The most important and definitive thing the occupant of the center does is select the successor who will be most likely to select the successor who will be most likely… This may sound like a very “formal” and “selfish” way of thinking about governing but the exact opposite is the case—the entire field of centered ordinality must be continually surveyed, all institutions must be created and maintained so as to produce suitable candidates and make those candidates known to people, responsibilities must be conferred across all distributory channels and priorities set so as to produce the dispositions needed to provide a sufficient number and range of candidates, Selecting the successor in perpetuity is intrinsically bound up with the center as the site of distribution, in which is remains continuous with its originary ritual function. As with all of my hypotheses (I know that I repeat this often) this is not just prospective and normative but descriptive—everyone with the slightest authority is always already doing this, even under conditions inimical to such projections of authority, which means it is often done dishonestly, without unawareness or, in the best of cases, by modeling one’s occupation of the center in such a way as to constrain future occupants. Everyone can feel on some level that all their work would be in vain if the wrong successor was to take over—trying to make your work indelible is an attempt to select your successor.
I certainly appreciate your emphasis on programs for a new order that can be started now in a pragmatic, not-too-obviously-revolutionary spirit. How open can one be about this though? Can one have a "political" party (if only the creation of a greater movement) openly devoted to ending politics in the name of common decency? How do you address your members if the goal is to make them, ultimately, into a working hierarchy of apolitical officers, or non-party party? If this "party", let's call it the Slap away the anti-SLAPP laws party (SAS - because I can't think of a good acronym for a You Can No Longer Call us Racists and Uncle Toms Party), whose slogan might be "free Parliaments and politics from the work of slander", institutions which as you suggest presently take their immunity from defamation laws as fundamental to their original privileges won in combat with (killing) the king, how can one sustain the claim that one is being pragmatic in face of the inevitable onslaught of claims that SAS is an anti-democratic, hence revolutionary party? One has to be in some way Machiavellian, no? Or can one be simply a happy warrior who is pragmatically restoring an originary constitution and protecting free speech but only for the work of maintaining data security?
My question stems from the passage in this post that is giving me, i think, the most trouble:
"There will never be any way of stepping outside of the existing order and representing that order as badly ordered in accord with some abstract model of order and proposing bringing it into closer approximation to that ideal. The very first decision you would make would activate all the resentments, i.e., the "sense of injustice," that is inextricable from the "sense" that things are badly ordered in the first place. Regicides had to criminalize the King..."
-You can't step outside because you could never deal with all the resentments your step would seemingly justify and unleash by simply saying things are badly ordered? Or you can't step outside because philosophical ideals you find there will never do well the work of deferring resentments? In any case, I have a sense why regicides criminalized the king (obviously that's what you do if you want to kill him; and you are further suggesting, rightly i think, that a parliament can't ever legislate without defaming some kind of big man) but I'm not sure why you are suggesting there was no other way, historically, for Parliamentarians to say things are badly ordered and keep "all the resentments" in some kind of check while merely sidetracking the king, because in the end, after civil war admittedly, the British did come up with the idea of a constitutional monarchy. And how does this "you can't step out" deal with the avant-garde artists whom you propose in the previous post as going somewhat outside, or "para", to compare and test scenes (albeit not-too-resentfully), beyond the middling artist's job of performing dramatic court-room trials for the bureaucratic class?
In any case, the trend (at least in the non-American anglo countries) already is away from legislatures legislating. They seem to be doing less and less as the Prime Minister's Offices shape things, often without pushing "new laws" but using established administrative rights. (Do anti-SLAPP laws become necessary when almost no one listens to what is said in Parliament anymore and all the slandering and scapegoating goes on outside?) Nonetheless, here in Canada, the last PM, Stephen Harper got into a brouhaha with the Supreme Court (or with their academic and media apologists, after publicly bad-mouthing the court) because, it seems, they wouldn't recognise his office as a de facto Supreme Court according to the founding doctrine that Parliament is the supreme arbiter. The judges now see themselves as ultimate arbiters, in a federal system where there are two levels of government claiming to share in the prerogatives of the Crown, in addition to their role as guardians of "human rights". So a Canadian SAS or juridical party would have to somehow propose knocking the judges down a peg (by ending federalism?) without being seen, or more importantly seeing themselves, as either revolutionary or Parliamentary Supremacists? Or, can you see yourself as revolutionary once you have worked pragmatically to get into a position to knock them down a peg, having talked mostly about restoring decency, coherence, sustainability, and a proper judiciary, to public life?
I certainly appreciate your emphasis on programs for a new order that can be started now in a pragmatic, not-too-obviously-revolutionary spirit. How open can one be about this though? Can one have a "political" party (if only the creation of a greater movement) openly devoted to ending politics in the name of common decency? How do you address your members if the goal is to make them, ultimately, into a working hierarchy of apolitical officers, or non-party party? If this "party", let's call it the Slap away the anti-SLAPP laws party (SAS - because I can't think of a good acronym for a You Can No Longer Call us Racists and Uncle Toms Party), whose slogan might be "free Parliaments and politics from the work of slander", institutions which as you suggest presently take their immunity from defamation laws as fundamental to their original privileges won in combat with (killing) the king, how can one sustain the claim that one is being pragmatic in face of the inevitable onslaught of claims that SAS is an anti-democratic, hence revolutionary party? One has to be in some way Machiavellian, no? Or can one be simply a happy warrior who is pragmatically restoring an originary constitution and protecting free speech but only for the work of maintaining data security?
My question stems from the passage in this post that is giving me, i think, the most trouble:
"There will never be any way of stepping outside of the existing order and representing that order as badly ordered in accord with some abstract model of order and proposing bringing it into closer approximation to that ideal. The very first decision you would make would activate all the resentments, i.e., the "sense of injustice," that is inextricable from the "sense" that things are badly ordered in the first place. Regicides had to criminalize the King..."
-You can't step outside because you could never deal with all the resentments your step would seemingly justify and unleash by simply saying things are badly ordered? Or you can't step outside because philosophical ideals you find there will never do well the work of deferring resentments? In any case, I have a sense why regicides criminalized the king (obviously that's what you do if you want to kill him; and you are further suggesting, rightly i think, that a parliament can't ever legislate without defaming some kind of big man) but I'm not sure why you are suggesting there was no other way, historically, for Parliamentarians to say things are badly ordered and keep "all the resentments" in some kind of check while merely sidetracking the king, because in the end, after civil war admittedly, the British did come up with the idea of a constitutional monarchy. And how does this "you can't step out" deal with the avant-garde artists whom you propose in the previous post as going somewhat outside, or "para", to compare and test scenes (albeit not-too-resentfully), beyond the middling artist's job of performing dramatic court-room trials for the bureaucratic class?
In any case, the trend (at least in the non-American anglo countries) already is away from legislatures legislating. They seem to be doing less and less as the Prime Minister's Offices shape things, often without pushing "new laws" but using established administrative rights. (Do anti-SLAPP laws become necessary when almost no one listens to what is said in Parliament anymore and all the slandering and scapegoating goes on outside?) Nonetheless, here in Canada, the last PM, Stephen Harper got into a brouhaha with the Supreme Court (or with their academic and media apologists, after publicly bad-mouthing the court) because, it seems, they wouldn't recognise his office as a de facto Supreme Court according to the founding doctrine that Parliament is the supreme arbiter. The judges now see themselves as ultimate arbiters, in a federal system where there are two levels of government claiming to share in the prerogatives of the Crown, in addition to their role as guardians of "human rights". So a Canadian SAS or juridical party would have to somehow propose knocking the judges down a peg (by ending federalism?) without being seen, or more importantly seeing themselves, as either revolutionary or Parliamentary Supremacists? Or, can you see yourself as revolutionary once you have worked pragmatically to get into a position to knock them down a peg, having talked mostly about restoring decency, coherence, sustainability, and a proper judiciary, to public life?