Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Kyunki Mahanta too was an Obama

[On Obama from Continental Philosophy by Farhang Erfani
Judith Butler, “Uncritical Exuberance”
Jacques-Alain Miller, “Obama: Métis or Hermaphrodite?”]

[Obama launches new website from Open Integral by Edward Berge
The Obama campaign used technology in unprecedented ways to achieve its goals. Such will continue in Obama’s Presidency. He’s launched a
new website to interact with the POTUS again in unprecedented fashion. Finally, a President with a brain, a heart and who knows how to use contemporary media to communicate with us.]

[larvalsubjects Says: November 9, 2008 at 6:27 am From the standpoint of ideology critique, I tend to be suspicious of declarations such as those we find in Obama where the self-interests of groups are set aside in the name of a “we”. Such moves tend to obscure and hide the real of antagonism, making it more difficult to articulate and engage. The Spinozist in me is also nervous about dismissals of self-interest. Marx’s analyses certainly did not unfold along the opposition of altruism and self-interest, but were an analysis of self-interest pertaining to different classes through and through. Without some dimension of desire in the Lacanian sense and conatus or the will to endure in one’s being, engagement and critique seems to fall apart and we’re left with normative approaches that tend to function as masked interest.]

Having observed the "Prafulla Kumar Mahanta" syndrome two decades ago, we have never been enthusiastic about Obama from the very outset. But tolerating the promotional hype consistently for the last two years has been really painful just like sitting forcibly through a Kyunki episode. [TNM]

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