Logic of identity

[bob scheetz]

> Contempt of who or what? Of non-flashy replies...I don't think so.
Contempt
> for the revolutionary subject of history? That's unfair. Next you'll be
> calling me a class traitor,

Matt,
yer being ironic, ...all those elegant locutions as "Me also bloody
intolerant of religion", "make my skin crawl,"  in re metafisical libido
were'nt meant for contempt?


for like you:
>
> >and  i can speak coz i alas (and antecedants) am of the former (like
> >ralphie, only a amateur philosopher).
>
> I don't know what you expect: an "unthinking" mythic solidarity with your
> own class. This sort of dogmatism IMO undermines class/value solidarity.
Yet
> assuming a position of self-critique engenders a patronizing attitude
which
> replicates other oppressive structures.

producers, persons who understand their work and its dignity within their
socio-economic universe, arrive to an existential conviction of the
metafisical signification of the (sorry) labor theory of value, ...and
thence that makers have a morally imperative claim to dispose the polis,
...which from the essential ethos of homo faber must by definition be
humanistical, ...that this claim has been usurped for 2 centuries with
unending hekatomb to the serenely cruel god Capital, by business, the
bourgeoisie ...nso on, the old allegory.  Clearly, calling this core
confession "unthinking myth" is either malign or insouciant.  But obviously,
lacking the existential illumination, there can't be any solidarity
(notoriously intellectuals from a morbid hyper-cerebrality default into
caste loyalty, no?...adorno, quintessentially brahmin).  While, given the
core faith in the great god LTOV, self-critique (ie, re-thinking the
labor/construct) is constant and natural and liberating (please no invidious
auschwitz gate).

>
> So the question remains with whom are we in solidarity?
>
> >as for where i come from, ...you know the boss, so you know youngstown,
> >...empire has abandoned us this "hundred yrs" for sunnier climes;
>
> sure solidarity with your family, neighbours and community. Doesn't this
> comes prior to ideas of class? You see people hurting around you and this
> SHOULD elicit solidarity. What next? Information, education, resistance, a
> cup of tea. On a micro level solidarity IMO just isn't in question. Moving
> to the macro is where the cracks start to appear in the socialist
> ideological apparatus. Grand holistic aspirations (domination of the
> universal, perhaps) lead to the suppression of the particular. Isn't that
> the logic of the identity? Isn't that what Foucault learnt from H. & A.,
and
> why he could only theorize local resistance?

foucault's humanity was his genius as well as limitation, no?  and, just to
be clear, we are speaking philosophically, aren't we? sometimes feel you're
being a stickler for the narrowest reifications, religion, prole class,
movement, etc., which insofar as they thrive under the present set of
circumstances perforce disqualifies them.  The praxis, as in the present
case against capital's great leap forward, is always trial and error,
critique, 'n atom again; and while you may derogate as habermas and mentor,
there's no denying its presencing.  corney as it is,  marching, picketing,
teach-ins & co is still a engendering force, gathering threat, eh? the
sharon/bush/blair axis is more afraid of the street than the evil one,
saddam & sons.

finally, from my perspective the source of your difficulty appears the
cartesian, cart before horse, fallacy.  the vital formula is still credo ut
intelligam.  but then you either got credo or you don't.

bob



> MattP
>
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