver" <rathbone-AT-california.com>
Subject: RE: Marx's critique
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 16:28:46 -0700


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Steve,

"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13

Oh, I think I see how you're reading Lyotard.  If so, I think you put it
remarkably well, remarkably clearly.  I was just slow to get it, and of
course, I will put Freud aside and try to frame the debate, as I think you
see it.  Please feel free to revise.  Please think of it as a formulation in
process.

Lyotard's notion of critique, as you see it, then, portrays the Marxist as
locked in the critique of capitalism and unable to invent a system of its
own.  All the Marxist can do, according to Lyotard, is protest the alienated
society, that which is, and cannot invent new social structures, new forms
of life.  Lyotard dreams of another superhero, the paralogist, who will be
an inventor of new systems, new language games that can take us out any
closure we want.

But, according to the Marxist critique of Lyotard, paralogy just doesn't
have the fuel to make the new systems materialize. And, while admitting the
forward path is blocked, the recovering Marxist chooses to stay with the
critique, where there is plenty of fire in the gut to fuel the protest in
the struggle against Capital.

..Lois Shawver


  -----Original Message-----
  From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of steve.devos
  Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 6:45 AM
  To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Subject: Re: Marx's critique


  Lois/all


  "Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
  Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
  one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13

  To answer the two questions, caused by my terrible lack of clarity - (an
old problem caused by the slow uselessness of email ).

  To return tothe beginning the rejection of 'critique' associated with
Lyotard's review of AO was not something Deleuze agreed with, nor was he in
agreement with the idea that Marx and the Critique were wrong. In the early
90s in a journalistic interview he said that he did not understand what it
meant to claim that Marx was wrong, still less when they claimed that
Marxism was dead for the urgent task of analysing the world market and it's
transformations cannot be carried out without Marx. Only the high
postmodernists and the high theorists of the neo-liberal counter-reformation
really believed that the 'critique' was over rather than understanding that
we were in a period of defeat and repression. I am interested not in an
understanding of the PMC in 1979 - or even in 1984 - but rather to read the
statement in the light of the ending of the counter-reformation,  when
history has returned with a vengence - Seattle, Genoa, Porto Alegre, Stop
the War  and the WSF and ESF - so that Fukayama, Furet and indeed Lyotard
can be seen to be either wrong or been superceded. The point of the critique
for a materialist is not related to the question of communism or socialism
but rather to the question posed by Deleuze related to capital and the
question of surplus value. Capitalism does not work in the same way now as
it did in the 19th C or prior to the invention of the spectacle in response
to the great crisis of the 1920s - and yet it does function. To understand
what it does, to address the phantasmagorias of the spectacle and to respond
to its contradictions - this is the business of the critique. Where early in
his Career Lyotard argued that the notion of 'Critique' implied that the
critic was unable to leave the ground established by the adversary's
domain - what he discards is the means to understand and work against
capital.

  It is for these reasons that Lyotard's refusal of  the notion of
'critique' has to be inverted and the refusal placed against his refusal of
the critique. Now more than ever it is necessary to question precisely what
the results of  arguing that the critique of political economy is simply
another aid to the continuation of the system  means. (Lyotard's position is
very different from arguing as Negri and Hardt do in Empire that capitalism
changes in response to the struggles, resistences and demands of
oppositional groups.)



  regards
  steve

  Lois Shawver wrote:

    Steve, I found the remarks by Lyotard that you told us (the remarks from
the preface of D & G's Anti-Oedipus book) quite compelling.

    It also relates in an interesting way to a short paper by Freud, and we
know that Lyotard did read Freud.  Read Freud's paper, "Negative Remarks."
(It is contained in his "Collected Papers" series of 5 volumes.)  There
Freud says that if a patient in analysis free associates so that she simply
denies the truth of something that had not been brought in any systematic
way, say, perhaps, the patient that a dream figure "was not my father," this
indicates that the person is struggling against the idea that the dream
figure is, indeed, the father.  I think Foucault has a similar remark
somewhere, too, but for the life of me I can't, at the moment, remember
where.  Probably in his book on Power.

    And, I can see how this would be construed as a form of
false-consciousness, too.  However, Freud, at least, was not talking of
critique of others, but self-critique, that ostensibly made the undenied
truths "false" but left the whole logic and reasoning in tact, although in a
negative form.  It sounds like Lyotard is talking about critique of others -
but I think I see a connection, anyway.  Can you?

    You said, Steve, Without going deeper into this, fundamentally Hegelian
and Marxist understanding of what 'critique' means,  it does seem that given
the current impossibility of constructing a radical understanding of our
societies without the use of some aspect of critique then the question that
Lyotard proposes needs to be inverted.  "  I'm not sure I'm following you.
I am struck, nevertheless, as I read your words by the thought that before
Hegel there was Kant talking about "critique".  What Kant was talking about
was the "critique of reason", or rather "pure reason".

    I hope you elaborate your understanding of the Hegel and Marx sense of
critique.


    ..Lois Shawver
      -----Original Message-----
      From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of steve.devos
      Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 2:15 PM
      To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
      Subject: Re: Marx's critique


      Lois

      It depends  on whether you accept the proposal that 'critique' does
remain within the existing system. It is around the false consciousness of
cultural theorists and philosophers, the incredible but nonetheless real
mystification that translates "social relations into the propositions of
things themselves (reification...) still more explicitly transforming the
relations of production itself into a thing" The notion of critique is
consequently then the incessent labor of consciousness against our own
neo-religious representations in what is after all a socially and
historically determined society.   Without going deeper into this,
fundamentally Hegalian and Marxist undeerstanding of what 'critique' means,
it does seem that given the current impossibility of constructing a radical
understanding of our societies without the use of some aspect of critique
then the question that Lyotard proposes needs to be inverted.

      In 2003 the necessity for critique, the critique of political economy
(a wierd german science)and an understanding of Hegel's logic seem more
necessary than ever.  Can one say the same of the strange positivism that
occupied us (who are sadly old enough to remember it) during the 70s and
80s - now that we are gradually emerging from a dark and unpleasent tunnel ?

      regards
      steve

      Lois Shawver wrote:


        Here is the Lyotard sentence Steve and I were talking about:

        "Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of
Marx's
        Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are
used in
        one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13

        I like your answer.  As you suggested, then, the critique remains
within the language game of the original ideology.  It simply negates the
key phrases, leaving all the linkages intact.  In other words, the critique
has not yet invented a new language game in which can emerge a new form of
life, a new way to live.

        So, is it in this way, in keeping us within the conceptual circles
established by the language of the old ideology that the critiques aids the
programming of the existing system?  I think it can also be read that the
critique prepares the ground for the new system to emerge.  What does he
mean by "the system"?  The old system or the new?

        ..Lois Shawver

        .


          -----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, June 25, 2003 11:48 AM
          To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
          Subject: Re: Marx's critiqu


          Early in his Career Lyotard accepted and argued that the notion of
'Critique' implied that the critic was unable to leave the ground
established by the adversary's domain. By implication, given that marxism is
a critique of capitalism it follows that Lyotard would at some stage argue
that marxism cannot leave the ground on  which capital stands.   The
question is whether in 2003 the sentence means the same thing that it did in
1979 - plainly for the majority of postmodernists the sentence must be
meaningless as the dream of socialism and communism is defined as over.

          In his review of Anti-Oedipus he states this very clearly: "In
spite of its title, Anti-Oedipus is not a critical book. Rather, like the
Anti-Christ, it is a positive, assertive book, an energetic position
inscribed in discourse, the negation of the adversary happening not by
Aufhebung, but by forgetting. Just as atheism is religion extended into its
negative form-is even the modern form of religion, the only one in which
modernity could continue to be religious-so does the critique make itself
the object of its object and settle down into the field of the other,
accepting the latter's dimensions, directions and space at the very moment
that it contests them. In Deleuze and Guattari's book you will see
everywhere their utter contempt for  the  category  of  transgression
(implicitly  then  for  the  whole  of Bataille): either you leave
immediately  without wasting time  in critique, simply because you find
yourself to be elsewhere than in the adversary's domain; or else you
critique, keeping one foot in and one out, positivity of  the negative, but
in fact nothingness of the positivity. And this is the critical  non-potence
one finds in Feuerbach and Adorho. Marx said in l844 that  socialism doesn't
need atheism because the question of atheism is positionally  that of
religion; it remains a critique. What is important in the  question is not
its negativity, but its position (the position of the problem)...."

          regards
          steve

          Lois Shawver wrote:

Anyone feel inspired to comment on this passage from Lyotard?

"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13

..Lois Shawver







HTML VERSION:

Steve,
 
"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13
 
Oh, I think I see how you're reading Lyotard.  If so, I think you put it remarkably well, remarkably clearly.  I was just slow to get it, and of course, I will put Freud aside and try to frame the debate, as I think you see it.  Please feel free to revise.  Please think of it as a formulation in process.
 
Lyotard's notion of critique, as you see it, then, portrays the Marxist as locked in the critique of capitalism and unable to invent a system of its own.  All the Marxist can do, according to Lyotard, is protest the alienated society, that which is, and cannot invent new social structures, new forms of life.  Lyotard dreams of another superhero, the paralogist, who will be an inventor of new systems, new language games that can take us out any closure we want. 
 
But, according to the Marxist critique of Lyotard, paralogy just doesn't have the fuel to make the new systems materialize. And, while admitting the forward path is blocked, the recovering Marxist chooses to stay with the critique, where there is plenty of fire in the gut to fuel the protest in the struggle against Capital. 
 
..Lois Shawver
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu [mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of steve.devos
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 6:45 AM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Marx's critique

Lois/all

"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13

To answer the two questions, caused by my terrible lack of clarity - (an old problem caused by the slow uselessness of email ).

To return tothe beginning the rejection of 'critique' associated with Lyotard's review of AO was not something Deleuze agreed with, nor was he in agreement with the idea that Marx and the Critique were wrong. In the early 90s in a journalistic interview he said that he did not understand what it meant to claim that Marx was wrong, still less when they claimed that Marxism was dead for the urgent task of analysing the world market and it's transformations cannot be carried out without Marx. Only the high postmodernists and the high theorists of the neo-liberal counter-reformation really believed that the 'critique' was over rather than understanding that we were in a period of defeat and repression. I am interested not in an understanding of the PMC in 1979 - or even in 1984 - but rather to read the statement in the light of the ending of the counter-reformation,  when history has returned with a vengence - Seattle, Genoa, Porto Alegre, Stop the War  and the WSF and ESF - so that Fukayama, Furet and indeed Lyotard can be seen to be either wrong or been superceded. The point of the critique for a materialist is not related to the question of communism or socialism but rather to the question posed by Deleuze related to capital and the question of surplus value. Capitalism does not work in the same way now as it did in the 19th C or prior to the invention of the spectacle in response to the great crisis of the 1920s - and yet it does function. To understand what it does, to address the phantasmagorias of the spectacle and to respond to its contradictions - this is the business of the critique. Where early in his Career Lyotard argued that the notion of 'Critique' implied that the critic was unable to leave the ground established by the adversary's domain - what he discards is the means to understand and work against capital.

It is for these reasons that Lyotard's refusal of  the notion of 'critique' has to be inverted and the refusal placed against his refusal of the critique. Now more than ever it is necessary to question precisely what the results of  arguing that the critique of political economy is simply another aid to the continuation of the system  means. (Lyotard's position is very different from arguing as Negri and Hardt do in Empire that capitalism changes in response to the struggles, resistences and demands of oppositional groups.)



regards
steve

Lois Shawver wrote:
Steve, I found the remarks by Lyotard that you told us (the remarks from the preface of D & G's Anti-Oedipus book) quite compelling. 
 
It also relates in an interesting way to a short paper by Freud, and we know that Lyotard did read Freud.  Read Freud's paper, "Negative Remarks."  (It is contained in his "Collected Papers" series of 5 volumes.)  There Freud says that if a patient in analysis free associates so that she simply denies the truth of something that had not been brought in any systematic way, say, perhaps, the patient that a dream figure "was not my father," this indicates that the person is struggling against the idea that the dream figure is, indeed, the father.  I think Foucault has a similar remark somewhere, too, but for the life of me I can't, at the moment, remember where.  Probably in his book on Power.
 
And, I can see how this would be construed as a form of false-consciousness, too.  However, Freud, at least, was not talking of critique of others, but self-critique, that ostensibly made the undenied truths "false" but left the whole logic and reasoning in tact, although in a negative form.  It sounds like Lyotard is talking about critique of others - but I think I see a connection, anyway.  Can you?
 
You said, Steve, Without going deeper into this, fundamentally Hegelian and Marxist understanding of what 'critique' means,  it does seem that given the current impossibility of constructing a radical understanding of our societies without the use of some aspect of critique then the question that Lyotard proposes needs to be inverted.  "  I'm not sure I'm following you.  I am struck, nevertheless, as I read your words by the thought that before Hegel there was Kant talking about "critique".  What Kant was talking about was the "critique of reason", or rather "pure reason". 
 
I hope you elaborate your understanding of the Hegel and Marx sense of critique.

..Lois Shawver
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu [mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of steve.devos
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 2:15 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Marx's critique

Lois

It depends  on whether you accept the proposal that 'critique' does remain within the existing system. It is around the false consciousness of cultural theorists and philosophers, the incredible but nonetheless real mystification that translates "social relations into the propositions of things themselves (reification...) still more explicitly transforming the relations of production itself into a thing" The notion of critique is consequently then the incessent labor of consciousness against our own neo-religious representations in what is after all a socially and historically determined society.   Without going deeper into this, fundamentally Hegalian and Marxist undeerstanding of what 'critique' means,  it does seem that given the current impossibility of constructing a radical understanding of our societies without the use of some aspect of critique then the question that Lyotard proposes needs to be inverted.  

In 2003 the necessity for critique, the critique of political economy (a wierd german science)and an understanding of Hegel's logic seem more necessary than ever.  Can one say the same of the strange positivism that occupied us (who are sadly old enough to remember it) during the 70s and 80s - now that we are gradually emerging from a dark and unpleasent tunnel ?  

regards
steve

Lois Shawver wrote:
 
Here is the Lyotard sentence Steve and I were talking about:
 
"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13
 
I like your answer.  As you suggested, then, the critique remains within the language game of the original ideology.  It simply negates the key phrases, leaving all the linkages intact.  In other words, the critique has not yet invented a new language game in which can emerge a new form of life, a new way to live.
 
So, is it in this way, in keeping us within the conceptual circles established by the language of the old ideology that the critiques aids the programming of the existing system?  I think it can also be read that the critique prepares the ground for the new system to emerge.  What does he mean by "the system"?  The old system or the new?
 
..Lois Shawver
 
.

-----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, June 25, 2003 11:48 AM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Marx's critiqu

Early in his Career Lyotard accepted and argued that the notion of 'Critique' implied that the critic was unable to leave the ground established by the adversary's domain. By implication, given that marxism is a critique of capitalism it follows that Lyotard would at some stage argue that marxism cannot leave the ground on  which capital stands.   The question is whether in 2003 the sentence means the same thing that it did in 1979 - plainly for the majority of postmodernists the sentence must be meaningless as the dream of socialism and communism is defined as over. 

In his review of Anti-Oedipus he states this very clearly: "In spite of its title, Anti-Oedipus is not a critical book. Rather, like the Anti-Christ, it is a positive, assertive book, an energetic position inscribed in discourse, the negation of the adversary happening not by Aufhebung, but by forgetting. Just as atheism is religion extended into its negative form—is even the modern form of religion, the only one in which modernity could continue to be religious—so does the critique make itself the object of its object and settle down into the field of the other, accepting the latter's dimensions, directions and space at the very moment that it contests them. In Deleuze and Guattari's book you will see everywhere their utter contempt for  the  category  of  transgression  (implicitly  then  for  the  whole  of Bataille): either you leave immediately  without wasting time  in critique, simply because you find yourself to be elsewhere than in the adversary's domain; or else you critique, keeping one foot in and one out, positivity of  the negative, but in fact nothingness of the positivity. And this is the critical  non-potence one finds in Feuerbach and Adorho. Marx said in l844 that  socialism doesn't need atheism because the question of atheism is positionally  that of religion; it remains a critique. What is important in the  question is not its negativity, but its position (the position of the problem)...."

regards
steve

Lois Shawver wrote:
Anyone feel inspired to comment on this passage from Lyotard?

"Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's
Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in
one way or another as aids in programming the system."  PMC, p.13

..Lois Shawver

  




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