I
I would like to ask you about issues and political philosophy, as is known, are not disjoint systems. I begin with the first knot. Do you often declare to Spinoza. What do you think is more interested in the work of the author of more geometric Demonstrate Ethica?
Spinoza's work is the major contribution of a single author materialistic thinking has been done to date. What is more interesting to me is the permanent Spinozism Spinoza struggle against abstraction. For Spinoza are always and in particular in the complex and in the plural: the complex should not be deducted. A difference of philosophies that are based on a principle and essence, the materialism of the plurality as something always already given: the infinite atoms and the void that separates them in Democritus or Epicurus, God as the cause and effect of the infinite constituent modes in Spinoza, or before, the confluence of unpredictable, not governed by any principle of unity, wealth and virtue in Machiavelli.
This is what the seemingly mystical beginning of philosophy by the concept of God. This is not a theology, but a necessary deconstruction of the idea imaginary materialist, Marxist ideological would say in terms of God. God, an infinite substance consisting of infinite attributes that are expressed in infinite ways - but the complexity is not always given and, as the only horizon speculative and practical. Everything else is mystification, the work of the imagination if not superstition. If God is dissolved in the infinite complexity of reality, the infinite ways that are finite reality, " man the same fate: the concept of "man" is merely the mirror image of God. Only universal teleological delusion which is the universe of "common sense", or whatever it is, of ideology, for which the world was made for man, and there is "something" or "Someone" that everything has arranged for their benefit, suggests the concepts of God and Man. The man, as free subject, worship God, free Subject also has organized the world for man and it requires that cult. Xenophanes and Epicurus Since no one had fought the idea of \u200b\u200bthe absolute imaginary anthropomorphic as vigorously as Spinoza. No Nor had fought the idea so radical "anthropomorphic" of man.
Spinoza be today, what do you mean? Intolerance against superstition "as you point out yourself at any time? Is not there a danger that we become something, well, politically very strange as was the case of former Althusserian Gabriel Spinoza and former Albiac?
More than intolerance of superstition, which is in Spinoza and generally in the true materialism is a need to understand the mechanisms of superstition. As Althusser argued, materialism is "not tell stories" (ne pas is raconte des histoires ). Is this a prerequisite of freedom. To do this, however, it is required theoretical knowledge of the illusion, the illusion is necessary to know its causes. Is what Spinoza did, but so did Marx in Capital : pass effective relationships that are the essence of capitalism to its phenomenal forms and explain the latter as a necessary effect of the former. The theoretical anti-humanism, the radical critique of the moral and political illusions, recognizing that all power is based on a correlation of forces are, in my opinion, key elements any materialist theory of history and of any materialistic ethic both individually and collectively. Freedom from the imaginary idea of \u200b\u200bman is a demand for intellectual freedom and practice.
However, the problem of freedom that is won and hard for true knowledge, is that nothing is assured and materialism, isolated from the whole communist political commitment and practiced in a university environment and media, as was in the case of Albiac, can easily degenerate into a misanthropic cynicism in an anthropological pessimism, a sad libertinism. I do not think the problem is of Spinoza, or Althusser, who always fought any form of anthropology. The theoretical anti-humanism is not a reactionary and elitist misanthropy, but on the contrary, a theoretical requirement essential for individual and collective practice free of ideological illusions.
Although courts have given in your answers, let me insist on a notion that you have used: when you talk about materialism, materialism what are you talking about? Do not tell stories, that's the point? He adds, "the ongoing struggle against the abstraction of the spoken is not contradictory with the project of a Ethica, which is not only an ethics course, demonstrated no is small, the mode or style of the classical geometry?
Materialism: Althusser recalled in his later works that the term was not very happy and that idealism versus materialism was far less clear than it seems. There is an element in the whole materialistic philosophy that takes off from the ideology and the imaginary: the philosophies, in general, attempt, at least in part, not only do not tell stories or tell stories, do not flatter the subject that challenge so that it can recognized what they say. Also exists in the philosophies of idealism and ideology, and not just imaginary recognition concept.
Materialism idealism and therefore exist in a trend in every philosophy and the terms of an insurmountable conflict. Hence, the time to find a philosophy for Marxism, Althusser of achieving a new line of antagonism to better understand the conflict in establishing the philosophy: the principle of reason. There are so many philosophies that are based on the principle of reason and claim that it is possible a rational explanation for everything, an absolute knowledge, and others that are situated, as we might say, imitating the title of Freud, "Beyond the principle of reason." Beyond the principle of reason are the traditional materials as Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius, Machiavelli, Spinoza and Marx, but also Martin Heidegger. Heidegger did in his brief on the principle of reason a critique of idealism versus materialism, conceived as the two branches of thought on the principle of reason. Faced with the principle of reason is the random, the clinamen Lucretius / Epicurus, Machiavelli's fortune and the forms of structural causality found in Spinoza and Marx. It is thus a new front, in which what is at stake is that history is not conceived as the unfolding of an essence but as the random outcome of a meeting of non-linked. It is compatible to historical materialism the practice of politics, with the randomness of the situation.
As for the fight against the abstraction ...
As for the fight against abstraction, one of the materialistic aspects of Hegel's philosophy is its rejection of abstraction: now , Hegel's abstraction to the concreteness of common experience, the language of the greengrocer. Against the abstraction of immediate awareness in the common experience is the concept, to be produced through the hard work of the internal mediations of consciousness. The concrete is not immediate, but the result of patient work the concept. In the same sense, the constructivist model Euclidean underlying the Ethics of Spinoza serves two purposes: to prevent immediate recognition, the free flow of imagination that "recognizes" the meaning of the terms God, substance, soul etc. and, above all, produce, building on the productivity of common notions, the concept of the concrete, the right idea, the concrete thought. There is, however an important difference between Hegel and Spinoza, for Spinoza conceived the idea and do not identify themselves never, ever integrate in a common essence to overcome their differences through denial. The circle and the circle will be eternally idea two different things.
Let me vindicate the language of the market women and let me also that in the case of the circle, point out that I'm not so sure that the thing and its idea are, forever or not, two different things. Anyway, spoke before "theoretical anti-humanism" as a synonym for radical critique of the moral and political illusions. Is there any problem in using that term? What do we get using the term "anti-humanism"? "Freedom from man's imaginary idea involves getting rid of any approach to the concept man or human being? Does it also inferred denial, use Althusserian terms, the continent's scientific anthropology? "Claude Levi-Strauss was a charlatan?
who would be justified in this regard is the assertion, not the one who denies. Apart from the imaginary evidence of "concrete" ideological that we all recognize, in addition also the zoological or biological theory of what the human species, man has the idea of \u200b\u200bideological use in modern management devices population and political economy. In theory, the materialist philosophy or materialistic theory of history that has no concept place. To write the Capital, Marx had to get rid of evidence of man illusory, their needs and interests, which is based in political economy: designing individual carriers, vectors ( Träger) of social relations. As Laplace said to Napoleon when asked about the place of God in their system of celestial mechanics, a Marxist might say about the "man": "I have not needed that hypothesis."
For that anthropology is a "scientific continent, this is something that can not be attributed to Althusser ...
do not mean to. Used the terminology that he used on occasion to refer, for example, to history, the continent "history" as his way of saying.
Anthropology is an intermediate space between questioning about man's own "social sciences" and "human" and materialistic or scientific history. Lévi-Strauss is not a charlatan, but it is a humanist theory, however much they talk about anthropology. Its purpose, despite some ambiguities, not the man.
That communist political commitment to also talking about earlier, what does it mean for you today? What is the twenty-first century communism in your opinion?
Communism in the XXI century I think that is identical in substance to communism in the nineteenth century as seen by Marx. To which are not identical is a socialist aspiration. Socialism, like the dictatorship of the proletariat can only be a vanishing mediation of communism, an unstable period of transition between capitalism and communism where have all the "conditions of non-existence" (Althusser, Spinoza) communism. Persevere in socialism leads to error and horror of Stalin, who, unlike Marx and Lenin, sees a "socialist mode of production." A socialist mode of production is, in Althusser's terms, something like a "yellow logarithm," a contradiction in terms. Historically the only thing that socialism represented the dream was already envisaged by Marx in Volume III of Capital of "capitalism without capitalists", where the state plays policing social relations based on abstract labor and value, without there is an independent market.
course, communism is something else: the free production of Commons, stateless, classless free market and without right. Today's capitalism has discovered the virtues of free association of free workers and the parasites and explodes. The communist strategy is now aimed at freeing those social relations and these common productive and communists.
If my memory it has coined this coin, I think it was Althusser in self elements, a text from early to mid seventies, who noted that the absence of Spinoza's legacy in the approaches and development of Marx's work was one of the weaknesses of the tradition. Is that in your opinion? What reading can bring to the interpretation Spinoza Marx?
Althusser sought in Spinoza's philosophy of Marx. That philosophy underlying the Capital but Marx never got to ask. Spinoza's reading of Capital away many temptations: 1. first of a dialectical interpretation of history that sees, in the manner of Hegel, the events and historical changes as a display of an essence in which these changes are pre-registered, 2. secondly, to establish theoretically allows Marx's thesis that no theoretical concept is ahistorical character: all reality is a singular essence that depends on conditions of existence (Over) determined. Spinoza's perspective allows us, for example, recognize that, for Marx, unlike what happens in the political economy, there is no work or the overall value, but that these categories must necessarily be integrated into a production mode and the real conditions of existence of this mode of production. Faced with the dialectic, therefore, what Spinoza proposes a reading of Marx is an explanation of plurality and complexity by and in the plural and complex.
Therefore, in your opinion, does the legacy-Hegelian dialectic in Marx's work has no interpretation whereby political-theoretical fruits? The dialectic, if I may joke analytical, it would be a story, one of the stories you should not tell a materialist that claims to be.
Yes, like any teleological thinking, as the dialectic, as Hegel explains it, is a theodicy. There is no dialectical materialism: it is a "yellow logarithm."
Speaking of the Marxist tradition of those years. Is there anything of interest in the work of writers like Althusser, Rancière, Dominique Lecourt, Balibar, etc? Are there substantive squeezed juice?
depends
for whom. If the issue is to defend a theoretical or political "modern", ie adapted to the ultimate hegemony of capital, these authors there is little squeeze. With Althusser, for example it is impossible to uphold the rule of law as those currently in vogue in certain sectors of the left-to Althusser to Marx, the "key concept" of Marxist theory is the dictatorship of proletariat. Rancière is also difficult to defend the "democracies" that for him are prototypes of the system of police, who manages the distribution of social locations among different groups without regard for the existence of that group without a place, of that class without class that Marx called "proletariat."
speak, but the authors very different from each other. Althusser remains the major theoretical framework of Marxism materialism opting for a no-compromise integrated into the "only materialist tradition, that of Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Marx, etc. Rancière is at another level and to some extent, are trying to regain the political traditions of real workers' movement against the Marxist "theoretical" one hand, and in front of the apparatus of representation of the working class. Rancière harshly criticized Althusser in his book Althusser's lesson, but a big dose of misunderstanding between the two, Althusser, writing in the middle of the 70 explicitly accepts many of the criticisms of Rancière. Rancière, they also constitute essential reflections on democracy as the power of the free part of the section of the people left out of the deal "police" of social positions. Under protest, which Rancière calls "democracy" is basically in line with what Marx called "dictatorship of the proletariat." Balibar's reflections on citizenship not without interest, although more and more oriented towards neutralist conception of the capitalist state that more integrated in the French republican tradition, in its radical version, which in Marxism. However, Balibar's contribution to the study of political Spinoza is extremely valuable. As Lecourt, I believe that his work in epistemology remain of great interest. Nor should we forget the work of Macherey on Spinoza and still ongoing seminar in Lille on "philosophy in mind."
II
Three questions about what you've said. What is for you the dictatorship of the proletariat? "The Left Communist must vindicating the notion even after having seen what has been done in his name in companies and very recent historical times? How Cuba or China, for example, exists or has existed a dictatorship of the proletariat?
Leaving the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Marxist theory of history is the same as abandoning the law of falling bodies in physics of Newton. Marx understood it and said so quite explicitly in his letter to Weidemeyer. The idea of \u200b\u200bclass dictatorship is intrinsic to the Marxist conception of politics in class societies, and specifically in capitalism.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is only the reverse need for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. However, the political forms of bourgeois dictatorship need not always be "dictatorial", that is violent, draconian, there are also democratic capitalism and dictatorial capitalism in the political and the Pinochet or the Ben Ali Tunisia.
For the dictatorship of the proletariat and its political forms can never be "dictatorial", at least in regard to the relationship of the governing bodies of the proletarian social majority.
In China and Cuba, as in Russia itself or in the Commune of Paris clearly there have been moments of dictatorship of the proletariat, especially at the beginning of the revolutionary processes, which were then replaced by authoritarian forms of government, the perpetuation of socialism we talked about earlier. These authoritarian ways have had some utility, as they have freed China and Cuba from dependence on imperialism and have allowed China to become an autonomous capitalist pole, a regional power. As for the future of Cuba, things are not clear: it is possible a transition to a national market capitalism controlled by the State and in China, but there is also the possibility of a communist development from the massive buildup of productive common cognitive occurs in the island A pure and simple return to dependence on the world market, it seems unlikely.
also speak, critically, to uphold the rule of law which is so fashionable, in your opinion, between sectors of the left. Is not there to defend because the rule of law? "The thesis points out the inconsistency between the rule of law and the capitalist mode of production seems unwise you?
very good and dear friends of mine and defend the thesis that was defended by famous Marxists like Kautsky and Bernstein. I think that since Marxism is simply indefensible. Therefore have to be invented in of Marx or Marxism matter from anthropology anthropological invariant natural law as the basis for the rule of law.
As for the inconsistency between capitalism and the rule of law is the same as that between feudalism and religion. If you are a believer, one would think that religion was a transcendent value that made him even beyond the Middle Ages the feudal framework, if not a believer, he examines the role of religion within the feudal mode of production is sufficient. Whoever thinks the rule of law is the bearer of eternal values, like human rights as a subject of the rule of law, is a believer, not a materialist. As to political expediency of raising the flags of the bourgeoisie when it is attacking half of humanity on behalf of human rights and the rule of law, it is better not to speak. Posts to resurrect terms, I think a thousand times more useful to the dictatorship of the proletariat, if not separate from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the necessary background. The rule of law is now a poisoned chalice: its function is similar to that of free trade that Britain imposed on all countries in the nineteenth century, and reserves the right to defend its own market. Today, the Empire State requires all law, reserving the right to act dictatorial ruler. That gift, so others, forced acceptance, it had better stay. We stayed with a state or representative democracy, or, which is, communism.
"Althusser remains the major theoretical framework of Marxism," you said. But he himself, in his last work, The future is long, spoke of his reading of Marx was not very deep, who had spoken from hearsay sometimes to impress, who had worked less than previously thought the work of the author of Capital . "He exaggerated maybe? Already were bad?
I have personally seen the books, copies of the works of Marx used by Althusser, packed into each page of notes and underlining also the hundreds of pages of manuscripts in preparation for Pour Marx or Lire le Capital. There are signs of poor knowledge or hearsay. We know that the relentless demands of the superego in certain psychic structures forces the subject to autohumillarse. As recalled in Freud Civilization and Its Discontents , the saints are always those who feel most guilty.
Lacan was a thinker who captivated a large and important sector of the European left, out Marxist or not. What is your opinion of your work?
Freud Lacan is what Althusser's Marx. With Lacan can now read a different Freud which presents the American Freudianism, henchman of Anna Freud. Lacan considers the task of psychoanalysis is to "normalize" the ego, or complete, which otherwise is an impossible task, but to allow the analysand-which is a patient-live with his symptoms. Both Freud and Marx are writers who teach us to see our society and subjectivity as essentially divided realities. Trying to "normalize" a neurotic subject is to submit to the social order is largely home of their discomfort.
Lacan who is also from the 50 anticipated the "linguistic turn", stating that "the unconscious is structured like a language." Lacan allows us, on the other hand, think what is most radical materialism. Not enough to Lacan that the self is an effect of non-self as defined Fichte materialism, or that consciousness is an effect of social being (Marx). The thesis of materialism can not be a mere reversal of the idealist thesis according to which the self is original and not-self is derived. Materialism that is limited to investing the idealist thesis is not out of idealism. What Lacan brings materialism, and this is crucial is the idea of \u200b\u200ba subject divided by language, and a non-self, the Other of the order of signifiers, necessarily incomplete. Deterministic conception of history finalist is associated with the formulations vulgar Marxism is based on the idea of \u200b\u200ban "ultimate determination" of historical events in the economic sphere. The economy is an area that gets its own entity in capitalism due to an alleged self: a self-determined autonomous whole and all the features of I of idealism. Break with this conception is to acknowledge that the economy is not self-regulating, not based on itself. This is what have in common Lacan and Marx.
You aim, according to Lacan, to try to normalize to a "neurotic subject is submitting to the social order, to a large extent, is the cause of their discomfort. A mental patient (say, a person or an individual bipolar schizophrenic) is a neurotic subject? If so, would not then be "normalized"? What would you do with it then?
In cases of psychosis is dating, not neurosis. Anyway, apart from normalizing to the people, for the existing police, doctors, sociologists and psychologists, may be other things: first, to respect their uniqueness and consider the work on the symptom for the "sick", even if it is a psychotic. Is this what psychoanalysis attempts to do so much in his classic device, the "couch", as in the institutions in which their practice can produce effects. It is not doing nothing with the psychotic, but to do something to enable them to achieve for themselves the minimum coupling with the language needed for social life. Moreover, the institution, including confinement, may be useful as a means of protecting the patient against a social environment as hostile and hostile to them. To do this, institution and closure should not be an end in itself, a substantial element of the cure, but a framework for an activity of the subject on itself with the assistance of individuals able to listen, even to hear their silence.
We also discussed the anticipation Lacanian "linguistic turn": the unconscious is structured like a language. But that, looked calmly saying much and saying too little. All, or almost all, may have a structure akin to the structure of a language. Moreover, language is everything, natural or formal, has the same structure or a structure related? What singles this structure?
A (almost) everything can be given the structure of a language that almost everything is symbolized by a language. The talking animal has no knowledge of reality, no contact with reality do not speak the language. He said this and Aristotle, long before Lacan. What Lacan offers a coherent development of certain Freudian thesis on the relationship between the unconscious and language. The language not only, or primarily, a means of communication. In the language there are faults, errors, lapses pointing beyond himself to the subject of the unconscious. Lacan said on TV that Freud had anticipated Saussure and that in fact was the real founder of linguistics, to discover the linguistic structure of symptoms in the psychopathology of everyday life and in the joke, and sleep on the job. Thus what Freud discovered, through these "flaws" in the inter-communication was the centrality of the signifier, the material aspects of the word in the language. The language becomes visible as a structure, as signifying chain, at the time it fails. Without symptoms that point to the subject of the unconscious, the language would be invisible as a system would confuse imagination with things as in all theories representing the linguistic meaning. Language opens the possibility of lying, showing the presence or absence of the subject. Signifier and subject (the unconscious) are well separated. In Lacan's terms, "a signifier represents a subject for another signifier" as a "sign" is that by which a subject is one thing to another subject.
Castillo del Pino, ironically, spoke of Charlacán and Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, carefully and subtly, criticized some abuses Nonsense-metaphorical sense, in his opinion, Lacan and others also and French authors. What do you think about these critical approaches?
Chomsky called it "a brilliant talker aware of it." I think not belie Lacan, he always said his spoken prose analysand represented the position of applying the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis, free association. Speaking as the unconscious is talk like a charlatan. However, the critical approach of Sokal and Bricmont are gross simplifications. Stating that the Sokal hoax literary fun and I think his success is an indication of the degree of pedantry and Booby giant that boast many intellectuals on the left. Moreover, I am convinced that Ethics of Spinoza would have been included by these gentlemen between "Nonsense." For there is a fairly close relationship between the more geometric Demonstrate Ethics of Spinoza and discourse Lacan deliberately baroque: in both cases to prevent immediate recognition of the reader in what they say, the reader has to work on it read and read what he has to work to produce a conception. It is the opposite of the empiricist conception of knowledge-and reading-which is common, and for which there are clear facts and data speak for themselves and just read in reality and in an "open book." The empiricist view is seen by Lacan as an imaginary place: Spinoza said in the same terms.
I leave aside that speculation about the Spinoza's Ethics. They, in fact, not included in any series of deceptions and it is not impossible that it had documented news. Literary joke, you say, its Nonsense. They did not think so, it does not seem the least. Why success is huge index of the degree of pedantry and Booby which boast many leftist intellectuals? Do not invert the criticism? That is exactly what they criticize Lacan and others: that sometimes, sometimes illustrated with reference and selection of texts, talk, for example, the axiom of choice or gödeliano incompleteness theorem without any consistent and fruitful idea what they are talking. I thought you said yourself before was not to be materialistic tell stories?
is also a way to fool any other speech denying the use of themes and results of science. Again, not only Spinoza, but Plato and so many others fall under the criticism of Sokal and Bricmont. The initial approach of Sokal and Bricmont's a joke, a joke taken seriously like all good jokes, but a joke, nothing more nor less. Make a collage of texts of postmodern philosophers and submitted as an article in a publication of Duke University subjected to peer review seems like a good joke, mainly because the thing slipped.
Yes, yes, I agree, is the origin of the book.
joke makes us laugh all pointing to a spot of reality that we do not knowingly accept, we repress. In this case, it is the arrogance of a liberal discourse that makes some responded by passing a Pavlovian manner that smacks of political correctness without asking for consistency. Perhaps, however, the text had more consistency in what the authors of pastiche and has not thought to be so harsh on the editorial board of the magazine. It is very easy to make a pastiche of great philosophers to look plausible. In the Middle Ages were common texts such as the Liber de causis who mixed happily Aristotelian and Platonic themes. What is fascinating is that the texts had their consistency and even served as an inspiration to all classical Arab-Muslim philosophy. Think that the speaker or writer is owner of the signifier is an illusion that psychoanalysis takes more than a century trying to liberate.
change of pace. Do you have any preference for any author of Italian Marxism? "Gramsci continues to be a thinker to be taken into account? Are you interested in any other philosopher or thinker? "Lucio Magri, Rossana Rossanda?
Gramsci is fundamental for me as an author is the great Marxist thinker of ideological and class struggle, but do not use this term, but the hegemony of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Gramsci allows us better than any other great Marxist-certainly much better than Lenin, understand the complexity of the device class power. It is an unrecognized precursor Michel Foucault. As Rossana Rossanda, as a reader of Manifesto and its great items, I admire her as a journalist and intellectual, but not a character comparable to Gramsci.
Let me ask authors who currently have major or significant influence on large sections of the Left in Europe and worldwide. I start with Negri. What is your opinion of his work and his resurgence?
not only Negri Negri. Little is understood of its work if it is separated from the Italian autonomist Marxism where Negri stand before the actual works and especially Panzieri Tronti. Is fundamental to Marxism late twentieth century the double shift that gives the autonomist Marxism of the Third International: 1. first assertion of the decisive nature of the internal structure of the proletariat, its class composition, professional workers, the mass worker, social worker, 2. the assertion of worker's subjectivity as a determinant of class struggle against passivity, victimization and subsequent messianism and millenarianism own left. For Negri, the class struggle is no mere struggle against exploitation, but an expression of power to assert its way from exploitation. Anything not already said in Spinoza. The concept of "crowd" when used in a positive Spinoza's way, facing the negative view of many Western political tradition, plays a key role in political theory and Negri. The crowd describes the internal plurality of the proletariat deterritorialised poor, strongly marked in his new identity through new forms of work by the centrality of language and communication. The crowd is also the class without class displays, which produces and reproduces the productive common: unlike the people of the political philosophy that was unified by the State or of the working class of the Marxism of the IIa and IIIa looked unified international by the Party, the crowd did not need any body representing to access your unit because the unit is always already given in ordinary production. Negri's concepts are, for a political Spinoza, but also and therefore, for a Marxist, essential if you want to understand something of the social and political chaos of late capitalism.
As Zizek. Is it so interesting to his work, his increasingly voluminous work, as is often said among some sectors of the Marxist left?
Zizek's work is interesting as it applies in a highly creative psychoanalytic theory to analyze social and political reality. I appreciate the radical claims that concepts like the dictatorship of the proletariat and its analysis of terrorism and violence. But Zizek is also a spectacular and commercial dimension that I find tiresome. From a philosophical standpoint, his attempt to reconcile the Hegelian dialectic with the teaching of Lacan, despite what Lacan himself says Hegel, "he seems doomed to failure.
III
While not authors of the Marxist tradition itself, do you think the work of Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault is of interest to the left in these times of conservative counterrevolution acute class struggle?
I distinguish. Many of Foucault's analysis of power devices are highly topical. Deleuze also constitutes a fundamental aid in understanding the bio-political society and the control scheme in which we live. As for Derrida, does not think he has great interest to the left, though Althusser considered the greatest living French philosopher.
Postmodernism is, as stated, is the ideology of capitalism in its most despotic and the terminal time?
In its most exploitative and the terminal time, capitalism has to develop any ideology that is not directly the practice of market ideology and socialization through the value and abstract labor. That ideology is imposed on machamartillo, but I do not have much to do with postmodernism. What is called postmodernism is a very poorly defined intellectual space which includes the French post-structuralism, the new feminism, queer studies, postcolonial studies etc. There are many works of great value in the flow and also much fool, but you can not say that the ideology of contemporary capitalism. I believe that certain radical postmodern trends have earned the hatred of certain traditional Marxist realities because they affect that they refuse to see: the irreducible plurality of the new proletariat, the new forms of power, the political nature of the private directory, failure to consider reality from a purely colonial victimization, etc. crossbreeding. A Baroque mosaic impossible to represent it rightly scares to any political organization even pretend to exercise universal representation, be it the bourgeois state or the parties' workers. "
have spoken in a text of "the necessary incompleteness of the order of the signifier." Can you translate the statement to a less pro-French language? Why necessary?
The order of the signifier is not French but Castilian. "Incompleteness" is certainly a Gallicism, but it seems better to introduce it to speak of "incomplete." The order of the signifier is the string that the opposing linguistic signifiers relate to one another, so that the only definition of each of them is the presence / absence of one or another feature in comparison with others. Moreover, the human individual as a subject is determined by the language of membership in the language makes it impossible to direct satisfaction that the child obtained the mother's womb or in general of the mother. Language is the instrument that divides the subject separating the object of desire with which he was identified. As Freud said: "The baby is the breast." This means that after the resolution of the Oedipal crisis, all I want is to be formulated linguistically as a request addressed to another. The lawsuit seeks, however, always something different from what the person wants, which is inevitably outside language. Language, for structural reasons, is unable to symbolize the object of desire is also the cause of desire, because the subject that can only be constituted as a subject in and through it exceeds its own ex-resistance and the object -because of their desire that it be expressed. Front coherent Cartesian subject that is considered transparent to itself, Lacan recognizes a failure in the subject and interprets insurmountable cogito cogito ergo sum as an "ergo sum" where the existence and knowledge is an alternative: "I think or am" I think there where they exist, are there where I do not think. In other words, or am I in the order of the signifier (I) or of being (exist). If the subject (I) is divided, the order of the signifier is "bored" by the subject that inhabits and avoided. In other, more simple, when we speak, to say (that say) is hidden and not expressed in the above. Enunciation not ever set out in the statement.
In the field of English Marxism, what authority do you think has contributed more to the tradition?
What you hope to say is that it was Manuel Sacristán ...
fact, that you expected.
Yes, it's what I say. That said, I somewhat agree with Manuel Sacristán and in general with the "tradition." Specifically, I disagree with their interpretation Sacristán positivist Marx (you know what I think of the facts and data.) However, their translations and interpretations of Marx and Lukács filled a huge void and helped to spread the Marxist Paideia in the English State. With Sexton, began to read Marx.
Well, the truth, I hope not bother you, but not clear to me what you think about the facts and data. Is not it good to know, for example, that unemployment in Spain over 20% in Catalonia that poverty affects 15% of households or 30% of Nissan workers have objected to an agreement that freezes their wages and making them work more days and more exploitation, control and business discipline? "There is no point to know all this?
not useless without an adequate theory. The data itself has no existence. The term "data" (from the Latin dare, to give) suggests a donation to us the reality, but reality does not give us anything in terms of knowledge that do not produce ourselves. Only from a particular theoretical position can be a scientific experiment, so there are only "facts" which are the relevant data of a given scientific theory. After Canguilhem, Bachelard, Althusser and Kuhn I can not say that pre-existing data to the theory and the theory is limited to "interpret". This conception empiricist belongs to the spontaneous ideology of scientists, but has little to do with the actual practice of scientists. This should follow the advice given Marx and at the time of purchase, not to rely too much on the shopkeeper. For that philosophy serves.
And why do you think that Sexton made a positivist reading of Marx? What is concrete that interpretation? Moreover, if so, what sin he committed along this path?
philosophy, like any human practice, is in nature, and nature is no sin, there is only efectos que a su vez son causas. Una concepción positivista de Marx desfigura a mi juicio el pensamiento de Marx reduciéndolo a la práctica de historiadores y economistas prehistóricos, esto es anteriores a la fundación de la ciencia de la historia por Karl Marx. Es exactamente lo mismo que hacen quienes reducen el psicoanálisis a una psicología. Por lo poco que he leído de Sacristán, tengo entendido que reprocha a Marx una indecisión entre la science anglofrancesa, positivista y la Wissenschaft alemana con pretensiones metafísicas y de saber absoluto. No quiero entrar, por ahora, en un debate que me obligaría a releer lo poco que he leído de Sacristán y a leer lo mucho que aún I have not read, but I think Marx is not within any of these models, even in a combination of both.
not enter, then, in the debate. Of the current English Marxists. Are you interested in the work of some of them? Why?
not live in Spain and I have little contact with English Marxism. I guess now you can not say as Baroja in the 30's that "Marx is a little read author among the English Marxist," but I know the picture. The work of my friend Carlos Fernández Liria alone or with Luis Alegre Zahonero or my other old and dear friend who is Santiago Alba, I find it interesting: it raises issues that are fundamental, but I do not resolve them properly. I will not elaborate on this: I am preparing my recension of his latest book, The order of Capital .
abolitionist John Brown was a nineteenth-century American. In Wikipedia can leerese this information: "On 16 October 1859, with a small group, and trying to create a shelter to house slaves previously released by the weapons, stormed and took the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry (Virginia) and took control of the city. His group was surrounded by a company of the Army under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown's ten men, including two children, were killed in the battle that ensued, and he was wounded and forced to surrender. He was arrested and charged with treason and murder, was executed on December 2, 1859, in Charlestown (Virginia), thus becoming a martyr for the abolitionist cause for some, and an extremist for others. " What honor do with your name, besides recalling the figure of this fighter? What arsenal should take at this stage of the century and the history?
The "John Brown" is first of all a pseudonym, a false name, which, like all names is primarily a signifier that, by linking up with other, produces effects of meaning and determines a subject as such. The same applies, of course with my "real name." The first thing I searched was the most common name possible in a language that was not mine, but that was not exotic. Without much thought, I chose John Brown. What's illustrious captain as Thoreau wrote apology and that his actions, became a classic of direct action and one of the few whites who had the honor of being leaders of a brothel, came later. First is the significant and then all metonymy.
The array we should use century at this stage should focus on all means necessary and possible for us to lose respect for the rule and the capital and regain respect for ourselves. It is not necessary for offensive weapons, but strategic intelligence of the masses that get block the flow of goods and communication flows directed from power. Blocking these flows is re-appropriated, even temporarily, as happened recently in France. We have a more recent example in the revolution even in Tunisia, in which an unarmed people neutralized to a gigantic apparatus of repression, and is gaining increasing share of freedom and power. Tunisia's events are the result of a classic workers' strike, but a greater mass strike paralyzed the capital and major cities, a striking paradox of the unemployed, the educated urban youth, including university, which feeds the ranks of precariousness in North Africa, but also in Europe. Recognize the power of the new composition of the proletariat and avoid nostalgia of the subjects of history lost-and perhaps never existed, as working-class-represented-by-your-Party is allowing us to resume with an authentic "common strategy" and abandon the gloom that grips the left.
Does that mean, let me ask this to be finalized, that the left must abandon their traditional instruments: the party, the unions? How is losing respect for the rule and the Capital? Can not we lose that respect and not be able to generate anything and that our revolution is diluted in the air?
all depends on the "consistency" to be achieved. I do not think the instruments of the bourgeois representative government, with its state apparatus, can be found anything that actually exceed it. Past revolutions have not been diluted in the air, but in the horror of a caricature of the bourgeois regime. Anarchist self-management for English revolution still serves as an example, while Stalin's regime continues to discredit anti-capitalist struggles today. Naturally, parties and unions may now be means of resistance, but they must be abandoned in favor of other forms of social and political organization consistent with communism. The representation is based on the individual owner, is antithetical to free access to productive community, is incompatible with communism, not by a democratic romanticism rousseauista, but for reasons having to do with material conditions, relations of production communists.
Let me one last question. Jacques Texier's demise last January 13 I almost require it. When we spoke of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and of its concrete forms, may have given the impression that the concept of democracy was not the object of your devotion. Texier, however, spoke of revolution and democracy in the work of Marx and Engels. Now let me play a text Alma Allende, January 25, 2011, a story about what is happening in Tunisia in recent days. He says: "There is always something naive in the word" democracy "when you pronounce a bourgeois do not ask, where is your wealth or what freedom is based mud. But there is something huge, great, very serious, exciting and almost shocking in that word shouted angrily by young surviving at ground level. There is nothing strange in that they are poor and are not communists, the strange thing is that they are poor and do not ask for bread or a good king or God's intervention. That's what I wish our media and our governments western colonizers, that is what they would expect sociologists and misanthropes. Lo and behold, these barbarians lit, some of whom do not even have identity cards, are presented in the capital, on foot or in open trucks, and call "democracy." In a process that is very reminiscent of early the Bolivarian revolution, have a mouthful of "forms" which require content, which are not compatible with any way of managing the economy, which hit the hypocrisy of our European institutions: democracy, constitution, rule by the people, Dignity " . What do you suggest this discussion? Do you have the strength to text comment to end the interview?
we go. I think my friend Alma is absolutely right, even more reason than you think. I am not opposed to democracy, on the contrary, but democracy only makes sense when the demand of the demos, this is the part without part of society (Rancière), of which they are nothing, in terms of Marx, the proletariat. You know that Greek democracy, political officials were not elected, they were only the "how" - because an election is always a discrimination between citizens according to some criterion: their knowledge, strength, popularity, wealth etc. In the Greek city, free citizens are equal, are individuals who fall under the "isonomy", that is equality defined by city law, the nomos (the verbal noun nemein verno , "divide") which expresses a common participation in the city, where land in wealth, military power and so on. Among those who are free and equal under the nomos there can be no choice but simple drawing. The poorer and less educated the Athenians could well occupy the highest tribunals. This, today, it seems surreal and worthy of the "Lottery of Babylon" by Jorge Luis Borges and yet, one of the most educated and free societies known to the world was governed well. This is now a beggar could be president.
The claim of "forms" legal equality (isonomy), has nothing to do with the idea of \u200b\u200brepresentative democracy, or the State of bourgeois right (pun intended). What people in Tunisia and has claimed half the world's oldest and taste more authentic than the modern republics of owners. What in the suburbs of Caracas, as now in Tunisia but also in the resistance movements against neo-liberal Europe is defended and requires the free and direct access to common productive, collective power and intellectual material production through the life and political order. I guess our friend Alma, after living and narrate live and with great brilliance this burst of constituent power that is sweeping the tyrannies (with representative forms, by the way) the Arab world can draw from this theoretical and political consequences that are imposed. To defend democracy is not to defend the rule of law, is to oppose the state and the law as both are based on private property or public-state and prevent the release of the commons.
This seems a mere theoretical subtlety, but it has immediate political consequences. Let no one be deceived: neither in Venezuela or North Africa, it is possible a representative democracy, rule of law that respects the property. It is not possible, because people can not tolerate on pain of falling back into misery and oppression of the majority necessary condition social capitalist countries and increasingly dependent on the capitalist center itself. Just off the dependence on the world market and global capitalism will establish democracies. Precisely for this reason, these democracies should guarantee access to the commons and the development of these against all forms of property (including government) can not take the "forms" legal and policy associated with the ownership and market the synthesis is the rule of law.
Source: Rebellion
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=121710 (04/02/2011)
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=122178 (11/02/2011)
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=122647 (18/02/2011)
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