Skip to main content

The day-after of negativity

Been reading the very exciting Society of Tiredness of Byung Chul-Han. He diagnoses that the immunological time has been replaced by a neuronal time - a time of otherness and negativity was replaced by a time of excessive positivity, with open potentialities with scarce limitations. The contrast between the two eras - that of a disciplinary society and that of a society of achievement (or of performance) - is expressed in the prototypical diseases of the two times: in a society of discipline, borders are to be preserved - as is otherness, negativity, duties - and people go down with immunological diseases, infections of all sorts while in a society of achievement, borders spell defeat - people are rather guided by potentiality than duty, by what they can do than by what they should do - and illnesses are depression, deficit of attention, burn-out syndrome. A society of achievement - in a name that he considers fitter than Deleuze's "society of control" which is still too full of negativity - is more convenient for late capitalist production than a society of discipline (but it is not clear whether it can be expanded for the whole of the world working class or if it is a model limited to the expanded cognitariat). The abolition of negativity generates the excesses that cannot be digested - what is refused is the excessive quantity and no longer the insufficiency in quality. As a consequence, people are worn out to the point of becoming over-worked zombies, and all their faculties are all overused.

The alternative to negativity then is hangover. Without negativity there is no will limiting one's capacities. Attention is not guided by anything other than what calls it. Han holds that distributed attention is what wild animals have to have as they often hunt, look for shelter and escape from danger at all times. Concentration - vita contemplativa - is what gives rise to a world of one's own; selective attention that provides a matrix of differences and indifferences. A post-immunological, flat life, invites another ethics, not of alterity, but of refusal. Maybe these are times where there is nothing but what can be done. There is a sense in which we see that whenever there is no will, what can be done seems strikingly little.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev...
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Me...
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I ...
Post a Comment
Read more