archive : s0metim3s

Some of the talk given at SydneyU earlier this year, and posted in light of current ‘events’.

First, it’s not surprising that the emergence of a so-called global activism was accompanied by debates about activism as such. Much of this turns around the crisis which Brett alluded to earlier: the refinement of ‘crowd control’ techniques that involve massive and often pre-emptive repression, movements increasingly constrained by barricades, designated protest zones, lockdowns and ever-more severe controls on migration during such events. But these are, let’s say, the external conditions of that crisis; whereas the crisis of activism itself runs much deeper. Because activism too has its borders, and the shape of these are not all that different from those more famously exercised upon it. Though it’s important to note that the specific techniques and levels of force do differ, the contours of those limits are remarkably similar.

Claire Denis and J-L Nancy speaking on Denis’ film L’Intrus: parts one, two, three. Some more on the film, here. A translation of Nancy’s “L’Intrus” here as a pdf, via Influxus.

As we turn to the question of names (or figures) and the common, and continuing the series of discussions on zoon politikon, the sense of the political and the triumph of economics over politics, J-L Nancy’s “Is Everything Political?” (trans. P. M. Adamek, CR, 2:3, 2002).

An extract from BC Hutchens’ “Philosophy as Juris-Fiction: Jean-Luc Nancy and the “Philosophy of Right”, courtesy of Ravi:

According to Nancy, contemporary politics is regulated by the standards of the modern liberal middle-class state, which includes an emphasis upon the “rights” of the individual subject or citizen. In being so, it is modeled on the paradigms of what Nancy designates with the awkward neologisms “theologicopolitics” and “juridico-commerciality”. […]

Does anyone have electronic access to the Journal for Cultural Research? Specifically, for: Hutchens, “Philosophy as juris-fiction: Jean-Luc Nancy and the ‘philosophy of right’” in JCR, 16:3, December 2005.

J-L Nancy’s “Of the One, of Hierarchy” (Cultural Critique, 57, 2004):

If “September 11″ has made one thing clear, it is this: the world is tearing itself apart along an intolerable division of wealth and power. This division is intolerable because it does not rest on any acceptable hierarchy of wealth or power. A “hierarchy” signifies, according to etymology, a sacred character of principle or commandment. Now the world of techno-science, or the world of what I call ecotechnics — that is, a natural milieu made up entirely of the human supplementation of a “nature” that has now withdrawn — which is also the world of democracy, of the universal rights of a man assumed universal, the world of secularity or of religious, aesthetic, and moral tolerance, not only prevents the establishment of differences of authority and legitimacy within a sacred system, but also causes disparities or inequalities that openly violate its principles of equality and justice to seem intolerable.

This has been sitting in my drafts folder for a week or so, but since Matt astutely picks up a thread from the Tocqueville post below, xposted to Long Sunday, I’ll post it now - as fragmentary and allusive as it is. I’d hoped to work it up as an elaboration of the second note on Schmitt, but also by way of eventually connecting this up with the question of the political and, as it pertains to the organisation of borders and law, habeas corpus. In any event, some fragments from Derrida and J-L Nancy for your perusal: