Re: [-empyre-] a new meta-narrative to guide us
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Christina, yes you read my mind. the via negativa is one of the things that I picked up from reading Eugene Thacker's book After Life -- and it's a method that has influenced me greatly in recent years (and incidentally syncs well with Laruelle i'd say). This not to reinforce some sort of transcendental--religious or otherwise--but rather to highlight how important denial is for contemporary methodology. In other words, while much contemporary thought operates through a logic of augmentation--more this, more that--I'm much more excited by a logic of subtraction (one example of which would be Badiou's theory of the event). In other words we need a kind of anorexic philosophy, not an inflated one. Thinking is hamstrung by claims to sufficiency; thought is only liberated via the common. I see this as the key to unlocking the non-human. Ken might be able to say more here, but in the book we were interested in how religious thinking gets taken up by theory and philosophy. so Badiou has his St Paul, Zizek has his Job, Agamben his St Francis, etc. For his part Laruelle focuses on the resurrection. I find the evangelical strains of Badiou's Paulinism a bit wearisome in the present climate, but I understand how it's necessary for a voluntarist form of militancy. a secular via negativa is interesting to me, and i see it as a way to understand the common. not an inflated universal subject. but a deflated generic person (arrived at via subtraction or negation). this connects to renate's comments too about Gandhi and King. and your last comment is great: a revelation from “God”. i think yes, although this might not be God in the normal sense (nor revelation)! I'm a student of the Spinoza/Marx/Deleuze version of God: let's banish metaphysics in favor of a flat material plane. and if spirit exists it exists right here and now. lots of material to ponder. thanks, -ag On May 11, 2014, at 7:00 PM, christ...@christinamcphee.net wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Alexander et al, To insist on focussing our ethics on a strategy of infinite (as in, non-relational) withdrawal has antecedents in the Orthodox spiritual tradition of the via negativa. Your (AG’s) discussion of James Turrell’s light installations in ‘light of’ Laruelle’s theory of non-photography resonates with me to that tradition, and even to the figure that LaRuelle throws up, the Son of Man. St. Matthew calls Jesus the “Son of Man” rather than “Son of God” more often than not. Matthew is writing in an attempt to link the story of Jesus to an historical geneology of culture-heroes in the Hebraic written tradition and oral history and community consciousness during a time of tremendous catastrophic and ongoing loss of those community values. Perhaps also, if you can indulge a psycho-history, to a loss of a sense of God’s presence among His chosen. At the same time, Matthew’s invocation of “Son of Man” also radically points to the transcendent arrival of an agent whose parentage is of “Man” , i. e. not just the Jewish people or any tribe, but an ultimate Man. It’s not for nothing that Pasolini chooses Matthew as his text for his film “The Gospel according to St Matthew” : Pasolini rightly builds on the radical implications of the figure of Christ as arising directly from a transcendence that gathers force not alongside, or against, but “in, with, and under” the people— transubstantiation. On the level of poetics if not politics, Pasolini’s agnosticisms consider the possibility of accord with an ’too-innocent philosophy’ — but, by means of making of the film itself, with Palestinians, in ‘Palestine” , reject a radicalism of extraction of the Logos; no, for PPP, the Logos is in and among us qua film qua life qua body and blood. In contrast— an opposite politics--- in your discourse on Turrell via LaRuelle, AG? I’d like to explore this further, starting here: As one blogger recently notes …. the beginning of the determination of a too innocent philosophy, a non-philosophy, a supra-rational innocence, which could only expressly mean the immortalization of the Logos through the extraction of all its radical conceivability in history, already practiced or imagined, the only reason, ne plus ultra.http://veraqivas.wordpress.com/category/immanent-philosophy/francois-laruelle/page/2/ Imagine this binary, just for a moment (it may or may not be provisional). Let’s say : where Pasolini and Matthew remain on one side of a chasm, on the other stands LaRuelle, the non-philosopher who may not presume to partake (through history, through ethics, through the spoken word, through the moving image..) community or communitarian values. If Matthew the historian, and Pasolini, artist of proto-Christian atheism, stand for and with community--with or without ‘God’
Re: [-empyre-] a new meta-narrative to guide us
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- What a thoughtful response. I'm honored. Sent from my iPhone On May 14, 2014, at 7:59 AM, Alexander R. Galloway gallo...@nyu.edu wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Christina, yes you read my mind. the via negativa is one of the things that I picked up from reading Eugene Thacker's book After Life -- and it's a method that has influenced me greatly in recent years (and incidentally syncs well with Laruelle i'd say). This not to reinforce some sort of transcendental--religious or otherwise--but rather to highlight how important denial is for contemporary methodology. In other words, while much contemporary thought operates through a logic of augmentation--more this, more that--I'm much more excited by a logic of subtraction (one example of which would be Badiou's theory of the event). In other words we need a kind of anorexic philosophy, not an inflated one. Thinking is hamstrung by claims to sufficiency; thought is only liberated via the common. I see this as the key to unlocking the non-human. Ken might be able to say more here, but in the book we were interested in how religious thinking gets taken up by theory and philosophy. so Badiou has his St Paul, Zizek has his Job, Agamben his St Francis, etc. For his part Laruelle focuses on the resurrection. I find the evangelical strains of Badiou's Paulinism a bit wearisome in the present climate, but I understand how it's necessary for a voluntarist form of militancy. a secular via negativa is interesting to me, and i see it as a way to understand the common. not an inflated universal subject. but a deflated generic person (arrived at via subtraction or negation). this connects to renate's comments too about Gandhi and King. and your last comment is great: a revelation from “God”. i think yes, although this might not be God in the normal sense (nor revelation)! I'm a student of the Spinoza/Marx/Deleuze version of God: let's banish metaphysics in favor of a flat material plane. and if spirit exists it exists right here and now. lots of material to ponder. thanks, -ag On May 11, 2014, at 7:00 PM, christ...@christinamcphee.net wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Alexander et al, To insist on focussing our ethics on a strategy of infinite (as in, non-relational) withdrawal has antecedents in the Orthodox spiritual tradition of the via negativa. Your (AG’s) discussion of James Turrell’s light installations in ‘light of’ Laruelle’s theory of non-photography resonates with me to that tradition, and even to the figure that LaRuelle throws up, the Son of Man. St. Matthew calls Jesus the “Son of Man” rather than “Son of God” more often than not. Matthew is writing in an attempt to link the story of Jesus to an historical geneology of culture-heroes in the Hebraic written tradition and oral history and community consciousness during a time of tremendous catastrophic and ongoing loss of those community values. Perhaps also, if you can indulge a psycho-history, to a loss of a sense of God’s presence among His chosen. At the same time, Matthew’s invocation of “Son of Man” also radically points to the transcendent arrival of an agent whose parentage is of “Man” , i. e. not just the Jewish people or any tribe, but an ultimate Man. It’s not for nothing that Pasolini chooses Matthew as his text for his film “The Gospel according to St Matthew” : Pasolini rightly builds on the radical implications of the figure of Christ as arising directly from a transcendence that gathers force not alongside, or against, but “in, with, and under” the people— transubstantiation. On the level of poetics if not politics, Pasolini’s agnosticisms consider the possibility of accord with an ’too-innocent philosophy’ — but, by means of making of the film itself, with Palestinians, in ‘Palestine” , reject a radicalism of extraction of the Logos; no, for PPP, the Logos is in and among us qua film qua life qua body and blood. In contrast— an opposite politics--- in your discourse on Turrell via LaRuelle, AG? I’d like to explore this further, starting here: As one blogger recently notes …. the beginning of the determination of a too innocent philosophy, a non-philosophy, a supra-rational innocence, which could only expressly mean the immortalization of the Logos through the extraction of all its radical conceivability in history, already practiced or imagined, the only reason, ne plus ultra.http://veraqivas.wordpress.com/category/immanent-philosophy/francois-laruelle/page/2/ Imagine this binary, just for a moment (it may or may not be provisional). Let’s say : where Pasolini and Matthew remain on one side of a chasm, on the other stands LaRuelle, the non-philosopher who may not presume to partake (through
[-empyre-] a new meta-narrative to guide us
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Alexander et al, To insist on focussing our ethics on a strategy of infinite (as in, non-relational) withdrawal has antecedents in the Orthodox spiritual tradition of the via negativa. Your (AG’s) discussion of James Turrell’s light installations in ‘light of’ Laruelle’s theory of non-photography resonates with me to that tradition, and even to the figure that LaRuelle throws up, the Son of Man. St. Matthew calls Jesus the “Son of Man” rather than “Son of God” more often than not. Matthew is writing in an attempt to link the story of Jesus to an historical geneology of culture-heroes in the Hebraic written tradition and oral history and community consciousness during a time of tremendous catastrophic and ongoing loss of those community values. Perhaps also, if you can indulge a psycho-history, to a loss of a sense of God’s presence among His chosen. At the same time, Matthew’s invocation of “Son of Man” also radically points to the transcendent arrival of an agent whose parentage is of “Man” , i. e. not just the Jewish people or any tribe, but an ultimate Man. It’s not for nothing that Pasolini chooses Matthew as his text for his film “The Gospel according to St Matthew” : Pasolini rightly builds on the radical implications of the figure of Christ as arising directly from a transcendence that gathers force not alongside, or against, but “in, with, and under” the people— transubstantiation. On the level of poetics if not politics, Pasolini’s agnosticisms consider the possibility of accord with an ’too-innocent philosophy’ — but, by means of making of the film itself, with Palestinians, in ‘Palestine” , reject a radicalism of extraction of the Logos; no, for PPP, the Logos is in and among us qua film qua life qua body and blood. In contrast— an opposite politics--- in your discourse on Turrell via LaRuelle, AG? I’d like to explore this further, starting here: As one blogger recently notes …. the beginning of the determination of a too innocent philosophy, a non-philosophy, a supra-rational innocence, which could only expressly mean the immortalization of the Logos through the extraction of all its radical conceivability in history, already practiced or imagined, the only reason, ne plus ultra.http://veraqivas.wordpress.com/category/immanent-philosophy/francois-laruelle/page/2/ Imagine this binary, just for a moment (it may or may not be provisional). Let’s say : where Pasolini and Matthew remain on one side of a chasm, on the other stands LaRuelle, the non-philosopher who may not presume to partake (through history, through ethics, through the spoken word, through the moving image..) community or communitarian values. If Matthew the historian, and Pasolini, artist of proto-Christian atheism, stand for and with community--with or without ‘God’ (AKA the noumenous) --through the figuration of relation and partaking (taking part) (=transubstantiation) of the Son of Man; then on the other side, LaRuelle proposes to stands in for, contra or at least in figure/ground opposition, to community--with or without “Man” (AKA the human community) . Alexander, are you also there with LaRuelle, or is this binary too stark? Listening to your talk, Alexander, on Incredible Machines, considering James Turrell’s installations as evidence of LaRuelle’s theory of non-photography, I immediately turned back to Laruelle’s desire for the Son of Man. (I must confess I am relying on impressions I had when I listened to your live talk) Alexander, your manifesto is “ to articulate a logic being that is not reducible to a metaphysics of exchange… ‘there will be no more messages.” And you go on to point to a “logic of relation..without the….model of exchange. “ It’s possible Laruelle espouses a (non)-figuration of the transcendent angel en arrivant. So: to propose a chasm here. No exchange, means no more messages, means in its equal and opposite expression (since if there is no more x-y or y-x there can only be x= not-x). Turrell’s light objects, in order to be understood as new information, new knowledge…. need not require a St Matthew-esque historicity with antecedents like Moholy-Nagy, Naum Gabo, El Lissitsky… They can arrive, like angels… ? I take it that 'the new meta-narrative to guide us’ — (AG, below) partakes of this only-reason, this new plus ultra of an arrival of an angel in the subject-site of theorist. Could Turrell’s space-time-image manifest the arrival of something new, like this? A Logos, of a sort? The canard of art as knowledge-production goes to something else, something very interesting. Since always otherwise words partake of the play of the trace, the way from above is to make the person-space-time of the Logos an embodied speech act? A via-negativa speaks, from a space of non-relation, non-photography— from the somewhat disingenuously described ‘too-innocent’
