C R I S I S & C R I T I Q CRISISU & E / S p e c i a l I s s u CRISIS & CRITIQUEe CRITIQUE CRISIS & CRITIQUE SPECIAL ISSUE VOLUME I / ISSUE II, 2014 Dialectical Materialism Collective 1 Toward a New Thinking of the Absolute C Editorial note C R R I I S 10 S I Toward a New Thinking of the AbsoluteI S S & 22 & Politics, Subjectivity and Cosmological C C R Antinomy: Kant, Badiou and Žižek R I I T T I 52 I Q Discontent, Suffering and Symptom: Q CRISISU & Reading Lacanian Diagnostics U E E through Amerindian Perspectivism / / 76 S S p Psychoanalysisas labor: p e an impossible profession and e c c i the Marxist conception of labor i a a l 94 l I The 21st Century Dawns with a I s Chance s s s u u e 110 e CRISIS & CRITIQUEEntlassen. Remarks on Hegel, Sacrifice and Liberation 130 Real Abstraction and the Autonomization of Value 150 Serialism as Simulacrum 160 What is missing / what is coming CRITIQUECRISIS & CRITIQUE Robert Pfaller Agon Hamza 174 SPECIAL ISSUE Frank Ruda Martin López VOLUME I / ISSUE II, 2014 Gabriel Tupinambá Fernando Marcelino The Analysis and the Presentation Sead Zimeri Duane Rousselle of Marc Lachièze-Rey’s ‘Travelling EDITORS Fabio Vighi Ehren Stuff in the Time: The Modern Physics and Agon Hamza Benjamin Noys Gabriel Tupinambá Frank Ruda Roland Boer Daniel Tut t the Temporality1’ Bree Wooten CRISIS & CRITIQUE ACHERONTA MOVEBO Yuan Yao Editorial Board is: Editorial Board is: Henrik Jøker Bjerre Sina Badiei 2Aaron SchusterToward a New ThinkingSrdjan of Cvjeti theć Absoluteanin 3 Toward a New Thinking of the Absolute Adrian Johnston Oguz Erdin Joan Copjec Chrysantho Figueiredo The following texts comprise a special edition of Crisis and Critique, cre- ated by the editors of a different journal project, entitled Acheronta Movebo which is still in its infancy. This latter project, which began about Editorial 7 months ago, is comprised of a few students and researchers whose aim was to construct a Freudian journal which was not strictly psychoana- lytic, but makes use of the Freudian categories in politics and philosophy as well. As we began to receive submissions from various authors, we Note decided that Acheronta had not sufficiently distinguished itself from other journals with similar commitments, most notably this one, to warrant its own existence. Although the topics covered in this issue are perhaps of a more variegated nature, we believe that they essentially fit into the struc- ture and platform of Crisis and Critique better than our own project. In this sense, our decision to move our first issue under the ban- ner of a different journal is very practical - we simply think that one good journal devoted to Marxist critique is good enough, and that there is no need to further divide an already fragile field. By consolidating with Cri- sis and Critique, we are also motivating a question regarding our future plans - how should Acheronta Movebo move forward? The present letter from the editor is an inquiry into this situation - we hope that by outlin- ing the facts of our project, what we aimed to do, and why we thought our end product did not fit the idea, we can engage ourselves and others to re-think our mode of work. The texts offered here were to be divided into two “camps” – Rings (which are modeled after Zizek’s productive engagement with the bor- romean knotting of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and ideology) and Con- ditions (which are further divided into Badiou’s “main” truth procedures – politics, art, science and love). Our thesis (and if you affirm this, we consider you one of us) is that this split between the two thinkers orients the entirety of philosophy today. Their differing perspectives on the same issues is well-documented, but it is not enough to simply “choose” one or the other - it is not a matter of dividing their readers into the same two camps as the thinkers themselves. Rather, we conceive of their disagree- ment as an example of what the Left should be capable of today - internal dissension (about the role of the State, about the nature of the New, and about the unconscious) which supports, rather than detracts from, our solidarity. We have also come to realize that the primary marker of distinction for our project should be the novelty maintained in the way we work with our authors, which unfortunately was not upheld this time around. A platform that supports the “contradictions among the people” requires that we engage the authors by confronting their texts with certain naïve C We essentially failed in our first attempt to actualize the above C R R questions about their positions. Namely, we want to ask our authors I points, for reasons that were mostly based on our own inexperience, but I those questions which would make their point clear for ourselves - and S also on the inherent problems of the field we are involved in. Our failure S I I therefore to install a certain didactic quality to the editorial process it- S confirms for us that this project (Acheronta Movebo) cannot do without S self. The current texts are the product of intelligent thinkers, and for that the close proximity between the editorial team and the authors of the & & reason, they ought to be met with the incomprehension of an engaged journal. We rarely contacted the authors to make major changes to their C C student. R texts or to ask for clarifications – a task which is quite difficult when faced R Our first attempt was that of a standard Call for Papers – but we I with authors of such erudition – and we didn’t ask ourselves what sort of I T T soon found that there were certain obstacles inherent to the openness I new criteria would be required to authorize any such changes in the first I of this request – first and foremost, the lack of submissions, but also the Q place. We think that our project should be more devoted to establishing Q U U vagueness of the criteria we used to judge whether a text was properly E the Zizekian and Badiouian field of study rather than being a format for E “Zizekian” or “Badiouian”. celebrating already-established figures. / / In that vein, here is an excerpt from the original editorial note which Additionally, we found that good contributions to the “Conditions” S S was planned: p section were especially sparse. Though there is a relatively large commu- p “The goal of this journal is to establish, by means of a self-referring e nity of thinkers who engage with Badiou’s work, we could not find many e c c movement, a field of study which can be properly named as Badiouian i who would write with enough proximity on the truth procedures. Thus, i and Zizekian. This effort requires us to go beyond the work of the think- a we are today lacking a platform to engage with what is new, and – follow- a l l ers themselves, to expand it in as many dimensions as possible. It is not ing Badiou – this contributes to an overall degradation of philosophy. our job to dissect and disseminate their work, but rather to begin new I Certain questions, then, have to be confronted. What would be the prop- I s s projects that inherit the problems they’ve posed to us. The first problem s er text on love, for example? How would our texts on science be distin- s is that of fidelity to an Idea - in what sense does a project devoted to ex- u guished from those of other formats, and what would compel a scientist u e e tending a thinker’s work actually betray it most fully? It is a sure sign that to publish with us given other options? one is among the left when the charge of “revisionism” is raised, but as The reasons for “transplanting” our first texts to C&C became clear the masters have shown us, it is only in rendering this charge undecid- when we realized that it is genetically identical with AM (in the sense of able that we make progress. What we need is to acquire the capacity to having similar authors, political and philosophical positions), but without betray with honesty, to make use of what we grasp as the real contra- the extraneous structure we are imposing on ourselves. We hope that dictions of previous thought. In that sense, the division of the journal this decision stands as one of those few examples of the Left “unioniz- into two sections - Rings and Conditions - is a perfect fit for the task. If ing” rather than dividing in the face of common obstacles, and we affirm Badiou’s thesis that truth is always the outcome of certain procedures our commitment to a new presentation of AM’s idea, one that has learned (and that philosophy must maintain itself upon those procedures) is from the concrete experience of its first attempt. true, then we can only go as far as our grasp of these procedures (e.g. love, politics, art and science). If Zizek’s thesis that one must close the internal gap of cynicism before one can subvert the existing ideology is true, then we must train ourselves to take the Freudian unconscious seri- ously. In short, we must confront the contradictions posed by Badiou and Zizek’s respective edifices by establishing our own practice of them. This means to question, as they do, the ontological and ethical premises of the various situations which constitute our time - not simply to satisfy a vain understanding, but so that we may intervene in these situations with boldness.“ 6 Toward a New Thinking of the Absolute 7 Toward a New Thinking of the Absolute RINGS My intention is to establish that a contemporary materialism must assume C R the existence of an absolute ontology.