> .. and if we snarl let it be music to your ears-
>
> >I believe life to be a question mark; a certain veil of ambiguity hangs
> >over it and surrounds it with mysteries. This by no means implies that
> >life is empty, negative, useless, etc.,
>
> So far so good, Mr. Raggo: no need for belief in here though, life is de facto
> a question mark, an open process of experimentation, for as long as it is not
> reduced to reactive life.
>
Very true, as I used it as an idiom. I "take" to life.
> > but rather the distension of a being yet to be defined
>
> What being to be defined? Being is defined at every moment of life, as the
> being of becoming which is to recur in alterity. Tension, distension (evoking
> Reich's formula for "orgonotic pulsation"), isn't that the rhythm of breath,
> the rhythm of life, the cycle of the eternal recurrence at the level of the
> micro-cosmos? What distension is there to be defined that is not already here
> and now, and there and then?
>
Nietzsche wrote (lost reference) "Man is the unfinished animal"; that's
my take on the modality of the "as yet to be" in terms of the advent of
the future, the "to come" or the French "venir" which makes sense in terms
of a "philosophy of the future". However I wouldn't say distension (that
quite rightly resonates with me) is "already here and now"; how now?
> >This puts the accent on an infinitely postponed future
>
> Yes, if there is distension of a being yet to be defined, this certainly puts
> the accent on an infinitely postponed future... could that be the returning of
> Christ instead? Or is this a matter of a Derridean ragout de poulet?
>
Now, now, calm down. I think a lot recommends a deconstructive approach
that should not be ruled out prematurely. But no, I don't think we need
superessential promises, fulfilling fantasies of utopias or kingdoms to
come. Rather, if it's always postponed there's no final resting place, no
ultimate state which we could reach that would wipe out the messy and
interesting contingencies of life.
> >The implication lies with the abyssal extension of
> >the active forms of interpretation that at least put into question many of
> >the "positivities" of Western culture, of the concept "life" and "being";
>
> If we can make sense of your ragout: who cares about the values or so-called
> positivities of Western culture? Only Derridas and Baudrillards, the
> intellectual trash that spends its life deconstructing the deconstructed in
> order to sell books about...well, nothing at all, giving vacuous lectures and,
> enfin...making the same kind of living as every other intellectualoid strumpet!
> Famous positivities they are- specters of science, knowledge, religion, morals-
> in the eyes of the beholder, all those hashed and re-hashed divine and human
> values (the value of deconstruction) that pretend they are superior to life and
> its powers of creation!
>
Well, I guess you're not going to calm down. What's there to say? Are
you saying something else beyond this reactive, resentful tirade? Are you
just playing the wolf in Lambs clothing?
To answer your question, who cares about these positivities?, I would
say you, Lambda C, that was your word, your concern, your interest from
the post I was responding to. So why now this dodge, this game of having
it gone (fort), forcing it onto others?
> >Nietzsche is trying to interpret the
> >temporal process of interpretation and its non-coincidence with "truth";
> >interpretations are active while our whole metaphysics seems in many ways
> >blind to this positing potential, the active form of inferring.
>
> Even though Nietzsche invokes precisely the art of interpreting, his
> interpretation is not what one usually means by it: what he sought was the play
> of forces, natural and social, behind the signs, as signs of power and
> powerlessness. Not some being in itself. Moreover, the art of genealogy is
> inseparable from the double affirmation that is intrinsic to Nietzsche's
> doctrine of the eternal recurrence; but here, the matter of discovering the
> positivity of life is hardly a mere question of intuition, or an active form of
> inferring (more like ferreting out...). It requires will to power and mastery
> of one's reactions. Deconstruction for the sake of deconstruction is a
> pointless task. The point is not to replace the deconstructed with another
> construct, but to find the process for open construction of life-affirming
> values, situations, etc. Constructs do not have to be closed systems. But
> deconstruction for its own sake is one such closed loop.
>
Yes, as is art for art's sake. But to assume this all there is to it is
to miss the point. Since its not to your liking I won't go too far into it
perhaps only this one quote that I'll leave to your discretion (but I
think this reflects what you're saying), "Not to be able to stabilize
itself absolutely would mean to be able only to be stabilizing itself"
(Points, p.270). However, to reject deconstruction (as well as Lacan,
Marx, etc.) out of hand is to play into the neoconservative camp, no
matter how radical or anti-fashion you may think you are. What I would
reject is the facile, distorting, shallow interpretation of these
movements. To attack deconstruction is just the latest bloodsport of the
highly reactive, defensive academia.
> >Rather,
> >there's a certain passivity and suffrance built into the metaphysical
> >notion of "truth."
>
> Any notion of truth is a capital investment. A philosophical notion of truth,
> and at that metaphysical, can only represent a negation of the living, a
> negation of the material and energetic realities of the living, no matter how
> deconstructed. If this is what you are getting at, we won't quibble.
>
> >This thoroughgoing critique I think needs to be
> >acknowledged before we jump in too quickly with the idea of "positivity",
> >with what might amount to no more than a new variation of an old
> >empiricist habit.
>
> What thorough critique needs to be acknowledged? Maybe a clinical critique.
> But a critique of metaphysical notions of truth to the benefit...of an
> infinitely postponed future? And as for jumping in, what is wrong with dawning
> the habit of the empiricist? Who but the experimentalist can expose the
> inversion of life committed by dialecticians fond of making their life a
> process of critique (of things they know not)? The philosophical notion of
> truth is not to be confused with the scientific notion of truth (nor is either
> to be confused with a religeous, aesthetic or moral notion of truth), and not
> just because of the operational criterion of the latter; there is far more to
> this than meets the unprepared eye. This is a good terrain for us to do
> battle, if you so wish - or leave it indefinitely postponed.
>
There is definitely more to be said, to argue over or snarl about;
first, there is a thourough going critique of the metaphysical notions of
being, identity, cause/effect, truth, reason, consciousness, etc., etc.,
happening in Nietzsche's work. To draw more attention to the details and
consequences of these attempt to "overcome" traditional habits in
philosophy as well as science. Would Nietzsche not also be suspicious of
what still lurks in science as a belief in God the truth? In science as an
ascetic, trans-human enterprise that has disengaged itself by the pursuit
of truth in itself? This is not to disagree with what you're saying, only
to complicate this easy recourse to science that I think can go both ways.
Certainly, the experimental affinity to details, to the genealogies of
various humble facts is very important but this is only through a more
suspicious underwriting of science's philosophical assumptions; hence, the
importance of the interpretive process that seems more obvious to us than
it did at the time of Nietzsche. That is, he understood very well that the
sciences were biased, that psychology or the history of morals had the
heart against it and was not hard enough to find the active impulses of
life in aggression, domination, lust, etc., all disdained as moral
abberations.
> >Rather than attacking everyone on this list (for
> >whatever reason you think it necessary) maybe a little careful thinking is
> >in order. Say it, don't snarl it.
>
> Careful thinking is desirable if the point is to communicate something. You
> could begin by being clearer yourself, instead of emulating the Derridean stew;
> after all, being, the being of becoming, is hardly empty! (That is where it
> all started, remember?) As for attacking everyone on this list and, with
> reason at that!, we believe we have not done so: your statement is untrue, an
> easy generalization. But had we done so, which for good and obvious reasons we
> haven't, what's wrong with attacking and snarling? Combat, combat, is what it
> is all about here. The hammer. When is the last time there passed a wee bit
> of sheer communication? If our writing sounds like snarling to you, maybe you
> need to take the earmuffs off. You might even find a joyful deconstructing...
>
So you have your reasons! You have your right, your declamation, this
is good, to attack, to combat. So have you or haven't you? Personally, I
find your "snarling' (call it what you will) somewhat alluring; snarl
away! Just don't drape me with this depressing cloak of "step stew" that
involves more the superficiality of your reading and interpretation. This
assimilation to the "Derridean" that you already deem no good is a very
safe game, much too defensive for my tastes. You bar, my friend, and stave
off understanding this "joyful deconstruction" ... (nicely put).
> But perhaps you have drunk the Derridean Koran too-
>
> >In many ways the differential element as
> >Deleuze describes it is really the "play" of forces, the differences
> >beneath which there are no things in themselves, no "truth", but the
> >temporality of interpretation or becoming.
>
> There is no being in itself because being is the affirmation of becoming, the
> very consistency of the process of the living. But this hardly means, for
> instance, that space void of matter is empty of energy (ah yes, the roots of
> being empty), or that it is _not_ an obvious and empirical _truth_ that the
> motion of the electron in the atom is an example of perpetual motion. So much
> for the positivities of Western culture (such as space is empty; there is no
> perpetual motion: there are no absolutes in life...), and for your Derridean
> criticism that there is no "truth" to becoming!
>
Ah, misreadings! There is no "truth", but (and I emphasize BUT) the
"temporality of interpretation" or (which is to say) "becoming"; there is
only the becoming truth of becoming. The difference and play of forces are
by all means "what is."
> >The supreme act of will to
> >power seems to posit this becoming as the only form of being which itself
> >implies that being is no more than a vanishing vapor or a trace, a
> >differentiality, rather than something that can be opposed to the world as
> >it is, i.e. as its depiction or truth.
>
> A vanishing vapor, a trace - that sounds aethereal. Bueno, a differentiality?
> There is no doubt that metaphors displease us. When is the last time we
> clamored for something as opposed to the world as truth? Your baudrillardesque
> discourse, like the master's, gets lost in this dialogue with itself playing
> all the roles at once. Consider the electron, again and for instance: does the
> simple experimental _truth_ that it is engaged in perpetual motion imply a
> truth opposed to the world? Or is it that embracing the world resulted in such
> simple truths that science, "philosophy" and religions deny? It is false to
> speak of truth without connoting one's meaning, either to establish it or
> disestablish it. After all, facts are facts but for most they are fiction.
> Some even claim facts are untrue. No, the earth does not translate around the
> sun or a virtual center of motion...
>
Look, I have no problem with the simple facts, although I don't think
you can paint science, philosophy, religion so glibly. Not to be
forgotten, as you seem to, is that the context of my post was and is a
discussion of the eternal recurrence, In this context, the simple facts
are not to the point, there is not a scientific hypothesis involved
(appearances to the side, but which will be no doubt debated loudly), not
something for which we could conduct an experiment, nor something that is
frontal, adequate to the truth, to a correspondance, etc., going through
in a very rapid way different, historical conceptions of "truth" and not
all truths in general. Is there a truth to the eternal recurrence? Is it
true? I'm not sure myself although what that would be, what it means,
would not be the order of these humble and necessary small facts.
> >What Nietzsche is explicating (and
> >this would require some more careful reflection) is the structure of an
> >ellipse, a lack that would need to be read between the masks, the rhetoric
> of ER, if you will, that involves deferment, women, and death.
>
> Yes, rhetoric, that is what the Derridean speech brings us down to; a bit like
> Mr. Rhodes and the question of semantics. And then the ellipse - but not as a
> physical reality, a corpo-reality of motion, no. As a figure of speech. This,
> Mr. Raggo is where we draw the line. Ellipse as a line of flight, as a
> cyclical line, we could address that. After all, our posting on the Eternal
> Recurrence attempted to provide precisely the basis for the description of the
> singularities of the living as an undulatory cycloidal motion of massfree
> energy in the context of defining forces and power. But figures of speech and
> metaphors...ce sont les femmes qui s'en vont.
>
And your jargon? This seems very forced, very contorted and rhetorical
in its own way. You hope that there would be no rhetoric, no stagings and
settings yet you are profoundly inscribed in them. My point is
Nietzsche's, as an old philologist, learn to read me well. Do you deny
that simple step?
> Yes, the best of Bataille comes out in his reading of Nietzsche. As for the
> excess of play, the last time we looked, it still appeared as an excess of
> excrement pouring out of reactive life.
>
> >That's my direction in this labyrinth
> >as well, my way of threading a path between your dissecting needling. I,
> >of course, welcome such jabs even from such grave heights.
>
> Heights? We think not, Mr. Raggo. Maybe distances. Undeferred differences,
> that's all. After all, life without noise would not be a mistake, but an
> impossibility. The music is in the ears of the listener.
>
> We will leave you to such nonsense as the truths of Derrida:
>
> "This is why I will not say that the concept of matter is in and of itself
> either metaphysical or nonmetaphysical. (...) The concept of matter must be
> marked twice (the others too): in the deconstructed field - this is the phase
> of overturning - and in the deconstructed text, outside the oppositions in
> which it has been caught (matter/spirit, matter/ideality, matter/form, etc).
> By means of the play of this interval between the two marks, one can operate
> both an overturning deconstruction and a positively displacing, transgressive
> deconstruction." ("Positions").
>
Yes, I'm sure you think your right and righteous about it. Very odious
Lambda C, very much in the spirit of gravity, in the gloom and doom in
which you contort every position. That's the gravity that's the real death
within life, the spectacle habits of a decadent mob-ster. I'm sure you
think you're very "active" and life affirmative, but from where I am, it
doesn't come through. I'm sure you and Zarathustra's ape have a lot in
common, many grave and indignant discussions will keep you warm at night.
Perhaps this counter-volley will help you see me in a "better" light.. I
demur.
Leonardo R.
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