There is a funny double entendre in the French original, which is sadly lost in translation. The sentence has three members. The first one is perceived as a question even though it has no question mark. The second member states that someone said something, this something being the third member. The ambiguity arises in this last member, which can be read as both a direct and an indirect quotation. Either someone repeated the question in the first member – “What matter who’s speaking” – or someone said that, in fact, it matters who is speaking.

The funny bit, of course, is the “someone” claiming the importance of identity. Who speaks at aleph.dk? Both an “I” and a “we.” Certainly, only one person writes all this garbage but there is a difference between the “someone” holding the pen and the “someone” who speaks through what is written. As Foucault once said: “Dans l’écriture, il n’y a pas de la manifestation ou de l’exaltation du geste d’écrire ; il ne s’agit pas de l’épinglage d’un sujet dans un langage ; il est question de l’ouverture d’un espace où le sujet écrivant ne cesse de disparaître.” ²

There are a lot of theoretical subtleties in this argument and, unfortunately, it would derail our argument too much to pursue the disentanglement of their respective threads. Suffice it to say, that it is no longer theoretically viable to uphold the romantic notion of the text as direct imprint of the authoring soul.

The effacing of the authoring authority is, “I” feel, a healthy exercise, which is hopefully at the core of our present authoring function. The friendly questioning of “our” use of personal pronouns resulted, i.a., from our critique of Anne Knudsen’s usage of the term “the greater we” (“det store vi”)³. What is the difference between her “we” and our “we”?

Our “we” is completely empty. It is an empty megaphone, it is the “no hay banda” of Mulholland Drive. Every word needs an articulating mouth and our mouth opens wide for one single statement and is then closed forever. Anne Knudsen’s “greater we,” on the other hand, along with the usages of the “we” demonstrated in We the people, is a doxological “we.” It is the exclusive society of good Danish citizens. It is the obscurantist hailing of a never existing Danish spirit as the only true identity of the good Danish citizen and subsequent attempt at legally ostracizing anyone who dares not to comply.

The consistent question “What matter who’s speaking” and the anonymous “someone” of whoever claiming the importance of the speaker are part and parcel with another of Beckett’s characters. The first person narrator of The Unnamable tried in vain to take the motto “De nobis ipsis silemus.” ⁴. Maybe, in stead of the obscurantist declaration of who “we” are, “we” should accept ourselves as merely “someone” with an anonymous voice, not searching the fixating of identity through language but the opening of a space where “someone” is identity enough.

I just now stumbled upon the following gem of an aggressive defense:

“J’aime les grandes métaphores venues de la religion : Miracle, Grâce, Salut, Corps Glorieux, Conversion… On a évidemment conclu de ce goût que ma philosophie était un christianisme déguisé. Le livre sur saint Paul que j’ai publié en 1997 aux PUF n’a pas arrangé les choses. À tout prendre, j’aime mieux être un athée révolutionnaire caché sous une langue religieuse qu’un “démocrate” occidental persécuteur de musulman(e)s déguisé en féministe laïque.” (Baidou: Second manifeste pour la philosophie note 4)

In case your French is a bit rusty, here is a rusty translation:

“I love the great religious metaphors: Miracle, Grace, Salvation, Glorious Body, Conversion… Obviously, someone concluded from this preference that my philosophy was disguised christianity. The book on Saint Paul, which I published in 1997 at PUF, didn’t help the matter. All considered, I would rather be a revolutionary atheist hidden behind a religious vernacular than an occidental “democrat” persecuting muslims disguised as a secular feminist.”

You almost want to high-five your buddy and chest bump your pal shouting “Snap! Them mo-fo’s got pwned!,” don’t you?

Let us begin at home. At their main annual convention this summer, leader of Danish People’s Party Pia Kjærsgaard said something like the following: “So while the potential maximum penalty for a crime has maybe doubled, the actually passed sentences have only augmented slightly. We will not stand for this. The judges are not the rulers of this country!” As well as crying out for mandatory minimums, this angry minx is decreeing the power of “We” over the power of the judges. “We the people” may be sovereign in American law but even the Americans try to uphold the seperation of powers as described by Montesquieu. Kjærsgaard is actually calling for direct popular control of the judiciary branch. “We the people shall not accept delicate judicial treatment of those who dare defy our laws.”

Next, and slightly more seriously, we have the Danish minister of justice. Commenting on a new law that allows the police to hold potential unruly demonstrators for up to twelve hours without showing cause, Brian Mikkelsen said: “We must help those who help us. Thus, we will not stand for people who obstruct the work of the police.” When did “We must help those who help us” become a legitimate juridical argument? The man is not the greatest orator of our time and this does make him quite unable to hide is feeble intellectual powers, but under no circumstances is this sort of outburst to come from a minister of justice! “We the people shall not accept those who dare defy our controlling grasp.”

The final example from within the walls of delightful Denmark is kindly delivered by the chief coordinating officers of the Copenhagen police force. The New York Times quoted him for the following on the subject of the handling of COP15: “Mr. Larsen said that his officers would have low tolerance for behavior that deviates from “Danish society as we prefer it to be.”” Again the statement goes “We the people shall not accept the actions of those who dare defy our glorious society and they shall ne’er prevail against us.”

In all three cases, there is an indistinct “We the people” proclaiming the illegitimacy of certain unwanted elements. And it should be noted, that in the first case, the illegitimacy actually includes the nation’s judges. Their sentences are illegitimate because they do not correspond with the wishes of the people that unruly scoundrels be severely punished.

This is why “We the people” is a rather stupid and potentially very dangerous formula and why the sovereignty of “the people” is not really desirable. “We the people” is an empty vessel that may easily be filled poison. The above examples pretend to take it for granted that “We the people” all agree who “We the people” are and are not. In France they are currently having a debate to have the national identity carved in stone. It was launched by the Minister of Immigration and (wait for it!) National Identity!

A thing about this French debate about their national identity is that the Minister, Eric Besson, gave quite strict guidelines at the very outset. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité are cornerstones he dictates. But more specifically, wearing a Burkha is against French national identity. This, apparently, is not open for debate. The point of the debate seems to narrowly define the vague “We the people” in order to use it as a means to exclude unwanted elements like the Burkha. With a narrow definition in hand it gets quite easy to put Sarkozy’s famous statement to good use: “France, love her or leave her.”

In conclusion, ladies and jellybeans, skipping the obvious problems in the American use of the word “patriot,” there should be quick mention of two alternative uses of the concept of “democracy” and “people.” First up is French philosopher Jacques Rancière who defines democracy as the equality of whomever with whomever, the absence of arkhé, i.e., the absence of any “true” order. His concept of people, démos, is the collection of those not counted as part of the community. Politics, in his conception, is not the guarding of imaginary identities, but rather the challenge of existing order.

Another viewpoint is that of Jean-Luc Nancy. In The Truth of Democracy, he states the following (my translation): “The democratic kratein, the power of the people, is first the power to defeat the archie and then, everyone together, to take care of the infinite opening, which is thus brought to light. Taking care of this opening enables the finite inscription of the infinite.”

These are not complicated matters. The current political misuse of “We the people” should be obvious for all to see. However, the contemporary global project of making a work (faire œuvre) of our societies continues unabated. Only therefor are the above banalities worthy of mention.

“La substitution n’est pas simplement le remplacement d’un unique remplaçable : la substitution remplace l’irremplaçable. Qu’il y ait tout de suite, dès le premier matin du dire ou le premier surgissement de l’événement, itérabilité et retour dans l’unicité absolue, dans la singularité absolue, cela fait que la venue de l’arrivant – ou la venue de l’événement inaugural – ne peut être accuillie que comme retour, revenance, revenance spectracle.”

This one is from a mainly improvised lecture given at le Centre Canadien d’Architecture on the first of april 1997.

“L’hégémonie organise toujours la répression et donc la confirmation d’une hantise. La hantise appartient à la structure de toute hégémonie.”

And this well phrased banality is from Spectres de Marx which is largely based on lectures given on the 22nd and the 23rd of april 1993. As always titles and pages are served with the quotes in Fragmentum.

At the moment we are without comment or justification for their presence in the Fragmentum Hall of Fame, but we hope to use them in some theoretical waffle later on. In the mean time: Enjoy!

When the ethopoetic relation to textual fragments becomes constitutive of the I by which you meet your reader, your fellow, your brother, with whom you then establish a doxopoetic relation, there is trouble. The fragments are presented as a totality by the name of I. “I” is the incorporation of the different fragments who bear the rather technical name, hypomnemata, meaning memory aid or substantification of memory. But is this totality possible? Is the incorporation of hypomnemata possible without an irreducible difference or maybe even “Différance” between the fragments and their meaning?

It is probably time to whip up an example. L’Oréal once used the slogan “Because I’m worth it”. This slogan became “Because you’re worth it” and then simply “You’re worth it”. All slogans were and are pronounced by various heroes of popular culture – models, actors and even a race car driver. I say! It’s so elegant, so intelligent!

The first slogan, of course, indicated that this distinguished representative of the entertainment industry is a delighted user of the given product. The idea probably was, that the viewer of this distasteful spectacle should cry out “I want that, too!” because the viewer wants to be just as cool, rich and recognized as the celeb. It is worth noting that the celebrity is worth it, i.e. is living up to the standard of the product and not the other way around.

The second and third slogans, who are basically identical, intimate that the viewer is now the one who is worth it. And since the slogans still come from our distinguished representative of the electric tin can soup that is modern media, the viewer is supposed to take the bate and exclaim, “Indeed I am!” Again the viewer accepts to live up the divine glory of the soapy satisfaction brought to you by L’Oréal.

And this, finally, is somewhere near to what we were getting at! Accepting the message of the advertisement, thereby affirming what we with Althusser might call “interpellation”, and responding as intended, “I want that, too!” or “Indeed I am!”, the viewer tries to incorporate the magic of L’Oréal in his or her hypomnemotic totality. But as long as the viewer turned consumer incorporates the proposed hypomnemata via this interpellation the incorporation is impossible. If the incorporation is a result of the interpellation, the I will only exist as long as the I demonstrates its incorporation.

We should quickly remark that according to French linguist Benveniste the subject, “I”, only exists as long as the I is pronounced. We should probably have mentioned this earlier but the combination of bloggery waffle and subtle theory is not alway straight forward. So, the subject, I, depends on the pronunciation of “I”. And what the advertisement slogan is basically suggesting is, that you constitute your “I” by the pronunciation of “I am worth it!”, i.e. “I” am only as the incorporation and continuous pronunciation of L’Oréal.

We shall, of course, get back to what this pronunciation of L’Oréal actually entails. But first, yet another “To be continued”…

This ethopoetic incorporation is the writing of a corpus, the body with which you meet your peers, so that they can see your spiritual genealogy. Since this demonstration of the construction of the self by fragments is forcibly a negotiation of what is right or wrong, good or bad, and thus constitutive of a doxa (the community of values), we propose to call this relation of the ethical incorporation to the others a doxopoetic relation.

And now we get to the problem of saying I. The doxopoetic relation is a way of showing yourself as a textual corpus, and as Levinas was kind enough to remind os, to show yourself in a meaningful way is to speak. Let’s return to housekeeping for a moment. The ordering of the self as a well-kept abode is to a wide extent a doxopoetic relation. Of course, you yourself can appreciate nice furniture, a clean floor, art on the walls and a good espresso machine but when this becomes constitutive of who you are, the fragments that make up your public face or body, there is trouble. When the well kept abode of the self, whether an actual abode or an actual self, is no longer a function of your way of life, your life form, your personal praxis, but a means to the end of saying I, so that the others will see your “I” and raise you one more, then the I will condemn itself to an eternal existence as not-I.

We’ll get there eventually, don’t you worry. To be continued…

As is widely known, the greek word for housekeeping is oikonomos. In the wild currents of time this word swirled and bobbed until it multiplied and transformed into the English word economy, the French économie, the German Ökonomie, the Danish økonomi and many others (Greek words are strumpets and have bastard children everywhere). As such, a housekeeping crisis might be waitin’ ’round the bend, my Huckleberry friend, if the financial rugrats do not get their house in order in the near future.

As implied by the historical and geographical transformation of the term oikonomos, there are many different forms of economy. One among them is, as suggested above, related to money and their less than evenhanded distribution between what we might call agents. These could be nations, companies, the man on the street, the person writing this, or even actual secret agents with surprising gadgetry and a license to kill. A very different and in many ways more interesting type of economy is what a long dead Austrian psychoanalyst dubbed libidinal economy. Libido is the instinct energy or force, contained in what Freud called the id, the largely unconscious structure of the psyche. Sometimes libido is perceived as mere sexual energy but we’ll try not to mount that old hobby horse or, indeed, to mount anything or anyone – at least for the duration of this post.

Libidinal economy is thus the restrictions on pure libidinal flow imposed by the super ego. Restricted libido can be good and bad, the good one being sublimation, i.e. the productive usage of libidinal energy or the channeling thereof towards productive instead of destructive outlets. This type of economy, of course, is the housekeeping of the ego. Bear with us, we are within smelling distance of something like a point…

To be continued…

(Via Le Monde.fr : A la une.)

Slavoj Zizek – Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses – Part II: ““

Slavoj Zizek – Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses – Part III: ““

Slavoj Zizek – Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses – Part IV: ““

Slavoj Zizek – Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses – Part V: ““

Slavoj Zizek – Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses – Part VI: ““

Slavoj Zizek – Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses – Part VII: ““

Slavoj Zizek – Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses – Part VIII: ““

(Via lacan.com blog.)