Sunday 17 May 2009

Captain Trips

‘Recall Husserl’s dark dream, from his Cartesian Meditations of how the transcendental cogito would remain unaffected by a plague that would annihilate all humanity.’
Slavoj Žižek, In Defence of Lost Causes (2008), p.169

4 comments:

ECW said...

I've been having that dream a lot recently. Except for me, the plague affects only the transcendental cogito, leaving the frenzy of bodies with no subjective anchor...

Benjamin said...

good one! Although I'm not sure I should forgive you this democratic materialist deviation. What effect would such a plague have on Badiou's 'objective phenomenology' (cf Logics)? I can't help but think the number of events would go down (further).

Dominic said...

Tch! It's objective! Because he said so!

Benjamin said...

have you been checking out his remarks on correlationism? I've only skimmed Logics but it seemed to me he makes the discourse of ontology pretty reliant on humanity but then makes (or tries to make) appearance non-correlational? Hence the strange remarks about the phenomenology of dinosaurs... (my copy is in work or I would have posted the quote)