Surplus: Spinoza, Lacan

by Kordela, A. Kiarina

• ISBN13: 9780791470206
• ISBN10: 0791470202
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Opposing both popular "neo-Spinozisms" (Deleuze, Negri, Hardt, Israel) and their Lacanian critiques (Zizek and Badiou), Surplus maintains that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the proper continuation of the Spinozian-Marxian line of thought. Author A. Kiarina Kordela argues that both sides ignore the inherent contradictions in Spinoza's work, and that Lacan's reading of Spinoza-as well as of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Wittgenstein-offers a much subtler balance of knowing when to take the philosopher at face value and when to read him against himself. Moving between abstract theory and tangible political, ethical, and literary examples, Kordela traces the emergence of "enjoyment" and "the gaze" out of Spinoza's theories of God, truth, and causality, Kant's critique of pure reason, and Marx's pathbreaking application of set theory to economy. Kordela's thought unfolds an epistemology and an ontology proper to secular capitalist modernity that call for a revision of the Spinoza-Marx-Lacan line as the sole alternative to the (anti-)Platonist tradition. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: The Context	p. 1
Postmodern "Neo-Spinozism"	p. 1
Scientific "Neo-Spinozism" and Hegel	p. 5
Consensual, Evolutionist "Modern Spinozism"	p. 20
After the Context	p. 25
Secular Causality and Its Enjoyment	p. 27
From the First Cause to Transference	p. 27
Causes or Reasons?	p. 32
Science of Differential Substance	p. 36
Secular Ontology: Differential (Non-)Substance and the End of (Anti-)Platonism	p. 42
Wherein Consists the Break of Secular Modernity?	p. 55
History of Differential (Non-)Substance	p. 59
Ethics of Differential (Non-)Substance	p. 63
From Libido to Enjoyment	p. 68
A History of God in Secular Reason (From Philosophy to Non-Anti-Philosophy)	p. 71
God in (or out of?) Cultural Studies	p. 77
The Break of Extimacy	p. 79
(Burning with) Enjoyment	p. 81
God, Nobody, or Mr. Nobody?	p. 87
Kant with Marx: Surplus, Or, Gaze	p. 91
Commodity Fetishism: Toward an Epistemo-/Ontology of Surplus	p. 92
The Rule of Representation and Sex (From Kant's Rule of Reason to Marx's Rule of Exchange-Value)	p. 93
Set Theory and Being (Marx's Materialist Metaphysics)	p. 101
From Absolute Knowledge to the Gaze	p. 108
Is It Possible Not to Hate Representation? (Another Look at Empire)	p. 123
Conclusion: Raising a Question	p. 133
Another Look at Ethics, Or, Commodity and the Gaze	p. 133
Notes	p. 141
Works Cited	p. 177
Index	p. 187
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