the "school"

[LEO MEEKS]

On Thu, 2 Feb 1995, Flannon wrote:

> 
> 
> On Thu, 2 Feb 1995, LEO MEEKS wrote:
> 
> (stuff deleted) 
> 
> > Also all this discussion of 
> > economism on the part of the early school - if indeed it is a school and 
> > not an Institute - is misplaced or misdirected. What is interesting is 
> > what Althusser would later call effectivity or indeed we can call with 
> > all the interest in deconstruction and the f-school the trace of the 
> > economy in writing.
> > 
> > -leo
> > 
> 
> So far I've enjoyed the discussion of the early "school" because I don't 
> know a whole lot about it, since my reading has beenlimited to the major 
> figures associated with the school.  I was hoping that you could draw out 
> this allusion between the early school and Althusser.
> 
> Flannon
> 
These allusions -- perhaps illusions -- to the economic trace in writing 
especially in Bejamin and Adorno are drawn from many sources: Perry 
Anderson's critique of Western Marxism, Jameson's semi-Althusserian phase 
(Political Unconscious), but mostly from the work of Althusser Adorno and 
Benjamin.

What i would like to suggest is that writing is not, as some who propose 
an economic analysis as a base through which all phenomena although not 
reducible are ultimately structured (vis a vis their meaning), a 
conjuncture between the economy and knowledge but is rather an economy of 
its own (which is not, again, to denote a seemless interior). Writing as 
an economy is the production of liguistics terrainsor rather the 
transformation of these terrains through miscommunication.

Citation is miscommunication and forgetting: as an act of reification, 
writing excerpts concepts from their historical coming into being, the 
concept as such is not deformed as it is translated or transubstantiated. 
That is, reification betrays the instability of meaning while maintaining 
the relative stability of the word itself. Several examples of this come 
to mind -- the modern use of logos, or again Heidegger's development of 
an approach to western philosophy (dekonstruction) as an attempt to 
revitalize the textual language of Paul of Tarsus. Forgetting provides 
the simulacrum (Plato) of a linguistic terrain, much like Hegel's 
history of western philosophy, when in fact it is much more complex than 
has been proposed, even by supposed historical materialists.
(the stuff on the concept is a development of Adorno's ruminations in ND 
as well as Althusser's attempt to make the notion of inversion both 
dialectical and historical in For Marx)

The interesting possibility of understanding writing as forgetting is the 
actual creation of a linguistic terrain: John van Buren and Gadamer with 
Heidegger and Karl Lowith with Nietzsche -- though i think some 
development of Lowith in this regard important -- have produced 
competing economies out of which Heidegger and Nietzsche are read. Thus, 
instead of understanding Nietzsche as a repository of romanticism (a la 
de Man) one can read in Nietzsche the fate of the Reformation, the 
closure of Luther's theology of the cross.

The well known criticism of the later f-schhol, especially Adorno and 
Horkheimer, is that they were a-political, or that they understood 
critique to have failed (see the excellent article by Sullivan & Lysaker 
in NGC # 57 'Between Impotence and Illusion') seems to have missed the 
point that the terms of critique have been changed. The notion of 
forgetting (which of course comes from Dialectic of Enlightenment) 
suggests not the rehabilitation or convalescence of criticism nor again 
its loss but perhaps something like its atrophy: the simulacra is a 
reflection in which the reflected cannot be recognized, and the object of 
its critique is not to collapse the image into the object, nor to glimpse 
the tain. Perhaps critique is itself also image, an attempt to charm 
the various discourses of language.

I hope this goes toward explaining what i think Benjamin Adorno and 
Althusser are getting at with their materialist critique and how it plays 
out in their texts. i apologize in advance for the rather crude 
presentation but at present i've not had the chance to fully work this 
out and of course hope to do this in dialogue.

-leo