PART 2: LADYBUG PARANOIA 

The next book I read is Guilty by Bataille, which contains a passage I did not know about… In which Bataille describes a ladybug landing on a note Bataille took at Kojève’s lecture outlining the entirety of Hegel’s Logic, flitting from section to section on the page. Bataille actually tries to follow the ladybug in its erratic progression, commenting on its choices.

THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE FICTION

Kojève defines a corner of science fiction when he gives the example of the poet in the Middle Ages who could have written: "at this moment a man is flying over the ocean." Kojève calls it an error, but fails to recognize that his scribe put it in a POEM and not a chronicle or philosophical text. How can a poem be in error? The statement would actually be full-fledged science fiction. It would be false for hundreds of years but eventually turns out to be true currently with the development of aviation. But despite its dialectical ability to change with history, it retains its marker as a science fiction “novum” because of when it was written. Is it possible to have a “novum” before we have science, properly speaking? Just as we have pseudoscience, is there pseudoscience-fiction? 

Alternate history: by writing this example Kojève is actually writing a science fiction story himself. A minor detail, perhaps it rebounds backwards onto the entirety of the Lectures, or even onto the entire Phenomenology itself? Distorting them all into filthy genre tales, pulp, dystopia… You have to be careful—one slip-up will do it! 

Entropic addendum: the poetic statement is a barometer. It is periodically true but interrupted by major world events that curtail trans-atlantic flight (9/11, COVID-19, and perhaps eventually the using up of fossil fuels). At which point it will revert from science fiction back to mythos? Seems embarassing…

ERROR

Kojève says only humans can err (through language) in a persistent way. It is almost a human only talent. If so, then isn’t ERROR our actual humanity? Can’t we make a huge deal out of this warped faculty? 

Could we interpret the ability for confabulation, science fiction as a Developed Human Characteristic?

WARNING: THE DOG DIES

“Hegel said that all conceptual understanding (Begreifen) is equivalent to a murder.” 

Kojève’s go-to example in this book is a dog. On page 140 the dog is not only murdered but actually vivisected in the most twisted manner possible. (Prerogative of philosophy).

Kojève at first means this “murder” as metaphor but later casually admits biological knowledge actually does require dissection of a real body.

CONNECTION TO A PREVIOUS READING

I can’t help but picture the post-historical actor as Marcel Duchamp. A complete enjoyer of contingent a-historical happenstance, a slow/breather (respirateur), a gambler-artist. Ultimately an optimal user of free time.

CATGIRLS

Kojève describes the post-historical man as something between an animal and a human, and furthermore, something modeled on the Japanese penchant for contentless snobbery in the face of ‘no more history’. This could very well be the spiritual origin of kemonomimi.

THE LAUGHING COW AT THE END OF HISTORY

Kojève apparently only gave these lectures as a way to recoup some funds for investment losses suffered during the crash of 1929. So much for Hegelians and their insight into the workings of things! Isn’t it just perfect that the company he lost money on was the infamous Laughing Cow cheese? There is something almost proto-hauntological about this fuck up. It’s worth noting that the guy who actually assembled his notes into this book was not Kojève himself but the screwball ‘pataphysician Raymond Queneau. If Hegel is meant to be serious business why are all these ancillary details so ridiculous???

SOFTCORE

Reading the straight-laced nerd Kojève is somehow more invigorating and even erotic than reading many a “dissolute” writer. It is stimulating us to find a way out through all kinds of desperate transgressions. It’s over? You mean we’re done? What do you mean you’ve already cum? Is it any wonder so many of France’s Great Perverts (Breton, Bataille, Lacan) attended his sessions? And yet one gets the sense that he somehow knew they would be there, and got the jump on them. 

His straight-laced book often feels more erotically charged than their explicit smut: “Man feeds on Desires as an animal feeds on real things.” This could be the byline to every David Cronenberg film.

Corollary: if it is better to read Kojève THAN degenerates, this really only applies to those of us who can read Kojève AS degenerates ourselves. In that case one brings the degeneracy along for the ride, it’s already included. You get the feeling this got Bataille onto it.