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Jorge A Yágüez La primera cuestión que plantearía, sobre estos diez magníficos (y endiablados) puntos, y tan solo con el ánimo de aclaración es¿qué significa exactamente una “política más allá del sujeto”?, pues el sentido de esta expresión no es ni mucho menos unívoco.
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Alberto Moreiras Jorge, ?coinciden, en tu opinión, el círculo de la política y el círculo de la subjetividad? Es decir, ¿son el mismo círculo, de modo que no puede haber exceso de la subjetividad con respecto de la polìtica ni de la polìtica respecto de la subjetividad?
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Jorge A Yágüez 1. Mi pregunta no entraba en polémica; sólo era una petición de aclaración, pues no sé exactamente a qué atenerse con la expresión “más allá del sujeto”. Por ejemplo, en un sentido trivial uno podría decir que la política tiene como fin los sujetos -quizá no solo los humanos, sino cualquier forma de inteligencia; pero ahora dejemos fuera esta cuestión (antropocentrismo sí o no; H. Jonas/Kant, etc). Que ésta sea su finalidad no quiere decir, obviamente, que se reduzca al sujeto, y que el círculo de la política y el del sujeto sean el mismo, pues la política, en definitiva, ha de tomar a su cargo todas las condiciones que de algún modo limiten injustificadamente la libertad -lo que viene a significar, ciertamente, ir más allá del sujeto, y ,en definitiva, tomar a su cargo el planeta. Pero creo que esto no es lo que está en juego en el uso que haces de la expresión. (Uso “sujeto” y no “subjetividad” porque me parece un concepto más amplio, menos cargado).
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Alberto Moreiras Yo tiendo a pensar, con Simone Weil, que lo verdaderamente sagrado es lo no subjetivable. Y no solo sagrado: yo nunca me enamoro de un sujeto. Hay que poner cabeza abajo a Pico della Mirandola.
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Jorge A Yágüez ¿Cuando dices “no subjetivable,” te refieres con ello a que lo que importa es lo universal, lo que no puede ser agotable en una singularidad, en ninguna realidad individual)?
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Alberto Moreiras No necesariamente, puede ser algo absolutamente singular también, incluso personal. Lo no subjetivable es lo que excede cualquier forma de instanciación subjetiva.
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Jorge A Yágüez El compromiso ético con el otro, inseparable de nuestros lazos empáticos, la indignación que suscita lo injusto, la pasión revolucionaria… ¿todo esto no pertenece al campo de la subjetividad?
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Alberto Moreiras Si, pero eso no agota lo politico. Nadie dice que no haya sujetos sino que el sujeto no es alfa y omega de ningun mundo excepto el mundo de la totalizacion despotica.
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Jorge A Yágüez Hasta ahora la noción de política solo tenía sentido del sujeto para el sujeto, la política como el intento por parte de los sujetos de decidir colectivamente su estar en el mundo. A partir de Heidegger, el principio de la subjetividad, humanismo, etc ha sido puesto en cuestión. El cuestionamiento, por ejemplo, del antropocentrismo ha llevado a plantear la posibilidad de introducir a otros como elementos igualmente relevantes en el marco político, por ejemplo todos los simios superiores, o todo ser vivo con inteligencia y capacidad de sufrimiento, que era una forma de decir: “también son sujetos”. Pero, cabe ir más allá, y decir que tambien las cosas tienen valor en sí mismas, y no en función del sujeto (crítica a Nietzsche), y la política tendría, entonces, que introducir una especie de principio de piedad con respecto a las cosas. ¿Iría por aquí, al menos como una de sus vertientes, la no reducción a la instancia subjetiva?
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Alberto Moreiras Claro, Jorge, ese es el fundamento del Sein-Lassen heideggeriano. Pero hay mucho más en esto que no ocupó a Heidegger o que no hizo explícito. Por ejemplo, entre cientos (pero para reconocer esos cientos hay que plegarse a cierta operaciòn mental, pequeño ajuste, como decìa Kafka): estoy haciendo un cursillo online que es forzoso para empleados del estado de Texas. Allì dicen que “las apariencias cuentan,” en la mejor tradición estalinista. Digamos que yo, usando un coche del sistema, lo aparco delante de una tienda de licores mientras voy a mear a la gasolinera de enfrente. Un vecino me denuncia, y como consecuencia de que he traicionado el principio de que *las apariencias cuentan” me despiden. Según ese proceso, pedir una absoluta internalización del principio de que las apariencias cuentan es pedir una absoluta subjetivaciòn del ciudadano, ni siquiera a la ley, sino a la regulación. Insisto en algo que no siempre se ve: pedir subjetivación en politica es introducir un principio despótico, reducir la política a subjetivación es despotismo absoluto.
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Jorge A Yágüez La reflexion de Arendt acerca de la aniquilación política que supone la idea, propia de los revolucionarios franceses, de que es en el fondo de los hombres, en su ser, donde reside el mal; que mientras que no se construya el “nuevo hombre” la revolución no es posible, que es misión de ésta transformar al hombre mismo, etc… estaría entonces en la línea de una resitencia a la subjetivación de lo político.
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Alberto Moreiras Completamente!! Una de mis broncas, no la menor, con el sujeto llamado X fue decirle que su proyecto social no era mas que ingenieria biopolitica, y que por lo tanto vivir en su mundo seria vivir en el horror permanente camuflado como felicidad amorosa y goce comumitario.
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Jorge A Yágüez Los peligros de esa deriva son claros. Y sin embargo parece difícil renunciar a la idea de la necesidad de nuevas subjetividades, a la idea de que sin ellas no podría darse algo distinto. El dilema acaso se resuelva pensando que el objetivo político nunca puede ser ese, el obtener el nuevo hombre, una subjetividad otra, etc, sino que, en el mejor de los casos, ésta será una consecuencia colateral, que no formaba parte, ni podía, de la actividad-pasividad política.
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Alberto Moreiras Yo diría que cualquier voluntad explícita de formación de subjetividad en otros como empresa política equivale a la introducción de un principio despótico inevitablemente, por muy gentil y generoso que se quiera que sea ese nuevo sujeto. Por eso yo remitirìa a una noción que me parece, republicanamente, mucho más productiva, que es la de reforma del pensamiento, y que yo usé ya en un artìculo muy antiguo. Hay necesidad de una reforma del pensamiento, lo cual, para mí, como es obvio, implica reformar la naturalización de la idea de sujeto como horizonte de la política. Creo que, además, eso es consistente con la recomendación fundamental del psicoanálisis lacaniano, que sin duda hablaría de la propuesta de fundación o refundación subjetiva como un avatar más de la ego psychology norteamericana, todavía dominante de forma abrumadora por aquì, y nunca más claramente que en la práctica totalidad de la izquierda acadèmica de estos rumbos. Dejemos que las subjetividades se apañen por sí solas, y, políticamente, busquemos otra cosa. Jorge, con tu permiso voy a colgar este diálogo en el blog, que ya me viene pareciendo un lugar más productivo que este formalmente.

This is simply to underline some of the topics that came up at the first seminar session, as part of the discussion, and that are far from settled. This is abstract and perhaps difficult thought, but it is meant to open up some access to dealing with concrete possibilities for thinking experience at every level. I propose ten notes:

1. The auto/heterographic inscription, or autography for short, is a singular incidence into writing (a generalized writing that also includes inscription into life in all ways) that exceeds subjective capture. This excess of the subject is essentially mysterious—it opens up, without explaining it, the possibility of a precarious thought beyond the subject, hence also of a politics beyond the subject. Perhaps this is what is called infrapolitics.

2. Autography or infrapolitics are allegorical names for quasiconceptual structures that cannot be captured into a theoretical definition, that is, into a conceptual determination—since a conceptual determination would turn them into merely captured remnants of an unnameable excess. Thinking through or from them is, on the one hand, what we do every day, what everybody does every day. At the same time, it is also what we seem to have no way of referring to except by doing it. The narrowest abyss is hence the most difficult to cross (Nietzsche).

3. Would that we became masters of metaphor, following Aristotle’s dictum “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it cannot be taught; it is a matter of genius” (Poetics). Could we, as masters of metaphor, be able to define or conceptually to grasp structures such as infrapolitics or autography? Or is it not rather the case that attempting to become masters of metaphor is already a symptom of the failure of spirit to relate to what cannot be conceptually thought? But that spirit—is it all spirit or is it the metaphysical spirit, which thrives on forgetting?

4. Is deconstruction an attempt to deal with the failure of metaphor? With the fact that metaphor can never stabilize itself, that it produces a ceaseless and perpetually disavowed excess that the tradition has sometimes, even if rarely, called Being? Perhaps deconstruction is indeed the attempt to liberate the excess of metaphor, not for the sake of another metaphor, only for the sake of listening in when what has been forgotten/disavowed stirs anew. Does that mean that deconstruction looks for the end of metaphor, for an unmetaphorizable language? But no—a demetaphorized language would be a dead language.

5. And yet, the attempt to stop demetaphorization is totalitarian politics itself, it is the very mark of oppression. A demotic politics opposes every attempt not at demetaphorization, but at stopping the natural (that is, historic) entropic process of demetaphorization for the sake of a continuous production of new figures that can never turn into one (master) figure. For demotic politics (the politics of radical democratic republicanism that I associated with the Derridean project) there aren’t many masters, because there is no master.

6. So the seminar does not propose a master trope as starting ground—since every metaphor, in Platonic terms, is always a figure of the sun, it does not posit a heliopolitical goal. Rather, it posits the dark light of the perpetual interruption of metaphor for the sake of metaphor, an ongoing demetaphorization that opens up, perhaps, a way into listening otherwise.

7. This otherwise—a new way into politics and at the same time a way outside politics. Since politics is not the horizon of thought but politics cannot be disavowed by thought.

8. Is a demetaphorized metaphor (say, Absolute Knowledge, Deus sive Natura, the Being of beings) always and in every case the trace of a broken hegemony (Schurmann)? Yes, which means that deconstruction is necessarily posthegemonic thought, a-principial thinking. Infrapolitics looks for deconstruction in politics, or political deconstruction.

9. Is infrapolitics merely the opposite of heliopolitics? If heliopolitics rotates about a master trope of signification, that is, a sun of meaning, infrapolitics does not rotate around an axis. It is a spiral whose region of expression eats heliopolitics for breakfast.

10. So how does this relate to actual political processes, to our own inscription into politics, to our reading of texts, to our professionalization, to our relationship with death and temporality?

[Sorry, I was going to respond to 10, but then it was already 10 and I had to stop my notes.)

Up to now this has been a closed blog, but it is not working as such. Too few people get in, and even less make comments here. So my feeling is, it does not make sense to keep it as a closed blog. Of course there are no guarantees that, if we open it up to interested people, they will come. But I don’t feel we stand to lose anything either way.

Our project started on the idea that we wanted to discuss the legacies of deconstruction in contemporary thought. After some discussions we focused on the notion of infrapolitics, which has been the object of some work over the last few years by some of us, and we decided to call this project Infrapolitical Deconstruction. It was meant to be a collective project, in the sense that we wanted to pursue writing and publication at the highest possible level of engagement. Exploring the legacies of deconstruction “infrapolitically” means that we will keep an eye on the political implications of deconstructive work, without positing deconstruction as political theory or political work in any direct way. We understand that one of the effects of deconstruction is probably the thought that no political theory holds any interest if it cannot accept and account for the idea of infrapolitical critique. And infrapolitical critique starts on the notion that there is always an underside to political thought that gets necessarily erased by all conventional understandings of the political, and yet it is most fundamental. On the basis of a reading of Jacques Derrida’s 1964 seminar on Heidegger: The Question of History and Being we may be prepared to say that the infrapolitical dimension of all political thought, and of every kind of political practice, is connected to the thematization of the so-called ontico-ontological difference in the political region. In other words, we are prepared to entertain the thought that an infrapolitical step back from politics is also necessarily a step back from the ontotheological understanding of the political we have inherited from the traditions of modernity. The question of hegemony, as the ultimate question of the ontotheological politics of modernity, necessarily leads, through infrapolitical critique, to the question of posthegemony.

This project proposes therefore an engagement with Jacques Derrida’s work and a consequent rereading of the philosophical and philosophico-political tradition with a view to a recuperation of its forgotten infrapolitical and posthegemonic dimensions. We understand, for instance, that a rigorous engagement with Hegelianism is necessary, and therefore also with Marxism.

We proposed to engage first with Derrida’s 64 seminar, which has only appeared in the French original so far, and immediately with two additional seminars that have been so far published also in English translation: The two volumes of The Beast and the Sovereign and the first volume of Death Penalty. We also have discussed the possibility of a serious reading and engagement with the work of Spanish philosopher Felipe Martinez Marzoa.

The systematic engagement with these issues should naturally lead to the production of papers and essays that should form the basis for ongoing publications. We are minimally committed to the publication of one volume of essays per year.

I think we should invite people to join in this discussion, to contribute to it, and to present their work for open debate.

Alberto

http://www.fronterad.com/?q=heidegger-fotografia

Notes on Derrida´s Heidegger: la question de l´Etre et l´histoire

Second session–Second set of notes.

Derrida calls our attention to two words in the Sein und Zeit manuscript, that is, “ontic metaphor,” two underlined words, as a comment to the end of the Introduction, where Heidegger is making a difference between the great difficulty of thinking the being of beings and “telling stories” about beings (ueber Seiendes erzahlende zu berichten).

[This is very significant in light of what will come later. Just keep it in mind.]

[We do not want postmetaphysical, postontological, postphilosophical thought to be a matter of telling ourselves, and others, stories.   We need to break away from novel writing when it comes down to thought.   It is de-narrativization, in a sense, that is called forth. The interruption of narration.] Derrida asks: “why, at the moment when historicity must finally be taken absolutely seriously, must we stop telling stories?”

 A necessary caveat: it is not, as it has classically been, a matter of stopping the story-making in order to access a superior realm of abstraction.   Being is not in the beings, it is nothing outside beings, it is not another being, it is ontically nothing outside its ontic determinations. It is nothing, therefore, outside its own history.   Which is the reason why the thought of (the truth) of being cannot be pursued outside history, and outside the history of ontology, through its destruction.

It is, rather, and this is the difficulty Heidegger proposes, a matter of stopping the story-making from within ontic fields–say, religion tells itself a story, science tells itself a story, metaphysics tells itself a story BECAUSE they have already closed off the question of being in favor of their own internal ontic regionality.

So, to stop telling ourselves stories means to start thinking from the ontico-ontological difference, that is, from the difference that keeps the question of being apart from every ontic determination.

[Simple thing: we tell ourselves stories when we turn being into a character.   Say, I want to teach a class on being and I say, “Hey, remember the joke about two Jewish rabbis . . . ” The example given is the moment in Plato’s Sophist when the Stranger calls for taking the question of Being strictly on its own terms instead of muthon tina diegesthai, telling ourselves stories. Say, being appears as movement, or being appears as force, or being appears as god, or being appears as production. . .   All of this is crucial, because “telling ourselves stories” already in Plato, as Derrida notes, is assimilated to “what men do,” that is, to the natural attitude, to what one does when one finds nothing better to do, that is, practically all the time. Which sets up the theme of the “necessity of the ontic metaphor.”]

[What Heidegger calls for, therefore, is a certain breakaway from the natural attitude, that is, from the necessity of the ontic metaphor.   This is the great difficulty. Because, how does one break away from a necessity? Is the necessity not waiting around the corner every time when one thinks one has escaped it?]  

Once again, through references to Hegel, Derrida explains how, on the one hand, Hegel understood the problem, the philosophical problem of having to break away from the natural attitude, in order to, on the other hand, close it off within metaphysics, which of course turns Hegel into the “plus grand” story teller of all, but still a story-teller.

The step beyond ontological history might resemble a step outside history altogether, but it is, on the contrary, “the condition of access to a radicalization of the thought of history as history of being itself.”   Stopping the story-telling is the condition of access to a radical notion of historicity.

Even in Heidegger it is a long process. For instance, the fifth chapter of Sein und Zeit seems to be devoted to historicity, but it is the historicity of Dasein, not of Sein.   It is still introductory, therefore, preliminary to the question. It is only part of a preliminary investigation into the modalities of historical access for the human being, and it still says nothing about history AND being.

And yet, as preliminary, the question of the historicity of Dasein is already “immense progress.”

Why, then, must the question of the historicity of being go through the question of the historicity of Dasein?

Heidegger must begin somewhere. But that somewhere must be without presuppositions, without “stories.” Derrida says Heideger gives himself at this point two “assurances” in order to proceed.

The first assurance has to do with the “always already.”   There is an a priori that takes us away from mere empiricism, and that must not be understood as a presupposition, but as an entry point.

In order for us to be able to ask the question of being, it must be because the question of being is already obscurely accessible.   The accessibility posits an “already” not as presupposition, but as entry point enabling the question.   Now, this “already” points in the direction of an originary history.   Heidegger calls the obscure accessibility a Faktum.

As such, it is a Faktum of language. Since “being” is a matter of linguistic signification.

So, those are the two “assurances:” there is the possibility of the question, and the possibility of the question is a matter of language.

It is these two assurances that, Derrida maintains, open up–just open up–the question of being as history, since “there is no language without history and no history without language.” [Derrida’s reasoning seems a little weak here, not persuasive, at least to me.  Something does not quite click here.  Is it just me?]