1 / 26

ENDGAME

ENDGAME. Joseph W.H. Lough, Ph.D. Filosofski fakultet Tuzla Blog: http://www.newconsensus.org/blog Twitter: @jwhlough email: joseph.lough@gmail.com phone: +387 603375497 Office Hours: 10-Noon, MW, Urban. Review. Winston’s Problem and Our Own

ursa
Download Presentation

ENDGAME

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. ENDGAME • Joseph W.H. Lough, Ph.D. • Filosofski fakultet Tuzla • Blog: http://www.newconsensus.org/blog • Twitter: @jwhlough • email: joseph.lough@gmail.com • phone: +387 603375497 • Office Hours: 10-Noon, MW, Urban

  2. Review • Winston’s Problem and Our Own • why might we be eager to identify the agent of social and historical emancipation? • in what world would that agent have been formed? • in what world would we (who recognize that agent) have been formed?

  3. Review • The Subject-Object of History • Aristotle (Hegel/Marx): free thought and action are predicated on substantive freedom • I Kant (Lenin/Lukács): freedom is transcendental and needs to be objectified/historicised

  4. Review • Winston’s Problem and Our Own • What is the cause for Winston’s despair? • How does Winston solve the subject-object problem? • How might Winston have solved the subject-object problem?

  5. Review • Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room • What is Mark-to-Market Accounting? • What mechanisms mediate social relations in Enron’s world? • What mechanisms mediate social relations following the largest bankruptcy in world history?

  6. Preview • Directional Dynamism in History • Long-Term Cycles • Short-Term Cycles • The Post-War Epoch and Our Pessimism

  7. Preview • Endgame • The characters • The story • What does it mean? • What might it mean?

  8. Preview • Walmart: the high cost of low prices

  9. Directional Dynamism • Long-Term Cycles

  10. Directional Dynamism • Short-Term Cycles

  11. Directional Dynamism • What happens when the piston in a combustion engine seizes? • What happens in history when the tension between forces and relations of production disappears?

  12. Directional Dynamism • Resistence or opposition does not give rise to determinate directional movement

  13. Directional Dynamism

  14. Endgame • Who are the characters? • Ham • Clov • Nagg • Nell

  15. Endgame • What happens in the story?

  16. Endgame • What does it mean?

  17. Endgame • Let us say that victory in WWII was purchased at an inconceivably high price in personnel, material, and surviving infrastructure • But let us say that one power emerges almost unscathed, enjoying unprecedented wealth and productive capacity • But let us say that there is no one left to benefit from this wealth and productivity

  18. Endgame • If WWI and WWII were products of shifts in cycles of capital accumulation • What might have been “the solution” to these cycles and the resulting wars? • Were these solutions anywhere on the horizon in the 1960s?

  19. Endgame • Did the “failure of reason” to address the causes for mass death prevent these causes from expanding? • Did either our pessimism or continuing war and conflict cause the “engine of history” to “seize”? • Did it bring the dialectical dynamic of history to a stop?

  20. Endgame • Even in the absence of a subject-object, an Agent, to drive history, history is nevertheless unfolding • Even in the absence of an emancipatory agent or subject, history continues to proceed forward • Where is it going? • Who is driving it? • To what end?

  21. Endgame • Let us say that we can recognize the pattern of history • Let us say that we can also recognize the limited character of this pattern • And let us say that we can therefore appreciate why our “endgame” is not THE ENDGAME

  22. Endgame • Is there a way out? • Is there a way through?

  23. Endgame • If value is structured in our society by the self-domination of labor . . . • If freedom would entail the conditions that make for freedom . . . • And if freedom would entail the end of labor . . . • Is there a way through?

  24. Endgame • What kind of “freedom” did Cold War artists, writers, and intellectuals foreground? • In what ways did this foregrounding of “empty” or “negative” freedom promote repression in the “West”?

  25. Endgame • If freedom entails the reduction of labor and the conditions that make for freedom, what does this make of . . . ? • race • ethnicity • nationality • religion • gender • gender preference

  26. Preview • Walmart: the high cost of low prices • Office Hours: MW, 10-Noon, Urban • Open University, M 1-4, American Corner: Karl Marx in America

More Related