Fail better: Towards a conception of narrative totality
Item
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Title
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Fail better: Towards a conception of narrative totality
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:dfb84440411a:11320
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identifier
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11706
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Creator
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Hosadam, Haydar Sinan,
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Contributor
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Marshall Berman
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political science | Althusser | Badiou | Dialectics | Heidegger | Lukács | Totality
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Abstract
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Two opposing visions dominate the manifold ways in which totality has been conceived throughout the history: the expressive notion of totality and the generic notion of totality. This thesis argues that these conceptions should be understood as determinate negations of each other. It pays particular attention to the emergence of a narrative concept of totality in the transformation of subjectless, goalless and formless flux of history into a frame depicted by the mediated-expressive totality. It claims that it is this narration that allows the emergence and subjects in history. To make this argument, it juxtaposes two periods of the work of G. Lukacs as examples of these different visions of totality. It further discusses the introduction of the concept of finitude to 20th century political philosophy by Heidegger and evaluates its consequences that establish a framework where the access to the whole is considered to be impossible and the attempt to do so politically dangerous. The discussion of Heidegger is followed by a discussion of Althusser around whose work the impasses of the rejection of a dialectically conceived notion of totality is analyzed. The argument culminates around the work of Badiou which provides the context in which questions that were left with Lukacs can be asked again: questions about the political subject: political party: the state: questions about the relation between the standpoint of totality and emancipatory politics.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Political Science
