Re: new immanence - Chirac cheats!

Dear Yurek,

I have a lot of problems with the term post-modern. I also have a lot of 
problems with Empire, and I don't think I'm the only one.  I personally 
identfy myself with what a lot of people, undoubtely because of intellectual 
lazyness, have decided to brand as Postmodernism - I just disagree very much 
with the term.  Three simple questions: is Foucault a 'postmodern'? Is 
Deleuze? Is Negri?  You did not bring forward some 'post modern' concpets, as 
far as I understand, because Empire is not a post modern book, nor is Negri a 
post modern intellectual.  Yet, I'm not sure, because I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT 
YOU MEAN BY THE TERM POSTMODERN.  That litlle word, just like 'globalization', 
is absolutely vacous and means nothing at all. It should be scrapped. My point 
is not that continuity is preserved, Yurek, because there is no difference 
between continuity and discontinuity: all belongs to the 'flux' of history 
(sorry, I have been reading Bergson recently).  I disagree with your views 
about Negri trying to get immanent - no doubt, that is what he intends to do, 
but the empity and vacous notion of 'Empire' has nothing immanent in it.  I 
also believe Negri has misread Spinoza, by the way.  I just don't get you bits 
on Anglo-American thinking being immanent, can you give an example (other than 
rock and roll?).  I'm not brushing postmodernity away, i just want you to come 
up with a meaningful definition of the term.  According to Luhmann, for 
example, the difference between modernity and postmodernity is the difference 
to be found between first and second order observations.  For Foucault, 
modernity is the Birth of Man, post-modernity its Death (which, according to 
him, had not happened yet - and he was furious when a journalist said he was 
'postmodern').  For many others, Modernity is associated with the raise (and 
eslavement of) Reason.  Horkheimer sees modernity (Reason, the Enlightenment) 
as a failed project, embedded in the dialectics of enlightenment.  Probably 
economists will associate Modernity with the Industrial Revolution.  What does 
it mean for you?  I also don't get this bit on trascendence and immanence 
clashing and stuff, and how we need to put them together or something.  I 
confess I might not be a good reader.  Your points:

>I think divergence statistics do matter. You may brush it away now but you
>have no way of knowing until what they show is confirmed or disconfirmed.

I don't think so.  Governments don't do what their citizens want them to do.  
If that had been the case, no European State would have bombed Yugoslavia.

>I think it is. NATO itself has admitted that it has gone through the biggest
>crisis in its history. Things are made worse by the fact that NATO was quite
>disoriented as to its present day mission even before the split on Iraq.

Don't worry, they'll cope just fine, you'll see.  Even Russia might join in!!!

>UN is also going through a deep crisis of identity. This loomed large during
>the last SC dabate and you will admit that emotions were quite Sheakspearean

A crisis that has been going on for over half a century...the crisis was much 
worse when the Council was paralized by constant vetoing from the USSR.  The 
UN survived.  Don't you worry about them either, they will do just fine, too.  
Besides, thay are pretty irrelevant

>I touched on this one above. You read Empire TREE times. So you see
>something in it after all.

Not much, I'm afraid.

>I shall not try to catch you on a logical fallacy that institutions were
>challenged when they did not even exist.

Good.  I did not specify any dates in which they were challenged.

Instead I shall say that Anglo
>American case law is not fully applicable to the functioning of
>international institutions such as UN.

What? No national law is applicabale to the UN, as the UN is not a Sovereign 
body.

Some of the bits here seem do be
>rather cynical.

Good, that was the intention.  I have been reading some books on Greek cynics, 
and I like them very much.

>Preventive action against a sovereign state on a dubiously constructed case
>in full light of publicity is something extraordinary. Material breach was
>not confirmed by inspectors as was their job to do.

It is not, I thought my mentioning of the cases of Panama, Granada and 
Nicaragua would have closed the matter.

Regards,

>Dear Damian,
>
>I have written now and before that I do not see what is called post
>modernity as a rupture with the recent past branded modernity. I said also
>that a post modern approach has certain analytical values since the nature
>of analysis is to split, disengage, vivisect. I brought forward certain post
>modern concepts to highlight certain events which appear new. What you did
>was basically radicalise the bit in my text about the dubious validity of
>speaking about discontinuity. You have put forward your own (quite radical)
>version of how continuity was basically preserved.
>You may also recall that I spoke about post modern thinking as a typically
>continental European affair. "Empire" in this sense is pretty much a
>continental European intellectual history - in content as well as style.
>Another point which I see in Hardt and Negri is a project aimed at getting
>out of "transcendence" and getting "immanent".
>Now Brittish and American thinking is devoid of such problematique.
>Anglo-American democracy is immanence, case law is immanence, rock'n'roll is
>immanence. Now that the world has grown small and become one this clash of
>immanence and transcendence (both relative) has become unevoidable. But also
>each one compensates for the other. Immanence runs the risk of being
>unreflective while transcendence risks being over ponderous. To put it all
>to the extreme one may act on the principle: ready, shoot, aim, while the
>other: ready, aim, aim, aim. The problem is to reconcile the two.
>If we brush away the concept of post modernity as inadequate, then the
>concept of modernity will not make much sense either. Modernity as a concept
>has crystallised when conditions became ripe for post modernity.
>Let's see some of your points:
>
>"Mass public divergence with official decision making is new (see the
>statistics)"
>
>I'm not sure this divergence matters. For instance, statistics showed that
>the French were massively against nuclear tests in Mururoa - so what? They
>got
>done anyway. Sometimes divergence can get big enough, and contribute to stop
>a war (see Vietnam). Precisely, the great lesson of politics since then, is
>that the US have been into the business of trying to control they own people
>
>and not planet earth, as some accounts of events put it. Anyway, I'm not
>even
>sure anti-war protests contributed that much to stop the war in Viet-Nam.
>They were loosing, right? It might have happened anyway. Besides, the
>present 'anti-war' movement does not even compare to that case of incredible
>mass mobilisation.
>
>I think divergence statistics do matter. You may brush it away now but you
>have no way of knowing until what they show is confirmed or disconfirmed.
>
>
>"Rough split in NATO is new"
>
>No, it is not. The French got half out of it, got half back into it, messed
>it
>all up: end result: French planes bombing Belgrade under Nato commands.
>
>I think it is. NATO itself has admitted that it has gone through the biggest
>crisis in its history. Things are made worse by the fact that NATO was quite
>disoriented as to its present day mission even before the split on Iraq.
>
>
>"Negri's concept of "multitude" might be handy"
>
>I have to confess that I read Empire three times and I'm not quite sure what
>to make out of it. It seems a weird attempt at mixing up some Gramsci with
>some Foucault using (rather arbitrarily) the Spinozean concept of immanence.
>Anyway, and immanent approach to multitude...what would that look like? Like
>a Deleuzian 'virtual multiplicity'? A rhizomic, emergent, self organizing
>life? The last thing we can say about recent marches is that they are
>spontaneous. World public opinion has been saturated with stories about the
>Irak crisis for months now, for heaven's sake.
>
>I touched on this one above. You read Empire TREE times. So you see
>something in it after all.
>
>
>"Intense stand-off in the Security Council is new"
>
>Is it? As far as I know, nobody has threatened the veto yet - China and
>Russia would probably abstain. Have you ever wondered why the US have
>decided
>to go through the UN this time? Why not ignoring it, as with Kosovo and
>Afghanistan (and missile attacks on Sudan's factories of 'chemical
>weapons'...). Are they not just using it precisely to drum up world public
>opinion? Do you doubt that, now that the historical precednts have been
>created, the US would hesitate into going straight into Irak without UN
>consultations, if that was really what they wanted to do?
>
>UN is also going through a deep crisis of identity. This loomed large during
>the last SC dabate and you will admit that emotions were quite Sheakspearean
>
>
>
>"But note, international law and the legitimacy of international
>institutions
>are being challenged"
>
>Precisely. Just like in the good old days at the peak of (modern) European
>Imperialism, when these norms did not even exist. The whole international
>law
>business has always been a bluff. Even when it was meant to be accepted by
>all, the US used it as toilet paper while it took action in Guatemala,
>Honduras, Panama, Granada...in the name of what? In the name of Higher
>Absolute values: the fight against Communism, Freedom, Democracy. etc. Well,
>it marks a difference from previous absolute transcendentals: the Nation,
>the
>King, God, the Race...but not much really. The problem with the Law is that,
>while formulated upon absolute principles, it has to be applied in the realm
>of immanence: thus the idea that the everyone is equal before the Law.
>Positive international law has never existed. Modernity IS, as Michel
>Foucault
>describes it, the absolute triumph of a trascendental mode of thinking,
>embedded, according to him, in an emerging vision of totalising History
>(thus,
>in The Order of Things, Modernity is described as the Age of History...look
>around, everybody here, whether Bush or others, claim to be fighting an
>'historic' battle, and justify their actions through plenty of trascendental
>notions...pure Modernity)
>
>I shall not try to catch you on a logical fallacy that institutions were
>challenged when they did not even exist. Instead I shall say that Anglo
>American case law is not fully applicable to the functioning of
>international institutions such as UN. Some of the bits here seem do be
>rather cynical.
>
>"For the first time legitimacy is being given to a "preventive" war -
>does it not remind you of a futuristic Hollywood movie with Tom Cruz where
>the police arrested the criminals before they committed crimes (note also
>the morale from that movie" "The prospect of war is entertained on the
>grounds
>of a "just war"
>
>For the first time since when??? Since the raise of Modernity, there have
>been plenty of preventive wars. The notion of preventive war is absolutely
>not a 'post-modern' concept. Besides, if I remember the movie
>correctely...the plan gets abandoned in the end, does it not? The message of
>the movie is precisely that it is impossible to stop a crime before it
>happens. All sides in WW1 and 2, in fact, in all modern and pre modern wars
>were claiming to be fighting a just war. Note that the movie thus stresses
>how important it is to catch criminals fairly (that is, after they have
>commited the crime). The Yanks are not talking any longer about a preventive
>war - Saddam is said to be in 'Material Breach'...
>
>Preventive action against a sovereign state on a dubiously constructed case
>in full light of publicity is something extraordinary. Material breach was
>not confirmed by inspectors as was their job to do.
>
>
>Yurek Gierus
>
>--------------Boundary-00=_MYII12S0000000000000
>Content-Type: Text/HTML;
>  charset="windows-1250"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
><HTML><HEAD>
><META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1250">
><META content="IncrediMail 1.0" name=GENERATOR>
><!--IncrdiXMLRemarkStart>
><IncrdiX-Info>
><X-FID>FLAVOR00-NONE-0000-0000-000000000000</X-FID>
><X-FVER></X-FVER>
><X-CNT>;</X-CNT>
></IncrdiX-Info>
><IncrdiXMLRemarkEnd-->
></HEAD>
><BODY style="BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0px 0px; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; MARGIN: 5px 10px 
10px; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bgColor=#ffffff background="" scroll=yes ORGYPOS="0" 
X-FVER="3.0">
><TABLE id=INCREDIMAINTABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0>
><TBODY>
><TR>
><TD id=INCREDITEXTREGION style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; CURSOR: auto; FONT-FAMILY: 
Arial" width="100%">
><DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT><BR>Dear Damian,</DIV>
><DIV> </DIV>
><DIV>I have written now and before that I do not see what is called post 
modernity as a rupture with the recent past branded modernity. I said also 
that a post modern approach has certain analytical values since the nature of 
analysis is to split, disengage, vivisect. I brought forward certa
>in post modern concepts to highlight certain events which appear new. What 
you did was basically radicalise the bit in my text about the dubious validity 
of speaking about discontinuity. You have put forward your own (quite radical) 
version of how continuity was basically preserved.</DIV>
><DIV>You may also recall that I spoke about post modern thinking as a 
typically continental European affair. "Empire" in this sense is pretty much a 
continental European intellectual history - in content as well as style. 
Another point which I see in Hardt and Negri is a project aimed at get
>ting out of "transcendence" and getting "immanent".</DIV>
><DIV>Now Brittish and American thinking is devoid of such problematique. 
Anglo-American democracy is immanence, case law is immanence, rock'n'roll is 
immanence. Now that the world has grown small and become one this clash of 
immanence and transcendence (both relative) has become unevoid
>able. But also each one compensates for the other. Immanence runs the risk of 
being unreflective while transcendence risks being over ponderous. To put it 
all to the extreme one may act on the principle: ready, shoot, aim, while the 
other: ready, aim, aim, aim. The problem is to reconcile th
>e two. </DIV>
><DIV>If we brush away the concept of post modernity as inadequate, then the 
concept of modernity will not make much sense either. Modernity as a concept 
has crystallised when conditions became ripe for post modernity.</DIV>
><DIV>Let's see some of your points:</DIV><FONT color=#000000>
><DIV><BR></FONT><FONT color=#ff0000>"Mass public divergence with official 
decision making is new (see the<BR>statistics)"<BR><BR>I'm not sure this 
divergence matters. For instance, statistics showed that<BR>the French were 
massively against nuclear tests in Mururoa - so what? They got<BR>d
>one anyway. Sometimes divergence can get big enough, and contribute to 
stop<BR>a war (see Vietnam). Precisely, the great lesson of politics since 
then, is<BR>that the US have been into the business of trying to control they 
own people,<BR>and not planet earth, as some accounts of events put
>it. Anyway, I'm not even<BR>sure anti-war protests contributed that much to 
stop the war in Viet-Nam.<BR>They were loosing, right? It might have happened 
anyway. Besides, the<BR>present 'anti-war' movement does not even compare to 
that case of incredible<BR>mass mobilisation.</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000><FONT color=#000000>I think divergence statistics do 
matter. You may brush it away now but you have no way of knowing until what 
they show is confirmed or disconfirmed.</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><BR><BR></FONT><FONT color=#ff0000>"Rough split in NATO is 
new"<BR><BR>No, it is not. The French got half out of it, got half back into 
it, messed it<BR>all up: end result: French planes bombing Belgrade under Nato 
commands.</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000><FONT color=#000000>I think it is. NATO itself has 
admitted that it has gone through the biggest crisis in its history. Things 
are made worse by the fact that NATO was quite disoriented as to its present 
day mission even before the split on Iraq.</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><BR></FONT><BR>"<FONT color=#ff0000>Negri's concept of "multitude" might 
be handy"<BR><BR>I have to confess that I read Empire three times and I'm not 
quite sure what<BR>to make out of it. It seems a weird attempt at mixing up 
some Gramsci with<BR>some Foucault using (rather arbitrari
>ly) the Spinozean concept of immanence.<BR>Anyway, and immanent approach to 
multitude...what would that look like? Like<BR>a Deleuzian 'virtual 
multiplicity'? A rhizomic, emergent, self organizing<BR>life? The last thing 
we can say about recent marches is that they are<BR>spontaneous. World
>public opinion has been saturated with stories about the<BR>Irak crisis for 
months now, for heaven's sake.</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000><FONT color=#000000>I touched on this one above. You 
read Empire TREE times. So you see something in it after all.</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><BR></FONT><BR><FONT color=#ff0000>"Intense stand-off in the Security 
Council is new"<BR><BR>Is it? As far as I know, nobody has threatened the veto 
yet - China and<BR>Russia would probably abstain. Have you ever wondered why 
the US have decided<BR>to go through the UN this time? Why
>not ignoring it, as with Kosovo and<BR>Afghanistan (and missile attacks on 
Sudan's factories of 'chemical<BR>weapons'...). Are they not just using it 
precisely to drum up world public<BR>opinion? Do you doubt that, now that the 
historical precednts have been<BR>created, the US would hesitate
> into going straight into Irak without UN<BR>consultations, if that was 
really what they wanted to do?</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000><FONT color=#000000>UN is also going through a deep 
crisis of identity. This loomed large during the last SC dabate and you will 
admit that emotions were quite Sheakspearean.</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><BR></FONT><BR><FONT color=#ff0000>"But note, international law and the 
legitimacy of international institutions<BR>are being 
challenged"<BR><BR>Precisely. Just like in the good old days at the peak of 
(modern) European<BR>Imperialism, when these norms did not even exist. The 
whole in
>ternational law<BR>business has always been a bluff. Even when it was meant 
to be accepted by<BR>all, the US used it as toilet paper while it took action 
in Guatemala,<BR>Honduras, Panama, Granada...in the name of what? In the name 
of Higher<BR>Absolute values: the fight against Communism, F
>reedom, Democracy. etc. Well,<BR>it marks a difference from previous absolute 
transcendentals: the Nation, the<BR>King, God, the Race...but not much really. 
The problem with the Law is that,<BR>while formulated upon absolute 
principles, it has to be applied in the realm<BR>of immanence: thus
> the idea that the everyone is equal before the Law.<BR>Positive 
international law has never existed. Modernity IS, as Michel 
Foucault<BR>describes it, the absolute triumph of a trascendental mode of 
thinking,<BR>embedded, according to him, in an emerging vision of totalising 
History (thus,<
>BR>in The Order of Things, Modernity is described as the Age of 
History...look<BR>around, everybody here, whether Bush or others, claim to be 
fighting an<BR>'historic' battle, and justify their actions through plenty of 
trascendental<BR>notions...pure Modernity</FONT>)</DIV>
><DIV> </DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#000000>I shall not try to catch you on a logical fallacy 
that institutions were challenged when they did not even exist. Instead I 
shall say that Anglo American case law is not fully applicable to the 
functioning of international institutions such as UN. Some of the bits
>here seem do be rather cynical.</FONT><BR><BR><FONT color=#ff0000>"For the 
first time legitimacy is being given to a "preventive" war -<BR>does it not 
remind you of a futuristic Hollywood movie with Tom Cruz where<BR>the police 
arrested the criminals before they committed crimes (note also
><BR>the morale from that movie" "The prospect of war is entertained on the 
grounds<BR>of a "just war"<BR><BR>For the first time since when??? Since the 
raise of Modernity, there have<BR>been plenty of preventive wars. The notion 
of preventive war is absolutely<BR>not a 'post-modern' concept.
> Besides, if I remember the movie<BR>correctely...the plan gets abandoned in 
the end, does it not? The message of<BR>the movie is precisely that it is 
impossible to stop a crime before it<BR>happens. All sides in WW1 and 2, in 
fact, in all modern and pre modern wars<BR>were claiming to be fi
>ghting a just war. Note that the movie thus stresses<BR>how important it is 
to catch criminals fairly (that is, after they have<BR>commited the crime). 
The Yanks are not talking any longer about a preventive<BR>war - Saddam is 
said to be in 'Material Breach'...</FONT></DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#000000>Preventive action against a sovereign state on a 
dubiously constructed case in full light of publicity is something 
extraordinary. Material breach was not confirmed by inspectors as was their 
job to do. </FONT><BR><BR><BR>Yurek Gierus</DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV></TD></TR>
><TR>
><TD id=INCREDIFOOTER width="100%">
><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%">
><TBODY>
><TR>
><TD width="100%"></TD>
><TD id=INCREDISOUND vAlign=bottom align=middle></TD>
><TD id=INCREDIANIM vAlign=bottom 
align=middle></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><SPAN 
id=IncrediStamp><SPAN dir=ltr><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" 
size=2>____________________________________________________<BR><FONT 
face="Comic Sans MS" size=2><
>A href="http://www.incredimail.com/redir.asp?ad_id=309&lang=9";><IMG alt="" 
hspace=0 src="cid:7AAC241B-4352-11D7-81B7-0002440C5009"; align=baseline 
border=0></A>  <I>IncrediMail</I> - <B>Email has finally evolved</B> - 
</FONT><A href="http://www.incredimail.com/redir
>.asp?ad_id=309&lang=9"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><B><U>Click 
Here</U></B></FONT></A></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></BODY></HTML>
>--------------Boundary-00=_MYII12S0000000000000--

Damian Popolo
PhD candidate
Newcastle University
Department of Politics
Room 301