As time has passed I’ve increasingly found myself jaded with this medium. Some might have noticed that my posts have grown more and more infrequent. This hasn’t been the result of being too busy to post, nor of being without thought or inspiration. For the most part I would say that it is the result of encounters with others that thoroughly sap my energy and wonder what point there might be in writing publicly like this. In short, I will post something only to have some jackass jump all over me with the most uncharitable reading possible. I’ll then find that I lose any energy to write or post for days or weeks on end. There are, of course, the rude and hurtful people who are only out to attack, mock, or insult for reasons or motives that thoroughly escape me.
My “favorites”, however, are the “schoolers”. These are people who seem to assume the ignorance of anyone they are talking to so that they might have the opportunity to correct, teach, or educate you about the intricacies of Plato, Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Deleuze, Lacan, etc. Nevermind that you have a PhD in philosophy, teach this material for a living, and have published respectfully on these matters and practiced as a psychoanalyst. Of course, to be fair no one can see this through the internet. Nonetheless, what is interesting as a sort of transcendental framework within which the schooler encounters others is the a priori assumption that the other person must be ignorant and in need of correcting and schooling. The form of jouissance embodied in this subjective type seems transparently self-evident: to engage in a game of one upsmanship where one can situate their interlocutor in a subordinate position. The phenomenon is no different than the sort of hierarchies that emerge in wolf packs. In these encounters there is no dialogue, no discussion, no development of thought, but only a play of display and counter-display that seems geared towards repeating the word and position of the masters. I grow so unbelievably tired when encountering this and not a little insulted. Perhaps the only option is to turn off comments altogether. I certainly find myself better understanding why Spurious and IT have done so, and can see a little better why Shaviro almost never responds.
Larval Subjects . 
June 16, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I can understand the frustration, but I hope you don’t turn off the comments! They’re not always going to be productive spaces, but in general I think the discussions here are. I’d definitely suggest Shaviro’s style if you’re feeling frustrated by them. It’s widely used in political blogs too, which are obviously hot beds of mindless contention.
June 16, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Hi Levi,
Please, please don’t let your understandable frustration when encountering these commentators (who also frustrate the rest of us, your readers!) stop you from posting and sharing your thoughts. You have vastly enriched my understanding of not only Deleuze but also of a host of other subjects.
If you feel it necessary to turn off comments altogether, by all means do so, but continue to post, PLEASE.
June 16, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Metaphysician, heal thyself; that’s just the structure of “learning”, which you are delivering unto others as much as they unto you. I agree it’s pretty fucking unpleasant sometimes, which is why it’s nice there are other things in the world; but the way of intellectual courage is to accept that there is some point in other people acting in that fashion, even if it’s only for them.
As for your PhD, that’s a fine achievement, provided you don’t take it as license to “play doctor” with other people’s heads. Your factual knowledge and hermeneutic savvy are limited by virtue of the fact of being a material human being. And if you think people should just play probabilities and accept that you “probably” know better, consider this: did it ever occur to you that Lacan’s statement “Lesbianism is the only true heterosexuality” might be a joke about Catullus?
I guarantee it’s occurred to a number of people, which is why it’s important to maximize the number of eyes on a topic under consideration: more options. If “quality” outcomes are more important to you than that sort of discursive democracy, consider that the dream of academic learning (men of knowledge leading the people) is sometimes more of a social reality than an epistemic one. Or don’t; just don’t think you and yours have thought of everything.
June 16, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Of course the assumption isn’t that one has thought of everything, only that there’s a particular way of assuming the ignorance of others (i.e., pedantry) that can be extremely irritating… Especially about matters within the scope of a particular exchange where a certain background knowledge should be assumed as shared. For example, it would be rather ridiculous to point out to a Kantian that Kant wished to prove that synthetic a priori propositions are possible. Why? Because this is already elementary and basic background knowledge about Kant given in the communicative situation until the other person states otherwise, ie, says they know nothing of Kant. This is simply a principle of charity that allows dialogue to continue rather than breaking down due to the implicit message being sent that the interlocutor has no respect for the person they’re talking to and assumes they’re ignorant, lacking good reasons for their claims, or in need of correcting. It’s common among academics due to the manner in which we’re conditioned by classroom experience (we’re used to speaking to those who, in fact, do lack background in these areas and therefore generalize it to all others). Now, on the other hand, if the person has something new and interesting to say about the transcendental deduction or aesthetic, a novel interpretation, that’s an entirely different matter. The rest of what you say is, of course, absolutely true, though no less irritating for all that.
June 17, 2008 at 12:03 am
I would also suggest that this tendency to assume ignorance is especially common among continentalists. For example, when confronted with a critique of a particular philosopher such as Heidegger, Deleuze, etc., the first response is to usually point out that the person has misinterpreted the philosopher– that they’re ignorant of the philosopher –rather than address the claim. Theoretical differences are transformed into hermeneutic shortcomings.
June 17, 2008 at 12:09 am
Or to put it yet differently, the idea seems to be that if we only understood the position (interpretation), we’d endorse the position. Us continentalists just aren’t trained to argue in our institutions and tend more towards intellectual history. I’m, of course, guilty of all the things I’m bitching about in this post. In terms of Lacan’s imaginary or semblable, I find these things particularly irritating because they’re all too familiar in my own mirror image.
June 17, 2008 at 12:15 am
Nice parry. I don’t know the layout of academic continental philosophy too well, but I would guess (based on extensive problems with analytic philosophers) that a big part of that is libidinal investment: people are so identified with the thinkers they study that attacking a reading is tantamount to attacking their self-identity.
I suppose part of part of being the “differently minded” fellow I am is wanting to break out of the circle of metaphor and metonymy, but as I said a particular “drive” to concretely understand an admired thinker will not always succeed, and often with some right.
When it is a case of a “great mind” (who is perhaps somewhat paradoxically a less attractive model), often people want to remain at the level of intellectual cliche: it’s more appealing to maintain the “cultural literacy” about concepts and intuitions being respectively empty and blind without each other than to start asking questions about why Kant says there will not be “intuitions” (that is, examples) in the First Critique. So it’s true there’s all sorts of openings for people to tell it unto you, but if you can figure out some good way around exasperating versions of that be sure to tell it unto us.
June 17, 2008 at 3:52 am
Yes, the “pedagogic” comments are all too irritating, but then again, the hazard of the public is of course, nothing less than the perverse egalitarianism of the internet. And it doesn’t mean we can’t bitch about it, we have blogs after all! Whenever we get nasty and irritating comments over at PE (in fact, Mikhail was called a “fucking asshole” just the other day), I just think that at least the irritating (and sometimes shockingly anti-semitic, xenophobic, and plain wacky) know-it-alls that pop up on the internet aren’t angry people with torches in front of our houses burning crosses or effegys of a rival theorist or something. So, I suppose there’s always a worse alternative!
June 17, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Levi,
Your blog is the first philosophy blog I read some years ago and you would hate to see you mired by obnoxiousness. The best advice is to pick your battles and delete the rest.
What you said about continentals and misunderstanding is unfortunately true – once I professed my dislike of Levinas on a public forum in my school and a student replied with ‘oh, you’re having trouble understanding him?’ Let me help.’
I couldn’t believe it at first but it happened again and again.
What I’ve noticed in continentals and analytics is that perceived irrationality is transformed into stupidity – a difference is made into a lack which, the speaker then thinks they can fill. Strong thinkers disregard the false choice of stupidity and irrationality and not in a form of innocuous tolerance.
The gaffe on your last entry was more proof of what many of us knew: hardcore Heideggerians are (more often then not) assholes.
June 17, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Well, since the last post seems to remove any lingering doubt that this thread was penned in reference, partly, to myself, I guess it’s fair to ask:
BZFGT:
I fail to see where Latour is trying to get to an in-itself; he seems entirely unconcerned with this question, whereas Meillasoux seems to demand it.
LARVAL SUBJECT:
Well as I said previously, Latour is up to something quite different than the social constructivist. This is the key difference between assemblage theory and social constructivist. Latour constantly emphasizes that things such as ozone holes, bacteria, etc., are real. Things such as discourses and power are, for Latour, also real. Latour is analyzing the way in which all of these things hang together in a network in much the same way that you might examine the ecosystem of a rain forest.
Allow me to push the analogy a bit further. The analyst of the ecosystem wishes to see how the ant fits together with particular plants and other animals in a system. All elements of this system are absolutely real. No one is more real than the others. This is how Latour analyzes a network. He looks at how a discourse fits together with a particular object…etc.
Is this an example of being a “schooler”?
June 18, 2008 at 12:01 am
BZFGT, mostly I was just expressing exasperation at having the basics of Heidegger and Kant– both of whom I’ve spent extensive time on (my book on Deleuze is just as much a book on Kant as Deleuze) –explained to me. Of course, there’s no way you could know this and I myself am guilty of the nasty habit of over explaining to others in discussions (I’ve incurred similar irritation from Blah-Feme and Jodi Dean for over explaining points about Lacan).
As Jeff Rubard pointed out, there’s an intrinsic difficulty here in any dialogical situation. On the the one hand, we cannot explain points without explaining the framework in which we’re making that point as we cannot, at the outset, be certain what the other person’s background is. On the other hand, we risk insulting the other person when over explaining by implying that we’re placing them in a position of stupidity or ignorance. There seems to be no simple way of resolving this tension. Moreover, the sort of affectivity or irritation that arises in these contexts belongs to the domain of what Lacan called the imaginary, rather than the issue itself. That is, one of the reason that such explanations seem to generate such hostility and aggressive conflict is that they’re experienced as undermining the completeness and fullness of ones ideal ego, thereby evoking imagos that threaten the integrity of the body. In other words, the affective experience accompanying these things has little to do with the discursive value of what is being developed.
The example you bring up to suggest a performative contradiction between my words and actions is, I think, different. For in the case of my remarks about Latour, I was pointing to a difference in interpretation as to what I believe Latour is up to. It then becomes a question of working through that difference in interpretation to see which one is right.
Now, I often find that in my encounters with others I experience a sort of delayed effect in processing what the other person has said. My first response is often one of irritation and radical disavowel. Then, as a bit of time passes, the claims seep in a bit and I begin to entertain them in a different, less affectively charged, manner. As a result of yesterdays exchange I’ve found myself mulling over the relationship between affectivity, thought, and dialogue a bit more. Why is it that certain exchanges tend to produce a certain sort of affective charge? In what way might that affective charge be a symptom? If such affective charges are a symptom, what might they be a symptom of? Finally, how might that symptom be used more productively and effectively? For example, if, in fact, such an affective response is reflective of the imaginary and the paradoxes of the alienated specular image, it is likely that manifestations of aggressivity within intellectual exchange are indicative of a weak point in one’s own conceptual edifice… A lack of completeness. The aggressive affect then becomes an opportunity for the archeology of that blind spot, rather than a call to negate and shore up boundaries. Insofar as the aggressivity that accompanies the dimension of the imaginary in experience is an indication of our alienation in the specular image or our inability to coincide with our specular image, it seems to me that where aggressivity manifests itself in the space of conceptual dialogue it should be taken as a sign of a conceptual-schemes inability to coincide with itself; i.e., it refers to a gap or space of the real within the conceptual-scheme and therefore an opportunity for thought.
All of that aside, your remarks about Latour have provoked me to go back and take a closer look at his work. While I still maintain that Latour is not a correlationist and that he is a realist, his realism is certainly not one that fits comfortably with Meillassoux’s form of speculative realism as he is sceptical of a form of knowledge where there is an in-itself independent of other real actors such as language and power. Where Latour is Whiteheadian in the sense that he sees all beings as related, Meillassoux wishes to think a pure non-relation or an in-itself entirely indifferent to other actors. Thus, while Latour can’t be assimilated to the social constructivist that would argue that we can’t say what the thing is in-itself at all as it’s always mediated by a context (Latour develops a sophisticated critique of contextualism), he also can’t be assimilated to Meillassoux’s position that argues for a non-relation of the in-itself.
June 18, 2008 at 12:04 am
I wrote:
Well, since the last post seems to remove any lingering doubt that this thread was penned in reference, partly, to myself…etc.
I probably should have said “since the last post implies that this thread, etc.” since the author of this thread was not the author of that post.
Either way, my last comment doesn’t mean to imply that I interpreted your remarks in the other thread as “schooler”-type remarks, because I didn’t, I interpreted them as trying (whether successfully or not) to promote clarity. The point is that it is easy to get impatient and huffy at someone’s perceived pedanticism or obtuseness if one is having a bad day, but hermeutic charity would demand that we try to make it a fruitful discussion. If I failed in that respect, it was out of genuine, bona fide ignorance, not any desire to push a Heideggerian line (which I just brought up to counter what I saw as the wrong assertion that the “reality” of phenomena or objects under discussion was the relevant distinction) nor any desire to “school” anyone. And, since that was not my intention, whatever credentials any of us has or does not have was not, in that case, relevant.
June 18, 2008 at 12:17 am
LS,
I sent my last remark while yours was being sent, so a quick follow-up is in order. I appreciate and agree with the points you’ve made about affectivity and aggression, both of which I try to avoid in these sorts of exchanges, but to which we are all susceptible. Thanks for clarifying your remarks, I must admit the timing of this thread on the heels of the last one did provoke a bit of an affective response in me, mostly one of frustration.
A couple of quick remarks on content:
LS: While I still maintain that Latour is not a correlationist and that he is a realist, his realism is certainly not one that fits comfortably with Meillassoux’s form of speculative realism as he is sceptical of a form of knowledge where there is an in-itself independent of other real actors such as language and power.
BZFGT: That was my only real point, I think…Latour may certainly be some sort of realist nonetheless (and I found Nick’s comments enlightening), of course.
LS: Thus, while Latour can’t be assimilated to the social constructivist that would argue that we can’t say what the thing is in-itself at all as it’s always mediated by a context (Latour develops a sophisticated critique of contextualism), he also can’t be assimilated to Meillassoux’s position that argues for a non-relation of the in-itself.
BZFGT:Yes, I agree, I never meant to suggest that Latour is a social constructivist, my point was that one does not have to be any kind of constructivist to be a “correlationist” in the sense you’ve outlined it as per Meillasoux.
I didn’t think I was explaining Heidegger or Kant, I was trying to give examples of non-constructivist or more or less “realist” correlationists (less so in the case of Kant, of course), to clarify my point about Latour. That is what I was TRYING to do. It doesn’t mean I succeeded, but I think it is relevant that that was the purpose of my remarks; I wasn’t trying to “school” you in Heidegger any more than you were trying to “school” me in Latour, I was trying to promote clarity. And I certainly didn’t assume that you had no competence or expertise with those texts. And I would NEVER suggest that if you disagree with Heidegger you simply don’t understand him.
June 18, 2008 at 1:27 am
[…] response to my recent diary on the public, Shahar of Perverse Egalitarianism writes: the “pedagogic” comments are all too […]
June 18, 2008 at 6:30 pm
LS, this is a great site. I learn a lot from your posts and from the conversations they enable. As good as your own raw thoughts are, this thread would not be the same without the cooking and seasoning you, Shahar, Jeff, bzfgt and naughthought did together.
I also do my thinking in two moments, the reflex and the reflection; I’ve noticed you doing it and been impressed by the transparency and generosity of your process. It’s not efficient and it can be exhausting but how else are we gonna get our thinking done?
More related thoughts but theoretically impertinent so I’ll post ’em as Dead Voles where they won’t clutter.
June 20, 2008 at 6:59 pm
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