Notes on “Can The Subaltern Speak?” as the next step from this suggested by Rob.
Spivak asserts “an interested desire to conserve the subject of the West, or the West as Subject.” I don’t think I know what this means, but assuming the forming is a type or way of (lived? philosophical fiction of?) humans being in the world, such that there is one which characterizes the West, then it seems to me that this different from the latter, understood as a geopolitical region (or the so-called people of that region) which has a world-historical mission such as civilizing savages, advancing technology, whatever. I also don’t know what is meant by “undermining subjective sovereignty” or what Spivak later calls the sovereign subject. That term has a similar ambiguity as “subject of the West”/”West as Subject” in that it could mean an understanding of subjectivity as sovereignty over self, and it could mean an understanding of some type of subjectivity implied within political sovereignty. I expect that both are meant, and I expect that this is a conflation I disagree with. (271.) On the other hand, perhaps Spivak is criticizing others who put forward these ideas, not putting them forward herself, in which case I’m not criticizing Spivak but rather am following her charge.
Her remarks about French Maoism in her discussion of Deleuze and Foucault are too simple and don’t show an awareness of the relevant history. Deleuze and Foucault’s conversation begins with Foucault quoting an unnamed Maoist who once said to Foucault “I can easily understand Sartre’s purpose in siding with us (…) I can partially understand your position, since you’ve always been concerned with the problem of confinement. But Deleuze is an enigma.” (”Intellectuals and Power”, 205 in Language, Countermemory, Practice.) Spivak criticizes the anonymity of the Maoist as an example of “monolothic and anonymous subjects-in-revolution,” in contrast to the intellectual who “are named and differentiated; moreover, a Chinese Maoism is nowhere operative. Maoism here simply creates an aura of narrative specificity, which would be a harmless rhetorical banality were it not that the innocent appropriation of the proper name “Maoism” for the eccentric phenomenon of French intellectual “Maoism”" which “symptomatically renders “Asia” transparent.” (272.)
Spivak’s criticisms would be more accurate if they were true. Or at least less ambiguous. The interview was published in 1972. The French Maoist group Gauche Proletarienne - which Foucault’s partner Daniel Defert was a member of for at least some time - was proscribed by the French government in 1970, with many members thrown into prison. Sartre took up being the editor of the GP publication, the Cause du Peuple, as part of his solidarity with the imprisoned GP Maoists. Foucault and Deleuze took part in the Prison Information Group, which sought to publicize conditions outside prisons in order to help support prisoners and help them improve their conditions. GP was announced in 1971 (via), after a hungerstrike by imprisoned GP members (via). This is likely what is referred to in the quote Foucault provides from the unnamed Maoist, given the timing, the reference to Sarte and Deleuze, and the reference to confinement. If that’s the case, then the anonymity of the Maoist is just as plausibly an attempt to protect a member of a criminalized organization, since, if the unnamed Maoist was not publicly a member of GP, to name them would be to out them in print to the authorities.
Spivak’s scare quotes around the Maoism of some in France and the reference to “French intellectual Maoism” - characterized with the diminutive term “eccentric - may not be deliberately intended to say that French Maoism was simply a thing of the professoriat and that it wasn’t really Maoism. Likewise, she may not have intended to say that all the French Maoists were unaware of China and Chinese Maoism such that “Chinese Maoism [was] nowhere operative.” Still, it’s hard to read the remarks otherwise. If that’s not Spivak’s intent, so much the better. Either way, it should be noted that GP was not solely a student or university or ‘intellectual’ phenomenon and that this was even more the case for at least some other currents of French Maoism. It should also be noted that these currents were not wholly unaware of what was occurring in China. And why is Maoism an Asia-specific phenomenon (and why “Asia”, why not “China”? Are the two identical?) such that French can not take it up while Marxism travels from Germany to France? There are of course questions and criticisms that could be posed about French Maoism(s) and French thinkers’ involvement therewith, and some of Spivak’s criticisms might prove true in the end if one worked through the available material, but Spivak isn’t interested in any of that - her conclusions are (al)ready made when she begins discussing Foucault and Deleuze. If she steps over the stories of the lives of a few imprisoned proletarians while storming barricades of the geopolitical determinations of the Western subjectivity of poststructuralist theoreticians, surely the ends justify the means, no?
It’s tempting to conclude that Spivak’s references to Chinese vs French Maoism
creates an aura of narrative specificity, which would be a harmless rhetorical banality were it not that she - hopefully unwittingly - misrepresents the historical conjuncture at the moment in question in order to score points in a game of academic political credibility: Spivak attacks Foucault and Deleuze for unwittingly rendering Asia transparent while at the same time helping continue the occlusion of a case of state repression. Indeed, the latter is the condition for the former, which makes me wonder about Spivak’s utility at all, as well as the accuracy of her other representations. (Fool me once … fool me twice, etc.)
Spivak asserts but doesn’t argue that “a theory of [ideology] is necessary for an understanding of interests”, as part of castigating Deleuze and Foucault for “their indifference to ideology.” (273.)
I find Spivak compelling when she criticizes a running together of “[t]wo sense of representation (…) representation as “speaking for,” as in politics, and representation as “re-presentation,” as in art or politics.” (275.) That’s dead on. Perhaps representation is a problem, but if so then in some respects at least the problem of representation is an ensemble of problems of representations and it’s not clear what the relationship between elements of that ensemble are. This is important in my view in order to avoid the idea that statements questions about aesthetic and philosophic representation(s) automatically and without mediation impact political representation in some fashion. As Spivak writes, “the shifting distinctions between representation within the state and political economy, on the one hand, and within the theory of the Subject, on the other, must not be obliterated.” (275-6.) Spivak is dead on here, though I want to make two caveats. First, it’s hard not read her opening gestures about the subject of the West, the West as Subject, and sovereign subjectivity as running together different things in a way which she here (rightly) decries. Second, in each case - state, economy, theories - there are not so much specific representations - as in, one for each - as there are modes of representation. While we can and should generalize, we do so from contextually specific instantiations.
I find her treatment of the Marx quote from the 18th Brumaire a bit uncritical. Marx writes, “in so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that cut off their mode of life, their interest, and their formation from those of the other classes and place them in an inimical confrontation [feindlich gagenuberstellen], they form a class.” (Quoted on 276. Return to this passage in the Brumaire post-Spivak post.) Perhaps Spivak addresses this later in the essay, but the quote doesn’t reference divisions within the working class - the family as site of production as in the Boydston article - but imputes a common interest distributed relatively evenly across the class. This interest does exist as far as I’m concerned, but differences within it should be noted, at least by someone who is concerned about Deleuze and Foucault treating “the workers’ struggle” as a case of “monolothic and anonymous subjects.” (272.)
*
I finished the essay, don’t really know what to make of it. These notes aren’t very satisfying -
I find Spivak’s point about not moving so rapidly from macro to micro levels somewhat compelling, but I don’t find her placement of theories of ideology as the connective tissues between these levels less so. (279.)
This, however, is great: “The reduction of Marx to a benevolent but dated figure most often serves the interest of launching a new theory of interpretation.” (279.) Marx(ism) carries a sort of rhetorical weight in its association with radicalism. Academic dissing of Marx(ism) from the left is often an attempt to take this weight, this association.
I don’t understand Spivak’s objection (is it an objection?) to the idea that “the oppressed can know and speak for themselves.” (279.) I’m sympathetic if the criticism is something like “D and F think they allow space to consider the oppressed as thinking (for) themselves, but really they don’t” and perhaps with the addition that this is self-serving on D and F’s part. But if the claim is “oppressed do not or can not know and speak for themselves” then that strikes me as absurd and self-serving.
I still don’t understand Spivak’s point about subjectivity. “This S/subject (…) belongs to the exploiters’ side of the international division of labor.” (280.) I’m still not clear what the subject refers to here - a structure of being in the world (something like what is meant in an utterance like “in studying the factory we must attend to the type of subjectivity it produces or seeks to produce in factory workers and managers”) or some theoretical claims about structure(s) of being in the world. Second, what is the sense of ‘belongs’ here? I can think of two, neither of which I’m convinced of. ‘Belongs to’ might means ‘reinforces’, or it might mean ‘originates on.’ Part of what I’m unconvinced about in Spivak’s presentation is ‘epistemic violence’. Insofar as it means to claim that certain bodies of knowledge and/or ways of knowing originate in instances of (non-epistemic) violence then I’m sympathetic; likewise with the claim that these cases of ‘epistemic violence’ serve to help the perpetuation or enactment of (non-epistemic) violence (I’m more sympathetic with either claim with regard to the former, bodies of knowledge, than with the latter, ways of knowing. With both cases I don’t see that the chosen idiom adds much and I think the metaphorical use of ‘violence’ is rhetorically and possibly politically suspect).
I also don’t understand and have mixed feelings about Spivak’s criticisms of the Subaltern Studies group. Spivak expresses sympathy with a Foucaultian moment of “rendering visible the medical and juridical mechanisms that surrounded the story” of subalterns. She criticizes a slippage from this to “rendering vocal the individual” and I think this applies to individual classes as well as individual persons. Again I’m sympathetic if the goal is a sort of deflation of an overly inflated sense of self or account of the subject that might have academic careerist - or worse, political substitutionist motivations or outcomes - but Spivak seems suspicious of any attempt whatsoever to “touch the consciousness” or “voice-consciousness” of the subaltern. (285.) It seems to me that as long as one holds all conclusions as provisional, admits some level of nuance and tries not to flatten (ie, not taking too seriously the singular nouns like ‘the subaltern,’ ‘the worker’, ‘the class’ etc), then this isn’t a problem at all.
Again I find myself sympathetic with part of the step but only part, when Spivak writes against the association of Foucault with politics - and thus, Foucault as having a crucial contribution to make to the extra-theoretical world - as opposed to the idea of Derrida as merely textual. But Spivak doesn’t criticize the game here so much as assert that Derrida should be the real winner. (291.)
I can’t tell the point Spivak is trying to make about the practice of sati, nor do I understand how that section relates to the section of Deleuze and Foucault. And what is “the circumscribed task” which “[t]he female as intellectual (…) must not disown with a flourish”? Since “[t]he subaltern can not speak” and “[r]epresentation has not withered away” is the task to speak on behalf of - that is, to represent - the subaltern? (308.) In that case, the attack on Deleuze and Foucault is not “they represent, and worse, while claiming not to” but rather “they represent badly despite claiming not to.”
[Note to self - reread in its entirety the interview that Spivak reads w/ D and F, in Language Countermemory Practice, it’s called “Intellectuals and Power”]
*
Speaking of Spivak and enervating, I started Derrida’s Specters of Marx and … ugh. I really hate it. It not only saps my will to read it, but it saps my will to read. Like I get tired of reading that book and any other book I pick up next I also don’t want to read. Like a taste of some food that kills the appetite altogether. Because of Specters I nearly decided this morning to throw in the towel on the summer of enervating reading. My wife suggested instead that I try to downgrade how closely and seriously (ie, with how much energy) I read this stuff (though my reading level is already questionable). I think that’s the thing that will be most conducive to maintaining the project. Rather than the summer of enervating reading, then, it will be the summer of trying hard to look at all the words in enervating texts.
Maybe I’ll finally go back and read Derrida’s response to Searle. I think I never got around to taking notes on Searle’s response to Derrida - I remember thinking Searle was right about everything he said.
Foucault wasn’t protecting someone by needlessly quoting him/her - it’s a rhetorical move and the nameless Maoist is only one of the two anonymous needy figures who are conjured and fall conveniently silent. MF was very skillful theatrically. The mystery Maoist and the mystery Prisoner are evoked to deliver their questioning and needy lines - these voices without personnages provoking and justifying the theorists’ eloquence - and thus to populate the scene of this conversation (it must not appear to be taking place on a cloud or in the ivory tower), but they are there also to not object, to be silently approving as Maoism and Marxism are dismissed in favour of Nietzsche and something else. F sets himself and D up in a kind of court, where a shadowy subordinate crowd is asking for answers and help, and then he responds to these staged demands for guidance with the pronouncement that power a mystery and individual resistance and identity politics revolutionary, incompatible with capitalism. The Maoist and the prisoner are evoked as a silent, concerned presences for these assertions; but they don’t interrupt and thus seem implicitly satisfied; it’s a deft performance, an artful dramaturgy, and one fairly typical of MF.
Comment by chabert — May 28, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
Spivak is admittedly not very persuasive or knowledgeable about things outside her field but she’s an astute reader of culture product. I think her judgement of what MF is up to with the mystery Maoist is a fair cop. I thought the same thing when I first read that dialogue years ago (it was one of the first theory things I read, in a literature class) and most everyone else did too - “lucky for these two that Maoist left the theatre after delivering that obligingly inquisitive prologue!”
Comment by chabert — May 28, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
hi Colonel,
I’m not convinced. I do think there are a variety of things one could say to question and criticize Foucault and Deleuze here, and I’m not at all invested in them proving sufficiently leftist (I’d actually be happy to be convinced the opposite because it would allow me to more easily disdain some more people who I occasionally want to disdain), but I don’t find this particular case - “the Maoist” - convincing. I think F and D’s involvement in the Prison Information Group is one of the more interesting things about them, particularly due to the link to GP. And I don’t know how else Foucault could have used that anecdote in a better way. I think the anthology should have contextualized it, but presumably in 1972 the readership of L’Arc would know what F was talking about such that his omission was less egregious than the omission of context by the editors of that volume in English.
That said, I’ll take your word for F doing this in other cases, like I said I’m not invested in defending him or Deleuze and if they do ventriloquize (and thereby render silent) others that wouldn’t surprise me. I like your phrase, “voices without personnages provoking and justifying the theorists’ eloquence,” that’s a common professorial move, including Professor Spivak with her speechless subalterns. I’m planning to reread that interview (it was a relatively early work for me too, I remember being like “who is this Maoist?) when I finish the Spivak, and would be happy to discuss and critize it. I just don’t find Spivak convincing on that particular example - I find her criticism about as damning of her as of Foucault and Deleuze. I could be wrong but thus far I don’t get the impression that she’s opposed to theoretical muting of others in order to amplify the voice of the theorist.
take care,
Nate
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — May 29, 2007 @ 1:46 am
I agree Spivak is just rivalising, (i haven’t read that in a while either) and not innocently, but she is sensitive to F’s literary inspirations and doings, which is worthwhile. Its not a question of better use of the anecdote since the anecdote is not required. There is no good reason for the anecdote of the Maoist at all - its not even really an anecdote, just a theatrical device. The mystery Maoist appears of course to be acquainted with Deleuze’s philosophical work so is almost certainly French and bourgeois, not any kind of subaltern. Yet I think Spivak is right to sense there is an effort there to portray this wondering as a question from some kind of other world conjured by ‘Maoism’ (the Maoist accepts his partial understanding of F’s private and idiosyncratic motivation but wants to hear from the enigmatic Deleuze). The dialogue which this curious Maoist sets a’ going emphasises that F and D’s interest in prisoners does not involve any recognition of the particularity of prison as an instrument weilded by the ruling class against the working class: it is, we are told, just like a school where children of all classes go, and the schools for children are just like a prison, and the caprices of power exerted within are all evidence of the new post new theory’s needfulness.
So Spivak may be off the scent when she marks the subaltern as the main target of the manoeuvre but that there’s a drama occurring is unmistakeable. It seems to me (and hindsight tends to confirm) that really Maoism and Marxism - and all the objections to the positions taken by F and D that those words name - is what must be made to silently give its imprimatur to these two but cannot be allowed to interrupt the mutual flattery of F and D (D congratulates F for his great discovery that other people can speak for themselves which has a comic effect when F slips into starting his sentences with the pronoun “we”); F does not wish to appear to be ignoring Maosim and Marxism (ignoring the political left effectivey), but rather inheriting and surpassing and enlightening, taking control of it, absorbing it into this “we” who “have yet to fully understand the nature of power”.The Maoist appears as a ceremonial baton hander over, presenter, introducer, at once indebted to the D and F and implicitly authorising their rejection of Marxisms… a prologue serving the staging of the new post new thing and politely retiring. The thing is not that F brings up the unnamed Maoist as opener; nor is it that he doesn’t inject the Maoist when obviously the Maoist would have something to assert against F and D; it is the combination of these things in what is clearly a theatrical operation conducted by F (and D) upon “the Maoist”, the writing of the Maoist a specific and limited part which doesn’t involve the voicing of any Maoism, the designing for the Maoist a specific and utile, convenient presence in the scene which serves no purpose other than situating the assertions of the dialogue favourably to the goal of usurping, from that puppetised Maoism, the central place, the place of “the latest most radical thing”, in left thinking
Comment by chabert — May 29, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
ciao Colonel,
I’ll have to re-read that piece and get back to you, which will take a minute because I’ve still got to finish the Spivak. For the time being, having only re-read the quote Foucault offered and no further into the piece, I can’t really add anything other than a restatement of my initial prejudices which are pro-Foucault and Deleuze in this particular case - I’m predisposed toward reading this anecdote in a positive light because I think their work supporting GP, while limited, was a laudable act of a sort which I’m not aware of many contemporary poststructuralists doing. After I read the rest of the piece I’ll re-read your comments here (and will post on it and perhaps we can discuss it) and I may change my mind.
I will say, that I find the near total lack of discussion of French Maoism and GP in English frustrating. There’s a bit once in a while in relation to Badiou, a little re: Ranciere, but almost nothing in relation to Deleuze and Foucault - on the latter two of whom there is proportionately more writing in English. Given that, among other things, Foucault’s prison book came after the involvement in the Prison Information Group, the historical context here is relevant (leaving aside that GP and other French Maoist currents had their own ideas and experiences which might be worth taking seriously). Also given a certain francophile tendency toward starry-eyed invocations of “‘68″, I would think that the movement currents which operated in the immediately following years would be a logical next step for attention. That this doesn’t get more attention is very frustrating.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — May 29, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
thanks Nate…I agree with you about the GIP; about the Gauche Proletarienne, partly the thing is the positions more visible members got into - crazed foaming at the mouth zionists, imperial apologists, warriors on turr as well some tepid inoffensive liberal jornos, politicians and shrinks - really complicates any project of examination of their period of leftism. How to approach the story of the maoist youth of andré glucksmann without seeming like george lucas telling of the cuddly childhood of darth vader? I understand why no one wants to approach it, running the risk of seeming to justify or glamorise the surviving celebrity members or discouragingly suggesting this kind of thing is the youthful excess of extremely ambitious people who end wailing at the wall in jerusalem or drinking with edouard de rothschild in Tatler magazine.
Comment by chabert — May 29, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
Have you read Olivier Rolin’s novel Paper Tiger?
Comment by chabert — May 30, 2007 @ 12:08 am
Hi Nate
I found your post very interesting for the fact that it picks up on an element of Spivak’s argument that means nothing to me, and which — accordingly — I always took as marginal to the “central” argument. It’s been a long time since I read Spivak’s paper, and I really should read it again. But even if I do, I think I’ll be no more enlightened regarding your criticism, since my early disciplinary training (largely in cultural studies) was driven by post-structuralism and post-marxism. Consequently, I just don’t possess very evocative signifieds for the signifiers “Maoist”, “Trotskyite”, etc. I’m completely ignorant of that particular history of “revolutionary” thought and politics. One day I’ll pick up a “primer” on that history and try to reduce my ignorance…
At any rate, I see the central problem addressed in Spivak’s paper as being the unwitting appeals to authenticity and transparency that appear (simultaneously) to legitimise (and thus to lend force to) F&D’s apparent worth as politically enabling intellectuals and to mark their arguments as “non-representative” in the sense of not claiming to speak on behalf of the oppressed (i.e. as disclaiming F&D’s role as bearers of the truth of and as representing the interests of the oppressed other). Bound up with this critique is an extended reflection on the problem of ethnocentrism and the international division of labour, the question of representation, the problem of defining “interests”, and the general shift away from a Marxist analytics (on the basis of a simplification of key Marxist concepts, such as class) and hence the abandonment of attempts to develop a more sophisticated theory of ideology.
I don’t know how far you’ve gotten into the paper yet, and I don’t want to post any spoilers, so I won’t elaborate on the above. But I will try to clarify what I see as being at stake in the “subject of the West/West as Subject” bit, and help (I hope) clear up the confusion you express in your opening paragraph. First up, when Spivak says “Some of the most radical criticism coming out of the West today is the result of an interested desire to conserve the subject of the West, or the West as subject” (271), this is pretty much a direct statement of the conclusion to her critique. In other words, this “radical criticism” only appears to be radical; in actuality, it ends up reproducing a kind of ethnocentrism that it would otherwise want to reject or critique, and it has an interest (i.e. political interest as self-interest) in wanting to reject/critique that ethnocentrism. In other words, “the theory of pluralized ’subject-effects’ gives an illusion of undermining subjective sovereignty while often providing cover for this subject of knowledge”.
Put simply, F&D’s intellectual work rightly claims to undermine the status of the “human subject” as unconditioned or as self-constituted/self-governing (hence “sovereign”). Within the history economic and cultural colonialism, that “sovereign subject” is simultaneously the subject of the West and the West as subject: it is an image of subjectivity that both emerges “in the West” and is imagined (by the West) as universal, and is thus imagined as the ground for economic and cultural colonialism. So you’re right that the two expressions of the relation between subjectivity and “the West” are different (i.e. one is a type of subjectivity that is “western”, while the other is the foundation to a “world-historical mission”), but they nevertheless remain intimately linked by virtue of the history of Western thought (simplistically, the path from Kant to Hegel) and the history of European colonialism. In other words, there’s not so much a conflation going on here as a coupling.
F&D’s work claims to undermine the sovereign subject — and forgive me here for stating points that I’m positive you’re well familiar with — insofar as it disperses the subject-constituting forces across a range of otherwise disconnected institutions and sees them as arising out of a discontinuous, non-teleological history. What Spivak will go on to object to is the way this work is then used by F&D as a launching pad for making claims about oppression, consciousness, etc. in colonial contexts. Crucial to her argument (though from memory not greatly elaborated) is what she would see as the historical fact of an international division of labour, which amounts to a strange repetition, or rather inversion, of the earlier conflation/coupling. And everywhere her critique of F&D centres on the contradictory nature of that inversion.
(But I won’t say anymore for fear of spoiling the story.)
Comment by rob — May 30, 2007 @ 1:53 am
hi Rob, Colonel,
Colonel, you know the G(I)P story more than I do - I wish there was more material on that (and on many other similar-ish things) - in English I mean, my French is merde. I’ve not read that novel, I’ll have to give it a look, I assume it’s related to all this.
Rob, thanks for your comments. I’ve not read any further in the essay yet, not had time yet, so maybe some of what I’m currently objecting to will be made clear and convincing later.
I think I said this, but I’m open to an argument - call it “argument A” like “F&D’s theoretical work has an aura of political utility but it’s without substance”, in part because I’m nearly always open that argument. I’m not nearly as open to an argument that “argument A” itself has some substantive political utility, though - that is, “argument A” also has only an aura of political utility.
I’m also open to claims about international divisions of labor and so on, but that stuff is tricky … it’s one thing to say “you’re not paying attention to” - or, “you’re making totalizing claims about” - “a lot of people who are doing a lot of the work that makes universities possible”, say, but it’s hard to do so in a way which doesn’t in turn ignore/totalize those people. (A parallel here for me is the type of criticism that is sometimes made about academic writing - one that I generally agree with actually, though my own academic writing etc is certainly just as guilty - that it’s obscurantist, exclusionary, etc. That’s true but it’s really easy to slip from that into some version of “dumb it down, most people aren’t this smart” which to my mind is false and perniciously so.)
I’m also a bit perplexed about the stuff on sovereign subjects, ethnocentrism and the west. First, the West is not the history of institutionally recognized western philosophers, and the latter history is to my mind about as characterizable as heterogeneous as it is homogeneous (on a similar note, I find claims I’ve stumbled across about “western metaphysics” leave me cold, particularly when they’re made in tandem with denunciations of dualism since the former category is itself dualist). Also, even if it’s only in the west/the canon of western philosophy that a certain understanding of the subject has been articulated - which I’m not convinced of - it’s not clear to me that this articulation applies only to people in the west.
It seems to me very hard to criticize a certain type of ethnocentrism without enacting another type of ethnocentrism - like if you say “people everywhere are likely to desire freedom and to attempt to resist hierarchical power” and I say “you’re being ethnocentric” then - if it turns out that people really do have this likelihood - I have myself been ethnocentric by implying that people in some places don’t have this likelihood. (I can’t remember the context but I remember having the misfortune of being in a conversation once where someone defended female genital mutilation saying “it’s their culture”, a racist and laughably unfounded attribution of conflictless monolithicness to “their culture.” These polemical parenthical remarks are not an attack on Spivak by proxy, by the way.) This parallels the point about the international division of labor, which is that it’s easy to point out that X is flattening complexity in a way which itself flattens out complexity perhaps differently. That’s a very abstract and schematic statement of what I think Spivak does regarding D&F and the Prison Information Group and Gauche Proletarienne. That’s not to say that we can only exchange one flattening for another. Nor is it to say that Spivak definitely does this, I can’t say for sure until I finish the essay, but I have my suspicions as I’m sure is obvious.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — May 30, 2007 @ 4:04 am
Hi Nate
Thanks for your response. I’m looking forward to what you might say once you’ve finished the paper.
I’m also open to claims about international divisions of labor and so on, but that stuff is tricky … it’s one thing to say “you’re not paying attention to” - or, “you’re making totalizing claims about” - “a lot of people who are doing a lot of the work that makes universities possible”, say, but it’s hard to do so in a way which doesn’t in turn ignore/totalize those people.
I would say that this is precisely the problem that Spivak’s exposing, exploring and elaborating. To the extent that you’re already open to the problem, you may well decide that Spivak’s not saying anything new or that she falls into the same trap, etc. I first read this paper not too many years after it was published, though, in the context of a discipline that was resolutely pro-Foucault (and generally anti-Derrida) and at a time when I was starting down the path towards higher research. Consequently, I found it to be a fascinating, rich and dense (if also a little impenetrable) argument, one which I still wonder whether those who have read and lauded it really took on board….
Cheers
Comment by rob — May 30, 2007 @ 4:37 am
Rolin was one of the leaders of GP and this is evidently a quasi autobiographical novel (I haven’t read it yet)
If I may butt in about the sovereign subject; this is what Spivak noticed:
D has denounced the mystery Maoist (let’s imagine him Victor/Lévy for the moment) for implying that F is applying theory (like that bad subject might) rather than embodying-in-action the radicalism that is taking up the relay function once becoming aware that people confined in prison must speak for themselves; F then assumes the posture of oracle of the spirit of the west: “Isn’t this difficulty of finding adequate forms of struggle a result of the fact that we continue to ignore the problem of power? After all we had to wait until the nineteenth century before we began to understand the nature of exploitation, and to this day we have yet to fully comprehend the nature of power. It may be that Marx and Freud cannot satisfy our desire for understanding this enigmatic thing which we call power, which is at once visible and invisible, present and hidden, ubiquitous. Theories of government and the traditional analyses of their mechanisms certainly don’t exhaust the field where power is exercised and where it functions. The question of power remains a total enigma. Who exercises power? And in what sphere? We now know with reasonable certainty who exploits others, who recieves the profits, which people are involved, and we know how these funds are reinvested. But as for power…We know it is not in the hands of those who govern. But of course, the idea of the “ruling class” has never recieved an adequate formulation, and neither have other terms, such as “to dominate,” “to rule” “to govern” etc. These notions are far too fluid and require analysis.”
So this relay function, this new state of theorybeing, in which F is a conduit for the voices of the incarcerated, is quickly incorporated into a (super strong brevetted) subject which is recognisably - and more confidently than ever for its experience of relay - the “we” that is normaliens, the all but immortal subject of knowledge who in the 19th century discovered exploitation and who are now discovering power as Colombus discovered America. F was not alive in the 19th century. The voices he relays from a state of incarceration were not alive in the 19th century. But the shell subject F has created for himself to occupy (without being responisble for) was in fact existing then and discovered things then and he speaks as that subject. The relayed voices it turns out are of a different order, raw data awaiting this subject’s knowledge production - they are effectively new territory for him to map. This subject has a different status and the voices from the penitentiary are subordinated to it in a certain way. The subjectivity-destruction has in at least one sense harmed or diminished them but strengthened F; their challenge, their power to rival as human subjects F and D as human subjects, is sort of diffused by the whole manoeuvre about subjectivity; they aren’t subjects, but F has access to this immortal subjectivity with its record of progressive discovery of everything known.
Comment by chabert — May 30, 2007 @ 6:43 am
Nate,
Spivak’s points about Maoism in that piece have always rubbed me the wrong way. I think that you do a good job of exposing some of the history that is overlooked in her piece. This is important stuff to point out, especially since the prominence of Badiou as the “next big thing from France” is going to make it harder to ignore the complex history of Maoism in France.
Comment by Unemployed negativity — May 30, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
hi UN, Colonel,
Thanks, both of you. UN, like I said above it’s frustrating that there’s not more material on this history. While I have very mixed feeling about it, I think Verso’s recent publication of that Mao collection might help a little. And there has been a bit of work on this re: Badiou, like that journal issue whose name escapes me just now (the one with stuff on Badiou and the cultural revolution) and the occasional translator’s introduction to a work by Ranciere. I have a similar gripe with the reception of Negri et al, though with that there’s a little more work in English on the relevant movement and organizational histories. I think the absence of this history is connected to what Le Colonel is objecting to re: Foucault, a sort of distribution of who gets to speak and who doesn’t.
Colonel, that Foucault quote and its “we” _is_ frustrating. First, is the problem of adequate forms of struggle really the result of a theoretical failing? I mean, sure, in some cases definitely, in others maybe, in some others clearly not. Some times we have everything right and we just lose (if we take the term ‘class war’ seriously part of that means recognizing that the outcomes of conflicts aren’t predetermined though we must of course try to make provisional predictions).
Second, the idea that exploitation wasn’t understood until the 19th century is ludicrous and quite vulgarly marxist. It’s like when Marx says “Aristotle couldn’t understand labor, that’s because no one in his society could have understood labor.” That might be the case though proving a negative like that is difficult I think it’s more plausible, though, that at least some of those who did (more) labor and were (more) exploited have understood labor and exploitation, well before it received theoretical formulation by those who didn’t labor and weren’t exploited (or were less so).
Part of what’s lurking in the background here in this quote is a veiled and normative ‘we’ as you note and a veiled and normative sense of ‘understand’ linked to that we. It’s particularly ironic given that F is someone who worked on the links between power, epistemology, knowledge, etc.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — May 30, 2007 @ 5:10 pm
It’s particularly ironic given that F is someone who worked on the links between power, epistemology, knowledge, etc.
This is precisely Spivak’s point. So, to come back to a formulation you used earlier, Nate, the issue here is not simply of swapping one ethnocentrism for another, but rather that the desire not to represent, to the extent that that desire emerges from the anti-representationalism of F&D’s respective (theoretico-political) “positions”, (1) entails a constitutive contradiction the moment that it tries to account for or allow for an absolutely Other (i.e. an other that is irreducible to a form of otherness within the subject), and (2) refuses to take any responsibility (as chabert suggests) for its ineluctable role in representing the other (e.g. as absolutely other).
Put crudely, the issue here is that F&D refuse to approach representation as a problem; instead, they see representationalism as something like a “wrong turn” in history, and thus as something like a theoretico-political stance that one can simply eschew by denying that there is any representation (Cf. Deleuze’s claim that theory is “a tool box. It has nothing to do with the signifier”).
Let’s take each of the above points one at a time:
(1) In their attempt to denounce their authority as Western intellectuals or as bearers of the truth, F&D insist throughout their conversation that the Other about which they speak is never deceived by ideology, but rather is aware of its condition as oppressed. The aim, of course, is to promote a form of analysis that does not take the form of “enlightening the masses”, but rather creates conditions that enable the Other to speak on its own behalf. In negating criticism’s work of demystification or enlightenment, however, and by situating the oppressed Other in a position to speak its “own” conditions, F&D risk contradicting their genealogical/schizo-analytical critique of the sovereign subject, because this act requires that they posit the Other as a subject who is aware of its conditions (Cf. F: “the masses know [i.e. their conditions] perfectly well” and “they know far better than [the intellectual] and they say it very well”).
Note the appeal to the authenticity of the experience and of the speech of the Other. As you say, Nate, this is ironic, if nothing else. It’s also what I was getting at when I said that F&D’s claims amount to a strange repetition or inversion of the West/Other distinction and the international division of labour.
(2) But that’s only one side of the problem, for it is precisely in their proclamation of the Other’s self-awareness and authority that F&D conceal the act of making the Other intelligible (i.e. translating the Other) according to a discourse and a value system that remains tied to the “Western” knowledges they seek to reject. This is to say that in their insistence that the Other knows its condition as oppressed, F&D disregard their role (indeed, they deny it) in characterising the Other’s experiences and speech as politically significant. As Spivak argues, they fail to appreciate that “the concrete experience that is the guarantor of the political appeal of prisoners, soldiers and schoolchildren is disclosed through the concrete experience of the intellectual, the one who diagnoses the episteme”. If, in other words, F&D seek to create conditions in which the Other may speak on its own behalf, this speech is already understood by them as politically significant, and their discourse accordingly represents it so. For all that F&D want to deny the role of representing the Other, all they end up doing is concealing their role, representing themselves as transparent in the process of revealing the Other.
And, of course, there’s a complex play of power, desire and interest at work in that movement.
In terms, then, of the question of substituting one ethnocentrism for another, Spivak’s ultimately target is the idea that one would be able to remove all traces of ethnocentrism from one’s discourse. But further than this (since this is by now a familiar trope), affirming the critique of that idea requires a certain ethical gesture, one which precisely does not deny the representative role of the intellectual, but rather that specifies that the investigating subject constructs the Other as an object of study. That’s not to say that this way of representing the Other is “bad”, and it’s most definitely not to say that one therefore must always respect the discourse, value or practice of the Other because to denounce that discourse, etc. would succumb to ethnocentrism. On the contrary; it’s precisely because F&D’s claims lend tacit support to arguments of the latter type, that Spivak’s argument is most compelling. Indeed, she ultimately argues that the subaltern cannot speak.
All this discussion is making me want to re-read the paper… but it’s such a mammoth piece I don’t know how I’d ever find the time!
Comment by rob — May 31, 2007 @ 12:39 am
hi Rob,
Thanks very much for this, I find it very helpful. For now, drawing on your final paragraph, I’m sympathetic with the target being “the idea that one would be able to remove all traces of ethnocentrism from one’s discourse” - those who claim to be angels (and incapable of being otherwise) should be among those we first suspect. I’m less sympathetic with the stuff on the role of the intellectual. It seems to me that the self/other interaction said to characterize that of the intellectual as self - ethnocentrically projecting onto/constructing the other (or at least, having that be a possibility) - characterizes any interaction between what could be called a self and what could be called an other, with gradations where this becomes more likely/notice-able. I’ll have to think more on this, though.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — May 31, 2007 @ 4:39 am
Really, it’s just that F. was a whitey, however depraved he may have been. Caucasian professors are the Other (or capitalist, vichy, fascist, racist, etc.) to the marxist-multiculturalists, even when reciting marxist Screepture.
What is funny about this is how you code shift, Nate, from an interest in epistemology, Truth, knowledge, proof to these grand abstractions and generalizations. My own feeling is that most postmod chat actually betrays the few marxist bon mots worth salvaging (like shutting down finance, speculation, Shekels, Inc.): and that marxist economic critique only works with a high degree of specificity, objectivity, data: once one stoops to the ethnocentrist game, one might as well put the marx aside, and pick up Hegel, machiavelli, or an AK-47…………. .
Comment by Perezoso — June 1, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
hey Per,
I don’t understand what you mean about my shifting from “epistemology, Truth, knowledge, proof to these grand abstractions and generalizations.” Which abstractions and generalizations? Mine, or one’s in what I’m reading? (Both?)
If you mean my remark about ethnocentrism, I have two things in mind. First, I get the term from Rorty, who says (I forget where) “I’m not a relativist, I’m ethnocentric” as a way of saying “W practice I’m attached to may be no more ultimately justifiable than Z practice I’m not, but I don’t see why that’s sufficient grounds for me to swap W for Z.” The point being that charges of the type “unless you hold to Y philsophical idea then you’re a relativist! that mans any moral-sounding utterance you make is void! you must think anything is as good as anything else!” are charges that don’t really stick. To my mind one of the uses of philosophy is to help us work arguments for things when we feel a need for them (like when we find ourselves facing counterarguments that we take seriously for whatever reason). But prior to the completion of that task of philosophy or if an attempt at that task fails we can still be okay to make strong assertions. For instance, someone who opposes white supremacy with conviction but without a thoroughly worked out argument against white supremacy (such that we might say their anti-racism has the philosophical status of a cultural norm or prejudice, which would make them describable as ethnocentrically anti-racist) isn’t necessarily worse than someone with a thoroughly worked out argument against white supremacy (especially if the second someone has less conviction or does less that’s useful based upon their anti-racism). This type of ethnocentrism doens’t really trouble me.
Second, I do think that in general one should be open to someone saying “you’re unfairly/inaccurately universalizing based on non-universal experiences”, which is to say, one should be open to someone saying “that sounds ethnocentric to me.” This type of ethnocentrism is troubling, especially if it has negative results and one should regularly check instances of the above type of ethnocentrism (this is part of why I like the claim that we can’t be sure we’re not being ethnocentric, because it helps provide an injunction to do this regular checking) to see if it is this second type (which is more in keeping I think with typical uses of the term ethnocentrism). Put differently, if we count this second kind of ethnocentrism as a type of error, then the point really consists of two simple things which I think hold for this type of ethnocentrism and for error in general. One, we admit that it is always possible that after the fact we might look back on something we did and find we made an error somewhere in doing that something (something which has little force in the present except to perhaps make one try to be careful). Second, we try to take seriously any claim that looks back on something we did, points to an aspect of it and says “here’s an error.” And we try to take seriously any claims that say “because of this error, Q additional negative consequence occurred.”
Anyway, I’m fine to own up to charges of inadequacies in my blog posts - that’s part of why I blog, in attempt to work out some errors so that later I’ll hopefully be less prone to them (like doing sets of math problems or verb conjugation drills in the hopes to not make mistakes in balancing one’s checkbook or speaking another language).
take care,
Nate
ps - you still planning to read more Davidson this summer?
Comment by Nate — June 2, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
Unlike you, I really like Specters of Marx - but then I have a high tolerance for Derrida, much of whose work I find insightful and often beautiful. (I certainly don’t agree that Searle was correct about ‘Signature Event Context’, and I think a careful reading of Limited Inc will show that Derrida does effectively anticipate or respond to the kind of point Searle makes.)
In fact, Spivak’s response to Specters is one of the worst things of hers I have read. Derrida briefly but I think sharply commented upon it it somewhere, I think in his piece in Ghostly Demarcations - which, if you haven’t seen it, is an excellent book to read alongside Specters, if only for a few key pieces which help to make the stakes clearer - Derrida’s, Hamacher, maybe Negri’s. And though it is longer than Specters, Derrida’s Politics of Friendship is I think a necessary companion to understand where he is attempting to go with the question of the political.
It is nice to read people attempting to understand the constitutive intersections of theory and politics, since recently I have been sucked into and then rapidly fled yet another dogmatic ‘marxist’ attack on ‘postmodernism’ - as if the time when one could construct an entire academic career around one’s erotic relationship to the word ‘postmodernism’ had not passed years ago.
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — June 3, 2007 @ 3:52 am
“”you still planning to read more Davidson this summer?”"
Yes. The material on meaning and truth seems important; yet as with Quine’s writing on language, truth, meaning (both Q. and D. were indebted to Tarksian semantics), I believe there are reasons to object to referentiality, but they are not so easy to specify. Many words (and statements made of those words) do obviously relate to a sort of conceptual knowledge, which may not be “platonic” per se, but is difficult to reduce to direct observable facts, and this is a point which I think Quineans dispense with: it’s easy to think of many abstract nouns which seem sort of anti-Quinean or anti-Davidsonian: “democracy”, justice, beauty, violence, game, etc. OK, I don’t think Quinean semantics suggests those words are verboten, necessarily, but they do seem to depend on a “meaning” which appears quite different (and not really intensional) as are common nouns (chair, tree, human, horse, etc.). Similarly for modal words: ought, might, may, etc. Perhaps that’s slightly Wittgensteinian, but my own sense is that much of what passes for semantics (or philosophy, and logic, etc.) relates to perception, cognition, neurology even, and semanticists generally don’t know enough about the mental events associated with perception to offer informed analyses.
Language, whether informal or formal (logic, propositions, mathematics) poses all sorts of difficulties, and while referentiality does seem correct for most language use, it doesn’t account for ALL language use. I’m not, however, down with the “ordinary language” people (or postmods), but I think that syntax functions in ways which are not always strictly semantic, though I am not a pro. linguist or semanticist: perhaps that’s discourse analysis or something. Lovecraftian prose creates quite a different beast than does a proposition or java code. Yeah in well-defined contexts–programming, say–the language functions semantically, referentially, denotatively–but in non-formal contexts language (and syntax, really) does all sorts of things, not merely semantic, but psychological, and one might say political.
Comment by Perezoso — June 3, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
hi Ben, Per,
Ben, do you know where Spivak’s response to Specters is? I’d be keen to read that. I’ve got some essays from Ghostly Demarcations photocopied to read when I finish Specters.
I’ll also be reviewing the Derrida and Searle again this summer and I may actually read Derrida’s response to Searle, maybe we can discuss that stuff. I got about 5 pages in to D’s response and found it so irritating I didn’t care to continue (those early pages struck me as little more than a temper tantrum - D writes a 20ish page piece, S writes a 12ish page response, D then writes 60 or 90 pages in response, in the opening of which D mocks S’s name and use of copyright - hardly a respectful engagement with the Other, it seemed to me).
I think part of the disconnect for me in reading Derrida and some other figures may be largely stylistic. I’ve also got or am open to somewhat similar beliefs as a result of other stuff I’ve read (ideas about realism, interpretedness, etc from some anglo-american philosophy and ideas about non-determinist and nonvanguardist marxism and politics from reading ultraleftist and history stuff). Having sympathy with the ideas, though, means that the (for me irritating) idiom in which those ideas are expressed appears to me as something unnecessary and abandonable. Given that I think some of those ideas are really important and given that for me the idiom puts me off, I think the idiom is not only dispensable (as a matter of taste) but _should_ be dispensed with as something which inhibits the transmission (or success) of the ideas. Just like how a lot of north american anarchists and most marxists give the ideas they believe in a bad name by the way they carry out their adherence to these beliefs. All of that aside, for what it’s worth, I looked at the marxism vs poststructuralism thread you linked to and I agree with you - strikes me as a lot of building of strawpersons in order to burn them.
Per, I’d be happy to read some of that stuff with you if you want to map out a reading schedule. Would you be open to starting with Tarski’s ’semantic definition of truth’ essay? I’m generally really interested in and sympathetic to the ordinary language stuff I’ve read.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — June 3, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
Hi Nate and benjamin (if I may)
Nate, you should listen to benjamin rosenzweig — going from what he’s written above and in the leftwrites thread, he is a very intelligent person.
I find it both strange and unsurprising that you should be ambivalent about Derrida’s work. Strange because much of what you write here so accords with ideas that Derrida has been utterly instrumental in disseminating (nevermind the question of technology and the deconstructive principle of a-destination) that it’s astounding to learn that you don’t count Derrida as at least one of sources or conditions of those ideas. Take your discussion of ethnocentrism above: it’ gesture towards a double responsibility with regard to ethnocentrism is more or less a restatement of Spivak’s main point, which is itself owed largely to her reading of Derrida (his Grammatology in particular). At the risk of overly ontologising (as it were) Derrida, he is pretty much the philosopher of the double gesture, movement, responsibility (etc.). (Although see the fabulous book by John D. Captuo, called Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant reference to Deconstruction, which, as the wonderful subtitle indicates, is in any case heavily indebted to Derrida.)
At the same time, though, your remarks about his “style” are not new, and you wouldn’t be the first person of intelligence to be put off by that dimension to Derrida’s writing. I can appreciate your point about the irritation you feel with regard to his “idiom”, but I can’t agree that Derrida’s exploitation of the stylistic or rhetorical dimensions to communication are simply “unnecessary and abandonable”. There are a number of good arguments about why things might be a little more complex than that — for instance, arguments about context, authority, strategy, about the adequacy of a transmission model of communication (not to mention the political implications of its widespread acceptance), and, most significantly here, given the way you’ve phrased your objections, about the question of audience — but they’re all a bit too much for me to recount right here, right now. In any case, there’s a good chance that you’re already aware of, or at least attuned to the possibility of, a number of those arguments.
All I will say in that regard, therefore, is that when you come back to reading the Derrida-Searle debate, you might like to try the following: (1) given that Derrida is widely known both for “respectfully engaging with the Other” and for “being playful with language”, consider whether there might be a “serious” question being raised in or by Derrida’s seemingly infelicitous and disrespectful reply to Searle; (2) if you don’t make it through Derrida’s reply, try to get hold of and to read the “Afterword” in Derrida’s Limited Inc (the book that emerged from the debate); and (3) consider reading a wonderful little book called Debating Derrida (by Niall Lucy, a friend of mine) — it’s quite short and could be read in half a day, and the second chapter is devoted specifically to the Searle debate, while the whole book continually addresses the question of Derrida’s style.
Finally — and this last bit is addressed as much to benjamin as to you, Nate — I contributed a comment to the leftwrites topic directing readers to a paper, which you might also be interested in. here’s what I wrote over there:
The question or postmodernism’s relation to the Left is an important one.
For those who are interested — though, judging from the above, it’s likely only Benjamin will be open to the question — here’s a paper (in two parts) in which the question is addressed with regard (largely) to contemporary public and political debate in Australia:
“The Postmodern Left”
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5668 (Part 1)
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5680 (Part 2)
Cheers
rob
Comment by rob — June 4, 2007 @ 1:15 am
(I wonder what Spivak would make of being a mere conditioned echo of a “source” and condition of thought and knowledge?)
Aijaz Ahmad very observant about Spectres here:
http://newleftreview.org/?view=1784
Comment by chabert — June 4, 2007 @ 2:46 am
hi Rob, Colonel,
Colonel, can you unpack the parenthetical for me? I’m not sure I follow. Thanks for the Ahmad article. I’ve got about 50 pages of Specters left, so I’m going to wait to read that till I finish the book.
Rob, I don’t mean to say Derrida’s no good for anything to anyone. I’m just not clear what use he is to me. Let me put it this way - someone who is a thoroughgoing Derridean and I may be fellow travelers in some respects. That’s great, and insofar as that’s true then I ought to take Derrida seriously or at least not discount him out of hand. (Several good friends who I respect a lot take a lot from Derrida - and others from Deleuze, who I also find hard to take.) But that only tells me not to make claims about Derrida that I can’t back up, which I don’t think I do. Beyond that though … I dunno. So far he doesn’t work for me.
I do want to say, though, that all I’ve read from Derrida is the piece Searle responds to and most of Specters of Marx. My criticisms are limited to those pieces and are not claims about others of Derrida’s works (not having read them, I can’t speak to them). One thing I’ll say for now is simply that I don’t like Derrida on Marx - not to say that Derrida only does one thing, but insofar as Derrida does (some of) the things he does, I don’t like it when he does them with Marx. This is in part because I feel a bit proprietary about Marx (that remark is the best things I’ve read by Spivak). Insofar as I’ve found things in Specters useful, they’re things I’d already read elsewhere and the specific-to-Derrida elements - or rather, the elements that sound to me specifically like Derrida - didn’t add anything. I have some other slightly more substantive objections to Specters of Marx which I’ll put up after I finish the book.
I had a more straightforward response to the piece where he talked about Austin, which is that I think he misrepresents Austin. (My notes on that are here http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/02/21/is-derrida-on-about/ - and the Austin stuff starts after the asterisk.) I’ve said this to other friends before who then say “Derrida isn’t trying to represent Austin.” If that’s so, then “he fails to adequately represent Austin” should be a true claim (insofar as we would expect it to be very unlikely that someone not trying to represent someone else’s argument would somehow manage to represent that argument) and an uncontroversial one. It may well be that misrepresenting Austin was part of what Derrida was trying to accomplish - perhaps a perlocutionary act of confusing the reader, in which case he succeeded because he confused Searle by Searle’s own admission, or perhaps some other goal. I’ve also found — and I’m not implying you do this Rob — that friends of mine who are pro-Derrida are keen to defend him in the debate with Searle while at the same time are keen to bash Searle. It’s a two part move: Derrida’s intentions are good and the effects of (or, what is enacted by) his works in the debate with Searle are also good, Searle’s intentions are bad (and/or Searle is defective - stupid, perhaps - in some way that makes him incapable of really getting Derrida) and the effects of (or enactments in) Searle’s work are also bad. What’s notable in those conversations I’ve had is that there seems to be a different standard applied to Derrida and to Searle. Personally I think it’s because with those friends it’s a rigged game - the odds favor Derrida in a Derridean house, so to speak. At this point I am more anti-Derrida than pro- but I’m not pro-Searle from what I’ve read of his other work (not a lot, but some) and when I first read the debate I was really ready to conclude with Derrida and against Searle. Hopefully we can discuss all this further after I re-read the Derrida and Searle, and I will try my best to get through Derrida’s response to Searle. Thanks as well for the recommended works. I’ll look at those when I get a chance, especially the one by your friend.
I’ll also look at your pieces, thanks for posting them. I’m not going to read them tonite (unless I get another bout of insomnia, heaven forbid). Real quick, though, I do want to say that I’m not invested in any “postmodernism/post-structuralism is reactionary” kind of debate. As I said in another discussion on here somewhere, I’m generally not sure that academic work is particularly politically valuable, but that includes work I like very much and my own work - I don’t reserve that fate for postmodernism(s) or try to conclude that way more often for postmodernism(s) than for other bodies of thought. Which is to say, I do try to stay open to questions like this and try to not be selective about that openness.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — June 4, 2007 @ 3:59 am
Hi Nate
I was just about to post something, but had to refresh, when I saw this last comment. I was actually about to write something about not feeling that everyone has to like/agree with Derrida, that not everyone whose work I value does like/agree with Derrida, and that I have a lot of respect for people who justify their preference for not reading Derrida in terms of their needs being met by other philosophers, etc. If I’d managed to post more quickly, I might have saved you some typing. In short, I respect your “stance” regarding Derrida’s work, and I look forward to what you may have to say on those parts of it you do get round to reading and writing on.
I also wanted to say that I’ve only just noticed that you edited the main post. All my comments so far have been premised on the assumption that you’re only part-way through the Spivak article, so apologies if they seem not to take into account what you’ve written in the second part.
Just want to clarify, too, that the paper at the URLs isn’t by me but by a couple of friends of mine, one of which is the author of the Derrida book I recommended. I mainly posted the link here for benjamin rosenzweig’s benefit, since he may appreciate not only the argument but also the context (judging from his blog, he’s based in Australia?).
Finally, I think chabert’s paranthetical remark was directed more at me, or at any rate, written in response to my previous comment. To chabert, then, I say “touché”.
Cheers
Comment by rob — June 4, 2007 @ 4:21 am
I visited the offices of the New Left Review in London and received from the editor a copy of the latest issue of the journal, which includes Jacques Derrida’s ‘A Lecture on Marx’. I read the ‘Lecture’ the next day, on my flight to Ljubljana. It struck me that Derrida himself had opened up the space for a dialogue—a contentious dialogue, maybe—between Marxism and poststructuralism, specifically deconstruction, as it now stands, after the dissolution of Communist states in the former Soviet Union and East-Central Europe. Derrida’s text I read, as I said, on Saturday afternoon.
Ah! So it’s Aijaz Ahmad who wrote the legendary review of Specters based on a reading of the book during a one-hour flight! I always thought it was Terry Eagleton, but there you go…
I’ll just say that it took me a week to read Specters for the first time. Ahmad’s reading abilityies are truly astounding!
Comment by rob — June 4, 2007 @ 4:33 am
Aijaz Ahmad who wrote the legendary review of Specters based on a reading of the book during a one-hour flight!
“Legendary” indeed! He didn’t write a review at all. He spoke at a lecture: “The lecture itself, which is simply a reflection on the kind of opening that Derrida provides in his own lecture, I started writing this morning—which means that, for all the appearance of a confidently finished text, what you are going to hear is only an initial, provisional response.” It was printed in NLR. It’s an astute and witty response, despite the haste I think, don’t you?
Comment by chabert — June 4, 2007 @ 10:15 am
hi Rob, Colonel,
Rob, no sweat re: any of this. I edited the post inserting the rest of my notes after your last comment on Spivak (and even if that hadn’t been the case I wouldn’t have been offended). I did that because I like to keep all my notes in one post as much as possible. I know that can limit the blog’s utility for others, for which I’m sorry, but that’s not the main point of the blog. Also I’m fine to agree to disagree on Derrida and, as much as I don’t like him, it’s good for me to have to justify my claims more than I would without you urging me to not be so hasty.
That Ahmad piece sounds like it was a blogpost!
I checked just now and NLR’s site requires a subscription to read the article. I think I can get it from the library but are either of you aware of a nonsubscription version available?
best,
Nate
Comment by Nate — June 4, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
Hi Nate
It takes more than an hour to fly London - Ljubljana, even at the speak Ahmad writes at. His tranductions are entertaining, but often spurious (the ellipses in his quotes are revealing). But Eagleton’s reading is a far finer example of how to fail to hide your spite when you write a review. What I like about your original post here is the open attempt to engage with Spivak’s politics - I’d be interested to see what you made of the rewrite of that subaltern speaks essay that Spivak provides in Critique of Postcolonial Reason.
She comes to visit us at CCS, Goldsmiths for a week in November.
Thanks for this discussion - refreshing. I like to hear more stories of Maoists (French or Chinese - both are too rare today).
Red Salute
Trinketization
Comment by John — June 10, 2007 @ 8:57 pm
I meant ’speed’ at which Ahmad writes, of course - speak-speed (I blame the noxious substances that provoked me to respond in the first place). Thing is, he might have read slower, and done better, thought twice, and had a better time of it. Same goes for me I guess. Ha. J.
Comment by John — June 11, 2007 @ 12:20 pm