From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 19:51:02 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: modes of production and procedures of truth


glen

I can see how under this kind of approach the charge of postmodern
relativism may never be far away.  The structure of the event/simulcra as
you pose it weights the 'event' side of the  pairing  over the simulcra.  It
rather attractively agrees with Debord's argument that all 'images in the
society of the spectacle are equivilant'  - because in this particular
dialectical structure one side of the pair has to be dominant. The question
is what is actually being represented - and the recognition that your
simulcra can never produce a truth-event, it can produce a 'false-universal'
  but never a 'true-universal' --


steve



> Steve,
>
> I may be totally wrong, these are just some lazy thoughts, if what I
> write seems like utter bollocks, just say so!! Basically, I am
> converting Massumi's "more-real-than-real" thesis so it is
> "more-absurd- than-absurd" and trying to think through the futurity of
> an event.
>
>> do read this properly as I am slightly confused .  You seem to be
> assuming
>> that 'truth'  can never be a discursive that is to say a mediated
> event,
>> which makes me think that there is no representation which can be
> said to
>> be
>> true.
>
>>From a certain perspective, yes, I reject mediation. No thing 'passes
> through' anything. I have major problems with arguments that are
> forwarded along the lines of Bolter and Grusin's wildly successful book
>  _Remediation_. To say things are mediated is to allow the possibly of
> some sort of Platonic essence traveling from a spatiotemporal location
> A to spatiotemporal B. No thing travels except for force, and such a
> force is mediated every time it is actualised.
>
>> This is because the difference between  absurd  and the true/false
>> appears
>> to be nothing  except that is non-truth as a single category plainly
>> excludes Debord, Badiou and even Deleuze from the equation.
>> Absurd/Non-truth appears to accept that truth like reality can never
> be
>> represented....
>
> No, if the truthful is processual then it is not a question of judging
> the truthfulness of a representation. Every thing is a simulacra of a
> model that is back-formed in the immanent encounter with the thing. For
>  example this email only carries a certain degree of force and that
> force triggers you to think some thing. Of course, things are
> *actually* represented, but I am more interested in the event of the
> encounter with simulacra than anything else. Like you would assume I
> wrote these words, there is nothing to indicate otherwise. The sense
> (force) of what I write is not even authored by me.
>
>> All that is left is 'everything is ideology'  and truth and reality
> can
>> never be reached.  Even psychoanalysis refuses this notion...
>
> I would argue it is not a question of reaching 'reality'. Reality is
> everywhere, everything is reality (some things are just more-real-than-
> real). What I was talking about and attempting to attack was the
> selection of various attributes of reality through discursive practice
> and holding them to be "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
>  truth, so help me God." Reality is also always true. The problem is
> that a sense of all the truths of reality can never be communicated,
> only triggered.
>
> The comment, "The 'true' reality of GWB is that he is going to be right
>  wing." may be false (it is based around an element of truth, ie GWB is
>  already right wing), but it is not absurd. "The 'true' reality of GWB
> is that he is going to be the saviour of humanity." This comment is not
>  false; to call it false would retain the notion of truthfulness about
> the comment and you would only have to seek out a sympathetic higher
> authority to prove, eg if you believe in God, and you think God is
> telling you this, then you are going to believe it. The second comment
> is absurd, which to me means there is absolutely no truthfulness about
> it whatsoever and it must be rejected out of hand.
>
> Weighing up how to figure out what truth of reality should be carried
> from the event is the ethical question that Badiou addresses. I am
> reframing it in terms of truthfulness/absurdity to escape from Badiou's
>  use of 'good' and 'evil'. Rejecting absurdities is already ethical.
> The  comments about the temporal series belonging to assemblages was
> trying  to demonstrate the relativism of the truthfulness actualised,
> and also  to show it is possible to reject absurdities without relying
> on
> transcendental 'others' by measuring the 'truth' of a discourse by
> testing its internal limits. A discourse does not 'speak the false'
> ever, only its internal limits are truthful/false. Whether you think
> that such and such a discourse should exist is an ethical question, but
>  the limits of its internal consistency are a question of
> truth/absurdity.  What the discourse says about the world can be
> measured in various 'bits' of truth/falsity, but you end up hitting a
> brick wall of the big(ger) Other. So the political task is to point out
>  when discourses become absurd (when they break down in their internal
> consistency). When a discursive formation 'mutates' (as Foucault calls
> it in "On Questions of Method") it is to realign the internal
> consistency with reality so it is still truthful.
>
> Ciao,
> Glen.