Highly effective practice of assemblage formation in the blogosphere

Difference and Givenness Levi Bryant

All else aside, that’s a dullwitted response, and a standard one among those who equate ‘politicized fundamentalist Christianity’ with ‘Christian beliefs.’ I’m “just sayin’” and all.
It’s reductive and dishonest to reduce my critism to this offhand sarcastic remark in a comment thread that has 88 posts, over half of which are mine. Sorry, but you don’t get to set “all else aside”. Nonetheless, with that point in mind, I see little reason to extend any good will to so-called “Christians” that can’t even be bothered to act according to the particular values expressed by their savior. If I’m told that I’m not in a position to judge this outside of Christianity all bets are off as others can just set up whatever values they wish. “You shall know them by their acts.”

In my view, one of the most effective weapons in the Christian’s arsenal is not their arguments, not their promises of salvation, but how a Christian lives and relates to others. This would hold not only for those that already belong to that community, but especially to those outside the community. But if this is the case, there must be collective standards that allow these things to be recognized by others. These standards can be historically contingent, but collective nonetheless. Part of what’s extraordinary in Jesus (for me) is how he relates to the Samaritins (the despised), women, lepers, thieves, etc., and his hostility to certain segments of his own people that are highly respected such as the moneychangers in the temple or the self-righteous, holier than thou Pharisees. These are the things that are most convincing to me, not magician stories and certainly not self-righteous and hateful behavior. larvalsubjects said this on May 2nd, 2007 at 5:54 pm

Zizek and Negation Shaviro at Pinocchio Theory has written a brilliant critique of Zizek and his use of negation. Special kudos go to the truly magnanimous Dejan for locating Zizek’s article on the first place and “seeding” the blogosphere to generate discussion (highly effective practice of assemblage formation there). K-Punk also weighs in here.

I am especially interested in Shaviro’s passing references to both Deleuze’s critique of negation in Nietzsche and Philosophy and the Deleuzian concept of negation, as I’ve been thinking lately about Deleuze’s concept of difference developed there as a sort of potent difference that exceeds the horizon of context, thereby unsettling the possibility of overdetermination and allowing for something like a “singular universal” (which Deleuze developes in Difference and Repetition). Such an affirmative or potent difference would be transhistorical in that it cannot be reduced to its historical setting, but nonetheless is not a universality in the sense of a repetition of the same or something that is identical in all possible worlds, but rather a repetition that produces difference in all possible worlds (it’s productive capacity does not exhaust itself). One might think, for instance, of a great work of art whose fecundity does not exhaust itself but rather generates an infinity of different interpretations in different social and historical settings, suggesting that there’s always something that fails to be integrated.

My dear friend Melanie led to these thoughts, when she expressed irritations at some passages in Holland’s book on Deleuze and Guattari where the eternity of the concept is discussed with respect to What is Philosophy?. Just what can this mean? I think such a potent notion of difference is just what Deleuze has in mind in The Logic of Difference when he talks about the eternity of the event that nonetheless cannot be reduced to an empirical happening or state-of-affairs. Here, perhaps, is a rejoinder to Badiou’s truth-procedures taht would allow for a far more nuanced and relational level of analysis. I hope to develop more around this theme in months to come. Anyway, read the post! ~ by larvalsubjects on May 2, 2007. 7 Responses to “Zizek and Negation”

Mark, any idea when Brassier’s book is to be released? I looked into the write up over at Amazon and it does look truly interesting. Terrific points about Deleuze’s rejection of negation as well, though I’m not sure I agree with the assertion that it ultimately boils down to a tautology. I think there are more compelling ontological reasons behind his hostility to negation. I would, however, agree that it’s pushed a bit too far such that it becomes counter-productive at points. larvalsubjects said this on May 2nd, 2007 at 10:35 pm

I’ll weigh in too, as I seem to be constantly over there at the moment. I think the Zizek piece as someone said, is basically him being childishly and annoyingly contrary as he often is. His swinging close to Stalinism is simply not at all amusing, and should make any leftist actually concerned with making real changes nervous - hasn’t the left fought long and hard enough to distance itself from these oppressive regimes that it is (wrongly) associated with to have Zizek return us to an easy dismissal via the “you basically want totalitarianism” card. Alex said this on May 3rd, 2007 at 1:05 am

For your reading enjoyment mr. sinthome, see here: www.parrhesiajournal.org/ for a recent text by Badiou, “The Event in Deleuze”. Keith said this on May 3rd, 2007 at 1:34 am

Thanks for this, Sinthome. I think that the idea of “affirmative difference” in Difference & Repetition is much more valuable than the way the critique of negation, and affirmation of affirmation, is worked out in the (early) Nietzsche book. The discussion of the Eternal Return in the Nietzsche book is, I think, the beginning of what gets developed in the form of what you are calling the “singular universal” in Difference & Repetition. The crucial point is that singularity connects to universality without the mediation of anything in between (without particulars and generals).

And I do agree that what you say about “great work of art whose fecundity does not exhaust itself but rather generates an infinity of different interpretations in different social and historical settings” does explain why Deleuze also refers to the singular universal as being “eternal.” Beyond that, I relate Deleuze’s “eternal events” and “eternal truths” to Whitehead’s notion of “eternal objects,” but that is probably because I tend to see everything in Deleuze through a Whiteheadian lens these days. Excuse the lack of rigor in these quick comments… it’s been a long day. Steven Shaviro said this on May 3rd, 2007 at 1:43 am

There’s good evidence for the connection to Whitehead and the Leibniz book, but he makes reference to Whitehead as early as DR, if I remember right. Whitehead is a constant reference point in my own work, though I seldom mention him. larvalsubjects said this on May 3rd, 2007 at 3:56 am