> Diane,
>
> It sounds like you're moving in the direction of Habermas's or Benhabib's
> rejection of the subject-centered critique and the call for
> "communicative rationality." Two questions emerge for me: do others
> agree with Habermas's argument that Foucault's project remains centered
> on the subject? Are the intersubjective philosophies of Habermas,
> John McGowan, or Jessica Benjamin those "poststructuralist informed"
> returns to human dignity, ethics, and positivity that *some* of us are
> looking for?
>
> Erik
>
> >
>
> Erik D. Lindberg
> Dept. of English and Comparative Lit.
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
> Milwaukee, WI 53211
> email: edl@xxxxxxxxxxx
WOAH!! Erik, noooooooo, a "communicative rationality" is not at ALL something
that would interest me... OOO, I did invite that interpretation, though,
didn't I--I see it on the reread. Lemme try this again. I'm thinking here not
of Habermas or Benhabib but of Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, and Avital
Ronell...also of Lyotard (especially in the Differend and his "A l'insu"). I'm
thinking of an/Other community/communion/communication. A community that is not
about infinity or immanence. Certainly not about rationality. A "community"
of what Bataille called "shattered egos"; a community without a telos...yet
sharing--this interests me.
Nancy describes a community that is not made up of self-determined subjects nor
on the hope for transcendence or human immanence. It is not even bound together
by a common struggle--it's not in the work but rather, as Blanchot says, in the
"des-oeuvre" (UNwork) that community exists. Community exists in the
"in-common" that exists BEFORE any projected telos. But this "in-common" is
not common pain or whatever...it is the in-common of our finitude, our
singularity. The members of a posthumanist community, Nancy suggests, find
communion across the exposition (exposing) of their own finitude: an unsharable
finitude, rather than an affinity of infinity or a communion of immanance,
becomes the very condition for commonality in Nancy. This community is about a
sharing out among Singularities--Daseins MADE UP OF loose ends that will never
be connected up. Community happens not across commonalities or working for some
projected goal together but across the re-cognition that there is no
commonality to be MADE...that community is precisely what we cannot MAKE.
Our "compearance" or co-appearance, Nancy says, exposes itself in a formula,
which he says we need to learn to read in all possible ways: "you (are/and/is)
(entirely other than) I" (toi[e(s)t] [tout autre que] moi). Or, again, more
simply "You shares me" (toi partage moi). In a master/slave dialectic, the
master/self exists at the expense of the slave/other. In comperance, however,
communication always already is. Community is not a product--it can't be built
or produced. To assume that community can be produced is to fall again into
humanist arrogance. Compearance/community takes place in the interruption of
singularities--Nancy says it is made precisely of "the suspension that singular
beings are." No community happens as a result of solidifying the fluidity that
we are.
DDD
------------------
>
> It sounds like you're moving in the direction of Habermas's or Benhabib's
> rejection of the subject-centered critique and the call for
> "communicative rationality." Two questions emerge for me: do others
> agree with Habermas's argument that Foucault's project remains centered
> on the subject? Are the intersubjective philosophies of Habermas,
> John McGowan, or Jessica Benjamin those "poststructuralist informed"
> returns to human dignity, ethics, and positivity that *some* of us are
> looking for?
>
> Erik
>
> >
>
> Erik D. Lindberg
> Dept. of English and Comparative Lit.
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
> Milwaukee, WI 53211
> email: edl@xxxxxxxxxxx
WOAH!! Erik, noooooooo, a "communicative rationality" is not at ALL something
that would interest me... OOO, I did invite that interpretation, though,
didn't I--I see it on the reread. Lemme try this again. I'm thinking here not
of Habermas or Benhabib but of Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, and Avital
Ronell...also of Lyotard (especially in the Differend and his "A l'insu"). I'm
thinking of an/Other community/communion/communication. A community that is not
about infinity or immanence. Certainly not about rationality. A "community"
of what Bataille called "shattered egos"; a community without a telos...yet
sharing--this interests me.
Nancy describes a community that is not made up of self-determined subjects nor
on the hope for transcendence or human immanence. It is not even bound together
by a common struggle--it's not in the work but rather, as Blanchot says, in the
"des-oeuvre" (UNwork) that community exists. Community exists in the
"in-common" that exists BEFORE any projected telos. But this "in-common" is
not common pain or whatever...it is the in-common of our finitude, our
singularity. The members of a posthumanist community, Nancy suggests, find
communion across the exposition (exposing) of their own finitude: an unsharable
finitude, rather than an affinity of infinity or a communion of immanance,
becomes the very condition for commonality in Nancy. This community is about a
sharing out among Singularities--Daseins MADE UP OF loose ends that will never
be connected up. Community happens not across commonalities or working for some
projected goal together but across the re-cognition that there is no
commonality to be MADE...that community is precisely what we cannot MAKE.
Our "compearance" or co-appearance, Nancy says, exposes itself in a formula,
which he says we need to learn to read in all possible ways: "you (are/and/is)
(entirely other than) I" (toi[e(s)t] [tout autre que] moi). Or, again, more
simply "You shares me" (toi partage moi). In a master/slave dialectic, the
master/self exists at the expense of the slave/other. In comperance, however,
communication always already is. Community is not a product--it can't be built
or produced. To assume that community can be produced is to fall again into
humanist arrogance. Compearance/community takes place in the interruption of
singularities--Nancy says it is made precisely of "the suspension that singular
beings are." No community happens as a result of solidifying the fluidity that
we are.
DDD
------------------