Rationality and Totality, Part VII
Here's an example of Orla saying pretty much the opposite of what he's said in recent posts,
In recent posts, Orla himself has seemed to equate affirmation with the old hippie slogan of "letting it all hang out."
I am not concerning myself with "catching" Orla in a contradiction, (though it would be dishonest to say the "discrepancy" did not present itself to me, first pass, as a contradiction.) I also do not believe the problem is Orla failing to express himself properly, or being forgetful, or contentious for the sake of being contentious,(so that no matter which way I turn, he disagrees.) Least of all do I believe Orla is equivocal or dishonest.
I DO NOT explain this competition of sides in Orla in psychoanalytical terms, as the play of the unconscious, tricking him.
“Before we get to that, let's look at your use of "affirmation". I'm probably being reductionistic here, but you seem to equate it with the old hippie slogan of "letting it all hang out" = basically anarchic. As long as it is creative, life-affirming, the free flow of being, it overrides any notion of "selection", meaning any ethical hierarchy. Or it is an affirming YES to life versus the Adorno-like NAY-saying (to the absolutism of the values of Enlightenment and to the general debasement of humanistic value by present day hedonistic materialism.)”
In recent posts, Orla himself has seemed to equate affirmation with the old hippie slogan of "letting it all hang out."
I am not concerning myself with "catching" Orla in a contradiction, (though it would be dishonest to say the "discrepancy" did not present itself to me, first pass, as a contradiction.) I also do not believe the problem is Orla failing to express himself properly, or being forgetful, or contentious for the sake of being contentious,(so that no matter which way I turn, he disagrees.) Least of all do I believe Orla is equivocal or dishonest.
I DO NOT explain this competition of sides in Orla in psychoanalytical terms, as the play of the unconscious, tricking him.
posted by Yusef Asabiyah at 9:46 PM
2 Comments:
The case of Orla,
Orla wrote: "within prison of linguistics we are locked in binary thinking and simile."
No wonder that Orla himself falls victim to the binary thinking he supposedly set out to critize in the
first place. The mistake he commits is believing that the underpinnings of language as a structure
or system (linguistic) is binary opposition. It is not. The structural underpinnings are differences. No sign is ever defined
positively in a linguistic system. The essential distinction to make here is between difference and opposition.
Perhaps Orla have become so radicalized in his thinking, that he can only think difference as opposition, in fact much like Hegel.
This way everything becomes either-or: being or becoming, squares or plasma, flow or frozen etc.
A good example of this is his misinterpretation of Adornos criticism of the enlightenment dialectics when he refers to
"..the Adorno-like NAY-saying (to the absolutism of the values of Enlightenment".
Adorno believed that the dialectics of enlightenment was a two-fold one, between nature and man, and between man and his
values. And that the values became instruments for dominating nature and this way executed as values.
Adornos problem with the enlightenment was not that it claimed absolute values. Saying so is in error but also
an oversimplification of the enlightenment problem. More importantly it is a symptom of an either-or ideology: if we want
to get rid of something we just ascribe absolutism to it, and per "post modernistic" tradition we can classify it as bad because
it hinders "emerging flow of creativity". This way of thinking is self-limiting to the extreme.
It does appear that Orlas hegelian discourse camouflaging as Deleuzian vitalism, has to some extent corrupted this blog.
However the critique of the Case of Orla may open up for a new relationship to the enlightenment, based more on difference and distinction, rather than repetition and opposition.
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