The economy of reciprocity requires, in Derrida's Circumfession, that he offers ingratitude to Bennington so that Bennington can take him as the Other that will offer no reciprocity. Ingratitude - as much as sanctity, or other forms of positive cybernetics - is part of the Maussian circle. Derrida, I think, is juggling to escape from that circle while realizing it eats everything up. Sanctity, to be sure, do exist in its own right - but has to enforce ingratitude (Levinas says this explicitly in "The Trace of the Other", p. 349). Derrida deconstructs (and trusts) this idea by asking how ingratitude is forged. The absolute Other is not alien to the economy of reciprocity because sanctity comes about in a background of reciprocity (gratitude, ingratitude, the law of hospitality, hostility). In my discussion with Ahanon and Janina today we talked about offspring - parenting is a handy example for Levinas struggle to establish the possibility of sanctity. Offspring are enforced places for sanctity, because they are constituted in a way that they don't have the powers to be grateful - and this is not about kids but about offspring. Levinas holds that the (metaphysical) desire for the Other is the ground of our sociability, but the Maussian circle is defined as total social fact.
It is perhaps just wishful thinking that the alt-right seemingly innovative and intrepid ideas will disappear from the scene as Trump's reign comes to an end. They have their own dynamics, but certainly the experiences of the last years, including those in the pandemics, do help to wear off their bright and attractiveness. Neocameralism, what Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land with him ushered in as a model of post-democracy that relinquish important ingredients of the human security system, is one of these projects that is proving to be too grounded in the past to have any capacity to foretell anything bright beyond the democratic rusting institutions. It is little more than necropolitics - which is itself a current post-democratic alternative. Achile Mbembe finds necropolitics in the regimes were warlords take over the state-like institutions (or mimick them) to rule on the grounds of local security having no troubles killing or letting die whoever is in their path. Neocameralism pos...
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