tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post3676471216822195570..comments2023-11-05T03:05:16.380-08:00Comments on No Useless Leniency: The Great RefusalBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-12315236818647181802009-06-06T05:34:51.727-07:002009-06-06T05:34:51.727-07:00Thanks all, I actually find it hard to reconstruct...Thanks all, I actually find it hard to reconstruct the mental state in which I wrote this, which obviouslt tallies with certain positions I've gone to develop and not others.<br />On the correlation with leftism I'd say this was an early version of later doubts, with my suspicion at the point falling on the avowed self-positioning of lbertarian celebrations of desire; the later criticisms of accelerationism in a sense develop the point to its correlation to capital. It is simply undeveloped in this early piece - polemical verve replacing actual argument.<br />On the acsetic I think implicit is a certain 'angelism' qua Lardreau and Jambet, but also an interest in a number of feminist interventions in the 1970s. I'd have to unpack this further. In terms of asceticism in relation to theory / practice this was always the stumbling block (skandalon) of the sans-philosophie pieces I wrote. They tended to shear off into 'beautiful soul' territory (something I know L&J valorise). In some ways I'd see acesis as the refusal to tell lies or deceive ourselves and the extinction of the self (cf. my other arguments on the refusal of the creative ideology). I am actually planning to read Simone Weil and look at her concept of decreation. I was wondering about a reversal or complication of my previous endorsement of Bataille against Weil. In fact they form a strange kind of pseudo-couple in which Weil's asceticism comes full circle in its extremity to Bataille's libertinage (one story tells that Weil's self-mortifiying tendency not to wash used to disgust the peasants she had to work with - a strange kind of Maoist imperative derailed by the excessiveness of the identification).<br />This may be continued or may not... but please if it generates something better than it is that would be wonderfulBenjaminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-16466588565850890792009-06-05T10:52:00.112-07:002009-06-05T10:52:00.112-07:00Wonderful post indeed, which I had read only too q...Wonderful post indeed, which I had read only too quickly at Sans-philosophie a ways back. Just some scattered points, thoughts:<br /><br />Cf. Celestia's <a href="http://www.metal-archives.com/release.php?id=178735" rel="nofollow">Frigidiis Apotheosia: Abstinencia Genesiis</a>.<br /><br />Simon Critchley, in a recent talk on mystical anarchism (a la Vaneigem's reading of free spirit heresy, but less mystical and anarchic) at Brooklyn College grad conference, indicated an interest in chastity as site of vague anarcho-political becoming. <br /><br />This is clearly ahead of what his argument will likely be, particularly as you are doing with "these two symmetrical and complementary orientations" something homologous to what Meillassoux wants to do with religion/atheism, post-synthesize them. <br /><br />In psychic terms these complementary orientations correspond to repression and indulgence as superiority and inferiority complexes, respectively. The ascesis you call for attacks the craving, the false construction of life, at the root of both.<br /><br />Of course I want to hear more about the practical (without being 'practice' or discipline as such and so on) of such a self-critical ascesis of theory, or theory itself as mode of self-critical ascesis (because we are talking about already-dead living beings here, not "theory" as some project to which energies are owed, right?) <br /><br />On this point, ascesis as the return of something to itself seems crucial (cf. Marx's return of labor to itself), especially as such return is PLEASURABLE, a term which I think needs room to breathe in the argument. Chastity, a psycho-physical pleasurable withdrawal from false opposistes, is theory-as-pleasure (?)<br /><br />How I wish y'all could make the black metal theory symposium!<br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />NicolaNicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-17229115347937850012009-06-05T09:44:56.310-07:002009-06-05T09:44:56.310-07:00Very interesting Ben, as always, will post a respo...Very interesting Ben, as always, will post a response soon- but why do you tally libidinal celebration of desire with a hollow leftism, when it is this very celebration which has been so frequently associated (by its critics) with an isomorphy with the activities and cultural logics of capitalism (and the right, if not the conservative right, then the neo-liberal or libertarian right).Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00166682331860761879noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-73127735291890003152009-06-05T06:23:36.737-07:002009-06-05T06:23:36.737-07:00Thank you, I must admit to finding it all rather e...Thank you, I must admit to finding it all rather embarrassing now...Benjaminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-63572283017233407502009-06-05T06:10:29.992-07:002009-06-05T06:10:29.992-07:00This is fucking awesome.This is <i>fucking awesome</i>.Dominichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17939466948420020186noreply@blogger.com