weird poll question

from the CNN website:

“Have you ever been duped in a property deal?”

Well, 24% said “yes,” so maybe it’s not such a weird question after all. But that figure must count people who are angry at something about the house they bought.

Callon

Incidentally, Nick refers to Michel Callon in his lecture. For those who don’t know, Callon was Latour’s colleague at the Ecole des mines in Paris for many years (Latour moved to Sciences-Po a few years ago). Callon, Latour, and John Law are often cited as the major figures of ANT, and in fact I think Callon himself is credited with the actual phrase “actor-network theory.”

I don’t actually know Callon’s work that well. But I will say that I saw him speak for the first time at Latour’s Cerisy week in 2007, and was very impressed. Callon is one of the few people who can pull off a speaking style that is powerfully loud and assertive without seeming like an opinionated bully. It seems instead like passion and seriousness. You get the definite feeling that he’s approachable with objections.

a few more thoughts on Nick’s ideas

I’ll LINK TO NICK’S LECTURE as well.

Though I wasn’t in the audience to hear what the criticisms were, I would guess that the call for piece-by-piece reform is what bothered some people. And it’s not surprising that people of a committed militant stripe would read that as a manner of caving in to the present actuality, but…

What I like about Nick’s lecture is that it allows a possible way to get out of the rut into which these discussions tend to fall. That rut can be seen in Badiou, I’m afraid, where you are either mired in the state of the situation and simply going along with whatever happens, or you are jumping entirely out of the world. There is no redemption in the play of forces between things; the human subject must magically tear a hole in the world for anything worthwhile to be possible. All of this is too reminiscent of bad ontologies that I see to have even the least appeal as a political doctrine. (Though just to clarify, I’m actually a fan, in principle, of Badiou’s “events” in a way that even most Badiouians are not.)

But the idea of the political actor as someone who contracts networks by closing off parts of them is one that has some potential. One of the real problems with Latourian actor-network theory is that, despite Latour’s disclaimers, there is a sense in which this theory tacitly identifies might with right. The winners are the winners and the losers are the losers, and there is no way to distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy among winners and losers. If Pasteur fails to persuade enough actors that he is right, then he is simply a failure, not a neglected visionary.

I’m just sort of thinking aloud here, about Nick’s claim that contracting oneself from networks is a good description of political action… And another thing that has troubled me in Latour’s ontology is the idea that stronger connectedness is better. He does interesting things with that, but the other side of the story often gets neglected. Many important moments in life are those where we disconnect. Many key moments in intellectual history are like that too. Connection can corrupt and weaken as well as strengthen and proliferate, as can be seen even from homely anecdotes such as the need to turn down a social invitation to finish a piece of writing.

So yes, I think Nick is right that the notion of disconnecting is important, and also agree with him that that disconnection need not be a severing of oneself from the cosmos as a whole. (I haven’t read Dominic’s book yet, but it sounds like I would disagree with it for the same reason that I disagree with Heideggerian Angst: I don’t think the idea of humans as transcenders is a good one. It’s been around too long and has too little to do with reality.)

don’t get it yet

I must be getting old… I’ve read several descriptions of GoogleWave, and still don’t get what it is. Maybe it will become clear once I simply look at it.

Levi on Nick’s Goldsmiths talk

Nick from Speculative Heresy is now in London, and gave a talk at Goldsmith’s.

Here you can read LEVI’S TAKE on it.

Here is THE PDF OF NICK’S LECTURE ITSELF, “Framing Militancy.” Despite the title, he suggests “getting rid of the idea of a pre-established revolutionary actor.”

I like this formulation, because one thing I find frustrating about the “what does S.R. say about politics?” refrain is that it often just seems to mean: “to what extent does S.R. agree with the prejudices I already bring to the table?” In short, I’ve seen a number of invocations of phrases such as “revolution” and “neo-liberalism” in these discussions, but not a heck of a lot of fresh political insight. In several cases in recent weeks, including one especially alarming and disappointing one, I’ve seen “revolution” pulled from a hat without the least trace of a justification. It felt a lot more like a social maneuver than a philosophical question. Levi says similar things in the aforementioned post in more interesting detail than I can muster at the moment.

In fact, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard a genuine political discussion in these circles. People position themselves at a certain leftward position in the spectrum, and you can either join them there or you are labelled as a “neo-liberal.” It’s really quite sloppy, and not what I would expect from a philosophical movement that has innovated in so many other areas. Why be less fresh in politics than in metaphysics? Why dump stale old positions like correlationism in metaphysics, only to dig up old and unquestioned picturesque political costumes like “revolution”? I’m open to hearing calls for revolution. What I’m not open to is “revolution” when used as a self-congratulatory trump card in conversation that is actually a non-conversation.

In any case, I’m glad Nick is in London now. It’s one of the livelier intellectual environments I’ve ever encountered, and it will be good for him and for them that he’s in the mix.