This was a fantastic discussion. I have been looking for something to help me explore how to write in a way that I will be excited about what I produce. There is such a push to write in the autobiographical mode. I loved her differentiation of the anecdote and the autobiography. It's so wonderful to find a new thinker to fall in love with. She is amazing.
That passage of Marx which Todd refers to is from the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy from 1859 and reads thus: "The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism." I guess the interpretation of this hinges on the term 'social conditions of existence'.
@Todd McGowan. Wonderful discussion. It would be illuminating to think about Elena Ferrante's Naples novels and the ways in which they open up the first person singular in such intimate and contradictory terms. Especially the ways in which the principle characters are constantly growing and stumbling in achieving subject-ness only in response to each other.
the bourgeois relations of production are the last contradictory form of the process of social production, contradictory not in the sense of an individual contradiction, but of a contradiction that is born of the conditions of social existence of individuals; however, the forces of production which develop in the midst of bourgeois society create at the same time the material conditions for resolving this contradiction. With this social development the prehistory of human society ends.
I got lost in the last part of the conversation in the distinction between the temporal and the spatial. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand how to separate space-time. And I never really understood Bergson’s attempt to Rescue time or duration from space. So statements like “psychoanalysis doesn’t care about time” and that its only concern is with space, didn’t make any sense to me. I also didn’t understand why Dickens is concerned with space rather than time.
The discussion of spaciality in literature was interesting. The comments on Dickens prompts a read Bleak House. (Wouldn’t necessarily consider modernist and contemporary literature as temporally-biased. (Dublin in Joyce’s Ulysses and Boston in DFW’s Infinite Jest equates with London for Dickens. Add Proust and Woolf as well as modernist writers concerned with space.))
I think the point around 17:20 hits the nail on the head. Without the division of labour we are *allowed* to be contradictory. Reminds me of your point about the Madonna/whore complex
'Last antagonism' in Marx refers to the last class antagonism following the varying configurations of class relations throughout history though, doesn't it?
I’m tempted to think about the end of class in Marx as in line with the end of consciousness in the phenomenology - once we get the relatively easy questions of class out of the way we’ll be left to deal with the really messy stuff
@@ianszabo2079 I tend to think of it as a good reading of certain Marxists - and a politically important corrective - but I agree that he misses other ways of reading Marx. I think he’s right, for instance, that ‘after the revolution there’ll be no more contradictions’ allows certain Marxists to slip into Utopianism and to excuse the inexcusable ‘in the meantime’
Anna thanks. Great comment that critical theorists should spend a little less time pulling things apart, “puncturing” ideologies, and more time synthesizing (creating) theory for planetary welfare. Perhaps though it shouldn’t be a dichotomy of dystopic/utopic but dystopic/negentropic. We’ve got a great earth that works really well. We need to theorize how we can protect it from ourselves.
With respect, it’s unfathomable to me that there’s “too much trouble” between the human being and his jouissance under capital, unless “satisfaction” is understood differently. In “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, the two are contrasted, with satisfaction construed as a symbolic mediation of jouissance. It’s hard to believe that this is what is meant by “enjoyment” given the context of the convo, where capitalism is portrayed as an impediment vis a vis “oppression”, which would correspond to “satisfaction” (broadly), given the above. Lacanian Third Positionism when? (The “form and content” discussion rectifies some of the above.)
"... fantasmatic incorporation of the real ..." Errr well, lovely conversation, but I'm off digging trenches while not worrying about the climate or just distribution of love and resources.
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That was a GREAT discussion. Exactly how these things should done. Very well done!
More Anna , please.
This was FANTASTIC, thank you so much Todd!!
This was a fantastic discussion. I have been looking for something to help me explore how to write in a way that I will be excited about what I produce. There is such a push to write in the autobiographical mode. I loved her differentiation of the anecdote and the autobiography. It's so wonderful to find a new thinker to fall in love with. She is amazing.
That passage of Marx which Todd refers to is from the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy from 1859 and reads thus: "The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism."
I guess the interpretation of this hinges on the term 'social conditions of existence'.
@Todd McGowan. Wonderful discussion. It would be illuminating to think about Elena Ferrante's Naples novels and the ways in which they open up the first person singular in such intimate and contradictory terms. Especially the ways in which the principle characters are constantly growing and stumbling in achieving subject-ness only in response to each other.
the bourgeois relations of production are the last contradictory form of the process of social production, contradictory not in the sense of an individual contradiction, but of a contradiction that is born of the conditions of social existence of individuals; however, the forces of production which develop in the midst of bourgeois society create at the same time the material conditions for resolving this contradiction. With this social development the prehistory of human society ends.
The end of economic contradictions is not the end of all social contradictions.
I got lost in the last part of the conversation in the distinction between the temporal and the spatial. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand how to separate space-time. And I never really understood Bergson’s attempt to Rescue time or duration from space. So statements like “psychoanalysis doesn’t care about time” and that its only concern is with space, didn’t make any sense to me. I also didn’t understand why Dickens is concerned with space rather than time.
On the auto-theory discussion, I’d be interested in your thoughts on Frantz Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ in those terms
Yup
The discussion of spaciality in literature was interesting. The comments on Dickens prompts a read Bleak House. (Wouldn’t necessarily consider modernist and contemporary literature as temporally-biased. (Dublin in Joyce’s Ulysses and Boston in DFW’s Infinite Jest equates with London for Dickens. Add Proust and Woolf as well as modernist writers concerned with space.))
I think the point around 17:20 hits the nail on the head. Without the division of labour we are *allowed* to be contradictory. Reminds me of your point about the Madonna/whore complex
'Last antagonism' in Marx refers to the last class antagonism following the varying configurations of class relations throughout history though, doesn't it?
I’m tempted to think about the end of class in Marx as in line with the end of consciousness in the phenomenology - once we get the relatively easy questions of class out of the way we’ll be left to deal with the really messy stuff
@@OH-pc5jx yeah, which is why I find Todd's reading of Marx really poor (among other reasons), despite his excellent reading of Hegel
@@ianszabo2079 I tend to think of it as a good reading of certain Marxists - and a politically important corrective - but I agree that he misses other ways of reading Marx. I think he’s right, for instance, that ‘after the revolution there’ll be no more contradictions’ allows certain Marxists to slip into Utopianism and to excuse the inexcusable ‘in the meantime’
God this interview is such a relief, maybe I can be a Marxist after all
Anna thanks. Great comment that critical theorists should spend a little less time pulling things apart, “puncturing” ideologies, and more time synthesizing (creating) theory for planetary welfare.
Perhaps though it shouldn’t be a dichotomy of dystopic/utopic but dystopic/negentropic.
We’ve got a great earth that works really well. We need to theorize how we can protect it from ourselves.
Nice one thanks
With respect, it’s unfathomable to me that there’s “too much trouble” between the human being and his jouissance under capital, unless “satisfaction” is understood differently. In “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, the two are contrasted, with satisfaction construed as a symbolic mediation of jouissance. It’s hard to believe that this is what is meant by “enjoyment” given the context of the convo, where capitalism is portrayed as an impediment vis a vis “oppression”, which would correspond to “satisfaction” (broadly), given the above. Lacanian Third Positionism when? (The “form and content” discussion rectifies some of the above.)
5 mins in and the Foucault bashing has already started 😢
Hell yeah
"... fantasmatic incorporation of the real ..."
Errr well, lovely conversation, but I'm off digging trenches while not worrying about the climate or just distribution of love and resources.
Can we get, “Freud, not Marx” on a t-shirt?
Fuck no