Habermas and Right-Wing Discourse

andy pink for you, waiting and suffering on a chromebook that is a giant piece of crud, did locate pornhub, but the screen is so dark i cannot see the root from the cauliflower -

the german social theorist, jurgen habermas, rather famously theorized what he called the "ideal speech situation" which he imaged is a discourse that is guided by reason (with such impossible accoutrements as clarity, transparency, equality, and so on) - for habermas, the idea is that political justice, and even progressive movement, can be organized or structured by this "ideal speech situation" and that through reason, rationality, logic, good faith, and so on - language can be used as a means of clarity and compromise/consensus rather than the gibberish that structuralism isolates as the essence of speech and writing. i never write about habermas, in part because this grand idea of the "ideal speech situation" is so impossible that his work seems even less applicable, relevant, and practical than the excesses of structuralism. in short: the "ideal speech situation" is impossible, there is no transparency and clarity and equality in discourse (there's not even an object as saussure suggests).

but, importantly, at the same time, we appear to operate in everyday life with the ideal of this speech situation of reason, rationality, and logic (which are none other than force and power disguised by the properties of objective science). so, the "ideal speech situation" is not dead, it is quite active and alive, it's just not really how we're functioning - it is like the manifest formation of a dream, it's what appears to us when we awaken, but there is at the same time a latent truth, such that the latent dimension of the "ideal speech situation" is - of course - the gobbledegook and gibberish of structuralism (hymen, differance, trace, a/-a, and so on). the ideal speech situation is in difficulty finally manifest, and the structuralism of illogicality and unreason is latent, real and true, the reality that is overlaid by the ideology of the "ideal speech situation."

but i really want to say that the "ideal speech situation" is simply no longer relevant (mentioned above) or even actionable, especially in politics. the reason is that right-wing discourse and argumentation is so illogical and irrational now, there is no battling trump and his grifters and shifters with reason and logic. this discourse of the right-wing is beyond any coherence, clarity, and reasonable argumentation. now, this perhaps has always been the case, even for left-wing discourse, and perhaps all speech and writing have all along been gobbledegook and gibberish - but also at least partially propogandistic and persuasive (see pragmatists for this line) - and so, in all cases, lodging attacks or counter-arguments with logic and reason toward the right-wing is simply a moot, irrelevant, and ultimately silent and failed endeavor.

but it's crucial to note that the irrationality and unreason of right-wing discourse is not the incoherence and incomprehensibility (differance, trace) of structuralism. perhaps right-wing discourse is not properly ideology, but it is certainly off the rails, but not structuralistly so.

what we actually need more of now - given that reason, logic, and rationality, and even discourse are no longer mechanisms of argumentation or even politics - are anarchism and political aggression, even political subterfuge. the question emerges: how do you combat right-wing discourse and action if logic, reason, and rationality have been entirely abandoned by that side? how do we even engage with right-wing theory and practice in the absence of common good faith in reason? the answer is: you don't engage, you destroy.

one of the reasons that the right has been so successful after trump is that it no longer looks to reason as a guiding principle, it's pure power at this point, it's just force, there's no content to it, other than the concrete effects on the system. what is otherwise to reason, logic, and rationality? this is really the key question to battling the right-wing post-trump, it is the element of anarchism and political aggression that is now required, and though i mostly don't condone political violence, i'm not as opposed to taking prisoners as i used to be. that said, as we now live in a global police state, it might not really be possible to advance anarchic and aggressive tactics against the nation states and their atomic weaponry. but then what are we ultimately left with in the west? - protest and franchise. (i went to the boston anarchist book fair and everybody looked weird so i quickly bought a pamphlet and left.)

are protests even successful, ever? they make for good pageantry - like a parade at disneyland - but are they ever even relevant to power and force? is a poll as counted not more of a threat to power than a protest? the other contestatory option is to vote, and i think this is very important, as courts, which safeguard the franchise, have been the only functionary that has really defended the system (which - to put it mildly - i do not condone, and rail against with political aggression and anarchism). but protests and the vote are not enough - and they are mired in the kind of reason, logic, and rationality that the right-wing has abandoned. but i cherish the value of the vote, but only because of the value of the civil rights movement of the 60s (and forward) - which, to be honest, was too little too late. the franchise is weak, it's not powerful and forceful enough.

i am tempted to return to structuralism, since it destroys reason and logic and reduces it to a constitutive alterity that undermines any claim (and this is done even in hegel's work, the dialectic is the messiest of logics, and it's hard to see that any form of understanding or comprehension ever survives hegel's discovery of radical contradiction at the center of the system). the problem with the structuralist critique of the "ideal speech situation" is that the latter is palpably how the system (does not) work. Deconstruction can return the sign to the dysfunctional signifier, generating a vast nothingness in the place of being, but no one (for some unknown reason) actually functions like that. structuralism (the signifier, as explicit in saussure) is of a theoretical dimension, it really is not how the practice of signification functions in everyday speech and writing in the social text. but that said, the "ideal speech situation" also is defunct, it does not work, as in my outline of right-wing discourse, it does not conform to the reason, logic, rationality, transparency, clarity, equality, and so on that the "ideal speech situation" relies on as its condition, making possible the tepid left-wing counter-discourse. essentially, we are betwixt the ideal speech situation and incoherence, and neither of these qualifiers properly describes how language operates - though aspiration to both reason and unreason abounds.

what has to be examined is the socratic method from plato, which posits reason and rationality at the site of the individual, which is different from the city-state model that places reason within law and the state. socrates is rightfully displaced (murdered) because he challenges the state and its version of reason. we need a model of selfhood and sociality that is between the "ideal speech situation" and postmodernism, or between socrates and the death drive. but when push comes to shove toward the future, anarchism and political aggression (which is mere code) are the necessary features of an anti-capitalist and anti-statist agenda.

in sum, we yet have a functional definition of language, or one that accurately depicts how language actually works in speech and writing. we already know that language does not work (hymen, differance, trace, etc.) - but we don't have an account of why language simultaneously works. why does it work? the right-wing avoids incoherence but also rejects logic, reason, and rationality. i do as well. but there has to be an alternative to reason that avoids nothingness while at the same time destroying meaning-making as we understand it in the west. the only conclusion is: we need a new language, and this is a project for the madman, the pervert, and those who want to alienate themselves in and through the project of unreason. but, with the caveat: with an unreason that destroys capital and ushers in a future of communism, of each according to his need and each according to his ability. as i would strongly suggest: communism heralds a new modality of representation altogether. what we need is the language of communism.

for rich: i think dedicating the queer manic depression book to you is an okay move, i don't have your last name, which feels a little strange, but i'm going to do it anyway. as for the printing of that book: lulu will do hardcover copies with the erotic imagery for about $25 a pop, which means i can get twenty paperbacks for about $500, which i will do. i'm pleased with this plan. i'm a bit saddened that rich and i won't go on our walk until 2/1, but i do need to get down to 150 and it might take that much time. i wish him well for the holidays and hope he gets fat.

xoxo andy pink

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