What in the hell …

From Makeworlds, Deleuze on human rights (via) -

“Law isn’t created through declarations of human rights. Creation, in law, is jurisprudence, and that’s the only thing there is. So: fighting for jurisprudence. That’s what being on the left is about. It’s creating the right.”

This quote is a briefer excerpt of a brief excerpt worth reading in its entirety. I’m not generally fussed either way about human rights, I figure if that’s an idiom people use to express something I agree with then great. If not, then not. But this bit about fighting for jurisprudence, being on the left is about creating law, creating right…? What’s with that? Left wing of capital-and-sovereignty, perhaps? It reminds me of Negri (which reminds me, I need to chase up the reference where he says movements always express a juridical aspiration). I’m all for this perspective tactically, if it makes sense and has an aggregation power or effect, but I don’t take the long term goal to be the production of right, creation in law, but the rupture and breakdown thereof - law destroying rather than law preserving violence.

I contributed something to the LS symposium on Schmitt’s Theory of the Partisan. John asked a question there about a remark I made, asking if I think power is always reactive. My remark was a repetition of the sense in various things I read, to the effect that constituted power is always reactive. (more…)

Answering, of course, requires being able to say what’s old about the past and what is and is not old about the present. In the context of a longer post, Steve Shapiro at Pinocchio Theory kindly responded to my notes on Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” (more…)

As in, ’societies of control.’ (more…)

Notes to self, adding more subcategories to the infinite reading list. (more…)