|
August 28, 2005
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.
The dissertation says that within the context of Continental theory, there were two avenues available for pursuing this projectof transgression: a Nietzschean philosophical critique of Hegel and a Marxist political critique. These two avenues available for an anti-Hegelian project offer a way of looking at the works of Gilles Deleuze and Antonio Negri.
The text says that:
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.
This accords with my reading here.
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.
The language of Hegel is used to transgress the Hegelian dialectical tradition.
|
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