Slavoj Zizek and Byung-Chul Han

Sylvere Lotringer, "The Dance of Signs"

Excerpt:

These causes are always going to be some sort of childhood event for Freud. At least in part, and we're going to talk about the two-legged model of causes in Freud's work in a moment, part of which, of course, is the "current events", and then there's the other leg of that being, the "childhood" elements. But Lotringer is trying to frame Freud's interpretations as, yet he's not trying to go for neutrality, he knows that he's bringing his own interpretive schema, he just thinks it's a good interpretive schema. But Lotringer is trying to, at the very least, point out that it is "reactive". It is reacting to the dream, to the manifest or nihilic content instead of using that as an active element which will lead to some new creation. Lotringer has kind of a classic schizoanalytic, in a sense, phrase: "I will learn to resist The Melody of Causal Relations in the torper of narrative accumulations in order to reinvent the intensity of risks ceaselessly menacing and forever being reborn." And this is, of course, one of the main gripes with what schizo analysis is, that it is risky. It's going to take one to the limits of, you know, these... different flows are going to be accentuated in all their raw, potentially destructive power, kind of operating on the edge. I mean he constantly talks about the rough edges of reterritorialization and deterritorialization. And Deleuze & Guattari call this a sort of homemade atom bomb of an activity. So there's something dangerous in going to these limits of, you know, the dissolution of the ego, like John Cage talked about, and in a sense what Deleuze & Guattari talk about. And we are forever rebirthing our analysis. But of course, always making it reborn anew, in the sense of Nietzsche's eternal return. The eternal return of difference itself in, you know, this is the' whole point in "Difference and Repetition" basically, is that one must repeat the difference that always comes back as different.

Salvador Dalí, “Maison pour érotomane” (ca 1932)

The second painting, “Maison pour érotomane” (ca 1932) shows a Catalan landscape, with rocks morphing into a horse, cello, and car. (Erotomania is the delusional disorder in which a person believes someone else to be madly in love with them, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.) According to Sotheby’s Aleksandra Todorovic, the transmogrified figures are a direct allusion to the couple in Jean-François Millet “L’Angélus” (1857–59), a painting Dalí used as a reference for many of his own works: “By transforming the Catalan rocks into anthropomorphic and sexually charged images, the artist eroticizes the landscape that witnessed his first delirious encounters with Gala.”

America Against America

by Wang Huning

Amazon blurb:

In 1988, a young Chinese man traveled to the United States on an academic research trip. During his six month stay he visited 30 cities and 20 universities throughout the country. Upon the conclusion of his trip, he authored a book called America versus America, which described the contradictions of the American political and socio-economic system, as well as a critique of capitalism and democracy.

That young man was Wang Huning, who is currently a member of the CCP's Politburo Standing Committee (China's top decision-making body) and the first-ranked secretary of the CCP's Secretariat. He has been called the "Grey Eminence" of the CCP. As such, Wang is believed to be the chief ideologue of the Chinese Communist Party and the principal conductor behind the official political ideologies of three paramount leaders beginning with Jiang Zemin in the 1990s. 30 years later Wang is still helping to formulate Chinese domestic and foreign policy at the highest levels.

This book is an attempt by a scholar to explain the reasons behind the success of the United States in the 20th century, as well as offer a critical take on the various structural problems that were already facing the US in the 1990s. It offers a brief outlook of why the US is potentially heading toward a decline. Although America Against America was first published in 1991, more than 30 years ago, it is still widely read amongst high level Chinese political figures and bureaucrats. Any serious student of US-China relations will benefit greatly from reading this book that remains at the core of Chinese strategic thinking vis-à-vis the United States.

Deleuze on Nietzsche - Against the Dialectic

Anti-Hegelianism runs through Nietzsche's work as its' cutting edge

Distinctions - Accidental difference:Relative difference::Pure difference

Excerpts (from Video):

In Nietzsche the essential relation of one force to another is never conceived of as a negative element in the essence. In its relation with the other force, which makes itself obeyed, it does not deny the other or that which it is not, it affirms its' own difference and enjoys this difference.  The negative is not present... on the contrary it is the result of activity, of the existence of an active force, and the affirmation of its difference.

Negation "is only a subsequently invented, pale, contrasting image in relation to its' positive basic concept - filled with life and passion." - Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

Deleuze's Nietzsche wants to affirm difference because guess what, it can create new stuff. There's no good and evil, true and false, in Nietzsche. We invent those because we value them, or we value them because we invented them, the humanist conceit. We can say where Nietzsche affirms difference, Hegel disappears it. Each instance of the will to power is a "yes", an affirmation, whereas every negation or starting with a lack, is a "no".

There is though one, one particularly reactionary force that makes the negative central, Ressentiment, revenge, slave morality. That's what dialectics is, not power, but a representation of power. And representing power is not power in the same way that talking about politics is not politics. And with both politics and power, talking about it lets the world just keep on doing whatever it was already doing. Idle chatter justifies the status quo that permits idle chatter in the first place.  And that is it for dialectic. It's not a dialectic. Don't quote me.

...So let me paint the world for you all the way down to the smallest things that exist, from bouncing molecules that feel or repel each other, to the striving of some species to overcome changes in its environment, to your own will to see something accomplished in the world of things. These are all wills that differentiate. You too are repeated acts of willing, in a great sea of willing. The you that refers to you is not "Identity". It's a repetition of your will to differentiate. Not one force, either, but many forces. Multiplicity not Identity. 

So your acts of willing not only differentiate you from other acts of willing, but every act of willing differentiates anything that is anything. The will to power is not some childish outburst to get your own way, it's the metaphysical reason for why anything is different from anything else. Existence. That's why both Nietzsche and Deleuze put such a high value on creation, movement, artistic practices, and such a low value on debate, resentment, and moralizing.  Creativity, making, is active. While resentment negatively represents yourself as good only because others are more evil than you. That's critique without creation.

So, all things that are, are processes. They're struggles in time to not disappear to the background, that is, to become undifferentiated. Will differentiates. A whole plurality of wills. Even our most permanent objects are processes, mountains, stars, the universe itself, and you.

Now, why is this cool? Through differentiation, a fundamental expression of power, and not just special human power, but the power of anything to continually become, and to continue to exist. This is not the critical, not the negative, but the affirmative attitude towards the world. This is ultimately then a affirmative attitude to the world that reflects the world's own attitude towards itself to create and to repeat the creative act. The scientist creates prospects, the artist creates affects, the philosopher creates concepts. Creation affirms power our power.

Scientists artists and philosophers should be a lot more like dancers. Where Deleuze says dance, laughter, and play are affirmative powers of reflection and development, Nietzsche says, "I know not what the spirit of a philosopher would like better than to be a good dancer, for the dance is his ideal and also his art. In the end, likewise, his soul piety."

So let's go back to those metaphysical categories. Cause, effect, possibility, actuality, sameness, otherness, all begin in difference rather than sameness. Not an accidental difference, which is how the dialectic conceives of it, but pure difference. Differences that are not ultimately sublated within an identity, or an idea. A dance of difference, rather than the boring plotting of ideas through history. And for Deleuze, and for Nietzsche, we don't serve ideas or movements, they serve us. And at their very best, they serve life itself.

The New Cancel Culture II

The New Cancel Culture

Slavoj Zizek, "Cancelling Palestine"

Current debates about Israeli policy are rife with double standards, leading to absurd decisions like Germany’s recent cancellation of a pro-Palestinian gathering. By quashing legitimate speech and assembly, an Israel-aligned establishment risks inciting precisely the kind of anti-Semitism that it wants to prevent.

LJUBLJANA – It is only April, but we already have a good candidate for photo of the year. On April 12, German police shut down a Palestine Congress that was set to take place in Berlin, and among those arrested was Udi Raz, a devout Jew with a red yarmulke. In photos and videos of the incident, one can clearly see the smirking aggression on the faces of the policemen – reminiscent of their forebears in the 1930s – as they drag away a Jew.

Among those swept up in the ongoing struggle against anti-Semitism in Germany, many are Jews. The Palestine Congress itself was a joint initiative of the Berlin-based organization Jüdische Stimme für Gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East) and the pan-European political movement and party DiEM25, whose top figure is Yanis Varoufakis. Yet the German Ministry of the Interior has now banned Varoufakis not only from entering the country, but even from online participation in any political activities there.

Varoufakis is fully justified in claiming that, with this ban, the German government has crossed the line into authoritarian behavior. Worse, the German political establishment – including even the Greens and Die Linke (The Left) – have supported the move, reflecting the breadth of the new anti-anti-Semitic cancel culture. To be sure, similar incidents are occurring in the United States, where, for example, Hobart and William Smith Colleges recently placed political theorist Jodi Dean on leave, after she published an essay discerning an emancipatory potential in Hamas’s October 7 attack. But Germany represents an extreme case of how the establishment has appropriated cancel culture.

To dispel any suspicion that Varoufakis might have delivered an anti-Semitic speech at the Palestine Congress, one can simply read his prepared remarks. The text unambiguously condemns any form of anti-Semitism, and demands only that the same standards be applied to both sides in the conflict.

On April 13, CNN reported that, “Hundreds of Israeli settlers surrounded Palestinian villages and attacked residents across the occupied West Bank … after an Israeli boy who had gone missing from a settlement was found dead.” Let’s call these attacks by their proper name: mob lynchings. Far from a normal police investigation, the Israel Defense Forces have simply allowed vigilantism to prevail. One can only imagine how the enlightened West would react if it had been hundreds of Palestinians attacking Israeli settlements after a Palestinian boy went missing.

Or consider another case: On January 18, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejected the idea of a Palestinian state and promised that Israel would control the entire region it currently occupies: “And therefore I clarify that in any other arrangement, in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.” Netanyahu’s use of “from the river to the sea” has come under particular scrutiny, and for good reason. When Palestinians or anyone on the left have used the same phrase to demand a free Palestine (as in the popular chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”), those on the right have disingenuously argued that they are calling for the death of all Jewish people in Israel.

In short, a phrase that is denounced as genocidal when Palestinians use it is now being used by Netanyahu. The formula “from the river to the sea” represents what Israel is actually doing and planning to do, but would never publicly admit to doing, until now – when the Israeli prime minister himself turns it into an obscenity.

I could go on with these examples. On April 2, Netanyahu called the airstrike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza a “tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people.” How, then, would he describe the deaths of thousands of Palestinian children at the hands of Israel’s forces?

The house of cards is falling. Previously, Israel at least pretended to follow two rules: criticism of Israeli policies is permissible, but anti-Semitism is not; and the bombing of Gaza is directed at Hamas, which itself terrorizes ordinary Palestinians, not at Gaza’s entire population. Lately, however, these distinctions have collapsed. Netanyahu has openly stated in interviews that in cases where direct anti-Semitism is not allowed, criticism of Israel has taken its place. Likewise, many senior Israeli officials have become increasingly open in equating Gaza with Hamas.

According to Israel’s hardline finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, over 70% of Israelis support the idea of “encouraging voluntary immigration,” because “two million people [in Gaza] wake up every morning with the desire to destroy the State of Israel.” (If this is the case, perhaps it has something to do with the indiscriminate Israeli bombing of Gaza.) The implication is that all Gazans are legitimate targets – and it is clear that the West Bank is next.

Given this, the oft-repeated argument that Israel cannot really eliminate Hamas misses the point. For Israel, the true goal of the war is to absorb Gaza and the West Bank: a Greater Israel, from the river to the sea. Until then, Israel needs to be able to claim that Hamas remains a threat, to justify continued military intervention.

The gap between elite and popular opinion in Western developed countries, as well as in some Arab countries (such as Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco), has grown too wide to be papered over. While governments basically support Israel, their citizens can only protest – and, increasingly, be canceled, threatened, and even arrested for it. The danger I see is that if popular dissatisfaction explodes, it will take the form of anti-Semitism. That is why acts like Germany’s cancellation of the Palestine Congress should be recognized for what they are: a new perverted chapter in the history of anti-Semitism.

Un-Biased Spies Like Us

Sun Tzu - Know thy Enemy

Examined Life - Zizek, et al

John Donne, "Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud"

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Giles Deleuze, "What Can a Body Do?"  (Lecture)

Baudrillard - Our Theatre of Cruelty