Quick response to Terence Blake’s “ZIZEK ON DELEUZES LETTER: against identitarianism“
[terenceblake] “so it is only fitting that Zizek misreads it, and Deleuze’s work generally, as avoiding any encounter with Hegel, who he (Zizek) claims represents “absolute Alterity”.
{AK}: What would “absolute alterity” mean?
The notion of otherness, inherently presupposes that of identity. Without an identity positioning, the ‘other to-‘ relation cannot obtain. So, strictly speaking, if “absolute alterity” is in any way identified, as severed from identity, it could no longer be ‘alterity’. Its absolute inflation exceeds the relation of its production.
As can be seen in the italicisation above, this absolute inflation is itself a product of a totalising identification.
Zizek’s phrasing, reflects the positivist assumptions of a simplifying, substantialist procedure, neglecting logical and implicative conditions. It has never been the case, that identity thinking, or differential thought, are in and of themselves essentially inadequate or deficient in any way. How can they be, given their essential complicity? But it is the case, that practices of positivist abbreviation and assumption, lead to the cul de sacs and fixations of habitually unthinking and inappropriate, substantial commitments. Such an entrainment of abridged assumptions; mechanically, lazily, illogically, and incompetently applied; results in insularity and positivist instrumentalisation. It is the inflation, not of identities or differences, but of fixations, however those fixations might be characterised, in what can only be called an imperialism of insularity.
The question might be asked, however, as to how the determination of ‘fixation’ is to be accomplished. For some, asking questions and honest consideration, are all that is necessary to discern theoretical blockage. For others, caught in the grip of fixation, more work is perhaps necessary. But the question itself, when in the modality of hasty demand, exemplifies fixation.
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[terenceblake] “All the uncertainty is left out.”
{AK}: Yes, and all the stupidity is left in! That, in a positivist nutshell (nut’s hell), is the exclusionary procedure of positivist instrumentalisation.