Portal Logic: Find the Others
Network for Thinking Sex, Community, and Metaphysics
This month at The Portal we will be focused on the metaphysics of self-reference, or self-reference as metaphysics. We will be inviting guests
of , Greg Dember of What Is Metamodernism?, and of . To learn more or to get involved, see: The Portal.To start 2024, Philosophy Portal also became The Portal. While Philosophy Portal focused and focuses on teaching the foundations of modern philosophical discourse, hosting courses, conferences and anthology processes that make sense of thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, and more; The Portal is a live event space designed to make philosophy actual.
In my first announcement posts for The Portal,1 I focused on situating the live event space as the foundation for thinking our current technological situation, both in regards to its threat and its emancipatory potential.2 This framing was in regards to “technofeudalism” and “technosocialism” via “technocapitalism”.3 I do not believe we can escape capitalism, but I think if we do not sublate (cancel/lift) capital towards socialism, then we risk feudal conditions.
That paradigm still represents the core of my thinking motion. It is the attempt to frame and work the Marxist dialectic in our technological moment with the foundation of Hegel’s logic.
The Owl (of Minerva) is one of the core symbols of Philosophy Portal because I think and act knowing that I cannot know the future. My thought and my action is abyssal, but it is still directed: it is an arrow pointing towards the conditions of possibility for a higher world. I cannot know what technosocialism is, but whatever it is, I think The Portal is a vehicle that can help make it a reality.
Throughout the first five months of The Portal’s operations I have gotten a clearer picture of what this vehicle is and what its potentials are. And how this clarity emerged is itself interesting and potentially instructive to others who are either interested in getting involved, or interested in building their own technosocial projects.
The first point: the foundation of The Portal remains in the idea of creating live event spaces where philosophy could/can become actual. The four core live event spaces all aim to bring something different to life:
Concept Cave is a space to explore core concepts
The Edge is a space to explore the under-conceptualised
Thought Lab is a space to think with thought leaders
Real Talk is a space to engage philosophy in personal self-relation
Each month there would be/is a different theme and different guests so that the thinking community could/can learn how to start working with core philosophical concepts, get a sense of the under-conceptualised dimensions of the field, think with real figures who have mediated these concepts for a longer-term, as well as relate to these concepts personally.
What emerged in the actualisation of this process is a meta-theme. After the first three months of working with this structure, we had hosted four events each month built around themes of Libido, Communism and the Sacred, but I was concerned with a process that continued to unfold themes randomly or in a seemingly arbitrary pattern. But in deep reflection on the first three themes — Libido, Communism and the Sacred — I recognised that the pattern I was directing looked a lot like the pattern that structured the dialogos I had led with Kevin Orosz and Daniel Dick a few years earlier, and which resulted in our book, Sex, Masculinity, God.4 Libido = Sex, Communism = Masculinity, Sacred = God. It didn’t map perfectly, but well-enough to suggest a pattern that needed to be made more refined and explicit.
And so there was a new birth: The Portal became organised around meta-themes of:
Sex
Community
Metaphysics
I think there are several advantages to having meta-themes that take the form of a triad or trinity which can then be repeated with sub-themes that allow us to explore their different dimensions.5 So, so far the structure of The Portal looks like this:
Sex (Libido, Jouissance)
Community (Communism, Home/Origin)
Metaphysics (Sacred, Self-Reference)
And I am confident that this triad can hold differentiation throughout 2024 and hopefully also beyond. The idea is that, if we are to really think through the dimensions that allow us to sublate capital for technosocialism, we will need to ourselves be a network of individuals that are capable of thinking Sex, Community, and Metaphysics. These dimensions are not going anywhere, and usually lead to all the problems that cause the dissolution of higher order structures.
I think there is a special but vulnerable seed here at Philosophy Portal with The Portal. Moreover, those who have been engaged concretely with Philosophy Portal over the last 2.5 years know there is something special here. There are more than one germinating “communities of thought”, and so what is actual has become like a loosely connected network of distributed cognition. Moreover, this network is both virtual and physical. Thus there is the real potential to “find the others” in a way that does not coalesce into an institutional identity, but rather takes the form of a re-invented “Holy Spirit”. This “Holy Spirit” is not found in the direct identification with Christianity or Christ, but is itself actual beyond such presuppositional identities, birthed in the truth, goodness, and beauty of the concept.
In moving out of my doctorate, my slogan was often “Die again, die better!”. This slogan both captures the necessity of death as an absolute negativity, but also its positive potential as metaphor to help one die into one-self in a way that leads to a different type or quality of being.6
I think that quality of being is Philosophy Portal. And so since the birth Philosophy Portal, my slogan has moved towards “patience of the concept”, which I find to capture the necessity of building slowly, and with a consistent discipline that might allow for magic to become real.7
Combined: “die again, die better” and “patience of the concept” reflects becoming a “midwife of the concept”. Something is being born.
And so if you are looking to “find the others”, if you also recognise the need to think through the dimensions of sex, community, and metaphysics that might allow for the sublation of capital towards technosocialism, join us at The Portal.
This month at The Portal we will be focused on the metaphysics of self-reference, or self-reference as metaphysics. We will be inviting guests
of , Greg Dember of What Is Metamodernism?, and of . To learn more or to get involved, see: The Portal.See: Sex, Masculinity, God.
I think this logic allows the space to maintain its “Hegelian” dimensions, with Sex = Being, Community = Essence, and Metaphysics = Concept. I think this logic also allows us to avoid falling into the problems of “cheap Deleuze” in the sense of becoming a rhizomatic multiplicity of concepts without a clear direction or telos.
See: Zupančič, A. 2017. What Is Sex? MIT Press. p. 106.
See: Žižek, S. 2011. Less Than Nothing. Verso. p. 508.
Excellent Cadell, and it's been an amazing ride: the Events have been outstanding! Very much looking forward to what the future holds.