The impression of linguistic cohesiveness. Not a strength but a weakness. What holds together the argument being nothing but the choice of a set of terms, the configuration of notions that are asserted, as opposed to others that are denied, downplayed, mocked, invited into oblivion. Assertions that seem apodictic, immediately convincing, overwhelmingly striking one as “true,” true to the bone, to the gut, but that hide the assumptions that make their validity palpable. Or the other way around: irritating, obnoxious, downright “wrong” in spite of being well-put, smart, brilliant even. Not a question of “mere” rhetoric, as if there were a form of arguing, theoretically or philosophically, that could do without a series of implicit assumptions: proven referential thought. But nonetheless, only when disagreed, viscerally and viciously, the sense that nothing holds this together except a new chain of words as opposed to an old chain of words. Do not say “representation,” but say “inscription” or “marking” or “tracing.” Do not say “originality” but say “singularity.” Do not say “practice” or “production” but say “assemblage,” “dispositif” or “impassibility.” Do not say “social formation” or “collectivity” but say “socius” or “multitude.” Do not say “hegemony” or “ideology” but say “control” or “biopower.” But then certain terms cross over, become ambidextrous, adopted to play on both sides of the fence and not sure it is worth to try to reconstruct or erect the exact contours of the fence because of the all-sweeping, almost negligent, lazy nature of the other side that draws in, sucks up, drags in, pulls over: “event,” “subtraction,” sometimes even “truth” itself. No point in continuing. Better to focus, go back, bite into the meaty parts where the disjunction is clearer, but then nobody listens anymore because of the prior commitments, all the lines in the sand already drawn, but still why not return to the dividing lines running through “subject,” “meaning,” “language”? And even, at the higher explicit level, to the methods or systems where the commitments are often more openly stated though then at too far a remove from the ground to be a terrain for battle still: “dialectics,” “metaphysics,” “hermeneutics,” “politics,” “aesthetics,” all the “ics” and “tics,” the hiccups and downs of philosophy, still unable to step down, to abdicate, to submit to the beheading more than two centuries after the king and become, simply, theory, or more simply still, thought, ideas, concepts, notions, words with their assumptions worn on their sleeves, tattooed on their chests. Should be possible without proper names.
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 03:19:48 +0000
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