tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post692597350448690149..comments2023-11-05T03:05:16.380-08:00Comments on No Useless Leniency: ProvidenceBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-82152099051840067422008-12-18T04:04:00.000-08:002008-12-18T04:04:00.000-08:00I wrote a long post on this about the relationship...I wrote a long post on this about the relationship of theodicy to providencein Christian theology (from the begining to today), plus the relationship of providence to economics then lost it. I'll post it again soon!Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14929509373840313459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-47616811545834724312008-12-17T03:38:00.000-08:002008-12-17T03:38:00.000-08:00Well more and more I see what I'm doing as trying ...Well more and more I see what I'm doing as trying to think agency from within Marxism, whereas perhaps previously I've felt more on the edge of this kind of discourse. This is partly due to a believe that something like the working class (re-conceptualised now doubt) is the only possible agential basis for a truly mass intervetion (for the usual reasons that labour (power) is the condition for the continuing functioning of capital).<BR/>On the messianic I have just written a paper on Agamben and reversibility which somewhat repetatively touches on the series of posts I've recently been making. My concern is with exactly the question you raise: should we believe in a 'magic' reversal between the worst and some kind of redemption? What kind of agency would 'be' or 'perform' the messianic? (pending an obvious disbelief in the actual messiah...)<BR/>A certain everyday passive nihilism makes me rather allergic to the category as well.<BR/>In Benjamin's formulation I'm concerned about how 'every moment' is the gate through which the messiah can enter. While this might refer to a general conditional possibility of revolution, it seems to me to risk a conjunctural reading that prevents thinking better/worse possibilities for such 'entrances'. I would tend to argue that a work of deactivation or negation is required for the 'redemptive' moment. I'm quite taken with what I read as Agamben's claim that this redemption is not simply the entrance to a new blessed state, but the immanent and material redemption of what is as blessed through the torsion of a deactivation that makes everything available for free use - including the usual structuring forms of difference deployed by capital.<BR/><BR/>The classless society is not a society that has abolished and lost all memory of class differences but a society that has learned to deactivate the apparatuses of those differences in order to make a new use possible, in order to transform them into pure means.<BR/>(to quote Agamben)<BR/><BR/>This does not answer how we reach that state of course...<BR/><BR/>Thinking in the Gramscian form I suggested in this post we might start to try to consider the historical conditions and attractions of the messianic as a form of agency to academics / intellectuals. It might be worth looping this back through the kind of analysis Goldmann makes of Port-Royal / Janesenism in The Hidden God. I'd be reluctant to see it as a simple index of powerlessness, ie the invocation of the messianic as relieving the intellectual of the need for action and refracting their own 'floating' class position.Benjaminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-9175991383496830462008-12-16T09:34:00.000-08:002008-12-16T09:34:00.000-08:00Ben,I like what you're starting here: myself and S...Ben,<BR/>I like what you're starting here: myself and SBA were just chatting the other day about reconceptualising agency in such a way that wouldn't be in thrall to traditionally marxist models, and perhaps this is one way. Needless to say, I'll stay tuned. <BR/><BR/>I was wondering also, given the concepts around which this post murmurates (agency, passivity, providence, theodicy), where you stand on the messianic and how this post relates to it in its various forms (e.g. Agamben's messianic seems to demand an abdication of agency, whereas a more deconstructive messianicity, like Derridas', <I>claims</I> to necessitate a certain agency in "preparing the way for that which is to come..." etc). <BR/><BR/>I imagine our friend M. Mason might explain this a whole lot better than I've just done but hopefully you see what I'm getting at...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-63213959680113516372008-12-14T07:00:00.000-08:002008-12-14T07:00:00.000-08:00Next on my reading list - I'm concerned with how t...Next on my reading list - I'm concerned with how this distributed form of agency cripples actual intervention. I'd also be interested in any anti-theodicy arguments from the period, if you know of any.Benjaminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-51940120651720439402008-12-13T22:57:00.000-08:002008-12-13T22:57:00.000-08:00There is of course no greater example of theocidy ...There is of course no greater example of theocidy than Spinoza, Negri's or otherwise. When agency is distributed across assemblages, and the question of freedom is necessarily multiple...I'm unsure what more you could ask for.kvondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07709562524431261018noreply@blogger.com