Thanks, Apple
Not sure we really needed a new Smashmouth, though.
I suppose Derrideans are pretty well-heeled these days
Still, £10 for a lecture seems pretty steep. The Žižek one is booked up already, but looks like it’s going to be a recapitulation of his standard anti-Derrida argument, which I’ve read three or four times, heard twice on the radio and seen once in person, so I’m pretty sanguine about missing it. Obviously I’ve bought a ticket for the Badiou lecture — anyone recommend any others in particular?
Impossible potential
A very interesting article from the Contretemps issue on Agamben traces Negri’s opposition to Agamben from a Spinozist point of view:
> For Negri, the concept of bare life denies the potentiality of being. Like Hobbesʼs Leviathan,
> which promotes a vision of life as subjugated and unable to resist, the
theory of
> bare life represents a kind of foundation myth for the capitalist state. It is a cry of weakness
> that constructs the body as a negative limit and licenses a nihilistic view of history. More
> pointedly, “bare life is the opposite of Spinozan potential and corporeal joy.� With this
> statement, Negri reaches the nub of his disagreement with Agamben. As an alternative
> to the Aristotelian notion of potentiality (as intrinsically and paradoxically connected to
> the act), he poses the Spinozan vision of potentiality (potenza) as the unstoppable and
> progressive expansion of desire (cupiditas).
I’ve recently been pondering something similar from the opposite direction, wondering about potential Agambenian criticisms of Spinoza, or at least the Spinoza that Damasio keeps talking about, the biologist interested in the _regulation of life_. But I don’t think it can be as simple as a confrontation of Agamben _against_ Spinoza. Agamben explicitly mentions Spinoza as taking steps (although, he says, incomplete ones) to move away from the Aristotelian account of potentiality which founds sovereignty.
k-punk suggests that Damasio, as a biologist, “concentrates on the organic, perhaps fatally equating Spinoza’s ‘body’ with the organism.” And certainly Agamben, with his painstaking disection of the very concept of the organic (which, I take it, is _the_ point of Homo sacer) would have no time for such a vitalist Spinoza. The question is (and I don’t know enough about Spinoza to even, really, attempt an answer to it), can this vitalist interpretation be avoided given Spinoza’s concentration on a particular sort of immanence? What is life if not simply the will to go on living, the organism/mechanism’s ability to preserve itself in its existence.
Can Spinoza’s ontology encompass the kind of radical break that would provide an alternative to this zombie vitalism (and vitalism is always zombie vitalism; that’s the point of zombie stories)? I may be wrong, but I think that Badiou, at least, suggests that the answer is ‘no’ in his essay, ‘Spinoza’s closed ontology’ (in Theoretical writings). The suggestion in the Contretemps paper seems to be that Virno, arguing against Aristotle’s theory of potentiality, likewise calls for an ontology that can support radical rupture, arguing for a potentiality that is not located in time and is fundamentally irreducible to the time-bound being of the act (”Far from being simply inactual, potentiality is inactualizable”).
I think, and I’m currently arguing in a paper I’m writing, that Badiou’s _event_, like this reading of Virno, can provide the new ontology of potentiality that Agamben is looking for.
Lust for life
Good to see Avril Lavigne looking happy. Her new song’s a nice change from all the moping she’s been doing lately, and definitely lends itself to the slightly winsome Iggy Pop impression (I realise that sounds like a contradiction) she was doing on Popworld at the weekend.
Also on Popworld were The Faders, who inasmuch as they are a female Busted are obviously a good idea. Not sure they’re quite the perfect implementation of the idea (I guess we’ll need to wait a little while for the female McFly to come along). According to their bio, they’re all Adam Ant fans, though, which is excellent.
“In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!”
I fucking love Aldi. Have you ever been to a 24-hour supermarket when you’re really drunk? Aldi is like that only more so, a demented, joyful parody of a supermarket. I particularly like the competing brands, all made by Aldi, and the variety of products available, so indistinguishable they come pre-packed in the same box. Do I want tea-tree oil and mint shaving foam, or sensitive-skin moisturising shaving foam? The ideological illusion of free market choice, perfectly exposed.
(The title of this post is from Allen Ginsburg’s A supermarket in California)
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Fraternal greetings from our underwater comrades!
See the power of Mao Zedong thought! Following vigorous agitational work, the octopus fraction of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the Pacific (Marxist-Leninist) has adopted the Comrade Chairman’s policy of walking on two legs.
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The leftist BBC
Scheduling Boys don’t cry and Mulan on consecutive days. Coincidence, or pro-transvestite propoganda?
“Under communism it’s Christmas every day”
You find the best stuff on Flickr, sometimes.
You can also find some of my pictures on Flickr (you’ll have to scroll past the Žižek, though).
Scoop!
The Wrong Side of Capitalism’s international network of philosophy paparazzi have come up with the goods: pictures of Žižek’s wedding, from some kind of Argentinian Hello equivalent.
Apparently, Žižek got cold feet and fled just before the wedding. Luckily, his fiancée’s parents are lacanians, so they sent some heavies to make sure Žižek didn’t give up on his desire.
T US LEGISLATORS
Advocating constitutional amendments to define words, or passing legislation which explicitly only applies to _two people_ makes you look like you really shouldn’t be in charge of a fucking country. Please sort it out.
KTHX BYE
Oh, and while I’ve got your attention, you’ll want to stop choosing names for legislation based on the hilarious acronyms they produce, too.