File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0401, message 43


From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: set theory and the set-up
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 10:49:10 -0600


Steve wrote:


evgeni/eric

laughs - ok i'm convinced both you and Eric are of course always 
correct.  It's fascinating how everyone always wants me to do work... 
But never themselves.

Steve,

Now who's the one sounding stressed out? 

Look, I don't see this forum as being about winning or correctness. I
value your opinions and insights and want you to be a sounding board.
The goal, as I see it, is that through the discussion of these issues we
can both arrive at a deeper understanding of them. If that's wanting you
to do work, so be it.

The trouble is when you make such crude reductionist arguments that set
theory by its very nature is nothing but technocratic scientism, it
merely sounds silly to me. To use set theory language you seem to be
claiming a complete union of sets where I only see partially
intersecting ones. 

When you accuse Zizek of being nothing more than a "misrepresentation of
Deleuze's work and...politically suspect" I think you are merely making
a sweeping generalization that is simply not paying enough attention to
what the text is really saying. You are right to say that part of the
problem is that you are taking Zizek more 'literally' than I am. I see
his text as being, at least in part, a provocative performance; one that
deliberately says outrageous things in an effort to seduce us into
thought. 

On page 107 of my copy in the RIS section, for example, Zizek makes a
very succinct criticism of Badiou's set theory you may have overlooked
because you were so busy ranting against the book. It actually supports
your position in some ways and offers an illuminative insight into
Badiou's position. Zizek writes:

"If mathematics is ontology, then, to account for the gap between Being
and Event, one either remains stuck in dualism or one has to dismiss the
Event as an illusory local occurrence within the encompassing order of
Being. Against this notion of multiplicity, one should assert as the
ultimate ontological given the gap that separates the One from within."

I haven't been able to read "Being and Event" yet, so most of my
information is coming from second-hand sources, but one of the things
that has impressed me about Badiou's argument is that he seems to use
set theory to define ontology in a way that tends to delimit it. In a
move that surprisingly seems to echo Levinas' similar devaluation of
ontology, Badiou wants to argue that beyond the counting of the elements
of the situation, the Truth Event of Infinite Thoughts is where the real
action is.  

The trouble is, as Zizek points out, this leads us into a kind of
paradox. If truth is beyond set theory, then one enters into dualism, an
inaccessible Platonic world of ideas - a mirage created by our 'passion
for the Real'.

If, on the other hand, set theory is still operative, aren't we back
again at Russell's theory of types and the 'all Cretans are liars'
paradox; namely, the problem of reflexity? If I proclaim such a
universal statement, as a subject I need to stand outside the fray, as
it were, in order to not be implicated myself. Otherwise, I am just
making a contraction; one that masks a basic hypocrisy.   

Doesn't Badiou's argument, despite all of his strictures against
sophism, still land us in the sophist universe Lyotard that discusses in
the first chapter of 'The Differend'?  

This leads into one of the basic problems that rears its ugly head as
soon as we start to discuss universals. To use an old Marxist joke that
Zizek frequently likes to quote - it is like wanting to join only that
club that would refuse to have me as a member. 

eric
 
  

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