Rolling Political Philosophy Thread

thanks! really is about time i read debord finally.

i was hoping for a bit more / tighter specificity before, but now i see that it's just not that kind of book. those do seem like they're probably apt recommendations unless there happen to be one or two super-specific books post-dating, say, the agamben that are important for 'civil war'.

knowing the wittgenstein, i would say that wouldn't help much (even if the prospect is exciting). they seem to use the idea (against agamben? or maybe he uses it too in connection with 'bare life') as a way of registering individuals' particularity (and particular potentials for community with particular others), in a spinozist/nietzschean spirit (esp. potentials for growth of power).

the idea of 'hostis' is pretty important for them in that first part too, i gather because they're using it as a third term in the group friend/enemy/hostile to leave room for a lack of relations. i assume the schmitt is huge there. and since 'hostis' is apparently connected historically with the idea (not one they take up) of the homo sacer, maybe this amounts to a point of difference with agamben, who knows.

i think the rehearsal of the modern state --> empire story in the second and third parts confers a lot of lucidity on what i recognize as foucaultish and deleuzean ideas about subject-formation as it's tangled up in state-formation. in particular, they work pretty elegant variations on the pair 'police, publicity' in the second part that is transformed into 'biopower, spectacle' in the third part. i like the discussion of biopower in terms of empire's role in maintaining/extending the operation of norms (as the imperial successor to the modern state's 'law'). the sharp lines drawn make the story's implications for modern/cartesian subjectivities pretty strong, too.

they have a bit to say in the discussion of biopower of how norms operate via apparatuses, so i take it that the various authors writing about that (foucault a lot in the later lectures on biopower/governmentality, deleuze in something i haven't read, agamben in a later trifle that seems not too helpful), and relatedly deleuze/guattari and their machines (a term tiqqun select sometimes) are also meant to be a point of contact. but the virtue here seems to be that those contacts are registered and not allowed to muddle things by being pursued more extensively.

as it turns out, they think negri sux so no need to read that book!

though it's partly set up by the way individuals are pictured in the first part, situationist antecedents seem strongest in the last part ('an ethic of civil war'), since the picture is basically, empire has mutilated life and deprived us of experience, if you are like us you should pursue more affectvely intense experiences as suit your individuality, but there's not much to be said about that since it's an experimental thing. (then there are some snipes at bad revolutionaries.) experiment/experience how? through realization in/of practice.

(epigraph to concluding essay: 'don't know what i want / but i know how to get it'...)

this is good -

http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2010/05/from-restricted-to-general-antagonism.html

but he uses a phrase i've seen around (i think nina power uses it in her review of the later 'young-girl' book?) and find irritating, 'so-and-so ontologizes x'.

http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2013/08/blinded-political-science-egypt.html

hey mordy (or anyone else)

do u happen to know what the (caricature) vampire castle response is to the line against it that k-punk takes here?

http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11299

See the Russell Brad thread from here j.
russell brand - C or D?

dur, i was looking for some marxism thread, couldn't find, ended up here - thx

all political philosophy must now be discussed with reference to R Brand these days!

Reading Ernesto Laclau's "New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time" and it's pretty great. Perhaps old hat for people better versed in this stuff than I am.

does socialism represent an eusocial impulse in the otherwise presocial human species?

i thought this was a pretty good read:
http://mccaine.org/2014/05/24/no-blood-for-oil/

what was it about WW2 that the allies could collapse the German government and not get bogged down in insurgency + some kind of WW2 version of ISIS? is it bc Germany had some experience w/ democracy prior to the Nazi takeover that they could fall back on? is it bc the US and USSR were able to keep a larger force there longer? is it bc europe didn't have the same kind of radical religious insurgency ready to step into a power vacuum? putting aside all ethics - how come we could destroy the german government and not create a huge pocket of instability + violence?

loads of bourgeois private citizens and developed local and national and international industries to reinforce an atmosphere of compliance?

Splitting the country into two ideologically distinct halves must be a factor? With a sustained occupying force in each, and 'friendly' neighbouring states.

i'm not sure what thread is best for this:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/01/attention_deficit_disorder_economy_nigeria_gaza_caring

interesting article i thought

I believe Bernard Stielger's recent stuff has been about something similar.

i'd like to see that - got a link?

I haven't read much of it, but this seems to be a central part of what he's doing:
http://arsindustrialis.org/disaffected-individual-process-psychic-and-collective-disindividuation

Dominic Pettman has also written on Stiegler's notion of "peak libido" in an accessible way. That's how I know about it.

q:

is 'confusion' / 'wavering' / possibly 'hovering' between something like abstractions and reality, empty metaphysical ideas and concrete life, etc etc, a pretty standard marxian complaint / point of critique?

do you mean this in the "thesis 11" sense or a Marxist complaint about competing theories not drawing that distinction clearly enough?

whew that's over my head holmes, i just mean as something marxians would generally be fond of targeting ppl / thinkers / societies with

ah, well it's an interesting question! I can't answer very well since my reading in that stuff isn't all that wide--at least in regard to those specific terms you mention.

i seem to recall the latter two terms showing up a lot in the älteste systemprogramm generation / athenaeum folx, but i think the bit about confusion might be more proper to marx? for all i know that could mean an ancestry in hegel.

you know, my guess would be that your intuition re: hegel is right. prob something in the phenomenology.

Anderson's The Imperative of Integration looks extremely good. Anyone read it?

I've been reading the Invisible Committee/Tiqqun lately with some ambivalence (and extreme skepticism about their rhetorical strategies in Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl), but I was impressed with Alberto Toscano's lengthy response to their latest book, To Our Friends: http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/burning-dwelling-thinking

(I was thinking of posting this to HOOS's organizing thread, but IC/T isn't exactly intersectional in their approach.)

I just noticed Mordy's question from last year:

how come we could destroy the german government and not create a huge pocket of instability + violence?

In the case of WW2 it was not only the German government which had been destroyed, but the entire infrastructure of Germany. Their military defeat was rigorous and complete. The German people were refugees within their own country, unable to feed themselves, clothe themselves or house themselves, or transport people or products without assistance from their conquerors. Cooperation was essential to survival.

Further, the allied armies of occupation were on a massive scale, numbering in the millions and able to dominate the entire country. Under the circumstances, the allies had an extremely effective monopoly on force. And don't overlook the fact that those occupation forces stayed on for decades afterward.

The last factor I'd cite in the post-WW2 era was that both Germany and Japan had a well-established culture of obedience and deference to authority which could be used to advantage during their transitions to new governmental structures.

say what you will about moldbug, he's a bright, provocative guy w/ many interests historically, geopolitically, etc, which is a preamble to saying that i was reading this series this afternoon and found it very interesting (w/ the ilx-necessary caveat that i don't agree w/ much of what he says but i still feel richer for having examined it):
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives.html

There is one difference, though. To be a Catholic, you have to have faith, because no one has ever seen the Holy Ghost. To be a progressive, you have to have trust, because you believe that your worldview accurately reflects the real world - as experienced not just by your own small eyes, but by humanity as a whole.

i can imagine there are Catholics for whom the truths behind their beliefs are less important than their belief that Catholicism = morality. prove that God does not exist and they would still adhere to Catholicism because they believe it is the best way to be in the world.

i can extend the same idea to "progressives" - some of them may well believe not that their political opinions are true but that they are moral.

i'm not convinced by any arguments that morality is a product of rationality.

and inasmuch as political beliefs are moral beliefs, the attempt to rationalize them is at best disingenuous imo

interesting bc i feel like you could make the opposite argument easily (that moral beliefs are political beliefs) obv both terms are "fraught"

oh sure i think you could, i don't know if that's the opposite argument, i'm saying that i think politics and morality are very much intertwined

and neither are really grounded in the kind of scientific truth system that Moldbug claims to believe can be applied to history

for sure here are some problems w/ it: his pseudo-structuralist reading of history, the kind of inauguration into the 'truth' tone he strikes - like i think he observes certain things that maybe trouble contemporary political identities in productive ways, but i don't find his conclusions satisfying

i'm still picking thru and that was the first thing that struck me, tho i agree re: political identities - he's not creating Straw Catholics or Straw Progressives as such, but he's taking one kind of believer as representative of everybody who shares the label

i guess this struck me because of a cross-thought from the Guardian thread - for a lot of years now i've abandoned any effort to argue that my political beliefs are "correct" in a way that wd tally with scientism/positivism/whatever the best term here wd be - and i don't find positivist analyses of history/sociology/power relationships v. convincing either

Catholics are Catholics because they were raised catholic or are Tony Blair

there is that also obv but in this case they're just standing in for whatever metaphysical belief system you care to consider

tbf standing waiting to receive belief is part of the formation of a Catholics

if some kind of morality is embedded in our nature surely it's pre-rational (even if the two things happen to overlap sometimes)

From Guardian thread (since discussion seems to have moved here):

i wonder if being "right" or speaking "truth" is an important part of politics

Prob "values" (morality, ethics, one's hierarchy of "goods" or "ends") is primordial. Philosophers' efforts to identify "good" and "truth"/"reason" (or derive former from latter) not very successful. (But some of those efforts have had powerful political effects-- some "good,” some “bad.”)

But if politics is about praxis in the world to enact or meet or work toward those ends (insofar as they are practicable), then empirical social reality (and our corresponding knowledge or theorizing of it) v relevant-- anthropological, historical, socioeconomic, etc. And there concepts of "correctness" and "truth" have use and relevance. Fact/ value distinction is imo valid and irreducible; but on the other hand fact/value totally and inextricably intertwined.

Dunno, when it comes to the role of "reason" in politics I find myself wavering between like Rorty and Habermas (not clicking with either). Pragmatist post-Wittgensteinian theory gives you a way to think about politics (or have conversations about politics) but it doesn't help in terms of "what is to be done."

Moldburg does get at something important, that “values” are not just about morality (or truth) but involve cultural and aesthetic factors, like Rorty’s ethnocentrism and Wittgenstein’s “form of life.”

Just read part 1 (will read more). Moldbug's thought-provoking in a good way, but there's a lot to contest (in his premises let alone conclusions). For instance-- though I know the oversimplified dichotomy is intended-- presenting (American) conservatism and progressivism as utterly distinct viruses misses one of the things I find most interesting, their intertangled genealogy & ideology. Going back e.g. to Edmund Burke, or what it means today to be a "liberal" ("classical" or "progressive"; European or American meaning; etc.).

There's a strain of skepticism in conservatism that's imo salutary; as Moldbug says, you doesn't have to be or become a conservative to get something out of reading some (intelligent) voices on the right-- if only to better recognize your own biases and unexamined premises, not falling back on kneejerk political judgments. I've found that to be true in my case.

in some ways i think he's very damning of the right-wing, that they always ultimately sanction yesteryears progressive struggles, that there is no such thing as a revolutionary guerrilla right-wing movement (he discusses franco as a possible exception), that a lot of right wing power is illusory and easily crushed and that judging from history, it has not really put the brakes on its dialectical opposite. i'm more inclined to read these dialectics deconstructively - this is a piece of derrida's that i always liked about the mechanics of nations forgiving themselves: http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-05-24/news/the-global-theater-of-forgiveness/

imagine my surprise when i get to part 5 of this and it turns out i've been living in the theological heart of the cathedral the entire time - twist!

and now he's talking about israel + hamas so obv this was meant to be

Made it through part 3, plan to continue. He's a trip (lol a jacobite!)-- lots to argue with, lots to chew on. Feel I need to read a little further before commenting on his definition of left vs. right and his philosophy of history.

i'm embarrassed to admit i dreamt about this essay a bunch last night

image from harlem that feels relevant to moldbug's major theological claims

https://jewishphilosophyplace.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/012.jpg?w=1280&h=960

get why this is fun and it links to some interesting primary sources but it is also just the first half of the republic (you wouldn't elect a ship captain! not in a proper navy! you would use standardized tests!) with some attached nixonian muttering about new england. (in its analysis of a century stealthily dominated first by ivy-league communist flunkies of that-man and then by the weather underground it doesn't have a word to say about the ~50 years skull and bones spent setting up juntas everywhere; "i wonder why." it also reduces reagan to this single phrase, in a list of minor exceptions to the rule of right-wing failure and irrelevance: "he got his military buildup." haha.) its ideas about the camouflage (or seen another way, diffusion) of a specific strain of protestantism are probably more otm than not, but it's wrong to act like the present ruling ideology has not also been diffused into plenty by a different and harsher strain, one no less eager to call theology science. he keeps talking admiringly about how "shockingly to the right" of today everything from the past is, by which he mostly seems to mean that people were more interested in metrical justifications for racism, because in other ways the mainstream american intellectual climate of the early-to-mid-20c was well to the left of that of the early 21c. (his grandparents, he says half a dozen times, were cpusa activists; he's a monarchist blogger whose go-to example of a good dictatorial candidate is fringe pariah steve jobs. but all the other american families have been dragged left, i guess.) at the same time he talks as if the allied-soviet pact and its accompanying popular-front uncle-joe propaganda were evidence of washington's abiding love for stalinism rather than something that appeared when hitler invaded russia and disappeared when he was defeated--as if FDR's infernal reign was actually lefter than it was.

surprised he gets through the whole thing without talking much about augustus, who i would have thought was the ideal model for the lasting purgation of republican sclerosis, but i guess people don't think much of him cuz he accomplished the whole thing with ridiculous orwellian lies, which don't ring like a bell when struck with your dick. irl tho if america ever did somehow reconstitute itself as an absolute dictatorship it would be in exactly this way, so if i were a "restorationist" in search of a responsible technocrat to ruthlessly redesign the state i'd probably hope for another one of him (maybe with better sperm) before i'd hope for frederick or the king of lichtenstein. (cognitive dissonance is always unattractive but in practice i don't think the alleged perpetuation of the republic actually much interfered with roman reverence for the imperator, or with the Moral Strength needed for all that great stuff like building tall things and stomping people.) there shoulda been more gibbon here in general, honestly, espesh considering the big twist was that xtians did it. he should have cut out the parts about how future monarchical authority over the military will be assured by putting electronic code-locks on all small arms, and put in some gibbon.

american blacks are not a protected samurai-style upper class.

the pobedonostev quotes i admit impressed me; pobedonostsev is some deep reaction. i like his book too. longtime unrealized project: pen-and-paper rpg campaign set in a version of 19c russia wherein slavic mythological creatures co-exist with late-imperial politics; big bad is koschei the deathless in the form of pobedonoststev.

(sorry, should not conflate the uncle-joe wartime-allies phase with the pre-molotov/ribbentrop popular-front phase. still tho: in general this essay did not take the cold war seriously enough.)

still slowly making my way through this and would like to say something about it tomorrow, but don't know where to start. enjoyed dlh's response.