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I know you guys are all riled up, but it would be worth chilling
out. As a reader of this thread I'd like to point out that nobody
has either 'won' or 'lost' it, but the degeneration in the tone is
a classic side-effect of the echoing ping-pong of faceless digital
communication where the signal gets more and more distorted. Can
the participants please take a deep breath, have a walk,
acknowledge each other's unique humanity, and then maybe meet in a
pub to actually have a civil conversation. If there is anything we
know, it's that nobody gets anywhere in this movement by treating
each other like enemies
Cheers,
Brett
@suitpossum
On 28/10/2018 10:04, Alexander Bard
wrote:
Hahahaha,
and there comes the Rousseuian personal attack. Exactly my
point.
There
are apparently people so evil and dangerous that the mere
mentioning of their names disqualifies the mentioner from any
further attachment. See Ian's outburst below. Are the gallows
what await me next?
While
I thought Nettime was s forum for grown-ups - in which case
separating person and opinion (meaning Nelson Mandela may be
wrong and Adolf Hitler may be right on details) - is a
fundamental requirement, Ian wants this to be a kindergarden
faux discussion forum for the good children isolating
themselves against the evil children on the outside.
Superiority versus inferiority in the moralist struggle. Sooo
Rousseauian. And exactly what is so fundamentally
pathologiocal and infantile with identity politics. What could
possibly be a more Rousseuian attitude than that?
I
happily dine with everybody and anybody without becoming them.
As my great dad taught me when I was five years old. And if
The Left may not even listen to and learn from Candace Owens,
Nick Land and/or Adolf Hitler for that matter, then whatever
that Left is, deserves to die its current slow death into
total irrelevance. It is not a proletarian left at all, it's
just a church lady left.
But
I'm all for The New Left. A return to Freud and Marx. And I'm
happy my message in a bottle in this forum worked big time
considering how many offlist new amazing contacts my postings
created. Nettime is still very much alive (thank the God who
does not exist) even if not on the mailing list itself.
And
Ian, our dear historian of identitarianism Asad Haider will
never attract any masses. Because he again does not have a
narrative to attract anybody. Except possibly for the eternal
self-victims that Marx so grandly despised.
Thank
you, everybody!
Alexander
Bard
"Like
charismatic Candace Owens says on Fox News these days,
race does not exist to her. Neither does it to me. And
gender is merely a rough but not fixed orientation toward
dividual archetypes of tribal contribution."
What a strikingly ahistorical, antimaterialist, and
ideological statement. Anyone who finds Candace Owens and
Nick Land salvageable deserves no attention, and certainly
no serious consideration or dialogue. Best of luck with
your fantasy of a pure universal class which exists only
for itself as an abstraction thoroughly divorced from
reality.
Dear
Ian
It's
great that you bring up Asad Haider because he is a
brilliant historian of identity politics and I agree
with him that the big shift happened in 1977. But
while for Haider 1977 meant a deepening of
emancipatory struggle to include feminist and
anti-racist minoritarian causes that he insists were
ignored prior to then, I disagree and mean that this
shift was rather an ideological turn away from Marx
straight into the arms of Rousseau and no deepening
at all but rather a massive loss. The preoccupation
became one of medial attention (the attentionalist
call for "has everybody been seen and heard" rather
than the socialist call for "has everybody been
given the means and resources toward equal
opportunity") instead of class struggle proper and
has remained so ever since.
Once
this dramatic shift of "leftist activism" met with
postmodernism's hatred of the grand narrative as
idea (which I as a Hegelian insist is in itself just
another form of subconscious grand narrative) we
ended up with the mess we have today. Laclau's and
Mouffe's hegemonic race to the bottom. Specialized
subcultural struggles "within" rather than "away
from" victimhood with no clear vision in sight.
Meanwhile that clear goal will always be lacking
unless there is a grand heroic narrative that
connects the struggles and lifts up its participants
to a tribal and today also hopefully global whole.
My
work is therefore all about tribal anthropology
instead (tribes in Greenland, Botswana, New Guinea
and China are all alike) now moving into data
anthropology about contemporary humans to build a
universal story of the tribe in all its variety and
diversity. This is the return to Marx that I insist
on. Like charismatic Candace Owens says on Fox News
these days, race does not exist to her. Neither does
it to me. And gender is merely a rough but not fixed
orientation toward dividual archetypes of tribal
contribution. Without any Rousseuian fantasies
allowed on any levels.
Because
only class is class and only class har universal
validity. Laclau's and Zizek's dream of the
particular personifying the universal was never more
than a wordgame anyway. It is through shared vision
(a fetish as opposed to an abject) that we can find
a shared agenda. Not by distributing medial
attention according to ultimately infantile needs.
Because that's no better than Trump himself.
Best
intentions
Alexander
Bard
If
you you think being of critical and
suspicious of theological metanarratives
is intellectually lazy, wait until you
hear about faux-Marxist class
reductionism!
In
all seriousness, for those of you looking
for actually useful analyses of the
complex relations between identity, class,
and emancipation, you couldn't do much
better than Asad Haider's recently
published "Mistaken Identity" ( https://www.versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity
), which draws on the history of black
radicalism to arrive at some truly
exciting answers.
~i
Dear
Joseph
While
you resentfully remain obsessed with my
tonality and my etiquette (as if this was
some smelling salt-driven cocktail party
at a ship doomed to sink) I do prefer to
stay with the topic I brought up.
Forget
about me. Ans forget about Joseph's
preoccupation with my style and whatever
bitter personal vendettas he is
projecting, I'm into the topic of what the
left might or could be. And with
postmodernists ringing alarm bells at any
attempt at creating a grand narrative
while the world is on fire, may I ask, is
this all you can achieve? What is that if
not the most mortidinal, death- and
tit-worshipping pathetic anti-narrative
there ever was?
It's
very comfortable to say "I don't know" but
as far as I'm concerned the answer - while
pretending to be cautiously honest -
reveals nothing but ignorance and
intellectual laziness.
However
it is easy to see where it all comes from,
this so called "left" has returned to the
comforts of Rousseau's kindergarden
fantasies and is more preoccupied with
keeping academic tenure, posing with the
correct virtues, than with fostering and
mentoring a new generation of leftist
radicals focused on the potential of open
source platforms toward a collaborative
collective intelligence. The project that
should be and still could be the genuine
leftism of the 21st century. The rest you
can read in my books "Syntheism" and
"Digital Libido". Yes, the first one is
about Intelligence becoming God and the
second one is on how we still underrate
Hegel and Freud when trying to understand
our current predicament. But it's all
forward-looking and grand
narrative-building. As this is what we
need today.
Oh,
a great many thanks for the offlist
endorsements I have received the last
three days from Nettime members. However
if those endorsements end up in my private
mailbox rather than on Nettime itself,
then perhaps this mailing list is better
suited for some kind of nostalgia for the
pre-Trump era or something? I have that
still to figure out. I personally prefer
to looking forward and solving deadlocks.
But no prestige.
Deleuze
genuinely mixed Nietzsche and Marx, he was
an absolutely heroic philosopher. Totally
opposed to Rousseau. So what do you think
Deleuze would have thought of today's
social media-driven victimhood obsessions?
Yes, I miss Nick Land here. We are close
these days.
Best
intentions and utmost humility
Alexander
Alexander addresses me with an
injunction and second-guesses my
answer: "What is your tactic? Further
excuses for not dealing with the
crisis of the left?"
My answer is that I do not have the
slightest idea, and that anyone who
claims to have one is either a liar,
fool, or utopian dictator. And insofar
as utopian dictatorship is concerned,
Alexander espouses a
"politico-theological project", a
title that has all my alarm bells
going.
Indeed, Alexander reduces the
complexity of the world to a sterile,
doctrinal dialectic that denies
the sophistication of reality.
I regret being so disobliging, but in
my opinion Alexander's prose is
intellectual, political and literary
logorrhoea, in no way conducive to
dealing constructively with the issues
at hand.
Joseph Rabie.
Dear
Joseph
Yes,
I said I made a grotesque
simplification. That was my
point. What else is new? Have I
claimed anything else?
If
we don't start to see the
difference between a
victimhood-driven and a
hero-driven left, then how are
we going to spot our own
weaknesses? Where do you start
yourself?
Because
I'm one of many many leftists
who return to Marx these days
since Identity Politics has
become nothing but an endless
tirade of complaints with no
creative solutions or
constructive routes up and out
in sight. It really is Rousseau
and his tabula rasa idea of
humanity all over again.
Moralism instead of pragmatism.
And it has been growing since
the 1970's and now dominates
whatever leftist social media we
still have.
That's
not Marxism. That's a parody of
Marxism. Celebrating the lumpen
proletariat instead of heading
directly for what proletarian
heroism could be in the 21st
century. No wonder that 95% of
social crowdfunding goes into
the pockets of the libertarian
right these days. Leftists do
not even support each other any
longer. At least not for more
than three days.
What
is your own answer? What ties us
together? Only banal hatred of
Trump, or a true vision for the
future, a genuine
politico-theological project
that get people going?
Sometimes
simplifications do the job. What
is your tactic? Further excuses
for not dealing with the crisis
of the left?
Best
intentions
Alexander
Bard
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