Notes on Coffee

Carl Schmitt and Jurgen Habermas are, without a doubt, the most (in)famous political theorists to come from Germany since Marx. (One might want to include Leo Strauss, but I don't think he wrote anything of substance on coffee.) As is well-known - many of us get our introductions to Habermas via his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere - Habermas associated the development of the salons and coffee-houses with the development of the public sphere, located between the spheres of 'family' and 'state.' Coffee, for Habermas, was essential to the development of liberal, bourgeois and democratic politics.  Much less well known is that Schmitt also wrote on coffee, the bourgeoisie and liberal democratic. His assessement of coffee and liberalism is nearly the opposite of Habermas'. Their respective assessments of coffee present interesting grounds upon which to judge and compare the anti-liberalism of Schmitt with the pro-liberalism of Habermas. Interestingly, it is worth noting that Schmitt's notes on coffee (1947-51) predate Habermas' book on the coffee-house (orig. 1962) by over a decade and coincide with the end of Schmitt's internment and interrogations at Nuremberg. While Habermas engages in a lengthy -  if albeit surprisingly ambivalent - confrontation with Schmitt in the Structural Transformation, he does not cite Schmitt's notes on coffee (most likely because they were not widely available, even in Germany, until 1991).

Extracts from Habermas' Structural Transformation and a discussion of Schmitt's Glossarium notes on coffee by Jakob Norberg 'below the fold.'

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'Another origin of the world'

As other "Theory"-literate and serious denizens of the blogosphere duly note, Specters of Marx is a book that continues to look better with each passing year.  Generous, intricate and faithful expositions of Derrida's later political thought, meanwhile, are so few and far between that a recent article by Ross Benjamin and Heesok Chang (ProjectMuse) is most welcome, and also conveniently works as a rather natural continuation of our Spivak (and Europe, and technology, and democracy) discussions. 

Suffice to say that many familiar themes make an appearance.  I provide some brief excerpts and comment below the fold, as the authors are friends and were kind enough to share a copy.   (Those interested and without Muse access may I suppose ask very nicely via email.)   The excerpts are by no means generous enough, as indeed the article covers quite a lot of ground, including responsible forays into anonymous internationalism (composed of "no one" who is , nevertheless, "not just anyone" – cf. Thomas Keenan; recalling also Blanchot's communism), Spivak's (partly just) criticisms in Ghostwriting, Derrida's distinctly atheist transformation of Benjamin's 'weak messianism' and Roland Barthes' reflections on the photograph among other things.  The bold and truly excellent SUBSTANCE Magazine was once kind enough to grant us a generous "fair use" permission to quote from its "Counter-Obituaries" issue on Derrida from some time ago...so consider this too a first step, if you will, toward a more precise engagement there. 
    
From the key orienting and introductory 'graph (or rather, a bit of graft on my part, as the  framing, justifying work performed by introductions certainly is important to get right):

As admirable as [their] aims may be, Habermas and Derrida’s proclamation inevitably raises the question of their global bias.   Although their article closes by “renounc[ing] Eurocentrism,” it seems nonetheless to reassert a particular European obligation to act on behalf of the world.    American political philosopher Iris Marion Young objects to the publication’s premise in an essay for the web-based journal openDemocracy.  She asserts, “Europe needs not globalism but a provincialism that will enable a dialogue of equals with the rest of the world.”   Young points out that the anti-war rallies of February 15, 2003 were planned at a World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre in January 2003 and, moreover, took place in hundreds of cities throughout the world.   Such a “coordination may signal the emergence of a global public sphere, of which European publics are wings, but whose heart may lie in the southern hemisphere.”   Though [Iris Marion] Young correctly calls into question their geopolitical assumptions, a closer evaluation of Derrida’s key statements makes clear that his position on Europe is distinct from the one Habermas sketches in their jointly signed text* [...]   

Contrary to his press, Derrida never made a secret of his allegiance to the European Enlightenment.    Our title, “the last European,” is meant as a tribute and a provocation, a corrective to the idée fixe that “deconstructionism” seeks to corrode Enlightenment ideals.   The allusion to Blanchot’s Le dernier homme notwithstanding, it is unlikely Derrida himself would have recognized the descriptive pertinence of the phrase or accepted its eschatological pathos.   We certainly do not wish to suggest that he clung to the Continent.   On the contrary, the globe-trotting itineraries of his teaching and lecturing – in particular his numerous visiting professorships in the US – imparted a decisively non-European competence and tonality to his numerous public stances.   The topic of European identity, he admitted, is predictably tired:  “Old Europe seems to have exhausted all the possibilities of discourse and counter-discourse about its own identification” (Other Heading 26).   And yet, paradoxically, European identity has never really been taken up in the promise that it holds for the future.   For Derrida, this at one and the same time old and young identity is a fine example of Hamlet’s famous declaration that “the time is out of joint.”   In the following, we argue that this temporal rift is precisely what compelled him to speak in the name of Europe.

  The authors proceed to engage first with Derrida-Valéry in a manner that deserves to be quoted at some length, though again I will limit myself:

Valéry’s texts figure in The Other Heading, then, as telling, modernist examples of the Eurocentric idealism that continues (in a somewhat threadbare mode) to animate the West’s cultural politics.   To Jameson’s account of Derrida’s strategic use of Valéry we would only add that Valéry does not simply function as the object of an ideology critique.   His outmoded Eurocentrism also serves, paradoxically, to advance Derrida’s deliberation on the future of Europe.  Valéry forcefully elucidates the expansive limits of a high cultural European self-understanding, and thereby, points a way out from within....

* [Sadly and rather inexcusably, the actual Habermas statement co-signed by Derrida appears to be unavailable online...or at least eluding my night's efforts.]

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Fresh Light

...to supplement a post at The Weblog (and encourage readers toward David's, on Badiou's Hölderlin below it)

None of the parties involved in the struggle against terrorism can afford to refrain from talking about it, but the more they do so the more they help the terrorist cause, by giving it status, visibility, and a sense of purpose...victims of a traumatic experience need to endlessly play the trauma back for themselves in order to feel reassured that they have withstood it.  This self-destructive tendency becomes a destructive weapon in the hands of the media and the political leadership.  Imagine, said Derrida, if we told the American public and the world that what has happened is no doubt an unspeakable crime, but it's over.  Everyone would then begin their own period of mourning, the preliminary step to turning the page.  All responsible parties need to facilitate this turning of the page and stop hindering it.  This is an urgent responsibility, the evasion of which transforms the enemies of terrorism into its allies.  (Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 153-154; image via remue.net)

I may not share the proclivity (or mixed fascination) for sterilized images of the zeitgeist's self-appointed spokesmen, but I do appreciate the impetus of Alain's post.   And I suspect he would agree that discussions of Fukuyama and B-Henri, while revealing things by falling rather decisively short, don't really do the subject at hand much of any justice. Which is the way I prefer to read his concluding remarks, in any case.  That subject being, broadly, the social and political role of philosophers, and even more broadly their relation to the question of Europe.

As to the former, Alain cites those two repellents attempting to  distinguish strictly between "government" and "private life", and "realistic" and "idealistic" intellectual labor, respectively.  But as Alain himself, and one savvy commenter do not fail to note, neither of these sets of bins are very helpful, or even all that relevant.

Rather, and in a manner that overlaps a great deal with John Emerson's recent forays into questions of global citizenship and intellectual responsibility in "analytic" vs. "continental" frameworks, one might more usefully distinguish, following Giovanna Borradori, between models of social and political commitment aligned with either a "liberal" or "Hegelian" lineage.

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Debating the future/a future d'Europe

There have been several lively discussions recently (see for example, somewhat shamelessly, here, here, here, here or here) regarding the immanent vote in France on whether or not to ratify the European constitution as currently structured.  Is a "yes" vote an immediately despicable but ultimately necessary gesture?  Intellectual figures far and wide seem to be calling for the “courage” and “strength” to vote “yes,” but significant enough doubts have been raised, among a remarkably diligent and conscientious public (ah, if only we had such a thing here!), as to make the likelihood of a majority “no” vote in France very strong.  The issue seems to be one of either compromising with a neoliberal “free” market wet dream for the sake of "progress" and meaningful competition with the U.S., versus taking an active stand for something better, more just, more wary of the disaster that is unchecked privatization, perhaps more democratic and yet to come (which is not to say, of course, inevitable).  Needless to say the corporate press, even in France, seems to be rolling over itself in a mad rush to grant space to luminaries, writers and philosophers of all stripes who fervently oppose the “no” vote, yet rarely if ever do these public intellectuals address the concerns of what appears to be the majority of French citizens.  Just what are Habermas, Grass, Kluge, and Baudrillard thinking? 

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Public? Yes, please!

What is a public?  Jodi Dean lucidly suggests that since calls for the 'public' are voiced, well, in a pre-existing public, such calls are mostly political interventions for a certain kind of public, i.e., one more amenable to one's own orientation.  We might say, then, that these calls for a public are disengenuous, not actually concerned with achieving a true public.  (One can obviously place in this context Republican calls for a less `liberal biased' PBS.)

What, then, is a true public?  Is it the pre-existing public that allows for various factions to fight within it for their particular definition of a public?  The set that exists before the battle to hegemonize its definition and practice?  Does a true public only pre-exist the hegemonizing of the set through the rise of the master-signifier?

Or can we say that, only with the right master-signifier, the right political order, the true public actually comes into being? 

A true public is one without pigeon-holing, where one doesn't automatically place oneself in five seconds of speech.  It's one where you don't know what I am going to say next.  It's where I am not merely offering pre-digested soundbites.  Most of the blogosphere then has nothing to do with this true public; partisan hackery is but more TV (which is precisely why the TV networks can so easily report on this sector of the blogosphere), as are the endless ruminations on what one fed one's cat today.

The true public goes beyond your surprise at my words, my positioning.  I must be surprised myself.  As in the decisive act that overwhelms you, that preempts one's understanding of one's own actions, here I must myself be surprised by what comes from my `pen'.  Only after the fact, upon the establishment of a new order, can I come to understand what I have done.

But then the question is: does the new order in fact get created here, in this part of the blogosphere?  What could that mean?  No, yes, maybe new orders are constantly being tested.  We're playing at being vanishing mediators.  But playing with an enormous sense of responsibility, for the Other.  So maybe, then, Long Sunday is both the `true public' before the hegemonization of the very term 'public', and the Just `public' after the right hegemonization. 

Having it both ways?  Ah, the life of a vanishing mediator...

Zizek writes, in a sort of parallel:

The "political" dimension is... doubly inscribed: it is a moment of the social Whole, one among its sub-systems, and the very terrain in which the fate of the Whole is decided - in which the new Pact is designed and concluded.  (For they know not what they do, 193)