Formalism, Ideology, Critique: Althusser after Badiou

Livingston, Paul M.

doi:10.5771/9783845275840-59

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Wittgenstein wards of these sceptical misgivings by taking recourse to the category of usage or ‘custom’. Taking a cue from a recent interpretation of the said remarks, it could be argued that it is usage which enables the leap between justification and doing (Livingston 2012). This medial category not only puts a practice and its symbolic codification in touch with each other but also brings to relief the idea that the relationship between these elements of the triad is dynamic and hence subject to regular and often unforeseen changes.…”

Section: Mathematics and Form Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though they lead towards no clear understanding of the virus spread and its containment, policy decisions with enormous social impact are frequently taken on their basis. 10 What is strange is that, decisions with very real and not infrequently disastrous implications for people, mostly at the lower rung of the social ladder, draw upon an incredulous ontology of the unknown. This deliberate ploy for not knowing SARS-CoV-2, by foregoing the classical strategy of test-trace-isolate , and yet acting with full certitude on the basis of half-baked models signals towards the emergence of a new mode of governmentality.…”

Section: Mathematics Of the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Reading Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics in Times of COVID-19: Remarks on the Relationship Between Mathematics and Society

Malviya

2021

Society and Culture in South Asia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The crisis, following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe, has been unprecedented in terms of the extent to which it has been mathematised, such that both our understanding of it and responses to it have been largely guided by mathematical or epidemiological models. Mathematical certainties seem to have provided a reliable guide for action and anticipation in the midst of looming uncertainties unleashed by the spread of the virus. States, too, have mostly relied on mathematical projection to dole out policies for precaution and control, as the strange ‘fix’ between prevailing uncertainties and mathematical certainties, has provided the rationale for acting urgently and, literally, imposingly. Instead of attending to the fragility and diversity of human worlds mathematics of the pandemic has produced sweeping, but, ‘critical sounding’ generalisations and governments, world-over, have been too ready to act on their behest, often to the great detriment of the working poor and marginalised sections of society. This article offers a critical evaluation of this ‘fix’ and more generally of the mathematics of the pandemic with the help of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. The argument is that in the absence of a proper appreciation of the sociality of mathematics we create certain pictures of the mathematical, with very concrete consequences at the level of policy and implementation, which demean and dehumanise instead of helping us out in times of need and despair. A case is made for a mathematics which is more sensitive to our vulnerabilities, desires and capabilities, as an alternative to solutionism which has come to dominate our life with and in crisis.

show abstract

Section: Mathematics and Form Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mathematics Of the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics in Times of COVID-19: Remarks on the Relationship Between Mathematics and Society

Malviya

2021

Society and Culture in South Asia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The response to this increasing agency-anxiety was, in some sense, brilliant. In exploring structures of mathematics, language, and society, scholars paralleled Gödel’s uncertainty theorem, which argued for the incompatibility of both coherence and completeness in any analysis (Livingston, 2012). Any coherently gridded analysis would, of necessity, be left incomplete, and anything complete could not help but be a bit incoherent.…”

Section: Agency-anxiety: Postmodernmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The linear reductionism necessary for determinism is thus lost in the uncertainty of semiotic repetition. Likewise, Badiou’s void at the edge of formalism, Derrida’s trace, Lacan’s Real, even Schmitt’s exception, all offer a version of Gödel’s theorem: there is no coherence if complete, and no completion if coherent (Badiou, 2005; Derrida, 1976; Lacan, 1999; Livingston, 2012; Schmitt, 1985). Another group of theorists allowed the gaps to emerge between broader modes of existence instead of individual actions (Bourdieu, 1989; Deleuze et al., 1994; Latour, 2013).…”

Section: Agency-anxiety: Postmodernmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of scale: How Western agency-anxieties mold affect theory, and how Pentecostalism and neuroscience teach us to think differently

Brahinsky

2018

Anthropological Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper offers a critique of affect theory using the analytical concept of scale that is made concrete through an ethnography of Pentecostal Christianity and an exploration of current neuroscientific thinking. Affect theory is one recent form of a Western philosophical concern about the loss of agency in modernity, what I call “agency-anxiety.” Affect theorists tend to privilege the sense of freedom gained by immediate and individual experience over the constraints of more extended experiences and collectivity. That is, affect theory often scales its analysis tightly. This paper responds with an ethnography of Pentecostal practice and exploration of work in neuroscience that describes an analytic space in which broader scales can be useful as well. Ethnography scaled beyond the instant reveals that the Pentecostal ideal of surrendering to God in a moment of abandonment often results from a “fake it until you make it” approach; in other words, from extended, effortful, willful practice. This practice leads to the formation of habits and dispositions that allow the attainment of spontaneous rupture. Likewise, neuroscience can scale out its analysis by focusing on dispositions, moods and habits, rather than simply a more immediate view. Further, “scale effects” and emergent properties in scale-to-scale relations undermine reductionism. Finally, because Pentecostals are generally right wing yet also exemplify ruptural practice, it seems that outside of a particular conjuncture, the tightly scaled eruptive moment of affect is by no means per se a productive or (politically) progressive formation. As such, making scale an explicit analytical category might help us to see agency, change, and structure more clearly.

show abstract

“…To unwind the semiotic knots of mathematical practice Derrida’s attempts at unravelling structural ambiguity in a system of writing are put to use. Of particular interest for this paper is his argument that such ambiguity is not accidental but results due to the essential crossing between syntax and semantics with in any such system (Derrida 1982; Livingston 2012). More specifically Derrida calls this procedure diagonalisation through which an element can be constructed within a system of writing through syntactical manipulations yet which remains undecidable or unprovable from the constitutive rules governing the system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Use in Mathematical Practice: An Ethnographic Perspective

Malviya

2018

Society and Culture in South Asia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mathematics is often seen as an epitome of cold objectivity and astounding infallibility. Particularly for the outsiders, it comes across as an extremely rigid and closed system which seems impenetrable owing to its very specific and technical language. This article problematises these assumptions and seeks to study mathematics as a social practice with insights drawn from an anthropology of language and concepts, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics and semiotics. Using the anthropological insight that a language is always embedded in a form of life, this article shows how mathematical practice generates its own conventions and forms of language use. In particular, two dimensions of language use in mathematics are delineated and their consequences for further research are drawn out. In the first part of the article, the role of concepts in the discourse of mathematics is explored and in the second it is shown how applying a rigid distinction between syntax and semantics to mathematical language obstructs our understanding of its fluid and dynamic character. The argument unfolds through an analyses of interviews, texts and classroom sessions and shows how mathematical practice is heavily context bound and mathematicians often display an ethnographic attentiveness towards their work. The general tenor of the description is such that it attempts to trace the ethical dimension latent in mathematical practice and suggests a possibility of exploring it as a form of life. Connected to this thought is the argument that like any other practice, mathematical practice generates its own forms of reflections which cannot simply be assimilated to philosophical/theoretical knowledge. The question whether this action knowledge regarding mathematics has some relation to the South Asian location where the ethnography unfolds is also tentatively explored.

show abstract

Formalism, Ideology, Critique: Althusser after Badiou

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Reading Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics in Times of COVID-19: Remarks on the Relationship Between Mathematics and Society

Reading Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics in Times of COVID-19: Remarks on the Relationship Between Mathematics and Society

The effects of scale: How Western agency-anxieties mold affect theory, and how Pentecostalism and neuroscience teach us to think differently

Language Use in Mathematical Practice: An Ethnographic Perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About