{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","uuid":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","normalized_title":"democracyandotherneoliberalfantasiescommunicativecapitalismandleftpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":229,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Democracy%20and%20Other%20Neoliberal%20Fantasies%20Communicative%20Capitalism%20and%20Left%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/search"},"page":{"printed_page":120,"pdf_page":130,"physical_index":130,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"74ccfc48a584731d0fa9a4a7922b0d24f2040d819a7382339c8abbf446757c4a"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"Absolute Relativism\n\nWhile evil has long flourished in the fecund discursive habitats of Americanized religiosity, it has inhabited political speech as well, evolving as it adapts to changes in political climate. Evil is at home in George W. Bush's presidential rhetoric not because of his own personal faith but because of a larger coincidence of relativism and absolutist conviction, of the instability of signifcation and the resolve to signify in the face of this instabilty. Rather than two warring ethical or epistemological attitudes, relativism and absolutist conviction are two sides of the same coin, part of the same ideological matrix. On the one hand, this coincidence of opposites involves the way that each position limits and conditions the other-relativists understand their position against absolutists and vice versa. To this extent, neither position is fully identical with itselfj each is internally split, possible only through the other. But more important is the way that the speculative identity between relativism and absolutism can be expressed as internal to :relativism: relativism denotes an attitude toward absolutes. \\_Far from negating or even taking issue with these absolutes, reiativism requires the acceptance of particularized convictions, the acknowledgment that each is entitled to her O'Yfl beliefs and opinions. Difering positions or beliefs are not to be engaged, compared analyzed, or brought into critical dialogue with one another. They -are to be accepted as wholes, as essences, unique to the self-identity of another . .Abso.; lute conviction appears in and through relativism. Relativism encourages certainty in one's own convictions because it accepts that others have their own convictions: My convictions make me who I am.\n\nGiveri: the rich variabilty in evil's discursive habitats, the multiple registers in which it thrives, determing the fields of reference informing a specific invocation of \"evil\" is dificult, potentially unending. Much easier is the registration of afect: an invocation of evil expresses an intensity of judgment and belief. The eficacy or weight of the term evil thus shifts from the signified to the signifying subject. The subject is convinced, certain. He knows the truth. He feels it deep in his soul. Moreover, as hearers join the speaker in filng in evil with content, they become invested in the struggle against evil. Insofar as they have suppressed uncertainties and installed their own unacknowledged fantasy of evil into the empty place the term occupies, they identify al the more deepl)lj libidinall)lj with the battle against it. Evil might thus be usefully analogized to obscenity in First Amendment jurisprudence: giving a clear, principled, definition of obscenity is too dificult; nevertheless, \"we know it when we see it:' The emphasis shifts from the object to those who know, to those brave and forthright enough to look evil in the face. Were the terms obscenity and evil dear and unambiguous, using them, applying them to their proper objects, would be no great feat. In the United States of George W Bush, as in the United States ofRonald Reagan, this shift of the eficacy of the term evil from its object to the signifying subject suggests wil, courage, and faith; indeed, it points to the resolve and conviction of a subject who knows.\n\n120\n\nF OUR","previous_page":119,"next_page":121}