I’m lazy by inclination (lazy defined as “not likely to do things unless they are enjoyable”). Luckily, one of my strengths is making myself find things enjoyable, it’s the main way I accomplish things. I’m not athletic by inclination and I’ve not had much success making myself find exercise enjoyable. I like biking. I guess.
I need to exercise despite not enjoying exercise. I’ve been going to the gym somewhat regularly for a while again now, trying to stay disciplined. Not just going to the gym, but going to the gym and getting a cardio-vascular workout. I find lifting weights easier because I need it less. I’m in greater need of cardio-vascular fitness and so I find that kind of workout less enjoyable. One way I try to stay motivated is by distraction. Without distraction, I count the time as it passes on the treadmill, thinking something along the lines of “oh man I hate being on this stupid thing I can’t believe it’s only been two minutes so far.” With distraction, it takes much less effort to stay on the treadmill. To distract myself, I try to think while on the treadmill. Like, to think about things, and stuff.
Today I thought about the topic of a paper draft my friend Matt sent me. The paper is on the theme of kairos in Negri and Agamben, among other things. Several things struck me on this. First, it struck me that it seems easy to think of kairos and jetz-zeit in non-kairological ways. Similar to singularity and difference. What some specific X which is a singularity (kairos/difference) has in common with every other thing which is a singularity (kairos/difference) is not very interesting and cuts against the attempt to pay attention to the specific X.
Second, it struck me that there are two approaches to kairos, which I’ll call objective and methodological.
The objective approach is to think that there are kairos moments (kairoi?) and non-kairos moments, like the time of collective struggle vs that of waged labor. This is appealing in a way, but it implies that time on the clock can only ever be homogenous time, which is simply false and inhibits our ability to understand how certain kairos moments come about. That is, the objective approach retains a thought of empty homogenous time. This I think relates to the ‘non-kairological’ thought of kairos, since sorting moments into kairos and not kairos involves appeal to the qualities of kairos as such.
The methodological approach is to think from the point of view of kairos and jetz-zeit, which supplants thinking empty homogenous time. It doesn’t involve claims about this or that time or sorting - here’s empty time, here’s jetz-zeit - so much as a sort of orientation toward time in general. This has downsides - time on the clock as jetz-zeit?! - but it doesn’t involve the retention of empty homogenous time.
(No citations cuz the books in question are in the basement.)
general discontent recently with ontology in politics makes me really want to say that these words (kairos etc.) really obfuscates the link between thought and political action. What does an ontological reckoning with time really give us? Are they better arms for revolution? I think not.
no, I’m not opposed to scholarship, but i have a hard time pretending nowadays that it has anything to do with struggle.
in any case, I’ll get back to my Leibniz now…
Comment by tzuchien — July 30, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
I agree completely. I’m mostly done with the newest Rorty collection (Philosophical Papers v4), which I like. Among other things, he repeats his pragmatist assertion that something which doesn’t impact nonphilosophical practice shouldn’t matter to philosophers. I don’t feel that strongly myself, I feel like one has a sort of fundamental right to speculate about angels on pins and the like (this is part of how I think of Ranciere’s defense of worker-poets alongside strikers etc), but I do feel part of the main point is right - that there’s a sort of (self-serving) category mistake made when one says “angels on pins matters a great deal to X important practice such that I am not simply exercising my fundamental right to inert speculation.” It may well prove true in the end, but that proof would have to be shown rather than presumed.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 31, 2007 @ 11:43 am
Incidentally, like I think I’ve said to you on the phone before, this makes me like Badiou’s assertion that mathematics is ontology/ontology is mathematics, though read in a deflationary fashion. Being qua being is what pure mathematics talks about and math is a good way to talk about being qua being. Therefore if you’re interested in ontology, go read a math book. If you’re interested in politics, though, read something else and quit talking about ontology. It’s sort of like the remark on being in the early parts of the science of logic, that being qua being has no qualities and therefore is indistinguishable from nothing (which implies in a sense that Seinfeld is a show about being). The being of X isn’t very interesting especially to politics and other things which we think are pretty important. It’s all about the historical part of historical materialism.
later,
Nate
Comment by Nate — July 31, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
Hi Nate. I wonder though…everybody (except a minority of those professionally engaged in the philosophy industry) seems to agree that this kind of thing is neither here nor there “for struggle.” But this is really I think assuming that “struggle” means working class struggle, really only one side of ongoing struggle. Is this stuff equally irrelevant to ruling class struggle? tzuchien you ask if this affords “arms for revolution”? and you answer no, doesn’t look that way. But what about arms for counterrevolution and revolution-prevention? I’m not so sure this product stands at the same distance as it were, from left politics and from the politics of the class that does actually generally underwrite and produce/consume this stuff.
Comment by chabert — August 1, 2007 @ 7:35 am
Something like the way Foucault’s big initial focus on this is absorbed without difficulty sort of suggests that institutions really do have a political tendency which, while not invulnerable to various kinds of resistance and even alteration, cannot be simply shed by individual works or the oeuvre of an individual producer. So like even the question posed vis à vis individual product (which is ultimately trapped in Great Man History) - do hardt and negri do something effectively radical with these books? - is a problem and ideological, since they could not, on that scale, all alone, try as they might, pure of heart and all, but only maybe be part of something much larger and collective that could possibly be accomplishing something related to real social change.
Comment by chabert — August 1, 2007 @ 7:50 am
I mean there is a kind of common habit to notice that obviously philosophy product “is political” (all culture product being political) and conclude that therefore it is really a kind of neutral ground, form, vessel with “politics” added (by individuals) as content, so that there is this symmetry - reactionary or subversive sculpture, movies, songs etc. But really it’s not symmetrical. Much (most? all?) culture product of this type could be default status-quo maintaining and could be kind of stubbornly rooted in this respect.
Comment by chabert — August 1, 2007 @ 8:06 am
As an example: I was thinking about that zizek article in the times last year about the moozlimenace that was argued about. The white supremacist myth of yerupeen Spirit, with everyone nice interesting educated creative and “modern” being labelled either “western” or “westernised”, which he deployed is something that has really been completely discredited by the global university, except among a really reactionary minority. There is so so much really good product examining and debunking this, telling it’s history, a whole massive library taking this apart, growing since the early part of the 20th century. Yet. It doesn’t broadly “take”, even among those professionally engaged in the consumption of this very product. One is tempted to be very vulgar and suppose that this ideology will survive as long as the real conditions it “matches” and complements survives; that as long as europe(america) dominates in economic, political and military realms, that figment “yerup” it generates in discourse will be valorised and worshipped and believed in by the (more or less) privileged by these conditions. The self-consciousness of the ideology, the capacity for self critique, is assumed to be a kind of magic which dispells it, but it really doesn’t dispell anything. Yerup and the Spirit of the West survives its perpetual debunking and analysis and critique so that one can only suppose even though it is an intellectual product it is not something that can be eradicated intellectually; subjecting it to doubt and scrutiny is not enough; it really could be more consequence nthan cause, the dominated element in a relation, and the real conditions have to change before this cluster of beliefs can really vanish or change.
Comment by chabert — August 1, 2007 @ 8:36 am
hi Chabert,
I think things look different or feel different for T and I because we work in or close to the philosophy industry and know many others who do so. One of the props of at least some sections of that industry is “you’re doing political work, you’re making a difference - politically, not ethically - right now and getting paid for it! (so quit your complaining and no you can’t have your partner included on the health insurance)” etc. That’s one thing. The other is that at least some of these books are widely read (ish) outside the academy. I know very many people in movement circles that read Negri in the US and in Europe. In instances like that I think there are people who are sincere and who are working on worthwhile projects who sometimes make mistakes like thinking immanence vs transcendence is another worthwhile project, politically speaking. I was in a Capital v1 reading group once with some friends, several of whom were members of far left and pro-revolution organizations. One of them - a great comrade with a ton of experience and knowledge and insight - was super into Hegel. At one point (near the end of the reading group, which dissolved quietly) he looked up after reading a passage with a huge smile and said loudly “this is a syllogistic mediation!” He really thought (still does think) that the dialectic matters politically. And not in the sense that like an innovation in one arena can have effects elsewhere (as in, I think we can say that the concepts of dialectics did have some historical importance and political effects but that’s not the same thing as saying “doing dialectics is doing politics” just as doing kairology isn’t doing politics).
As for the rest, I’m not sure. I think universities are part of an industry. I think that anything produced in that industry for sale is likely to bear the marks of its conditions of origin either in its content or in its distribution or both (I’m thinking here of newspapers, how papers like Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times provide somewhat clear presentations of what’s going on and are distributed to a certain consumer base, while other papers distributed to others have very different consumer bases - I’d imagine there’s an analogous thing with academic works). That’s part of why, despite my own interest in Marx and so on, I’m not convinced that academic work - work that builds one’s academic career and is encouraged/rewarded by institutions - matters very much politically speaking to people outside of universities. (What matters most to my mind is building organizaton, both informal and formal. I favor the latter though it’s always animated by informal organization if effective.)
Comment by Nate — August 1, 2007 @ 10:58 am
thanks nate. just to clarift on thing I meant to say was, for example, you write: “the same thing as saying “doing dialectics is doing politics” just as doing kairology isn’t doing politics).” What I understand you to be saying here is that you’ve concluded that doing dialectics isn’t doing leftist or anticapitalist politics. It’s not really clear that it isn’t doing any kind of politics. That is, there is another option which hasn’t been considered, which is that “doing dialectics” is doing reactionary or conservative politics, which are not simply a mirror of left politics. I just meant to point out this is a possibility often sort of noticed in passing but not really taken seriously either as concern to be evaluated or as assumption. It’s nt clear for example that just because an individual book does not have some kind of subversive impact or cannot measureably assist political struggle of a leftist sort, that this same book does not contribute to a indeed useful or necessary ideology reproduction serving the politics and the interests of the social group who actually publish these books and retain their authors. It’s possible I mean. The only options are not politically radically leftist or politically inert.
Comment by chabert — August 1, 2007 @ 11:31 am
oh also:
“I think things look different or feel different for T and I because we work in or close to the philosophy industry and know many others who do so. One of the props of at least some sections of that industry is “you’re doing political work, you’re making a difference - politically, not ethically - right now and getting paid for it! (so quit your complaining and no you can’t have your partner included on the health insurance)” etc.”
This is not unique to university philosophy departments but is seen across culture industry sectors and media (though most are better insured). I was up at the google offices here not long ago - very very strong conviction of serving the commonweal there. Or so it seemed.
Comment by chabert — August 1, 2007 @ 11:50 am
Got it. That makes sense re: the sort of politics thing but my impulse is to say it works the same way for the class enemy too. Doing politics means the construction and exercise of power. I can see how as part of that there is a need ideological work, a role of writers of all sorts etc, but I think if someone really wanted to help the other side (just like our side) writing a theory work isn’t the best way to proceed. Another way to put it is that that kind of stuff works on other practices, it always at most does politics at a remove (like it presses on something in order to get the something to press on something else). I find it much more convincing to say that dialectics or immanence or differance or whatever are more like dead ends people get wrapped up than I find them convincing as politics for the other side. Their political effect is to sap or misdirect energy more than to build the energy of the other side, so to speak.
Re: the culture industries generally, that was my impression. Before getting into the university racket I worked in NGOs where almost the exact same ideology is present.
best,
Nate
Comment by Nate — August 1, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
From my experience the same could be said for journalism too - both in that even journalists who see themselves as critical form part of a product that is on the whole very conservative; and in that they are paid very poorly for quite hard work, but often see it as a calling rather than a job.
Comment by Mike B — August 1, 2007 @ 5:41 pm
mebbe the pitch could be altered to a more convincing: “you should be grateful to work in the only reasonably remunerative sector of the culture industry that is harmless politically.” No small attraction surely, considering.
thanks for the replies.
Comment by chabert — August 1, 2007 @ 5:48 pm
Yeah totally. For the record, I think aspects of the work done in universities are really great. I like teaching. I particularly like working with students on their writing. And I got a lot out of some great courses in my schooling. (I’ve had extra-curricular educational experiences which were at least as high quality and important to me, though.) I just don’t think of that as something that makes a political difference. At best, I think it’s like nursing or being an emergency room social worker - one does work that helps some people in ways that they feel good about. That great, and is totally compatible with the structural logic of the system. I’m generally of the view that pretty much nobody draws a paycheck for (certainly nobody has a career of) doing things which will undermine that logic.
I actually want to eventually write a blog post on this culture industry ideology, I think it’s equivalent to the idea of a wage for whiteness or love as a wage for the nonmonetarily remunerated labors of reproduction (a payment in kind in certain use values). Once that ideology no longer serves, many jobs in those industries don’t look quite so attractive and they look a lot more like, you know, jobs. There was some strike years ago I think maybe it was clerical workers at an Ivy League U, one of their slogans was “you can’t eat prestige.”
take it easy,
Nate
Comment by Nate — August 1, 2007 @ 10:48 pm