With Hegel Beyond Hegel

The Hegel Variations: “On the Phenomenology of the Spirit” by Fredric Jameson. (London: Verso, 2010. pp. 144. $24.95 cloth.

Ladrones del mundo, uníos

La repetición de un hecho, según Hegel, juega un papel crucial en la historia: todo acontecimiento que solo se produce una vez, puede considerarse mero accidente, un hecho que podría haberse evitado si la situación se hubiera manejado de otro modo; pero, cuando el mismo acontecimiento se repite, es señal de que está en curso un proceso histórico más profundo. La derrota de Napoleón en Leipzig, en 1813, pudo atribuirse a la mala suerte; pero, tras su derrota en Waterloo, era evidente que estaba acabado. Lo mismo podría aplicarse a la sostenida crisis financiera actual. En septiembre de 2008, algunos la presentaron como una anomalía que podría corregirse introduciendo regulaciones más acertadas. Ahora que hay cada vez más indicios de que vuelva a producirse otro colapso financiero, parece evidente que nos enfrentamos a un fenómeno estructura

Hegel and the Object, Or, the Idea's Constipation

One of the standard motifs of the pseudo-Freudian dismissal of Hegel is to characterize his System as the highest and most over-blown expres­sion of oral economy: is the Hegelian Idea not a voracious eater which "swallows" every object it stumbles upon? As Hegel likes to point out, however, we can only grasp the object if this object itself already "wants to be with/by us." The standard critical reading constructs the Hegelian absolute Substance-Subject as thoroughly constipated - keeping in itself the swallowed content. But what about the counter-movement, the Hegelian shitting, excrementation? Is the subject of what Hegel calls "ab­solute Knowing" not also a thoroughly emptied subject, a subject reduced to the role of pure observer of the self-movement of the content itself

El inconsciente de la economía política

The libidinal tensions described by Freud are not simply characteristic of the subject, but are part of interpersonal politics (family) of the struggle for power. This is the reason why Etienne Balibar points out that, in his description of the crowd formation and the genesis of the superego, Freud does not provide a "psychoanalysis of politics" (an explanation of the political dynamics of the crowds, through processes which are themselves apolitical), but their opposite: the politics of psychoanalysis (the explanation of the emergence of the triadic structure of the Ego-Id-Superego, through family "political" power struggles). This is what Marx does in A Critique of Political Economy: he brings out his unconscious, and that is why he calls the object of his critique "political economy."Las tensiones libidinales descritas por Freud no son simplemente propias del sujeto, sino que forman parte de la política interpersonal (familiar), de la lucha por el poder, es por ello que Etienne Balibar señala que, en su descripción de la formación de la multitud y de la génesis del superego, Freud no proporciona un "psicoanálisis de la política" (una explicación de la dinámica política de las multitudes a través de procesos libidinales que son en sí mismos apolíticos) sino su contrario, la política del psicoanálisis (la explicación del surgimiento de la estructura triádica del Ego-Id-Superego a través de las luchas de poder "políticas" familiares). Esto es lo que hace Marx en su Crítica de la economía política: saca a relucir su inconsciente, por eso llama al objeto de su crítica "la economía política"

Globokar, or the Effort to Write Materialist Music

In what precise sense is Vinko Globokar's music materialist? Music at its most elementary is an act of supplication: a call to a figure of the big Other (beloved Lady, King, God...) to respond, not as the symbolic big Other, but in the real of his or her being (breaking his own rules by showing mercy; conferring her contingent love on us...). Here we might say that music in this sense is an act that is the breaking in of the fantasized Other. Music is thus an attempt to provoke the "answer of the Real," to give rise in the Other to the "miracle" of which Lacan speaks apropos of love, the miracle of the Other stretching back his or her hand to me. The historical changes in the status of "big Other" (grosso modo , in what Hegel referred to as "objective Spirit") thus directly concern music – perhaps musical modernity designates the moment when music renounces the endeavor to provoke the answer of the Other. Modern music is thoroughly and really atheist, MATERIALIST, not in the sense of the ridiculously pathetic spectacle of the heroic defiance of God, but in the sense of the insight into the irrelevance of the divine, again, along the lines of Brecht’s Herr Keune

The Vagaries of the Superego

Starting from the distinction between “ideal ego”, “ego-ideal” and “superego” structured from the Imaginary-Symbolic-Real triad made by Lacan, this study investigates how is possible to distinguish the a-sexual social space from the domain of libidinally-cathexed interactions. Through the analysis of Balibar’s, Miller’s, Schuster’s and Hägglund’s ideas, paths and strategies are defined to analyze the existing dynamics between symbolic power, law and superego. What emerges is the reconstruction of a new subjectivity which is capable, at the same time, to overcome the jouissance-superego dynamic at the basis of Lacanian reflection and face the challenges of contemporary post-humanism. Therefore, what subject stands for is the inhuman core of being-human, what Hegel called selfrelating negativity, what Freud called death drive. The text proposes, in short, how the Subject is what is in a human being more than human, the immortality of the deathdrive which makes it a living dead, something that insists beyond the cycle of life and death

Vold: Tyrannens blodige kappe

Violence:The article analyses different kinds of violence and labels directly visible violence ‘subjective’ violence, while ‘symbolic’ violence is the violence embedded in language and ‘objective’ violence is the systemic violence of capitalism. In most cases in today’s society it is only subjective violence that is talked about as violence. This is a problem, the article argues, as it tends to prevent an adequate understanding of how capitalism actually functions. In the present historical situation an adequate understanding of capitalism ought to be more important than the need for an immediate political engagement. What is needed, the article argues, is a critical analysis of the present constellation of forces and powers. It is more revolutionary to read and analyse the present conjuncture, than fight the police or build barricades. The article then proceeds to discuss what it calls ‘liberal communism’ in the guise of entrepreneurial philanthropists such as Bill Gates who are engaged in philanthropic activities and try to do good with some of the huge amount of money they have earned. According to the article the liberal communists claim that we can have the global capitalist cake (thrive as profitable entrepreneurs) and eat it too (endorse the anti-capitalist causes of social responsibility, ecological concerns, etc.) In fact while they may be fighting subjective violence these liberal communists are the very agents of the structural violence that creates the conditions for such explosions of subjective violence. Precisely because liberal communists want to resolve all these secondary malfunctions of the global capital system, they are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system as such

Veliki Drugi ali vzdrževanje videza v javnem prostoru

Through examples such as Antigone, Sygne de Coûfontaine, Abraham, the Wobblies song Joe Hill, the political situation in the 1970s in Portugal, the film Brief Encounter, and many other anecdotes and historical coincidences, the article presents a thesis on the big Other, which is not merely an anonymous symbolic field but at the same time an instance necessarily represented by a random individual in a certain situation. In the subject’s relation to the big Other, we are effectively dealing with the closed loop best rendered by Escher’s famous image of two hands drawing each other. The big Other is a virtual order which exists only through subjects “believing” in it; however, if the subject suspends the big Other, the subject itself, its “reality”, disappears.Skozi primere Antigone, Sygne de Coûfontaine, Abrahama, sindikalne pesmi Joe Hill, portugalske politične situacije v sedemdesetih letih dvajsetega stoletja, filma Bežno srečanje in skozi mnogo drugih anekdot in zgodovinskih koincidenc članek postavlja tezo o velikem Drugem ne kot zgolj kot o anonimnem simbolnem polju, temveč hkrati kot o tisti instanci, ki potrebuje naključnega posameznika, ki ga v določeni situaciji zastopa. V subjektovem odnosu do Drugega gre dejansko za zaprt krogotok, zanko, ki jo najbolje upodablja Escherjeva slika dveh rok, ki slikata druga drugo. Veliki Drugi je virtualni red, ki obstaja le v toliko, kolikor subjekt »veruje« vanj; kolikor subjekt Drugega suspendira, pa izgine s tem tudi subjekt sam, njegova »realnost«