Fichte, Philosopher of Freedom

"Mine is the first system of freedom. Just as France freed man from external shackles, so my system frees him from the fetters of things in themselves, which is to say, from those external influences with which all previous systems – including the Kantian – have more or less fettered man. Indeed, the first principle of my system presents man as an independent being." (Quoted in Editor's Introduction of J. G. Fichte Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings trans. Daniel Breazeale (Hackett: Indianapolis, 1994), p. vii.

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[x] Political Thought

Jodi posted an ad for a job in her department looking for candidates able to teach "American Politics/American Political Thought." The idea of "American Political Thought" (the ad gives the example of the Federalists/Anti-Federalists) and wondered what it means to have a national tradition in "political thought." Regarding "American political thought," wouldn't the two main texts be the Federalist Papers and Democracy in America? Tocqueville, of course, was French, an aristocrat and not a fan of democracy - is that "American" or "French" political thought? My copy of Tocqueville's book, the Mansfield edition, says that it is the most important book on America. (Does Martineau's Society in America count as English or American? Does anyone actually read it?) But, does "French" political thought even describe Tocqueville's book? Is there a "French" tradition in political theory? The most famous book of "French" political theory was written by a Genevan, not a Frenchman. This, of course, lead me to thinking, "What would a course in Canadian political thought look like?" Certainly, Canada has produced some fine political thinkers - but there is nothing essentially "Canadian" about them that would characterize their thought as "Canadian." James Tully, Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor, G.A. Cohen, Michael Ignatieff, Shumalith Firestone, George Grant, H.S. Harris, Thomas Pangle, (Alan Bloom, IIRC) ... they're all either "Canadian" or spent time at Canadian universities. Does that make their thought "Canadian"? George Grant is likely the only "Canadian political thinker" we've ever produced - but I'm not sure there's anyone who could sit through a twelve week lecture course on his thought.

la rochefoucauld favorites

22
Philosophy triumphs easily over past, and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.

26
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily

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Past, passages?

So, the CPE did not pass!

There is some skepticism regarding the withdrawal of the CPE, with decisions to continue occupations of some universities and schools, as well as blockades of two ports by CGT unionists in the early hours and a couple of train blockades. Although (perhaps not unsurprisingly) the CFDT seems to have declared "the objective acheived" (via libcom). 

Tim gets up on the wrong side of ontology.  And some initial, though since updated, remarks here. What do others think of the scrapping of the CPE?  Is it a zero-sum game of 'victory-defeat' or a significant moment of strategy, of movement and obstacle? Are there other questions to ask? (picture via)

Blessing and Partage: No Pasarán; On Celan and Derrida

"No, I will limit myself here to the aporia (to the barred passage, no pasarán:  this is what aporia means)."

"...A date is mad, that is the truth.
And we are mad for dates.
For the ashes that dates are.  Celan knew one may praise or bless ashes.  Religion is not necessary for that.  Perhaps because a religion begins there, before religion, in the blessing of dates, of names, and of ashes..."

"A date always remains a sort of hypothesis, the support for a by definition unlimited number of projections of memory."-JD

One wonders what Derrida might have thought and said these past few weeks, about the re-casting of a certain enigmatic slogan in the streets of France.  One he always heard, after, as coming through Celan; one so clearly dear to his own heart.  Who could forget those passages?   But also, who would dare to write on them?

When Giovanna Borradori asked Derrida about September 11, and though I wonder if she realized it, what must have come first to his mind was another September, that of Celan's "Huhediblu"..."date of Nevermansday in September." 

Another Long Sundayan has already remarked, in suitably derisive manner, on the subject of this slogan–itself a "veritable knot of radical associations"–being recently adopted on the interweb by a group of impressively soporific blowhards, so we needn't dwell especially there.  Mark commented on the poem "Shibboleth", and later, Amie and I discussed "In Eins," which as Derrida notes is in fact a poem inside a poem, containing "Shibboleth", as it were, within.

No Pasarán.  A slogan, a pebble, with unusual powers, or something of what Nancy calls "partage":   to be capable of dividing, and at the same time blessing waters ("partition" and "partaking"...how often Derrida remarked on the theme of this...disastrous movement).  Also Shibboleth, watchword, at once demarcating a certain line or border, and a community, one marked by an act of crossing over.  A word Derrida also connects to necessary departure–departure from belonging, and in order to address the other.   A word, a pebble, like a tombstone, seeking to mark a date...

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When will this labour end?

Labouring against work. Mulling over the contributions and remarks made during the course of these readings, this is what strikes me as the first paradox, which is also the specific paradox of abstract labour and concrete labours that, in turn, characterises Marx's distinctive account of capitalism, that which brings all others paradoxes to the fore and makes them boil over. It's all about specificity, the difference and the cut. And is there anything more paradoxical than communism, a class politics that gears itself toward the abolition of class society? Operaismo - ie., workerism - against work. And Tronti's essay is nothing if not paradoxical.

Who would have guessed that a discussion of the refusal of work would result in so much toil?

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Apropos

An Update by the Sorbonne Occupation Committee in Exile - Communique # 4

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One important lesson that November the 30th, 1999 taught us

Courtesy of Infinite Thought, from an article in Socialist Worker:

The movement in the universities crossed a symbolic threshold with the occupation of the Sorbonne university, at the very centre of Paris. This hadn’t happened since May 1968.

Even the mainstream media sees that the government is in a difficult position. Opinion polls show that the government’s popularity has fallen to abysmal depths and that the CPE is overwhelmingly rejected.

The brutal evacuation of the Sorbonne, the standard lies about the supposed actions of a “radical fringe” and the rising internal dissent in the ranks of the Tories show that it has started to lose control of the situation.

The evolution of the struggle will depend on two factors – the capacity of the student movement to react on the streets to the brutal attitude of the government, and the strength of the demonstrations called for Thursday and Saturday of this week by the youth organisations and trade unions.

The call of the national student coordination for a day of nationwide strikes and demonstrations has not yet been followed by the main unions.

It decided instead to prioritise the Saturday demonstration and only to support the student actions from the outside on Thursday.

But the key to victory lies in the level of unity and coordination between the youth and the workers’ mobilisation. This is what is at stake in the streets, universities and workplaces of France.

You don't say.  Consider this an open thread to post links on current happenings in France.

Bourdieu vs. Post-Structuralism

Those of us who end up being associated with 'postmodernism' or 'theory' often find ourselves confused or infuriated by the attempt of our opponents to lump us into a single category. It is amusing, therefore, to read one of those 'postmodernists' or 'theorists' or -- more plainly -- 'Frenchmen' get upset about this lumping-in with people he views himself to be in competition with. The last chapter, indeed the last section of that chapter, in Bourdieu's Science of Science and Reflexivity sees him attempt to articulate -- for an audience in France at the College de France -- his relationship, that is departure from, philosophy and, consequently, his relationship to the stars of French academic philosophy. This section, "Sketch for a self-analysis", sees him go after, as it were, Althusser and Foucault (and, by consequence, Deleuze), primarily, but also Derrida. His problem with the first group is that they disavow the social sciences while taking the object of the social sciences for themselves and his problem with the second group, exemplified (symbolized?) by Derrida, is its 'aristocratic' tendencies. (Do recall, Bourdieu often revisited the theme of his petit bourgeois origins in relation to his thought, in general, and, more specifically, the context of the elite French academies.)

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Screw Your Mother

Baudrillard has an interesting piece in the latest New Left Review.  What struck me is how it seems to share a theme that Jodi just pointed out regarding Bartleby's "I prefer not to."   Both point to a fundamental refusal:

But France, or Europe, no longer has the initiative. It no longer controls events, as it did for centuries, but is at the mercy of a succession of unforeseeable blow-backs. Those who deplore the ideological bankruptcy of the West should recall that ‘God smiles at those he sees denouncing evils of which they are the cause’. If the explosion of the banlieues is thus directly linked to the world situation, it is also—a fact which is strangely never discussed—connected to another recent episode, solicitously occluded and misrepresented in just the same way: the No in the eu Constitutional referendum. Those who voted No without really knowing why—perhaps simply because they did not wish to play the game into which they had so often been trapped; because they too refused to be integrated into the wondrous Yes of a ‘ready for occupancy’ Europe—their No was the voice of those jettisoned by the system of representation: exiles too, like the immigrants themselves, from the process of socialization. There was the same recklessness, the same irresponsibility in the act of scuppering the eu as in the young immigrants’ burning of their own neighbourhoods, their own schools; like the blacks in Watts and Detroit in the 1960s. Many now live, culturally and politically, as immigrants in a country which can no longer offer them a definition of national belonging. They are disaffiliated...

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Chirac Shellack and Shlock

Any Long Sunday correspondants in France wish to take issue with the President?  (That's usually about as far as we get over here (sorry Brits, but whatever do you have to compete with Kos on the crucial anti-war front? In a perfect world, it would be the most deserving reincarnation yet of lenin, sure but...) – but why bother with neoliberal context when there's a freshly fallen star figurehead to bin every six years?)  They do permit you to talk about him over there, don't they?  And in movies now, even?  Doug Ireland writes:

When Chirac himself (left)-- whose invisibility during the violence had been much criticized in the press -- finally went on TV a few days later to address the nation, he, too, had little more than empty words. His only concrete proposal was the creation of a "youth volunteer service corps" to help prepare kids for careers in the army (half of the program), the police, and health services, with a goal of 50,000 such minimum-wage posts within three years -- a drop in the bucket. But even that was a phony -- within 24 hours, the press reported that Chirac had simply consolidated and given a new name to already-existing programs in the three sectors. No new money was involved.

Perhaps the biggest void in Chirac's and Villepin's proposals was the absence of any new money or enforcement mechanisms to fight racial discrimination in hiring and housing. France has laws on the books against such racial bias -- but spends almost no money to make them stick, and employers and landlords are free to discriminate against people of color with impunity. And they do. Life in the 750 suburban ghettos throughout France will go on as before. No wonder that a poll for the Journal de Dimanche showed that only 29% of the French thought Chirac had anything to offer to counter the causes of the rebellion (read the whole thing).

Where, oh where, are the future leaders of the fr$$ free world? This shit is so depressing.

Negri on France

Toni Negri: Finally a Little Revolt

Interviewed by Jacopo Iacoboni, La Stampa, 12/11/05

TN: What gangs! The explosion of the banlieues is not some random jacquerie. Even if it were, it would be in a radically changed social context, whose basic features are the crisis of Fordism and the absence of a political response – not only in France - to this crisis. That is why for me it remains a revolt, but I could even say insurrection, if we understand the term in a mild sense. There is a lack of political consciousness of the objectives, what Marx called the for-itself. This movement wants something, but it does not yet know what it wants.

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Badiou's L'Organisation politique on France

[I've kept some of the French in square brackets where translation is not straightforward; some points of clarification are also included, as are details of some of the laws mentioned (in the footnotes). If anyone has any more detailed knowledge of these laws/any corrections, please email me at infinitethought [at] hotmail.co.uk. This piece is also posted on my own site]

On Riots that come after Pain…

I. The 27th of October in Clichy-sous-Bois, three adolescents chased by policemen hid in an electric transformer. Two of them, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré died from electrocution. The third, Muttin Altun, was severely burned. The Minister of the Interior and the Prime Minister immediately declared that these youths were wanted following a burglary and then, later, of a theft from a construction site. They denied any chase by the police. But these are patent lies. Not only was there neither burglary nor theft, not only did the policeman chase a whole group of adolescents, who were coming back after a football game, and saw them go into the transformer, but they did not warn the EDF [French electricity company] who could have cut off the current and prevented the terrible accident. That day the daily harassment of the youth of the estates by the police ended in crime. The crime of the police covered by the lies of the highest authorities of the state.

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Le Soleil Pourri

On October 27th, violence came to the the suburbs of France, a violence that is apparently now under control, things are returning to normal. But what if the normal, what passes for the normal has, for a very long time, been violent in its turn, in les banlieues, and not only there?
(I'd barely written the sentence above, when I get a call that the Prefect of Police in Paris is invoking the "state of emergency" to ban all gatherings in Paris that could "result in" violence, and that there is also a call for demonstrations. )

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