An Objection
Monday, September 17, 2007
One often hears the objection that someone is close-minded, hostile to viewpoints other than their own, or not open to dialogue. Such an objection, however, doesn’t go anywhere — just as the supposed “endless conversation” it presupposes wouldn’t go anywhere. As so often happens, the person who is really opposed to dialogue is not the “asshole,” who after all takes the conversation seriously, but the “niceness police,” whose impoverished idea of conversation implies the indifferent “exchange” of hermetically sealed “viewpoints.” That is, the one objecting to an overly forceful argument is most often the really close-minded one, wanting their precious opinions to be treated gingerly, resentful of anyone carrying their logic to conclusions that seem “bad” or even just unexpected — being the “niceness police” is what being intolerant of the mere existence of other views actually looks like.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 8:54 am
As a signed up member of the niceness police, I just subscribe to the opinion that interesting debate works best when their is measure of control not in what is said, but in how it is said. You can be forceful, but you don’t have to be an asshole.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 9:03 am
You fucking moron!!! (Kidding.)
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 9:24 am
Alex,
I don’t think too many people would consider you a member of the niceness police. You fucking prick.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 10:46 am
In all seriousness, I think there is a tendency to read “forceful” as “mean.” In real life, people are often put off by forcefulness, and in virtual life, that effect is exaggerated to the point of feeling persecuted. So often you will find that someone who is “rude” or “brash” or “intolerant” in comment threads is actually just forcefully disagreeing with the complainant.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Fuck you all, fuckers.
But no, its just that online things are ramped up a lot, and this tends to cause tense scenes where as in flesh space it wouldn’t.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 12:41 pm
The psychology of online communication really deserves more study. In my years of experience, I have started to get some idea of how the inherent problems could be addressed, but I think before we could really figure out how to make it “better,” we’d need to fully account for what happens when you remove the fleshly element — I think it’s even different from print, and not just because of the speed factor.
Passive-aggressive blog posts trying to set up arbitrary rules (like “don’t recommend books to people unless they ask you too,” as Kugelmass recently did at The Valve, obviously in response to me) are not the solution in this regard.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 12:59 pm
My friend did his undergrad dissertation on online communication, in particular IRC conversations. Not wanting to recommend journals when people don’t ask for them, but some of the stuff the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication does is interesting. This paper, the result of an experimental study, might be approaching addressing in some sense what happens when you remove the flesh, in the particular in context of political discussions.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 1:13 pm
God, what a fucking jackass, showing me up as ignorant of the latest research in my own fucking comment thread. That’s rude, Alex.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Not as rude as writing a whole blog post about how people who say you are rude are in fact ruder, in fact the rudest!
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Oh, so sorry to hurt your delicate ego by calling you “rude.” Grow a spine, Alex.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 1:26 pm
No you grow a spine Mr Meta-Rude. A double sin - meta-post that is meta-rude!
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 1:30 pm
We were having a really productive conversation before you commented, Alex.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Not to be a fucking rude asshole, but didn’t Gabe & Tycho solve this one 3 years ago?
John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Eric, you douche-cock — that’s the exact fucking opposite of the problem I’m talking about.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I do not think the concern should be the short coming of being impolite, but, perhaps, unwise. See Plato’s Republic 539 b-d.
(I suppose it is interesting, however, that in Boyarin’s new work he argues that it is precisely the mode of dialogue which chokes out other view points.)
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Adam, I would amend one thing. You write: ‘”the “niceness police,” whose impoverished idea of conversation implies the indifferent “exchange” of hermetically sealed “viewpoints.”’
This gets things exactly upside down and backwards.
When viewpoints are hermetically sealed, then the gloves come off and people are free to say that x is totally wrong, y is flatly a mistake, etc. without offending anyone’s feelings intolerably. Because x is just a position, not a person, or even an irreplaceable personal heirloom. No one’s pride or sense of intellectual self-worth is then inextricably bound up with the fate of x. (Indeed, your own formulation implicitly shows why this is so. Once opinions become personally ‘indifferent’, there is no pressure to compel ‘niceness’ to them. Who cares if you slap around an ‘indifferent’ opinion, as vigorously as you like? It’s just an abstract object, after all.)
The niceness police clamp down when positions are NOT hermetically sealed, when it is thought that they cannot be made abstract and impersonal in that way. Then, often, there is no way to have an argument without having a struggle for social dominance. There is no way to say that x is wrong without implying the owner of x is wrong, i.e. a bad sort of person. Argument becomes fundamentally Schmittian - friend and enemy. Every attack is perceived as an existential threat. So you need police to keep social order. What you need, you get. So you get niceness policing.
This is not to say that positions always CAN be sealed off, hermetically. Let alone that it is always GOOD when they are. (Because, after all, that would falsify a good many things.) Often when opinions are sealed off, the debate becomes arid and scholastic. But arid, scholastic debates are seldom ‘nice’, in the sense you are complaining about. Typically they are severe and knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred. This is possible precisely because the issue is not conceived as ‘personal’, so the holds - however violent - aren’t personal. Two people can disrespect each others’ positions without disrespecting each other. No one is personally attacked (so, to repeat, there is no temptation to call in the niceness police.)
In short: jumping out of the fry pan of philosophy as indifferent exchange of ‘hermetically sealed’ opinion is the swiftest rout into the fires of ‘niceness’. And to suppose resistance to the former is actually resistance to the latter is just an alternative mode of arrival at the latter.
(I do hope this doesn’t look like thread-jacking. As you were. Didn’t mean to interrupt the conversation.)
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 10:15 pm
John, Yeah, this is a definite thread-jack — how dare you actually respond seriously to my post?!
We seem to be dealing with different ideas of “hermetically sealed viewpoints.” I was taking for granted the idea that one’s opinions should be sealed off from one’s person — I was saying that sometimes people want to put forward their viewpoints as unchallengeable, internally perfect little snowflakes. But that stance could very well reflect the fact that their ideas are not hermetically sealed in the sense that you mean in your comment.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 10:43 pm
“I was taking for granted the idea that one’s opinions should be sealed off from one’s person.”
Do you really take that for granted? (If so, it seems to me you should not. Because, after all, it is so rarely the case.)
At any rate, it seems to me that, yes, people who put forward their viewpoints as unchallengeable and internally perfect are invariably utterly personally invested. They are claiming personal perfection by proxy.
But this hardly fits with what you said. Because this approach hardly ‘implies’ a conception of philosophy based on indifferent exchange of opinions. No one could mistake it for that from 200 yards.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 5:48 am
As so often happens on this blog, I feel like I’ve somehow failed to make myself understood.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 6:17 am
No, Holbo just reads for obscurantism.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 8:28 am
Adam, at the risk of inducing you to give offense to named individuals, could you perhaps offer some reportage on ‘niceness’ police actions, versus the actions of who ‘take things seriously’. To put it another way, on the one hand we’ve got the hermetically sealed, squeezed tight shut ones. On the other side, apparently, are the apparent assholes. I’m having trouble telling the difference.
Anthony, I don’t understand what you mean. Are you saying that I am drawn to obscurantism, that I am the cause of it in others, or that I myself am obscure? Or some combination of the three? It makes a bit of a difference.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 10:28 am
Thanks for the perfect example.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 11:25 am
My main point of reference for this post was a discussion board from which I was removed. Since it was a private listserv, I can’t really give more detail, nor would you be able to track anything down to see what I’m talking about.
The Valve is not, in my view, an offender in this particular regard (though of course it is a horrible offender in many other regards), if that’s what you were wondering at all.
“Assholes” == people who are arguing too forcefully, breaking the tone of liberal niceness.
“Niceness police” == those who use complaints about rudeness to clamp down on what is actually perfectly “polite” (i.e., not personally motivated) debate. Such tactics can often be more or less conscious attempts to silence uncongenial opinions indirectly, by attacking the person’s tone or character.
I have often also been in online debates, primarily with regard to religion, where I have been accused of many slanderous things — being like a Nazi sympathizer, being a supporter of the religious right, etc. — but such sentiments were “okay” because they were expressed in a superficially “calm” manner. Meanwhile, I was “personally attacking” the other person by pursuing the argument too forcefully for their taste.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 6:56 pm
I can’t tell if this comment thread has shifted away from the “call each other asswipes” stage, or if it’s just mutated into a new form of asswipe-calls — perhaps a subtler, more invidious form.
Also: What is up with the shifts from “Adam” to “Adam Kotsko” in comment threads? Are there actually two Adams?
Also also: There is not one of you which is not an asshole. You assholes.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Sorry — it’s all me.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 7:58 pm
“though of course it is a horrible offender in many other regards”
I’ve long been curious about this. Everyone is always too polite to explain what they actually think is going wrong at the Valve. (Occasionally one reads things about lack of intellectual rigor, or simple wrongness, but I’m pretty sure those who make these complaints don’t actually believe this is it. So it must be something even worse.) Whatever we are doing must be pretty awful, if people can’t even bring themselves to say what it is. (Sometimes politeness can be taken too far, don’t you think?)
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 8:31 pm
It’s really too fargone at this point. The only solution is unilateral withdrawal.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Are you requesting it or offering it? (As I like to say: it makes a bit of a difference.)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 3:43 am
I would have thought what is wrong with The Valve is pretty clear, but I am willing to explain it to you, if you like.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 4:01 am
‘Whatever we are doing must be pretty awful, if people can’t even bring themselves to say what it is.’
If anyone attempted to explain it you would just perpetuate the awfulness.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 5:11 am
Very well, Alex. Explain.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 6:14 am
Okay, I am sure whatever I say you will pick it apart and try and get me to give you concrete examples etc, thus reducing what I am about to say to nothing.
I’ve been lurking around on the blogs of an academic sort for a few years now, including The Valve back in the Theory’s Empire days, so I think as a reader of it like any other, I have a decent impression of what it is like. So in this capacity as someone who reads and is potentially the target market of your weblog, I would suggest the following, maybe as constructive criticism. I hope this doesn’t come across as being too heavily loaded with my own intellectual commitments, and is likely despite this to come across as being quite subjective and hence open to the “thats your opinion” shot.
I think the problem with The Valve is two fold, from what I percieve. A problem of placement and target market, and drawn from this in part, a problem of style. In the first instance, I don’t know where it is trying to pitch itself. Is it a pseudo-journal online, where real decent articles are going to be placed and discussed, or is it, like this blog and others around, simply a place where people let off steam and just generally post any old crap they are thinking about right now. The Valve then, seems to have a problem of self-definition. On one hand, you are “editor” of The Valve, which implies the former, you have book events, with long articles about the books, substantial philosophical nitpicking and interviews with the authors of aforementioned books. Then again, one has Youtube posts, one shots linking to other sites, and certain rather annoying Dawkins shaped posts that seem to aim at parody. The latter case is a good example - I don’t actually know where to place it - is it a bit of fun and fluff which is mildly amusing, or is it a serious comment which deserves a serious response. This brings in the second point, because of the confusion about its purpose (journal/magazine versus informal blog), it seems to adopt a certain haughtiness of style and a self-importance that I find irksome. Often, in comment threads particularly, it seems that certain style comes out the “what me!” style of complaint. Eg this Zizek thread - http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/nobody_expects_the_anti_ms_word_revolution/ . Quoth Holbo:
“Frankly, I don’t understand why you get so pissed off about these posts of mine. Seriously.”
I guess, putting flesh on the bones its like this, and I should point out that The Valve is not the only perp in this regard. Maybe it is the fault of the medium. These kind of threads are, for all intents and purposes, seem to never, ever get beyond a cut above banter. They are never real hardcore, lets get the books out academic discussions, as perpetrated in journals across the land. But there is something about the style of you guys, also due to the confusion of purpose that seems to imply that such things are serious discussions and that people reputation and the reputation of the figures discussed are at stake. This is my impression anyway. Part of me feels that blog discussions are substitute for real work, which in my case they often are.
All of this, might of course, be due to my inability to accept websites of hybrid style.
But for the sake of argument compare http://alistapart.com/ with something like http://mashable.com - both tech/web 2.0 thingies, both written in different ways and in different styles. The former comes across as a magazine which in its boldest moments The Valve attempt, the latter like a blog of the traditional school. The Valve comes across as a weird hybird of passing thoughts, complaints and fancies and attempts to post online “serious academic work” TM, and seems to oscillate between the two, sometimes within the course of the same post. In a way, this is why I sometimes prefer other group blogs to the Valve (I’ll furnish with links as the discussion carries on - I have more important things to do).
Hopefully, in the following discussion you will stick to my first point that is much more objective than the latter one, which could lead us down a whole path of wrongness.
Hope this is all taken in the good humour it is intended in.
Regards
Me
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 6:16 am
PS Other people, feel free to chip in with my attempts to get “what’s wrong with Teh Valve”.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 7:51 am
The Valve really started going downhill for me when it censored the Bill Benzon post that analyzed, in loving, creepy detail, a sexually-charged anime scene — complete with screen captures.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 7:52 am
Let me see if the Wayback Machine has it. I think everyone would enjoy that post.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 9:07 am
Adam, lemme get this straight. You’ve been complaining loudly and angrily about the obscure horribleness of the Valve for months (years, I think), and strongly hinting that it has something, specifically to do with my anti-Theory/Derrida/Zizek posts … by way of sending Bill a message that you didn’t like his anime post?
Wouldn’t it have been easier to send him an email?
Alex, thanks for being civil.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 9:09 am
I guess I’ve just been reading too much Kierkegaard — the indirect communication has spiralled out of control.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 9:58 am
Wait, Benzon really did post something about Azumanga Daioh and Osaka wanting to ride a dolphin? I thought that was just a bad dream I’d had.
It was pretty creepy when I watched the show several months later and found out that there really was a scene where Osaka said she wanted to ride a dolphin. (Though there wasn’t anything sexual to it. Riding a dolphin just seems awesome. They are like living jet-skis that go underwater.)
Man, I don’t know what to believe anymore.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 10:00 am
It was real! I e-mailed SEK about it, basically to ask “WTF?!” and he took it down — immediately afterward, I was kicking myself for not saving it. That thing was a real tour-de-force of creepiness.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 10:02 am
His close readings of the career of a Youtube webcam whore are still in the archives, however, along with everyone’s discussions of comic books, popular polemics against religion, etc. — you know, literature.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 10:41 am
Adam, wouldn’t it be simpler just to admit that when you said we were horrible, you were saying something that you don’t actually believe? (Or are you going to tell me that the horribleness is due to the appalling fact of the discussion of comic books?)
If you just admit that you don’t actually believe it, the question becomes more interesting: why, when discussing the Valve, does Adam not say what he believes? (When, presumably, he could as easily say what he believes.)
I too have a Kierkegaardian theory of what is going on. But I’ll spare you that. (And still people think I have no mercy, in these discussions.)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 10:58 am
I think I probably articulated what he thinks, because I am psychically linked to Adam, as all Weblog regulars are.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 11:04 am
I’m just being difficult here. I do really think that the anti-Theory agenda of the “early” Valve, as well as the Zizek posts, were simply awful — though doubtless you will point out that I have failed to demonstrate to your satisfaction what is wrong with them.
You have clearly failed in your goal of facilitating dialogue among scholars of literature, no doubt in large part because you tied in the lack of dialogue with your personal polemic against what many scholars of literature actually do.
You drove away Ray Davis.
You have minimal female readership, in large part because of the stupid boy’s club atmosphere produced by the “geeky” posts (comic books, anime, camwhores) and the smug Britishness of the whole thing — yet of course, this was revealed to be my fault after it was too late to do anything about it.
The posts on religion are invariably ill-conceived, and their place within The Valve’s mandate is in any case unclear.
There are good posts, and there are even literary posts, but the blog is too dominated by your own personal idiosyncrasies to do anything that it promised to do. So you end up with a handful of good, but basically unnoticed, posts, and a lot of posts that generate bitchy little comment threads. All in all, hardly a triumph — and in fact, a living demonstration of the correctness of my critique of academic blogging.
Is that clear enough for you?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 12:21 pm
For the sake of balance, I do think that your stuff on electronic publishing, and academic publishing more generally, is both good and relevant — you have good ideas in that regard, and The Valve is a good forum for putting them forward. (My favorite, however, remains your proposal for an online peer-review forum from Crooked Timber back in the day.)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 5:27 pm
‘His close readings of the career of a Youtube webcam whore are still in the archives’
Emmalina is not a whore! You asshole! Have you ever even watched her videos?! Fucking prick..
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 6:56 pm
OK, I’ll say what I think. This is going to come out sort of harsh, so I’ll try not to be too snarky on top of that. Basically, I’m going to tell Adam K. that he projects his sins onto me. That is not usually a welcome message. But I’m quite serious. The main reason for mentioning it is that I’m sort of tired it.
“I do really think that the anti-Theory agenda of the “early” Valve, as well as the Zizek posts, were simply awful — though doubtless you will point out that I have failed to demonstrate to your satisfaction what is wrong with them.”
I would add only that you have failed to demonstrate to YOUR satisfaction what is wrong with them. We may as well pick Alex’s example. In that case, in the end you admitted that, not only was the joke funny, but the two minor points I argued were perfectly valid. You just hadn’t known it at the start because you didn’t know enough Dennett to realize that Zizek didn’t know enough Dennett. (Plus the MS-Word thing, which was just sort of obvious. So god knows why you tried to argue against it through scores of comments.) This did nothing to reconcile you to the tolerability of the existence of the post because - this is the point - your objection to it had nothing to do with its rightness or wrongness. You objected to its disrespectful tone. In short, quoting from your post, “the one objecting to an overly forceful argument is most often the really close-minded one, wanting their precious opinions to be treated gingerly, resentful of anyone carrying their logic to conclusions that seem “bad” or even just unexpected.” Your objection to my Zizek/Derrida/anti-Theory posts has never been that they are wrong- which not only have you not shown, you have rarely attempted to show. It is always this other thing - the ‘this is disrespectful, insufficiently deferential’ thing. Which I object to. For the reasons you object to niceness in your post. Also, your objection to academic blogging is, in effect, that it is impossible to see how the thing can ever be satisfactorily niceness policed. People will make unwelcome objections to your stuff - the sort of objection that you don’t want to consider. This is actually your official view, may I remind you. (That post about how you never want to post a paper for discussion on line because people might object to it in ways you would find intolerably irritating.)
Take the whole “Theory’s Empire” thing. It is, again, telling that you complain about the ‘agenda’ - that is, the very fact of the book event. But there is nothing awful about a book event. At the time there were some concerted attempts to pretend it was a right-wing conspiracy, that there is no such thing as theory, etc. That it was anti-intellectual, anti-philosophy. These were the only real objects to the event, as a global phenomenon. But those are bad objections. And no one even pretends to think they were good ones anymore. Hell, after a while Long Sunday started doing ‘what is theory?’ posts. Yet you still object to the whole thing. Why? Well, I submit to you that, for a variety of reasons, you feel compelled to play ‘niceness’ cop on this beat. I think that is an inappropriate, borderline anti-intellectual attitude to take towards serious philosophical discussion.
Not just you, of course. But your post sort of provokes me to leave this comment here.
Moving on down:
“You have minimal female readership, in large part because of the stupid boy’s club atmosphere produced by the “geeky” posts (comic books, anime, camwhores) and the smug Britishness of the whole thing — yet of course, this was revealed to be my fault after it was too late to do anything about it.”
You can’t possibly actually believe this counts as an objection, even if you believe it’s true. You are blogmates with Anthony. When you are offended by the Valve, don’t pretend it is because we are a boy’s club, or rude, or smug, or any of that. You aren’t actually offended by that sort of thing.
“… and a lot of posts that generate bitchy little comment threads. All in all, hardly a triumph — and in fact, a living demonstration of the correctness of my critique of academic blogging.”
Look, again I don’t believe that bitchy comment threads actually bother you. If they did, you wouldn’t be instrumental in constructing so many of them. You can’t blame the Valve for the bitchy comment threads. (I never leave bitchy comments, for example. Sarcastic coments in response to bitchy commments, yes. Bitchy comments, no.) Well, I guess we could put a stop to it. But that doesn’t exactly make us the responsible parties. We have bitchy threads, not because there is anything about the posts that merit bitchiness. Intellectually, they are on the whole perfectly respectable and would more appropriately be responded to in a non-bitchy way. But, again, the existence of the Valve upsets people, and so they feel the need to engage in recreational niceness policing. Bitching in comments is a way to do that. And then, when that fails - due to insufficient familiarity with Dennett, or a host of other reasons - you can always feign that the reason why it is appropriate to bitch is that, after all, the comments are always so bitchy. So the thing you say is a demonstration of the correctness of your view is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Begging the question. Call it what you will.
Look, every six months or so I send you an email, asking why you are peeing in my shoes. And the answer is never: because I had a good reason to pee in your shoes. The answer is always: sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. Please don’t start answering: because they smelled like pee. That’s even worse. Take responsible for your own intellectual approach. Own your bitchiness before you object to it.
Again, I don’t suppose you find this very pleasant reading. But I actually am writing it because the unpleasant, borderline abusive tone you take in our exchanges strikes me as intellectually inappropriate. Don’t blame me for your own behavior. Don’t niceness police, when you could have a philosophical discussion instead. Seriously. Philosophy is more fun than bitching in Zizek comment threads.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 7:56 pm
It’s awesome how the objection in the final paragraph of your comment is precisely to my tone. And yes, when my tone gets out of hand, as it too often does, I do apologize.
But claiming that your “critique by a thousand cuts” of Zizek misconstrues his project or that your reading of Grammatology misconstrues Derrida’s relationship to the texts he is using — neither of those are anti-intellectual positions, nor are they intrinsically disrespectful to you. For example.
I admitted to you that I overreached with the Dennett thing, which was part of a broader strategy of refusing to concede in advance that “continental figure X” (Zizek in this case, but often Foucault or others) has something wrong, but “it doesn’t matter because of their super-deep insights.” And even now I think, based on what was said about Dennett in that very thread, that Zizek’s take on Dennett is simply overly compressed, rather than outright wrong. Yet I did not push the issue because I knew I had undermined my credibility.
Your “clever” reversal of my complaint is undermined by the fact that I actually think a charitable reading is necessary as a first step to understanding, and I actually think that your uncharitable stance toward certain “continental” figures is part of the reason you misread them. It’s not that I’m asking you to be “nicer” to Zizek or something — I’m asking you to understand what he’s saying before offering a critique. If that’s “niceness police,” then I’m the “niceness police” — but that’s obviously not what I meant in my post. Creating an idiosyncratic definition of the terms I use does not consistute critique.
My incredible power over The Valve is amazing to me, though, overall.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Also, your comment seems to presuppose that Anthony is some kind of horrible misogynist that I’m hypocritically tolerating, which is both unfair and frankly bizarre.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 7:59 pm
OK, one thing I just wrote in that comment is over the top. So I hereby retract the following: “Your objection to my Zizek/Derrida/anti-Theory posts has never been that they are wrong- which not only have you not shown, you have rarely attempted to show. It is always this other thing - the ‘this is disrespectful, insufficiently deferential’ thing.”
To the contrary, you have often tried to show they are wrong. I am sure we can agree that sometimes you have succeed, sometimes failed. Because, often, the reason you think I am wrong is because you are confused, not me. But my present point is that you certainly do not find my posts ‘horrible’ because they contain intellectual errors. That’s the whole point of philosophical writing. To get things wrong, so you can get it right. (Or at least less wrong.) What you have never tried to show is that there is anything intellectually ‘horrible’ about what I do, in the global sense of ‘horrible’ that is the clear impetus for your comments. Your comments respond to the horribleness, never give reason to think it is actually there.
The horribleness of what I do (as opposed to occasional wrongness) can only be a global lack of ‘niceness’ - a failure to be respectful and deferential to certain figures/ideas, etc. But it does not seem to me to be intellectually appropriate to demand that sort of ‘niceness’. Sometimes it is more helpful to be severely critical, even of figures that people very much want to think very highly of. You know that perfectly well, in the abstract. Otherwise you wouldn’t have written this post. I am simply asking you to acknowledge that you are on the wrong side of this acknowledged truth, in the case of your ongoing ventings against the Valve. Or, actually, I don’t care whether you acknowledge it. I want you to stop being on the wrong side. For the sake of the good discussions that might then take place.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 8:06 pm
‘You are blogmates with Anthony.’
The only person who has every complained to me that I was making women feel uncomfortable was SEK, who gets himself into far more trouble with his blog than I could ever dream. Last time I checked he was listed as male. I absolutely reject this notion that I’m somehow misogynistic and unless you can provide some evidence I think you should stop saying it. Not to mention that Adam’s point was that the boys club comes from the fact that you are all geeks meaning its the obsession with comic books and camwhores that alienates the female crowd.
‘I never leave bitchy comments, for example.’
Comments about grammar are bitchy comments. Nerdy-bitch comments, but bitchy nonetheless.
‘Also, your objection to academic blogging is, in effect, that it is impossible to see how the thing can ever be satisfactorily niceness policed. People will make unwelcome objections to your stuff - the sort of objection that you don’t want to consider.’
I’ve never been given helpful comments on drafts of conference papers I post. I’ve been put in contact with people and through email exchanges had some interesting conversations, but via the comments nothing good has ever come. It rarely moves out of the ‘can you teach me about concept X’ and when it does it usually moves into, ‘completely unrelated, but I was wondering if you’ve considered that you’re entire basis for your thesis is wrong’ which is hardly interesting or helpful. You are proof of that! You never respond well to these kinds of questions because you’ve already necessarily made a decision on the big questions surrounding the little one you happen to be dealing with.
‘Intellectually, they are on the whole perfectly respectable and would more appropriately be responded to in a non-bitchy way.’
Umm… ‘on the whole’? The religion posts are always so bad though. A good deal of it doesn’t really interest me as the study of literature/comic books doesn’t really interest me (which isn’t to say it isn’t interesting, I know) so I can’t claim to have an opinion there. I find it very annoying that you claim the site is a philosophy blog though. Obviously the work you do fits under a general rubric of philosophy, but Kuegelmas? Benzon? This is a kind of unsexy critical theory or cultural criticism, whatever you want to call it. And it’s not that fun when everything has been decided ahead of time. I have never seen you relent, it’s mostly banter back and forth basically agreeing with one another and then extreme Holbonic passive-aggressive hostility when someone disagrees.
I just don’t see why you come here though. If blogs are supposed to be communities can’t you just stick to yours? You have plenty of fans there it seems and nothing good ever comes of your coming on over and trying to give us one. Or maybe I’m wrong and this is really fun for you. dBut Jesus, don’t you have a comic book you could read instead?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 8:17 pm
I’m all for being severely critical, but only after understanding a given thinker. For instance, I have an essay about Agamben coming out in a few months, and from reading it, you’d naturally assume that I think Agamben is an idiot. But no! I spent a couple years reading and rereading Agamben until I was confident I had a handle on what he was doing — then I wrote my critique.
Your procedure on Zizek appears to have been nearly the opposite, and as a result, I really do think that your writings on Zizek, including the article, are intellectually irresponsible. They play well to the kind of person who wants to be reassured that Zizek is nonsense, but no one who has really engaged with Zizek has yet taken them very seriously as critiques. It’s not simply that you’re often incorrect, though the additional factor is not best characterized as “deference” in my mind. Charitable reading is not “niceness,” or at least that’s not how I’m using the terms.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 12:37 am
Anthony, all I meant was that you are often quite ostentatiously rude and tend to take a smashmouth approach to online intellectual exchange. Further point in my defense: there was the time we almost had to kick you out for attacking pica. (I hadn’t been thinking about that, and only just remembered.) But I don’t think that was because she was a woman. I think it was because she was a person. You are a misanthrope, an equal opportunity hater. (I think you actually acknowledge as much. No?) So, no I didn’t mean to call you a misogynist, except insofar as misogyny is, as it were, a corollary of an axiom of universal hate. Is that fair? I withdraw any whisper of an implicature to the effect of inegalitarianism.
Seriously, I was emphasizing that Adam does not have delicate rhetorical sensibilities - otherwise he would hardly associate with you, who are so, erm, blunt - so he shouldn’t pretend we have offended his sense of decorum. I was trying to clear up a red herring.
Adam: “no one who has really engaged with Zizek has yet taken them [ my stuff] very seriously as critiques.” Well, I’ve gotten positive feedback on the P&L piece from lots of folks, including some apparently favorable to Zizek. I got invited to a conference Zizek panel and Zizekians asked questions, etc. No one has ever suggested that there’s anything wrong with what I said. OK, Jodi said in print that it was obviously completely wrong. But no one has ever specified anything wrong more closely than ‘everything’. (Seriously. No one has ever even hinted at specific criticism. Which is downright weird, actually, given how much it has been discussed, at least indirectly.) I wasn’t unfair to Zizek. I didn’t misunderstand or misrepresent his claims. I just showed that he didn’t understand Kierkegaard. (Or at least got K. wrong in this book.) And he mistook a point that was utterly familiar to liberals for an original, anti-liberal critique. That’s it.
We don’t really need to keep harping on this. But it seems to me that if something is seriously intellectually irresponsible, it ought to be possible to specify the source of the problem more narrowly than ‘it’s completely irresponsibly wrong’. You say my writings might give comfort to people who want to think Zizek is nonsense. But a trenchant, valid critique of some prominent piece of analytic philosophy could reassure lazy continentals that analytic philosophy is all trash. There is no such thing as a text that a lazy reader cannot turn into an excuse to be lazy. So, by the only standard you have provided according to which my piece might be deemed irresponsible, every text ever written is irresponsible. That seems like setting the bar too high.
And I do think you confuse charity with deference. The proof is that you consider some valid critiques to be ‘uncharitable’, and reject them on that grounds. You write: “It’s not that I’m asking you to be “nicer” to Zizek or something — I’m asking you to understand what he’s saying before offering a critique.” But you yourself don’t think I misunderstood Zizek. You yourself have, in fact, told me that you concede that the Kierkegaard point I make in the paper is perfectly sound and well-supported. You have also said you think “On Belief” is a bad book, by Zizek’s usual standards. But that is not a reason to exempt it from criticism. Writing a good book is not a ‘get out of critical thinking jail free card’ if you turn around and write a bad book.
From the fact that you continue to insist that my paper is horribly irresponsible, while freely admitting that what the paper says is intellectually correct, I conclude that you are just asking me to be ‘nicer’. How can it be that charity demands a higher standard than correct understanding? The only thing that could possibly mandate higher standard is some demand for deference to Zizek’s high status as a Thinker. I know you will say that isn’t it. Well, what can I say?
I’ll leave it at that. I’ve said my piece. Probably there’s too much bad blood over all this nonsense. Which is too bad. (I’ll take your advice and read a comic book, Anthony.) We should probably know better, somehow.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 4:40 am
‘Anthony, all I meant was that you are often quite ostentatiously rude and tend to take a smashmouth approach to online intellectual exchange. Further point in my defense: there was the time we almost had to kick you out for attacking pica. (I hadn’t been thinking about that, and only just remembered.) But I don’t think that was because she was a woman. I think it was because she was a person.’
Pica is a bit of a sensitive soul. I “attacked” her (which is rather stupid way of putting it, but it works for your purposes) because she perpetuated a bit of stupidity regarding Deleuze that, of course, went unchallenged by the sweatered masses of Teh valve. She emailed me to say that I had hurt her and that she was sensitive. To my knowledge that email exchange went fine, we explained ourselves, I apologized for hurting her but said that I couldn’t apologize for being upset that she was propagating this particular fallacy, and said I would try to remember in the future that she was sensitive. Case closed. Though you didn’t have to ban me, the content did that for me.
‘You are a misanthrope, an equal opportunity hater. (I think you actually acknowledge as much. No?)’
Only to the same degree you’ve acknowledged yourself as a prick. I try to be fair. If I read something and feel it is wrong then I say as such.
‘So, no I didn’t mean to call you a misogynist, except insofar as misogyny is, as it were, a corollary of an axiom of universal hate. Is that fair? I withdraw any whisper of an implicature to the effect of inegalitarianism.’
So you’re calling me a misogynist with plausible deniability for calling me a misogynist. No, that’s not fair. I find it bizarre your ascribing to me universal hatred because I dislike intensely a small group of academic bloggers mainly centered around Teh valve. Its not as if I would be happy if one of you suffered a personal misfortune!
Your constant refusal to see that Adam has given you a specific critique of your criticisms of Zizek and Derrida is mindblowing. Your saying it is true does not make it so, though your acolytes may believe via your repetition.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 5:00 am
John,
You really are acting like a complete prick. Doubtless as I say it you will say “who me” and throw up your hands in disbelief.
I think it is rather telling that you ignored the post I made regarding what is wrong with The Valve and went straight for Adam. I don’t see how what I said was hugely different to what he said. This is because, the plain fact is that you don’t like Adam or anything he stands for. This is fair enough, but don’t pretend you have some amazingly complex reason for this.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:17 am
This is amazing. I never said, “You’re right, the reading of Kierkegaard is total trash.” I noted that his goal in using Kierkegaard in On Belief was not to exegete him, but essentially to draw an analogy. Apparently that amounts to a concession that his stuff on Kierkegaard is straightforwardly wrong.
This fantasy world you’ve constructed where I agree with you on everything but nevertheless continue to randomly bully you is really bizarre to me. The series of objections that I keep pointing to in this very thread apparently does nothing to shake the overall frame wherein we’ve somehow failed to have any “real” intellectual disagreements. It may be that you’ve simply decided that all my objections amount to an anti-intellectual insistence that you be deferential to certain thinkers, such that you just can’t hear anything I’m actually saying — and you always exaggerate any minor concession into total agreement (for instance, it’s supposed to be meaningful that I liked the joke in the title of that one post?!), because that provides further evidence to support your crackpot theory that all I care about is how “mean” you’re being to Zizek or something.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:37 am
Alex, the difference between what you and Adam said is that you didn’t feign belief that there is something horrible about the Valve. I feel that Adam feigns horror as a way of dodging certain substantive intellectual exchanges, so I sort of kept to my straight line, pushing past your (admittedly constructive) contribution.
I like Adam fine. He’s a very smart fellow. But, again, I feel that he is often quite unfair to me. So I said so. In the hopes that he would come to see that he was being unfair and, accordingly, stop. It annoys me to be made part of the whole anti-Valve kabuki dance thing. (I don’t demand realism. But there is such a thing as taking artificially too far, in the dramatic arts.)
Speaking of which: Anthony has always been extremely insulting and abusive in his interactions with me. He adopted that tone early on, due to no provocation from me. I was quite forbearing for a time, then figured out it wasn’t going to do me any good. Anyway, that’s how I remember events unfolding. So now I don’t feel I owe him any great debt in the politeness department. And he’s got this sort of ‘hey, I’m a hater’ thing going. So I figured it was ok to play off that a bit by way of saying that I actually wasn’t calling him a woman-hater. Which, actually, I wasn’t. Hadn’t crossed my mind. I hope he doesn’t hate everyone, or women, and I of course don’t have any reason to suppose he does. And I hope that the ‘fuck you’ tone is just an online act. He’s probably a total sweetie offline. Again, I wouldn’t know. The fact that Anthony is always a jerk to me is just one of those things. Sometimes I route around. Sometimes I try to make him ashamed of himself. (I’m not made of stone, you know.)
I don’t know whether this counts as simple or complex, but I feel that philosophical discussions tend to go needlessly badly on a certain subset of blogs, and that I’m sort of caught up in it; but it’s actually not my fault - nor the Valve’s fault - but other people’s fault. This is sort of a suspicious circumstance, I acknowledge: saying things are all other people’s fault and not one’s own. Maybe I’m delusional about my own subterranean rhetorical malice. I like to think I can turn the mock-socratic vulcanism of my passive-aggressivity on or off. Like a light. On. Off. (It’s on right now, for example.) The idea is that people will find it so annoying that they will give up, in despair, and be driven to sheer philosophy as a last resort. But, then again, that’s so psychologically unlikely that it’s probably just me expressing annoyance, paying out to people what I think they are owed, for being rude to me. When all I was doing was making posts about philosophy.
That’s pretty much it.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:46 am
Poor John. He just wants to write posts about philosophy. That are cutting. And show the lack of seriousness by a whole host of certain philosophers. Via irony. Poor John. He is so misunderstood.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:50 am
Look, Adam (I see you’ve responded now). I never said that you said that the Zizek reading of Kierkegaard was total trash. (Obviously you wouldn’t say that.) I just said that you admitted my criticism was valid, which - at the time - you did. Z said K. said X. But K. didn’t say x. And of course Z is pushing a sort of analogy. But I pointed out how, if you see the analogy through, you end up with a choice between two piles of nonsense. Unapalatable either/or. Look, we definitely shouldn’t revisit all that. But if you did have an actual substantive problem with it, you could SAY what you think the problem is. Rather than evaporating globally about ‘irresponsibility’. You don’t actually think it was irresponsible. Saying so is an are-you-still-beating-your-wife gambit. A way of making me splutter ‘but I wasn’t being irresponsible’. This is no way to live the life of the mind. Cut it out.
But we’re obviously both so annoyed that the best thing for me to do is go read a comicbook. I’m out of here. I’m sorry for causing offense when there was no point in doing so.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:59 am
A last remark: Good Lord! Why do you keep saying that I obviously don’t mean what I say?!
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 8:01 am
John Holbo has powers.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 11:42 am
Didn’t Kotsko claim that “On Belief” was actually supposed to be read as, so to speak, a joke? The point being to show that leftists nowadays really do not want to go back to the “good ol’ days” of Stalinist purges, despite their nostalgic rhetoric, by writing enthusiastically about how things would really go better if we just were willing to line up all the bankers and shoot them in the head. An “A Modest Proposal” sort of thing. But Zizek didn’t pull the gambit off very well, so the book just ended up bad. (This in addition to a few other complaints, like Zizek confusing the virgin birth with the immaculate conception.)
(I honestly am not sure if Kotsko said anything like this or not. I might be confusing him with someone else; the P&L paper has been around for awhile now. But if Kotsko really has said something of this sort, then it’s easier to see what he thinks is wrong with “Zizek and Trilling”: It reviews “A Modest Proposal” without noticing that, really, Swift does not want anyone to eat babies. Which means that specific criticisms made of Swift’s infantophagy policies are rather besides the point.)
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I don’t remember if I took that specific approach, but I do definitely maintain that Zizek is not in any sense advocating a return to Stalinism — not because it’s somehow “impossible” for anyone to do so, but because he explicitly says he isn’t. For instance, Stalinism is the key example of “perversion,” which for Zizek is the greatest possible ethical failure. The closest he comes to “advocating” Stalinism is saying that it is minimally “better” than Nazism, and surely that cannot be confused with a ringing endorsement. So throwing Stalin back in his face is idiotic: Zizek knows very well that Stalin was horrible.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 2:10 pm
And I’ll also note that my opinion changed somewhat through the course of the on-going, years-long debate — something that an advocate of the Socratic “dialectical” method should not only approve of, but actively anticipate. For instance, I still think that On Belief is Zizek’s weakest book, but I’m no longer willing to throw it to the dogs entirely.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious that Zizek does not think Stalinism 2.0 would be a good idea. (This interview has him laughing at the idea that he’s even recommending a return to Leninism; “Sorry, I’m not totally crazy”: http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/endconstruction/desublimation )
Given how often people complain that Zizek lacks “real” “concrete” political advice, it’s surprising how many people still think he’s in favor of Stalinism. Stalinism was many things, but “abstract” was not one of them.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Right — in the Lenin anthology (and numerous other places), it’s clear that he has a very particular thing in mind from Lenin and is well aware of the limitations of “actual existing Leninism.”
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Well, that was a good comic book. I’ve decided my new superpower is going to be: not getting into blogfights about who has committed the worse rhetorical offenses in the past.
Restricting myself to substantive matters, and cutting out the snark: it turns out Adam has misunderstood - or merely forgotten, over the years - what my P&L paper argues. Adam: “I do definitely maintain that Zizek is not in any sense advocating a return to Stalinism — not because it’s somehow “impossible” for anyone to do so, but because he explicitly says he isn’t.” Maintaining this is consistent with everything I say in the paper. “So throwing Stalin back in his face is idiotic: Zizek knows very well that Stalin was horrible.” Since throwing Stalin in Zizek’s face is perfectly consistent with that first thing, I suspect Adam has misunderstood the basic form of my argument. That is, his perception of ‘idiocy’ is just a function of having misunderstood me and, also, Zizek (that latter is more consequential, obviously.)
The short version of what Adam is missing: saying you aren’t a Stalinist isn’t good enough. You also have to not avocate a view that implies that Stalinism is, in practice, politically ideal. Zizek passes the first test, fails the second. (Because Zizek passes the first test, Adam may neglect to run the second. But you have to run both tests. That’s what my paper does.)
The slightly longer version: The plain implication of Z’s Leninist-Kierkegaardianism, if construed with a ounce of seriousness, is that the ideal political leader will necessarily behave exactly like Stalin. (With the caveat that we can never really know whether he is indeed a knight of political faith or just history’s worst pychotic madman.) So when Zizek says he is not advocating a return to Stalinism, he is being inconsistent. Because he IS advocating something that plainly implies a return to Stalin.
But that’s not quite it, actually.
Z’s rejection of Stalinism is less full than Adam thinks (this isn’t just about “On Belief”, obviously. This covers his other writings, too, although perhaps not the most recent. He seems to have moderated his views.) Of course he says Stalinism is the worst perversion. Just as Kierkegaard says murdering your son is the most horrible crime. But that doesn’t keep Abraham from being a Knight of Faith. Zizek defines his ideal of political action, in absurdist religious terms, in such a way that you can never have a good reason NOT to believe that your ideal revolutionary hero is NOT Stalin. Horrible, apparently senseless acts, etc. Just as Abraham is ideal for being willing to murder his son, even though it makes no sense and no conceivable good can come out of it. ‘No omelet can conceivably result from breaking this egg, nevertheless - on the strength of the absurd - I break the egg.’ So you grant that the old objection to Stalinism ‘breaking eggs, but no omelet’, is rationally sound. Yet you advocate breaking the eggs. This actually IS it. This is what Zizek is getting at. This is precisely what Abraham is doing to poor egg, Isaac. This IS the point.
So this is actually the closest Zizek comes to ‘fear and trembling’, to give credit where due. The horror of being opposed to Stalinism yet absurdly committed to advocating something no thoughtful, ethical, politically responsible person would ever say is anything else BUT Stalinism.
I prefer to take the ‘Z just isn’t taking his own views seriously’ line. His butterfingers, when it comes to handling Kierkegaard’s stages suggests to me that he’s just a wishy-washy utilitarian at heart. That’s the Leninism (plus wishing and a degree of white-washing).
But you can, alternatively, read Z.’s Kierkegaardianism more ‘charitably’. That is, you can correct the lapses of his analogies (this is what I did in the paper, at least experimentally) and conclude that Z. is really advocating Stalinism, in exactly the complex sort of way that Kierkegaard really is advocating murder - i.e. for the sake of faith. That is, without saying murder is ethically acceptable. This position at least has the virtue of considerable originality.
There. The basis for an actual argument one way or the other. Rather than just snarking about alleged rhetorical sins.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Skipping over the meta-snarking about who has most unfairly alleged rhetorical sins, &c….
You’re not using “perversion” in the technical sense that Zizek uses. In his terms, it means identifying with the big Other’s jouissance — i.e., discerning that the law “really” means to insight its own transgression, and therefore directly violating the law out of “obedience” to the law. This would be as if Abraham knew that all the ethical content of religion was bullshit and that God really was a sadistic bastard, and therefore he had to sacrifice Isaac for the greater glory of this malicious God. In terms of Stalin, it means justifying unspeakable cruelty in the service of the big Other of “historical necessity” (this is definitely already in place in Plague of Fantasies, which predates On Belief by like six years).
Abraham, however, cannot speak, if I remember Kierkegaard correctly. It’s not like he can say to Sarah, Isaac, the head servant guy (what’s his name?), “I know this looks insane, but in the long run, it’s necessary for the greater glory of God.” Similarly, Lenin didn’t know that the revolution would work (this is in place in the Lenin anthology, which predates On Belief by a couple years) — that’s the whole point of his return to Lenin’s “gesture.” It’s not doing the stupidest thing just for the sake of it — it’s assessing the situation and taking a risk that is not “covered” by the big Other (in Lenin’s case, the big Other of Marxist theory/historical necessity). It’s seizing a moment in such a way as to radically change the very standards by which your act will be judged.
I don’t think this idea of ethics really falls neatly (or even crudely) into the categories of “utilitarianism,” etc. It’s probably closest to existentialism — hence, you know, the Kierkegaard stuff.
So I’m saying that you appear to misunderstand:
1. What he takes Stalinism to be — if you’re going to offer a counter-idea of Stalinism, it seems fair to demand that you give an account of the Stalinism Zizek understands himself to be rejecting, right?
2. What he thinks is important in Lenin
3. What perversion is in Zizek’s theory
And I think your analogy between Stalin and Abraham is incorrect, both in terms of Kierkegaard himself (abstracted from Zizek’s reading) and in terms of what Zizek is doing with Kierkegaard.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Look, Adam, I was doing what you said I should: namely, charitably work out how Zizek’s K. analogy could actually work. On the page, it is incoherent, but there are a couple of points of stability you can work towards. Two, specifically: wishy-washy utilitarianism, plus rhetorical excess. (This is not philosophically admirable, but lots of people lives their lives out as wishy-washy utilitarians and are loved by their kids and neighbors. It appears to work out ok.) The other possibility is what I said.
The reason you think I don’t understand what ‘perversion is’, for Zizek, is that you don’t get what ‘faith’ is, for Kierkegaard. You say that if what I said were right, then maybe Abraham would be this ‘god is a bastard’ guy, or secretly reveling in the opportunity to be a bastard, that god’s monstrous commandment gives him. This actually IS what Kierkegaard says. So you’ve proved my point. Perversion in precisely this sense is a big part of the worry. Read “Preamble form the Heart”. Abraham is in Fear and Trembling not just because he can’t explain himself to others but because he can’t explain himself to himself. He can’t be sure he isn’t doing this because he’s secretly wants to, and has (presumably) just hallucinated this voice of Law to give him an excuse.
“I don’t think this idea of ethics really falls neatly (or even crudely) into the categories of “utilitarianism,” etc. It’s probably closest to existentialism — hence, you know, the Kierkegaard stuff.” Lenin isn’t an existentialist. So either all the Leninism has to go. Or the existentialism has to go.
And Kierkegaard isn’t about risk. Abraham isn’t willing to kill Isaac, while having faith that he will get Isaac back, because he’s a roll the dice, ‘papa needs a brand new son’ crazy gambler. (Kierkegaard didn’t think to put that particular false positive knight of faith case in the Preamble, or Problemata I. But if he’d thought about it he would have said: if Abraham was a gambler, he wasn’t the father of faith.) So if Zizek is advocating just a high risk strategy, then all the Kierkegaard stuff has to go. My reading is MORE charitable than that.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:28 pm
No, for Zizek, Stalin is sure he has a direct line to “historical necessity.”
Once again, you have such a reified notion of everything that it’s quickly becoming impossible to argue with you. Apparently you’re an expert in Lenin and Stalin and have (in the privacy of your own home) completely dispensed with Zizek’s own understanding of those two figures. Thus, “Lenin isn’t existentialist.” Awesome! Come to think of it, he does predate Being and Time…. But Zizek specifies the “moment” in Lenin he’s looking for, admittedly in a somewhat elliptical way, in the intro to the self-same book On Belief — the Lenin who has just been through the world-shattering betrayal of the workers’ capitulation to World War I and has to start from scratch. Zizek understands that his vision of Lenin (in that moment) is not what most people understand of Lenin — hence the anthology he puts out of the writings he’s talking about, together with a lengthy commentary. Apparently you can just dismiss that work with a gesture — in fact, you don’t even need to acknowledge it exists. You know Lenin, after all!
The discussion of “faith” and “risk” in your comment is confused, in my opinion. Obviously I don’t mean “playing the odds” when I say risk. If you need to collapse Zizek into this reified category of “utilitarianism,” be my guest — I am not one to deny anyone their compulsive jouissance. Yet I think it’s fairly clear to most people reading this thread that your highly reified notions of ethical categories, of Kierkegaard, of Lenin and Stalin, etc., are not helping you to provide a compelling account of what Zizek is doing in On Belief.
You’re skipping dozens of necessary steps, because of the little shortcuts you keep in your back pocket. If your critique is that Zizek (a) doesn’t say what a textbook would say about Kierkegaard but (b) if we substitute that textbook definition in, we end up with a textbook definition of Stalinism — well, you’re probably right. It remains difficult for me to take such an argument seriously as a critique, however.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 8:07 pm
“No, for Zizek, Stalin is sure he has a direct line to “historical necessity.””
Adam, not to get all meta-rhetorical again, but I don’t think you are approaching the question in way that makes much sense. You are taking me as attempting to close down the question in a close-minded way. But what am I really doing. I am saying: ok, this Zizek stuff is pretty elliptical and if we sharpen it up - even to a moderate degree - we get stuff that certainly appears to be conspicuously nonsensical. Now YOU say: yes, but here’s what we need to do to make sense of it after all.
Except that’s NOT what you actually say.
What you actually do is dismiss my points, unconsidered, with a gesture, (falsely) accusing me of dismissing Zizek with a gesture. Whereas, in fact, I am done the only thing that seems to me serious: take an elliptical, gestural presentation by Zizek and sharpen it up, to see what it looks like. I say it looks bad. You say: it’s your fault for sharpening it up. But that’s an inappropriate come-back: if there is some other way of sharpening it up, which makes it look less bad, then YOU sharpen it up. But don’t complain about what I did either way, because I did you a favor either way. If I’m right, I’m right. If I’m wrong, I provoked you to say what is wrong with a perfectly straightforward way of reading Zizek, i.e. one that proceeds on the assumption that his Kierkegaardianism resembles the philosophy propounded by Kierkegaard, and that his Leninism bears a family resemblance to the philosophy of Lenin.
I’m not skipping any steps. I’m making an objection, and giving my reasons. This is a completely normal thing to do, in philosophy. (My statement of the objection is compressed of course. This is a comment box. So you ask me for clarification of the steps you think are being left out. And I provide clarification. Would you regard the following as a remotely serious response: in defending Zizek “You’re skipping dozens of necessary steps, because of the little shortcuts you keep in your back pocket.” Therefore, your defense of Zizek is fundamentally irresponsible. It merely gives lazy comfort to those who want to think well of Zizek, and don’t want to bother their heads about awkward criticisms. No. That would be a grossly irresponsible thing for me to fling in your face. It would flagrantly sidestep the actual substance of Zizek’s philosophy. How is it not irresponsible for you to fling this very thing in my face, then? It seems to me you are avoiding the issue of whether what Zizek says makes any sense.
Example: “Obviously I don’t mean “playing the odds” when I say risk.” Well, ‘playing the odds’ is, in fact, a standard understanding of what it means to take risk. I don’t really think it is malicious to take someone who says we need to take risks as saying ‘we need to play the long odds’. So you tell me: what is your understanding of risk?
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 8:38 pm
God, you are one passive-aggressive guy. I feel like you’ve thrown back in my face literally everything I’ve said in this thread. Your reading of Zizek is truly “charitable,” I’m the “niceness police,” I’m intellectually irresponsible…. Is there some rule where you win if you say, “I know you are but what am I” enough times?
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 8:47 pm
(I mean, it’s certainly acceptable to point out when I’m guilty of something I critique in others — and it is the case that I probably actually am guilty in some, or even many, cases. But when I am made out to be the most rigorous and thorough-going hypocrite in the history of the world, that makes me suspicious that something is going on other than simply a heated argument. That’s why I responded like I did.)
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Your right, I do the ‘tu quoque’ too many times. But then again, it must have sort of annoyed Caesar to be stabbed so many times. I’ll bet that smarted. (Not that he didn’t ask for it. Still, I find it humanly understandable that he complained.)
I should work to present the edifice of my thoughts without growing this particular species of rhetorical poison ivy all up and down the walls. Yes, I do see the point.
It does seem to me a perfectly serious objection to what you have been saying that, if your criticisms of me were sound, they would score as heavily against your own position. Indeed, against all positions. If I am irresponsible, because my writings could comfort the lazy, it simply follows that all philosophy is horrible. Since you don’t believe that, you are encouraged to drop the first bit.
So in answer to your query: “Is there some rule where you win if you say, “I know you are but what am I” enough times?” No. There is no such rule. But there is a maxim that says: if I say this a number of times, and am plausibly warranted in doing so, however whack-a-mole tedious the litany becomes, then you should change up stances so I can’t say it any more. I should probably stop whacking the mole either way. Yes, that it also true.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 9:59 pm
There’s no named “head servant guy” in Abraham’s story. Though he does take “two of his men” along with him to Moriah, presumably to help haul things since it was a three-day trip to get within sight of the place.
I’m pretty sure I noticed a slip-up in a summarization from Holbo, of Kotsko: “You say that if what I said were right, then maybe Abraham would be this ‘god is a bastard’ guy, or secretly reveling in the opportunity to be a bastard, that god’s monstrous commandment gives him. This actually IS what Kierkegaard says.”
I think Kotsko was saying that if what you said were right, then Abraham would be this “God is a bastard” guy. Because that’s what Stalin is for Zizek: He likes to violate “the law” for its own sake. He’s the poster-child for perversion. I think it’s pretty clear that this isn’t what Abraham is for Kierkegaard: If Abraham is really hallucinating the command and just likes burning children, then he’s not the father of faith. Of course part of Kierkegaard’s point is that this can’t be ruled out by Abraham. But this isn’t how things stand with Stalin; we are not simply unable to rule out the possibility that Stalin is wicked, but we already have a settled judgement: Stalin is wicked.
I’m curious to hear what Kotsko will say to the “risk without odds” thing.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 10:05 pm
So let’s start with the risk thing. Define ‘taking a risk’ for me in such a way that it doesn’t turn out to mean, roughly, ‘taking a chance’. (I don’t insist on Platonic precision. I just want an intelligible elucidation.)
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 10:43 pm
John, You have “sharpened the edges” of On Belief in such a way that it completely fails to cohere with any of his other works. I’m trying to “sharpen the edges” so that Zizek will at least bear a family resemblance to himself — whereas you apparently give more weight to, say, your own preconceptions about Lenin than Zizek’s own statements about Lenin when trying to understand (which is still the first step before you can critique, right?) what Zizek is saying about Lenin. What you are saying about Stalin is, in terms of Zizek, flatly wrong. Your “application” of Stalin to Abraham is, again, flatly wrong. Yet you want to nitpick me on the concept of risk. This is dumb. Just stop.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Daniel, With “head servant guy,” I was referring to the head of Abraham’s estate, who would be the substitute heir in the event that something “happened” to Isaac. His name begins with an E, and he’s named in Kierkegaard’s questions.
I do have an answer to the risk thing, but I don’t want to venture it when there’s someone prowling around who will seize on the slightest imprecision in order to declare me guilty of something of which I at some time accused someone else.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Daniel, your post and mine crossed, but we ask the same question. Risk without chance. What’s that? Also, you’ve put your finger on the point I think Adam is missing, although you think I’ve missed it. Let me try to explain my side. You write:
“I think Kotsko was saying that if what you said were right, then Abraham would be this “God is a bastard” guy. Because that’s what Stalin is for Zizek: He likes to violate “the law” for its own sake.”
In both cases, Zizek and Kierkegaard, we have a true and a false knight. Kierkegaard makes the point in terms of the true knight - by hypothesis, Abraham. I made the parallel point, on behalf of Zizek, in terms of the false knight - by hypothesis, Stalin. But obviously we do not have to conclude that the true knight IS the false knight. Your coin can be analogous to mine, but mine is heads up, yours is tails up, for the moment. Both have two sides, that’s the thing to get.
If we want to preserve the Kierkegaard parallelism, in terms of presentation as well as general framework, then we simply imagine a good, Abrahamic Stalin, exactly like the one we’ve got, who acts exactly the same way, but is good. Is politically perfect. Which is a weird thought to think, bringing me to the next point.
Daniel: “Of course part of Kierkegaard’s point is that this can’t be ruled out by Abraham. But this isn’t how things stand with Stalin; we are not simply unable to rule out the possibility that Stalin is wicked, but we already have a settled judgement: Stalin is wicked.”
In fact, I think Zizek is committed, by the terms of his position, to saying we can never know whether Stalin was a monster. We assume he was. Just like we assume Abraham was the father of faith. But in the nature of the case, it is impossible to know whether someone is an effective political leader, or history’s greatest monster, because what makes the difference is an intensely private, unknowable spiritual factor.
Of course Zizek would say he does not want to imply THAT. Which is EVERY kind of crazy, rolled into one. But I don’t think he can block the implication, short of chucking all the Kierkegaard stuff, which is a lot of his stuff. So I take this to be an effective reductio on Zizek’s political philosophy. Such, such has been my argument.
Adam will say this is just flatly wrong. But what I would like to hear is some reason for thinking it is wrong. To put it another way, I think Adam is mistaking trying to do something for succeeding. I am willing to grant that Zizek does not intend to be reductio-ed by a Stalin argument. (Who would want that?) So, to that extent, what I am saying about Stalin is, in Zizekian terms, flatly wrong. But it isn’t wrong in the other sense. Which is a pretty important sense.
Think of it this way. Here is Goodman’s proof that P (from the philosophers proofs that P list): “Zabludowski has insinuated that my thesis that p is false, on the basis of alleged counterexamples. But these so-called “counterexamples” depend on construing my thesis that p in a way that it was obviously not intended - for I intended my thesis to have no counterexamples. Therefore p.”
Substitute ‘Holbo’ for ‘Zabludowski’, ‘Zizek’s political philosophy for P, and you’ve got Kotsko’s argument. I submit this is not a valid argument.
And on that note I am out of here. This time I swear it. Unless Adam can find something wrong with my argument short of its being ‘flatly wrong’.
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 11:29 pm
The “bad knight of faith” wouldn’t be a knight of faith at all — he would just be guilty of Schwärmerei (or, in Lacanian terms, “perversion”). No inverse version of the “knight of faith” is possible within Kierkegaard’s system, nor does Zizek give any indication that he thinks such a thing is possible. Nor, indeed, does he set up Stalin as a model of this thoroughly non-existent category.
Abraham finds himself in a situation of radical uncertainty: God has both told him that Isaac is the child of the promise and that he must sacrifice him. The uncertainty goes deeper than just “was I hallucinating?” He is completely bereft of guarantees. Stalin basically has a direct line from God. The parallel is just not there.
Zizek does think that the “knight of faith” position (with no guarantees) is incredibly anxiety producing and opens up the temptation of “perversion” (as represented by something like the reassertion of religion in a “fundamentalist” form after the advent of secularism). But he is pretty damn confident of his ability to identify perversion.
Overall, then, I’m trying to say: your reductio doesn’t work because its premises are flawed. That is what I’ve thought all along, not something stupid like “Zizek can’t be wrong because he doesn’t claim to be wrong.” All your too-clever-by-half pedantry about “procedural” issues really needs to stop.
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 1:39 am
I think I’m missing the place where Zizek ends up being committed to skepticism about the evaluation of any particular political figure.
I wouldn’t have thought the Kierkegaard stuff was enough to render judgement impossible like that; I don’t recall Johannes de Silentio ever expressing any doubts that Abraham was the father of faith, he just had difficulties finding a way to defend the point (eventually being forced to teleologically suspend the ethical to pull it off: With the philosophical payoff being that, purportedly, Hegel cannot allow for such a move, yet Hegel is committed to Abraham being the father of faith, hence Hegel is wrong). Judgement is impossible for Abraham, and for everyone around him (Isaac, Sarah, Eleazar of Damascus etc.), and so “the ethical” has to be suspended for Abraham to become the father of faith, but the suspension is “teleological” just because there is some intelligible grounding for it (for us, who count Abraham as the father of faith, but not for Abraham).
Am I misunderstanding Kierkegaard, here?
Otherwise, I’m not sure how the argument is supposed to go that Zizek is committed to leaving unsettled the issue of so-and-so’s monstrousness or lack thereof (due to it being reliant on some unknowably private mystery). Perhaps I am misremembering “Zizek and Trilling”; I recall it attributing horrible views to Zizek on the basis of things like the Brecht poem which seemed to be openly pro-Stalin (and so, charitably, treated as unserious — as jokes. Zizek likes Stalin jokes). I don’t recall any special trick being involved to get Zizek to be ladened with pro-Stalin views; it was more or less an incidental point made alongside the argument that Zizek’s “critique of liberalism” wasn’t anything that wasn’t already old hat by Trilling’s time. There was also the argument that Lenin does not make a good candidate for a “knight of faith”, since he was constantly calculating, hence Zizek’s “Kierkegaardo-Leninism” must be working with a flawed (utilitarian) version of Kierkegaard if “Lenin, Knight of Faith” appeared plausible. But I don’t see how either of these points is supposed to leave Zizek unable to say “Stalin was a monster, and Leninism sucked.”
(Zizek is able to hate Leninism while saying nice things about Lenin because he has in mind only a very specific bit of Lenin when he says good things, like Kotsko mentioned above. To cut off what appears to be a rather glaring problem in the above two sentences.)
Also, in case it wasn’t clear: I’m not sure that a sensible answer couldn’t be given to what “risks without odds” was supposed to mean. I’m just not sure what Kotsko had in mind, here. Though it appears I’ll just have to remain in suspense on this point.
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 1:55 am
I had apparently had this tab open for over two hours before I finished that comment. Huh. Should remember to F5 before posting.
Kotsko: I don’t think the “false knight” (not “bad knight”; “false”
was supposed to be a “knight of faith, just the false version”; it’s a merely apparent knight. A bloodthirsty Abraham who’d just been waiting for an excuse to kill Isaac.
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 3:26 am
Adam: “The “bad knight of faith” wouldn’t be a knight
of faith at all — he would just be guilty of Schwärmerei (or, in Lacanian terms, “perversion”). No inverse version of the “knight of faith” is possible within Kierkegaard’s system.”
By false knight I just meant apparent, as Daniel surmises. But the term is Kierkegaardian and he likes to play off it. From F&T: “As for the knight of faith, he is assigned to himself alone. He has the pain of being unable to make himself intelligible for others … The false knight readily betrays himself by this instantly acquired proficiency”; “the true knight of faith is always absolute isolation, the false knight is sectarian.” It was particularly the idea of partisanship that I had in mind.
Also, Abraham HAS a direct line to God. God spoke to him. Of course there was anxiety, but is there any reason why Stalin couldn’t have felt the same, even if he had a direct line to History? (Surely the Abraham case shows that anxiety is consistent with having a direct line.) I would point out that you are, in effect, conceding a major aspect of my point: that the decision will have to be a function of Stalin’s private spiritual state, and that is what seems absurd. Not to count consequences but only to consider private spirituality.
Also: I know Zizek didn’t intend to use Stalin as an example. We’re back to that problem again. In a sense, this makes my discussion un-Zizekian, because Z. doesn’t intend to face any counter-examples, let alone Stalinist ones. But that doesn’t mean Stalin isn’t a good test case. (Stalin is a very natural point of discussion, if you are worried about how Leninism might go bad.) I know you know that hoping a view doesn’t have bad implications doesn’t make it so. But it seems like you keep ending up on the wrong side of this basic point, defense-wise.
Daniel, you are right that I’m pushing the implications a bit thick and fast. Probably I should just cut it out and say: look, either Zizek is going to have to push this K. think to absurd lengths, or - like Lenin - he is basically going to cop to a utilitarian philosophy, according to which the end justifies the means. (And then we have to bring in the notion of risk, which is key, because either we understand it as meaning chance, or we find some other weird sense. But it seems to me the reading of risk-as-chance is pretty presumptively dominant.)
It’s a simple, tight problem and I really see no way out. The only sense that we can make is a kind of utilitarian suspension of a lower ethical duty for a higher one. But that’s not Kierkegaard (or Zizek). Or a suspension of the ethical for a spiritual thing. But that way likes political madness (which may be Zizek, but doesn’t look like a good thing).
One final point. Daniel: “I don’t recall Johannes de Silentio ever expressing any doubts that Abraham was the father of faith.” I think you are misremembering. He belabors the ‘if’. Always must remember the ‘if’, because it gives us OUR dose of fear and trembling, albeit smaller than Abraham’s own. We can’t be sure there is such a thing as faith. That’s why the story should have such an effect on us, if we understand it right. It shouldn’t be a comforting reassurance of even the possibility of faith. There is no such reassurance.
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 5:55 am
Holbo seems to be reading a different Fear and Trembling then I’ve read. That’s strange though because I’ve read both the Penguin and the Princeton editions. Maybe he’s reading the malay version.
He also has a very thin understanding of Lenin’s political philosophy. Utilitarian? Granted Holbo’s strange non-analytic way of doing philosophy (and here I’m thinking in the same way of Laruelle’s non-philosophy) moves via reifications (reifications all the way down!). Still, reading Lenin’s biographies and a few philosophical pieces on his thought, his isn’t mere utilitarianism. There are elements of truth to Zizek’s work on him and there are also Kantian aspects (see Bill Martin’s recent work).
But at the end of the day we know that Holbo is really the one who created his theory to have no counterexamples. It’s merely another clever send-up when he reverses this.
In short, isn’t it obvious to everyone that Holbo isn’t serious?
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 6:39 am
Anthony: “Holbo seems to be reading a different Fear and Trembling then I’ve read.”
That’s alright, Anthony, a lot of my students don’t make it past Problema I either. The quotes are from the end of Problema II, so that’s why you missed them. From p. 106 and 107, respectively. In my old Penguin. There may be others.
I challenge you to give a one-sentence summary of Leninism that could not be faulted as ‘thin’. If you fail, it will be true if you that you have a very thin understanding of Lenin’s political philosophy. (You grant this will be a sound argument, I trust.) After we have established our rough equality as complete idiots, Leninistically speaking, we can perhaps put our heads together and argue as equals. Wouldn’t that be fun, for a change?
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 6:42 am
John, You don’t think it’s significant that Abraham got two directly contradictory messages from God? That just doesn’t matter for the sake of this discussion?
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 6:42 am
John,
I’m not the one who wrote an article that in part depended on a very thin understanding of Lenin’s political philosophy. So, no thanks. My point is that you should work harder, not write shorter sentences.
You’re really still reading from the Penguin? You haven’t read the journal entries? Come on John! A little fucking rigor!
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 6:46 am
Anthony, You’re undermining The Cause here — Zizek doesn’t generally quote the Princeton editions either!
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 6:48 am
No that serves my point. If Zizek isn’t serious neither is Holbo.
Friday, September 21, 2007 at 7:08 am
Anthony: “I’m not the one who wrote an article that in part depended on a very thin understanding of Lenin’s political philosophy.” That poor person! Was he (or she - it could have been a she) ever found?
Adam, you don’t think it’s possible that Stalin ever felt he was getting mixed messages from History? (How the hell would I know he didn’t have a long dark night of the soul?) Then that would be relevant as well.
Re: editions. I keep the Penguin at home, for early morning and late night reading, and the Princeton at school. I like the Penguin better. I don’t trust anyone who could think “Preliminary Expectoration” is a better translation than “Preamble From the Heart”. (Why not just call it ’spitting it out’?) With that sort of language, God only knows that I’ll find, and maybe before I finished my first cup of coffee. (Also, “Upbuilding Discourses” is silly, when ‘edifying’ would actually have the same etymology. So that’s Hong for you. But that’s a tale for another day.) Thanks, no. I’m with Zizek on this one.