It seems to me the postmodern (post-Cartesian) “decentered subject” is fundamentally lacking something. In a first move, postmodernists negated the subject’s identity as a fully operative, single unit, and exposed (in the same way Marx and Lacan pointed out how the universal can only exist by some un-perceived exception) the subject’s lack of “centeredness,” of unity, but they forgot the second negation. I am, of course, referring here to Hegel’s “Negation of Negation.” Just as when oppressed classes, say, women, fantasize about annihilating the oppressive Other, the entire class of men , they have only done the first negation: the problem is not that they are too radical, but rather that they are not radical enough. What happens in this situation is that women lose their status as such, and since the Other is annihilated, it is now upon them to fundamentally change their constitutive elements (this is, of course, a first negation). So, as one might suspect, I see the decentered subject as simply not radical enough, it is only a first move in the dialectical struggle.
Woah, woah, woah, back up. Not all women are oppressed, nor are women a ‘class’ (indeed to call them such is oppressive because it labels them as all being the same or part of the same).
Or they are just simple-minded ‘rebels’ who see opposition to oppression (rather than deconstruction of oppositions to undermine the oppression) as their sole tactic.
Well, short of giving you a postgrad dissertation on the issue I’ll point(sic) you in the direction of the following thread: ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=148251
Here, I quote Derrida saying
You can see, I’m sure, the association between the negation of the negation in Hegel and the two-gestures-simultaneously of deconstruction.
As a general, provisional answer to your query, I’d recommend seeing the whole PM project of decentreing the self as a deconstructing of the binary opposition of self(hood) and other(hood). Lacan says, I believe, ‘I think therefore I am, except when I am thinking this, when I am not’. This is his answer (implicitly) to the Wittgensteinian paradox of ‘I am the limit of the world, but I cannot draw a line around myself, for to do that I’d have to step outside myself, which I cannot do.’ The opposition between self and other is deconstructed the moment that one consider the self as other, when one utters ‘I’ and therefore delineates a self that is somehow other to the speaker.
Derrida would leap in at this point and point out that language always attempts to signify something that is not present, or not entirely present, in any case. Therefore when we talk of ‘the self’ or ‘myself’ or just plain ‘I’, we are trying to denote something that is not obvious purely by its presence, we are treating the self as other but in doing so cast doubts over the ‘intended’ meaning of ‘I’, referring to oneself. If one is absent, or not fully present, then who the hell is doing the thinking and speaking?
I actually feel that this is one of the few ‘successful’ philosophical projects of poststructuralism/postmodernism. No European phenomenologist uses ‘I’ anywhere near as comfortably and naively as they did 50 years ago. This is a great enquiry to be involved in, so I hope that you keep it going (here or elsewhere).
I was unaware that not all women had vaginas…hmm…Anyway, don’t get bogged down in an example; indeed, this seems to predicate your entire response afterwards. Had I said, “slaves in the pre-Civil War times” I’m sure you would have leapt to the same argument. However, I have already taken this into account: “the universal can only exist by some un-perceived exception”.
I didn’t mean to label them as anything. I simply pointed out that their fantasy was not radical enough.
They do not automatically coincide. In order for them to do so, you must already deconstruct Hegel. In short, deconstruction is related to everything after it does its song and dance, so I see this as a kind of moot point.
Agreed.
These are actually ideas of Lacan and Derrida, who stole them from Kojeve, who stole them from Hegel, which I ultimately see as only the first step in the dialectical struggle.
Well thank you for the encouragement, and I look forward to your response. =]
Do you dispute the claim that language must always already be deconstructed in order to make any sense at all? This is Derrida’s contention in Signature, Event, Context and in most of Judith Butler’s reading of that same work. This is a key point of contention, if you accept this, then I believe that you must accept that Hegel is already deconstructed, whether he likes it or not.
Agreed.
These are actually ideas of Lacan and Derrida, who stole them from Kojeve, who stole them from Hegel, which I ultimately see as only the first step in the dialectical struggle.
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Maybe you’re right, but how might one go about describing the next step before it happens? Or, as it happens? It may well be happening now, but we may not know it yet because of our convaluted associations with the first step. This is, of course, the very question that surrounds the whole of postmodernism, both the good and the bad.
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking me to demonstrate here, if you have any specific questions or counterarguments that I’ve missed or not understood then please lay them out again.
Classes come of various types. Before one generalizes to all types, it is good to first know which type one is starting with.
To say that vagina is the salient characteristic of women is putting the class on a physical or substantive basis. This physical characteristic does not make women oppressed. In fact, biologically it has been argued that women are mankind, since with asexual division they can continue the species even if there were no men around at all. In this argument men are superfluous drones. Negating men is of no consequence, except for the reduced variability of the all-female offspring. What exactly could you negate next on a physical basis?
Or pehaps you really mean a formal class. A set theoretic logical construct of ‘women’ which together with its complementary class of ‘men’ makes up the entire universe of discourse. In this case, the first negation negates ‘men’, leaving one to either negate ‘women’ as well, or just to attempt to negate the ever-present null set.
Now if you are really only considering women as a social class ONLY, as a subdivision of society, as a caste, then one can potentially negate the inequality or even the class by edict or legislation. There will be no more men, all people over the age of 16 will be considered women. In this case, perhaps by double negation you mean the removal of some further subdivision such as the elimination of middle managers, or capitalists, or politicians, or something.
On the subject of “negation” and dialectic, there are two types of opposites. One is a matter of degree as light-dark, happy-sad, short-tall. The other is binary signifying existence-nonexistence.