Dialectics as De-/Relinking: Relationality, Collective Self-Determination, and the Negative Utopia of Absolute Knowledge
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2024-08-15
Author(s)
Abstract
Apart from the (in)famous Doppelsatz of the Philosophy of Right, there is another, less iconic, but equally significant Doppelsatz in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. At the end of the section on “The Truth of Self-Certainty” Hegel describes the turning moment in which the subject becomes conscious of its relation to the spirit as the moment where the subject realizes itself to be an “‘I’ that is ‘We’, and ‘We’ that is ‘I’”. The political ramifications of this Phenomenology-Doppelsatz have not polarized Hegelian scholars as much as the Philosophy of Right-Doppelsatz. However, they are not less divisive and fulfil an analogous function. Following the model of Robert Brandom’s (2002) de re interpretation of the Phenomenology, the former part of the Doppelsatz, the “‘I’ that is ‘We’”, alludes to the existence of more than one identity that house the subject’s body; it underlies the subject’s embeddedness in social structures and political institutions; it suggests a historicized, if not socially constructed subjectivity; finally, it sketches the image of a subject that finds itself in the holism of being-by-oneself-with-the-other. However, the second part of the Doppelsatz, the “‘We’ that is ‘I’”, seems to undo what the first part had previously established. The different identities are to be subsumed under one dominant identity; the different forms and spheres of socialization are to be hierarchized under one primary mode of socialization; the historical and social construction of the subject is to be reversed in favour of an essentialist understanding of subjectity that is assumed as having one, unalterable, nature; last but not least, the symmetrical recognition that characterizes the double relationship of the subject to the Other and the Other to the subject is to be modified to an extent that a victorious and solipsist ‘I’ is reinstated that has assimilated and appropriated its/the Other.
In my paper, I take into account the conceptual pair of “Delinking/Relinking” as laid down by Walter Mignolo (2010, 2011, 2018) in order to provide an interpretation of the second part of the Doppelsatz that will be able to overcome its inherent authoritarian and totalitarian disposition. In doing so, however, I question the possibility of liberation, as highlighted by Mignolo (2010). Instead, I opt for Arturo Escobar’s (2020) “week form” of radical relationality. That again, creates an interesting bridge between decolonial thought and this form of recognition that Brandom recalibrated and calls “robust recognition” (2019). What is particularly striking in this convergence, is, first, the fundamental role of collective practices and struggles as form of “collective self-determination” (Saar 2018: 217) that Escobar and Brandom attribute to collectives and community respectively. Second, what is equally striking is the openness with which the relationality that the process of de-/relinking instantiated engrafts upon the subject’s epistemological process. Driven, irritated, and unsettled by relationality, so the argument, absolute knowledge is not just “provisionally final” (Pinkard 1994: 339-340) but prevented from becoming final and absolute at all. This is not to say that absolute knowledge is not possible. Rather, it is to say that absolute knowledge will necessarily remain a negative epistemological utopia (Kolakowski 1982) that will be negated as soon as it supposes that it has been achieved.
In my paper, I take into account the conceptual pair of “Delinking/Relinking” as laid down by Walter Mignolo (2010, 2011, 2018) in order to provide an interpretation of the second part of the Doppelsatz that will be able to overcome its inherent authoritarian and totalitarian disposition. In doing so, however, I question the possibility of liberation, as highlighted by Mignolo (2010). Instead, I opt for Arturo Escobar’s (2020) “week form” of radical relationality. That again, creates an interesting bridge between decolonial thought and this form of recognition that Brandom recalibrated and calls “robust recognition” (2019). What is particularly striking in this convergence, is, first, the fundamental role of collective practices and struggles as form of “collective self-determination” (Saar 2018: 217) that Escobar and Brandom attribute to collectives and community respectively. Second, what is equally striking is the openness with which the relationality that the process of de-/relinking instantiated engrafts upon the subject’s epistemological process. Driven, irritated, and unsettled by relationality, so the argument, absolute knowledge is not just “provisionally final” (Pinkard 1994: 339-340) but prevented from becoming final and absolute at all. This is not to say that absolute knowledge is not possible. Rather, it is to say that absolute knowledge will necessarily remain a negative epistemological utopia (Kolakowski 1982) that will be negated as soon as it supposes that it has been achieved.
Language
English
Keywords
Social and Political Philosophy
German Idealism
Decoloniality
Walter Mignolo
Arturo Escobar
Pluriverse
Dialectics
Utopia
Negativity
Absolute Knowledge
G.W.F. Hegel
Axel Honneth
Maria Lugones
Event Title
Emancipation in Hegel’s Metaphysics and Social Theory? The Liberal Reading Under Question
Event Location
SOAS
Event Date
15.07.2024
Division(s)
Additional Information
https://www.hegelpd.it/hegel/international-conference-emancipation-in-hegels-metaphysics-and-social-theory-the-liberal-reading-under-question-soas-university-of-london-august-15-16-2024/
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Dialectics as De-/Relinking: Relationality, Collective Self-Determination, and the Negative Utopia of Absolute Knowledge.
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