File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0312, message 3


From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 14:50:26 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: [Zizek on Singer, over and out]


Lydia,

Yes he argues the same basic case in the Conversations book and it is a
strong  case - claiming in that text that he was given the argument by
Badiou.  Whilst it is a very strong critique and superfically it appears to
work,  however it has the following flaw - namely that the real flaw in
Singer's work is that he does not actually push his logic far enough because
he wants to maintain  human beings as a  special case.  The unstated gap in
Zizek/Badiou's critique then is that Singer (ultimately) remains a humanist
because of his prioritisation of the human over the non-human (he will
always choose a thinking human over George the Cat or the intelligent
machine) as indeed Zizek and Badiou do. Which is where the gap, the
philosophical blind spot emerges. Ultimately anyone who priotitises the
human over the non-human could and perhaps should be described as a humanist.

Thankyou for the Opera reference/quote it's a book I've become aware of
recently,  but have not bought yet.   (Have you read the Michel Leiris book
on 'Operatics' ? rather wonderful..)

regards
steve



> Since we're at Zizek, here's one citation just for Steve -- and as a
> conclusion to the Singer episode (there's not much more to be said of
> Singer, Steve-o).
>
> In his and Mladen Dolar's lovely book on opera *Opera's Second Death*
> (Routledge, 2002), Zizek has a few pages on Singer.  He first calls him
> a  likely "today's equivalent of de Sade", goes on to describe some of
> his  utilitarian ethics and for some unclear reason considers him a
> person who  happily follows what Zizek calls the "contemporary
> posmodern ethics" to  their absurd end.  (This line of argument is
> really mangled, in the worst  possible Zizekian mode.)  But soon enough
> Zizek's Dr. Jekyll face comes out  in the concluding passages of this
> segment:
>
> "One of the divisions in the chapter on *Vernunft* in Hegel's
> *Phaenomenologie des Geistes* speaks about "das geistige Tierreich":
> the  social world that lacks any spiritual substance so that
> individuals  effectively interact as intelligent animals within it.
> They use reason but  only to assert their individual interests, to
> manipulate others into serving  their own pleasures. Is not a world in
> which the highest rights are human  rights precisely such a "spiritual
> animal kingdom"?  There is, however, a  price to be paid for such
> liberation -- in such a universe, human rights  ultimately function as
> *animal* rights. This, then, is the ultimate truth of  Singer, but the
> obvious counterargument to this is, so what, why should we  not reduce
> humankind to its proper place, that of one of the animal  species?"
>
> "What gets lost in this reduction? The thing, something to which we are
>  unconditionally attached regardless of its positive qualities. In
> Singer's  universe, there is a place for mad cows but no place for an
> Indial sacred  cow. Singer's universe is the positive universe of
> qualities in which there  is no place for what Kant would have called
> the eruption of the noumenal  dimension in the order of phenomenal
> reality, no place for the dimension  beyond the pleasure principle, no
> place for *love* in the radical sense of  the term."  (pp. 143-144)
>
> L
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
>
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/photos&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca



   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005