Comments

  • What Capitalism is Not (specifically, it is not markets)
    A market is, first and foremost, a site of what might be called impersonal exchange. It is ‘impersonal’ insofar that those who participate do not, for the most part, have any pre-existing obligations, bonds, or relations to one another. This ‘impersonal’ aspect of markets is what makes it different to say, gift economies, where gifts might be exchanged in order to keep up good relations between tribes. Or else different to relations of patronage or villeange, in which labour or goods are exchanged for protection or use of land.

    One might say that what defines the ideal market is the ‘spot exchange’. The exchange ‘on the spot’, of goods, money, or labour, after which the participants no longer have any social relation to one another at all..
    if a market is defined by impersonal exchanges, what defines capitalism? Well, a few things. First, capitalism implies a generalization of impersonal exchange to all spheres of the economy. That is, impersonal exchange must begin to replace all kinds of regimes of personalised and social exchange...
    the generalization of impersonal exchange involves an increase in commodification: making things commodities for the market.
    Streetlight

    This account of the birth of capitalism is significantly influenced by structuralist or classical liberal lines of thought: the market is an impersonal sphere of exchange, organized and regulated by a rationally constructed structure of norms and rules; there is a movement from chaotic and haphazard world to the managed and predictable system, and the progressive improvement aims to satisfy human needs more effectively and efficiently. Yet, the widespread image of how the market works is related to what Marx called commodity fetishism. Far from being the site of equilibrium and rationality, the capitalistic market and production are founded on excess, waste, transgression, and limitless expansion. Disguised by impersonal and beneficial exchange, there is a system of disequilibrium and anti-productive forces. "What is produced today is not produced for its use-value or its possible durability, but rather with an eye to its death, and the increase in the speed with which that death comes about is equalled only by the speed of price rises. This alone would be sufficient to throw into question the `rationalistic' postulates of the whole of economic science on exchange, utility, needs, etc. Now, we know that the order of production only survives by paying the price of this extermination, this perpetual calculated `suicide' of the mass of objects. This operation is based on technological `sabotage' or organized obsolescence under cover of fashion or innovation." (Jean Baudrillard, 'The consumer society')

    It is at this point, where the general mode of production becomes geared towards the market, that capitalism proper can be said to come into being. And this, ultimately is the difference in kind between markets and capitalism. Markets bear upon issues of exchange: how goods move from one set of hands to another. Capitalism on the other hand, cannot be understood apart from issues of production: of who and what is it that stuff is produced for.Streetlight

    Before producing goods and commodities, there has been the production of the personal sphere itself. In parallel to the continuous process of decoding, destroying, and reconstructing archaic social, institutional, economic, and individual norms and relations, there has been the ongoing activity of producing economically effective consumers and subjects of interest.
    The inmost dimensions of individual existence are linked to the market environment
    and the economic field of life. Therefore, like founding the market, capitalism produces an individual’s self-relation to its determinant quasi-chaotic conditions.
  • What Capitalism is Not (specifically, it is not markets)
    To not lose the original-Marxist critical anti-capitalist perspective, it is worth to combine an expanded socio-economic approach with the notions of various surplus-values, apparatuses of capture, relations of power, and individuazation. As a result of the conjunction of these dimensions, on the personal level, articulating theoretical or historical perspectives on capitalism is also a matter of enacting a particular subjectivity, agency, or identity.
    — Number2018

    I think such discussions have their place, but are they ultimately consequences of capitalism. Yet people cannot even get their head around basic principles, and so confuse markets, interest, finance, and profit with the existence of capitalism. There is interest in talking about individuation and so on, but at some point this stuff is mystifying rather than clarifying if our basic concepts are not fixed.
    Streetlight

    It looked like the purpose of this thread is not just to fixate the basic concepts but also to show why the critique of capitalism is still productive and applicable. That is indeed mystifying! Likely, what keeps all discussions about capitalism alive is that our society operates the founding capitalistic principle of benefiting from the interplay of various heterogenic levels. Yes, there have been a variety of dominating economic and financial concepts. Still, the system has survived all crises and developed further due to its continuous grounding in a private, individual, and intimate field. The spheres of production and exchange have been mediated, maintained, and animated by the most individual desires. And that is what Marx meant when he said that the true difference is not the difference between the two sexes but the difference between the human sex and the ‘nonhuman’ sex. So, we invest in our economy not just when we work, bye goods, stocks, bitcoins, play games, or consume. Our deepest, intimate desires: to live a social life (and thus life), have an identity or realize our moral aspirations have been interconnected with the impersonal movements of the monetized neoliberal processes. The foremost task of critique today should be to explore this metamorphosis of exploitation. How can the system neutralize, appropriate, and utilize even the most potent protest movements and sentiments?
  • What Capitalism is Not (specifically, it is not markets)
    The birth of 'the individual' follows quite nicely from the birth of generalized market-society. It is no surprise that liberalism - whose unit of analysis is precisely the individual, upon whom rights and obligation accrue (and property rights above all!) - is born exactly at the end of feudalism at the point at which markets become ascendant.Streetlight

    The guiding light I follow in thinking about this is the exchange/production distinction. To the degree that capitalism ultimately makes a change at the level of production so that production becomes production-for-market, so long as this remains in place, I think what we have is still capitalism. A key notion here is that of market-dependency. If our social (and thus life) arrangements are dependent on markets to reproduce themselves, then, to put it bluntly, we're in trouble.Streetlight

    It can be more productive to expand the discussion of contemporary capitalism beyond the framework of “the exchange/production distinction so that production becomes production-for-market.”
    Let’s consider, for example, the concept of immaterial labour, introduced by Maurizio Lazzarato:
    ” A new “mass intellectuality” has come into being, created out of a combination of the demands of capitalist production and the forms of ‘self-valorization’…The worker’s personality and subjectivity have been made susceptible to organization and command…Workers are expected to become ‘active subjects’ in the coordination of the various functions of production…The capitalist needs to find an unmediated way of establishing command over subjectivity itself; the prescription and definition of task transform into a prescription of subjectivities”. (Lazzarato, ‘Immaterial labour'). Before entering a market, a product’s particular marketing specifications have converted into a set of
    a customer – a salesperson- producer relations. Further, exchange, communication, and cooperation have become transferred, internalized, concealed, and personalized. As a result, the collective and impersonal production conditions have become profoundly personal and individual. The radical expansion and mutual intensification of the spheres of production and exchange should not be limited to the world of work. In our lives, we are habitually enacting a variety of pre-given, constituted, and defined communicational and informational models and networks incorporated within the processes of capitalistic valorization. Likely, that is close to what you mean here: “our social (and thus life) arrangements are dependent on markets to reproduce themselves.” To not lose the original-Marxist critical anti-capitalist perspective, it is worth to combine an expanded socio-economic approach with the notions of various surplus-values, apparatuses of capture, relations of power, and individuazation.
    As a result of the conjunction of these dimensions, on the personal level, articulating theoretical or historical perspectives on capitalism is also a matter of enacting a particular subjectivity, agency, or identity. And what is stated or declared can, in the long run, assist the reinforcement of the object of critique. It is another reason for the expansion of the theoretical anti-capitalist framework.
  • What Capitalism is Not (specifically, it is not markets)
    there has been the ongoing activity of creating and animating private life and personal interests.
    The omnipresent deterritorization has been compensated, balanced, and concealed by the all-embracing territorization.
    — Number2018

    Examples?
    Tom Storm

    There are so many examples around. Take the US right now: every field of social, political, marital, and private life have been transformed into a zone of intensive experimentation and contestation. One cannot work, study, raze children or have a family the same way as it was for the previous generation. You could ask how all these radical changes are related to the notion of capitalism? One of the possible answers is what Streetlight wrote: “our social (and thus life) arrangements are dependent on markets to reproduce themselves.” The conjunction of our vital social and cultural conditions is inseparable from the most acute contemporary political and economic struggles.
  • What Capitalism is Not (specifically, it is not markets)
    Capitalism: Impersonal ProductionStreetlight

    It is the reproduction of the conditions of impersonal exchange that begins to make instances of ‘capital’ into capital-ism: a systematization of ‘capital’ in society.Streetlight

    once impersonal exchange becomes wide-spread enough, it brings with it a change in the ‘who’ or ‘what’ production is geared towards: no longer lords and family, but markets.
    It is at this point, where the general mode of production becomes geared towards the market, that capitalism proper can be said to come into being.
    Capitalism on the other hand, cannot be understood apart from issues of production: of who and what is it that stuff is produced for.
    Streetlight


    What should be added to this account of the birth of capitalism is the reciprocal interrelation between the impersonal production and reproduction and the emergence and development of the personal sphere itself. In parallel to the continuous process of decoding, destroying, and reconstructing archaic social, institutional, economic, and individual norms and relations, there has been the ongoing activity of creating and animating private life and personal interests.
    The omnipresent deterritorization has been compensated, balanced, and concealed by the all-embracing re-territorization.
  • What did Gilles Deleuze mean by “positive” desire?

    Would you agree that a desiring machine , with its aim and path , is already internally differentiated, so that this flow is never a matter of the repetition of the identical aim and path?Joshs
    Let's go back to the original quote: "the unconscious libidinal investment is what causes us to look for our interest in one place rather than another, to fix our aims on a given path, convinced that this is where our chances lie." A desiring machine is described here as "the unconscious libidinal investment." And, in principle, it cannot have "an aim and path." A machine cannot have an origin, identity, telos, or a concrete path; it is in the process of continuous becoming other than itself. So, it is internally differentiated. Yet, in the quote,
    D & G mean that we can have "an aim and path" in our conscious spiritual life to a certain extent. They imply a vague and complicated relationship between our desire, which is a part of the unconscious and blind social machine, and our conscious intentions and aims. D & G, together and separately, on numerous occasions, had endeavoured to clarify their concept of the machinic unconscious. I found that it is essential but very challenging. What about you? Would you agree to replace, for example, the notion of individual sexual drives with the concept of the impersonal collective machinic desire?
  • What did Gilles Deleuze mean by “positive” desire?
    As an ethics , intensive difference is also irreducibly violent, the basis of blame.Joshs
    Likely, what is implied here is the improper identification of drives and desire.
    It does not matter whether drives are directly referred to as instincts or whether they are defined much more elaborate. “In any of these cases, we always return to the same idea: necessarily setting this raw world of desire against a universe of social order, a universe of reason, judgement, ego, and so on” (Guattari “Molecular revolution in Brazil”). Anti-Oedipus’s entire project was to overcome the negative connotations of the common notion of desire and to conceptualize it as not simply the expression of libido but primarily as a flow and one of the parts of social infrastructure. Therefore, for D & G the ethical task is to disclose and identify one’s desiring machines so that “we can fix our aims on a given path.”
  • What did Gilles Deleuze mean by “positive” desire?
    "It is doubtless true that interests predispose us to a given libidinal investment, but they are not identical with this investment. Moreover, the unconscious libidinal investment is what causes us to look for our interest in one place rather than another, to fix our aims on a given path, convinced that this is where our chances lie." AO345Streetlight

    For Deleuze and Guattari, there is not an I that produces but a process of production of which the I is a kind of product. Or, to put this in terms of Anti-Oedipus, there is no subject before the syntheses of the unconscious, there are no libidinal investments without desiring machines.
    This perspective is from the ‘outside’ that comes before and indeed determines the subject of interests. The difficulty here is that we should access this outside through experimentation or just speculate about the productive unconscious process. For D & G, it is the crucial ethical point, the opportunity to find out "where our chances lie."
  • Ukraine Crisis
    I'm sure Putin's got to be thinking about how the USSR's demise was related to its protracted war in Afghanistan.

    Could Ukraine be his Afghanistan?
    frank

    It looks that right now, there are just two possible scenarios:
    1)Putin swiftly changes the narrative, declares Martial Law, and transforms his regime into a Stalinist dictatorship.
    2) The conflict will keep its primary military, ideological, and organizational parameters for a few more weeks. In this case, there will be more and more protests in Russia itself,
    Russian resources will be depleted, and Putin will be defeated.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    It's worth it to listen to professor Mearsheimer about the ongoing crisis:

    https://youtu.be/ppD_bhWODDc
  • Ukraine Crisis
    But sure, it absolutely is the case that Putin should take into account any response to his action; but no one is arguing - at least I hope no one is arguing - that he hasn't. That he innocently waltzed into war like a woopsie. By most accounts the speed and depth of the response have been a surprise, but I'd be happy to wager he didn't think he'd get a slap on the wrist either.StreetlightX

    Putin was surprised by the high level of Ukrainian resistance, resolution, as well as an extent of Western repelling reaction.
    Thus, for the first few days, the Russian air force aimed primarily at military infrastructure objects. Putin even appealed to the Ukrainian troops to desert and topple its government. But recently, the rules of military engagement have dramatically changed. So far, the unprecedented avalanche of sanctions against Putin himself, his close aids, oligarchs, banks, and industries could not change the general course of Russian military actions. There are signs that in the greatest Russian cities population disapprove Putin and protest against the invasion. Inexplicably, despite the deterioration of living standards, there is also some evidence that Putin’s popularity and the war’s approval are augmenting in provinces and rural areas. Likely, to avoid being ousted, Putin won’t stop. He has not yet appealed to ancient Russian archetypes of patriotism. It could become an ultimate sign of a radical transformation of his regime into an openly totalitarian dictatorship.

    Incredible how quickly cultural chauvinism immediately gets translated from geopolitical action: as if the actions of the American or European states have anything to do with any any sense of cultural identification. I guess this is how fascism takes root: when people look at state actions and think: that's 'us'StreetlightX

    Indeed, it is incredible. But this capacity to unite so quickly is different from the 'classic' fascist power potentials. Though we also deal here with an affective unconscious identification, this process does not include a few crustal pre - fascist instances.
  • Ukraine Crisis


    Third, Putin will stay, and there will be a profound transformation of his regime and the world’s geopolitical order.
    — Number2018

    This is the most likely outcome. Putin is too stubborn and Kreml has spent years creating an image of him as a tough guy. So he will try and spin the narrative so that a loss is still a win in Ukraine and then because of the broken trade and probably some sanctions left as a punishment for his actions, he will isolate Russia more, going in the direction of North Korea's relation to the world.

    Fourth: He will never surrender, never ever, ever. He will not go out without a bang and he orders nukes on big capitals in the west. Either people just accept his order and do it, or they refuse, as has happened during the cold war. He will then spin the narrative in some way, or shoot some of his staff to blow off steam.
    Christoffer

    I agree that it is the most likely outcome. Putin can appeal to
    ancient Russian archetypes of 'saving the motherland’ from getting defeated. Further, the iron curtain would again isolate Russia from the rest of the world, with an unprecedented nuclear, military, and ideological confrontation level. Are western leaders, decision-makers , and strategists taking this scenario into account?
  • Ukraine Crisis
    I would like to hear some practical solutions to Ukraine, how to deal with the nuclear threat, how to deal with Belarus getting nukes, how to deal with the fallout of economic sanctions, how to deal with China's relation to Russia, how to deal with Putin himself.Christoffer

    Likely, there are just three reasonable scenarios regarding the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
    First, the compromise will be reached, and things will come to normal as it was before Russia invaded. Second, Putin will be ousted from power. Third, Putin will stay, and there will be a profound transformation of his regime and the world’s geopolitical order. If the first two scenarios are inseparable, what is at stake now is Putin’s defeat and surrender.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Good video. This article in Foreign Policy from a few days ago makes the same points:

    Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis

    It seems the most reasonable assessment, and this is from American academics. It goes back to what I was saying over a year ago here, that there's a basic disconnect between the (ostensibly, at least) ideologically-driven American foreign policy and the Russian realpolitik.
    jamalrob

    The article is good. Yet, it explained the current course
    of Biden’s administration regarding the Ukraine crisis just by the decades of ‘liberal politics of hubris.’ The administration has demonstrated a priority of diplomacy and a willingness to compromise on different occasions. But here, the US discloses a harsh and uncompromising approach.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    the democrats fundamentally share the same policy positions as Trump with minor rhetorical changes.StreetlightX
    On the contrary, there are substantial differences: in climate change and the energy sector (Trump’s withdrawal from Paris agreement), in foreign policies (termination of Iran Nuclear Deal, relations with allies), open vs. closed border policies (Trump’s construction of the wall, remain in Mexico programs), trade policies, and so on. Yet, likely, the discord between Trump and the elites is not entirely based on concrete policies. He has been met as a wholly alien and disastrous factor from the beginning. Thus, his presidency and popularity have been explained and displayed primarily through negative and affectively charged schemes. Trump’s populist strategies have been mirrored and used to accelerate the affective economy of resentment and rage, enacted with varying degrees of emotional and discursive brutality and violence. It has placed a bipolar ultimate distinction of superiority and inferiority, of true and false, good and evil, granting no space or legitimacy to the other side. In principle, both Trump and his enemies
    operate the same dispositions of the contemporary political landscape.

    There are plenty of reasons that Trump should hang from his neck until dead:StreetlightX

    an 6 is an effort to draw a pseudo-bright line in the sand because if anyone looks too closely, they'd recognize that there is little too distinguish these power hungry fucks whose existence is harmful no matter what stupid colors they wear. The reason for the disproportionate hysteria over a three-hour nothingburger is because without this shit there is nothing to distinguish them and Americans might be in danger of actually recognizing that fact.StreetlightX
    Jan 6 anniversary entirely enacts the dispositions of the current politics of affect. But to what extent your (supposedly critical) discourse here is different from the current dominant rhetoric? It also presupposes the existence of the ultimate truth behind the spectacle; it also aims at “the enemy” and appears as a decisive action.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It's apolitical politics with exactly zero stakes,StreetlightX

    Indeed, when it comes to melodrama, histrionics, and exploitation of fear levels from the 1/6 riot, there has never been any apparent limit. And today — the one-year anniversary of that three-hour riot — there is no apparent end in sight. Too many political and media elites are far too vested in this maximalist narrative for them to relinquish it voluntarily.

    The orgy of psychodrama today was so much worse and more pathetic than I expected — and I expected it to be extremely bad and pathetic
    StreetlightX

    During the anniversary, Jan 6 has been represented as no less important than 9/11 or Pearl Harbour. It was not simply a stupid exaggeration or a misleading deception. On the contrary, it was an impressive demonstration and expression of an overwhelming mobilizing power achieved through spectacle. The prevailing narrative does not need ‘real facts’; the displayed effects entirely enact it. Further, the system would direct the accumulated force against Trump as its current real threat. Similar campaigns were organized before the appointment of Mueller as a special counsel, the two impeachments, and before the 2020 elections. Will Trump be indicted? Or, at least, will he be prevented from running in 2024? If Trump can launch his new social media platform, the struggle against him again will become the focus of US politics.
  • Currently Reading
    Judith Butler - The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection
  • Currently Reading
    Lawrence Grossberg - Under the Cover of Chaos: Trump and the Battle for the American Right
  • Currently Reading
    It is not bad. Yet, unfortunately, Finchelstein exposes fascist lies on the grounds of a common-sense concept of truth. Instead, if the notion of fascism is still relevant, it is needed to understand why ‘fascist lies’ made sense for so many people.
  • Currently Reading
    Federico Finchelstein - A Brief History of Fascist Lies.
  • Currently Reading
    Gilles Deleuze - Foucault
    Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari - Kafka
  • The War on Terror
    And from there onwards it has been an absolute disaster. American foreign policy deciders came punch drunk of the easiness of doing whatever and absolute idiots full of hubris as the neocons erased away everything what was left of a rational and cautious foreign policy. Nothing did matter anymore. What were the actual political situation on the ground in these countries? How would other nations react? That was totally meaningless. The US could do whatever it wanted and it went on into this crazy binge of being a bully.ssu
    Moronic stupidity overwhelmed everything. Because, why not? Nobody cared. There were no backlashes. War on Terror, war against a method. And once Bush the younger made it so, no President couldn't escape the trap as everything was already FUBAR.ssu

    The neocons are not in the current administration. But, it looks like you are right and even now American foreign (and others) policies are shaped by the logic of phantasmic and imagenary achievements. What makes it possible and even necessary? Likely, in the US there is no
    place for a neutral and independent position that allows to make weighted and qualified judgements. That is why the narative of building a self-sustainable Afghan government
    and military has been so persistent.
  • The War on Terror
    The fall of Afghanistan would have serious consequences. It could be well the end of the US as a Superpower and the beginning of it being just the Largest Great Power.ssu
    About 12 years ago, The International Institute for Strategic Studies
    in London has developed a cynical strategy of withdrawal from Afghanistan. It could be divided into
    tribal and religious fractions. Then, the US could choose one of the sides and benefit from managing
    a controlled civil war and anarchy. So, what is going on there can become an invitation ( a lure) for the next
    Power (China) to get involved.
  • The War on Terror
    in truth I don't think there is a highly controlled and organized fighting force as "The Taliban". How many of them are local militias, smugglers, groups controlled by some warlord that has been deemed to part of the Taliban?ssu

    If there is not 'a highly controlled and organized fighting force as "The Taliban"', how can you explain
    their success? And why is the current Afghan government's military so demoralized and helpless?
  • History as End
    Yet, he asserts that “Leaving behind the End of History, we have arrived at something like History as End.”
    — Number2018

    I wonder what that's supposed to mean. Must I read the damn essay to understand?
    Ciceronianus the White
    No, you do not need to read the essay. Matthew Karp means that we deal now with a new, extremely politicized function of history.

    I think it's more likely other factors played a part, and that it's as certain as it can be American institutional slavery would have come into being even if instead of the 20 enslaved persons, Jesus Christ himself, his mother, the apostles and all the saints had been brought to the shores of British colonial America in 1619.Ciceronianus the White
    You are right, the event of 1619 has no importance. Karp, a historian, knows it well. However, his essay is not historical; it is about the politics of the past. It is a protest against the newest role of history.
  • History as End


    And the interesting thing is that regardless of what the film maker shows, all of it will be factual, but the myth that is advanced would be purposeful and subject to the intention of the historian. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do disagree with those who claim that really Thomas Jefferson was not all he's been said to be. Those people aren't correcting history and myth busting. They're just replacing the old myth with their new one. If they are able to do that, that signals only a shift in politics, not an evolution toward more accurate truth.Hanover

    In our situation, ‘an evolution toward more accurate truth’ is left just for professional historians who can stay protected by relatively stable rules of their academic game. For non-historians, there is the choice between the two incompatible versions of history. Both are ideologically and politically motivated constructions.
  • Suppression of Free Speech
    Like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Castro, totalitarian governments abide by the dictum: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."

    This is exactly what the Biden Administration, using the cover of the issue of Covid vaccination, is seeking to accomplish right now in the USA in intimate cooperation with the leadership and censorship activities of Facebook, Twitter, etc.
    charles ferraro

    It could be interesting to compare the level of concentration of power of the US government
    with what the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century possessed. Likely, the task is not workable. Yet, despite the enormous increase of the means of social control, neither most people perceive the Biden administration as totalitarian or authoritarian, nor are these views accepted in academia.
  • History as End
    What is history? Lacking an answer to that, teaching it is the blind leading the eyeless. That is, what is it? What is its purpose and goal as history? How is it done? And to what end?tim wood

    I think that history is one of the ways society recognizes and understands itself. It is a kind of social construction. If the politics of the past had become shaped by a predominant metanarrative, it would mean a dramatic societal transformation.
  • Spanishly, Englishly, Japanesely
    For Benjamin, the differences between languages are, at base, differences between how words meanStreetlightX
    ‘The Task of the Translator' central theme is the relation between the original and a copy, or the origin and its outcome. Benjamin asserts that the connection between any two languages is primarily based on 'the ideal pre-language' (the origin). Later, he reconsidered this approach. In 'The Work of aAt in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, there is no origin anymore. Since 'the aura as the unique phenomenon of a distance' has been completely lost, the origin appears deceptive and illusory. Therefore, Benjamin started rethinking the relation between seeable and sayable (meaning and words).
  • Eleven Theses on Civility
    In the article, incivility is firstly defined as anger, as an act of outrage. https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/
    "Incivility is anger directed at unjust civil ordering.
    — Number2018

    Where do you think blame and moralism fit into this act of ‘outrage’ against ‘ injustice’?

    Specifically , do you think it is what Ken Gergen is critiquing as the moralistic blamefulness and indignation of identity politics? Would anger, outrage and condemnation apply if one throughly rejects the ethical foundationalism on which rightness and justice are grounded?
    Joshs
    In principle, our perception of the social and political realities, and the facts used in acute political debates are not directly related to our first-handed communal experience. We identify ourselves with images that in-form our reality and that simulate what is true or right. The images (in Bergson’s sense) are not primarily representative or informative. They exist in-themselves and for-themselves in the digital medium and generate what we perceive as politics. They contract, integrate, and simulate ‘all what we ever believed, valued, or fought for’; their semantic and semiotic levels are enacted and amplified by the redundancies of our affective involvements. The evolving event of the images self - regeneration and enactment is the system that continuously actualizes the construction of our social reality. As Gerden noted, identity politics contains opposite forms and dichotomy figures: incorporation and repulsion (marginalization), a victim and a persecutor, and so on. They are coexisting and working together through the synthesizing image of a savior, rescuer, expressing the primary Western ( Christian) archetype. In fact, before appearing as an anger, an act of outrage, or rhetoric of blame and moralism, the incivility is the system of images, operating the core regime of construction and re-construction of our social reality. We affectively invest images that simulate outrage based on the ethical fundamentalism. That is why identity politics is so effective and successful: it fits perfectly to the digital medium of social control.Therefore, I do not think that Ken Gerden's critique is effective. One can throughly reject the ethical foundationalism on which rightness and justice are grounded, and simultaneously and unconsciously enact identity politics on a micro-level..
    Why can’t we follow Gergen’s lead and jettison the outrage in favor of a throughly relativistic approach to societal transformation?Joshs

    20 years ago, Gerden wrote: “As many propose, identity politics is reaching an impasse. No longer does it seem an effective means of securing voice, dignity and equality. More positively, however, I see significant signs of transformation in both identity politics and in social constructionism.” He wrote it 20 years ago, but identity politics is now doing better than ever, being interwoven with the processes of contemporary societal transformation.
  • Eleven Theses on Civility
    The way I read the op, the incivility that is in contention is a product of the discourse being advocated , which takes subjectivity to be a product of sociallly constituted dynamicsJoshs
    In the article, incivility is firstly defined as anger, as an act of outrage. https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/
    "Incivility is anger directed at unjust civil ordering. It is a rage directed at political structures that triggers a negating response that labels it “personal.” But incivility is radically different from the disinhibited expression of anger and the incitement of violence in the service of a white settler order, such as we daily experience around us. Left incivility is the strategic outward direction of rage–out-rage. If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention. If you are outraged, we need your anger as an energy. Don’t be fooled or misdirected. a radical incivility makes space for the fullness of the presence of pain and anger, as well as a diversity of styles through which both pain and anger emerge to be heard as objections to the crisis ordinary. Far from giving in to individuation, radical incivility turns us from individual pain to structural analysis; it is a with-ness that turns us toward each other. In this sense we understand radical to be a term that undoes the arkhe of subjectivity."

    The incivility is represented as the response to the urgent situation of a crisis, the means of collective mobilization and action-in-concert. It is well known that crowd-like collective subjectivity can be created and remained united just for a short time. The discursive and ideological constitutive components are less important than the affective factors, such as anger or rage. Also, crowd subjectivity is critically dependent on the people’s physical proximity. It is an emergent, evolving, singular and unpredictable event. By contrast, the contemporary leftist solidarity depends less on a direct and first-handed communal experience. The collective affective mobilizing constituents are continuously maintained and reinforced by the arrangements of digital and ideological apparatuses.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    But what is your deepest desire? Is it identical to what was behind your previous the most intensive debates?
    — Number2018

    Who gives a damn?

    Although it's notable that this is like the 3rd or 5th time someone's tried to 'personalize' this and make this about who "I" am (is he happy? is he mentally OK? What's your deepest desire?). I love these questions. They're an an admission of utter substancelessness. They're a sign that one is one the exact right track. It gives me life, right before I ignore this kind of shit entirely.
    StreetlightX
    Your answer shows that you misunderstand my question and my apprehension of the concept of desire. I do not care about your mental health; it is none of my business. So, when I ask: "what is your deepest desire?" I mean, what are you doing while posting here.
    By the way, your answer also manifests your implicit understanding of
    desire as an individual psychological faculty. I try to apply the different concept of desire, taken from D&G's 'Anti-Oedipus': it is the ultimate collective investment into the overall societal order. One of the central themes of 'Anti-Oedipus' is the metamorphosis of desire: How can we start desire our own oppression? One of the D&G answers is that the seemingly revolutionary desire may disguise counter-revolutionary investments. For me, it is alarming when a left-wing intellectual is fighting for the noblest goals, but the actual result is the intensification of the left identity politics, accompanied by the erosion of liberal individual freedoms and the progressive concentration of power of the corporate media, big tech companies, and the neoliberal elites.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Ok. But what is your deepest desire? Is it identical
    to what was behind your previous the most intensive debates?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    And some vapid shit like Number2018 will say that all this isn't about Israel, employing philosophy in the most cynical, self-serving manner - or should I say copy-pasting, considering that is the only thing he or she knows how to do .StreetlightX
    iIn principle, we need to determine if Zizek's line of thought still could be relevant. Zizek offered a particular model of a political unconscious. Do we deal here, in this thread, with a kind of ideological system, implying the implicit dimensions and mechanisms? A keen anti-Israeli debater contends that Israel bears full responsibility for the existence and escalations of the Arab Israeli conflict. Her (or his) vision of the conflict and its resolution presupposes exhaustive knowledge of facts and the ultimate rightness of her ethical and moral believes. She possesses clear distinctions and dichotomies between good and evil, light and darkness, victims and aggressors. These positions are backed and reinforced by intensive affective and emotional commitments and responses. Strikingly, these cognitive and affective patterns are not necessarily may be evoked by the atrocity and inhumanity of the current conflict in the Middle East. Three years ago, she demonstrated almost identical attitudes during Justice Kavanaugh's nomination.
    Last summer, in a similar manner, she championed BLM's cause and fought for racial justice. On any occasion, she promotes an extreme, left-wing viewpoint. So far, her repetitive patterns are not necessarily symptomatic because they can indicate the aspiration to change our overall societal order ultimately. Yet, there are a few more factors: she regularly acts in concert with the intensive mass media hysteric events, maintained and reinforced by the corporate media, big tech companies, and the neoliberal elites. Regardless of the content of a particular event, she always takes part in the intensification of the left identity politics, causing the erosion and degradation of liberal individual values and the progressive concentration of power. Therefore, the conscious revolutionary desire for radical change disguises the unconscious counter-revolutionary totalitarian aspirations. The creation and proliferation of the newest tribal identities incorporate the production of their doubles, the opposite ideological figures, invested with negativity and monstrosity: 'a sexual predator,' 'a racist,' 'a fascist,' 'an apartheid Israel,' ‘a science denier’, etc. The ideological figure of Zizek's 'Jew' has been replaced, transformed, and proliferated 'to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system.' The newly created 'pathological, paranoid constructions' swiftly occupy digital platforms and all our sites of public social life. Not just a left-wing intellectual, but all of us are programmed to mirror and reflect our ideological others. Yet, comparing with Zizek's analyses, there is a new assemblage of desire and identification. The decisive role of the digital medium in the reproduction of our political unconscious makes Zizek’s reliance on Lacanian concepts unproductive and ineffective.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Israel has become a flashpoint for the left not just because of its subjugation of palestinians
    but because its form of nationalistic democracy exemplifies the Enlightenment era liberal political self-identity that the West is trying to distance itself from via brutal self-critique. There is nothing quite so threatening to a person than witnessing a way of thinking in an other that they have themselves only recently struggled to free themselves from. This is a thread common to the intensity of. BLM, #Metoo and anti-Israel sentiment. Israel is us Westerners, the way we used to be, the way many of us still are ( Trump , Brexit supporters) .
    Joshs

    Good points! Yet, the escalation of the anti-Israel rhetorics requires additional explanation. I would like to bring my previous post that could help to understand why Israel keeps
    attracting so much attention and hatred:
    "It is worth clarifying how the debate in this thread is unfolding. There is one
    side, so-called "pro-Israel," pointing out various dimensions and complexity of the ongoing conflict so that the achievement of peace would require patience and a trade-off. And there is another side, "anti-Israel," contending that Israel bears full responsibility for the existence and escalations of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Strikingly, these positions and arguments are similar to one of Zizek's outstanding examples of ideological blindness: "Let us examine anti-Semitism. It is not enough to say that we must liberate ourselves from so-called 'anti-Semitic prejudices' and learn to see Jews as they really ar - in this way we will certainly remain victims of these so-called prejudices. We must confront ourselves with how the ideological figure of the 'Jew' is invested with our unconscious desire, with how we have constructed this figure to escape a certain deadlock of our desire. The proper answer to anti-Semitism is therefore not 'Jews are really not like that' but 'the anti-Semitic idea of 'Jew' has nothing to do with Jews; the ideological figure of the ‘Jew’ is a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system."
    (Zizek,' The sublime object of ideology’). No, an "anti-Israel" protagonist is not necessarily an anti-Semite. But the ideological operative system here is similar to the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology in Zizek's sense. The grounding desire, an aspiration to immediately achieve the ultimate peace and justice, presupposes the evil ('sublime') object, invested with negativity and monstrosity. As a result, an ideological figure of 'Israel' has been constructed. 'Israel' has been labelled, demonized, and removed from civil discourse and the historical context. As Zizek points out, 'a pathological, paranoid construction' rejects objective facts and arguments. It employs them just for rationalizations and self-affirmations."
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    So, you justify killing of Israeli civilians.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    When I say that the Isreali state should stop murdering children and engaging in settler colonialism, it really does have everything to do with the Isreali state, which is murdering children and engaging in settler colonialism.StreetlightX

    Should the other side stop firing missiles?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    let's get back to how Isreali apartheid is finally being shown for what it is.StreetlightX
    It is worth clarifying how the debate in this thread is unfolding. There is one
    side, so-called "pro-Israel," pointing out various dimensions and complexity of the ongoing conflict so that the achievement of peace would require patience and a trade-off. And there is another side, "anti-Israel," contending that Israel bears full responsibility for the existence and escalations of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Strikingly, these positions and arguments are similar to one of Zizek's outstanding examples of ideological blindness: "Let us examine anti-Semitism. It is not enough to say that we must liberate ourselves from so-called 'anti-Semitic prejudices' and learn to see Jews as they really are - in this way we will certainly remain victims of these so-called prejudices. We must confront ourselves with how the ideological figure of the 'Jew' is invested with our unconscious desire, with how we have constructed this figure to escape a certain deadlock of our desire. The proper answer to anti-Semitism is therefore not 'Jews are really not like that' but 'the anti-Semitic idea of 'Jew' has nothing to do with Jews; the ideological figure of the ‘Jew’ is a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system."
    (Zizek,' The sublime object of ideology’). No, an "anti-Israel" protagonist is not necessarily an anti-Semite. But the ideological operative system here is similar to the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology in Zizek's sense. The grounding desire, an aspiration to immediately achieve the ultimate peace and justice, presupposes the evil ('sublime') object, invested with negativity and monstrosity. As a result, an ideological figure of 'Israel' has been constructed. 'Israel' has been labelled, demonized, and removed from civil discourse and the historical context. As Zizek points out, 'a pathological, paranoid construction' rejects objective facts and arguments. It employs them just for rationalizations and self-affirmations.
  • Free speech plan to tackle 'silencing' views on university campus
    Despite saying some of the stupidest possible shit one could say about potential treatments for the pandemic, he almost fucking won anyway.

    How?

    Because people believed him and nothing - evidently - could be done to stop him from dominating the discourse by defrauding the American public.
    creativesoul

    But why? Why did so many people vote for Trump despite all his lies?

    I've a little different take on the notion of unfettered free speech.creativesoul
    One of the widespread approaches to the freedom of speech has a few premises. First, there is a set of apparent, obvious basic facts. Second, one can possess a reliable access to what constitutes
    a safe and credible reference. Third, it is possible to exercise the responsible and correct interpretation of 1) and 2) to deduct a set of ultimate judgments. Finally, the resulting indisputable truth and the sense of rightness allow to clearly separate information from misinformation and to assert the benefits of the restrictions of the free speech.
  • Free speech plan to tackle 'silencing' views on university campus
    The government has announced plans for a "free speech champion" to ensure universities in England do not stifle freedom of speech and expression.

    The champion will regulate matters such as "no-platforming" of speakers by universities or student unions.

    But groups representing the sector are cautious, saying universities need to keep their "institutional autonomy".

    The National Union of Students says there is "no evidence" of a freedom of speech crisis on campus.
    counterpunch

    For a few reasons, the discussion here could become vague and unproductive.
    Without the exact context, the current government vs. universities confrontation can easily be framed as a brute political intervention: the government tries to impose its own arbitrary rules on universities and knock down their autonomy. Also, it may look obvious that it intends to determine the content of applying the freedom of speech.
    So, could you briefly outline your vision of the actual context of the current collision?
    Due to the Brexit and the COVID pandemic, the UK would’ve currently experienced an intensification of the spectrum of social and political conflicts.