Persisting with the Negative. ppt
Persisting with the Negative
Persisting with the Negative
The Simple Version
1. No, doing the same
thing faster won’t make
it disappear any faster.
2. No. No. No. No.
Evan Calder Wiliams
Persisting with the Negative
The Simple Version II
‘The aim of this book is
simply stated: to rehabilitate
a thinking of negativity
through
an
immanent
critique of contemporary
Continental theory.’
‘It’s just the simple thing /
That’s hard, so hard to do’
Affirmationism
I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if
thou be but around me, thou pure, thou
luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—into
all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yeasaying.
So, beware of that insidious disease known as ‘negativitis’
(negative thinking). It is as pervasive as the common cold,
but far more damaging. It mutilates, cripples, and corrodes
the human spirit. Those infected by it are broken men and
women aimlessly plodding along. The dark clouds brooding
over them obscure their vision and cause them to become
confrontational, apathetic, and cynical. Their lives are like
flat champagne, without any sizzle.
Negativity
Down to the vernacular of
praising men who are
‘positive,’ and ultimately in
the homicidal phrase of
‘positive forces,’ a fetish is
made of the positive-initself. Against this, the
seriousness of unswerving
negation lies in its refusal to
lend itself to sanctioning
things as they are. (Adorno)
High Affirmationism
Low Affirmationism
But as the liberties and the
restrictions vary with times
and circumstances and
admit to infinite
modifications, they cannot
be settled upon any abstract
rule; and nothing is so
foolish as to discuss them
upon that principle.
Edmund Burke
Accelerationism
there is jouissance in it, the English
unemployed did not have to become
workers to survive, they – hang on tight and
spit on me – enjoyed the hysterical,
masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of
hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in
the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it,
enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic
body which was indeed imposed upon them,
they enjoyed the decomposition of their
personal identity, the identity that the
peasant tradition had constructed for them,
enjoyed the dissolutions of their families and
villages, and enjoyed the new monstrous
anonymity of the suburbs and the pubs in
morning and evening.
Real Abstraction
A commodity appears, at
first sight, a very trivial
thing, and easily
understood. Its analysis
shows that it is, in reality,
a very queer thing,
abounding in metaphysical
subtleties and theological
niceties.
• Marx
Traversing Stasis
Reading Kafka demands a
great effort of abstraction –
not of learning more (the
proper interpretive horizon of
understanding his work), but
of unlearning the standard
interpretive references, so
that we become able to open
up to the raw force of Kafka’s
writing.
Žižek
Persisting with the Negative
The Simple Version
1. No, doing the same
thing faster won’t make
it disappear any faster.
2. No. No. No. No.
Evan Calder Wiliams
Persisting with the Negative
The Simple Version II
‘The aim of this book is
simply stated: to rehabilitate
a thinking of negativity
through
an
immanent
critique of contemporary
Continental theory.’
‘It’s just the simple thing /
That’s hard, so hard to do’
Affirmationism
I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if
thou be but around me, thou pure, thou
luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—into
all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yeasaying.
So, beware of that insidious disease known as ‘negativitis’
(negative thinking). It is as pervasive as the common cold,
but far more damaging. It mutilates, cripples, and corrodes
the human spirit. Those infected by it are broken men and
women aimlessly plodding along. The dark clouds brooding
over them obscure their vision and cause them to become
confrontational, apathetic, and cynical. Their lives are like
flat champagne, without any sizzle.
Negativity
Down to the vernacular of
praising men who are
‘positive,’ and ultimately in
the homicidal phrase of
‘positive forces,’ a fetish is
made of the positive-initself. Against this, the
seriousness of unswerving
negation lies in its refusal to
lend itself to sanctioning
things as they are. (Adorno)
High Affirmationism
Low Affirmationism
But as the liberties and the
restrictions vary with times
and circumstances and
admit to infinite
modifications, they cannot
be settled upon any abstract
rule; and nothing is so
foolish as to discuss them
upon that principle.
Edmund Burke
Accelerationism
there is jouissance in it, the English
unemployed did not have to become
workers to survive, they – hang on tight and
spit on me – enjoyed the hysterical,
masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of
hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in
the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it,
enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic
body which was indeed imposed upon them,
they enjoyed the decomposition of their
personal identity, the identity that the
peasant tradition had constructed for them,
enjoyed the dissolutions of their families and
villages, and enjoyed the new monstrous
anonymity of the suburbs and the pubs in
morning and evening.
Real Abstraction
A commodity appears, at
first sight, a very trivial
thing, and easily
understood. Its analysis
shows that it is, in reality,
a very queer thing,
abounding in metaphysical
subtleties and theological
niceties.
• Marx
Traversing Stasis
Reading Kafka demands a
great effort of abstraction –
not of learning more (the
proper interpretive horizon of
understanding his work), but
of unlearning the standard
interpretive references, so
that we become able to open
up to the raw force of Kafka’s
writing.
Žižek