Repetition and Ruins. An Idiotic Discourse on the Method (original) (raw)
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The Repetition of the Void and the Materialist Dialectic
The aim of this paper is to outline the core of the question of the continuation of the material dialectics after the structuralist turn, through the specific figure of the repetition of the void, which could serve as the basis of the materi-alist dialectic thought in three important contemporary theorisations after the structuralist turn in theory, namely, those of Louis Althusser, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek. The core of this question leads us back to the structure without a cause, or the so-called vanishing cause of the structure, with its main impasse: how to think the historical event within the structure or the transformation of the structure as such. The basic frame of this problem appeared in the face of the events of May 1968 in France, more precisely, of the revolts of workers and students, when the divisions among the theorisations of these events, between the Althusserian circle, the Maoist groups, and the circle around Jacques Lacan were deepening. On the one hand, there was Althusser's scepticism about the failed encounter between the workers and students, and Lacan's famous criticism of the student uprising in his famous prediction of their hysterical search for a new Master. On the other hand, there was Alain Badiou, who in his " Red years " defended the importance of this event on the basis of the theory of contradiction of Mao Zedong, firstly in Le (re)commencement du matérialisme dia-lectique (a review of Louis Althusser's Pour Marx, and Lire le Capital (1967), by Althusser et al.) and later, more consistently, in his famous work Theory of the Subject (1982). According to Badiou, Louis Althusser rejected this event since he failed to think of the subject of history within his writings on the overdeter-mination and contradiction in the materialist dialectic, enclosing the question of subjectivity completely within the realm of ideology. Therefore, he was unable to think the real change or transformation of the structure or the event as such. This caused Badiou to return to the question of the materialist dialectic by thinking about the change in time or history and to the question of how something new arises from the old, Mao Zedong's famous question from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, (which, according to Bruno Bosteels, among others, henceforth became the most persistent question in his work as such), in
In our contemporary societies, we increasingly witness the political acts of the dissenters that include "life and death" decisions whether it is a suicide bomber in an urban metropolis or a guerilla in the mountains fighting the state. A discourse of "martyrdom" is usually deployed for commemorating the dead militant while others copy the sacrificial act by following example.The actor of the act of death that results in death and self-sacrifice is frequently aesthecized in a way that even the opposing parties are "struck" or "in awe" of the event. I argue that the act of dissent that results in self-sacrifice has to be rethought with the Kantian "sublime" that posits this act beyond human facility and understanding. At the instance of one's death as a political act, one paradoxically encounter one's freedom and finitude of one's being simultaneously. The moment of foundation of political community is usually referred to the sublime properties of the sacrificial political act that is all too powerful and impossible to bear in its sublimity. Especially in a situation of (civil) war, this "sublime object", that is the "nameless martyr"/"fallen soldier" has recurringly occurred as the "nodal point" that the stakes for political community rested on. Yet, I claim that the sublime qualities of political act of sacrifice points to moment of encountering "nothing" or "void" rather than the moment of foundation of political community. Encountering this nothingness and its political productivity which presents itself to us as "void" can inspire us towards a politics that prioritizes "means without an end" and a non-utilitarian realignment of our political capabilities.
Politics of Univocity, Politics of Analogy
The Radical Orthodoxy project and movement (later referred to as RO), described by its members as rather an orientation or sensibility than the strict paradigm, was created by the group of Christian theologians (Anglicans and Catholics) 1 with the goal of reviving, and even obtaining hegemony for (Christian) theological perspective as a tool for thorough critique of modern social reality. Their approach entails negative assessment of secular modernity and religious fundamentalism as well; methods, affiliations and theoretical interests indicate that the project is to the great extent shaped by conceptual frameworks typical to poststructuralist critical theory -though RO thinkers dismiss poststructuralism (often equated by them with 'postmodernism') as a symptom and theoretical foundation of merely the next stage or intensification of modernity (as they say, 'hypermodernity').
Encyclopedia of Critical Political Science, 2024
A critical political science, if it is to be both critical and a science, must overcome what is often referred to as the "fact-value distinction"; a view that is traceable to David Hume (2007, 302), who argued it is impossible to derive critical conclusions-regarding what ought or ought not to be-from scientific premises, which concern what is, was, or perhaps will be. The approach to "ideology critique" outlined in this chapter bridges that gap by grounding claims about how the world ought to be in an account of how the world is and came to be that way.
The postmodern critique of ideology
The Sociological Review, 2008
Postmodernism is a complex cultural phenomenon which is characterised, among other things, by its distrust of totalising discourses, of reason and of universal truth. It propounds indeterminacy, the primacy of difference and the incommensurability between discourses, which are supposed to have their own regimes of truth. This is why postmodernism is suspicious about the critical concept of ideology, because according to its tenets it is impossible to pass judgement on a discourse from the perspective of another discourse. Hence the critical concept of ideology must be abandoned. However, an examination of Foucault's, Baudrillard's and Lyotard's work shows that they unwittingly end up re-introducing the concept through the back door thus contradicting themselves. While they doubt the validity of total discourses and of their ideological critique, they must assume the validity of their own critique of total discourses.
Studying Politics and Performing Critique Among Normative and Political Ruins
Performing a State, 2017
The Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt was the host for a two-day symposium on the Value of Critique, wherein a collection of leading sociologists and social and cultural theorists met to discuss the meaning, value, and possibility of critique in our contemporary world. At a time when intellectual and political projects that carried universalist normativities seeking to improve the human condition have become something of the past, how does one engage with the current human condition in a critical manner that has some productive (and desirable) value? This concern with the state of critique at a time when normative and political utopias are no longer considered to be relevant, is also a concern for Performing the State project and is at the core of Endre Dányi’s most recent research on melancholy politics. The questions that preoccupy him are centred around the ways in which politics-in-practice can be studied at a time when liberal democracy is being hijacked and /or claimed to be outdated by some of the most powerful players in international politics. More specifically, he asks: How might researcher-citizens deal with complex political challenges, such as the recent refugee crisis in Europe, which raise not only ideological but also political theoretical dilemmas vis-a-vis the modern state? How can they relate to such ambiguous public problems as drug use, which seem to defy national attempts to govern through legislation? And how might they even begin to conceptualise the concurrent practice of differing modes of the political, as is being called for by many indigenous groups? Do these and similar moments indicate the end of democratic politics as we know it? What follows is a shortened version of the conversation we had about these and related questions after the Values of Critique symposium.
Ideology Without Dupes: Althusser's Materialist Theory of Ideology
Consecutio Rerum, 2021
I begin this essay by explaining several problems with ideology critique. First, it has a tendency to conflict with or undercut the goals of critical theory (Robin Celikates calls these "political-strategic" problems). Second, the theory of ideology rests on problematic ontological commitments and empirical assumptions. These charges, I argue, offer compelling reasons to reject ideology critique as a component of any emancipatory critical theory. And yet, there continues to be a distinct need for something like ideology critique within any critical social theory; we recognize many instances in which the oppressed seem to work "all by themselves" (i.e., without the direct oversight of an armed slave master) in support of (or at least in harmony with) the status quo. Critical theory seems faced with an impossible choice, then: Either take up an elitist, empirically suspect theory of ideology, or forego an essential critical tool. In the second part of my essay, I diagnose the root of this dilemma: Critical theory in its various radical forms has attempted to supplement a materialist critique of society with an idealist account of social reproduction (the theory of ideology). In order to overcome the contradiction at the heart of (would-be) egalitarian critical social theory, I suggest, we need to move past the idealist account of ideology. This essay argues that, in his work from the mid-1970s on, Althusser sketches out the foundations of just such a materialist theory of ideology. By filling in (and building upon) the foundations left by Althusser, I argue, we can rehabilitate ideology critique as a part of a more radically egalitarian critical theory.