yeah i see what you're saying. that's the crux of the problem isn't it? it wouldn't really be hard to turn that whole argument against Z as well (ie, that what he's doing is an "apology" for hegemony. hence Critchley's quote of Lacan telling the Leninists, "What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a master.")
but Critchley definitely steps in it when he shifts to being an advocate (even if one for "infinite" demands)...and perhaps what's at stake is a (philosophical) defense of that act.
― ryan, Friday, 3 February 2012 02:21 (twelve years ago) link
and that's why his demands have to be "infinite" (or effectively without content).
― ryan, Friday, 3 February 2012 02:22 (twelve years ago) link
Though perhaps it'd be fun to read Z as basically posing exactly the "infinite demand" that Critchley wants, just in the form of a nostalgic Leninist mode.
― ryan, Friday, 3 February 2012 02:25 (twelve years ago) link
new spivak apparently
http://www.amazon.com/Aesthetic-Education-Era-Globalization/dp/0674051831
― markers, Thursday, 23 February 2012 17:05 (twelve years ago) link
ryan, did you finish the critchley book? worth reading?
― markers, Thursday, 23 February 2012 17:06 (twelve years ago) link
markers: I thought there was some value in it, and the parts about mysticism were really interesting to me, but overall I'm kinda left wondering why he felt he needed to stage his argument in the way he did, and perhaps his sense of the organizing power of religion is more a holdover from theocratic politics than something that belongs to religion per se. Anyway, I liked it and learned stuff, though I'm not sure it leads anywhere.
― ryan, Thursday, 23 February 2012 17:50 (twelve years ago) link
I mean "your conflating religion with politics" at once a dumb criticism since thats the argument of the book! But at the same time I think he fails to articulate what the secular meaning of "sacralization" in contemporary politics could be. He wants a positive form of religious feeling that leads to spontaneous political organization where I only see negative theology.
― ryan, Thursday, 23 February 2012 17:55 (twelve years ago) link
oooh that spivak looks really interesting. was just thinkin about schiller again the other day!
― Despite all my cheek, I am still just a freak on a leash (bernard snowy), Friday, 24 February 2012 11:39 (twelve years ago) link
ya i've been reading schiller lately, SHE'S ONTO US.
― shart practice (Merdeyeux), Friday, 24 February 2012 12:27 (twelve years ago) link
nick land goes in for the post-austrian paleo-reactionary scene
http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1880/the-dark-enlightenment-part-1
against democracy! (in a strange coincidence i just brought up "mencius moldbug" yesterday)
this line is particularly glib, considering the blistering pro-rumsfeld/cheney line he took on the old hyperstition blog. he condemns, in a slew of other things, "reckless evangelical ‘wars for democracy’
― goole, Thursday, 8 March 2012 17:46 (twelve years ago) link
nobody? jeez, should have gone to the right-wingery thread
― goole, Monday, 12 March 2012 15:05 (twelve years ago) link
nick land goes there
― The term “hipster racism” from Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious (nakhchivan), Monday, 12 March 2012 15:07 (twelve years ago) link
yo nakh let's shmooze about bh
― Mordy, Monday, 12 March 2012 15:08 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1901/the-dark-enlightenment-part-2http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1920/the-dark-enlightenment-part-3
― goole, Monday, 19 March 2012 19:12 (twelve years ago) link
just now reading critchley's "infinitely demanding" really digging it
At the heart of a radical politics there has to be what Icall a meta-political ethical moment that provides the motivationalforce or propulsion into political action. If ethics without politics isempty, then politics without ethics is blind. Taking my cue from aheterodox reading of Levinas, I claim that this meta-politicalmoment is anarchic, where ethics is the disturbance of the politicalstatus quo. Ethics is anarchic meta-politics, it is the continualquestioning from below of any attempt to impose order fromabove. On this view, politics is the creation of interstitial distancewithin the state, the invention of new political subjectivities.Politics, I argue, cannot be confined to the activity of governmentthat maintains order, pacification and security while constantlyaiming at consensus. On the contrary, politics is the manifestationof dissensus, the cultivation of an anarchic multiplicity that callsinto question the authority and legitimacy of the state . It is inrelation to such a multiplicity that we may begin to restore somedignity to the dreadfully devalued discourse of democracy.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 21 April 2012 08:09 (twelve years ago) link
Taking my cue from a heterodox reading of Levinas, I could really go for some fried chicken right now.
― ogmor, Saturday, 21 April 2012 17:55 (twelve years ago) link
lol
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 21 April 2012 18:06 (twelve years ago) link
that's quite nice tho, I am never sure if I'd get on w/ critchley
― ogmor, Saturday, 21 April 2012 18:11 (twelve years ago) link
finally defended yesterday. now I can read what I want to! think im gonna fill in my two biggest blind spots (relatively speaking): Lacan and Deleuze.
ogmor: I've read a lot of critchley and im still not sure if i get on with him. but his Very Little, Almost Nothing is really lovely and moving and smart.
― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 18:26 (twelve years ago) link
hey congrats!
― markers, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 18:28 (twelve years ago) link
thanks man! huge relief. i now have one official life accomplishment i can point to.
― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 18:30 (twelve years ago) link
hurrah, ryan
― max, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 19:18 (twelve years ago) link
well done
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 20:42 (twelve years ago) link
Thanks guys!
― ryan, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
good work! what was your thesis on?
― michael nyman cat (Merdeyeux), Wednesday, 25 April 2012 00:54 (twelve years ago) link
essentially reading American Pragmatism through systems theory and "second-order" cybernetics. Hopefully I'm able to argue that's not as strange a combination as it sounds!
― ryan, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 02:54 (twelve years ago) link
That sounds like a really cool topic. Systems theory and cybernetics are pretty interesting fields of thought ... like if philosophy actually dealt with the real world.
― Spectrum, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 02:57 (twelve years ago) link
oh, cool! I know someone working on Peirce and erm computation theory and things like that?, it sounds like a really interesting connection even if I don't quite know enough about either side to see exactly what's going on with it.
― michael nyman cat (Merdeyeux), Wednesday, 25 April 2012 03:05 (twelve years ago) link
That sounds pretty amazing. Feel like there's a lot of untapped potential in Peirce (and lots of new stuff by him still seeing the light of day). I was frequently astonished by his simultaneous total weirdness and prescience.
It was actually a really fun topic for me and I certainly learned a lot writing it. Got to second base with a press so far but we'll see how that goes. In any case I feel lucky. How many people get to read this stuff, let alone write about it?
― ryan, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 03:17 (twelve years ago) link
keep us updated on the press status, would purchase said book.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 04:03 (twelve years ago) link
Will do. That's very kind!
― ryan, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 04:31 (twelve years ago) link
pretty good critchley interview on his new work on love & otherwise
http://www.full-stop.net/2012/04/02/interviews/tyler-malone/simon-critchley/
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 26 April 2012 04:31 (twelve years ago) link
Tree of Life I couldn’t even get to the position of wanting to like it. It seems to feed that Emersonian, American desire for authenticity, which just fills me with nausea. I’ll go with Lars von Trier and Melancholia. Nature is Satan’s church.
That's kinda funny (also surprising given Critchley's admiration for Stanley Cavell--he should know Emerson better than that). Almost get the sense Critchley finds himself in a weird position, with some vestigial loyalty to some euro-skeptic-hermeneutics-of-suspicion way of thought that seems at odds with the "religious" turn of his work. I'd argue Emerson represents a more rigorous turn away from that stuff than Critchley's own recent work.
― ryan, Thursday, 26 April 2012 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
on another topic: has anyone read Brian Massumi's "A User's Guide to Capitalism Schizophrena"?
http://www.amazon.com/Users-Guide-Capitalism-Schizophrenia-Deviations/dp/0262631431/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_T1?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3A7S5CTE1D9AK&colid=336N6EL0R3GGA
― ryan, Thursday, 26 April 2012 21:16 (twelve years ago) link
Capitalism AND Schizophrenia obviously.
no, though it sounds extraordinarily useful
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 26 April 2012 21:25 (twelve years ago) link
curious about yr reading of emerson ryan! that bit of the interview made me laugh.
― ogmor, Thursday, 26 April 2012 21:43 (twelve years ago) link
didnt malick study under cavell?
― The term “hipster racism” from Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious (nakhchivan), Thursday, 26 April 2012 21:50 (twelve years ago) link
y, they know each other
― ogmor, Thursday, 26 April 2012 21:52 (twelve years ago) link
What's implicitly at issue, I think, is Cavell's readings of Emerson under the rubric of post-Kantian skepticism. (Emerson as a disappointed Romantic, if you will. See in particular "Experience"--which is absolutely extraordinary and one of the best things written by anyone ever.) So Emerson's big project becomes about "mourning the loss of the world" and that sort of thing. I think there's a better take on Emerson that can do without bringing in the bogeyman of skepticism, but Cavell's readings are pretty indispensable.
And Critchley has written about this! Which is why the idea of "Emersonian authenticity" must be an intentional straw-man version of Emerson.
― ryan, Thursday, 26 April 2012 22:25 (twelve years ago) link
idk as a nonphilosophe i just read it as a halfassed skein on 'lol americans and their residual calvinism'
― The term “hipster racism” from Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious (nakhchivan), Thursday, 26 April 2012 22:29 (twelve years ago) link
yes def that too!
― ryan, Thursday, 26 April 2012 22:30 (twelve years ago) link
please let this be as hilarious to someone else here as it is to me
So even with two stage review, journal editors are tempted to publish papers with weak methods but positive results. And why not – unless important customers insisted, why would a journal handicap itself by committing itself to not publish such papers, which bring more fame and prestige to the journal.Journal customers include universities who tenure professors who publish in prestigious journals, and grant givers who prefer grantees who publish similarly. But why should these customers handicap themselves – they also win by affiliating with those who publish papers with weak methods but positive results.I’ve suggested that academia functions primarily to credential people as impressive and interesting in certain ways, so outsiders, like students and patron, can gain prestige by affiliating with them. If so, and if those who publish weak-method positive-results are in fact more impressive and interesting than those who publish stronger-method negative-results, there is little prospect to get rid of this publication bias.What is possible is to augment publications with betting market prices estimating the chance each result will be upheld by future research. This would let readers get unbiased estimates on the reliability of research results. Alas, it seems there is no customer willing to pay extra to get such reliability estimates. Most everyone involved in the process mainly cares about signals of impressiveness; few care much about which research results are actually true.
Journal customers include universities who tenure professors who publish in prestigious journals, and grant givers who prefer grantees who publish similarly. But why should these customers handicap themselves – they also win by affiliating with those who publish papers with weak methods but positive results.
I’ve suggested that academia functions primarily to credential people as impressive and interesting in certain ways, so outsiders, like students and patron, can gain prestige by affiliating with them. If so, and if those who publish weak-method positive-results are in fact more impressive and interesting than those who publish stronger-method negative-results, there is little prospect to get rid of this publication bias.
What is possible is to augment publications with betting market prices estimating the chance each result will be upheld by future research. This would let readers get unbiased estimates on the reliability of research results. Alas, it seems there is no customer willing to pay extra to get such reliability estimates. Most everyone involved in the process mainly cares about signals of impressiveness; few care much about which research results are actually true.
― Mordy, Saturday, 28 April 2012 03:24 (twelve years ago) link
i'll cut directly to the best part: "What is possible is to augment publications with betting market prices estimating the chance each result will be upheld by future research. This would let readers get unbiased estimates on the reliability of research results. Alas, it seems there is no customer willing to pay extra to get such reliability estimates. Most everyone involved in the process mainly cares about signals of impressiveness; few care much about which research results are actually true."
I struggled for a while to think of a point of reference through which to relate Badiou's philosophy. I hope that you will not think I take lightly the topic of dubstep to which I adapt Badiou's theory of the subject and event in music. What I intend to present is precisely an attack on ironic appreciation of art as much as the key terms and rationale behind Badiou's works.
lolz
http://pastebin.com/tfHN2Ah5
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 29 April 2012 15:47 (twelve years ago) link
thread for random crit theory bloggers discussing pop music
― Ms Tum-Bla-Wi-Tee (nakhchivan), Sunday, 29 April 2012 15:53 (twelve years ago) link
has anyone picked up the Zizek yet? it's a monster. i was looking at it at the bookstore but can't really justify spending 60 dollars on it. hopefully it'll start to turn up cheap somewhere soon.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 May 2012 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
I'm watching a newish Cavell Q&A:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9z-LyUuDes
I got to meet him a few years ago. Nice old man.
― Träumerei, Wednesday, 16 May 2012 20:42 (twelve years ago) link
the new Zizek has turned up 'cheap' 'somewhere' already, if you can be bothered figuring out how to convert from a .mobi file...
― Merdeyeux, Wednesday, 16 May 2012 20:59 (twelve years ago) link
ROLLING HARDMAN THREAD 2009
― navihchkan (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 16 May 2012 21:01 (twelve years ago) link