Re: (no subject)

[Brian Holmes]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 8:48 AM ari  wrote:

> Does an understanding of politics as transformative action not clash with
> one of it as a practice of belonging?
>

Certainly not. The whole Marxist tradition conceived of class consciousness
as a practice of belonging.
However there are problems the Marxist tradition never solved. You want a
universal working class conscious of its own transformative agency; but you
will not be able to describe this class in terms concrete enough to address
any member of it in particular. No one can, those days are over, the
language does not fit the times.
When the *industrial* working class could still be conceived as a
revolutionary subject, such a description was possible. Marx and Engels did
it brilliantly, by spending years debating their ideas directly directly
with the workers. But after the crisis of the 1930s, all capitalist states
recognized the danger represented by the working class and made
extraordinary efforts to integrate the industrial workers to capitalist
practice, first through wage bargaining, then through benefits, then
through a variety of cultural and even military appeals, culminating in the
current situation where industrial workers are recruited to fascism with
anti-immigrant nationalism and the vague promise of industrial jobs.
This doesn't mean there is no transformative potential left in the
industrial working classes. But they can't hold the place of a universal
political subject,and the class you are looking for -  singular, concrete,
conscious of itself and ready to act - is not solely defined by work
anymore.
In fact, the focus of the state on work and the workplace encouraged anyone
who cared about class to look outside the factory and even the wage
relation for the inequality and injustice of capitalist societies. Because
those societies now focused as much on consumption - and more broadly, on
what Marxists call "social reproduction" - as they did on production,
direct oppression exerted by the capitalist state and by the forms of
social reproduction that it mandated could be found in many different
places. Identity politics emerged as a way of naming those sites of
oppression, and even more importantly, as a way to gain transformative
agency through the consciousness of belonging to an oppressed group.
The upshot is, that if you wanted to redo Marx and Engels, you would have
to start not by rereading their books and their tradition, but by taking
new ideas of both oppression and transformation down to the places where
identity politics is debated, and giving those new ideas a go.
Now, this all does not mean everything is fine with identity politics as it
is practiced today. Certainly just abandoning the question of work is the
wrong path (but no one serious does it, so I don't know what the problem
is?).  A new universal is definitely lacking, and much can be learned from
the attempts to conceive a universal working class. However, it does mean
that you can't just diss off identity in favor of some supposedly correct
concept which you have totally dehistoricized, particularly by ignoring the
dialectical negations to which it was subject. No one will take you
seriously if you do. Today, pretty much every "return to Marx" is a return
to some nostalgic and usually privileged self, alone even in the typically
tiny groups, trying to convince themselves that their pure idea from the
past can overcome everything that has happened in global society since 1968.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "Marx to the trashcan." I'm just saying
that if you do go to the barricades, you will not find a universal working
class, and the language with which you seek to invoke or catalyze one, will
remain empty and useless. Doing real politics is far more demanding than
most of us can handle. The "back to class' posts in this thread are so
vague, so nostalgic, so empty, that they do not come anywhere near the goal.

What we are missing is a theory of social relations in the future. To be
transformative it will have to be inclusive, combative and aspirational,
attuned to a possible life beyond the dead-ends of the twentieth century.

best, BH
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Re: (no subject)

[Johnatan Petterson]

i guess the word class has been largely delegitimized thru due to the
efforts of the french theory and in particular Deleuze and Guattari, whom i
know well-
in a passage in ATP, they favor the work of Gabriel Tarde (sociologist
contemporaneous to Durkheim) and talk about "quanta" this is part of the
physical political vision of theirs
which can answer this question regarding incivility and internet fascism
(molecularity) i think what is urgent for the Left is to bring to the
Commons (Democrates and Republicans in what regards USA,
as i am writing from the UE) the debate about rapidly controlling this
Fascist Violence, as described in the book by Angela Nagle "Kill all
Normies" which i am currently in the course of reading . We need to bring
the issue of stopping, blocking the Dark Net and all its subcultural flight
lines.  the ways of the First Amendment about Freedom of Expression
ought to be changed in regards to Philosophy. the Intellect & Philosophy
are the base of the US Constitution. the Intellect & Philosophy should seek
deep if Freedom of Expression truely encompasses the Secrecy with which has
developed modes of a new technology of expression (the "global" Internet)
or are instead undermining the citizens individuals' fundamental rights of
expression. with the tragic consequence of the disintegration of the
Commons, such as have been observed for instance by de Tocqueville in his
essay on Democracy in America in 1830. It is quite possible the with Trump,
the adventure will poise the US in a situation in which a choice will be
hard to make: either to go further in the instanciation of the global
Empire over so many Alt-Right outpost (Orban, Le Pen etc) in order to
refine to control the segments, either to self-destroy . The right of
expression is based on an ability to think one's expression, the ability to
think one's expression is based on the tracability of one self as the
source of expression, which is responsability for one's expression in front
of the Public "Eye" insight, or Commons, thus when Secrecy, and Anonymous
Expression escapes from Democracy, we have a new Natural Right , previously
controlled or tamed by the Commons of Democracy. We can as well have
encouraged Fear of Self Expression, and this could explain the failure to
resist the atomisation via Alt Right wealthy outpost around the planet.



Le dim. 28 oct. 2018 à 14:49, ari  a écrit :

> At the end of a long decade of global austerity, that the 'c' (lass) word
> should be so taboo on the left that it provokes accusations of nostalgia at
> best, sexism and racism at worst, I find rather worrying and sad. If one
> said 'occupational status,' 'income bracket,' or whatever politically
> neutralising appellative the local national statistical agency goes by,
> such knee-jerk reflexes would probably be less common.
>
> But does politics mean belonging?
>
> For identity politics champions, it really does seem to: their political
> reasoning moves along lines of inclusion/exclusion,
> recognition/suppression, voice/silence and, in its most pedestrian moments
> here, even in-fashion/out-of-fashion.
>
> But can identity politics be inclusive of those inherently ill-disposed to
> narcissism?
>
> More fundamentally, does an understanding of politics as transformative
> action not clash with one of it as a practice of belonging? And why does
> the latter dominate the scene on left and right, just as hope in system
> change is at its lowest?
>
> I do think that I, some self, alone, is ultimately incapable of politics,
> as is the endless multiplication of selfsameness.
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Empowerment vs Entitlement - what direction will The Left choose?

[Alexander Bard]

Dear Ari & Co

I totally agree and this was precisely my point. And for all the good
intentions of keeping a civilized tone on this forum, we are civilized
enough not to have to deal with tone-policing either. Thanks to Ted for
pointing that out. Now, let's dare to think this issue though fully. Here
is a thought experiment. OK?

Can we agree that we want class to disappear or become irrelevant? Can we
agree that we want race to disappear or become irrelevant? Can we agree
that we want genders to be given equal opportunity and then empowered to
decide what to prioritize as respective outcomes of that equality? And that
we wish for genders to be equally strong and collaborate? So as to which
gender you are born into becomes, again, irrelevant?

This means we remove the narcissistic obsession with identities and
differences to be replaced by a class struggle proper. A struggle based on
empowerment and not on entitlement. A storytelling about the road upward to
the heroic and not downward into the abysmal. You see, I don't believe that
people are nearly as complex and/or sophisticated as they themselves think.
I believe people are rather simple and utterly predictable once you've
studied Freud. That's precisely why I like them. Without pretentions.

So maybe "labour" was too limited a term coming from Marx, well then
"contribution" is the term proper. Credit Marx for that. Because that was
what he meant. Not a single tribe ever fosters its children to be anything
other than contributing adults. What would the alternative be? Identity
politics' obsession with keeping victims passivized forever as cry-bullies
at The Great Tit of the state and the media? No way. Which is why Marxism
and identitarianism are incompatible. And which is why identitarianism is
just identitarianism. Without a class analysis overriding everything else,
why would there be any difference between the cuckoo's next called "The
Identity Left" and the cuckoo's nest called "The Identity Right"? They are
both each other's perfect abjects. Caharlottesville literally left no space
for any third alternative since Rousseau ruled both camps and class was
never part of the equation.

Other than that, I hope Ted Byfield writes his own books instead of poking
fun about other writers' calendarian priorities. Especially because he is
absolutely right. The postmodernist left has resigned into the falsehood of
matrichal pacifism. Its total and utter lack of phallic passion is exactly
why philosophers like Land and me have turned our backs on it with such a
vengeance. My question is then whether Byfield sees himself as first
executioner of people he merely dislikes in a Robespierrian vendetta
justified by a purification of the population toward a Rousseuian infantile
innocence (Pol Pot did that well and if anybody was a Rousseuian he was,
Pol Pot even did his PhD on Rousseau).

If so, Byfield will soon have thousands of Portland hipsters joining his
ranks when Charlottesville really magnifies in North America. I'm sure
Antifa makes sure his books become bestsellers in no time at all. Or else
Byfield is seriously interested in Marxist violence firmly focused on using
whatever means necessary to go after the class oppressors of our time,
because then that is a book I would be happy to publish myself. He should
then regard me as a loyal and listening ally and not as a foe.

Because I like Byfield's desire for phallus a lot, the question, as Freud
would say, is where he chooses to direct it. But contrary to Land, I still
count on diplomacy to work. I still want the priests to build religious
ritual places rather than design military drawing tables. Although time is
running short. But pacifism is dead and over and should never have been a
leftist axiom to start with. Here Byfield is thoroughly correct. Never
castrate a culture more than absolutely necessary. Once we deal with the
infantilization of the left we can also open a whole new tool box toward
proper empowerment.

So while Byfield has decided not be interested in my ideas based on his
dislike of my personality, I pay no attention to his personality but am
frankly and sincerely interested in his ideas. You say violence. Then I
must ask in return: The Rousseauian variety of ressentiment, or the Marxist
variety of empowerment? Or have I misunderstood that there ever was a
difference? Because to me it makes a hell of a difference. Like the
difference between planned violence or threats thereof and the blind
variety where today's social justice warriors are bound to end up soon.
It's about to become Paris vs Versailles 1789 all over again. Then because
of the printing press, this time because of the internet. My question to
Byfield is what we are going to do inside Paris once Versailles has burned
down?

Best intentions
Alexander Bard

Den fre 26 okt. 2018 kl 00:47 skrev ari :

>  The primacy of identity has transmorphed class struggle into
>  ressentiment politics. Generation identity is the bastard child o

Re: Interview with Richard Stallman in New Left Review (September-October 2018)

[Florian Cramer]

Today, IBM announced that it will buy up Red Hat for $30 billion. That
value was mostly created by the labor of volunteer, un- or underpaid
developers of the Free/Libre/Open Source software that makes up Red Hat's
products. These people will not see a dime of IBM’s money. There need to be
discussions of economic flaws and exploitation in the FLOSS
development/distribution model.

-F


-- 
blog: https://pod.thing.org/people/13a6057015b90136f896525400cd8561

bio:  http://floriancramer.nl
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Re: Identity and difference

[tbyfield]

Ian, this idea of 'civility' should be unpacked a bit, because the ~word 
lumps together a disparate range of concerns. At its worst, a lot of 
babble about civility boils down to is tone-policing, which relies on 
etiquette as an all-purpose tool for micromanaging rhetoric — and in 
doing so, limiting and even delegitimizing positions of every type 
(subjective, relational, political, whatever). In other contexts — 
notably, in 'centrist' politics in the US — it serves as a rationale 
for institutionalist pliability: 'bipartisan' cooperation, etc. But 
those two uses are very different from its function as a foil for the 
frightening prospect of outright political violence. These different 
strands, or layers if you like, are hopelessly tangled, and that 
confusion in itself has serious consequences — hence the culturalist 
use of the word 'strategy,' which often is used to get at the nebulous 
realm in which individual behavior aligns with (or 'is constitutive of') 
abstract, impersonal forces. That's a very roundabout way to get at the 
obvious problem, which is the direct way that increasingly uncivil 
political discourse foments violence. And, in a way, that's the problem: 
the left's path for translating ideals into political practices is 
hobbled and misdirected at every stage, whereas for the right it's 
becoming all too direct.


My gut sense is that Land is symptomatic of the left's repudiation of 
force — violence — as a legitimate form of politics. Some, like him, 
sense that and embark a theoretical trajectory that tacitly accepts or 
even actively embraces violence. I'll leave that there, because I don't 
want to debate it or even to see a debate about it on this list. Nettime 
is fragile, and decades of accumulated effort could be poisoned with a 
few, um, 'uncivil' messages. There was a time when the solution was 
widely said to be more speech, but at a time when 'more speech' means 
trollbot networks that systematically and strategically subvert civil 
contexts I think that rule is more problematic than ever.


As for Bard, whenever his mail appears in inbox my first reaction is 
"When's the new book coming out?" But that's a rhetorical question — 
no answer needed, thanks.


Cheers,
Ted


On 28 Oct 2018, at 10:48, Ian Alan Paul wrote:

Brett - I don't think that the problem of the Left is that we don't 
spend
enough time with people who think it's worthwhile to discuss the 
potential
virtues of "Candace Owens, Nick Land and/or Adolf Hitler." If 
anything, the

Left needs to thoroughly rid itself of the liberal and depoliticizing
notion that we should all simply get along in the name of preserving
civility, esp. in a historical moment while fascist gangs are 
literally
roaming the streets beating up migrants, synagogues are being shot up, 
and

pipe bombs are being mailed to politicians.

I don't think Alexander's ideas are worth engaging with or even 
refuting to
be entirely honest, as I hope is obvious to most people on Nettime by 
this

point. We live in times that are too extreme and urgent to expend any
attention or energy dialoguing with disingenuous apologists for the 
Right .

 <...>
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Re: (no subject)

[Marc Lafia]

Greeting All

Well worth reading the entire interview. But here is a pertinent excerpt.

Learning to Love Again: An Interview with Wendy Brown

CC: Would you say that a paradox that flows from that faith is then how to 
actually achieve that freedom with others while taking into account the force 
and the power of difference? How to cope with the inevitable drive toward some 
form of individuation or recognition of the integrity of self through 
difference? Would you say that this is an ongoing agitation in mapping the 
project of freedom with others? 

WB: Is it a problematic of difference? Absolutely. To return again to Marx, I 
think he made it too simple, since the whole project of freedom with others was 
allowed to come to rest in labour, rather than in what we have come to 
understand as a multiplicity of other activities where difference actually has 
a more persistent rather than resolvable quality. That is the burr under the 
saddle of the project. On the other hand, I don't think that difference stymies 
or overthrows it. Difference complicates it. The project of freedom with others 
means not only beginning to look to some sort of sharing of power or collective 
engagement with the powers that condition our lives, but requires reckoning 
with the unknowable, the enigmatic, the uncomfortable, without then ceding to a 
radical libertarian ‘let us all go off with our differences' as if they were 
natural and ahistorical. This requires that we deal with differences not simply 
as social phenomena but as a domain of subjectivity and psyche, a domain much 
political and social theory has only recently been willing to approach.

http://baraka.blogg.org/learning-to-love-again-an-interview-with-wendy-brown-a115735920

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 28, 2018, at 11:01 AM, Keith Hart  wrote:
> 
>  >I do think that I, some self, alone, is ultimately incapable of politics, 
> as is the endless multiplication of selfsameness<
> 
> Each of us is a 'self' who belongs to all humanity. These extremes are 
> mediated by a plethora of divisions. Individuals can't act alone n politics, 
> but we can choose with whom to act, how, when and why. The notion of this as 
> a lifetime commitment is as irrelevant in this world as expecting a job for 
> life.
> 
> The classes that Marx and Engels identified are not written in stone. The 
> idea that workers have no self or small property except in their labour and 
> the petty bourgeoisie only their selfishness and small property was always a 
> misreading of Manchester society then and now. Beatrice Webb writes in "My 
> Apprenticeship" that she found a new civilization in the North built on three 
> institutions, each of which was built on collective and individual 
> principles: the chapel (congregation and Protestant individualism), union 
> (combination in the work place and private ownership of tools) and the coop 
> (combination in the market and private property) which spawned a rival 
> socialism to Marxism.
> 
> C L R James, who renounced the party but never Marxism, argued that the most 
> difficult thing i any historical struggle (anti-capitalist, anti-colonial 
> etc) is to work out is who the sides are. You then do your best for your 
> side. His American Civilization (written in 1950 and published in 1993) came 
> up with totalitarian bureaucracy vs democracy which isn't a bad label for how 
> our world is divided. Classes certainly do and will play their part in these 
> conflicts. Fanon's class analysis of the anti-colonial revolution in The 
> Wretched of the Earth is exemplary of this method. This is a man who, when he 
> came to France from Martinique refused to accept that he was Black, claiming 
> rather to be French, a communist and a doctor. After living through the 
> Algerian genocide, he attacked the national bourgeoisie and proclaim became 
> a/the leading Pan-Africanist before dying of cancer at 36.
> 
> Political parties and unions were  weak and conservative in late colonial 
> Africa, representing a tiny part of the population: the industrial workers, 
> civil servants, intellectuals and urban shopkeepers. This was a class 
> unwilling to jeopardize its own privileges. They were hostile to and 
> suspicious of the mass of country people who were governed by customary 
> chiefs supervised in turn by the occupying power. A nationalist middle class 
> of professionals and traders opposes the superstition and feudalism of the 
> traditional authorities. Landless peasants moved to the town where they 
> formed a lumpenpretariat. Eventually colonial repression forced the 
> nationalists to flea the towns and take refuge with the peasantry. The latter 
> introduced the former to the reality of colonial rule in return for political 
> education. Only then, with the rural-urban split temporarily healed by 
> crisis, does a mass anti-colonial movement take off.
> 
> Lenin said that he was just another bourgeois politicians with some extremist 
> rhe

Re: (no subject)

[Keith Hart]

 >I do think that I, some self, alone, is ultimately incapable of politics,
as is the endless multiplication of selfsameness<

Each of us is a 'self' who belongs to all humanity. These extremes are
mediated by a plethora of divisions. Individuals can't act alone n
politics, but we can choose with whom to act, how, when and why. The notion
of this as a lifetime commitment is as irrelevant in this world as
expecting a job for life.

The classes that Marx and Engels identified are not written in stone. The
idea that workers have no self or small property except in their labour and
the petty bourgeoisie only their selfishness and small property was always
a misreading of Manchester society then and now. Beatrice Webb writes in
"My Apprenticeship" that she found a new civilization in the North built on
three institutions, each of which was built on collective and individual
principles: the chapel (congregation and Protestant individualism), union
(combination in the work place and private ownership of tools) and the coop
(combination in the market and private property) which spawned a rival
socialism to Marxism.

C L R James, who renounced the party but never Marxism, argued that the
most difficult thing i any historical struggle (anti-capitalist,
anti-colonial etc) is to work out is who the sides are. You then do your
best for your side. His American Civilization (written in 1950 and
published in 1993) came up with totalitarian bureaucracy vs democracy which
isn't a bad label for how our world is divided. Classes certainly do and
will play their part in these conflicts. Fanon's class analysis of the
anti-colonial revolution in The Wretched of the Earth is exemplary of this
method. This is a man who, when he came to France from Martinique refused
to accept that he was Black, claiming rather to be French, a communist and
a doctor. After living through the Algerian genocide, he attacked the
national bourgeoisie and proclaim became a/the leading Pan-Africanist
before dying of cancer at 36.

Political parties and unions were  weak and conservative in late colonial
Africa, representing a tiny part of the population: the industrial workers,
civil servants, intellectuals and urban shopkeepers. This was a class
unwilling to jeopardize its own privileges. They were hostile to and
suspicious of the mass of country people who were governed by customary
chiefs supervised in turn by the occupying power. A nationalist middle
class of professionals and traders opposes the superstition and feudalism
of the traditional authorities. Landless peasants moved to the town where
they formed a lumpenpretariat. Eventually colonial repression forced the
nationalists to flea the towns and take refuge with the peasantry. The
latter introduced the former to the reality of colonial rule in return for
political education. Only then, with the rural-urban split temporarily
healed by crisis, does a mass anti-colonial movement take off.

Lenin said that he was just another bourgeois politicians with some
extremist rhetoric until he came back to Russia and saw the soviets on the
streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Revolutions are not made by sedentary
intellectuals deciding between class and identity politics. They are made
when whole peoples are on the move; then the radical politicians need to
make their untested categories empirical and watch the people.

Keith


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Re: Identity and difference

[Ian Alan Paul]

Brett - I don't think that the problem of the Left is that we don't spend
enough time with people who think it's worthwhile to discuss the potential
virtues of "Candace Owens, Nick Land and/or Adolf Hitler." If anything, the
Left needs to thoroughly rid itself of the liberal and depoliticizing
notion that we should all simply get along in the name of preserving
civility, esp. in a historical moment while fascist gangs are literally
roaming the streets beating up migrants, synagogues are being shot up, and
pipe bombs are being mailed to politicians.

I don't think Alexander's ideas are worth engaging with or even refuting to
be entirely honest, as I hope is obvious to most people on Nettime by this
point. We live in times that are too extreme and urgent to expend any
attention or energy dialoguing with disingenuous apologists for the Right .



On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 7:10 AM Brett Scott  wrote:

> I know you guys are all riled up, but it would be worth chilling out. As a
> reader of this thread I'd like to point out that nobody has either 'won' or
> 'lost' it, but the degeneration in the tone is a classic side-effect of the
> echoing ping-pong of faceless digital communication where the signal gets
> more and more distorted. Can the participants please take a deep breath,
> have a walk, acknowledge each other's unique humanity, and then maybe meet
> in a pub to actually have a civil conversation. If there is anything we
> know, it's that nobody gets anywhere in this movement by treating each
> other like enemies
>
> Cheers,
> Brett
> @suitpossum 
>
>
> On 28/10/2018 10:04, Alexander Bard wrote:
>
> Hahahaha, and there comes the Rousseuian personal attack. Exactly my point.
> There are apparently people so evil and dangerous that the mere mentioning
> of their names disqualifies the mentioner from any further attachment. See
> Ian's outburst below. Are the gallows what await me next?
> While I thought Nettime was s forum for grown-ups - in which case
> separating person and opinion (meaning Nelson Mandela may be wrong and
> Adolf Hitler may be right on details) - is a fundamental requirement, Ian
> wants this to be a kindergarden faux discussion forum for the good children
> isolating themselves against the evil children on the outside. Superiority
> versus inferiority in the moralist struggle. Sooo Rousseauian. And exactly
> what is so fundamentally pathologiocal and infantile with identity
> politics. What could possibly be a more Rousseuian attitude than that?
> I happily dine with everybody and anybody without becoming them. As my
> great dad taught me when I was five years old. And if The Left may not even
> listen to and learn from Candace Owens, Nick Land and/or Adolf Hitler for
> that matter, then whatever that Left is, deserves to die its current slow
> death into total irrelevance. It is not a proletarian left at all, it's
> just a church lady left.
> But I'm all for The New Left. A return to Freud and Marx. And I'm happy my
> message in a bottle in this forum worked big time considering how many
> offlist new amazing contacts my postings created. Nettime is still very
> much alive (thank the God who does not exist) even if not on the mailing
> list itself.
> And Ian, our dear historian of identitarianism Asad Haider will never
> attract any masses. Because he again does not have a narrative to attract
> anybody. Except possibly for the eternal self-victims that Marx so grandly
> despised.
> Thank you, everybody!
> Alexander Bard
>
> Den lör 27 okt. 2018 kl 23:46 skrev Ian Alan Paul :
>
>> "Like charismatic Candace Owens says on Fox News these days, race does
>> not exist to her. Neither does it to me. And gender is merely a rough but
>> not fixed orientation toward dividual archetypes of tribal contribution."
>>
>> What a strikingly ahistorical, antimaterialist, and ideological
>> statement. Anyone who finds Candace Owens and Nick Land salvageable
>> deserves no attention, and certainly no serious consideration or dialogue.
>> Best of luck with your fantasy of a pure universal class which exists only
>> for itself as an abstraction thoroughly divorced from reality.
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 5:34 PM Alexander Bard 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Ian
>>>
>>> It's great that you bring up Asad Haider because he is a brilliant
>>> historian of identity politics and I agree with him that the big shift
>>> happened in 1977. But while for Haider 1977 meant a deepening of
>>> emancipatory struggle to include feminist and anti-racist minoritarian
>>> causes that he insists were ignored prior to then, I disagree and mean that
>>> this shift was rather an ideological turn away from Marx straight into the
>>> arms of Rousseau and no deepening at all but rather a massive loss. The
>>> preoccupation became one of medial attention (the attentionalist call for
>>> "has everybody been seen and heard" rather than the socialist call for "has
>>> everybody been given the means and resources

Re: (no subject)

[ari]

  

At the end of a long decade of global austerity, that the 'c'
(lass) word should be so taboo on the left that it provokes accusations
of nostalgia at best, sexism and racism at worst, I find rather worrying
and sad. If one said 'occupational status,' 'income bracket,' or
whatever politically neutralising appellative the local national
statistical agency goes by, such knee-jerk reflexes would probably be
less common.  

But does politics mean belonging? 

For identity
politics champions, it really does seem to: their political reasoning
moves along lines of inclusion/exclusion, recognition/suppression,
voice/silence and, in its most pedestrian moments here, even
in-fashion/out-of-fashion. 

But can identity politics be inclusive of
those inherently ill-disposed to narcissism? 

More fundamentally, does
an understanding of politics as transformative action not clash with one
of it as a practice of belonging? And why does the latter dominate the
scene on left and right, just as hope in system change is at its lowest?


I do think that I, some self, alone, is ultimately incapable of
politics, as is the endless multiplication of selfsameness. #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: Identity and difference

[Brett Scott]

I know you guys are all riled up, but it would be worth chilling out. As 
a reader of this thread I'd like to point out that nobody has either 
'won' or 'lost' it, but the degeneration in the tone is a classic 
side-effect of the echoing ping-pong of faceless digital communication 
where the signal gets more and more distorted. Can the participants 
please take a deep breath, have a walk, acknowledge each other's unique 
humanity, and then maybe meet in a pub to actually have a civil 
conversation. If there is anything we know, it's that nobody gets 
anywhere in this movement by treating each other like enemies


Cheers,

Brett
@suitpossum 


On 28/10/2018 10:04, Alexander Bard wrote:
Hahahaha, and there comes the Rousseuian personal attack. Exactly my 
point.
There are apparently people so evil and dangerous that the mere 
mentioning of their names disqualifies the mentioner from any further 
attachment. See Ian's outburst below. Are the gallows what await me next?
While I thought Nettime was s forum for grown-ups - in which case 
separating person and opinion (meaning Nelson Mandela may be wrong and 
Adolf Hitler may be right on details) - is a fundamental requirement, 
Ian wants this to be a kindergarden faux discussion forum for the good 
children isolating themselves against the evil children on the 
outside. Superiority versus inferiority in the moralist struggle. Sooo 
Rousseauian. And exactly what is so fundamentally pathologiocal and 
infantile with identity politics. What could possibly be a more 
Rousseuian attitude than that?
I happily dine with everybody and anybody without becoming them. As my 
great dad taught me when I was five years old. And if The Left may not 
even listen to and learn from Candace Owens, Nick Land and/or Adolf 
Hitler for that matter, then whatever that Left is, deserves to die 
its current slow death into total irrelevance. It is not a proletarian 
left at all, it's just a church lady left.
But I'm all for The New Left. A return to Freud and Marx. And I'm 
happy my message in a bottle in this forum worked big time considering 
how many offlist new amazing contacts my postings created. Nettime is 
still very much alive (thank the God who does not exist) even if not 
on the mailing list itself.
And Ian, our dear historian of identitarianism Asad Haider will never 
attract any masses. Because he again does not have a narrative to 
attract anybody. Except possibly for the eternal self-victims that 
Marx so grandly despised.

Thank you, everybody!
Alexander Bard

Den lör 27 okt. 2018 kl 23:46 skrev Ian Alan Paul 
mailto:ianalanp...@gmail.com>>:


"Like charismatic Candace Owens says on Fox News these days, race
does not exist to her. Neither does it to me. And gender is merely
a rough but not fixed orientation toward dividual archetypes of
tribal contribution."

What a strikingly ahistorical, antimaterialist, and ideological
statement. Anyone who finds Candace Owens and Nick Land
salvageable deserves no attention, and certainly no serious
consideration or dialogue. Best of luck with your fantasy of a
pure universal class which exists only for itself as an
abstraction thoroughly divorced from reality.

On Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 5:34 PM Alexander Bard
mailto:bardiss...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Dear Ian

It's great that you bring up Asad Haider because he is a
brilliant historian of identity politics and I agree with him
that the big shift happened in 1977. But while for Haider 1977
meant a deepening of emancipatory struggle to include feminist
and anti-racist minoritarian causes that he insists were
ignored prior to then, I disagree and mean that this shift was
rather an ideological turn away from Marx straight into the
arms of Rousseau and no deepening at all but rather a massive
loss. The preoccupation became one of medial attention (the
attentionalist call for "has everybody been seen and heard"
rather than the socialist call for "has everybody been given
the means and resources toward equal opportunity") instead of
class struggle proper and has remained so ever since.

Once this dramatic shift of "leftist activism" met with
postmodernism's hatred of the grand narrative as idea (which I
as a Hegelian insist is in itself just another form of
subconscious grand narrative) we ended up with the mess we
have today. Laclau's and Mouffe's hegemonic race to the
bottom. Specialized subcultural struggles "within" rather than
"away from" victimhood with no clear vision in sight.
Meanwhile that clear goal will always be lacking unless there
is a grand heroic narrative that connects the struggles and
lifts up its participants to a tribal and today also hopefully
global whole.

My work is therefore all about tri

Re: Identity and difference

[Alexander Bard]

Hahahaha, and there comes the Rousseuian personal attack. Exactly my point.
There are apparently people so evil and dangerous that the mere mentioning
of their names disqualifies the mentioner from any further attachment. See
Ian's outburst below. Are the gallows what await me next?
While I thought Nettime was s forum for grown-ups - in which case
separating person and opinion (meaning Nelson Mandela may be wrong and
Adolf Hitler may be right on details) - is a fundamental requirement, Ian
wants this to be a kindergarden faux discussion forum for the good children
isolating themselves against the evil children on the outside. Superiority
versus inferiority in the moralist struggle. Sooo Rousseauian. And exactly
what is so fundamentally pathologiocal and infantile with identity
politics. What could possibly be a more Rousseuian attitude than that?
I happily dine with everybody and anybody without becoming them. As my
great dad taught me when I was five years old. And if The Left may not even
listen to and learn from Candace Owens, Nick Land and/or Adolf Hitler for
that matter, then whatever that Left is, deserves to die its current slow
death into total irrelevance. It is not a proletarian left at all, it's
just a church lady left.
But I'm all for The New Left. A return to Freud and Marx. And I'm happy my
message in a bottle in this forum worked big time considering how many
offlist new amazing contacts my postings created. Nettime is still very
much alive (thank the God who does not exist) even if not on the mailing
list itself.
And Ian, our dear historian of identitarianism Asad Haider will never
attract any masses. Because he again does not have a narrative to attract
anybody. Except possibly for the eternal self-victims that Marx so grandly
despised.
Thank you, everybody!
Alexander Bard

Den lör 27 okt. 2018 kl 23:46 skrev Ian Alan Paul :

> "Like charismatic Candace Owens says on Fox News these days, race does not
> exist to her. Neither does it to me. And gender is merely a rough but not
> fixed orientation toward dividual archetypes of tribal contribution."
>
> What a strikingly ahistorical, antimaterialist, and ideological statement.
> Anyone who finds Candace Owens and Nick Land salvageable deserves no
> attention, and certainly no serious consideration or dialogue. Best of luck
> with your fantasy of a pure universal class which exists only for itself as
> an abstraction thoroughly divorced from reality.
>
> On Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 5:34 PM Alexander Bard 
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Ian
>>
>> It's great that you bring up Asad Haider because he is a brilliant
>> historian of identity politics and I agree with him that the big shift
>> happened in 1977. But while for Haider 1977 meant a deepening of
>> emancipatory struggle to include feminist and anti-racist minoritarian
>> causes that he insists were ignored prior to then, I disagree and mean that
>> this shift was rather an ideological turn away from Marx straight into the
>> arms of Rousseau and no deepening at all but rather a massive loss. The
>> preoccupation became one of medial attention (the attentionalist call for
>> "has everybody been seen and heard" rather than the socialist call for "has
>> everybody been given the means and resources toward equal opportunity")
>> instead of class struggle proper and has remained so ever since.
>>
>> Once this dramatic shift of "leftist activism" met with postmodernism's
>> hatred of the grand narrative as idea (which I as a Hegelian insist is in
>> itself just another form of subconscious grand narrative) we ended up with
>> the mess we have today. Laclau's and Mouffe's hegemonic race to the bottom.
>> Specialized subcultural struggles "within" rather than "away from"
>> victimhood with no clear vision in sight. Meanwhile that clear goal will
>> always be lacking unless there is a grand heroic narrative that connects
>> the struggles and lifts up its participants to a tribal and today also
>> hopefully global whole.
>>
>> My work is therefore all about tribal anthropology instead (tribes in
>> Greenland, Botswana, New Guinea and China are all alike) now moving into
>> data anthropology about contemporary humans to build a universal story of
>> the tribe in all its variety and diversity. This is the return to Marx that
>> I insist on. Like charismatic Candace Owens says on Fox News these days,
>> race does not exist to her. Neither does it to me. And gender is merely a
>> rough but not fixed orientation toward dividual archetypes of tribal
>> contribution. Without any Rousseuian fantasies allowed on any levels.
>>
>> Because only class is class and only class har universal validity.
>> Laclau's and Zizek's dream of the particular personifying the universal was
>> never more than a wordgame anyway. It is through shared vision (a fetish as
>> opposed to an abject) that we can find a shared agenda. Not by distributing
>> medial attention according to ultimately infantile needs. Because that's no
>> better than Tr