One Thing For Sure
Debaters should be thinking about the Schiavo events.
Not necessarily for the reasons everyone else is, though. It’s all about the spectacle.
For many debaters, Schiavo revives the archaic question of whether we ought prioritize life itself or the quality thereof. The last two weeks may also have introduced important concerns about separation of powers, the sufficiency of some state legislation to deal with unique medical circumstances, and various commitments in medical ethics. It is, however, the afterthought of this circus that should linger the longest: how has spectacle so thoroughly replaced the proper political Event?
This tragedy was, after all, ripe with space for dialogue on the ever pressing relevance and constitution of that which is Human. On the brink of bio-robotic interfacing, a cloning extravanganza, artificially intelligent “life,” and nanotechnological innovation… surely we could seriously consider what it means to be human when all signs of humanness are lost (and the corresponding mystery of the inhuman wearing the cloak of humanness). For Schiavo’s parents it was (in a perversely Levinasian sense) the life in Terri’s face that made her human. For the political community at large, it was the absence of awareness that made her human in only the most superficial sense–something tantamount to the living-dead. It is precisely at this stage of generic inhumanness that the biopolitical production of rights’ claims so efficiently organizes an otherwise ambiguous and perfectly unnameable situation. Specifically, the rule of law served as the apparatus through which Schiavo was counted as part of her own situation (see Alain Badiou’s set-theory ontology). Is it any coincidence that an administration perpetually engaged in generating a “state of exception” to the rule of law was found here pointing at the insufficiency of this legal apparatus as an organizing principle in Schiavo’s Situation? With ethical, juridico-political, and medical “knowledge” at a deficit we are left with more questions that certainty.
One thing is for sure though: the possibility of an Evental Truth erupting at the ambiguous edge of this Situation’s constitution was quickly precluded by a spectacle of mass proportions. The spectacle displaced ANY possibility for a Truth that (again working within Badiou) *could escape the ordinary and predictable logic of the Situation’s organizing principle of juridico-legal precedent*. In other words, any space for an authentically revolutionary re-commitment to life-qua-life died not with the failure of Schiavo’s parents in the courts… nor with Schiavo herself… but (in a most obscene reversal) with those who battled on behalf of Schiavo: the opportunist special interest circus of pseudo-disobedient self-indulgents. Badiou provides an elaborate litmus test for the formations of Truths, thus schematizing the exlcusion, for example, of a revolutionary Nazi Truth… or the “Truth” of Really Existing Socialism. An authentic Truth, for Badiou, cannot be produced from the already-situated coordinates of the political… but must come from outside (at the unassimilable edge of) those coordinates altogether. To this end, we must conclude that Schiavo’s would-be saviors were anything but outsiders to the status quo coordinates. Rather, they are the necessary complement to the secular rule of law… the ideological flipside to bio-political organization of life is precisely the irrational blind commitment to life itself. The revolution did not come from the nameless margin–it was staged by the Situation itself, a simulated mockery of the authentic believer whose subjective fidelity to the Event is the source of Truth (here Badiou would point to moments of *real* love, the French Revolution, and even Saint Paul). The structure of such a fidelity is here mimed by the worst of performers (leave it to the voices from Operation Rescue…). And the result? Pure spectacle. Is it any wonder that the public at-large remained unconvinced by these very visible and very “passionate” performances?
As debaters who grasp for prescriptive footing in the political, we should remain ever attuned to just such spectacles. They remind us, at the very least, at how far removed we are from Truth as it were… how deeply entrenched we remain in an age of simulation & fantasy. This was not a case of media hyperbole and public voyeurism. The distortion here is not produced by some epistemic separation from the Real nor is it a socially generated confusion. As Zizek notes, it is the Real itself that is fractured such that the naming thereof is constitutively at a loss–no wonder we are so puzzled when confronting the symbolic impasse of the living-dead (the Real of humanness stripped of its symbolic orientation). This is where politics comes to its end, where we are ill-equipped to project meta-ethical solutions onto everyday application. These are of course precisely the environs that Badiou idealistically asserts to breed Truth-Events. But Badiou would see the revolutionary outcry on behalf of Schiavo as no more an event than the post-September 11th era of patriotic fervor (his comments here are outstanding by the way). While Alain Badiou has unquestionably given new hope to transcending postmodern nihilism, one wonders if the recently transpired does not lend ever more sympathy to Jean Baudrillard’s suggestion that, quite simply, there are no more Events… that history has decomposed. On Badiou’s behalf (and that of his own), Slavoj Zizek has attempted to resuscitate the notion of the Event that cannot be properly accounted for in the ordinary logic of the Situation… that we might one day see authentic movement in the spirit of Lenin over and against the dominant ordering-logic of capital.
What Badiou and Zizek both concede, however, is the well-refined efficiency of capital when it comes to producing and sublimating its own supplemental excess (waste). At the intersection of capital and the rule of law, this waste looks something like the pseudo-apostolic movement outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice: a well adorned spectacle pointing toward the modesty and inclusiveness of the dominanant ideological coordinates: “Watch as the those at the margin have their say! Isn’t freedom great?!” All the while, the hope for any real Event was lost altogether. And what’s worse, hopes for a good discussion went with it…
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Posted from: 136.242.122.83
April 1st, 2005 01:56
It seems to me that I could find much more truth in the reasonings that each person makes concerning matters that are important to him, and whose outcome ought to cost him dearly later on if he has judged badly, than in those reasonings engaged in by a man of letters in his study, which touch on speculations that produce no more effect and are of no other consequence to him except perhaps that, the more they are removed from common sense, the more they will foster his vanity, the more pride he will take in them, for he will have to employ that much more wit and ingenuity in attempting to render them plausible.
Posted from: 24.162.117.201
April 1st, 2005 03:04
Sweet mother of God Descartes reads the VBD! Who better to stand in criticism of Alain Badiou than.. Descartes??? And to think Zizek ever entertains this nonsensical business of the cogito…
How to deal with anonymous indicts that use a pseudo-philosophical afterthought of an otherwise rigorous philosopher to confound content with ad hominem ruminations on my “pride” and “vanity”…
I would begin by suggesting that if distance (temporal or otherwise) is in any way preclusionary of criticism, then Rene Descartes should definitely avoid the amazingly phantasmic criticism of those to post-date him by a few hundred years (be that Badiou or me or whomever). To the extent that criticism can be posthumously engineered through some process of philosophical buggery by the still living Other (in the spirit of Deleuze), I applaud the author’s militant subversion of Descartes’ text. For there is no doubt but that Rene would roll in his grave at such textual misappropriation. You have taken Mr. Descartes from behind in a most magestically Deleuzian manner. Though if this is accicental, I must wonder what on earth you meant to do by inserting what amounts to a Jack Handy Deep Though into an otherwise substantive dialogue about the erosion of the Event.
As for the content…
Descartes’ comment begins from the assumption that subject is a comprehensive and fixed agent to the extent that criticism or reasoning always operates from a properly rationalist perspective. Even in the most charitable of arrangements, this assumption has had its socks rocked right off by those who in a communitarian gesture decry the inanity of a rational-choice theory in which the values at work in the model are somehow universal irrespective of the valuator. In reality, nearness to the object of evaluation [that is, the extent to which the object “matters” to the reasoning subject] would, via this rejoinder, simply cloud the reasoning process altogether with a host of inflated value estimates. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this nearness would also simply mean that the reasoning ’subject’ is irreparably lost in the fantasy-pursuit of the objet petit a (a position that is, of course, ill-suited to criticism as it is the locale of the hysterical patient herself). From a post-metaphysical perspective, this nearness would simply represent the increase of distortion as a the instruments move ever closer to the object of measurement.
As for the rest of the diatribe.. I’m unsure as to the relation between “wit” and “ingenuity” with “pride” and “vanity”. That just sounds like something unclever people say. But, one should also read it as an obscene endorsement of ‘common sense’ over and against poetic subversion. Should we also spit on Voltaire? On Derrida? On Al Franken?
Very impressed with the recourse to your handy book o’ quotes! I can only hope the next response consists of David Hume’s thoughts on how his pud always smells better in the winter with the unavoidable subtext that “Babb is too proud and witty” or “Babb does the elfen gnome race an injustice” or “Babb wears pampers.”
Anyway, what the hell.. I have all the sympathy in the world for Schiavo’s parents. There’s nothing like a parent’s unconditional love for their child in the most desperate of circumstances. And for that matter, the criticism of the circus trolls exploiting the event is made on to the end that commentary on the status of the Event might be made. Duh.
Posted from: 136.242.122.83
April 1st, 2005 09:10
I’ll keep the cheesy alias for the sake of our readership. I’ll be honest — I seriously have no idea what you’re saying, and I’m sure that many other readers feel the same way. You’re an intellectual terrorist, couching your “analysis” — what is more appropriatly called idol worship — in what I can only assume is a larger academic discussion that occurs between three “philosophers” and yourself — hardly ripe for presentation to an audience, especially one of the high school variety.
You assert and assert and reference and reference — and then reference some more, providing reasons that are unintelligable and, at the very best, difficult to understand to a person without your exact “books I’ve read” list. Your arguments, or rather, your regurgitations, exist so far out of the mainstream that they are parodies of themselves: what the hell is an Event? What the hell does capitalizing the word situation do for you? Quite frankly — WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? You sound more like a satisfied customer from the post modern generator than you do a legitimate scholar/student, and that is something of which to be extraordinarily embarrassed. Rather than electing to discuss the tragic and controversial event of Terri Schiavo in its more appropriate and readily apparent context, you drive into the margin, hoping people will believe that your “new” and “insightful” analysis with its capital letters denoting a meaning different from the usual usage will scare readers into believing that this post is not bereft of any meaning at all, and, maybe as an aside, that you’re smart. Rather than responding, as the initial quotation of Descartes (to be clear, when you take issue with the “afterthought,” you take issue with Rene, and not me) would provoke you to do in regular, laymans terms, you again heap pile after pile of bullshit onto it. The response is even less understandable than the initial post — and I suspect that this has a motive behind it. Either YOU are SO SMART that the vast majority of people simply think on a different level than you, or, you resort to this sort of weak and referential writing to shoo away those would legitimately question your points — if they could understand it. Citing little known authors covers your ass in two ways: first, it gives you the ability to scoff at readers who seriously have no idea who the hell they are, rather than responding to their more than reasonable arguments that they don’t know what you’re saying, and secondly, it gives you the ability to advance only what others do — it’s not my point, you say, but rather the point of this man, an educated man, who is published, it is his point — and who wants to argue with an academic demigod? Not me.
Talking above everybody’s head isn’t a very good mask for illegitimate and meaningless “scholarship.” I’ve had quite enough of this fashionable nonsense. If you want to contribute something constructive to the debate community, do so in the terms and on a level in which everyone can participate, and please, next time — please have something to say first.
Posted from: 208.54.95.129
April 1st, 2005 09:19
Homer: Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. But I think I have to go to the retreat anyway.
Posted from: 67.124.49.254
April 1st, 2005 09:25
I’m a high school debater and it makes sense to me. I don’t think Babb’s writing style is incredibly confusing - granted, it’s probably not the 6th grade reading level you’ll find in most newspapers.
Posted from: 24.6.20.123
April 1st, 2005 10:43
Maybe you understood it Stephen, but I–and I’m sure AT LEAST 75% of VBD’s readers–had a great deal of difficulty making sense of that.
Cliffnotes?
Posted from: 12.216.147.234
April 1st, 2005 11:03
I need to read more.
Posted from: 165.123.147.34
April 1st, 2005 12:32
I think most readers of the VBD could handle this article if they were willing to give it some time and actually read it, not just skim it for big words that count them out of the discourse.
Babb- I think your insight is great. Question on Levinas- did the parents actually reference the “life in the face”? If so, that would be about the most bitchin combination of “spiritual advising” and phenomenological ehtics I’ve ever seen.
Posted from: 141.161.113.105
April 1st, 2005 12:37
Yes, we should spit on Derrida and Lacan and all the other philosophical opportunists and intellectual terrorists. Louis Lacan once concluded, after illegitimately hijacking science for pages and pages, that the ‘male erectile organ equals the square root of -1.’
I would HIGHLY recommend reading the book Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal and how the postmodernists have hijacked language and science.
DO NOT FALL VICTIM TO THEIR TERRORISM
If one examines neotextual objectivism, one is faced with a choice: either reject poststructural dialectic theory or conclude that government is part of the rubicon of consciousness, but only if art is distinct from reality; otherwise, we can assume that narrative comes from the masses. But Debord promotes the use of pretextual nationalism to attack sexual identity. Sontag uses the term ‘neotextual objectivism’ to denote the difference between class and language.
That is a quotation from elsewhere.org’s postmondern generator, which randomly generates semantic nonsense…sounds and awful lot like the dribble that came spilling out in that post.
Terry Schiavo was murdered by a relentless judiciary, it’s as easy as that. Sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, analysis of your post yields the simple fact that you can push shift F7 faster than anyone else. I, for one, will not revel in such academic masturbation.
Your use of ‘clearly’ or ‘one thing is for sure’ followed by philosophical nonsense is nothing short of intellectual terrorism. Put it do rest.
Posted from: 165.123.147.34
April 1st, 2005 12:38
And honestly- I’m not sure who this Descartes character is, but quit embarrassing yourself. A discussion about the merits and flaws of a particular argument is fine, but don’t stoop to a level of name-calling to get your point across.
Maybe you do have a point, but argue your point intelligently, don’t just asssert it like an ass.
Maybe you don’t have a point.
Maybe you are a point.
Maybe the point is the object of your fetish.
Maybe you are the object of the point’s fetish.
…am I blowing your mind?
Posted from: 66.15.175.130
April 1st, 2005 13:08
i didn’t realize a person is murdered by the judiciary when she was explicit *in the context of funerals for family members who had terminal illnesses* that she NEVER wanted to live in a vegetative state.
it just plain sucks when someone’s wishes for their own life is finally affirmed after years of familial pain and suffering, doesn’t it?
listen, babb is right: the questions about existence vs. quality, s.o.p., etc. are being ignored. the only thing we care about is the shenanigans of jesse jackson, prez bush, and his brother. the bottom line is that terry schiavo’s wishes were finally carried out. thank goodness for that.
michelinmassey.
Posted from: 66.25.148.76
April 1st, 2005 13:09
It’s like lazy people find Fasionable Nonsense and are like, “Omg, no one’s every heard of this book before…I’m sooooooo smart what’s wrong with these people”
Babb is an intellectual terrorist…but that’s a good thing.
I think a post that references Badiou and Zizek telling the reader something. Yes you can read it without knowing either but the text is specifically referencing lines of thought through proper names that intersect with the essay. It’’s making explicit that the text is a supplement to thought.
Truth Events form on Tommy Clancy’s Back Porch.
Posted from: 136.242.122.83
April 1st, 2005 13:18
It isn’t name calling, Mr. Stevens. If you’ll read the article clearly, there are several points that I make as to why the author’s approach is insidious: to that end, my arguments are necessarily ad hom in so far as my problem is with the author, because I can’t understand his text. On that same note, I am told that my initial points may have been to harsh — I don’t want to soft peddle my message, but I am not malicious either.
My point is, and remains: Babb couches his meaningless essay in intimidating rhetoric as to minimize the chance of legitimate criticism and inclusion. If you’ll see above:
1) The post can — but purposely avoids — discussing this in a context that most people can understand.
2) I’m not so sure there is a nice way to say this — I believe that the article is constructed in such a way as to scare the more ignorant among us (myself included) into revering the author’s intelligence. I explain above — high numbers of academic citations, etc.
3) To be sure, I read the article several times in my self-loathing attempt to be smarter than my means allow. I am none the smarter for it.
Posted from: 68.198.144.175
April 1st, 2005 13:29
danJ-
Babb might be an intellectual terrorist, but you are nothing more than a terrorist of stupidity. Whereas Babb (may/may not) make any sense, at least it gets people to think, at least the high schoolers who read this site MIGHT just be interested enough to go and google Zizek. If anything, you promote ignorance, by saying that just because the Language is dense, the authors are useless. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that you are simply scared of postmodern thought; most people are only repelled so strongly by things they can’t understand. So go ahead, turn everything into a stupid little partisan debate where *I* am the democrat and *you* are the republican, and let’s all play politics, whoopee!
Postmodernism is the only religion, the only thing that can explain our current condition.
And Babb, I think the Schiavo situation really speaks volumes about the growing use of technology and how the machine is infiltrating our daily lives. Great authors about the rise of technology in a matrix-esque way: McLuhan, Innis, Baudrillard, Lewis Mumford, and to some extent, Jameson.
Posted from: 24.162.117.201
April 1st, 2005 14:12
In some respects this has developed into more of a discussion on anti-intellectualism than anything Schiavo-related, and that’s fine. I will try to be thorough (and *clear*) in responding to Descartes latest treatises from the dead, though I must say Mr. Fugit, Mr. Hess, Mr. Massey, and Mr. Stevens have already made points with which I wholeheartedly agree. We will do some line-by-line first…
[You’re an intellectual terrorist, couching your “analysis” — what is more appropriatly called idol worship — in what I can only assume is a larger academic discussion that occurs between three “philosophers” and yourself — hardly ripe for presentation to an audience, especially one of the high school variety.]
Well it isn’t a discussion between “three” philosophers and me, as it were. Peter Hallward’s latest compilation (”Think Again”) on Badiou is literally a who’s-who of continental philosophy, featuring articles from Etienne Balibar, Jean-Luc Nancy, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Ranciere, Alenka Zupancic, and others. This is no mere post-structuralist paradise. It is a critical celebration of a figure (incidentally Badiou is by no means ‘post-modern’ in any typical sense) who is revolutionazing the philophical discourse as we type. The extent to which this is idol worship is only the extent to which I can appreciate intellect far greater than my own, an appreciate that I believe to be crucial to the humility of aspiring academics.
[You assert and assert and reference and reference — and then reference some more, providing reasons that are unintelligable and, at the very best, difficult to understand to a person without your exact “books I’ve read” list.]
Asserting and referencing is what people do when they don’t want to type out hundreds of pages of text on what the Truth-Event is. Those who don’t understand after a couple of readings should check out Amazon.com. As far as the audience, I suspect that there will always be a segment of my readership that doesn’t enjoy what I have to say for whatever reason. That’s fine. I’d like to say things that I believe to matter… if others believe they do not matter, they are not required to continue reading. It’s just that simple.
[Your arguments, or rather, your regurgitations, exist so far out of the mainstream that they are parodies of themselves: what the hell is an Event? What the hell does capitalizing the word situation do for you? Quite frankly — WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? You sound more like a satisfied customer from the post modern generator than you do a legitimate scholar/student, and that is something of which to be extraordinarily embarrassed.]
An Event is an occurence that cannot be explained within the ordinary “logic” of the situation. Here’s Peter Hallward on Badiou: “He [badiou] affirms this infinite capacity for transformation as the only appropriate departure for thought , and he affirms it in advance of any speculation about its enabling conditions or ultimate horizons. Innovation as such is independent of any cumulative dialectic, any acquired feel for the game, any tendency toward consensus or tolerance–any orientation carried by ‘the way of the world’. Triggered by an exceptional event whose occurence cannot be proven with the resources currently available in the situation, true change proceeds insofar as it solicits the militant conviction of certain individuals who develop the implications of this event and hold firm to its consequences: by doing so, they constitute themselves as the *subjects* of its innovation. A subject is someone carried by his or her fidelity to the implications of an event–or again, what distinguishes an event from other incidents that might ordinarily take place in the situation is that these implications, themselves illuminated by the consequences of previous events, make it impossible for those who affirm them to carry on as before.”
Capitalizing words like Truth-Event, Situation, etc is done to denote the unique lexical register from which these terms come. When Badiou uses the terminology he does so in such a way that it is already loaded with meanings that extend beyond the traditional usage of the words. In essence, they have acquired ‘proper’ status through usage in a specialized dialogue in which ordinary words are given extra-ordinary meanings because new concepts and schools of thought require new lexical registers.
As far as what I “sound” like, I do believe that a “legitimate student” takes a critical yet open-minded approach to worlds and texts that are not their own. Baylor is, incidentally, not a ‘post-modern generator’ of any kind. It’s Baptist.
[Rather than electing to discuss the tragic and controversial event of Terri Schiavo in its more appropriate and readily apparent context, you drive into the margin, hoping people will believe that your “new” and “insightful” analysis with its capital letters denoting a meaning different from the usual usage will scare readers into believing that this post is not bereft of any meaning at all, and, maybe as an aside, that you’re smart.]
Why is the spectacle more appropriate? Why is speaking from the margin a bad thing? Why is it wrong to follow figures that include Christ and Gandhi as models of speaking from the margin? I’m sure my article is bereft of meaning for some, but my hope is that it may remain meaningful for those with a cursory enough familiarity with the texts referenced therein. I don’t want to scare readers into anything–the article was anything by hostile.
[The response is even less understandable than the initial post — and I suspect that this has a motive behind it.]
Well there was some irony tucked in there, but that never made anyone’s head explode. As for the reference to Deleuze, I was merely pretending to read your bastardized appropriation of Descartes as an intentional textual subversion (Deleuze claimed to ‘take philosophers from behind’ in order to produce a more or less ‘reconstructed’ textual monstrosity). It was feigned charity–I understood the misappropriation to be accidental all along.
[Either YOU are SO SMART that the vast majority of people simply think on a different level than you, or, you resort to this sort of weak and referential writing to shoo away those would legitimately question your points — if they could understand it.]
I write, I intervene. I don’t babysit. I suspect that a number of folks in the VBD readership could more than adequately object, though my argument is not especially controversial. It simply attempts to apply a hot topic in academia to a current event. I’ve seen Badiou sitting on coach’s desks at tournaments (Tim Mahoney formally of st marks), I teach Badiou for about 2 hours every summer at VBI, and even those without explicit grounding in Badiou should have an OK time navigating the article if they have cursory understanding of continental philosophy over the last 20 years. This is intended by no means to be a measure of intelligence, but rather an open dialogue than might require some to do a little homework if they care to. Otherwise, it can be ignored (notice how little I include in the introductory excerpt so as to save space on the VBD’s front page).
[Citing little known authors covers your ass in two ways: first, it gives you the ability to scoff at readers who seriously have no idea who the hell they are, rather than responding to their more than reasonable arguments that they don’t know what you’re saying, and secondly, it gives you the ability to advance only what others do — it’s not my point, you say, but rather the point of this man, an educated man, who is published, it is his point — and who wants to argue with an academic demigod? Not me.]
I would still contend that Badiou, Zizek, and Baudrillard are not “little-known”–or anyway that they are becoming more well-known each and every year in this community. Not knowing what the article says isn’t an “argument”–it’s a question. And it’s a question to which I’m more than happy to respond. If I wanted to shy away from disagreement, God knows I would not be taking on Rene Descartes. As far as advancing what others do… the articles contains “points” that are mine and “points” that are not. The theoretical underpinnings are, indeed, not mine. That’s because at 22 years of age I don’t think I’m nearly competent enough to develop new ‘theory’. What I can do? Read critically and appropriate like every other student. The true arrogance belongs to those who consider themselves true armchair philosophers commenting broadly on that which has already been discussed ad infinitum. Paying homage by engaging the work of the world’s finest thinkers and doing one’s best to understand and integrate it is just what students do.
Posted from: 24.162.117.201
April 1st, 2005 14:17
Is Lyotard posting on this thread now?? Damn.. haha. I appreciate “the postmoden conditions”’s comments–those authors do indeed address the future of philosophy in so many ways. I would have loved to taken the article in that direction and explicitly engaged issues of the inhuman, but that ground is so fertile that a short essay could hardly form a thought on the subject..
b
Posted from: 66.25.148.76
April 1st, 2005 14:31
Everyone…
I really don’t think Zizek is afraid of being called an intellectual terrorist, because he’s too busy being a pimp:
http://photos8.flickr.com/7324349_cdc73b081f_o.jpg
Hail to the king, baby.
Posted from: 71.105.68.55
April 1st, 2005 14:42
Babb, just as a suggestion to avoid this type of backlash in the future (not that it is justified), could you briefly preface your article with an explanation of what the more-unknown terms in the article mean. That be helpful and probably make the article accessible to more people. thanks
Posted from: 165.123.147.34
April 1st, 2005 14:52
man is he cool.
Posted from: 24.162.117.201
April 1st, 2005 14:52
That’s an excellent suggestion, suggestion man. My only reservation is stylistic–I feel as though an article preceded by a glossary would be awkward, but I see its importance nevertheless. I suppose my hope would be that if folks are interested, they google the names or even pick up a book or two. Underlying the ostensible function of the article, there is of course the (apparently dangerous?) hope that some respond with curiosity rather than frustration… or perhaps, even, a curiosity born out of frustration. Whenever I got beat down by debaters simply because their academic resources were more sophisticated than my own, the frustration of the moment produced a desire to read more. But your recommendation is well-received–in any case, as I said… I’m always happy to respond to questions.
b
Posted from: 131.229.177.243
April 1st, 2005 15:06
Postmodern philosophy isn’t exactly my field of interest, nor one that I agree with - but atfer having spent two weeks reading papers on the philosophy of smell (don’t giggle, it’s really cool) and the philosophy of ableism (Smith College was one of the first institutions to define this term for itself, about the time the ADA was passed) I find Babb’s insight valuable and interesting, if a bit… er, *tangled* in its own rhetoric. ;-)
I will add another of my own, a question which came up again and again in a talk by Licia Carlson here at Smith last night, on the topic of cognitive disabilities: Why do we say that persons with severe retardation, or other disabling cognitive problems, “suffer” - when medically, they may not be in any pain at all? What allows us to presume that their lives are not worth living?
Why, also, is so much emphasis placed on “dignity” and “peacefulness” in death, when niether is necessarily a refelction of the dying person’s value as a human being? Death is often ugly. Sickness also is, almost by definition.
I personally am deeply revolted by the highly codified dance of death that our society accepts as natural. Last minutes visits to the dying - what purpose do they have? If he doesn’t already know you love him, it’s a little late to start telling him now. Wakes - could anything BE more ghoulish than visiting a dead body for a few hours? Burial and funerals - a show produced only for the living, in no way of interest to the dead. Why bother? Once a life is substantively gone, it’s gone - and nothing can alter that fact.
This shifts the focus of the question to: What is substantive life? If I am living in a persistant vegatative state and am cognitively no different from an animal, or a tree - why should I not be eaten, or used for furniture? The language, perhaps, is extreme - but I mean to draw attention to the vestiges of human existence that linger on after life has departed.
What compells us to find life even in death?
Posted from: 70.57.67.98
April 1st, 2005 15:36
Babb –
1) You wear pampers?
2) I think a “glossary” or brief description of what terms mean, i.e. Peter Hallward explaining Bodiou on the Event, would be tremendously helpful. Googling “Zizek”, “Bodiou”, or “the Event” can be tedious in sifting to find something that offers insight into what you are saying/thinking. Additionally, maybe even having a “suggested reading” or footnotes on some of your references would increase the magnitude of the audience. If your reserve to doing so is stylistic then perhaps post after your entry, or construct (or have Jon Cruz construct) a parallel website that offers clarity on “post-babbisms”. This might assist in softening the “anti-intellectualism” to the non status quo thinking that you present. If you want VBD readers to have curiousity for new ideas, post-modern or otherwise, making your “babbisms” more accessible (in the sense that you provide some sort of glossary, not in the sense that you dilute your writing as it is) as supposed to relying on google (who now is also a beverage manufacturer).
3) I have questions, what’s your s/n?
Posted from: 24.162.117.201
April 1st, 2005 15:47
Hey Peter!
Yah you’re right. I will think of something for the future. At the very least, I’ll post some links to helpful websites or something.
My (aim) screen name is igotid5 .
peace,
b
Posted from: 24.162.117.201
April 1st, 2005 16:12
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/badiou.html
I typed alain badiou + event into google and this is like the first site that comes up. Very clean, lucid explanation of Badiou’s fundamentals… I think the EGS website also has free articles. Anyway, if anything remains confusing after the 5 minutes it takes to google and read about Badiou.. hit me up and I’m happy to chat.
b
Posted from: 68.127.102.242
April 1st, 2005 17:11
This discussion has brought up an interesting dilemma to me. I agree that the article is simply a source of information, and individuals can A)not read it if they choose, B) do independent reading to understand, or C) generously, Babb has offered to Chat. However, I wonder, how would a debater do any of the above in a debate round? this is not related to the article itself, but given that these authors are becoming more pervasive, it is a fairly relevant issue. I, for one, barely understood the article, if at all, and that too, only after a close reading. Such a reading, however, is rarely feasible in a debate round, where a debater has AT MOST 6 minutes…assuming he reads the case for all of CX and all of prep. given the speed at which the cards may be read, it often seems impossible to understand the meaning, warrant, and impact of every card. Furthermore, CX clarification is also not an easy solution, given that the debater’s interpretation of the card(s) is usually unverifiable, unless one were to read carefully, once again. I guess the solution would be to read more… On the other hand, Judges often accept a card or argument simply via an extension, even if they did not understand the argument in the first place. This is sort of just a ramble, and I think advanced argumentation is cool. But what are all of your opinions on Judge paradigms regarding advanced positions, which unfortunately, can be fairly dense. Any thoughts on whether a judge can vote on the extension of an argument he did not understand, or cards which did not become cogent until rebuttals?
Posted from: 67.124.49.254
April 1st, 2005 18:18
paradigmidol: you fucking retard
paradigmidol: that babb post is an april fools joke
paradigmidol: oh wait, maybe I AM the fool
paradigmidol: for not understand your complex fake sincerity
paradigmidol: but i doubt that
hahah april fools?
like maybe i’m just extrapolating arguments personally from rhetoric but I (thought I) understood most of it?
Posted from: 68.117.70.131
April 1st, 2005 19:54
You guys are all nerds.
Posted from: 24.6.20.123
April 1st, 2005 20:49
hahahahahahaha.
Posted from: 66.218.240.111
April 1st, 2005 22:48
Babb - have you applied to the EGS grad program yet? I hear DJ Spooky is teaching there ;)
Posted from: 129.133.143.33
April 3rd, 2005 20:44
I do not know the art of being clear to those who do not want to be attentive.
Posted from: 66.25.165.128
April 4th, 2005 02:27
Hmm . . . seems like it’s time to fill my one random post of the semester quota.
Let me start by admitting my bias right away:
a) I understood, at least on a surface level, what Babb’s post said.
b) I’m good friends with Babb, so naturally I take issue to someone calling him an “intellectual terrorist.”
I say these things both in the name of honestly disclosing reasons why I might take Babb’s side, but also because, to my mind, those two facts make what Descartes has to say ridiculous. Let’s start with (a) my understanding:
I’m an English major at UT who hasn’t read philosophy in about 2 years and am certainly not well versed on post-modern/structuralist/post-whatever philosophy, but I still think that if one isn’t intimidated by name dropping/referencing, Babb’s post is quite understandable. Let’s take one of the more complicated sections of his article:
–An authentic Truth, for Badiou, cannot be produced from the already-situated coordinates of the political… but must come from outside (at the unassimilable edge of) those coordinates altogether. To this end, we must conclude that Schiavo’s would-be saviors were anything but outsiders to the status quo coordinates. Rather, they are the necessary complement to the secular rule of law… the ideological flipside to bio-political organization of life is precisely the irrational blind commitment to life itself.–
After talking about Events for a while, Babb gives us one of Badiou’s criterion. Now, the term coordinate is used kind of strangely here, but the basic (surface level) meaning seems to be that Events must be truly unique, they can’t come from status-quo politics, nor from beliefs which are just polar-opposite reactions to those. (If I’m wrong, my apologies/embarrassment.) Almost every time Babb uses an obscure term, he defines it in more conventional terms right afterwards. If you don’t understand the first part, read the second. Don’t give up. Certainly there are times when Babb makes very specific references–the Nazi reference–but why does that matter? If you don’t get it, move on; if you do, appreciate it.
It seems all one needs to understand Babb’s post enough to respond to it is an ability to not get hung up on certain phrases/allusions you don’t get and skills at using context clues. I think we’ve all been taught how to use context clues since middle school.
b) I’m friends with Babb
What this means for me is that Babb doesn’t use these terms to (a) be elitist (b) hide bullshit ideas behind complicated rhetoric.
As Babb has already pointed out he teaches Pomo at debate camp and tries to explain it in a way which is as least slightly accessible to everyone. He also will spend time after lecture talking to people who just don’t get it. Here, Babb has offered to chat with anyone about his post. This strikes me much more as a movement from someone who genuinely cares about the ideas behind what he is saying and who wants more people to understand them, than someone who wants to distance himself from the masses through use of complicated rhetoric.
As for bullshit ideas, well. . .they might be, but Babb freakin’ understands them. And for that matter, if Descartes admittedly can’t gleam a hint of meaning from Babb’s post, how can he ask Babb to “please have something to say first” before Babb posts again? That just doesn’t make sense.
But all of this is a prelude to my real point/ query. How is what Descartes does any more acceptable than Babb’s posts?
1) I’m not a fan of modern trends of unclear/obscure writing, but certainly by current standards the Descartes quotation is equally unnecessarily complicated. It may use words we all know, but that sentence isn’t a joy to read. It’s long-winded, unclear, and, for me at least, required two readings to discern it’s meaning. I had the feeling the guy/girl was poking fun at Babb, but to use a cliché: “Who talks like that anyways?” If we want clear language, we should demand it from all schools of thought, not particular ones.
2) Obscure references to hide lack of analysis:
Descartes is dead, Zizek and Badiou aren’t. That’s the only difference I can really come up with here. If you’re into contemporary philosophy, you’ve probably heard of both; if you’re into more general philosophy, maybe only Descartes. If you’re not into philosophy then the only time you’ve heard about Descartes is through Cartesian coordinates, in a history textbook blurb, or in a vapid reference to “I think therefore. . .” Why do those distinctions make Babb any worse? Why should we privilege old, dead voices over new, vibrant ones?
Also, I know it’s clichéd to call people out on not using real names, but c’mon this is too hypocritical. You accuse Babb of hiding behind philosophers but then post as Descartes?
Finally, at least Babb references in a way that makes it clear when he’s using other people’s ideas as opposed to just ripping them off. Descartes neither puts into quotation marks, nor gives due credit to the phrase “fashionable nonsense.” Someone else has to do it for him. Silly isn’t it?
Certainly, there are situations where people need to be called out for using overblown rhetoric or hiding behind obscure allusions. But if you’re gonna do it, tread carefully. If such accusations are misplaced you end up sounding “anti-intellectual” and undermine the efficiency of such accusations when they are well placed. Babb could be clearer, but the overstatement of Descartes’ claims ended up shifting the focus to their validity as opposed to creating a dialogue for genuinely constructive criticism.
Also, don’t be hypocritical, if you believe in clear, democratic writing and academic honesty, embrace it. Use it as a paradigm to judge your own texts as well as others.
Hokey doke, that’s all.
Posted from: 24.162.117.201
April 4th, 2005 08:58
Tommy’s ‘post of the month’ is always a good one… and now to respond to a few things given that I’ve been absent for a couple days.
a) Nope, not an april fools joke. I don’t believe in those.
b) Jay brings up an excellent point about complicated positions in general (when used in LD, anyway). It’s one of those issues that is often alluded to in various discussions, but rarely engaged head-on. I’d love to hear the input of others (I know Gelfand, for example, has had to make his case against those who can’t cope with Schreiber’s positions), but my initial comment would simply be that it is not enough to simply say, “Well I GUESS we COULD solve the problem by reading more.” There’s way too much amateur philosophizing going on in LD; that is, as opposed to integrating and applying already established voices, LDers are often just making up pseudo-philosophy of their own. Additionally, the growing gap between those who read and those who don’t has resulted in an activity where–at the higher levels, anyway–debates are simply decided purely by one’s grounding in literature. Believe me when I say judges would much rather watch a debate in which both sides can enter into the discourse.
But it’s not enough to just say: read more. There are ample opportunities for debaters to work on this problem. For starters, how about taking advantage of and then implementing the lessons learned at camp. Josh Anderson provided students with around 25 generic (but very good) arguments to be made against kritiks. I have seen kritiks run against students who *attended that module* (or a similar variation at NDF) and they maybe make ONE of the responses made available to them by Josh’s material. Joey Seiler gave a wonderful module on dealing with confusing positions last summer. These are opportunities for debaters to take home very solid strategies, but actually applying these strategies in-round is the responsibility of debaters. Many of the same debaters who complain about dealing with these positions fail to attend lectures/modules on critical theory and postmodern literature. I don’t give them in order to indoctrinate–I give them in order to provide students a resource in a community where these arguments are starting to automatically trump more generic arguments due to: (a) the willingness of some judges to pull the trigger on arguments they deem ‘progressive’ so that those judges can seem hip and en vogue; (b) a gap in familiarity with the literature; and (c), the UNwillingness of students to take advantage of the strategies afforded them by instructors who are aware of the trends in the activity. I want to say more about Tommy’s post in a second, but he alludes to an absolutely crucial point here: even if you haven’t read the precise texts involved, using the critical thinking/reading skills developed since middle school will take you quite far. Tommy may not read Badiou every weekend, but he DOES read and approach texts/film with a critical eye. While I have nowhere near Tommy’s experience with Russian novels, I’d like to think I could read one and at least participate in a discussion with him on what it was all about. As a general issue, the disposition of readers/listeners to be uncharitable to the text/voice of the other (whether that be author, debater, judge, teacher, whatever) is absolutely poor judgment. Being a “critical” audience does NOT mean being a dismissive and big-headed audience; to the contrary, it implies engaging thoughtfully within an ethic of hospitable readership. I tend to think that were this ethic taken seriously among debaters, debates might actually feature (gasp) RESPONSIVE arguments–as opposed to block after block of generic, non-responsive offense. The reading/thinking habits we develop in the community and over the summer heavily influence the way we debate. I think the habit of *listening* might be cultivated quite a bit more than the status quo suggests to be the case.
c) I have not applied for the EGS, but yes that would be a trip. I believe DJ Spooky does work there (along with David Lynch!), so it’s just a circus of hotttness really.
d) I think Tommy’s reading is dead on. Concepts reveal themselves on *multiple* levels of rhetoric; when one’s priority is to teach/explain, translating one level of rhetoric into a simpler scheme may be one’s priority. However, there are also merits to embracing a fidelity to the textual rhetoric and the author’s own lexical register (in this case, Badiou’s). There is a life to texts that transcends the analytical infrastructure with which they produce themes, arguments, etc. That’s why there’s all the difference in the world between reading James Joyce and reading the Sparks notes. Such is the case with “philosophy” or “theory”. Can the thrust be translated into a simpler lexicon? Sure. But when one attempts to participate in a genuine dialgue with these authors, to replace *their* vocabulary with your own is presumptuous at best. These demands, in addition to their anti-intellectualist undertones, are academically arrogant to the Nth degree.
Tommy is actually the person who introduced me to the earlier referenced text “Fashionable Nonsense,” so believe him when he says he is no pomo hack. Those who run performance or critical race theory in front of me and get dropped quickly will likewise tell you that I am no pomo hack either. I think just as some philosophy-proper is better than other (Hegel > GE Moore), some critical theory works and some doesn’t. There are any number of piss-poor en vogue “critical scholars” that write horribly about one emergence of particularity or another. But this is true of any discipline–the academic department doesn’t define the quality of the research/writing being done. Otherwise, sociology would *always* lose. (haha).
Nevertheless, even the piss-poor scholars deserve to be read carefully such that a determination of the piss-pooredness might be made fairly in the first place. This attitude that an audience must be spoon fed is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever encountered, especially among debaters who should be well-trained in the art of listening. Debate isn’t all about performing and looking cool (because none of us look “cool”, ‘cept maybe for Clancy in the Bono sunglasses)–it’s about entering a mutually hospitable dialogue that happens to overlap with a quite competitive little game. But all the grandstanding in the world fails substantially to compensate with the lack of GOOD arguments–a lack I attribute in no small part to the failure of some debaters to LISTEN in ways conducive to responsive argumentation.
-b
Posted from: 24.160.89.205
April 4th, 2005 17:58
read the initial article/essay/what have you, and i understood it. I’m not sure how interesting it really is, but i think it does say something about the progression of events in a world so politicized it seems almost arbitrary.
i stopped reading mid-way through, since the discussion soon turned into a conversation rather than a discussion.
anyway, interesting perspective on the case, i’m waiting for the jackson trial article, i bet that will be interesting, or at least should be writen.