New Directions in Philosophy and Marxism - A Conversation on the Thought of Kojin Karatani

Join us for a conversation meant to introduce the main ideas of the Marxist philosopher Kojin Karatani. Featuring Daniel Tutt and Gabriel Tupinambá.

[Moustachioedvigilant]

Hello I'm a casual listener who is also part of Matthew Flisfeder's reading group of They Know Not What They Do. I found myself thinking that Zizek's approach to the Hegelian notions of identity and universality from ch.1 furnishes a clear critique of Tupinamba's conception of Karatani's modes. Naively summarized: would Zizek perhaps say Mode D is the Hegelian self reference to the universal? I'll just quote one line from page 26 of They Know Not: "the multitude is totalized through the exceptional position of the One which embodies the moment of impossibility"(for instance: the moment between production and consumption).

Allow me to elaborate: Gabriel's explanation that the inclusion of the "negative" sides of the modes is inherently part of a stable social formation attributes to the object of the social formation a form of self-identity which Z calls "identity of identity and non-identity, " expressed by phrases such as "identity is not a dead, rigid identity-with-itself of an entity, excluding all change, but identity which preserves itself through the very dynamics of change, identity of the life process itself"(33). Zizek refers to this as Derridean deconstruction, which "incessantly varies the motif of how full identity-with-itself is impossible" while what remains elusive is "the Hegelian inversion of *identity qua impossible* into *identity itself as a name for a certain radical impossibility*"(37).

To repeat this point he then gives commentary on this passage from Hegel's Logic: "By way of reconciliation, the negative force recognizes in what it fights against its own force".

Zizek's commentary on this line: "By way of reconciliation, the "deconstruction" recognizes in identity that it endeavours to subvert via the hard-working symptomal reading "its own reference": the name for the impossibility that hinders the constitution of a full identity-with-itself"(Mode D)

Huge thanks to Tutt and Tupinamba for publishing these videos.

[brymtb]

Kant and Swedenborg...doesn't get any better than that 🥳🥳🥳😎