Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 15:47:39 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: zizek: justice


When Zizek asks the rhetorical question - "What however if justice is 
'as such', in its very notion  a travesty?" (p37)  shortly after 
critiquing  Spinoza's 'right to do' and consequently the positive 
aspects of Deleuze's philosophy,  he does not address the entirety of 
the 'justice issue' instead he seems to slip back towards engaging in he 
issue as if the metaphysics have not been surpassed, without discussing 
what remains in the present without the absence. Yet it is the absence 
of an argument with Deleuze about juridical issues of justice which is 
peculiar and related back to the absence of Nietzsche and perhaps 
Heidegger from the text.  Where Heidegger's attack against the 
Aristotelian categories are advanced against the strong, original 
meaning of rhetoric as the guard and guide to the law - but in doing so 
Heidegger  transcribes the Kantian antinomy of law into productive 
difference which is an attempt to remove or rewrite metaphysics from the 
discussion, engaging in Nietzsche's discussion of the collapse 
metaphysics through Nietzsche's making obvious the connection between 
law and morality. But Heidegger removes this history down to the 
singular event - and isn't this what Zizek maintains by keeping the 
reference to the Theological horizon enabling him to restrict the 
discussion to the familiar territory of his necessary attack on the 
Derrida/Levinas couple...?

Does the theological horizon fit easily with Deleuze's philosophy of 
difference and his relations to Nietzsche, Spinoza and Duns Scotus?  I 
think rather that the horizon vanishes in Deleuze's work Difference and 
Repetition, both with the engagement with Bergson but also with 
Nieitzsche.  Deleuze in his engagement aims to make us somehow more 
aware of the soveriegn anarchy  which is present in our "asymmetric 
synthesis of the sensible" and in our 'moral' experience (from D&R.) 
 From his work on difference allied with the positive principle we end 
with the inevitable ontologically injustice. "Being is said in a single  
and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it 
is said differs:  it is said of difference itself..."  This proposes the 
paradox that being is different and invokes the moments of both 
difference and sameness. The common 'notion' perhaps even the 'meaning' 
of being for Deleuze is the mode of law, of judgement and distribution. 
(shades of Lyotard and the differend of course)  Deleuze points towards 
the Greek nomos and its origins as division or sharing and further 
describes this establishing of  as a 'limited territories within 
representation...' (D&R p36). For Deleuze this is overshadowed by the 
ontological meaning which divides in the heiracrchical and nomadic way, 
wandering without boundaries, a power which surpasses the sedantary 
limits.  The equalities of the first  are suspended unequally in the 
second which is univocal in the  absence of ontological boundaries  - 
"Univocal being is at the same time nomadic distribution and crowned 
anarchy..." (37) . I'm not overly interested in the implications of 
disorder, nor at attending to the idea of soveriegn anarchy - rather the 
radical implication of equivilance that emerges from the concept of 
difference, is more interesting rather than accepting Deleuzes 
invitation to get behind the Neitzschean concept of  soveriegn anarchy. 
For we are not dealing with Heidegger's irony laden understanding of the 
eternal return - but a straightforward acceptence and re-interpretation 
for Deleuze only affirmation and difference returns. (Just as in the 
Matrix when Neo dies on his return it will not be the same Neo who 
retruns, just as when Zarathustra returns it will not be the same 
Zarathustra who returns...(God really is dead for Deleuze unlike for 
Derrida and perhaps Zizek)). So then to return to the Deleuzian 'law'; 
from the perspective of the law, of representation  the specific 
difference of  the genus is univocal, whilst generic difference is 
equivocal but both agree in the univocity of being. So then evyerything 
is between the two poles of 'differences'. The invitation being to leave 
the 'law' and move into the 'nomadic' which is of course pure 
affirmation....

Instead of this we get Kant, normal evil and radical evil - and finally 
diabolical evil - and of course the ethical question relating to the 
choice or not of evil, as if all ethics revolves around Levinas...

regards
steve
(Now that my migraines going perhaps I'll be able to get back to work 
rather than driftworking my way across this strange sub-slovackian 
territory...)