Even as it is quite deep within the postmodern religious scholasticism, it’s more general points are grounding. Where she falls off and over is in following the intuitive-intellectual coordination into idealized synthetic Being. The object she attempts to address really does withdraw from view despite her argument. Quite transcendental to my viewing.
What I mean by this is that just because we can conceptualize ideas and they can make sense, does not mean they are true. They can be put to use, but then we are left with our responsibility.
In a way I am concerned with intellectual discourses which are self referent and justified by that referent in all instances — except when they are not being activly employed.
😑
?
A little
Too metaphysical and, really, fantastical. And verges into an extended academic fantasy land – even while the initial grounding is solid.x
If we can think it, then why not? Even if it is a higher development of Modern religious apology. Perfectly valid.
It’s disturbing. Lol.
But we barely even started to find out what religion is. Where are we going?
What do I mean by Modern Religious Apology ?
Referring to my previous post about Plotinus: A justification for the placement of the soul (for any term, as in this case, a situation of ‘thought’) into a discursive scheme or scaffold.
Once we depart from a necessity for an essential and central thinker, we are allowed through historical semantic scaffolding into thinking apart from thought. We are able, for a term, to break from the unitive paradigm.
The question should be how is this allowed? What mechanisms are in place, what joints and beams lay to bring about a meaning that supposed its ability to ‘remove itself from itself’ ? And we come to types.
But other questions are allowed, as Katrina shows. The reason why it is allowed, thus, should have nothing to do with any discursive scaffolding, but only because something has occurred to create a blind spot, so that we can now see objects and relations without having to reconcile the scaffolding to a causal scaffold: The reason we are allowed to move on before explicitly discovering how we are able to move on is embedded in the assumption involved with the new reasoning itself.
This process of modern-post-modern modes replicating itself, we call ‘apologetics’, and reproduces the same mechanisms we find in the early Christian church fathers and the eventual Scholasitcs, which is to say, “post-Event”; the reduction to a common human experience allows specific occurrences to be generalized, extended out from their proper sphere, as they are encoded to thus be found or dis-coded (discovered) by the intrinsic mythology. Anything ‘post’ is understood to be dissimilar to its object and indeed progressed away from it even as it inscribes itself exceptional through what is common (irony/contradiction avoided and or suspended).
With discourses such as Katrina’s, we able to frame for understanding the issue of the three as multiplicity forms it’s justiciation for inclusion in the Valid reality: The proper placement of the soul.
With the philosophical death of God, the soul was displaced. Indeed, the Western Enlightened mind thought it could achieve ‘God’ (for a term) through the ‘divinely inspired’ (or whatever we want to call it) thinking, What we typically call “Modernism” was the last call for heroics, the last phase of the project of establishing ‘God’s world’. But counter-point to this great idealism was the rebuttal of such a project, what came to be known, again in its end, as post-modernism. If anything, post-modernism is at root the attempt to inject the fallacy of the soul into the project of Progress without the implied and inherent oppressive Modernist agent. Yet, what it achieved was merely the dissolution of itself, which in the end, was found to be merely a Modernist ploy; the strategy of Modern is to place itself as the scapegoat, too there by use irony to indicate a patsy. The use of this patsy can never be found: was it the Western Colonialism, Capitalism, Christianity, Masculinity, Industry — we could go on — that was to blame? For, every time an accusation is made, a justification through the accusatory critique is found to have just as much credibility from an argumentative standpoint: The method of argument constitutes what may hold veracity. What occurred through post-modern, how ever we want to define it, was indeed a humanity without a soul. Anyone now can use any justification into its own identity of soul; this fact denies a unitive category that we can know as ‘soul’, that is, unless we are able to define things outside of definition, or a definition that reaches ourtside of itself.
We should always look for the solution to any real problem in two places: The first place is in social appearance. What we have in this solution is a distilment of the soul-less human being toward the assertion of its soul-full-ness, These various assertions that find ‘actual’ culprits as they manifest as real antagonists for the sake of the asserted soul. Donald Trump in the US, and congress, the governing body that negotiates, who can’t get anything done, the threat of Catalan succession, the unstable Euro-Union, North Korea, the Balkans of a couple decades ago, Ruwanda, the Cold War; we could go on. Likewsie, The idea that we are leaving and coming into various significant and large phases that take place within lifetimes in the growth of the species Homo sapiens is actually a microscopic view of what is more properly a galactic motion; a century of turns all take place within the same scheme or mode or argument such that decades of ‘new’ ideas really don’t move us very far conceptually, yet even as they are are seen to, due to the current imperative to develop ‘conceptual products’, which is the real imperative: Create, assert, establish and demand identity. These amount to real social manifestations of philosophical solutions to the problem of having no soul. These solutions are based in an individual’s orientation upon the True Object of ideology, of seeing such solutions as having value. But of course, we are not arguing that they don’t; that is what is significant about a divergent philosophy: It’s value, with reference to the identity driven real commodities of thought, is not real.
The other place we look for a solution is less immediate. This second kind of solution takes place somewhere ‘outside’ the political realm. Feminism, at least the kind that Katrina os evidencing here, proposes to be able to bridge this ‘somewhere else’ and the political realms: she indicates this Abstract position through the term “Xeno”. (I think Terrence over at Agent Swarm might have something to add about this.) Such philosophical-critical discourses depend upon an anchoring that extends outside but is not accounted for in the political realm. Like a ship: The rope disappears into and beyond the surface of the water into the depths; what occurs down there from the perspective of the ships crew is only surmised from the effect the anchor has upon the ship, but then only when the rope is viewed and contemplated upon. Otherwise, the crew and passengers of the ship see itself as moving forward, towards its destination of adventure and exploration, the final destination only speculated about. Indeed Katrina says that we can look at her project has a type of Platonism.
The ‘soul’, for any term, whether we call it ‘thought’, psyche’, inner world’, spirit, nothingness, chaos –Im sure we could come uno with many more, and despite what we want to define of the term itself — is what is beyond the surface of the water. Feminism thereby gains its stature through a stabilized antagonist that we could call “the (masculine/male) ship”. It seeks to organize the ship to its anchor, through various incarnations of the soul. And yet, on board ship, we have all sorts of people and ideas, about the ship, what its doing, what the anchor is, what its doing. Katrina’s discourse thus must posit itself in the contradiction that is inherent from the perspective of the ship’s passengers and the assertion that comes from the view that supposes itself of the anchor itself. Such feminism (Katrina’s) cannot thus continue to argue about where the rope actually goes, or how far down it falls into the ocean, or what it is attached to, because from the perspective of the ship, no one has an ability to know what is beyond the surface. So with Object Orientation Philosophy, the strategy is merely now to work with what they have on board, to organize a common manner of ‘ship’ with reference to the again common ‘unknown’ that is the anchor, but without having to attempt to convince the people what the anchor might actually be or be doing under the water. Such feminist proposals thus exist and gain their veracity by virtue of the contradiction inherent of their discourses, but now with out having to justify them with reference to what may be outside or not taking place on the ship. Such proposals must suspend the contradiction inherent by the implication of origins in the proposal itself, and because it is most probable that feminism would not suggest there is anything ‘outside’ (philosophers only speculate on what could be outside, and thus do not have to admit to anything) we would then have to understand that such proposals not only must carry on “as if”, but indeed, carry on in total ignorance of the fact, and again, despite what anyone would want to argue.
…as an opening into her “types”: We are able to begin to find out what human beings (consciousness)- philosophy does.
Brilliant.
Its all unfolding perfectly. Totally love it.
Listen to her music and then listen to this album. 30 years apart. Am I too far off at hearing a relation?
*
…And a coincidental posting this morning at ALTexploit
Readers may be confused by my comment on feminism, like it came out of nowhere and then was shanghai’d and made into a strange, over-milked form. That’s ok; I intend to be clear, so I should take a moment to explain terms that perhaps are not widely understood. Also, I should be clear that what I am describing some may consider just one aspect of what feminism is, a narrow aspect, but I believe that no feminist worth his or her weight will discount my presentation here. ( And I do invite critique.)
In the common world of everyday, feminism means about the same as women’s rights, except maybe a little more hardcore. A feminist of this sort maybe has become a sort of stereotype, maybe wears her hair short, but maybe not; maybe she tends toward more traditionally masculine jobs such as tree trimming or the trades, or maybe is driven to achieve in business and become a CEO, maybe she is just one who is sensitive for typical traditional Western manners such as holding a door for a woman or letting her in first. Maybe, even, she is homosexual. But also maybe – and this could be the most modern form of common feminism – she is none of these. Maybe she is a he: men can be feminists too (but not really, because they are men – wink, wink, nudge, nudge). At minimum, though, feminism is usually associated with advocating for women.
Yes; feminism most assuredly arose from the problem of women as second citizens. But feminism is not just about women’s rights. Feminism proper (and I use this ‘proper’ as a designating term of propriety, of what an end-run of analysis would bring) sees itself more as a praxis. As I explained in an earlier post, praxis can be said to be an alignment of knowledge, thought and activity into effective practice; feminists and social activists like the term ’empowerment’. Feminism thus usually concerns social arenas of human interaction, but especially uses of power.
Feminism is rooted primarily in critical thinking, and along with this, discourse. One of the basic ideas that was brought out by feminism was or is, what can be called, ideological encoding. What this means is that power is supported just as much, if not more so, through talking as it is through physical force. Power is encoded into how we speak of reality, and is developed and maintained as a manner of speaking about what is true, and what is ethically correct; this latter part forms what is called ideology. Such encoded structures of power are called discourse. Feminism arises as marginalized, or oppressed people, people who do not or have little say in what they are to do in life, begin to question what it is that keeps them down. Feminists have thereby equipped themselves with the tools to subvert unjust wielding of power. They see that every discourse has an implicit agenda, and their role is to uncover what this agenda is and how it functions in the ideological reality for the maintenance of power. Much of feminist critique concerns how such discourse occludes itself, or hides its mechanisms, from a notion of power as a part if its effect, so the other half of feminist praxis is to awaken subjects of power, to educate them, the oppressed, to their actual situation within ideological power structures.
*
I mostly agree with feminist intent, though sometimes I think it is over applied.
My comment on feminism in the previous post concerns the implicit and explicit concerns of feminism and how, though they do often and mainly serve well for what can be known as ‘the good’, they tend to convey a limitation of this good founded in social justice, as if justice and fairness is the end, that one then can go on their marry way content that they have been empowered and achieved freedom in its most ideal and essential sense. My complaint is with the ideological structure in which feminism finds its true reality. For if the end run is indeed freedom and justice, once found through social action, they can not be taken as a Mercedes Benz that one has worked so long and saved up for, the prize having arrived. While they are noble things for which we must establish stalwart boundaries to guard against that which would more crassly and overtly impinge upon such freedom and justice, once established we must be obliged by such earned luxury to renounce it as individuals. We owe it to what is known as history not to become spoiled and lax, but to continue fearlessly into the void that is left inside the barricades, that we love, the void called freedom. We should not waste it on selfishly created despair and harbor together in support against the cold, gathering chemicals to ease us and things to appease us, sick minds to comfort us. We need continue onward. This is what I say.
Thank god for the feminist infantry who man the lines; but what they offer is not the goal, it is just the beginning.
There is a book called “Castes of Mind” by a man maned Dirks. It is an historical analysis and critique of 19th century English colonialism through an overtly cultural difference, caste, and how this feature of Indian culture was dealt with both by the English in an attempt to rule, and the Indians attempting to assert cultural autonomy and agency. I do not remember what his argument is beyond a picture of this interaction, but what I inferred from his presentation was this idea of appropriation of rhetoric, what feminists and modern theorists and activists call, but from a slightly but significantly different view, ‘hegemonic discourse’. Dirks is giving us a picture of how ideology asserts itself through a process of discourse, where those who have the power, in the case of colonialism in India: England ( but colonialism in general), dictate the terms of the cultural negotiation upon the colonized, namely, the indigenous Indians. The scheme or group of terms and their definitional relations are seen as a mechanism or tool of asserting power (read: violence) upon those who are colonized, and, as a very light definition, this is called ‘hegemony’.
What this means is that those in power bring the terms by which those not in power may be allowed to exist. And this is literally the case. Dirks paints a picture of how this really means for us that people are permitted to exist through discourse. One example (keep in mind I am not doing a research paper here; I am merely recalling the book from memory – one can easily look up the book for themselves if interested) he gives is about some Indian ritual. If I remember correctly, Dirks is drawing his analysis from written material of the time of the events, from various sources. The significant point here, is that the English there had trouble making sense of it. When they would ask the locals what was going on, or their feelings about it or the reason behind it, the English had no context by which to understand them. The Indians were effectively silent; they could not be heard: they effectively did not exist. Because of this, the English could only act upon the events through the understanding they had, which was total misunderstanding. The English, because of their position of power, were righteous in their view, having little or no ability to understand that they perhaps did not understand the Indian context: the Indian context was exactly what the English thought it was. Thus, the Indian context, the reason and meaning of the ritual in this case, was ultimately written by the English. The Indians, in an effort to establish their cultural legitimacy thus, in various ways and circumstances, developed a position in relation to what the English were saying, and doing, and in this way the Indians began to exist, for if they did not respond to such rhetoric in that fashion, they would in effect ‘remain silent’, and would thus be forced, physically, existentially, out of existence.
This is the typical feminist reading, analysis and comment upon such a situation; there are many such analyses upon various cultural contexts. The feminists propose to reconcile this hegemony, to balance this abuse of power and infringement of human autonomy and rights, by advocating that the colonized people, whether it be women, blacks, Hispanics, Argentinians, Koreans, hair dressers, union workers, or what, raise their voices, as the Indians did, by asserting themselves actively into the discourse, what one could call, the priority discourse, or the discourse of power, what i call a ‘rhetoric of power’ for reasons I will develop later.
What I am saying is a critique of such feminist rhetoric. The Feminists say that one needs to appropriate the hegemonic discourse, so that there is enacted thereby a shift in power, so it loses its effective hegemony. See, hegemony is read to imply agenda that is not recognized or approved of by those who are the subjects of the hegemony. But I suggest that what occurs is not that the people are empowered to their agency, but rather, they themselves become subject of the rhetoric of power such that they then too get to partake in the spoils of – what has developed out of – the hegemony, of colonialism. The people who appropriate the priority discourse lose their identity as individual cultural agents, and instead become, as Paulo Freire might agree ( maybe, but his was not at this level of critique), oppressed: involved in the game of oppression, both the oppressor and oppressed likewise caught in play. The oppressed, who learn the ways of the oppressor, become acculturated such that they are rewarded for their complicity, and thereby sustain the game of oppression. Neither have enacted a true free agency, neither have come upon praxis; both are oppressed.
* *
This is the position Laruelle appears to be presenting, the position I present here. Laruelle has appropriated the rhetoric of power, the priority discourse, in order to present his minority view, which is exactly silent – but as opposed to the movement of feminist-colonialist theoretics, which present the possibility of pushing agencies out of real existence by virtue of the establishing reality of the hegemonic (priority) discourse. And, it is because of this feature of his proposing Non-Philosophy within or by the priority discourse that he appears to be in Bad Faith.
It is thus the explicating of this appearance that is my task at hand here. The existence Laruelle proposes is exactly real opposed to the reality of the rhetoric of power.
