(no subject)

[proximoception]

Badiou's schtick reminds me of those "Murder Sex Art" t-shirts one saw on campuses for a season or two in the mid-'90s.

Comments

[paris-hat.livejournal.com]

I gather from this that I shouldn't read him, then? A reading group here starts tomorrow. I'm desperate to be in a reading group but maybe this isn't the one?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I just read some interviews, reviews, summaries--so my opinion is worth literally nothing. He doesn't come across too bad in them, even sounds Romantic at times. But it's materialist Romanticism: the world sucks you into great thoughts and events, all more or less public or interpersonal. And you are nothing at all when it releases you. More tolerable than Eagletonian Marxism, I guess. Very '68.

The T-shirt thing is because he considers the four ways the world sucks you into existence to be passionate love, political involvement, art, and scientific discovery. They become a bit of a refrain: Science Art Love Activism Activism Science Art Love. And he uses 'beast' type language to scorn human lives lived outside them...problematic, that.

I'm a bit queasy with his dismissal of human rights, also. Yes, they're an inadequate minimum, but in practice it's good to have a few down in writing. Is Human Rights just a slogan, a penny for a beggar that feels like you're giving a tithe? To some extent, sure. Is it the cork in the dam where once you pull it out our consciousness will be rewritten and the glory days begin? He goes at it like it is. I don't think these little linguistic and cultural diversions are the problem. Seems like Academic Marxism pushes pebbles about while the Great Wall rises.

But I imagine he'd have fair objections to these halfassed ones.