not

lepsie v http://www.burundi.sk/dusan/carrythatweight/images/d/d5/Speculative-realism.txt

SPECULATIVE REALISTS [najma via wikipedia] (2 jan 11)
defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against the dominant forms of post-Kantian philosophy or what it terms correlationism (~ anthropocentrism?).
conf
I 4/2007 @ Goldsmiths College, org by Alberto Toscano, *spec real
II 4/2009 “Speculative Realism/Speculative Materialism” @ UWE Bristol
publishing
Collapse #3 (publ conf I by CCRU Warwick), (wordpress) blogs, Zero Books, Re.Press, Open Humanities Press
Quentin Meillassoux, 67 fr/paris, son of anthropologist, teaches @ École Normale Supérieure, former student of Badiou (po nom prebral tiez matematicke referencie).
materialista, nie realista.
Badiou o jeho 06/08 knihe After Finitude (EN transl by Brassier) hovori ze uvadza do filozofie uplne novy pohlad, iny ako tri Kantove – kritiku, skepticizmus a dogmatizmus;
kritizuje ‘correlationism’ ~ filozofia moze pojednavat cisto o human-world (cosi ako antropocentrizmus, ale neviem preco nepouziva ten pojem).
‘arche-fossil’
‘absolute time’
hlasi(l) sa k ‘speculative materialism’.
pre-human-world = ‘ancestral realm’.
primarne vlastnosti veci dosahuje matematika, vnimanie az sekundarne vlastnosti.
[core] agnosticky skepticizmus voci kauzalite treba premenit v istotu ze causal necessity je uplna blbost… a nutnost ze laws or nature are contingent.
odmieta Kantovu Kopernikovsku revoluciu (svet zavisi od situacie pozorovatela) – vytvoril len Ptolemaiovsku kontra-revoluciu.
/ nebloguje?
Graham Harman – 68 ta 8 imix II us/iowa city, studoval pod Alphonsom Lingisom na Penn State Uni (MA 91), PhD 99 na DePaul Uni Chicago (hih zivil sa ako sports writer), 00- American University in Cairo
metafyzik, realista, occasionalist (occasional cause), silne sympatizuje s panpsychizmom, snazi sa zvratit lingvisticky obrat v zap. filozofii.
‘object-oriented philosophy’ (tiez Bryant a Bogost) via tool-analysis Heideggerovej Being and Time – fenomenologia trpi tym ze vsetko vztahuje na cloveka, PRO utlaceny realny zivot objektov (tymi je EM pole, ohnuty casopriestor, aj OSN).
‘tool-being’
‘vicarious causation’
‘allure’
robi rozdiel medzi realnymi a vnimanymi objektami – na rozdiel od (early?) Latour (& DeLanda?)’s flat ontology (mam to rozvite na poznamkach z pripravy PZI eseje 1).
Ray Brassier, 65, fr-skotski predkovia, Middlesex University => American University of Beirut
nihilista, realista, materialista, antihumanista.
stavia na ‘non-philosophy’ Françoisa Laurella.
premostuje povojnovu FR filozofiu s anglo-us tradicie fil. naturalizmu, kogn. vedy, a neurofilozofie.
‘transcendental nihilism / methodological naturalism’
prelozil 2 Badiouove a 1 Meillassouxove knihy.
Iain Hamilton Grant – BA Reading, MA, PhD Warwick, University of the West of England Bristol
‘transcendental materialism / neo-vitalism’
! venuje sa aj hist & phil of sci, phil of tech.
prelozil par knih Baudrillarda a Lyotarda.
breaktru 06 knihou Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (myslim ze Schelling zasadne spomina Ranciere pri aesthetical regime),
kde kritizuje filozofov snaziacich sa reverznut Platona – mali by radsej reverznut Kanta.
tiez dost kritizuje fil etiky a zivota v sucasnej kontinentalnej fil – ze davaju moc do popredia cloveka.
hlavny source: Plato & Schelling & Deleuze. anti Aristotle & Kant (realitu redukuju na ludsky pohlad).
+
Levi Bryant
Nick Srnicek
Ian Bogost
..

SPECULATIVE TURN reader (re.press 1/2011)
editori sa nikdy nestretli osobne (:

Intro [CORE] ***
quick hist of phil 1900s-2000s:
Heidegger & phenomenology; Derrida & Foucault (od late 70s); Deleuze (od smrti v mid-90s); Zizek a neskor aj Badiou (po smrti Derridu v 04);
tiez Latour (via OO ontologists Harman, Bryant, Bogost); Stengers (on Deleuze & Whitehead); Laruelle (non-philosophy, incl. cogn sci & neurophil);
v 02 DeLanda a Harman publikuju o realizme (Intensive Science & Tool-Being); mid-00s Meillassoux (After Finitude); SpecReal eventy 07 a 09
anti-realist trends @ phil incl. phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism.
teraz vid eko katastrofa alebo infiltration of tech into everyday (incl. bodies) – antirealizmus je neudrzatelny.
doteraz najma focus on texts, discourse, social practices, and human finitude — spec real na realitu ako taku.
SR vsetci uvazuju o realite inak ako cez myslenie a ludskost (napr textovu kritiku) – napr cez noumenal objects, causality-in-itself, neurovedu, matematicke absolutes, psychoanalyzu.
Speculation aims at something ‘beyond’ the critical and linguistic turns.
anti-realism found itself in trap of ‘correlationism’: ‘the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other’.
povod v Kantovej kritickej filozofii (Kopernikovska revolucia: it is no longer the mind that conforms to objects, but rather objects that conform to the mind)
javy: preoccupation with such issues as death and
finitude, an aversion to science, a focus on language, culture, and subjectivity to the
detriment of material factors, an anthropocentric stance towards nature, a relinquish-
ing of the search for absolutes, and an acquiescence to the specific conditions of our historical thrownness. [p 4]
Zizek draws on the naturephilosophy of Schelling, the ontological vastness of Hegel, and the insights into the Real of Lacan.
@Parallax View 06:
??? ‘Materialism means that the reality I see is never “whole”—not because a large part of it eludes me, but be-
cause it contains a stain, a blind spot, which indicates my inclusion in it’.
Reality, he repeatedly states, is non-All; there is a gap, a stain, an irresolvable hole within reality
itself. The very difference between the for-itself and the in-itself is encompassed with-
in the Absolute. Only by attending to this gap can we become truly materialist. Žižek
has signalled a ‘transcendental materialist’ turn within recent continental thinking.
Badiou: ‘mathematics = ontology’ (@ Being and Event 05-EN), stavia ontologiu na teorii mnozin. matematika hovori o byti bez predikacii
Latour: ‘irreductionism’ – all entities are equally real (though not equally strong) insofar as they act on other entities.
Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, *late 90s, Sadie Plant & Nick Land @ Uni of Warwick, tiez Matthew Fuller, Kode 9, Kodwo Eshun, Mark Fisher.
coskoro presunuli mimo uni. publikuju Collapse (*9/06) a Pli – liahen fil realizmu a materializmu.
approved blogs (discussing/producing SR): Bryant (Larval Subjects), Srnicek (The Accursed Share and Speculative Heresy), Harman (Object-Oriented Philosophy), Another Heidegger Blog, Eliminative Culinarism, Immanence, Infinite Thought, Jon Cogburn’s Blog, K-Punk, Naught Thought, The Pinocchio Theory, Planomenology, Poetix, Rough Theory, and Splintering Bone Ashes.

sections (cmr = continental materialism and realism)
0 badiou uvadza socreal – chyba im th of ‘event’
1 spec realist conf 2
2 responses to ‘after finitude’
3 cmr and politics
4 new phil trends in metaphysics
5 cmr and science

@ part 1 – Grant [core] – ‘Does Nature Stay What It Is?’
kritizuje ‘materializmus’ Badioua a Zizeka (on cerpa z dynamist concept of matter & formal rather than material problem of Ground by Hindrichs);
a neo-Fichteanism kontinentalneho myslenia (napr Meillassoux, Zizek)
predtym Harman kritizuje G ze ‘podkopava’ objekty tym ze v nich hlada hlbsie materialne zaklady (Boha, fyzicke vlastnosti, pudy, predindividualno);
G na to: Harman is incapable of grasping the anteriority upon which both ideation and objects depend.
+
PSR = ?; by Leibniz
Ground = ?
kritizuje Newtonovsky dualizmus atomov a sil (ten vidno aj u ‘grounded’ power theorists @ phil of nature) ktory naraza pri metafyzike hmoty,
a konkretne pri koncepcii inertnej underlying substance.
cize chapu hmotu ako Aristoteles chape substanciu. z toho dualizmus (@ ontology of eliminative materialism), pritomny aj na SpecReal 2007 conf.
materializmus treba chapat ako ontologicku tezu – potom je vsetko materialne.
Hindrichs provides a functionalist model of the operation of grounding, which amounts to asserting the equivalence of ground, act and form.
conceptions of matter:
– substance
– dynamist – introduced into physics by Hans Christian Oersted in 1820 (@ exp demo of EM), but into philosophy by Plato.
[moc tazke, precitam neskor, vyzera byt zasadne]

@ part 2
Meillassouxovi zmietli nesmely navrh potreby (virtualneho) Boha;
a ze jeho uplne zavrhnutie kauzality a potreba kontingencie v prirode nie su zlucitelne, pretoze ta kontingencia v dosledku beztak implikuje kauzalitu alebo becoming.
ontologizuje Humeovi epistemologiu;
pletie si metafyzicku a natural necessity, co ho vedie k unjustifiable derivation of pure Chaos;
nerobi rozdiel medzi pure a applied matematikou, a kym reasoning bases on pure math, conclusions rozvadza siroko mimo nej;

@ part 3 – CHECK srnicek
Srnicek o tom ze via Laruelle’s non-phil (subjektivita ako formalistic procedure neredukovatelna na fenomenologicky/psych zaklad) sa da uniknut kapitalizmu,
ale ze realist ontology v sebe nemoze zahrnat grounds for eticku/politicku action (zbavuje iba kapitalistickej autority, ale nedava guidelines/imperatives dalej).

@ part 4
Meillassoux [core] robi rozdiel medzi ‘potencialitou’ a ‘virtualitou’ via Hume & Cantor.
Shaviro porovnava Harmana a Whiteheada – H’s non-relational ontology sux; H’s allure (linked to sublime) je aesth modernizmus, kym W’s beauty (‘the emergence of patterned contrasts’) je 21st c.
Harman [core]: Whitehead (like Latour) has an ontology of individual entities while Deleuze (like Bergson, Simondon, and Iain Hamilton Grant) do not view individuals as the basic personae of the world.
Latour [core] pise knihu o 14 modoch bytia via Souriau [tajne ich riesi od 1987] (do 2007 verejne nerobil phil rozdiel medzi phys/mental/animal/fictional actors), napr: phenomenon, thing, soul, fiction, God.

@ part 5
Protevi o Deleuzovom afekte via developmental systems theory, neurology and cognitive psychology,

conclusion
Zizek porovnava svoj materializmus s materializmami
scientific materialism (Darwinism, brain sciences),
‘discursive’ materialism (ideology as the result of material discursive practices),
Badiou’s ‘democratic materialism’ (the spontaneous egalitarian hedonism),
speculative.
only the assertion of the nature of reality as ‘non-All’ can sustain a truly materialist position.

SR future
teraz 4 hlavne debatne okruhy: politics/ethics, temporality, subjectivity/consciousness, and science/truth

To Foucault, knowledge exists only where power relations are suspended. To Zizek, this Foucauldian position is false: there is no knowledge that does not presuppose power relations.
There is no place beyond discourse and the power relations that govern them; resistance and change are possible from within them (Zizek: Beyond Foucault, p. 90).
It is this position that colors the primary difference between the political strategies of Zizek over Foucault. To Zizek, revolutionary potential must be sought within the capitalist system of desire, and it must seek to be universalized.
/ takze aj wikileaks ma power
/ task: how to universalize revolutionary potential within the capitalist system of desire, aka je esencia toho co robia wikileaks?
a na zaklade toho – co robia zle?
/ presne takto by som mal pokracovat dalej [riesim teraz otazku transparency]
/ lokalizovat hlavne kontradikcie na ktorych sa pohybuje wikileaks (a s nimi aj globalna debata) a univerzalizovat ich
(v zmysle zizeka/kanta). cize lokalizovat ‘excluded’ – excluded informacie, treba zapojit do commons.
aby sa potom v ramci commons riesili problemy majetku a hodnoty objektu (vratane updatu tychto terminov)
/ scientific journalism – tiez zasadne tuna
/ excluded – otazka – vyradeni z coho? a co je tu commons?

+ moje reci k wikileaks:

otazka ludskeho poznania – chcu vytvorit intellectual/ record of how civilisation works in practise; our decisions are based on what we know.
je to nieco niekde, ktore mame odhalit a dostat k nemu pristup.
proste kopa, ktora je pod zamkom.
to snad ide do epistemologie – foucaultove pisanie o poznani spada pod nu?

; filesharing
? obmedzit cely clanok na filesharing? kludne.. filesharing in the context of political economy
mozno vysvetlit aj veci okolo, ale povedat ze ich nebudem teraz rozvijat

; propositions via potentialities
podla whiteheada potom pri cables pre nas nie je otazka ci su skutocne alebo falosne (pre wl tim bola otazka,
ci ich releasnu – to ci su prave bola len jedna z veci na zaklade ktorej zvazovali).
ale aky otvaraju v kulture potencial. W: “proposition points to a potentiality [..]
propositions are possible routes of actualization, vectors of nondeterministic change.
The “pri- mary role” of a proposition, Whitehead says, is to “pave the way along which the world advances into novelty.”.
^ takto citaj dokumenty ktore releasuje wl, a ktore obsahuje wp, a ktore siri tpb
vsetky tri su platformy, ktore maju podobne ambicie (aku hlavnu premisu ma tpb?)
=
task: open up access to excluded knowledge

; epistemology / knowledge that+how+acq
epistemologia – knowledge that [classical propositional knowledge = prienik medzi truths and beliefs], knowledge how, acquaintance knowledge…
ze 2 a 2 su 4. ale ze ako sa rata.
pozeram okolo na veci viem povedat ze su a kolko ich je.
ale o vacsine z nich neviem ako vznikli, ako stali sebou.
kutili su deleuziani.
viem ze nie co je, viem o vela veciach ze su.
ale viem len o malo z nich ako vznikli.
teda ake procesy v nich prebiehaju.
lebo sa menia dalej.
nie su fixne, nedorazili z buducnosti aby ostali rovnake, ani neplanuju ostavat rovnake s vyhladom do buducnosti.
menia ich ich procesy.
ktore ich formuju.
napr flasa vina… ako to ze je flasa vina? proces vyroby flase, proces vyroby vina, vinica, pestovanie vinica, distribucia, sklad, predaj, spotreba
recyklacia flase na inu flasu.

lepsie v: http://burundi.sk/dusan/carrythatweight/images/5/51/Pzi.esej.research.txt

polit econ

[186] Badiou – 3 mozne zlyhania revolucnej lavice
=> vsetko zle. treba revolucneho agenta ktory je neoddelitelnou sucastou systemu dostat do subjektivity
/ akoze treba byt politickejsi? a revolucnejsi v kazdodennosti?

Marx pre-1850s: ‘Marxist’ theory
ciel, postcapitalist society, je socialna forma kde transhistoricka praca, oslobodena od fetters of trhu a osobneho vlastnictva,
has openly emerged as the regulating principle of society.
‘economic base’ vs legal/ideological ‘superstructure’
naive historicist evolutionism ~ ahistorical absolutization of labor (process of mat prod and repr of life) as ‘key’ to other phenomena
cosi s Heideggerovou dialectic-of-Enlitenment temou technokratickej ‘instrumental reason’ to ma, ze domination is grounded in very notion of labor
eg. German Ideology

Marx v 1850s inspirovany znovucitanim Hegelovej Science of Logic, vsetko prehodnotil a skomplikoval
mainly in: Grundrisse, a najma Capital
dosiel na to ze commodity fetishism ako iluzia nie je len sekundarna reflection, ale operuje v srdci ‘realneho procesu vyroby’
cize uloha nie je odhalit ako sa z bezneho reallife objektu stava fetisizovana komodita (mysterious theological entity),
ale odhalit ‘metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’ v naoko beznom objekte
comm fetish = belief that commodities are magical objects with inherent metaphysical powers
Karatani: marx inak zacal tym ze kritika nabozenstva je pociatok vsetkej kritiky, presiel ku kritike filozofie, a skoncil pri kritike polit econ,
pri ktorej sa oblukom dostal naspat k tomu ze viera (v objekty) je v srdci ‘prizemnej’ ekonomickej aktivity

Engels tiez chapal produkciu jednak v ekonomickom zmysle (extrakcia komodit z prirody), jednak v spolocenskom (produkcia zivota, napr rodenie)

+ research:

http://burundi.sk/dusan/carrythatweight/index.php/Tactics_of_leaking_and_politics_of_the_common

Until recently, two main parties@Eur: a right-of-centre party (Christian Democrat, liberal-conservative, people’s) and a left-of-centre party (socialist, social-democratic); then smaller parties (ecologists, communists).
There is now one predominant centrist party that stands for global capitalism, usually with a liberal cultural agenda (for example, tolerance towards abortion, gay rights, religious and ethnic minorities). Opposing this party is an increasingly strong anti-immigrant populist party which, on its fringes, is accompanied by overtly racist neofascist groups.
PL (Tusk’s christdem lib conserv Civic Platform 42% vs Kaczynski’s national conserv Christian Law & Justice 32, 10/07),
NL (Rutte’s cons lib VVD 21% vs Wilders’ right populist PVV 16 vs Cohen’s socdem PvdA 20, 7/10),
NO (Stoltenberg’s socdem Labour 32% vs Jensen’s populist lib Progress 22 vs Solberg’s lib cons Conservative 14, 9/05) – ale lava vlada,
SW (Sahlin’s SocDem 31% vs Reinfeldt’s lib conserv Moderate Party 31, potom daleko nic, 9/10),
HU (Orban’s conserv christdem national Fidesz 53% vs Vona’s radical nationalist Jobbik 17 vs Mesterhazy’s socdem MSZP 17, potom len pod 10, 4/10)

we are entering a new epoch in which crisis – or, rather, a kind of economic state of emergency, with its attendant need for all sorts of austerity measures (cutting benefits, diminishing health and education services, making jobs more temporary) is permanent. Crisis is becoming a way of life.
After 1990 we entered a new era in which the predominant form of the exercise of state power became a depoliticised expert administration and the co-ordination of interests. The only way to introduce passion into this kind of politics, the only way to actively mobilise people, is through fear: the fear of immigrants, the fear of crime, the fear of godless sexual depravity, the fear of the excessive state (with its burden of high taxation and control), the fear of ecological catastrophe, as well as the fear of harassment (political correctness is the exemplary liberal form of the politics of fear).

What is increasingly emerging as the central human right in late-capitalist societies is the right not to be harassed, which is the right to be kept at a safe distance from others.

The contemporary redefinition of politics as the art of expert administration as politics without politics? This leads us to today’s tolerant liberal multiculturalism as an experience of the Other deprived of its Otherness – the decaffeinated Other.

After righteously rejecting direct populist racism as “unreasonable” and unacceptable for our democratic standards, they endorse “reasonably” racist protective measures: “We grant ourselves permission to applaud African and east European sportsmen, Asian doctors, Indian software programmers. We don’t want to kill anyone, we don’t want to organise any pogrom. But we also think that the best way to hinder the always unpredictable violent anti-immigrant defensive measures is to organise a reasonable anti-immigrant protection.” barbarism with a human face. It reveals the regression from the Christian love of one’s neighbour back to the pagan privileging of our tribe versus the barbarian Other.

(‘neutralny’ opis spolocnosti je falosny)
Zizek sees that the description
of the society that purported to be “neutral” would not
be objective, but would formally be “false” because it would
involve accepting the existing order. In a manner that is
reminiscent of Max Horkheimer’s 1937 essay “Traditional
and Critical Theory,” Zizek reads Lukács as maintaining
that a critical theory must recognize its own situatedness
and its own commitments to political action and social
transformation. Zizek wants to follow Lukács by showing
that historicism is not sufficiently historicist because it does
not give an account of itself as a social phenomenon and is
thus incomplete. Zizek maintains that social theory cannot
be objective in the sense of being politically “neutral,” and it
is incomplete unless it takes its own social embeddedness
into account. An important aspect of what the critical social
theory would have to explain is a question that traditional
theory ignores: Why does it meet with resistance? In this
respect for Zizek critical social theory is similar to psychoanalytic
theory, which also has to explain why its explanations
are often resisted at first by patients.
+
Saying that a
theory is partial is not the same as saying that it is false insofar
as partial representation is not the same as misrepresentation
or distortion.
(==> lukacs kritizoval ze ciastocna teoria je falosna, ze vtedy ide ‘len’ o jednu z perspektiv,
ktora zahrna len ciastocny obraz socialnej reality, ktora teda nie je objektivna, treba celostnu,
resp vedomie “imputed” to the class—-[to som nepochopil dobre];
kym zizek tvrdi ze angazovana ciastocna je ok kym som si vedomy ze je ciastocna lebo je pravdiva,
kedze ciastocna reprezentacia nie je to iste ako misrepresentation or distortion.
cize je ok teoretizovat localised case studies, napriklad na zaklade honest autobiografie).
+
critique of ideology:
Marx @ Capital: “They do not know it, but they are doing it.”
Zizek via Sloterdijk about it: Marx is interpreted wrongly and should go
“They know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it.”
~ instead of “we misrecognize what is really going on”, it suggests
“we misrecognize that nothing is really going on”.
This thought that things seem to be one
way but really are another way implies that there is a level
of reality that could be grasped correctly. Zizek manages to
disrupt this traditional epistemological understanding of
the distinction between appearance and reality.
& false: “reality is just an illusion”.
“ideology has nothing to do with ‘illusion'”.
“social reality” is an “ethical construction”.
+
the totality is encountered in its purest form when it fails, and when one
tries to distance oneself from it in order to maintain one’s
own purity.
+
“purity is the most perfidious form of ‘cheating.’ ”
+
(pochopit to v celku – to nejde – ale nechcem si to priznat –
nechcem vidiet ze si to neviem priznat)
Reality is usually thought of in terms of everything
that is the case, and it is also assumed that everything
coheres with everything else to form a totality, whether one
can grasp this totality or not. Generally it is granted that the
human mind cannot grasp the totality. If that is so, it can reasonably
be asked whether this notion of the totality is not
simply a product of the imagination. Zizek’s statement that
the totality, which is impossible, tries to cover up its own
impossibility, is admittedly paradoxical. How could something
that did not exist cover up its own nonexistence? The
answer depends on a psychoanalytic premise that
the fantasy desires to hide from itself its own inability to face up
to the nonexistence and the impossibility of its fantasized object.
+
(?) instead of thinking of reality as a given that is
antecedent to experience, one must try to think of reality as a
failed effect
+
If consciousness is nothing but the consciousness of
something other than it, and if that which is other-than-it is
nothing in itself, then it is not surprising that consciousness
is inscrutable.
“Consciousness, in effect, equals anxiety.”
+
the anxious awareness of mortality is not simply one
among many aspects of conscious awareness, but its “very
zero-level.” ~ [anthropocentric humanism]
+
“very model of self-awareness”: “ ‘I
know very well that I am mortal, but nevertheless. . . . (I do
not accept it; I unconsciously believe in my immortality,
since I cannot envisage my own death).’ ”
+
For Zizek poststructuralism is a misunderstanding
of French philosophy by North Americans:
“In short, an entity like ‘poststructuralist deconstructionism’
(the term itself is not used in France) comes into existence
only for a gaze that is unaware of the details of the
philosophical scene in France: this gaze brings together
authors (Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, . . . ) who are
simply not perceived as part of the same épistème in
France.”68 On his view, to consider poststructuralism as a
form of critical theory is “a classification which is unthinkable
in France.”

[49-51]

Capitalism is, he believes, incapable of resolving the biggest challenges of the day: environmental catastrophe and the abuse of information technology, intellectual property rights and biogenetics. | what particularly fascinates him is the ideological battle over how to interpret the financial crisis. | According to Žižek, the reason Hitler came to power in the 1930s was because he offered the most attractive interpretation of disastrous events. He simply flattered the Germans by claiming that their army had been betrayed in the first world war and by laying all the blame at the feet of the Jews. | Žižek is obsessed with the way that societies interpret events and the belief systems that underpin politics.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/06b42e32-09dd-11de-add8-0000779fd2ac.html

Badiou agree with Negri’s formulation that for this reason socialism (which is a statist imaginary) can only be replaced by communism which is radically anti-state. However, Zizek struck a pragmatist note here to argue with Badiou and Judith Balso as to what, operationally, this ‘at a distance’ can possibly mean and how this is a pathetic anarchist recipe for marginality. | Zizek proclaimed that if there is one good thing about capitalism, it is that ‘Mother Earth no longer exists’ – amidst a slightly emabrassed applause from the audience. “We must remain resolutely modern” he further proclaimed.
http://kafila.org/2009/03/16/evangelist-st-zizek-and-the-end-of-philosophy-ii/

The key reference points for Badiou’s anti-statist version of communism are Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Jacobins and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He rejects the idea – fundamental to Marx – that the economic and the political are indivisible.
http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=99

The resistance was formulated in terms of ‘class warfare’, Wall Street against Main Street: why should we help those responsible (‘Wall Street’) and let ordinary borrowers (on ‘Main Street’) pay the price for it? Is this not a clear case of what economists call ‘moral hazard’?/What left and right share in this case is their contempt for big speculators and corporate managers who profit from risky decisions but are protected from failures by ‘golden parachutes’. / While it is true that we live in a society that demands risky choices, it is one in which the powerful do the choosing, while others do the risking./‘Socialism’ is OK,it seems,when it serves to save capitalism. But what if ‘moral hazard’ is inscribed in the fundamental structure of capitalism? / Hypocritical defence of the rich: if you want people to have money to build, dont give it to them directly, help those who’re lending it to them. / Real dilemma is not ‘state intervention or not?’ but ‘what kind of state intervention?’
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v00/n03/zize01_.html

Today’s Left might accept the hegemony, but continue to fight for reform within its rules. Or, it accepts that the hegemony is here to stay, but should nonetheless be resisted from its ‘interstices’. Or, it accepts the futility of all struggle, since the hegemony is so all-encompassing that nothing can really be done except wait for an outburst of ‘divine violence’. Or, it recognises the temporary futility of the struggle, and defend what remains of the welfare state. Or, it emphasises the fact that the problem is a more fundamental one, that global capitalism is ultimately an effect of the underlying principles of technology or ‘instrumental reason’. Or, it posits that one can undermine global capitalism and state power, not by directly attacking them, but by refocusing the field of struggle on everyday practices. Or,it takes the ‘postmodern’ route. Or,it wagers that one can repeat the classical Marxist gesture of enacting the ‘determinate negation’ of capitalism
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html

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