Sunday 14 June 2009

The Resources of Critique

Derridata, you were referring to Paul Bowman's The Truth of Zizek, in the context of a discussion of some (belated) reservations of late about the canonical status of such figures in the blogosphere. But have you followed up yet on Alex Callinicos, who speaks admiringly of Peter Hallward (principally because of his critiques of Badiou, but Hallward has also disputed the idea of the "Deleuzian century")?I admit I was pleasantly surprised by Harman's comments on Speculative Heresy regarding Hallward, as there was no great effort to downsize the significance of "the empirical", unlike many of the bloggers I've seen extolling the virtues of Badiou et al on account of how "abstraction" can [allegedly] act as a critical sensitising device against "finance capital". It would be foolish though to suggest that Callinicos and Hallward have signed, sealed, and delivered to us a definitive critique (remember this?), so it's probably better to think in terms of a starting point that echoes, to a certain extent, some of the reservations already expressed on this blog regarding continental philosophy more generally. Send me an email if you have any more thoughts about this....

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