<nettime> Re: What is this thing that I call Doug?

[Simon Bayly <sibayly@freeuk.com>]

Geert wrote:

> i am afraid we can't ask more from US professors aka pop media stars
> they are not informed about subjectivity after kant. doug is not an
> academic philosopher. and why should he? i think you have too high
> expectations there. academic post modernism anyway has never tried to
> get beyond campus, specially not in the US. so there is a culture gap
> here, I fear.

Oddly, I have to give US Professors my support here! The writer I cite in
my previous post (Alphonso Lingis - selected at random really, since I
just happen to be reading his stuff) is Professor of Philosophy at Penn
State University. There a dozen others I could reel off the top of my
head, several of them with quasi-cult status in some circles, a couple
actually at NYU with Rushkoff!  They would find his assertions "curious"
to say the least.. 

No, I don't think we can lay the blame at the door of cultural difference
this time. To appropriate some movie blockbuster or other:  "This time,
it's personal." Actually, more an issue of personal responsiblity of those
in power in the academy towards everything "external" to them and their
insitututions. Not that I have anything personal against Doug R., just
that I find it surprising that someone in his situation gets to the top of
the pile where he can proffer ideas that should have been challenged (by
himself primarily)  way, way back in the system of which he has become a
part. 

Sure, it was an interview piece, and can all go off the deep end in
situtations like that, but hey, handling an interview coherently should be
a compulsory qualifcation for an academic media star, no? But Doug appears
to have actually reflected on this "pure intention" thing beforehand,
which is disturbing.... 

Also, I don't see it as a question of an academic discourse trying "to get
beyond campus". My previous (somewhat simplistic) rendering of
post-Kantian ideas on selfhood derives from what actually goes on. It's
not primarily about high-falutin', bombinating po-mo concepts, etc. 
Unlike "the subject", The imperative is not a concept, it's about engaging
the everyday. Feeling the force of the imperative ("what I have to do"
imposed independently of my wants and desires) is what goes on: 
everybody's doing it (feeling it), even if they don't "think" it or act on
it.  Thinking (philosophy)  just "listens in" and then makes its
interventions (makes concepts, links them according to reason, writes
book, etc). 

Sure, who reads philosophy books these days! But I see/read a good deal of
great work being done with this implict ethos in many activities far away
from the campus. From which I take hope. 


Simon Bayly
London, UK.


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