This post picks up on this one and, more importantly, this one. It is concerned with the way the French 'poststructuralist' philosophers moved away from the French Hegelian tradition.
The post works off this text. This dissertation says that:
The roots of post-structuralism and its unifying basis lie in a general opposition not to the philosophical tradition tout court but specifically to the Hegelian tradition. For the generation of Continental thinkers that came to maturity in the 60s, Hegel was the figure of order and authority that served as the focus of antagonism ... Any account of Continental post-structuralism must take this framework of generalized Hegelianism as its point of departure.
In his early work, Deleuze pursues a philosophical critique of the dialectic principally through his interpretations of Bergson and Nietzsche. Negri's work complements this project on a political plane by reading Marx and Lenin to develop an adequate political critique of Hegelianism. In these works Deleuze and Negri do not engage Hegelianism in order to salvage its worthwhile elements; they do not propose their critiques as the extraction of "the rational kernel from the mystical shell." They strive instead toward a total critique and rejection of Hegelianism so as to attain a real autonomy, a theoretical separation from the entire Hegelian problematic.
The dissertation goes on to highlight a paradox that I've also noticed:
Since they (Deleuze and Negri)are so firmly embedded in their cultural contexts, this attempted deracination from the Hegelian terrain is not immediately successful. They not only pose their projects in terms of the typical Hegelian problems -- the determination of being, the unity of the One and theMultiple, the dialectical development of historical forces -- they also do so in the traditional language of Hegelianism. Paradoxically, Deleuze and Negri appear very Hegelian in their efforts to establish Hegel as a negative foundation for their thought.
Forgive me for jumping in without reading all of your linked reference posts, but based on this post alone, you seem to be underplaying (ignoring?) the denial of linguisitc fixedness from which leaps the critique of textuality and thus metanarratives and their disenfranching normative moralities.
I'll read further, and may retract my hasty criticism.
Cheers,
LJ
Posted by: L J on August 30, 2005 02:38 PMLJ,
You can jump in any time anywhere and go off at all angles and open up all sorts of conversations. Use the search button to dig around the archived material.
You write that I'm:
"underplaying (ignoring?) the denial of linguistic fixedness from which leaps the critique of textuality and thus metanarratives and their disenfranching normative moralities."
Why so? Well I was trying to figure why the hostility to the 'French Hegel',the way the French Hegel is read, what were the issues of contention, and what were the concerns.
This arises from earlier posts that were concerned with Bataille and Klossowski and their readings of Nietzsche' and Hegel kept coming through. The confrontation is made explicit in Deleuze.
Why so? Well I'm trying to understand how their reading is different from my reading of Hegel upon whom I cut my philosophical teeth.It was my way of becoming familar with French philosophy and trying to link it to my understandings.
If you like it is my way of educating myself as I read the Germans note the French when I was at Uni.