Mark Phillips: The American Question

The Prime directive, or the idea that the exploited and oppressed liberate themselves, is the prime directive. That is why I still use terms like Socialism and Revolution. That is what enables us to hear the silences.

That said, we should go after the silences with your usual ruthlessness.

I borrowed your waycool use of "Prime Directive" and adapted it for my own ruthless purposes. This is what happens if you don't publish. :-)

It would seem that you need a theory of "incantation." How does incantation compare to something like ideological or magical practice? I assume one recites an incantation in order to avoid hearing the silences (aporia) implicit in any theoretical problematic.

Yes to both points.

I've been using the loaded term "incantation" because of its magical association. I mean it as a verbal gesture which glosses a silence without filling it, to mix every possible metaphor. A formula which is empty but sounds full, serving the purpose of making a silence seem to be a not-silence.

I would maybe suspect though that the silences requiring incantation aren't just any old ones implicit in the problematic, but are the specific ones which mark the boundaries, that is the limits, of our theories. For some reason or another we're unable to make progress beyond a certain point. Instead of marking it with a flag saying, "got stuck here", we utter an incantation and continue moving along, afterwards treating that spot in the Landscape -- careful, I'm reading Susskind -- as if it contained a theory, when in fact it contains a silence.

Well -- maybe that's what all silences always are, I dunno. But maybe not. Following Althusser following Freud, a silence would be a symptom of repression. If yes, perhaps part of our protocol should be to always ask, "Why this silence?" And, "what, exactly, does it repress?"

Needs a lot of work. LOL!

It would be interesting to compare Susskind's notion of "landscape" with Althusser's contention that every science explores a distinctive "continent"--in Marx's case the continent of history. Of course, "landscape" and "continent" are only metaphors and not concepts proper.

By the way, I don't think that any science can do without metaphors. There can be no purely conceptual scientific language. As Lacan argued regarding the scientific status of psychoanalysis, there is no metalanguage which doesn't not rely on, and double back through, ordinary spoken and written languages.

Been thinkin' about this. (Be afraid, be very afraid...)

An "incantation" is itself a silence. When we say for instance "control from below", "control" is untheorized, or to put it more exactly, I think, it's a discourse without an object.

If we accept that the metaphors are useful, there are more. I like "genuflection" -- as loaded as "incantation" -- meaning a verbal nod toward something which is known to be true, yet which we intend to ignore. Our tradition genuflects all over the place. "Marxism is a living body of ideas" -- a popular one. Then look carefully at exactly how it's used.

I'm sure there are more that could be helpful.