Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics 9780367418199, 9780367816940

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Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism

This volume brings together an international array of scholars to ­reconsider the meaning and place of poststructuralism historically and demonstrate some of the ways in which it continues to be relevant, ­especially for debates in aesthetics, ethics, and politics. The book’s chapters focus on the works of Butler, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard—in combination with ­ those of Agamben, Bartes, Luhman, and Nietzsche—and examine issues including biopolitics, culture, embodiment, epistemology, history, music, temporality, political resistance, psychoanalysis, revolt, and the visual arts. The contributors use poststructuralism as a hermeneutical strategy that rejects the traditional affirmation of unity, totality, transparency, and representation to instead focus on the foundational importance of open-ended becoming, difference, the unknowable, and expression. This approach allows for a more expansive definition of poststructuralism and helps demonstrate how it has contributed to debates across philosophy and other disciplines. Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism will be of particular interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, aesthetics, feminist theory, cultural studies, intellectual history, psychoanalysis, and sociology. Gavin Rae is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He is the author of six monographs, the most recent of which are Poststructuralist Agency (2020); Critiquing Sovereign Violence (2019); and Evil in the Western Philosophical Tradition (2019), published by Edinburgh University Press; and the co-editor (with Emma Ingala) of The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (2019) and Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (2018), published by Routledge. Emma Ingala is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain. She specializes in poststructuralist thought, political anthropology, feminism, and psychoanalysis, and is the co-editor (with Gavin Rae) of The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (2019) and Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (2018), both published by Routledge.

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics

Edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-41819-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-81694-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii



PART I

Historical Traces

13

1 Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism

15

A L A N D. S C H R I F T

2 Poststructuralism in America: From Epistemological Relativism to Post-Truth?

35

K E V I N K E N N E DY

3 From Choirboy to Funeral Orator: Foucault’s Complicated Relationship to Structuralism

53

GUILEL TREIBER

4 Haunted by Derrida: Reading Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ in Constellation

77

J A M E S R . M A RT E L

PART II

Future Pathways: Aesthetics

97

5 A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts

99

A S H L E Y WO O DWA R D

vi Contents 6 What Moves Music?: Poststructuralism, Pulsion, and Musical Ontology

119

M I C H A E L DAV I D S Z É K E LY

PART III

Ethical Openings

141

7 Not Just a Body: Lacan on Corporeality

143

EM M A I NGALA

8 The Ethics and Politics of Temporality: Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity

160

RO S I N E K E L Z

PART IV

Political Apertures

181

9 Re-thinking Poststructuralism with Deleuze and Luhmann: Autopoiesis, Immanence, Politics

183

H A N NA H R ICH T ER

10 Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt

204

S . K . K E LT N E R

11 Strategies of Political Resistance: Agamben and Irigaray

223

G AV I N R A E

Notes on Contributors Bibliography Index

247 251 277

Acknowledgments

The production of an edited collection, more so than any other publication, is the consequence of extensive collective effort. This obviously involves the authors included, but also extends to others. To this end, the editors would like to thank all those who participated in the international conference ‘Poststructuralism: Past, Present, Future,’ held in March 2019 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain, at which a number of the chapters included here—albeit in earlier, much reduced form—were first presented. We would also like to thank the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at UCM for its willingness to host the event. At Routledge, we once again thank our editor, Andrew Weckenmann, and his assistant, Alexandra Simmons, for their support and professionalism throughout the process, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Finally, this volume forms part of the activities for the following research projects: (1) ‘Human Nature and Community IV’ (FFI2017–83155-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry for Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness; and (2) ‘Sovereignty and Law: Between Ethics and Politics,’ co-funded by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under Grant Agreement 600371, The Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitivity (COFUND2013–40258), The Spanish Ministry for Education, Culture, and Sport (CEI–15–17), and Banco Santander. More information about this research project can be found at: https://sovereigntyandlaw.wordpress.com/. ­

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Introduction Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala

In the 1960s, French academic discourse witnessed an avalanche of theoretical innovations that fundamentally altered the parameters of Western philosophy. Texts including Michel Foucault’s The Order of  Things1 (from 1966), Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology, 2 Voice and Phenomenon, 3 and Writing and Difference,4 published in 1967, and Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition5 (published in 1968) exhibited and brought to the fore something of this spirit when they challenged the then dominant structuralist paradigm. Although not proposing a common program or, indeed, offering a homogeneous position, these authors undertook something of an internal critique of the premises of Saussurean and Levi-Straussian-inspired structuralism to, on the one hand, accept aspects of the structuralist approach— namely, but not exclusively, its critique of the foundational Cartesian rational subject and the onto-genetic importance given to differential structural relations— all the while, on the other hand, criticizing its implicit dependence on differential relational symmetry, closure, and ahistoricity. The result was a philosophical approach that challenged not only aspects of the structuralist paradigm, but also the fundamental importance traditionally given to substance, identity, closure, and totality, as a precursor to affirming the originary status of difference, asymmetry, aporias, and open-ended becoming. Although there is substantial debate over its relationship to ‘structuralism,’ these alterations gave rise, especially in Anglo-A merican academia, to the notion of ‘poststructuralism.’6 This term is, however, somewhat problematic, not only because a number of those to whom the label has been attributed have raised doubts about it,7 but also because it contains an inherent ambiguity, insofar as it is unclear whether ‘poststructuralism’ should be understood in a weak sense to delineate any theoretical position that comes temporally after ‘structuralism’ or in a strong conceptual sense as identifying a particular ‘school’ of thought with an agreed upon philosophical program. The problem with the weak version is that it is simply too indeterminate, whereas the latter is questionable because it is not clear that the heterogeneous positions of the various thinkers it is supposed to describe can actually be reduced to a single, common perspective.

2  Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala For these reasons, this volume uses the terms ‘poststructuralism’ and ‘poststructuralist’ as hermeneutical strategies to bring together a disparate and heterogeneous collection of thinkers who, in the words of Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, share ‘not, strictly speaking, a position, but rather a critical interrogation of the exclusionary operations by which “positions” are established.’8 More specifically, we suggest that their heterogeneous investigations are premised on a similar style of thinking that rejects the traditional affirmation of substance, unity, totality, transparency, and representation, to focus instead on the ‘foundational’ importance of open-ended becoming, difference, the unknowable, and expression. This hermeneutical approach allows us to (1) account for and use the notion of ‘poststructuralism’—one that is by now well-established in the Anglo-American philosophical scene— without having to undertake the problematic task of identifying a definitive project common to disparate thinkers, (2) expand the number of figures that can be associated with ‘poststructuralism’ beyond the Deleuze–Derrida– Foucault axis so often taken to define ‘poststructuralism,’ and (3) explain why ‘poststructuralist’ thought has contributed substantially to debates throughout the humanities and social sciences, including in aesthetics, animal studies, critical race studies, cultural studies, discourse analysis, environmental studies, feminism, ideology studies, law, literature, philosophy, politics, post- colonial theory, queer theory, religious studies, sexuality studies, and social theory. The immediate success of the poststructuralist style of thinking was however just as quickly met with significant and substantial resistance and critique. Institutionally, this found its most famous expression in the ‘Cambridge Affair,’ from 1992, in which a group of analytic philosophers petitioned against awarding Jacques Derrida with an honorary degree because his work was not held to adhere to ‘accepted standards of clarity and rigour’9 and ‘employ[s] a written style that defies comprehension’10 or makes claims that ‘are either false or trivial.’11 Derrida was awarded the degree anyway, but it is not a stretch to say that such a judgment about Derrida specifically and poststructuralist thought more generally is one that is often shared by those trained in and favorably disposed to so- called analytic philosophy.12 Poststructuralist thought has, however, also been subject to substantial criticism from those sympathetic to ‘continental’ philosophy, mainly due to its perceived lack of political efficacy. Critical theorists, such as Jürgen Habermas13 and Axel Honneth,14 have long questioned the political agency permitted by the poststructuralist decentering of the foundational subject, while others, such as Amy Allen15 and Lois McNay,16 have undertaken extensive critiques of various poststructuralist figures and positions, including on embodiment and agency, to reject the form of politics understood to be permitted by poststructuralism. Similarly, and despite the substantial impact that Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous,

Introduction  3 Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva had on the development of feminist theory, the 1980s and early 1990s saw a certain strand of feminist theory reject the decentering of the subject inherent in poststructuralist positions, claiming that it not only removes any possibility to analyze the fundamentally important role that sexuality plays in the constitution of human being, but is also unable to offer political strategies to fight the sexualized power differentials and relationships of domination that sustain the West’s dependence on the logic of patriarchy.17 This negative assessment continues in much contemporary theory, which, in some respects, is both more totalizing and intense in its rejection of poststructuralist thought, insofar as poststructuralism’s transformation from a revolutionary new upstart to an established part of the philosophical canon (at least in continental philosophy) allows other forms of critique to portray ‘poststructuralism’ as the problem to be overcome, and their own position as that to resolve the issue. Arguably, this lies behind the proliferation of post-poststructuralist positions that mark contemporary theory, where proponents of ‘posthumanism,’18 ‘post21 critique,’19 ‘post- continental philosophy,’20 ‘post-foundationalism,’ ­ 22 23 24 ‘non-philosophy,’ ­ ‘speculative realism,’ and the ‘new materialisms’ have suggested, albeit for different ends, that poststructuralist thought is fundamentally flawed and so must be put to death so that theory can move beyond its perceived limitations. 25 The problem, however, is that this conclusion and the demand(s) emanating from it are more often than not based on highly reductionist readings of the individual figures engaged with, a unified notion of ‘poststructuralism’ generally, 26 or some undefined homogeneous straw (wo)man position that is simply called ‘poststructuralist’ without appeal to any textual supporting evidence. 27 It is at this point that the rationale for this volume arises, insofar as it aims to call into question and, by extension, respond to this contemporary trend by (1) engaging with a reconsideration of how ‘poststructuralism’ arose to reconsider what ‘it’ might be, before (2) showing that, far from being dead, passé, or irrelevant, poststructuralist theory continues to have much to contribute to contemporary debates, especially, but not exclusively, those taking place in aesthetics, ethics, and politics.

The Structure of the Book To do so, the volume is split across four parts: Part I, titled ‘Historical Traces’ and composed of four chapters, is guided by the contention that thinking is historically and culturally embedded so that prior to identifying whether and how poststructuralist theory can contribute to future debates, it is necessary to reconsider how past theory contributed to its emergence. In Chapter 1, Alan Schrift engages with the question of the  conditions that gave rise to the emergence of poststructuralism to argue against the commonly held view that the French attention to

4  Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala Nietzsche in the 1960s was a response to the publication of Heidegger’s Nietzsche lectures in 1961. Instead he holds that it was in fact Nietzsche’s appearances on the reading list for the agrégation de philosophie—the ­ competitive examination that credentials those who pass to teach in French lycées and universities— that accounts for the philosophical attention paid to Nietzsche from 1958 through to the end of the 1970s. First showing how the agrégation functions within French academic culture, and the influence it has on both the teaching and publishing activities of the professoriat, Schrift analyzes the rise in interest in Nietzsche’s work among philosophers beginning in the late 1950s as a consequence of this examination, before concluding by studying the effects of the agrégation specifically on the career of Gilles Deleuze, focusing in particular on his 1962 text Nietzsche and Philosophy 28 to claim that it is in this text that we find the initial expression of the poststructuralist philosophy of difference as an alternative to Hegelian dialectics. In Chapter 2, Kevin Kennedy continues to engage with the question of the emergence of ‘poststructuralism’ by turning to the issue of the cultural dynamics that led to the creation of the label. Specifically, Kennedy suggests that, rather than being a French phenomenon, ‘poststructuralism’ is a uniquely American construct. To develop this premise, Kennedy discusses the epistemological assumptions underpinning the writings of some of the main thinkers associated with poststructuralism— most notably Foucault and Derrida— to establish whether it is even possible to speak of a coherent, unified poststructuralist epistemology, or whether the latter only emerged as a result of the reception and transformation of poststructuralism by its American acolytes (such as J. Hillis Miller, Stanley Fish, Richard Rorty, and Frederic Jameson). In so doing, Kennedy aims to first determine if and to what extent this particular brand of ‘American poststructuralism’ and its zealous embrace of the ‘suspicion of reason’ misappropriated the ideas of their French forerunners, before going on to examine whether and how this misappropriation may have helped to undermine the notion of truth in American intellectual discourse, manifested most clearly in the contemporary notion of ‘post-truth.’ From this, Kennedy ascertains the usefulness of a poststructuralist notion of truth— understood to be historically contingent, determined by the vicissitudes of language, and non-representational—for contemporary epistemological debates and public discourse in general. In Chapter 3, Guilel Treiber turns from discussing the emergence of ‘poststructuralism’ per se to a more specific encounter with the question of the relationship between ‘structuralism’ and ‘poststructuralism’ in the work of Michel Foucault. While noting that most contemporary interpreters of Foucault agree that his relationship to structuralism is significant, Treiber claims that it is usually treated as a reflection of the intellectual Zeitgeist of post-war France. For example, in interviews given around the publication of The Order of Things (1966), Foucault

Introduction  5 defines himself as ‘the choir boy of structuralism’29 and describes its importance in increasing the scientific status of the humanities. The question motivating Treiber’s chapter is how Foucault went from being the choir boy of structuralism in 1966 to subsequently claiming that he had nothing to do with structuralism. 30 Treiber responds that it was Foucault’s experience of the events of Tunis ’68 that contributed to this alteration, with Foucault’s increased political engagement in the following years rendering difficult his relations with the ‘neutral’ structuralism of figures such as Claude Lévi- Strauss and Jacques Lacan. Moreover, Treiber maintains that it is Foucault’s methodological commitment to his newly formulated idiosyncratic concept of struggle that led him to a complicated relationship with both structuralism and Marxism. To outline this, Treiber focuses on Foucault’s relationship to Althusser to show that the concept of struggle as a localized, corporeal, constantly changing form of social relation blocks both structural and Marxist analyzes as Althusser practiced them and leads Foucault to a critical appropriation of both. With this, Treiber contributes to our understanding of the relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, Foucault’s relationship to Althusser, and points to the political implications of poststructuralist thinking; an issue that anticipates the chapters contained in Part IV. In Chapter 4, James Martel continues to engage with the history of poststructuralist thought by using Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology to understand the way(s) in which Derrida’s work both precedes and succeeds him. Using Borges’s reading of Kafka and his precursors as a guide, Martel thinks about the way that Derrida’s work haunts those who come before him and further how he haunts those of us who come after him even as what he inaugurates remains ‘yet to come.’ More specifically, Martel examines how Benjamin and Derrida can be said to exist in constellation with one another so that each, in effect, precedes and anticipates the other. In looking at the ways in which Benjamin can be said to haunt Derrida and Derrida can, in turn, be said to haunt Benjamin, Martel claims that we can see how authors can have effects on one another even if they do not exist in a strictly teleological temporal order. Insofar as both thinkers make claims about how to radically rethink time and the kinds of orderings that it produces, he claims that it is especially relevant to see what happens to the ways in which we read their essays when they are treated in a non-synchronous fashion. By showing how Derridean deconstruction continues to haunt contemporary thinking, Martel bridges the movement from the historical antecedents of poststructuralist thought to its future potential applications and so facilitates that movement in this volume, while his discussion of ‘time’ and ‘democracy’ anticipates and links to a number of later chapters (specifically Chapters 8–11), where these discussions are taken up in relation to other poststructuralist thinkers.

6  Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala This perspective on the future pathways opened up by poststructuralist theory articulates the three remaining parts of the volume. Part II, titled ‘Future Pathways: Aesthetics,’ is composed of two chapters that focus on the ways in which poststructuralist thought can contribute to aesthetic theory. In Chapter 5, Ashley Woodward asks how should we understand the significance of poststructuralism for visual arts theory and assess its legacy. Woodward responds that, although he has been largely overlooked in Anglo-American debates, Jean-François Lyotard was the most significant poststructuralist to engage with the visual arts. Although some of Lyotard’s aesthetic ideas are widely known, Woodward claims that most of his vast writings on the arts have gone unread for those working in the relevant fields today, while, when they are engaged with, they are often wrongly read in terms of a generalized textualist account of poststructuralism or postmodernism, which focuses on language, signs, and cultural meanings. In contrast, Woodward argues that Lyotard favors a ‘logic’ specific to the visual, which he calls ‘presence.’ To outline this, Lyotard takes an encounter with the visual artwork as the paradigm ‘other’ with which to critique and reconfigure philosophy and theory, much as Derrida does with literature. From this, Woodward charts the Anglo-American reception of Lyotard’s work, which largely obscured its aesthetic dimension, and outlines the distinctiveness of his poststructuralist approach to the visual arts by contrasting it with Derrida’s. Woodard concludes that Lyotard’s ‘presence’ may be understood as a distinctive quasi-transcendental notion of difference which differs from Derrida’s différance, and which is more appropriate to the visual. This rethinking of aesthetic theory from the perspective of poststructuralism continues in Chapter 6 where Michael Székely shifts from the visual arts to music to respond to the question ‘what moves music?’ To do so, he focuses on the rhythm inherent in music to argue that this is premised on the notion of pulsion. While connected to more conventional musical elements, such as rhythm, beat, accent, etc. (but less so with meter), Székely argues that pulsion seems to both encompass and push beyond these elements. More specifically, pulsion is held to be exemplary of what Roland Barthes offers as a second semiology: literally and figuratively the driving force behind a musica practica that is, at once, linear and non-linear, signifying and a-signifying, and corporeal and incorporeal. To outline this, Székely appeals to the work of Barthes and Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guattari), who he holds to be crucial in­ terlocutors that compel us to think through music as a-signification (in a sense, targeting the limits of a ‘structuralism’ that persists in much of what is called ‘poststructuralism’), before going on to tie his argument to the ‘new materialism’ of Elizabeth Grosz’s aesthetico-biological project and Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking on the ways in which the body returns to itself at the intersection of sense and resonance. Székely’s overall point is that in its non-discursivity, music resists meaning— or, at the very least,

Introduction  7 the arrival of meaning—while being paradoxically also inextricably linked to the birth of all meaning and all utterance, and it is poststructuralist thought that best allows us to grasp this paradox. Part III, titled ‘Ethical Openings,’ continues to affirm the importance of poststructuralist thought to contemporary theory by examining its (potential) contributions to ethics. To do so, Emma Ingala (Chapter 7) takes up the question of embodiment, which she argues has been a fraught one for the critical reception of poststructuralism generally, in the thinking of Jacques Lacan. Although Ingala notes that it has long been common-place to accuse Lacan of a certain linguisticism and/or social constructivism that ignores, or at least downplays, the materiality of the corporeal, she argues that Lacan actually develops a complex and multilayered conception of the body that occupies a central position throughout his writings. Importantly, however, Ingala maintains that the body, for Lacan, is never a natural given that language overwrites nor is it actually ever ‘a’ body; that is, a single, discrete—natural or cultural— thing or organism. Rather, she highlights that Lacan points to, at least, three different but ultimately related conceptions of the body: (1) the imaginary body that results from the mirror stage and whose image operates as the support for the identity of the individual; (2) the symbolic body that is marked and particularized by signifiers and which can therefore be conceptualized and spoken about; and (3) the real body, which is the body that cannot be imagined nor apprehended symbolically and which is traversed by drives. Ingala concludes that, with this, Lacan actually develops a highly original conception of ‘the’ body as a relational field constituted by multiple elements and dimensions— such as language, material resources, biological and physiological processes, environmental conditions, social relations, or imaginary ideals— that do not pre- exist their entanglement but rather result from it. In Chapter 8, Rosine Kelz continues to examine poststructuralist accounts of the body by combining it with a questioning of temporality, a topic that she maintains has played a central role in poststructuralist thought, where the human experience of living in time has been understood to have profound ethical and political consequences. Kelz approaches this issue via Judith Butler’s discussion of the role that accounting for one’s personal past plays in moral philosophy. She compares Butler’s understanding of selfhood, where the past constitutes the self but remains only partially knowable and aporetic, with approaches by ‘narrativity’ theorists, who argue that a cohesive narrative of the past is central to the notion of agency. While agreeing with Butler’s argument that one’s relationship to one’s own past does not need to take the form of a cohesive narrative, Kelz argues that her account could benefit from a closer engagement with phenomenological notions of time-experience and so draws on the work of Thomas Fuchs and Denise Riley to show how these authors and Butler have engaged with notions of trauma and

8  Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala mourning as occasions of an altered living-in-time. Kelz then turns to a broader notion of trauma as an experience of interruption, which allows for a reorientation of the role of trauma, where the self is not only bound to the past, but also open to the future. Part IV, titled ‘Political Apertures,’ is composed of three chapters that explore the political possibilities inherent in poststructuralist thought. In Chapter 9, Hannah Richter explores the theoretical intersection between Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy as an avenue for poststructuralist political thought. Against the predominant reception of Luhmann’s thought as being analytically positivist and politically conservative, Richter highlights the potential of Luhmann’s work as a critical theory. Linking Deleuze’s and Luhmann’s theories of sense, Richter first develops an immanent perspective on onto-genetic creativity that argues that, for both theorists, sense- expression is ungrounded but self-grounding. In sense, material and epistemic singularities are always already interlinked so that neither can be assumed to hold constitutive primacy. She goes on to use Luhmann’s political sociology in conjunction with Deleuze and Guattari’s work to sketch out a poststructuralist theory regarding the functioning of democratic politics in contemporary capitalist societies. Her overall point is that Luhmann shows how, under the conditions of general functional differentiation, which mirror Deleuze and Guattari’s account of capitalism, politics functions autopoietically and reproduces itself through providing orientation in sense. Because established sense structures condition how creative change can take place, Richter argues that both Deleuze and Luhmann point to the conclusion that, far from being individual or idealistic, the generation of sense is inherently political, material, and socially embedded. With this, she exposes the similarities between Deleuzian poststructuralist thought and aspects of Luhmann’s systems theory, all the while showing that such similarities offer an innovative account of the nexus between democracy and capitalism. The next two chapters build on this to not only develop provocative and critical descriptions of contemporary politics, but also offer different prescriptions— thereby re-affirming the heterogeneity inherent in ‘the’ poststructuralist style of thinking—regarding future political action. In Chapter 10, Stacy Keltner turns to Julia Kristeva’s political work on revolt to argue that it is a constant theme in her work. Keltner points out that Kristeva’s first sustained attention to revolt in Revolution in Poetic Language31 focuses primarily on the modern political concept of revolt—more specifically, the role of modern art in social and historical change. Following Revolution in Poetic Language, however, Kristeva turns her attention to intimate revolt or the psychic life of meaning. Drawing primarily on psychoanalysis, art, and the personal trials of individuals, Kristeva examines revolt as a turning away or retreat from what she calls, following Guy Debord, the society of the spectacle. Revolt, for Kristeva, is a turning back or return to interiority, affectivity,

Introduction  9 and the past in a quest for meaning. Thus, against the revolutionary’s emphasis on the future, Kristeva insists on a grappling with the past. According to Kristeva, the future depends on the creation of a new culture of revolt, and she identifies its possibilities in the transformative work of exemplary figures— the revolt of the writer, the artist, her patients, female geniuses, wanderers, strangers, foreigners, women, Jews. With this, Keltner points to the complexity and innovation of Kristeva’s concept of revolt in order to demonstrate its continuing relevance for social and political theory and practice. In Chapter 11, Gavin Rae analyzes the relationship between poststructuralist feminist theory and contemporary biopolitical theory by bringing together the thinking of Giorgio Agamben and Luce Irigaray to argue that there are important overlaps between them, especially in relation to the question of political resistance. To develop this, Rae first outlines Agamben’s claim that Western juridical-political systems are structured around a binary inclusion/exclusion opposition that is used to regulate life (zoē) itself. On first glance, Irigaray’s critique of the West’s phallogocentrism appears to have little to do with Agamben’s project, but Rae argues that Irigaray’s critique actually shares a number of its logical presuppositions, insofar as Irigaray maintains that Western thinking on sexual difference has been structured around a binary opposition wherein ‘woman’ is devalued and excluded from (masculine-defined) law, with this permitting the phallogocentric regime to better regulate her life. Rae subsequently moves beyond this to examine their respective political strategies to overcome these exclusions, focusing on Agamben’s utilization of the Aristotlean conception of ‘potentiality’ to develop the notions of ‘impotentiality,’ ‘inoperativity,’ and ‘destituent power’ that deactivate the biopolitical machine to subsequent permit a space to re-conceive the coming politics; and Irigaray’s early work on the political importance of mimicry and laughter that jam the theoretical machinery sustaining phallogocentrism to allow a rethinking of sexual difference in nonphallogocentric terms. Rae concludes that what arises from bringing biopolitical theory and poststructuralist feminist theory together through these two figures is a call for a new form of political resistance and politics where, rather than simply affirming an alternative model, end, or norm to govern politics— a move that simply re-instantiates the reigning regime of politics based around conflict and domination—the dominant logic is deactivated and a space is opened to permit the on-going exploration and expression of distinct political logics and positions.

Notes ­

10  Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala 3 Jacques Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problems of Signs in Husserl’s Phenomenology, trans. Leonard Lawler (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011). This is a translation of La Voix et le Phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), the first English translation of which was completed by David B. Allison under the title Speech and Phenomena (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973). ­





Introduction  11 (2) John Searle’s critique of Derrida (‘Reiterating the Différences: A Reply to Derrida,’ in Glyph 2 [Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977], pp.  198–208), which is a response to Derrida’s critique—found in ‘Signature Event Context’ in Limited Inc. trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 1–23— of J. L. Austin’s Speech Act theory. In turn, Searle’s critique generated a scathing response from Derrida in the essay ‘Limited Inc. abc,’ (in Limited Inc., pp. 29–110). For a discussion of this ‘debate,’ see Raoul Moati, Derrida/Searle: Deconstruction of Ordinary Language, trans. Timothy Attanucci and Maureen Chun (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). This is obviously not to say that all analytic philosophers are dismissive of poststructuralism/Derrida’s thinking. For a discussion that aims to bring them fruitfully together, see Samuel C. Wheeler, Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).





20 John Mullarkey, Post-Continental ­ Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2006). 22 François Laruelle, Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy, ­ trans. Rocco Gangle (London: Continuum, 2010).

12  Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala

28 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).



Part I

Historical Traces

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

1

Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism Alan D. Schrift

In the 1960s, a philosophical revolution took place in France that would change the course of French philosophy for the remainder of the twentieth century: in 1966, Michel Foucault published The Order of Things1; in October of that same year, Jacques Derrida presented ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’2 at an important conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins University that, for all practical purposes, marked the beginning of the end of structuralism’s reign as the dominant intellectual paradigm in France; the following year, Derrida published Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Voice and Phenomenon3; and the year after that, Gilles Deleuze published Difference and Repetition 4 and Spinoza and the Problem of Expression5 —his two doctoral theses—followed in 1969 by his next major work, The Logic of Sense.6 What these events announce is, among other things, the French philosophical turn away from phenomenology’s three Hs— Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger—and toward what Paul Ricoeur first called the masters of suspicion— Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx.7 What these events also announce is a desire to move beyond the hegemony of structuralism in the late 1950s and early 1960s by means of the affirmation of a new style of philosophical thinking that would set the philosophical agenda in France and beyond for the remainder of the century in terms of what we, outside France, refer to as ‘French poststructuralism.’ Though perhaps not so obviously, these events also direct our attention to the centrality of Nietzsche’s thought in the emergence of poststructuralism. Returning to those foundational events in poststructuralist French philosophy mentioned above, Nietzsche’s philosophical importance for this emergence becomes apparent when one attends to the way Foucault situates Nietzsche in opposition to Kant in The Order of Things,8 Derrida situates Nietzsche in opposition to Lévi-Strauss in ‘Structure, Sign, and Play,’ and Deleuze situates Nietzsche in opposition to Hegel in any number of his works.9 Nietzsche was not, of course, first ‘discovered’ by the French in the 1960s, as there was considerable interest in his thought early in the twentieth century.10 But this earlier interest was located primarily outside the university, especially at the

16  Alan D. Schrift the Sorbonne/University of most prestigious of French universities—­ Paris—­and, when in the university, outside the faculty in philosophy. To cite just one example, in the 1902–1903 academic year, Professor of German Literature Henri Lichtenberger taught the Sorbonne’s one full-­ year course in the German Department on Nietzsche; it would, however, not be for almost 60 years that a philosopher—­Jean Wahl—­would offer, in January–March 1959, an entire lecture course devoted exclusively to Nietzsche in the Sorbonne’s Department of Philosophy.11

Nietzsche in the Works of Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze Although Nietzsche’s works had been almost completely ignored by the French philosophical establishment, this changed in the 1960s, as we can see by looking in more detail at the works by Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze mentioned above. Foucault’s interest in Nietzsche began long before his genealogical works of the 1970s.12 When asked in 1983 about his relationship to Nietzsche, he responded that like many others, he was drawn to Nietzsche because he ‘wanted a way out of phenomenology.’13 He read Nietzsche, ‘curious as it may seem, from the perspective of an inquiry into the history of knowledge—­the history of reason.’14 Reading Nietzsche, he continues, was ‘the point of rupture’15 for him insofar as ­Nietzsche showed that ‘There is a history of the subject just as there is a history of reason; but we can never demand that the history of reason unfold as a first and founding act of the rationalist subject.’16 Nietzsche showed, in other words, the way beyond the phenomenological, t­ranshistorical subject, a subject that, in his ‘Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology’ and The Order of Things, Foucault traces back to Kant. ‘The Order of Things asked the price of problematizing and analyzing the speaking subject, the working subject, the living subject.’17 And it was Nietzsche, according to Foucault, who was the first willing to pay this price: Perhaps we should see the first attempt at this uprooting of ­ nthropology—­ A to which, no doubt, contemporary thought is ­dedicated—­in the Nietzschean experience: by means of a philological critique, by means of a certain form of biologism, Nietzsche rediscovered the point at which man and God belong to one another, at which the death of the second is synonymous with the disappearance of the first, and at which the promise of the superman signifies first and foremost the ­imminence of the death of man.18 This passage follows by one page a reference to Kant’s formulation in his Logic (first published in 1800) of anthropology—­which asks the question ‘What is Man?’—as the foundation of philosophy. Remembering that for Foucault, it was Nietzsche who showed that there is a ‘history of the subject,’ when Foucault speaks of the ‘disappearance’19 or the ‘death of man,’20 he is not putting forward some kind of antihumanism.

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  17 Instead ‘man’ names a certain conceptual determination of human being that comes to be the privileged object of Kantian philosophical ­anthropology. 21 Only by understanding Foucault’s talk of ‘man’ as designating a foundational concept of Kantian anthropology can we make sense of his provocative claim that ‘man is a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old.’22 While ‘man’ has been privileged in the discourse of the human sciences since Kant, and continues to operate as the transcendental subject of phenomenology, Foucault locates the beginning of this end of man in Nietzsche’s doctrines of the Übermensch and eternal return, as we see in his final reference to Nietzsche in The Order of Things, where he couples Nietzsche’s death of God with the death of man: Rather than the death of God—­or, rather, in the wake of that death and in profound correlation with it—­what Nietzsche’s thought heralds is the end of his murderer; … it is the identity of the Return of the Same with the absolute dispersion of man. 23 Nietzsche’s importance in The Order of Things is not restricted to his showing the way beyond Kantian anthropology. In addition, it is ‘Nietzsche the philologist’ who is credited with being the first to connect ‘the philosophical task with a radical reflection upon language.’24 This is why, in The Order of Things, Nietzsche figures prominently as the precursor of the episteme of the twentieth century, the episteme that erupted with the question of language as ‘an enigmatic multiplicity that must be mastered.’25 For Foucault, it was Nietzsche, in other words, who recognized that a culture’s metaphysics could be traced back to the rules of its grammar, and who recognized that it is merely a linguistic prejudice that leads to the metaphysical error of adding a doer to the deed. 26 Whether it be the structuralists, who all based their theories on the view of language as a system of differences, or Heidegger, who saw language as the house of being, we can understand why Foucault could regard the question of language as the single most important question confronting the contemporary episteme. And insofar as Nietzsche viewed our metaphysical assumptions to be a function of our linguistic rules (grammar was, as he wrote in The Gay Science, ‘the metaphysics of the people’27), we can understand why Foucault traces the roots of the contemporary episteme back to Nietzsche. Turning to Derrida, in Of Grammatology he credits Nietzsche with radicalizing ‘the concepts of interpretation, perspective, evaluation, difference’28 and, in so doing, contributing ‘a great deal to the liberation of the signifier from its dependence or derivation with respect to the logos and the related concept of truth or the primary signified, in whatever sense that is understood.’29 It is his radicalization of perspective, evaluation, difference, and especially interpretation that motivates Derrida to position Nietzsche as the alternative to Lévi-­Strauss in  ‘Structure,

18  Alan D. Schrift Strauss Sign,  and Play.’ There Derrida shows several ways that Lévi-­ seeks to undermine and decenter a classical philosophical opposition—­a structure—­only to end up recentering that opposition/structure by appealing to the necessity of a center that he knows is not there. For example, Derrida examines Lévi-­Strauss’s retention of the opposition between nature and culture as a conceptual tool whose use is methodologically necessary even as its truth value is negated. This opposition, which predates Plato in the form of the physis/nomos opposition, is not just one opposition among others. Instead, all anthropological theorizing and data acquisition turn on the opposition of nature/culture. ­According to Derrida, in Lévi-­Strauss’s first book, The Elementary Structures of Kinship,30 he begins by defining nature as that which is universal, spontaneous, and independent of any particular culture, while culture is what depends on a system of norms that regulate society and can and does vary from one social structure to another.31 But shortly after affirming this opposition, Lévi-­Strauss discovers a ‘scandal’32 within this framework: the incest prohibition, which is universal while being at the same time a norm, which is to say that it is both natural and cultural. While the incest prohibition should make it impossible for Lévi-­Strauss to accept the nature/culture opposition, the opening page of Elementary Structures makes it clear that he has no intention of giving up this opposition insofar as it is central to—­in fact it is the center of—­the project of structural anthropology: Above all, it is beginning to emerge that this distinction between nature and society (Lévi-­Strauss’s note: ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ seem preferable to us today), while of no acceptable historical significance, does contain a logic, fully justifying its use by modern sociology as a methodological tool.33 Derrida concludes his essay by distinguishing two interpretations of the play of the center, one—­the one Lévi-­Strauss adopts—­that he calls Rousseauistic, and the other that he calls Nietzschean. Rousseauistic interpretation experiences the non-­center as a loss of center and it laments the impossible task that it pursues of locating the presence of the absent origin. It dreams, in other words, of deciphering a truth or an origin that can escape play. This structuralist thematic of broken immediacy is therefore the saddened, negative, nostalgic, guilty Rousseauistic side of the thinking of play whose other side would be the Nietzschean affirmation, that is, joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation.34 Nietzschean play affirms ‘the non-­center other than as the loss of the center.’35 While Rousseauistic play lives the necessity of interpretation

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  19 as an exile, Nietzschean play affirms the free play of interpretation that accompanies the absence of the center no longer viewed as a loss or a lack but as an invitation to enter into the play and create the new. Turning finally to Deleuze’s positioning of Nietzsche as the foundation of his critique of Hegel in the preface to Difference and Repetition (published in 1968), Deleuze says that this work reflects the ‘generalized anti-­Hegelianism’36 of the time in which ‘difference and repetition have taken the place of the identical and the negative, of identity and contradiction.’37 But Deleuze’s confrontation with Hegel and Hegelianism began long before this, insofar as it is a central theme of his 1962 book Nietzsche et la philosophie, where he appeals to the concept of difference to, among other things, show how Nietzsche departs from and opposes the Hegelian tradition. ‘We must,’ Deleuze writes early in the text, ‘take seriously the resolutely anti-­dialectical character of Nietzsche’s philosophy … Anti-­Hegelianism runs through Nietzsche’s work as its cutting edge.’38 Nietzsche’s notion of will to power is, for Deleuze, a theory of forces in which the superior force does not oppose or contradict its other but affirms its difference from its other. Nietzsche thus substitutes difference for the Hegelian ‘speculative element of negation, opposition or contradiction.’39 Hegel’s will wants to be recognized, which means for Deleuze that Hegel’s will is the will of Nietzsche’s slave. What Nietzsche’s healthy will wants is to affirm its difference and enjoy this difference. ‘Nietzsche’s “yes” is opposed to the dialectical “no”; affirmation to dialectical negation; difference to dialectical contradiction; joy, enjoyment, to dialectical labor [the “labor of the negative”]; lightness, dance, to dialectical responsibilities.’ 40 Deleuze revisits the thematics of Nietzsche’s anti-­ dialectical anti-­ Hegelian stance throughout the text, noting along the way that Nietz­ sche’s bad conscience is offered as an alternative to Hegel’s unhappy consciousness41 which, following Jean Wahl, Deleuze claims ‘is the subject of the whole dialectic.’ 42 And he returns to emphasize this theme in the book’s short conclusion, where he writes that ‘there is no possible compromise between Nietzsche and Hegel,’ 43 and that it is no exaggeration to say that the whole of Nietzsche’s philosophy, in its polemical sense, is the attack on [the three ideas that define the dialectic]: the idea of a power of the negative as a theoretical principle manifested in opposition and contradiction; the idea that suffering and sadness have value…; the idea of positivity as a theoretical and practical product of negation itself.44 In contrast to Hegelian dialectics, Nietzsche ‘is opposed to every form of thought which trusts in the power of the negative.’ 45 ‘To the famous positivity of the negative’ 46 that is the central discovery of Hegelian dialectics, ‘Nietzsche opposes his own discovery: the negativity of the positive.’ 47

20  Alan D. Schrift

The Agrégation de Philosophie and Its Impact on Philosophy in France Having shown the various ways that Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze appeal to Nietzsche’s works in the 1960s as they develop their own poststructuralist and post-­ phenomenological perspectives, we must now turn to the question ‘why Nietzsche?’ or, more pointedly, ‘why ­Nietzsche now?’ after having been overlooked by the French philosophical establishment for most of the early twentieth century. The standard explanation for the proliferation of French philosophical scholarship on Nietz­sche during the 1960s and 1970s was that this scholarship, initiated by Deleuze’s 1962 book Nietzsche et la philosophie, was largely in response to the publication of Heidegger’s two-­volume Nietzsche lectures in German in 1961.48 But given its length—­almost 1,200 pages—­ and the difficulty of Heidegger’s text, as well as the lack of its French translation until 1971,49 I would argue that there is in fact a more probable and indigenous explanation for the increase in attention to and publications by French philosophers on Nietzsche. This explanation points to the importance of a unique French institution—­one with no equivalent in the English-­speaking or German academic systems—­namely, the Agrégation de Philosophie. The agrégation has played a major role in the intellectual formation of every philosopher educated in France who teaches in a French university, yet it is an institution about which little if anything is known by philosophers outside France. Let me therefore begin by providing some information about the agrégation in general and then I will return to the role it played in the introduction of Nietzsche into the French philosophical academy and the consequences that this had for the emergence of poststructuralism. The agrégation was established in 1766 by the French state as a competitive examination to certify secondary school teachers in three areas: grammar, letters, and philosophy.50 Philosophy occupied a privileged place within this single examination and, as such, was from the outset a site of political contestation between the Sorbonne’s Faculty of Arts, which was initially given authority over the exam and represented the State’s secular interests, and the Faculty of Theology, which had long been a site of institutional power at the Sorbonne and for many years had control over philosophical instruction in France.51 The struggle between these two faculties led, in 1821, to the single examination being divided into three distinct competitive examinations, one for sciences, one for grammar, and one for letters, with the examination in letters including philosophy. Although a layman—­François Alexandre Jacques Mazure (1776–1828)—presided over the examining jury for this first agrégation de lettres, two of its five members were priests from the Sorbonne’s Faculty of Theology, and the important place philosophy held in the examination in letters can be seen in that first examination’s written

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  21 question: ‘Philosophia, omnium mater artium, quid est aliud nisi donum aut inventum Dei?’ (‘Philosophy, mother of all the arts, what else is it if not a gift or creation of God?’).52 Four years later, the agrégation de lettres was itself split into two separate examinations—­an agrégation de lettres and an agrégation de philosophie—­with the latter created specifically to certify teachers of lycée and university classes in philosophy. More importantly, this new philosophy examination was placed once again under the control of the Sorbonne’s Faculty of Theology and was part of a broader effort to re-­establish the power of the Roman Catholic Church in France after the fall of Napoleon. This effort was largely successful, and by 1830 more than half the philosophy teachers in France were members of the clergy.53 But control of the agrégation de philosophie by the Sorbonne’s Faculty of Theology lasted only a short time, as the newly established liberal constitutional monarchy in 1830 appointed the influential eclectic philosopher Victor Cousin (1792–1867) as president of the jury d’agrégation. With Cousin firmly in charge of the philosophy curriculum, the language for the written essays was changed from Latin to French and the agrégation de philosophie became a truly independent philosophy examination freed once and for all from the authority of the Faculty of Theology. In the years since 1830, many other specific competitive examinations have also been created, including examinations in history and geography (1831; these became separate examinations in 1944), mathematics (1841), physics (1841), German (1849), and English (1849), and today there are over 30 different agrégation examinations.54 In its modern form, the philosophy agrégation is a competitive exam (called the Concours) that candidates must pass in order to teach philosophy in secondary and post-­secondary schools. The content of the exam is chosen by a jury d’agrégation, acting under the auspices of the Ministry of National Education, on the basis of the published philosophy syllabus or Programme determined for the preceding academic year. The structure and content of the philosophy agrégation has been under almost constant review and has been revised several times since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early years of the twentieth century, the examination still followed the basic structure that the exam took when it was first created in 1825 and consisted of two parts, a preliminary written examination followed, for those who passed, by several oral examinations. The written examination consisted of three essays, each allotted 7 hours, with two questions on general philosophy and one focused on a topic in the history of philosophy. Following the written examination, of which only one in four candidates typically passed, oral examinations were required that involved explications of texts in French and at least one foreign language.55 The purpose of the written examination was to ascertain the candidate’s philosophical knowledge and abilities, while the goal of the oral examination was to discern

22  Alan D. Schrift the candidate’s pedagogic talents. In the first oral examination, candidates were given three philosophical texts with 1 hour each to prepare a 30-minute explication. The second oral required candidates to provide a ‘lesson’ on an assigned topic, given 6 hours access to the Sorbonne library to prepare the lesson. The number of candidates who ultimately were admitted into the agrégation was determined annually by the State in accordance with the number of teaching posts available that year. The agrégation results of 1912 are typical of these early years: of 62 students who registered for the exam, 18 passed the written examination and were admitted into the oral examination; of these, ultimately 7 passed and were admitted as agrégés. A success rate of approximately 10% of the candidates passing the agrégation is typical of the early years, and the odds have not increased since then. To cite the results from the most recent jury report (2018), slightly less than 5% (61=4.8%) of the 1,270 candidates who registered for the examination were ultimately admitted into the agrégation. Failure to pass the agrégation, it should be noted, is not necessarily an indication of a lack of philosophical talent. For example, Jean-­Paul Sartre failed on his first attempt (in 1928), as his decision to present some of his own ideas on the nature of existence, rather than parrot the received interpretations of the philosophers on the Programme, infuriated the more conservative members of the evaluating jury. 56 Other distinguished philosophers who have failed on their first attempt include Jean Beaufret, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.57 Passing the agrégation de philosophie has long been a mark of distinction. In fact, when looking at brief academic biographical notes of French philosophers, what year they passed the agrégation, including their rank when they finished with the highest or second highest score, is one of the first things mentioned, before information about their doctorat or books authored or the lycées or universities where they spent their career. Since 1950, however, passing the agrégation is no longer necessary in order to teach in a secondary school. Another exam—­the CAPES (Certificat d’Aptitude au Professorat de l’Enseignement Secondaire)—was created to meet the need for more secondary education teachers without diminishing the prestige of the agrégation. Teaching in a university at a rank above assistant, however, still requires passing the agrégation, and those who do pass enjoy certain privileges including higher salaries and shorter working hours. While not often recognized or acknowledged, the agrégation has been enormously influential on developments within French philosophy. For one thing, the figures that appear on the Programme have been for the most part canonical figures from the history of philosophy, with relatively few figures from the nineteenth century and even fewer from the twentieth. When a philosophical text appears on the Programme for

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  23 the agrégation’s oral examination, this means that all students that year who hope for a career in philosophy will spend the year studying that text intensively. Even more significantly, until this was changed in 2005, when a philosopher was named on the Programme for the written examination, this meant that candidates preparing for the exam would be expected to know the entirety of that philosopher’s œuvre.58 Not surprisingly, spending a year, and sometimes two, concentrating on a figure often results not just in subsequent publications on that figure, but it results equally often in that figure being a constant intellectual resource for one’s subsequent career. The impact of the agrégation is not just restricted to students, however. There is another effect which may be even more significant, namely, the effect that the annual Programme has on the teaching ­activities of the professoriat. There is an expectation that the topics of many university courses will be chosen in terms of topics announced on the upcoming exam. This is true for both formal university courses and, in particular, for the conférences59 offered by the regular teaching faculty, which are often initially posted simply as ‘Conférence en vue de l’Agrégation,’ ‘Préparation à l’Agrégation,’ ‘Agrégation: Explication de textes,’ or ‘Agrégation: Explications d’auteurs.’ For example, if we look at the 1923–1924 academic year, the teaching faculty in the department of philosophy at the Sorbonne included five professors of philosophy (two others were on leave), two professors of psychology, two professors of sociology, and one aesthetician. The professors of philosophy that academic year offered 14 courses, 9 of which were conférences, and 5 of these were listed as preparation for the agrégation in some form or other. In addition, one of the psychology professors and one of the sociology professors also offered conférences in preparation for the agrégation.60 Other years present an even greater correlation between the courses offered and the contents of the annual Programme. For example, the Programme for the agrégation de philosophie in 1938 listed Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Auguste Comte as authors for the written composition on the history of philosophy, and listed for explication in the oral examination Greek texts by Plato (Phaedo) and Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Book X), Latin texts by Spinoza (Ethica, IV) and Descartes (Meditationes de prima philosophia, I, II, and VI), French texts by Berkeley (Dialogues entre Hylas et Philonous) and Kant (Fondements de la Métaphysique des Moeurs), and for candidates who could waive the Greek explication, English texts by Locke (Essay on Human Understanding, Book IV) and Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Parts I and II), or German texts by Hegel (Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, paras. 1–83) or Schopenhauer (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Book III). The philosophy faculty

24  Alan D. Schrift at the S­ orbonne during the 1937–1938 academic year included Émile Bréhier, Léon Brunschvicg, Charles Lalo, Jean Laporte, Abel Rey, Albert Rivaud, and Jean Wahl. Of the six philosophy courses taught that year, four directly address figures that appear on the written Programme—­ Brunschvicg’s ‘Nineteenth-­Century French Philosophy,’ Bréhier’s ‘The Theology of Plotinus and Plato’s Parmenides,’ and Wahl’s ‘Explications of Kant’ and ‘Platonic problems from the Republic’—and a fifth addresses an author who appears among the oral explication options: Rivaud’s ‘Spinoza’s Doctrine.’61 And of the 12 semester-­long conférences the faculty offered, 9 relate directly to the agrégation: Bréhier’s two-­ semester ‘Explication d’auteurs,’ Brunschvicg’s two-­ semester ‘Préparation à l’Agrégation,’ Lalo’s ‘Auteurs du programme,’ Laporte’s first semester ‘Agrégation: Philosophie générale’ and second semester ‘Agrégation: Histoire de la philosophie,’ Rivaud’s ‘Spinoza Ethique livre IV,’ and Wahl’s ‘Agrégation: Explication de Phaedo.’ Every member of the philosophy faculty, with the exception of Abel Rey, who held the chair in the history and philosophy of science, lists teaching activities that relate directly to the content of that year’s agrégation, with the result that over 70% of the teaching activities of the philosophy faculty at the Sorbonne clearly relate directly to preparing their students for the coming examination. Later in the twentieth century, addressing the agrégation became part of the ‘required’ teaching obligations of the philosophy faculty, in particular the faculty with chairs in the history of philosophy, as we can see by looking in some detail at the 1964–1965 academic year. That year, the Sorbonne’s philosophy faculty included 14 chairs, 5 of which were in the History of Philosophy: Maxime Schuhl held the chair in the History of Ancient Philosophy, Maurice de Gandillac the chair in Medieval Philosophy, Henri Gouhier the chair in the History of Religious Thought in France since the sixteenth century, Ferdinand Alquié the chair in History of Modern Philosophy, and Jean Guitton the chair in History of Philosophy and Philosophy.62 The Programme for the 1965 agrégation listed Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics and Kant as subjects for the history composition, along with the following texts for the oral examinations: for French explication, Malebranche’s Recherche de la Vérité (livre III), Diderot’s Lettre sur les aveugles, Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origin de l’inequalité (including notes and appendices) and ­ Husserl’s Logique formelle et logique transcendentale (section I, pp.  69–199); for Latin explication, Lucretius’s De natura rerum Book V and Descartes’s Regulae ad directionem ingenii; for Greek explication, Plato’s Theaetetus and Marcus Aurelius’s Pensées Books II, III, IV, V; for German explication, Kant’s Grundlagen der Metaphysik der Sitten and Fichte’s Die Bestimmung des Menschen; and for English explication, Berkeley’s A New Theory of Vision and Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, Book

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  25 I, Part III: Of Knowledge and Probability. Looking at the graduate-­level course offerings in the 1964–1965 academic year, we find Schuhl offering ‘Mechanism and Philosophy, followed by Questions in the History of Philosophy’ and two semester-­long courses titled simply ‘Agrégation’; Gandillac offering ‘Agrégation: Aristotle’s Metaphysics’; Gouhier offering ‘Agrégation: auteurs du programme’ and a research course on ‘The History of Ideas in France since Descartes’; Alquié offering ‘Agrégation: Malebranche Recherche de la Vérité Book III’; and Guitton offering during the second semester a course on preparing leçons for the Agrégation. In addition, Schuhl offers a research seminar on Aristotle’s Protrepticus and Alquié offers a research seminar on the sources and genesis of Descartes’s treatise on the Passions of the Soul. When one compares the Programme for the 1965 agrégation with the teaching offerings of the Chairs in the History of Philosophy, the point is clear: all 5 of them teach courses specifically designed in preparation for the agrégation, and of the 11 graduate courses and research seminars offered by the historians, all but three are devoted either to figures listed for the written history composition or to one of the specific texts listed for the oral exam. What these data indicate is that not only the work of advanced students but also much of the work of the professoriat is determined in response to the Programme of the agrégation, and this has a direct effect on scholarship and publications. Here let me offer two specific examples, both of which are relevant to the emergence of poststructuralism. During the three years that Deleuze taught as Maître-­assistant in the history of philosophy at the Sorbonne, included among the philosophers on the Programmes for the written examination or French oral explication were Bergson, Kant, and the Stoics (in 1957), and Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Nietzsche (in 1958 and 1959). Although Deleuze’s book on Hume appeared earlier (1953), I would argue that it is no coincidence that he published on all of these other figures in the decade that followed his years teaching at the Sorbonne. The second example was related to me by a former student of Derrida’s at the École Normale: when Derrida’s La Vérité en peinture (The Truth in Painting)63 first appeared in 1978, Derrida’s former student64 recalled comparing Derrida’s text with his own lecture notes from Derrida’s 1974 seminar on Kant’s aesthetics and found them to be substantially the same. But this is not surprising when one knows that Kant was one of the figures listed on the Programme for the history composition that year and the thematic topic for the second composition that year had been ‘L’art.’ Given the impact a philosopher’s appearance on the Programme has on the entire academic field of philosophy—­­in terms of teaching, scholarship, and publications—­it is thus important who serves on the jury that selects the figures to appear on the Programme, and equally important which figures appear frequently or regularly on the Programme and which other figures do not.

26  Alan D. Schrift Analyzing the content of the annual Programmes thus reflects the foundational historical knowledge that philosophers educated in France will draw upon, and frequently write upon, early and sometimes throughout their careers.

The Agrégation and the Turn to Nietzsche Having shown the influence of the agrégation de philosophie in general, let me now return to Nietzsche and suggest that the emergence of poststructuralism can be traced to 1958, when Nietzsche’s La Généalogie de la Morale 65 appeared on the reading list in French translation for the agrégation. Appearing again in 1959, these were Nietzsche’s first times on the Programme since his one and only previous appearance in 1929, when Die [sic] Genealogie der Moral66 was listed as an option for the German oral explication. Moreover, Nietzsche’s name showing up in 1958 and 1959 began a series of Nietzsche’s appearances on the Programme that would continue over the next two decades. In precisely those years when Nietzsche’s Généalogie was one of the oral examination’s required texts (1958 and 1959), Deleuze was beginning his university career at the Sorbonne and he offered a course on the Genealogy in the fall of 1958,67 which surely explains why the Genealogy plays such a central role in Deleuze’s Nietzsche et la philosophie. And it is in direct response to Nietzsche’s appearances, I would argue, that in 1959 and 1961, Jean Wahl gave the first lecture courses on Nietzsche ever offered by a Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne.68 In addition, between 1958 and 1962, we see appear the first five articles focused exclusively on Nietzsche to be published in the prestigious French philosophical journals Revue de métaphysique et de morale since 190169 and the first article, other than a few reviews of books on Nietzsche, ever to be published in Études philosophiques.70 After Nietzsche’s agrégation appearances in 1958 and 1959, Also sprach Zarathustra71 appeared as an option for the German explication, in 1962 and 1963, and this was followed by another event that played a significant role in legitimating Nietzsche’s philosophical reputation. I refer here to the major conference on Nietzsche at the Abbey at Royaumont in 1964. Although organized by the young Foucault and Deleuze, the conference at Royaumont was presided over by the distinguished Sorbonne historian of philosophy Martial Guéroult and included presentations by, among others, respected senior academic philosophers Jean Wahl, Jean Beaufret, Karl Löwith, and Eugen Fink, as well as the prestigious non-­academic philosopher Gabriel Marcel.72 Following Deleuze’s book and the Royaumont conference, Nietzsche’s standing as a serious philosopher had been confirmed to the point where he could be situated in the canon as a major figure whose entire œuvre could be required reading in preparation for the written examination of the agrégation,

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  27 where he would appear four times in the 1970s (1970 and 1971, and again in 1976 and 1977). Equally significant in these years was the decision by Éditions Gallimard to begin publishing a French translation of the Critical Edition of Nietzsche’s collected works, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari.73 This edition, Œuvres philosophiques complètes, was placed initially under the editorial direction of Deleuze and Foucault, who were soon joined by one of the Sorbonne’s most senior historians of philosophy at that time, Maurice de Gandillac.74 Returning now to Deleuze’s book on Nietzsche, to appreciate its novelty, consider that Jean Wahl began his 1963 review of Nietzsche et la philosophie in Revue de métaphysique et de morale by saying that Deleuze’s book belongs alongside the most important books on Nietz­ sche, which he then names: those by Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Eugene Fink, and Lou Salomé.75 That there is no French philosopher named is not an oversight; instead, it again reflects how little scholarship on Nietzsche was done by philosophers in France prior to 1962. In fact, prior to Deleuze’s book, there had been only six books published by philosophers in France that focused on Nietzsche, and of these, only three had been published since 1902, two of which were introductory texts.76 More important for the present context, I would argue that Deleuze’s Nietzsche book should be viewed as the first work in France to put forward a ‘philosophy of difference,’ a theme which unites many poststructuralist thinkers, as Deleuze appeals to the concept of difference to show how Nietzsche departs from the Hegelian tradition, to explicate Nietzsche’s will to power, and to interpret Nietzsche’s thought of the eternal return, as what returns eternally is not the same or the identical, but the repetition of difference: ‘It is not the “same” or the “one” which comes back in the eternal return but return is itself the one which ought to belong to diversity and to that which differs.’77 Deleuze’s Nietzsche et la philosophie was one of very few works of poststructuralist philosophy in the 1960s focused primarily on Nietz­ sche, but this changed in the 1970s, and again I would point to the agrégation. As I’ve already noted, when a figure appears on the written examination for the agrégation, this means that students will be expected to be familiar with the entirety of their corpus and much university and lycée teaching will address this figure. Nietzsche’s name appears on the written Programme for the first time in 1970, and then three more times by 1977. 1977 is also the year of David B. Allison’s groundbreaking anthology The New Nietzsche,78 which for many Anglophone philosophers of my generation was our first introduction to poststructuralist thought. If one looks at the acknowledgments in Allison’s anthology, we find that the essays by Michel Haar, Eric Blondel, and Jean Granier were all published in 1971, the year after Nietzsche’s first appearance on the written Programme, while the chapter by Sarah Kofman comes from her 1972 book Nietzsche et la métaphore.79 In addition, one of the chapters

28  Alan D. Schrift by Deleuze and the essay by Derrida were translations of their presentations at the major Nietzsche conference at Cerisy-­la-­Salle in 1972. In other words, of the ten chapters in Allison’s anthology written by French academic philosophers, no less than six of them were written in the two years following Nietzsche’s first appearance on the written Programme, and a seventh, by Paul Valadier, comes from a book published just two years later.80 In the years following Nietzsche’s appearances on the written examinations of the 1970s, we see other books and articles on Nietzsche by poststructuralist thinkers like Philippe Lacoue-­Labarthe, Jean-­Luc Nancy, Bernard Pautrat, and Jean-­M ichel Rey, among others. And to highlight one final correlation between poststructuralism and the agrégation, many of these philosophers participated in the open seminar Derrida directed at the École Normale Supérieure in the winter of 1970 on ‘Théorie du discours philosophique: La métaphore dans le texte philosophique,’ which reflects not only Nietzsche being listed for the history of philosophy essay but also ‘Le langage’ being the topic of the second written essay.81 While there are, no doubt, other factors and thinkers that played a role in the emergence of poststructuralism, none of them exceed in importance the impact of Nietzsche’s appearance on the reading list for the agrégation de philosophie.

Notes 1 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1970). 2 Jacques Derrida, ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,’ in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 278–293. 3 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Of Grammatology: Corrected Edition, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problems of Signs in Husserl’s Phenomenology, trans. Leonard Lawler (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011). The latter is a translation of La Voix et le Phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), the first English translation of which was completed by David B. Allison under the title Speech and Phenomena (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973). 4 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 5 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème de l’expression (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1968) was published in English as Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990). 6 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 7 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 32–36. 8 Foucault had already set Nietzsche in opposition to Kant in his 1962 thése complémentaire, which included a French translation of Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (published in 1833) accompanied by a hundred

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  29 page ‘Introduction à l’Anthropologie de Kant.’ This was eventually published as Anthropologie du point de vue pragmatique et introduction a l’Anthropologie (Paris: Vrin, 2008); English translation: Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Roberto Nigro and Kate Briggs (New York: Semiotext(e), 2008). Cf. the text’s last sentence, where Foucault writes that ‘The trajectory of [Kant’s anthropological] question Was ist der Mensch? in the field of philosophy reaches its end in the response which both challenges and disarms it: der Übermensch’ (p. 124). 9 See, in particular, Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). English translation: Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); and Difference and Repetition. 10 Laure Verbaere, in La Réception français de Nietzsche 1890–1910 (thése de doctorat d’histoire, Université de Nantes, 1999) notes that between 1890 and 1910, more than 1,100 references to Nietzsche appear in French, with 47 books and more than 600 articles or studies discussing his thought. (Cited in Jacques Le Rider, Nietzsche en France de la fin du XIXe siècle au temps présent [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999], p. 104.) I address the earlier ‘moments’ in Nietzsche’s French reception in ‘French Nietzscheanism,’ in Poststructuralism and Critical Theory’s Second Generation, edited by Alan D. Schrift, vol. 6 of The History of Continental Philosophy (London: Acumen Press/Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 19–46. Some of the material in this essay appears in slightly different form in this essay. 11 Jean Wahl, ‘La pensée philosophique de Nietzsche des années 1885–1888’ (Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1959). 12 Nietzsche’s thought figures prominently in both Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977) and The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1978). 13 Michel Foucault, ‘Structuralisme et poststructuralisme,’ p. 436, in Dits et écrits, 1954–1988, tomes 1–4, edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, vol. IV (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1994), pp. 431–457; English translation: ‘Structuralism and Post-­structuralism,’ p. 438, in The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, Vol. 2: Aesthetics, Method, Epistemology, edited by James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley and others (New York: Penguin, 2000), pp. 433–458. 14 Foucault, ‘Structuralisme et poststructuralisme,’ p. 436/‘Structuralism and Post-­structuralism,’ p. 438. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Foucault, ‘Structuralisme et poststructuralisme,’ p. 443/ ‘Structuralism and Post-­structuralism,’ p. 444. 18 Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 342. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 See ibid., pp. 312–313. 22 Ibid., p. xxiii; see also pp. 308, 386–387. 23 Ibid., p. 385. 24 Ibid., p. 305. 25 Ibid. 26 See, e.g., Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §17, in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Alan D. Schrift and Duncan

30  Alan D. Schrift Large, Volume 8: Beyond Good and Evil/On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp.  1–203; and Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, First Treatise, §13, in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Alan D. Schrift and Duncan Large, Volume 8: Beyond Good and Evil / On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp. 207–349. 27 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), §354. 28 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 19. 2 9 Ibid. 30 Claude Lévi-­Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell, John von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969). 31 Derrida, ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,’ p. 283. 32 Lévi-­Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, p. 8. 33 Ibid., p. 3. 34 Derrida, ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,’ p. 292. 35 Ibid. 36 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. xix. 37 Ibid. 38 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 8. 39 Ibid., p. 9. 40 Ibid. 41 Cf. ibid., p. 157. 42 Ibid., p. 196. In Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (Paris: Rieder, 1929), Jean Wahl emphasizes the role of the ‘unhappy consciousness’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology, arguing that as a consciousness that is divided against and different from itself, the unhappy consciousness is the central figure in the Phenomenology, driving both the dialectic and the movement of Spirit itself. 43 Ibid., p. 195. 4 4 Ibid., p. 196. 45 Ibid., p. 179. 46 Ibid., p. 180. 47 Ibid. 48 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 Bd. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961). 49 Heidegger’s Nietzsche was not translated into French until 1971, in two volumes, by Pierre Klossowski and published by Éditions Gallimard. Rather than Heidegger, Deleuze himself, in Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), credits two essays by Klossowski for ‘renovating or reviving the interpretation of Nietzsche’ (pp.  81–82). These ­essays are ‘Nietzsche, le polythéisme et la parodie,’ first published in 1958 and reprinted in Un si funeste désir (Paris: NRF, 1963), pp. 185–228, and ­‘Oubli et anamnèse dans l’expérience vécue de l’éternel retour du Même,’ presented at the Royaumont Conference on Nietzsche in 1964 and published in N ­ ietzsche: Cahiers du Royaumont, Philosophie VIIe colloque, 4–8 Juillet 1964 (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967), pp. 227–235. 50 André Chervel, Histoire de l’agrégation: Contribution à l’histoire de la culture scolaire (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 1993), p. 18. Most of the following details concerning the early history of the agrégation come from this work.

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  31 Some of the following discussion is drawn from my more detailed discussion of the agrégation in ‘The Effects of the Agrégation de Philosophie on Twentieth-­Century French Philosophy,’ The Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 46, n. 3, 2008, pp. 449–473. 51 One might recall here Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, first published in Latin in 1641, which opens with a plea ‘To those most learned and distinguished men, the Dean and Doctors of the sacred Faculty of Theology at Paris,’ that they take his work under their protection. This was as much a political calculation by Descartes based on the relative weakness of the Sorbonne’s Faculty of Arts in relation to the Faculty of Theology as it was a consequence of Descartes’s concern that his work might be deemed heretical. See René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, edited by and trans. John ­C ottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 3. 52 Chervel, Histoire de l’agrégation, p. 69. The question is posed by Cicero in Book One of his Tusculanae Disputationes. 53 Chervel, Histoire de l’agrégation, p. 79. 54 As an aside, throughout the twentieth century, all announcements concerning the various agrégation examinations coming from the Ministry of Education listed the agrégation information in historical order, which meant that the agrégation de philosophie always appeared first, followed by letters, history and geography, etc. But in 2001, with the announcement of the programs for the 2002 agrégation, the order of posting was changed from historical to alphabetical, which meant that Allemand was first, Anglais second, Arabic third, and philosophy relegated to the twentieth spot on the annual listing. 55 Prior to 1911, the successful candidate would have been required to explicate passages from both a Greek and a Latin philosophical text. After 1911, candidates with certification of advanced work in a science could substitute linguistic competence in English or German for Greek, and after 1968 a candidate could pass the agrégation without competence in either Greek or Latin by opting to provide an explication of a passage in German, English or Arabic. An Italian option was added in 2004. 56 See Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), p. 25. Years later, Sartre was asked about his failure on the agrégation and responded: ‘I had tried to be original in my philo. compositions. That displeased. I had very bad marks. For the following year I understood: one must produce a banal copy presented in an original way’ (Jean-­Paul Sartre, Œuvres romanesques [Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1981], p. xlv). After receiving the lowest score on the 1928 examination, Sartre passed his agrégation the following year, this time receiving the highest score, with Simone de Beauvoir finishing second and Jean Hyppolite third. 57 Derrida went on to hold the position of agrégé-­répétiteur at the École Normale Supérieure, a position whose primary responsibility is to prepare students for the agrégation, from 1965 to 1967. Someone in this problematic position, he writes, ‘is destined to repeat and make others repeat, to reproduce and make others reproduce: forms, norms, and a content. He must assist students in the reading and comprehension of texts, help them interpret and understand what is expected of them, what they must respond to at the different stages of testing and selection, from the point of view of the contents or logico-­rhetorical organization of their exercises (explication de texte, essays, or leçons)’ (Jacques Derrida, ‘Where a Teaching Body Begins

32  Alan D. Schrift and How It Ends,’ p. 75, in Whose Afraid of Philosophy? Right to Philosophy I, trans. Jan Plug [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002], pp. 67–98). 58 Beginning with the 2005 Programme, for some of the philosophers named, specific texts are also named. So, while the 1993 Programme listed for the History of Philosophy composition ‘Ancient Epicureanism, Rousseau, Hegel,’ the 2005 Programme listed ‘Saint Augustine: Confessions, The City of God, On the Trinity; Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.’ 59 A conférence is a course with enrollment usually restricted to candidates for the agrégation, the licence, or certification in a specific field (e.g., history and philosophy of science). 60 André Lalande offered one open course, an undergraduate conférence, and a ‘Conférence en vue de l’Agrégation’ on ‘Logic and Methodology’; Léon Brunschvicg offered one open course in the history of modern philosophy on nineteenth-­century French philosophy (Comte’s Cours de Philosophie positive was a text for the French explication) and a conférence (at the École Normale Supérieure) in preparation for the agrégation; Émile Bréhier offered a closed course in the history of philosophy, an undergraduate conférence, and a two-­semester course listed only as ‘Agrégation: Explication des auteurs’; Léon Robin offered one reserved course specifically on theories of knowledge in Stoicism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, and the New Academy (one of the topics for the history of philosophy composition) and a conférence, also at the ENS, titled ‘Agrégation: Explication de textes’; and Étienne Gilson offered one course on patristic philosophy and two conférences on the ethics of Thomas Aquinas and the philosophy of Duns Scotus. One of the professors of psychology, Henri Delacroix, also offered a one-­semester conférence related to topics on the agrégation, as did professor of sociology Paul Fauconnet. 61 All translations of the French course titles are my own. 62 The other faculty include two chairs in General Philosophy (Paul Ricoeur and Raymond Polin), one in General Philosophy and Logic (René Poirier), one in Formal and Symbolic Logic (Roger Martin), two in History and Philosophy of Science (Georges Canguilhem and Suzanne Bachelard), one in Comparative Philosophy (Olivier Lacombe), one in Aesthetics (Jean Grenier), and one in Moral Philosophy (Vladimir Jankélévitch). 63 Jacques Derrida, La Vérité en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978); English translation: The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian M ­ cLeod (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 64 Jean-­Luis Fabiani, Professor of Sociology and directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, who had been ‘prepared’ by Derrida for the 1974 agrégation. (Personal conversation.) 65 Friedrich Nietzsche, La Généalogie de la Morale, trans. Henri Albert (Paris: Société du ‘Mercure de France,’ 1900). This would have been the only French translation available in 1958. 66 Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1887). By 1929, several other editions of the German text would have been available; no specific edition is listed on the Programme for the agrégation. For the English translation, see note 26 above. 67 I thank Giuseppi Bianco for providing me a copy of a student’s notes from Deleuze’s 1958 course which offered a ‘Commentaire de “La Généalogie de la morale.”’

Nietzsche and Poststructuralism  33 68 Jean Wahl, La Pensée philosophique de Nietzsche des années 1885–1888 and L’Avant-­dernière pensée de Nietzsche. Mentioning these first lecture courses in the department of philosophy at the Sorbonne gives me the opportunity to bring up another dimension of the influence of the agrégation de philosophie, a scandal that might well have significantly altered the reception of Nietzsche among philosophers in France. This scandal concerns an abuse of power by members of the evaluating jury in their treatment of Charles Andler, a promising student of German philosophy who was prevented from passing the agrégation de philosophie in 1887 and 1888 almost single-­ handedly by the influential idealist and neo-­ Kantian philosopher Jules Lachelier. During the 1880s, the jury was particularly hostile to Émile Boutroux’s metaphysical views and his criticisms of some of the philosophical establishment’s traditional doctrines, and Lachelier in particular was extremely hard on Boutroux’s students from the École Normale, who referred to him as ‘the tyrant of the examination.’ Andler, who studied with Boutroux at the École Normale, came through the written examination in 1887 very highly ranked, but one member of the jury affiliated with Lachelier (Elie Rabier) gave him a zero on the oral exam. Although the other members of the jury gave him acceptable grades on the orals, this zero made it impossible for him to pass (Ernst Tonnelat, Charles Andler, sa vie et son oeuvre [Paris: Les Belles-­lettres, 1937], pp. 31–32.). The following year, Lachelier returned to the jury and personally read Andler’s written compositions, and Andler did not even pass the written examination, with Lachelier offering his opinion of Andler’s essays that, as André Canivez has written, were ‘in terms so final that Andler understood that it was useless to present himself again’ (André Canivez, ‘Le Jury d’agrégation: Le cas de Charles Andler,’ Corpus, revue de philosophie, n. 24/25, 1994, pp. 199–200). Andler switched fields, successfully passed the agrégation d’allemand in 1889, ranking first, and went on to a distinguished career in German literature, first at the École Normale, then the Sorbonne, and finally the Collège de France (1926–1933), publishing a number of important works, including a six-­volume study of Nietzsche (published between 1920 and 1931). One can only wonder what might have been Nietzsche’s philosophical fate in France were Andler to have been a member of the philosophy faculty rather than the faculty of German language and literature, and had he been regularly offering lecture courses on Nietzsche to students of philosophy, as he and his colleague Henri Lichtenberger were doing for students of German literature. 69 When Charles Le Verrier published a critical study on Nietzsche in Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 9, n. 1, Janvier 1901, pp. 70–99. 70 Before Deleuze’s book appears, articles by Jean Wahl (1961: ‘Le problème du temps chez Nietzsche’), Henri Birault (1962: ‘En quoi, nous aussi, nous sommes encore pieux’), Pierre Klossowski (1958: ‘Nietzsche, le polythéisme et la parodie’), Angèle Kremer-­Marietti (1959: ‘Nietzsche et quelques-­uns de ses interprètes actuels’), and Hermann Wein (1958: ‘Métaphysique et anti-­ métaphysique: accompagné de quelques réflexions pour la défense de l’oeuvre de Nietzsche’) appear in Revue de métaphysique et de morale. Prior to 1958, the last article on Nietzsche published in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale was Marie-­A nne Cochet’s ‘Nietzsche d’après son plus récent interprète,’ a review published in two parts in 1931 (pp. 613–641) and 1932 (pp. 87–119) of Charles Andler’s six-­volumes. Pierre Fruchon’s 1962 article ‘Note sur l’idée de création dans la dernier pensée de Nietzsche,’ was the first article other than book reviews to ever appear in Études philosophiques.

34  Alan D. Schrift



77 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 46. 80 Paul Valadier, Nietzsche et la critique du christianisme (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974).

2

Poststructuralism in America From Epistemological Relativism to Post-Truth? Kevin Kennedy Postmodern relativism is precisely the thought of the irreducible multitude of worlds, each of them sustained by a specific language-game … and the problem of truth is how to establish something that … remains the same in all possible worlds. Slavoj Žižek1

In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary declared ‘post-truth’ the word of the year, defining it as ‘circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’2 Since then a plethora of books and articles have addressed the rise of post-truth in American and Western politics—usually in relation to President Donald Trump and Brexit3 —and its attendant ‘diminishment of the significance of traditional epistemic standards in public discourse.’4 What links most of them, perhaps surprisingly, is the notion that post-truth is, to some extent, the product of the pervasive influence of poststructuralist theory, not only within academia, but in cultural and political life as a whole. The influential American critic Michiko Kakutani, for instance, notes: ‘Climate deniers, anti-vaxxers and other groups who don’t have science on their side bandy about phrases that wouldn’t be out of place in a college class on deconstruction.’5 In a similar vein, the author Lee McIntyre writes: ‘Even if right-wing politicians and other science deniers were not reading Derrida and Foucault the germ of the idea made its way to them.’6 In his latest book Post-Truth: ­ The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back, the influential journalist Mathew D’Ancona is startled by the ‘arresting reflection that, etched into the long Parisian paragraphs of convoluted post-modern prose, so often dismissed as indulgent nonsense, was a bleak omen of the political future.’7 And finally, and perhaps most ungraciously, the American cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has claimed that ‘what the postmodernists did was truly evil. They are responsible for the intellectual fad that made it respectable to be cynical about truth and facts.’8 D’Ancona and Dennett are reflective of a general tendency in American discourse to conflate poststructuralism with postmodernism, reducing

36  Kevin Kennedy both to a simple epistemological relativism. While most commentators in the United States of America (U.S.A) link post-truth with poststructuralism, not all of them are as dismissive as Dennett. Writing in the Washington Post, Aaron Hanlon asserts: ‘The postmodernist theorists we vilify did not cause this; they’ve actually given us a framework to understand precisely how falsehood can masquerade as truth.’9 One can thus identify two main positions in this debate: first, poststructuralist epistemology is (partly) responsible for post-truth politics, to wit, it contains a strong normative dimension; second, it predicted and may help us understand the rise of post-truth, in other words, it is descriptive or even cautionary. Given the resurgence of poststructuralism in public discourse, it seems worthwhile to revisit the epistemology underpinning the writings of some of the main thinkers associated with poststructuralism. In view of the widely held belief that, as Fredric Jameson claims, ‘the very concept of “truth” itself is part of the metaphysical baggage which poststructuralism seeks to abandon,’10 this chapter will discuss the epistemological assumptions of some of the major exponents of poststructuralist thought—most notably Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, as they are usually the target of the attacks— to establish whether it is even possible to speak of a coherent, unified poststructuralist epistemology. At the same time, I will explore the unusual influence that poststructuralism had on American intellectual life and culture, particularly its impact on contemporary notions of post-truth, to ascertain whether the very notion of poststructuralism only emerged as a result of the reception and transformation of the work of a generation of French philosophers (Foucault, Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard) by their American acolytes (such as J. Hillis Miller, Stanley Fish, and Richard Rorty). My main aim will be to determine, first, if and to what extent this particular brand of ‘American poststructuralism’ and its zealous embrace of the ‘suspicion of reason’ misappropriated the ideas of their French influences and, second, how this misappropriation may have helped undermine the notion of truth in American intellectual discourse. More generally, the chapter will try to establish the usefulness of a poststructuralist notion of truth— understood to be historically contingent, determined by the vicissitudes of language, and non-representational—for contemporary epistemological debates and public discourse in general.

Nietzsche and the Foundations of Poststructuralist Epistemology In light of thinkers as diverse as Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Baudrillard, it seems somewhat far-fetched to speak of a unified poststructuralist epistemology. Yet it is certainly possible to identify some shared assumptions and influences, key among them the philosophy of

Poststructuralism in America  37 Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was one of the first philosophers to question the value of truth and disinterested knowledge, denouncing the aspirations of nineteenth century scientific positivism for a value-free, wholly objective description of the world as fundamentally misguided and highly limiting: ‘Against positivism, which halts at phenomena—“There are only facts”—I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations.’11 In their rejection of interpretation, so claims Nietzsche, scientists are as dogmatic and pious as traditional believers, guided by ‘the faith in a metaphysical value, the absolute value of truth.’12 Nietzsche’s demand that this ‘will to truth … must for once be experimentally called into question’13 becomes the epistemological paradigm for virtually every thinker who will come to be associated with poststructuralism. Two Nietzschean strategies for questioning the value of truth are particularly pertinent in this respect: (1) his emphasis on the rhetorical character of truth, and (2) the perspectival, radically historical nature of knowledge. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that the modern scientific ideal of objective, unbiased knowledge is based on rhetorical conventions rather than ontological givens. Pivotal among these conventions is the metaphysical belief in antithetical values, notably the basic antithesis between truth and falsehood itself. Nietzsche argues that what we tend to take to be really existing oppositions are in fact produced by the ‘unwieldiness’14 of language, which ‘continues to speak of oppositions where there are really only degrees.’15 Thus, Nietzsche contends, ‘the will to knowledge [is based] upon … a much more powerful will, the will to non-knowledge … to untruth— not as the opposite of the former will, but rather— as its refinement!’16 For Nietzsche, truth and nontruth appear as mutually exclusive only due to the discursive, mediating nature of language. That is to say, truth and falsehood do not inhere in reality itself, but only acquire meaning in relation to propositions and statements. For Nietzsche, supposedly value-free statements are always deeply rooted in the vicissitudes and accidents of history, determined not by the quest for abstract truth, but by human desires and needs, often neither rational nor objective: It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.17 These two aspects of Nietzsche’s epistemology (the rhetoric and power relations behind truth) not only prefigure the different concerns of Derrida’s and Foucault’s philosophies, but also the two stages of poststructuralism in North America: (1) the reception of Derrida’s work at the so- called Yale School of Deconstruction and (2) the appropriation of Michel Foucault’s ideas for newly emerging theoretical approaches (e.g., postcolonial, queer, feminist), most notably at the University of

38  Kevin Kennedy California, Berkeley.18 I will return to these stages later in the chapter. However, before considering Nietzsche’s reception in France, it is important note that his perspectivism— often portrayed as an archrelativism19 —is not entirely reducible to a relativist or even a pragmatist notion of truth. Alexander Nehamas has shown that Nietzsche, despite insisting that false judgments may in some contexts be highly productive, ‘never argues that their being beneficial makes them true.’20 In other words, Nietzsche does not reject the notion of truth out of hand, nor does he deny the possibility of distinguishing between facts and falsehoods. His philosophy must rather be seen as an attack on any form of dogmatism, questioning the axiomatic belief in the value of truth itself, which, as he convincingly argues, is a moral value, and thus calls for an analysis beyond the merely factual and objective.

Derrida and Foucault: Truth as Rhetoric, Truth as Power One of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century to heed this call was Jacques Derrida. Derrida’s work is an extended critique of the representational theory of language, which holds that words directly reflect an ontological truth beyond language and signification. For traditional metaphysics, according to Derrida, writing represents the graphic signifier of a phonic signifier (speech), which itself refers to an ideal signified (truth). Derrida argues that due to the nature of language as a ‘systematic play of differences,’21 in which every signifier acquires meaning only through its reference to other signifiers (a notion derived from Saussure), an ultimate signified becomes unattainable. Accordingly, speech cannot be considered primary in relation to writing as it depends, like the latter, on other signifiers, whose meanings in turn are never self-present. This obvious inconsistency, according to Derrida, places metaphysical texts in a position in which they end up undermining their own argument as the supremacy of speech is only possible on the grounds that it refers to a self-validating origin, which, by definition can never be fully present. Thus ‘the history of truth, of the truth of truth, has always been … the debasement of writing, and its repression outside “full” speech.’22 In order to be able to discover an ultimate, unmediated truth, one would have to presuppose the existence of a ‘transcendental signified,’23 prior to logos, accounting for the supremacy of speech, which, however, is logically unfeasible. As a result, the appearance of a fundamental truth, untouched by the differential nature of the sign, is deferred indefinitely: There has to be a transcendental signified for the difference between signifier and signified to be somewhere absolute and irreducible. It is not by chance that the thought of being … is manifested above all in the voice … This experience of the effacement of the signifier in the voice is not merely one illusion among many … it is the condition of the very idea of truth. 24

Poststructuralism in America  39 Rejecting the traditional metaphysical privileging of voice over inscription, Derrida shows that speech is not primary in relation to writing, and that truth— conceived as a transcendental presence beyond signification— can therefore never be separated from the ‘play of differences’25 constitutive of signifying processes. The lack of final determinacy in the signifier, its endless variability and instability, means that language transcends and to a certain extent constitutes the speaking subject, prior to any distinction between truth and falsehood. Language provides the context or milieu in which meaning can be produced: every meaningful statement is thus haunted by the inherently unstable, openended nature of the linguistic sign: ‘No meaning can be determined out of context, but no context permits saturation.’26 Derrida can thus be seen as a relativist to the extent that for him truth is based on the relative nature of the signifier, acquiring meaning only in relation to other signifiers and thus having no inherent meaning in itself. However, the potentially infinite relativizability and inexhaustible contextuality of language does not entail the relativity of all meaning, in the sense that, for example, scientific accounts of natural processes can be dismissed as mere language games. Although signifiers produce meaning only in relation to other signifiers, one cannot simply turn one’s back on the ‘outside’ of language, for ‘without that exteriority, the very idea of the sign falls into decay. Since our entire world and language would collapse with it.’27 While Derrida focuses on the paradoxical nature of the linguistic sign, Foucault challenges traditional notions of truth and objectivity from a historical perspective, arguing that the emergence of systems of truth (such as science) is always based on a particular culture, inextricably tied to questions of power and domination. For instance, while everyone would agree that 1+1  =  2, this simple fact only gives us a part of the picture unless we ask who asserts it and why. Why would a mathematician devote his entire life to the pursuit of such truths? What does it say about the culture he or she lives in? What wills are at play in the pursuit of mathematics? Who profits from such statements? For Foucault truth is thus always an effect of power and ideology, and applies to such seemingly timeless notions as madness, sexuality, identity, and reason. As he aptly puts it: ‘Knowledge is not made for understanding: knowledge is made for cutting.’28 As power relations change from one culture or historical epoch to the next, so too do the rules for the emergence and creation of truths. These frameworks of truth, or epistemes as Foucault calls them, are produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint … Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned. 29

40  Kevin Kennedy Foucault’s radical constructivism thus undermines the idea that we could ever achieve a form of timeless, disinterested knowledge, distinct from the time and place where it is produced, which evidently problematizes the ideal of scientific objectivity: ‘there is “something altogether different” behind things: not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms.’30 In Nietzschean fashion, Foucault argues that truth can never be divorced from the people, who supposedly possess or discover it: ‘devotion to truth and the precision of scientific methods arose from the passion of scholars, their reciprocal hatred, their fanatical and unending discussions, and their spirit of competition— the personal conflicts that slowly forged the weapons of reason.’31 Without going into the many important differences between Derrida and Foucault, the key notion that both thus take from Nietzsche— which in this sense could be seen as the cornerstone of a poststructuralist epistemology—is that truth never exists as an abstract, universal, transcendent category, with the consequence that they question the predominant modern notion that truth can be reduced to a value-free statement of fact, beyond language and power. In other words, there is never a space outside of the existing linguistic and political structures, from which to critique truth- claims. Any claim to truth already emerges within specific, pre-existing coordinates (cultural, rhetorical, political), which determine how these claims are evaluated and utilized. However, despite Derrida’s insistence on the ultimate impossibility of such a metaphysical, timeless truth, his work does not promote a facile epistemological relativism, where everything is reduced to pure rhetoric. As he puts it in Limited Inc., the value of truth … is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts … [i]t should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism and pedagogy.32 Despite the impossibility of establishing a ‘transcendental signified,’33 truth, as a yardstick of scientific and academic rigor, should never be abandoned. It is not Derrida’s ambition to demonstrate— as frequent caricatures of his work seem to suggest34 —that scientific knowledge is purely metaphorical or that there is no difference between the factual and the fictional. On the contrary, Derrida’s highly rigorous and selfreflexive readings aspire towards a ‘reinscription of the values of truth and science,’35 not their denigration or denial. In a similar vein, Foucault’s analysis of the ‘relative,’ historically determined nature of discursive, truth-producing practices does not imply that one can simply change a false statement into a true statement as a matter

Poststructuralism in America  41 of ‘emotion and personal belief.’36 Foucault compellingly demonstrates how systems of knowledge are always produced in tandem with developments in the fields of politics, science, and the economy, from which they can never be divorced, and which establish the very parameters that allow individuals to make statements about the world.37 This means that the focus of any epistemological critique should not be the isolated statements (opinions) of individuals, but the regime of truth (episteme) underlying and facilitating them. As Sergei Prozorov points out: To speak of a political history of truth is not to dissolve discourses of truth in prior relations of power or the rationalities of government, thereby depriving them of their consistency and autonomy, but, on the contrary, to demonstrate the effects of these discourses on social practices or the constitution of the subject’s relationship to itself.38 For Foucault, truths do not correspond to reality, but are a part of it, which means that they are always radically contingent. However, their necessary contingency and historicity do not render truth claims superfluous, false, or a matter of personal perspective. As Prozorov argues, Foucault does not deny the existence or the validity of truth itself (a defining characteristic of epistemological relativism), but rather insists on the non-necessity of any particular truth claim.39

Poststructuralism in America: From Critique to Relativism The attack on traditional notions of truth in both Foucault’s and Derrida’s works might suggest a shared philosophical outlook that would warrant subsuming them under the same ‘poststructuralist’ movement. Yet, as several critics have already pointed out, the notion of poststructuralism as a supposedly coherent set of principles and methods in fact only emerged in the U.S.A. As early as 1991, Slavoj Žižek pointed to the crucial but usually overlooked fact that the very term “poststructuralism,” although designating a strain of French theory, is an Anglo-Saxon and German invention. The term refers to the way the Anglo-Saxon world perceived and located the theories of Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, etc.—in France itself, nobody uses the term “poststructuralism.”40 And, in a similar vein, Jean-Philippe Mathy has argued that French ­theory, which was originally a corpus of very demanding, and more often than not arcane, philosophical and critical texts from a foreign culture

42  Kevin Kennedy has given rise over the course of the last decade to one of the most hotly debated domestic issues in recent American history, carrying in its wake debates on … the very future of the American moral and social fabric.41 The question then naturally arises as to why the theories of these difficult and unorthodox French philosophers had such an unprecedented impact in North America. The reason, as I will attempt to argue, is both institutional and cultural. Recently, Johannes Angermuller has compellingly demonstrated that the reception of poststructuralism in American academia is inextricably linked to its adoption in the centers of intellectual influence and power, notably Yale and Berkeley (unlike in France, where it emerged from the peripheries of the French university system): ‘more than in the USA, where the debate on poststructuralism began at well-established universities like Yale, Berkeley or Columbia, in France the oppositional stance of these theorists was decisively informed by a tacit conflict with the academic institutions.’42 Yale and Berkeley, two of America’s leading research universities, also serve as the symbols of the two moments of poststructuralism in America, which Angermuller calls ‘high’ and ‘low’ theory.43 The first moment, inspired by Derrida’s work, emerges from the so- called Yale School in the 1970s, where literary scholars, such as Paul de Man, Stanley Fish, and J. Hillis Miller adopted and developed Derrida’s notion of the undecidability of meaning in texts, and the relative nature of interpretation. What appealed to the critics of the Yale school was Derrida’s questioning of the traditional hierarchy between literature and criticism. Stanley Fish, for example, applied Derrida’s philosophical critique of metaphysical meaning to literary texts, arguing that due to the differential nature of language, meaning was no longer an objective feature of the text, but a rhetorical construct created by the reader/critic: ‘the choice is never between objectivity and interpretation but between an interpretation that is unacknowledged as such and an interpretation that is at least aware of itself.’44 Fish thus advances a radical interpretative relativism, where the only relevant epistemological criterion is not between truth and falsehood, but between acknowledgement and denial of the relativity of all meaning. Broadened to the cultural, political sphere, it is not difficult to see how this extreme skepticism could indeed be construed as a form of post-truthism, where individual rhetorical brilliance and self-awareness become more important than shared epistemological foundations. The second key stage of poststructuralism in America, this time inspired by Foucault’s analysis of power, occurs in the early 1990s with the emergence of cultural studies, queer studies, and postcolonial studies, most notably at the University of California, Berkeley. What all

Poststructuralism in America  43 these ‘new studies’ have in common is the idea that knowledge is always relative to cultural contexts, shaped by power, identity, class, and desire. In other words, the world as such (as seen from a subjectless perspective, what Thomas Nagel called ‘the view from nowhere’45) can never be known, precisely because it does not exist. Perhaps the most interesting but also controversial school to emerge in this context is New Historicism, associated with the literary historian Stephen Greenblatt. For Greenblatt, in a similar vein to Fish, cultural or literary criticism ‘must be conscious of its own status as interpretation … [and] this consciousness must extend to an acceptance of the impossibility … of leaving behind one’s own situation.’46 However, one’s own situation (subjectivity, rationality, taste) is itself fundamentally circumscribed by historical forces of power that radically limit individual agency and cognition: the human subject [is] remarkably unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society; … if there remained traces of free choice, the choice was … strictly delineated by the social and ideological system in force.47 What makes the new historicists so interesting, in my view, is that they radicalize one of the implicit problems of Foucault’s epistemic approach: if truths can only emerge within certain normative cultural parameters, what about the truth of Foucault’s theory itself? New historicism draws out the logical conclusion of such a stance. If history is always a type of narrative, determined by power and prejudices, then, as Terry Eagleton puts it, ‘there is no single determinable truth to any particular narrative or event, just a conflict of interpretations whose outcome is finally determined by power rather than truth.’48 Again it is not too far-fetched to connect this extreme historical relativism with a form of post-truthism, which rejects epistemic consistency in favor of competition and tribal allegiance.

Richard Rorty and the Pragmatics of Truth This cursory and highly selective glance at the reception of poststructuralist ideas in American academia in no way does justice to the many important differences and currents that emerged from the ideas of Foucault and Derrida in that setting. It would also be wrong to speak of a homogeneous school of American poststructuralism. Yet, I think one of the defining features that unites all of these different currents, and which is directly linked to American culture and history as a whole is the notion of pragmatism, or a pragmatist epistemology, epitomized by Richard Rorty’s post-philosophical relativism. In a sense, Rorty represents the culmination of American poststructuralism, combining Derrida’s

44  Kevin Kennedy rejection of the correspondence theory of truth with Foucault’s insight that standards of truth vary between different epochs and cultures. In Rorty, these claims are radicalized and infused with a strong dose of American pragmatism. Thus, for him, the question of truth becomes a question of competing justificatory frameworks, some of which are more successful than others and none of which could ever claim epistemological superiority. In his words, ‘truth is what one’s peers … let one get away with saying,’49 which means that for a pragmatist, like Rorty, ‘the question of whether justification to the community with which we identify entails truth is simply irrelevant.’50 Although there might be criteria of coherence and non- contradiction that could be applied within the belief systems of a particular community, there is ultimately no way of deciding which belief (or system of thought, such as science) is more rational or truthful. Joshua Forstenzer’s recent work Something Has Cracked links Rorty’s Derridean and Foucaultian–inspired epistemology with the notion of ‘post-truth’ to charge that ‘Rorty’s philosophical project bears some intellectual responsibility for the onset of post-truth politics, insofar as it took a complacent attitude towards the dangers associated with overaffirming the contingency of our epistemic claims.’51 Forster argues that although Rorty cannot be directly blamed for the rise of post-truth politics, he nonetheless bears some responsibility for creating an intellectual environment in which questions of truth are reduced to questions of rhetorical strategy or linguistic consensus. Taking Derrida’s critique of metaphysical thought as a starting point, Rorty subscribes to a radical linguistic constructivism, in which supposed truth claims never really tell us anything about world: ‘Truth cannot be out there— cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.’52 From this Rorty infers that a statement must never be judged according to its factuality or objectivity, but according to its efficacy or utility, which evidently varies from situation to situation, and from culture to culture. The possibility for identifying/establishing universal criteria of truth and falsehood is thus dismissed as irrelevant, as such criteria ultimately amount to nothing more than justifications of particular interests, at the service of specific groups or individuals. In a similar manner, Rorty amplifies Foucault’s genealogy of power and knowledge, by wholly rejecting any type of overarching metanarrative that purports to explain the movement of history by means of one privileged concept— matter, spirit, being, class struggle—including the concept of truth itself. For Rorty, these are mere stories which purport to justify loyalty to, or breaks with, certain contemporary communities, but which are neither historical narratives about what these or other communities have done in the past nor scenarios about what they might do in the future.53

Poststructuralism in America  45 According to Forstenzer, Rorty’s pragmatist relativism can thus be easily reconciled with the stance of some influential contemporary political actors, who dismiss claims to epistemic coherence or objectivity either as a mere ploy by the supposed elites or as simply not in line with their own values or interests.54 This means that Rorty’s epistemological position, which holds that there are ‘no neutral, objective criteria which dictate one rather than the other,’55 ultimately lacks the philosophical means to confront the political problems triggered by the rise of the post-factual, and, by extension, post-truth. It should be clear that Rorty thus departs quite significantly from Derrida’s more cautious emphasis on the rhetorical dimension of meaning. For Derrida ‘there is a point at which the authority of final jurisdiction is neither rhetorical nor linguistic, nor even discursive.’56 And, as Sergei Prozorov has recently pointed out, Foucault, in contrast to Rorty’s and Fish’s pragmatics of truth, does not reduce truth, ‘to the instruments of power or private opinions. It would therefore be patently incorrect to list Foucault among the precursors of today’s truth denialism.’57 The philosophies of Foucault and Derrida cannot then be accused of being cynical towards matters of truth and epistemic coherence. Yet, their eager adoption, homogenization, radicalization, and ultimate ‘ismification’ in American academia may have unwittingly contributed to a prevalent relativism that allows sinister, cynical political forces to play fast and loose with facts, which becomes particularly worrying in relation to such pressing concerns as climate change. It is in this context that Bruno Latour, a pioneer of scientific constructivism, has complained that entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint.58 Latour thus underscores Terry Eagleton’s point that poststructuralism ‘transplanted from Paris to Yale or Cornell, tended like the odd French wine not to travel well.’59

Between Individualism and Equality: Truth in American Culture The question then remains as to why the work of Foucault, Derrida, and other French philosophers of the 1960s and 1970s found such fertile ground in American academia and to what extent it influenced American culture at large. According to the American writer Kurt Anderson— whose recent book Fantasyland is a cultural history of the tenuous relation between truth and illusion in the U.S.A.—relativism in American culture is not a new phenomenon but can be traced back to the

46  Kevin Kennedy values of individualism and equality, so deeply ingrained in the American mindset. Due to its Puritan legacy and the belief that each person could have their own unique relationship with God/truth, combined with a pragmatic, meritocratic emphasis on efficiency and financial success, the U.S.A. has always been a country where individual liberty (including the freedom to believe whatever one wants) had taken precedence over facts and objectivity. Thus, in the US, ‘everything’s relative. Everyone has her own truth. Imposing ours is judgmental and undemocratic and elitist.’60 Although Andersen, like many other contemporary critics, laments the fact that in the 1970s and 1980s relativism ‘became entrenched in academia,’61 for him, ‘the intellectuals’ new outlook was as much a symptom as a cause of the smog of subjectivity that now hung thick over the whole American mindscape.’62 While the freedom to believe in whatever one wished had been a cornerstone of American identity from its very beginning, the 1970s saw a general erosion of shared cultural values and epistemic norms that did not originate in academia. According to Andersen, the reason why people started believing in ever more outlandish theories and subscribed to ever more idiosyncratic forms of beliefs was due to the growing realization that the greatest American belief of all, ‘the American Dream,’ was just that, a dream: ‘As the American dream of endless upward economic mobility came to seem increasingly like myth, all sorts of pure myths and fantasies became still more appealing and seemed more real.’63 Anderson thus suggests that the increasing fragmentation and relativization of truth and knowledge in the U.S.A. during the last decades of the twentieth century— manifest, for instance, in the eager adoption and escalation of poststructuralist thought—was a consequence of the increasing political and economic disenfranchisement of large parts of the population, planting the seeds for the current era of post-truth. The second major development, which, according to Anderson, is responsible for the widespread relativism in contemporary American society at large, is the emergence and embrace of alternative lifestyles in the 1960s and its effect on left-wing politics. The counterculture of the 1960s went hand in hand with a wholesale rejection of establishment figures (politicians, scientists, experts) and values (including, to some extent, the very concepts of reason and responsibility), which were seen as obsolete vestiges of a bigoted and repressive system. However, the attack on prevalent (sexual, political, artistic) norms gradually turned into a rejection of normativity per se. The 1960s obsession with alternative lifestyles, religions, sexualities, and drugs, fostered by an ever-expanding youth consumer culture, ushered in an age of relativism, which had a profound impact on the political left, for whom tolerance and individual freedom became sacrosanct: ‘criticizing became equal to victimizing, and individual liberty absolute, and everyone was permitted to believe or disbelieve whatever they wished. The distinction between fact and

Poststructuralism in America  47 opinion was crumbling on all fronts.’64 The point that is often overlooked, according to Andersen, is that although this ‘anti-Establishment relativism had erupted on the left … it gave license to everyone— in particular, to the far right and in the Christian fever swamps.’65 Leftwing relativism, which had begun as an attack on encrusted political structures and dogmatic cultural norms in the name of tolerance and individual freedom, paved the way for the right-wing identitarianism and the alt-right of today, who have appropriated the former’s cultural relativism, while dismissing its progressive agenda. The rapid dissemination of poststructuralist ideas at American universities in the 1970s and 1980s must thus be seen as a minor phenomenon within a much broader development, which saw American society, as a whole, gradually depart from traditional epistemic norms: equality came to mean not just that the law should treat everyone identically but that your beliefs about anything are equally as true as anyone else’s. As the principle of absolute tolerance became axiomatic in our culture and internalized as part of our psychology … individualism turned into rampant solipsism.66 In the wake of the assault on establishment values in the 1960s and the increasing economic inequality of the 1970s and 1980s, the relativizing tendencies at the heart of American society—its traditional celebration of individuality and equality—were drastically amplified, culminating in today’s age of competing ideological camps unable to find common moral, political, or epistemic ground. This mainstream acceptance of relativism is perhaps best epitomized by Fox News, now America’s most watched television channel. Launched in 1996, Fox News has taken the logic of ideological relativism to its extreme, arguing that its heavily biased reporting is justified because it creates a necessary counterpoint to what it perceives as the liberal, left-wing mainstream media. Fox News thus implicitly accepts its status as a propaganda organ for specific segments of the American population (usually the white, rural working classes), while denouncing any news organization that aspires towards objectivity or disinterestedness in its refusal to admit its ideological bias (usually favoring, in Fox’s view, the liberal elites). In light of Stanley Fish’s assertion that one should no longer distinguish between truth and interpretation, only between awareness and non-awareness of one’s own inevitable (interpretative) bias, Fox News’ radical ideological relativism can indeed be construed as a ‘Rortian “poststructuralist” strategy’ par excellence. And, in its rejection of universally binding rules and wholehearted embrace of partisanship and vested interests, Fox News (and other influential media outlets like Breitbart) follow a logic that is not too dissimilar from Rorty’s pragmatic approach to truth, with its emphasis on communal consensus over factual veracity.

48  Kevin Kennedy For Anderson, however, this trend towards heavily biased newsreporting is not new in the history of North America. Fox news and similar media are, in fact, ‘enabling a reversion to the narrower, factional, partisan discourse that had been normal in America’s earlier centuries. The new and newly unregulated technologies allowed us, in a sense, to travel backward in time.’67 The traditional mass media of the twentieth century (newspapers, radio, and television) tended to be highly regulated, contributing to the construction of a public sphere, espousing widely shared principles and values. With the emergence of digital means of communication at the dawn of the era of post-truth politics, this traditional form of control and its attendant ideological homogeneity is beginning to disintegrate, partly contributing to the current state of epistemic relativity. Although it feels radically new, the dissolution of epistemic norms, according to Andersen, is in fact a return to the highly partisan politics of the nineteenth century, epitomized by the American Civil War. In short, the germs of post-truth had taken root in American culture long before the emergence of Fox News and the advent of the current era of the post-factual, and certainly long before the arrival, amplification, and dissemination of poststructuralism in the 1970s.

Conclusion In this light, poststructuralism cannot be held responsible for the rise of post-truth politics in America: according to Andersen, the latter has always to some degree been a post-truth society. It does explain, however, why the relativistic aspects of poststructuralist philosophy were adopted and magnified in American academia, to the exclusion of its more cautious elements. Yet a bit more nuance is required. The American poststructuralists (like Rorty, Fish, Hillis Miller, and Paul de Man) attacked epistemic norms in the name of liberty, tolerance, and intellectual freedom: Rorty’s ethnocentric liberalism aims … to bring more and more people into a broader community of solidarity, united by nothing more than a common conversation, endlessly renewed thanks to a shared awareness of the contingency of any one final vocabulary.68 There certainly is no direct causal relation between them and contemporary post-truth politics, which are often based on xenophobia, resentment, and a rejection of critical thinking. Furthermore, post-truth cannot be simply equated with relativism. Unlike Rorty and Fish, someone like President Trump is not a relativist. Like many conspiracy theorists, he seems to believe (or pretends to believe) that he in fact possesses the truth that is kept from the general public by the political establishment. The numerous criticisms leveled at poststructuralist thought in contemporary theory are thus misguided on two accounts, both hinging on

Poststructuralism in America  49 the notion of relativism: first, poststructuralist thinkers are not relativists, if relativism is defined as the acceptance of every personal opinion, whim, and emotion as equally valid. Second, the political and discursive practices associated with post-truth are, strictly speaking, not relativist either: although their proponents in principle attest to the existence of different mutually incompatible, irreducible world views, cultures, or systems of belief, they do not accept them as equally valid: they tend to be ‘ethnocentric’—favoring one cultural group over another—rather than (epistemologically, culturally, politically) relativist. Nevertheless, poststructuralism in the U.S.A. reveals that challenging traditional certainties or dogmas is not necessarily progressive or liberal, but that this challenge can be instrumentalized as a justification for an anything-goes relativization of facts, masking underlying economic interests or deep-seated prejudices. Can we trace a direct trajectory from Nietzsche, via 1960s France, to present day American politics? Could an authoritarian regime use a poststructuralist critique of knowledge to ground its claims? Is one more truthful when one admits that truth claims are always contingent or tribal, a strategy that has served Fox News very well over the last decades? I would respond with an emphatic no to all of these questions. Still, the term post-truth implies that we used to live in an age where truth was taken for granted/accepted by all, that there once existed shared epistemic norms, which have now been undermined or abandoned. If this is the case, then poststructuralism can indeed be regarded as one of the first movements to question the value of truth. In other words, Foucault and Derrida are indeed post-truth, if truth is understood as fixed and dogmatic. Yet, as I hope to have shown, their challenge to truth is a far cry from a simple relativism or solipsism. What is clear, however, is that in a post-truth, post-poststructuralist world, we cannot go back to a simple epistemic conception of a direct correspondence between word and world. The solution cannot be a naïve insistence on facts. In fact, the prevalent idea today that data replaces analysis, on the hand, and an extreme post- epistemic relativism, on the other, might be two sides of the same coin: in both cases an engagement with the truly problematic, ambiguous, even paradoxical questions engendered by epistemological enquiry are eschewed. I believe Derrida and Foucault convincingly demonstrate that truth is not simply something that can be measured or quantified: facts can never replace ethical, economic, or political decisions or arguments. Yet neither can truth be reduced to ‘emotion and personal belief.’69 The fate of poststructuralism in America reveals the dangers of abandoning the quest for universal epistemological criteria that would allow us to adjudicate between different epistemic claims, while reminding us that every claim to universality is necessarily embedded in a particular narrative of emphasis and exclusion, predetermining our interpretation of facts.

50  Kevin Kennedy

Notes ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ 6 Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth ­ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), pp. 140–141.



20 Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 55. 22 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology: Corrected Edition, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 3. 24 Ibid.

Poststructuralism in America  51



40 Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), p. 142. 41 Jean-Phillipe ­ Mathy, French Resistance: The French-American Culture Wars (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 31.

4 4 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class: The Authority of Interpretative Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 167. 46 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self- Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 4. 48 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 197.

52  Kevin Kennedy 54 See Forstenzer, Something has Cracked, pp. 23–26. 60 Kurt Andersen Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History (London: Random House, 2018), p. 391.

3

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator Foucault’s Complicated Relationship to Structuralism Guilel Treiber

In the state of political and intellectual disarray characterizing the contemporary left, some have attempted to find resources for a renewal of theory in a synthesis between the different contributions of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. The combination has garnered a number of important formulations in the last few years, some tackling head on the combination itself and formulating a kind of Marxian-Foucauldianism 1 (or Foucauldian-Marxism), ­ while others, focusing on neoliberalism, have attempted to combine a Marxist leaning analysis of economic structures with a Foucauldian oriented analysis of the entrepreneurial self.2 However, without reducing the importance and value of such attempts, it seems that such efforts are hampered by at least one evident obstacle. If one is coming from a Foucauldian background to Marx, one must seriously confront the critiques of Marx and Marxism that are spread throughout Foucault’s work in differing degrees of urgency or relevance.3 Although some of these critiques are concerned with the concrete political manifestations of Marxism during Foucault’s life, i.e., the French Communist Party or the Soviet Union,4 most of them are quite principled and deal with important issues in Marx or Marxist scholarship. In 1978, in a long debate with the Japanese philosopher Takaaki Yoshimoto, Foucault formulates one of his most aggressive critiques of Marxism, even if not one of his most sophisticated (with which I will deal with later). Foucault argues that the post-1968 generation suffers from a ‘lack of political imagination.’5 If, in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, Western society was ‘teeming with fertile products of socio-political ­ imagination,’6 by the middle of the twentieth century these had been depleted. According to Foucault, our world is one of extreme imaginative poverty, which he blames squarely on Marxism: ‘Marxism has contributed and still does to an impoverishment of political imagination, this is my starting point.’ 7 According to Foucault, even though Marx and his work are an integral part of the Western tradition, Marxism has operated throughout the twentieth century mainly as a modality of power without providing any basis for critique or resistance. The Western world in the aftermath of the French Revolution has witnessed the rise of ‘the philosophical state.’8 If States prior to the

54  Guilel Treiber French Revolution were mostly religious, or at least were defined by their relation to religion, the philosophical State has sought its legitimacy in the works of a particular philosopher. For example, the democratic-liberal State with reference to Locke or Mill, the French Republic to Rousseau, the Soviet Union to Marx, and the Nazi State to Nietzsche. That this is or is not a proper interpretation of the philosopher in question is beside the point. According to Foucault, what is essential is that philosophy is doubled with a political copy that is criss- crossed by power relations. Philosophy has let itself be integrated into the mechanisms of the State,9 with Marxism being the most telling example of this. How then is one to ‘get rid of Marxism?’10 Foucault mentions two possibilities, both of which are taken to entail a return to Marx: one that values the truth or justice of his arguments, the other that aims to salvage him from the grip of the Communist Party.11 However, Foucault argues that he chose neither. Restating his critique from The Order of Things, Foucault claims that Marx only operates properly in nineteenth century thought. Using him in the latter half of the twentieth century sweeps under the rug many crucial issues.12 To add insult to injury, Marxism consistently ignores the potential contestation inherent in what it has termed the lumpenproletariat: the mad, vagabonds, criminals, homosexuals, or sex workers, all of which have shown, according to Foucault, their capacity to create radical societal changes.13 Indeed, Foucault’s path to Marx goes through a reactivation of what is, according to him, a neglected theme in the history of philosophy: struggle. Foucault admits that class struggle may indeed be a motor for historical change; he adds, however, that Marx and Marxism always focused on class while what they should have been focusing on is the struggle itself, in its concrete, tangible corporeality. As a consequence, Foucault explains that ‘What I would like to discuss departing from Marx is not the sociology of classes but the strategic method relating struggle.’14 It is this methodological re-formulation, incorporating struggle as its basic constitutive concept, that distanced Foucault not only from Marxism but from structuralism as well. In a recently published volume (issued in 2019) containing previously unpublished texts from 1967 to 1969, Foucault appears to be more than ever aligned with structuralism.15 However, even here, he seems to distance himself from the synthesis of structuralism and Marxism proposed by Althusser: ‘Althusser’s project is very beautiful … but in the end it is destined to fail.’16 In this chapter, I argue that one of the main reasons why Foucault distanced himself from both Marxism and structuralism is his insistence on the need to incorporate struggle as a methodological and constitutive concept. Incorporating struggle as a major concept in the way that Foucault conceives it— as a plurality of

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  55 never-ending, local clashing interactions constitutive of power structures such as the state and its apparatuses— has dire consequences for the stable synchronic analysis promulgated by structuralism and for the monolithic struggle between two unitary classes each endowed with one collective will espoused by Marxism. This point comes to the fore most clearly in Foucault’s lectures from 1972 to 1973, The Punitive Society,17 where he deals with Althusser’s famous article from 1971, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus.’18 As I will show, while Foucault’s issues with both structuralism and Marxism seem to be based solely on epistemological grounds before 1970, it is when both become political opponents of sorts that Foucault takes a harsher stance towards them, with this being best encapsulated in and through his critique of Althusser’s arguments. My argument follows the subsequent structure. In Section ‘A Complicated Relationship, Part 1: Structuralism,’ I expose Foucault’s relationship with structuralism according to newly published materials to argue that we can indeed take Foucault as a structuralist until 1969–1970. However, in the section ‘Tunis and the Discovery of Struggle,’ I argue that his positive attitude shifts following his political experience in Tunis in 1968, which brought forth to him the constitutive importance of the notion of struggle. I develop this in Sections ‘A Complicated Relationship, Part 2: Althusser,’ ‘The Punitive Society,’ and ‘A Complicated Relationship, Part 3: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ by engaging with Foucault’s relationship to Althusser to highlight the alterations in Foucault’s thinking that arose from his experiences in Tunis and show the important role that the notion of struggle comes to play in this thinking. From this, I conclude that Foucault’s critical appropriation of structuralism and Marxism is due to the implications stemming from his idiosyncratic conception of struggle.

A Complicated Relationship, Part 1: Structuralism The last few sentences of the preface to the American translation of Les mots et les choses (first published in 1966 and translated into English in 1971 as The Order of Things) can be easily considered the nastiest remarks Foucault wrote: This last point is a request to the English-speaking reader. In France, certain half-witted ‘commentators’ persist in labelling me a ‘structuralist.’ I have been unable to get it into their tiny minds that I have used none of the methods, concepts, or key terms that characterize structural analysis.19 The year after, in the revised edition of The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault took the time to edit out all too obvious terms referring to structuralist

56  Guilel Treiber theory or thinkers. 20 However, we should not consciously collaborate with Foucault’s attempts to re-write his past, nor for that matter take his description of his work at face value. Gilles Deleuze’s suggestion of Foucault’s interviews as the missing half of the books has led many to take them as an accurate self-description of Foucault’s works.21 I would caution against such a move. For example, the same book out of which the quote above is taken was meant to be subtitled ‘an archaeology of structuralism.’22 Moreover, though it is implied in the same quote that the tiny-minded commentators are critical, many of them were Foucault’s personal friends, such as Althusser, Roland Barthes, or Deleuze. 23 However, more than all these mitigating factors, the clearest voice that encourages that we read Foucault’s work in a structuralist vein is still Foucault’s own. In interviews and conferences given and texts written between the publication of The Order of Things (from 1966) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (from 1969), 24 Foucault is quite clear that his work can be taken as part of the structuralist activity or experiment. 25 In an interview from 1967 as to whether he is the priest of structuralism, Foucault answers jokingly ‘at best, I am its choirboy … I rang the bell.’26 He goes on to define structuralism as having two main manifestations. The first is as a methodology aiming to increase the level of scientificity of the humanities in fields as diverse as linguistics (Emile Benveniste), history of religions (Georges Dumézil), or anthropology (Claude Lévi-Strauss). This kind of methodology focuses on relations, an ensemble of elements, concepts, or conducts, which are maintained at a specific moment in an equilibrium enabling the analyst to dissect the structure formed. The second is structuralism as a philosophical activity, more generalized and unrestricted by any specific scientific discipline. Foucault states that if we agree that philosophy is mainly about diagnosis, then, and in words reminiscent of his much later What is Enlightenment?, 27 structuralist philosophy ‘could be defined as the activity which enables us to analyse what is today.’28 Foucault insinuates that his work takes the second form, yet when asked to specify the relationship between the content of his books and that of structuralism, he is much more careful and specific; What I tried to do is to introduce analyses of a structuralist style into fields where they have not penetrated until today … In this sense, I have to structuralism a relation of distance and doubling [redoublement]. Of distance, because I speak of it instead of directly practicing it; of doubling, because I do not want to speak of it without using its terms. 29 According to this, it appears that the structuralist tendency in Foucault’s work up until the 1970s is a mask of sorts, a question of style

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  57 rather than of content. However, one may wonder to what an extent one can speak a language without becoming a speaker of that language, how can one speak structuralism without practicing it? Whether Foucault was or was not a structuralist depends on the definition we give the term. Barthes suggests that structuralism is an activity concerned with reconstructing an object, a ‘simulacrum’30 of a system, or a structure. As such, it is divided into two operations: ‘dissection and articulation.’31 The structuralist thinker starts by dissecting a given set of phenomena out of which they reconstruct and articulate a meaning explaining the relations between the different elements they constructed. Human beings are sense-producing animals. ‘Man fabricating meanings’32 or as Foucault said, when opposing his project to Frankfurt School thinkers, ‘man producing Man.’33 In this case, and with relevance for the present volume, we are left pondering to what extent structuralism (or poststructuralism) is indeed a thing. Are not all those identified with poststructuralism just unorthodox structuralists constructing each their own ‘universals’? Structuralism as a category, a school, or a movement, has always been defined from the outside. 34 We should be careful as philosophers and historians of ideas not to fall into the problematic position of grouping distinct theories, such as those dominant in Paris from 1945 to 1979, under one heading be it ‘structuralism’ or ‘poststructuralism.’ This would amount to following the fashions of an intellectual scene, always keen on welcoming the next fad as the philosophical school of the day. In the newly published edited volume Folie, langage, littérature, containing previously unavailable material written by Foucault between 1967 and 1969, a brighter light is shed on Foucault’s relation to structuralism. As Judith Revel writes in her introduction, the entirety of the thirteen texts in the volume puts Foucault up until 1969 firmly ‘on the side of structuralism.’35 Crowned by the two conferences given by Foucault in Tunis during 1967 while he was teaching there, the texts give ample support to insist, against the Foucault of 1971, that he was using structural methods and not just artificially speaking them. For example, in a conference titled ‘Folie et civilisation,’ Foucault argues that madness is ‘a social function that exists in all societies with a perfectly precise role and overall relatively uniform structure in all civilisations,’36 or that Racine’s theatre captures the ‘structure itself of madness.’37 He adds as well that medicine could play a role in relation to madness precisely because ‘it has inserted itself within a structure that was a universal structure,’ 38 or when commenting on literary analysis, that it is ‘the structure of fiction that indicates the position of the speaking subject.’39 In another conference, ‘Structuralisme et analyse littéraire,’ which is essential for this chapter, Foucault defines ‘structuralisms’ as the different attempts to analyze the ‘documentary mass’40 produced by humans, i.e., ‘the ensemble of signs, traces or marks humanity has left

58  Guilel Treiber behind it and which it goes on constituting every day and in increasing numbers around itself.’41 This ‘universal archive,’ 42 as Foucault calls it, the object of a science of the document, is what I believe Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge and in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France would define as discourse.43 Hence, he explains the importance of linguistics, the analysis of systems of signs (semiology), and the multiplicity of methods characterizing these structuralisms.44 Revealingly, Foucault argues that there are two ways of dealing with this documentary mass, these bits and pieces of meanings that humans constantly produce: one, by formulating their laws of production over time; second, by taking them in a specific moment, in their concrete existence as documents.45 However, once structuralism has discovered this new object of study and the two approaches to it, it has ‘reached the point where it must efface itself and vanish as a method by turning on itself at the moment when it is erased and recognize that what it did was simply the discovery of an object.’46 It seems then that, for Foucault, structuralism necessarily leads to its own overcoming by pointing to a new realm of study with which it is ‘structurally’ unable to engage. I believe that it is through an appropriation and a simultaneous replacement of structural analysis that Foucault formulated both archaeology and genealogy. The former taking documents (verbal and non-verbal) in their concrete existence in a given moment, the latter as tracing their changing, historical laws of fabrication. However, even if Foucault believed himself to be developing methodologies and a tool box to replace structuralism and map the new continent that structuralism had discovered, the harsh words that he kept for those who (as we have seen with some justice) called his work ‘structuralist’ seems to be excessive.47 One need only remember that the choice to include such a sharp rejection in the introduction to what was Foucault’s bestseller at the time cannot have been a slip of the tongue. Foucault wanted to send a message and wanted it to be as explicit and as nasty as academic conventions would allow. However, this lead to the following questions: why does the meticulous, favorable engagement with structuralism that is present in the newly published volume of texts dated between 1967 and 1969 (and, indeed, other texts of that time) change after 1969 to ensure that he is no longer tarred by structuralism’s brush? Why did Foucault suddenly find the term ‘structuralism’ to be so offensive? In the next section, I will argue that the change was as much biographical, as it was philosophical, and it had to do with Foucault’s engagement with the riots in Tunis.48

Tunis and the Discovery of Struggle In the aftermath of the 1967 war between Israel and its neighboring Arab countries, a wave of politicization engulfed North Africa. The

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  59 first sign of the upheaval to come was a series of attacks against Jewish property. Foucault’s fierce anti-Anti-Semitism is well known, and he tried to convince some of his students at Tunis University to distinguish between Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism.49 He described the following scenes in a letter to Georges Canguilhem: ‘the timeless spectacle of the synagogue gutted…; people running through the streets, taking refuge in a block the mob wanted to set on fire … Nationalism and Racism add up to something very nasty.’50 Still, when the riots turned against the government, and severe repression ensued, Foucault felt it was necessary to use his position as a French national to help. He smuggled leaflets, housed students who were wanted by police forces, and in the end, was severely beaten up by police officers. When the trials of some of the students began in September 1968, Foucault paid the defense attorney from his salary and begged the French ambassador, to no avail, to intervene on their behalf. By October, after living a few months under police harassment (his life was threatened) and surveillance, he was made to understand that he should leave Tunis.51 In a famous interview with Duccio Trombadori a decade later, Foucault says that During those upheavals, I was profoundly struck and amazed by those young women and men who exposed themselves to serious risks for the simple fact of having written or distributed a leaflet, or having incited others to go on strike. Such actions were enough to place at risk one’s life, one’s freedom, and one’s body. And this made a very strong impression on me: for it was a true political experience.52 It was not only Foucault’s first time intervening in concrete political action, but it was also a moment of transformation: ‘it wasn’t May ’68 in France that changed me; it was March of ’68, in a third world country.’53 When he compared what happened in Tunisia to the Paris events two months later, Foucault was underwhelmed. Though a certain tendency for reversed Orientalism can be detected in Foucault’s writings, I believe it is not the issue here.54 For Foucault, the Parisian students did not risk much. Their understanding of Marxism was beyond reproach, but it was only theoretical. The Marxism of the students in Tunis was transformed by the intensity of their ‘existential act’55 and infused with a ‘spirituality’56 and an urgency to push back against what they saw as the intolerable character of capitalism and neo- colonialism: What on earth is it that can set off in an individual the desire, the capacity, and the possibility of an absolute sacrifice without our being able to recognize or suspect the slightest ambition or desire for power and profit? This is what I saw in Tunisia … There’s no

60  Guilel Treiber comparison between the barricades of the Latin Quarter and the risk of doing fifteen years in prison, as was the case in Tunisia.57 For Foucault, this ‘political experience’58 drove him into a more profound preoccupation with politics. From Tunis to the Groupe d’information sur les prisons (G.I.P.)59 to the formulations on power and his ongoing political activism from 1970 until he passed away in 1984. All this is relatively well known,60 but what is usually ignored is that during these years, Foucault attempted to reconceptualize struggle to such an extent that it had immediate consequences for everything he wrote. From Foucault’s historical epistemology in The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge to his engagement with both Marxism and structuralism, the formulation of struggle as a constitutive concept shifted and transformed much of what he took for granted theoretically.

A Complicated Relationship, Part 2: Althusser Foucault’s rejection of Marx on epistemological grounds in The Order of Things is by now (in)famous. ‘Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought like a fish in water: that is, it is unable to breath anywhere else.’61 In a language read by many at the time as reacting to Althusser’s arguments in For Marx concerning the epistemological break that Capital introduced in nineteenth-century thought,62 Foucault explains that: At the deepest level of Western knowledge, Marxism introduced no real discontinuity; it found its place … within an epistemological arrangement that welcomed it gladly … and that it, in return, had no intention of disturbing, and above all, no power to modify, even one jot, since it rested entirely upon it.63 Foucault argues that Marx did not revolutionize David Ricardo’s or Adam Smith’s economic thought; his entire corpus is anchored in the epistemological structures formulated in the nineteenth century.64 Hence, it is problematic to frame Marx as creating a specifically epistemic rupture, as Althusser would have us believe.65 Nonetheless, it is clear from Althusser’s letters during these years that his relationship with Foucault is one of great appreciation and intimate friendship.66 In 1962, Althusser wrote to his lover, Franca Madonia, that Foucault’s published thesis, History of Madness67 (from 1961), is a ‘capital book’68 and defines himself as the only one who can truly understand it and write anything meaningful about it. Instead of writing on it, however, Althusser decided to dedicate his yearly seminar at the École normale supérieure to structuralism, with Foucault’s work taking center stage.69 Socially, he spent many evenings with Foucault and Barthes.70 In 1965, he wrote to Franca ‘beside you, it is only with Foucault that I’ve

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  61 felt an outgrowth of intimate matter.’71 ‘I really like him … we are two silent brothers who communicate through our silences and our misfortunes.’72 Moreover, when Foucault learned that Althusser took to heart his critical remarks about Althusser’s reading of Marx in The Order of Things, he seems to have regretted ever making them. In an interview, after being asked precisely about his critique of Althusser’s work just mentioned, Foucault says ‘in relation to this subject, I have to make a 73 self-critique.’ ­ He adds that given the volatile nature of any debate over the status of Marxism, he should have been more careful in clarifying that he was speaking mainly of what happened in relation to Marx’s commentary in the years following his death. For example, according to Foucault, Engels does not develop a Marxist philosophy as Althusser is doing in Reading Capital.74 Marx’s friend and colleague is merely formulating an ‘ideological companion’75 to Marx’s social and historical analyses, which do not form the core of Marxism. Foucault adds that though this critique can be formulated against contemporary Marxists such as Roger Garaudy (or even Jean-Paul Sartre), ‘it does not apply to intellectuals like Althusser.’76 It should not be forgotten that in The Order of Things, Foucault concludes that anthropology and psychoanalysis have privileged critical functions within contemporary knowledge structures.77 However, there is no mention of Marxism (as Althusser would expect). This was subsequently rectified in the interview previously mentioned, where Foucault reinstates Marxism as another prized critical apparatus of the present.78 However, all this seems to stem more from the personal friendship between the two men rather than from Foucault actually recanting his previous theoretical position.79 Althusser and Foucault remained friends throughout their lives and Foucault went to visit him, unlike many others, when Althusser was interned after he murdered his wife, Helen.80 Althusser, when learning of Foucault’s death in 1984 said of him that ‘he was a saint.’81 It seems that some intellectuals can remain close friends while being ‘theoretical enemies.’82 Nonetheless, it is surprising to learn that while Foucault was giving the interview I mentioned in the previous paragraph, he was already working on his ‘settling of scores’83 with Marxism. The lectures course of 1972–1973, The Punitive Society, more than the book based on it, Discipline and Punish (published in 1975),84 is a frontal assault not only on Althusser’s famous article from 1971 ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus’ but generally speaking of Marxism, ideology, class struggle, and even revolution. Hence, I will deal in the following parts of this chapter with The Punitive Society, which was published in French only in 2013 and translated into English in 2015 and which is still relatively little discussed in the secondary literature. What makes The Punitive Society so interesting is that its argument is more far-reaching than the one Foucault actually did publish in the book Discipline and Punish two years later, partially based upon the lecture

62  Guilel Treiber series. Moreover, though critical towards structuralism and Althusserian Marxism, his attitude is not one of rejection but one of critical appropriation. Indeed, it is in these lectures that we can see best how Foucault understands archaeology and genealogy to be methodological replacements for structural methods and the way that these two are supposed to encompass the idea of struggle as a constitutive aspect of social life; a feat neither structuralism nor Althusser were able to accomplish.85

The Punitive Society If we accept Étienne Balibar’s suggestion that Foucault’s lectures in 1971–1972, 1972–1973, and 1975–1976 are a devastating critique of Marxism in three acts,86 it is clear that The Punitive Society stands out both for its encompassing argument, its thorough structure, the richness of its historical material, and the depth of its critique. It is also obvious that one of Foucault’s targets is indeed Althusser’s work, specifically the article published in La pensée in 1971: ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus.’ The main aim of Foucault’s course is to show the historical complexity of repressive state apparatuses when analyzed not through the prism of economics or the structure/infrastructure division but an analytics of power and the constitutive aspect of struggle.87 However, as stated earlier, the course is much more ambitious than a simple response to Althusser’s relatively rudimentary argument. In an archaeological-genealogical analysis, Foucault proposes an answer to the questions ‘why prison?’88 How has Western society developed into a society that imprisons its criminals? The Punitive Society, as is evident from its title, argues that prison is much more than just a penal tool meant to punish those who have transgressed the law. Prison, according to Foucault, is a ‘social form.’89 From what Foucault calls ‘the 90 prison-form,’ ­ we can deduce two techniques with and through which power operates in contemporary societies: surveillance and punishment. However, Foucault wants to push his investigation further to answer the question ‘in what system of power does prison function?’91 One cannot avoid noticing the structuralist-formalist formulation of this question. Power is understood to constitute a system in which certain strategies, such as prison, can operate. Hence, a system of power, to give it another formulation, is the condition of possibility of certain concrete phenomena that cannot be explained by only focusing on the result (the prison). The modern prison was not born fully formed in opposition to a more violent, dramatic form of corporal punishment; it is not structured around the re-formulation of a developmental-progressive schema of social evolution.92 The system of power must be explained through its tangible effects; hence the question sets as the desideratum a system of power or power relations as they are captured within specific power struggles to which prison was an answer.

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  63 Foucault focuses on prison for three main reasons: Historically, it is a radical innovation, though it has quickly gained the status of an anthropological constant. Theoretically, one cannot derive prison as a form of punishment, let alone as the monopolistic form of punishment, from the discourse that preceded it; that is of the great penal reformers of the late eighteenth century such as Beccaria and Brissot.93 Lastly, functionally, the prison has been dis-functioning as an institution since it was put into practice, never actually rising to the moral and social expectations it aimed and was supposed to achieve.94 The archaeological aspect of Foucault’s analysis focuses on the claim that prison emanates from a different discursive ensemble than that of the dominating penal discourse constitutive of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Foucault traces the rise of the concept of the criminal as a social enemy during this period in England, Germany, and France. Out of this concept and from the theories that formulated it there was no logical reason to deduce prison as a favored, let alone, an almost exclusive form of punishment from the early decades of the nineteenth century. If anything, other punishments seemed to be more fitting and more attuned to the aims of the reformers: The two processes of, on the one hand, the discursive derivation leading to the formulation of the principle of the criminal as social enemy and, on the other, punishment are heterogeneous. So that between the penal, organized around the principle of the criminal, and the penitentiary, organized around the prison, [we see] a rift the historical appearance of which we must now delimit.95 Three other models are logically deducible from the concept of the criminal as a social enemy: infamy and public opinion, the talion, and slavery or forced labor.96 However, the attempt to account for the heterogeneity between the penal system and the penitentiary leads Foucault to a first step away from Marxism. He contends that the answer is the concrete extraction of time as value. The relation between power and time allows Foucault to analyze with one stroke economic processes, punitive regimes, and disciplinary power.97 There is a fundamental structural continuity between the clock of the workshop, the school, and the time management of the prison.98 The investment of time by power is the condition of possibility of both what Foucault terms as the ‘wageform’ and the ‘prison-form.’99 The former permits the purchase of labor power as units divided by a unified, abstract time, while the latter allows the extraction of that same abstract, unified time as punishment for a crime committed. The two forms communicate at the structural level of power.100 What Marxists would call the economic infrastructure is thus subordinated to an analysis in terms of power.101

64  Guilel Treiber The genealogical aspect is focused on practices of imprisonment. Foucault searches for their source and traces their historical transformations. He postulates that mass incarceration can be detected as early as the sixteenth century, in the process he terms, in History of Madness, ‘the great confinement’102 of the mad, vagabonds, libertines, and other oisifs.103 However, he argues against accepting the simple thesis that contemporary practices of imprisonment are deducible and wholly formed from this initial mass- confinement. While in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the aim of exclusion was mainly to enclose and forget the individual; the confinement of individuals during the nineteenth century, our modern form of imprisonment, is anchored not in penal or parapenal practices but the penitentiary— a form of punishment constructed around practices and discourses of penitence. In other words, it aims to close the individual off from the world in order to correct him.104 It is a theological-moral discourse of redeeming individuals and curing them of their delinquency. It is here that Foucault relies most heavily on E. P. Thompson’s work to draw from it the argument that the passage from penitence to the penitentiary followed from the use of imprisonment in Quakers communities in North America and similar religious-moral societies in England.105 However, these communities were marginal and restricted in space. Nonetheless, it leads Foucault to wonder how this highly specific, localized practice of penitentiary colonized the entire field of the penal. According to Foucault, it is between 1790 and 1820, through a series of struggles related mainly to two forms of common illegalism against the new rising processes of bourgeois production and exploitation, that a need arose to regulate, order, and discipline the body of the worker. Depredation and dissipation were the two main forms of illegalism that Foucault detects and it is in constant reaction to the immediate danger with regard to the constant production of goods that the penitentiary came to dominate not only punishment but also the entire social field in the form of a disciplinary power.106 Prison, as practiced by the Quakers, thus became the necessary tool to reach the desired social aim: discipline through punishment and surveillance. By introducing the concept of illegalism, Foucault seeks to capture the ongoing relation between forces engaged in struggle. The struggle in all of its vivacity, its changing allegiances and interests has not only constituted the process of production as it took form in the middle of the nineteenth century, but also the classes themselves that were engaged in it.

A Complicated Relationship, Part 3: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses In the concluding lecture of 1973, Foucault gives one of the first formulations of his analytics of power relations through ‘four theoretical

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  65 schemas’107—which I will argue are implicitly set against Althusser—in order to state explicitly the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of the research he presented throughout the year.108 The four schemas Foucault rejects are (1) Power can be conceived as property, something that is owned and kept by one class or individual over another who lacks it109; (2) Power is localized in state apparatuses. Their control is the aim of any social struggle110; (3) Power is tied to the economic. Specifically, power is understood as ‘maintaining or reproducing a mode of production,’ 111 it is always ‘subordinate’112 to a mode of production; and (4) power operates either through violence in repressive state apparatuses or through speech, science, or culture in ideology.113 I would also like to add a fifth point that Foucault rejects more clearly in his lectures from 1975 to 1976,114 but whose rejection is already indicated in the first two lectures of 1973115: (5) Political power arises out of the end of strife and civil war; or, in other words, Foucault argues that power relations are to be understood under the matrix of generalized civil wars through the prism of local, plural, and unending struggles and not through the prism of civil peace. To clarify this, I will briefly go over Althusser’s arguments in his article from 1971. According to Althusser, power is exercised to ensure the reproduction of the productive forces and the means of production. While Althusser takes the relationship between power and the means of production to be a relatively simple one, insofar as it signifies the material maintenance of the infrastructure necessary to produce, i.e., machines, factories, etc., it is the relationship between power and productive forces that preoccupies him. Althusser’s main point is that the reproduction of the productive forces depends as its condition on ‘the reproduction of [the worker’s] subjection to the ruling ideology or of the “practice” of that ideology.’116 Hence, ideology itself has to be explained since it is the basic condition of economic reproduction. To do so, Althusser accepts a relatively classical division between the economic infrastructure and the superstructure (with its two instances: the legal-political and ideology).117 Even though there is ‘relative autonomy’118 and a ‘reciprocal relation’119 between base and superstructure, it is the base, the Lacanian Real or the concrete economic relations mystified by ideology, which has the ‘determination in the last instance.’120 Althusser also accepts the basic argument made by classical Marxism that the ‘state is a “machine” of repression’121 owned by the ‘ruling classes … to ensure their domination over the working class.’122 The State is a ‘class state’123 mainly aimed at repression, censorship, exploitation, and domination of the working classes to maintain the capitalist system in its place. However, this, for Althusser, is only the first descriptive phase of the analysis. State power is indeed concentrated in State apparatuses, and its control is the first goal of class struggle, yet it

66  Guilel Treiber seems to survive most political upheavals. Hence, Althusser directs his attention to ideological State apparatuses such as schools, the family, religion, etc.124 Through his lecture course, Foucault shows that these do not function as ideological State apparatuses but are located on a continuum where the extreme is the prison, the asylum, or the factory-barracksconvent.125 According to Foucault, these institutions are able to format individuals, subjectivize them, although he is also clear that those who go through the process of subjection are not simply passive recipients: they constantly resist and struggle against the process. What becomes evident in the aftermath of this short description of Althusser’s argument is that he operates within the five schemas of power mentioned above. Even if, for Foucault, the importance of these schemas extends beyond their status as a response to Althusser, Althusser’s work is an example of them. Althusser conceives of power as a prize to be owned and then used against others (schema 1). Power is solely localized in State apparatuses, whether ideological or repressive (schema 2). Power is subordinated to the economic Real (schema 3). It either operates through violence or through ideology (schema 4), and class struggle is one, monolithic, and taking place between two entities endowed with a unitary collective will (schema 5). From this, however, it might be wondered why Foucault does not deal with what Althusser’s article is famous for: the structure itself of ideology and its operation through interpellation.126 Julian Pallota argues that the absence of the concept of interpellation from the course is due to it being the point where Althusser and Foucault are closest.127 However, I disagree: the absence of the concept of interpellation is more a sign of personal respect and friendship than an implicit acceptance of its Althusserian formulation. In particular, the fourth and fifth schemas are an implicit answer to Althusser’s definition of ideology and the role of interpellation within it. Althusser holds that ideology qua structure has no history and its function is to conceal the real relations of production.128 Even if specific ideologies can change and are historically dependent, ideology as such, similarly to the Freudian or Lacanian unconscious, ‘is eternal,’129 and agents have no direct access to it. The ahistorical character of ideology is precisely the point that Foucauldian power analytics cannot accept. Foucault points out that his toolbox contains concepts such as strategy and tactics, struggle, power, resistance, victory, and defeat, which are meant to show that the social field is less opaque, even if never completely transparent, than what sociologists, epistemologists, or psychologists argue: I think in fact that we too readily endow the social field with opacity, envisaging in it only production and desire, the economy and the unconscious; …I think it is possible to see perfectly calculated, controlled strategies of power … It is clear that if we pose the problem

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  67 of the penal system in terms of economy, it appears opaque and even obscure because no analysis of the economic role of the prison … can account for its existence. In terms of ideology, it is not just opaque, but completely muddled, the system having been so covered over with varied ideological themes.130 The references above to economy, production, and unconscious cannot be understood as but a reference to Althusser.131 That an analysis of ideology cannot do justice to the complexity of the repressive State apparatus, nor see the continuum on which other institutions exist with prison, is a direct rejection of Althusser’s thesis. Indeed, it seems that even Althusser’s most famous two theses: ideology ‘represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real condition of existence’132 and that the existence of ideology is ‘material’133 that is constituted via practices, cannot be accepted at face value according to Foucault’s work in the 1970s. In order for a group to engage in a strategic struggle, a struggle that in turn constitutes it as a group, the agents must be able to assess the material conditions, the extent of the combat, the tools used, the duration, their capacity to resist attacks or counter-attack, the weak points where to strike, with what, and when. This seems to be quite impossible if individuals cannot represent to themselves, at least partially correctly, their relations with themselves, others, and the world. Certainly, the role assigned to genealogy in Foucault’s famous text from 1971 is to show that human history is violence installed in systems of rules proceeding ‘from domination to domination.’134 Thus, genealogy makes the concrete reality of struggle always present and, simultaneously, analyzable. This is why struggle plays such a crucial role in distancing Foucault from his theoretical allies of the 1960s. Struggle not only destroys the possibility of synchronic analysis or a monolithic class struggle crossing society. Struggle means that individuals and groups are able to comprehend the basic system that regulates their lives: power relations. According to Foucault, that system can no longer constitute a social unconscious of sorts, an inaccessible structure available only to sociological analysis.

Conclusion The expression ‘will to struggle’135 appears in Nietzsche’s writings rarely. To some extent, it can be equated with his more famous concept of the will to power. Trying to distinguish his will to power from a Darwinian struggle for survival, he writes ‘Useful’ in the sense of Darwinist biology means: proved advantageous in the struggle with others. But it seems to me that the feeling of increase, the feeling of becoming stronger, is itself, quite apart

68  Guilel Treiber from any usefulness in the struggle, the real progress: only from this feeling does there arise the will to struggle.136 For Nietzsche, the will to struggle is not aimed at some definite purpose, let alone one reduced to the usefulness of an organism’s evolutionary process. The will to struggle is the will to become stronger through the struggle, to increase one’s process of becoming by engaging in evermore struggles. Though Foucault does not use the term even once to my knowledge, I would argue that more than the will to power with its strong evocation of domination or Foucault’s favorite will to knowledge, the will to struggle expresses something highly specific to Foucauldian political conceptualization. According to Leslie Thiele, for Foucault, ‘the enhancement of struggle— not its mere production or exacerbation— must form the criterion of political judgement … it is precisely the enhancement (and one might add, sublimation) of struggle that is Foucault’s chief concern.’137 While for Nietzsche, the main concern is self-struggle and self-overcoming in the figure of the tragic hero in the release from the limitation of consciousness, venturing into and beyond ‘that inner world called “man,”’138 for Foucault, struggle is indeed sub-individual, but it is also sub-State. Power relations captured by the concept of struggle are ‘outside, below, and alongside the state’s apparatuses, on a much more minute and everyday level.’139 However, this struggle is not to be understood in terms of war. If anything, it is akin to an ongoing movement between forces in struggle, never going beyond, never-ending, always transforming, and hence always restarting, transformed. Although in the 1980s Foucault would arguably prefer the word ‘game’ to ‘struggle,’140 he uses the two interchangeably throughout the 1970s, thereby indicating that the conceptual distinction is not crucial. While ‘game’ better captures a relationship between equal partners, the term ‘struggle’ is preferred when the discussion veers toward unequal partners (the struggle for rights, the struggle for the boat people, the struggle for or against identity, the struggle for sexual minorities, etc.). In any case, it seems to me that—independently of Foucault’s usage in the last four years of his life; or, alternatively, preferring to take seriously his wish to return to the issues of war and struggle after his ‘Greek detour’141—the value of the concept ‘struggle’ remains a crucial resource for any attempt to analyze our contemporary condition. When Foucault ends The Punitive Society, he does so by formulating his positive take on the issues of power and struggle. He does so again in the following years, most famously in Discipline and Punish and the first volume of The History of Sexuality.142 However, it is interesting to note that resistance in The Punitive Society does not play the role it plays in the later definition as the ‘vis-à-vis’143 of power. Here, the issue is much more a matter of local, multiple struggles of forces constantly

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  69 changing positions and orientations. Power itself is constituted by struggle, ‘at the heart of power is a warlike relation.’144 Hence, power is always exercised, always operating. A salary is not just money given for time; it is not mainly an economic relation. It is primarily a power relation aimed at producing certain effects and so needs to be understood as such. The entire social body is shaped by these relations; it means that everything is political. If knowledge and power entertain between them a co-dependent relation, not making them similar yet preventing each from ever being fully objective, there is no reason to assume that individuals will not be able to have knowledge of power and use power to change knowledge. Within such a picture, unchanging structures, whether they be that of economy, ideology, or nature, are highly difficult to maintain. Struggle, taken as such and thought in its concrete reality, is the driving force that distances Foucault from structuralism and Marxism. However, it is also that which enabled him to develop his own idiosyncratic position encompassing both.

Notes 1 Jacques Bidet, Foucault with Marx (London: Zed Books, 2016). 2 Christian Laval, L’homme économique: essai sur les racines du néolibéralisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2017); Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neo-Liberal Society (London: Verso, 2017). 3 The two most important critiques of Marx are treated in this essay, that is, the one appearing in Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1970), pp. 261–263; and Michel Foucault, The Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972–1973, edited by Bernard E. Harcourt, trans. Graham Burchell (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For a summary of Foucault’s main issues with Marx, see Bernard E. Harcout, ‘Situtation Du Cours,’ in Michel Foucault, Théories et Institutions Pénales: Cours Au Collège de France, 1971–1972, edited by Bernard E. Harcourt (Paris: EHESS/Gallimard/ Seuil, 2015), pp. 263–278. 4 On the former see Michel Foucault, ‘Folie, Littérature, Société (1970),’ p. 984, in Dits et Écrits, edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Quarto, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), pp.  972–996. On the latter see Michel Foucault, ‘La Grande Colère Des Faits (Sur A. Glucksman) (1977),’ in Dits et Écrits, edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Quarto, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), pp. 277–282. 5 Michel Foucault, ‘Méthodologie pour la Connaissance du Monde: Comment se débarrasser du Marxisme (1978),’ p. 599, in Dits et Écrits, edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Quarto, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), pp.  595–617. In what follows, I have used the English translation where available, otherwise all translations from French are my own. 6 Ibid., p. 599. 7 Ibid. Foucault states this in reference to his 1966 book The Order of Things, although the interview takes place in 1978. 8 Ibid., p. 601.

70  Guilel Treiber 9 Ibid. In another text from the same year, Foucault is even clearer: The 19th century has seen the appearance in Europe of something that never existed previously: philosophical states … philosophies which are states. States who think, think of themselves, organize and define their fundamentals choices based on philosophical positions, inside philosophical systems and conceive themselves to be the philosophical truth of history. (Michel Foucault, ‘La Philosophie Analytique de La Politique [1978],’ pp. 538–539, in Dits et Écrits, edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Quarto, vol. 2 [Paris: Gallimard, 2001], pp. 534–551). 11 Ibid., p. 602. Althusser, interestingly enough, tries precisely these two ways of returning to Marx.

16 Michel Foucault, ‘Structuralisme et analyse littéraire (1967),’ p. 213, in Folie, langage, littérature, edited by Henri-Paul Fruchaud, Judith Revel, and Daniele Lorenzini (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2019), pp. 171–222.





From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  71





28 Foucault, ‘La Philosophie Structuraliste permet de Diagnostiquer ce qu’est “Aujourd’hui,”’ p. 609. See also Foucault’s definition of ‘critique’ in his later ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ (1984) where he writes that philosophy’s aim should be ‘the critical interrogation on the present and on ourselves’ (Michel Foucault, ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ p. 319). 29 Foucault, ‘La Philosophie Structuraliste permet de Diagnostiquer ce qu’est “Aujourd’hui,”’ p. 611. Italics added.





72  Guilel Treiber





49 Anti-semitism played an important role in Foucault leaving the French Communist Party in the aftermath of the Doctors’ plot (1953). See Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 40; James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 58–59.

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  73 55 Foucault and Trombadori, Remarks on Marx, p. 135.





61 Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 262.





74  Guilel Treiber 73 Michel Foucault, ‘Entretien Avec Michel Foucault (1971),’ p. 1038, in Dits et Écrits, edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, Quarto, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), pp. 1025–1044.

75 Foucault, ‘Entretien Avec Michel Foucault (1971),’ p. 1038. 76 Ibid., p. 1038.





83 The expression is taken from Balibar’s letter to Bernard Harcourt, the editor of the lectures of 1971–1972: Etienne Balibar, ‘Lettre d’Etienne Balibar à l’éditeur Du Cours,’ p. 285, in Michel Foucault, Théories et Institutions Pénales: Cours Au Collège de France, 1971–1972, edited by Bernard E. Harcourt (Paris: EHESS/Gallimard/Seuil, 2015), pp. 285–289. 85 To be fair to Althusser (something that Foucault could not have done since he did not have the full manuscript from which ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ was taken), he does state in the note ‘To my Readers’ that the issue of struggle is the weak link of his text and that he plans to treat it in a second volume (see Louis Althusser, ‘To my Readers,’ p. 9, in On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, trans. G. M. Goshgarian [London: Verso, 2014], pp. 1–9. For an analysis suggesting that indeed the distance between Foucault and Althusser is not

From Choirboy to Funeral Orator  75 so important concerning the issue of struggle, see Julien Pallota, ‘L’effet Althusser Sur Foucault : De La Société Punitive à La Théorie de La Reproduction,’ in Marx & Foucault: Lectures, Usages, Confrontations, edited by Christian Laval, Luca Paltrinieri, and Ferhat Taylan (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 2015), pp.  129–142. As the following section make clear, I disagree with Pallota.

102 Michel Foucault, History of Madness, trans. Jean Khalfa (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. xxxiii. 103 Foucault, The Punitive Society, pp. 44–77. 105 Foucault, The Punitive Society, pp. 102–112. See also the notes to lesson 6, pp. 117–121. See also E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism,’ in Customs in Common (London: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 352–403. 106 Foucault, The Punitive Society, pp. 187–97. 112 Ibid.

76  Guilel Treiber 122 Ibid. 125 Foucault, The Punitive Society, p. 205.

130 Foucault, The Punitive Society, p. 236. 131 Ibid. 135 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, edited by Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), §649. 136 Ibid., §649.

138 Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 10.

144 Foucault, The Punitive Society, p. 228.

4

Haunted by Derrida Reading Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ in Constellation James R. Martel

Is it possible to be haunted by something that has yet to occur? Normally we think of haunting and other forms of influence as occurring strictly within the limits of a teleological understanding of time and yet, for many thinkers, this way of thinking disguises and ignores critical ways in which influence works both backwards and forwards in time. For example, in his essay ‘Kafka and his Precursors,’ Borges writes about how Kafka’s influence goes in all temporal directions: If I am not mistaken, the heterogeneous pieces I have listed resemble Kafka; if I am not mistaken, not all of them resemble each other. This last fact is what is most significant. Kafka’s idiosyncrasy is present in each of these writings, to a greater or lesser degree, but if Kafka had not written, we would not perceive it; that is to say, it would not exist. The poem ‘Fears and Scruples’ by Robert Browning prophesies the work of Kafka, but our reading of Kafka noticeably refines and diverts our reading of the poem. Browning did not read it as we read it now. The word ‘precursor’ is indispensable to the vocabulary of criticism, but one must try to purify it from any connotation of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.1 In this way, we can see that actors across time reach toward one another, as it were, as the case of Browning and Kafka suggests. In this chapter, I would like to make a similar argument about Derrida and Benjamin. Although Derrida wrote in Benjamin’s future, there are certain ways in which they are nevertheless both engaging with one another or, perhaps more accurately, just as with the example of Browning and Kafka, we can see each author anticipating the other across and through the span of time. In order to make this argument, I will, in particular, juxtapose (or, to use a more Benjaminian term, hold in constellation)2 Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’3 and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’4 arguing that the latter essay reflects its influence by Benjamin even as Benjamin’s essay is

78  James R. Martel in turn ‘influenced’ retroactively by Derrida. This connection does not mean, as I will show further, that these authors are in strict accord but rather that they are thinking, as it were, across and between time in a way that mutually enriches our reading of each of their work as opposed to taking their work as being limited to its temporal (and teleological) ordering.

Thinking across Time Derrida and Benjamin may be particularly suitable figures to think of as being in temporal constellation because both of them subscribe to an idea of time that is open to multi-directionality and a general pluralization and intermixing of temporal locations. For Derrida, a key way that he thinks of the disruption of time comes through his notion of justice ‘to come.’ While the term to come (à venir in French) seems to speak of the future (when à is joined with venir it makes avenir which literally means the future in French), Derrida insists that this is not the case. Thus he tells us in his essay ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundations of Authority”’ that justice: may have an avenir, a ‘to- come,’ which I rigorously distinguish from the future that can always reproduce the present. Justice remains, is yet, to come, à venir, it has an, it is à-venir; ­ the very dimension of events irreducibly to come. It will always have it, this à-venir, ­ and always has. Perhaps it is for this reason that justice, insofar as it is not only a juridical or political concept, opens up for avenir the transformation, the recasting or refounding of law and politics. ‘Perhaps,’ one must always say perhaps for justice. There is an avenir. for justice and there is no justice except to the degree that some event is possible which, as event, exceeds calculation, rules, programs, anticipations and so forth. Justice as the experience of absolute alterity is unpresentable, but it is the chance of the event and the condition of history.5 In this way, what is to come speaks more about the condition of possibility than it does about its inevitable sequencing in time (as time is ordinarily understood). This condition of possibility is just as acute in the past as in the future. Even if justice, to speak of a term that Derrida directly connects with the concept of being ‘to come,’ doesn’t actually occur in time, its occurrence or non-occurrence is not the point. Justice is always (and has always been) a ‘perhaps’ or better yet a peut-être ­ in French, a ‘could be’ that the passage of time itself does not negate in any way. The same could be said for Benjamin; for both of these thinkers an event of the past could still be infused with justice even though it is temporally anterior to the present.

Haunted by Derrida  79 This notion of the ‘to come’ is in turn bolstered by Derrida’s notion of ‘hauntology,’6 a concept that he develops in his Specters of Marx. In that book, Derrida tells us early on that there is a certain quality to immanence (and particularly, for the purposes of that book, the immanence of communism and maybe also of justice) wherein This question arrives, if it arrives, it questions with regard to what will come in the future-to- come. Turned toward the future, going toward it, it also comes from it, it proceeds from [provient de] the future. It must therefore exceed any presence as presence to itself … Now if this question, from the moment it comes to us, can clearly come only from the future (whither? where will we go tomorrow? where, for example, is Marxism going? where are we going with it?), what stands in front of it must also precede it like its origin before it. Even if the future is its provenance, it must be, like any provenance, absolutely and irreversibly past.7 For Derrida, specters (like the specter of communism that Marx alludes to in the Communist Manifesto8 but also once again the specter of justice) are forces that do not obey ordinary rules of time. He tells us that ‘a specter is always a revenant. One cannot control its comings going because it begins by coming back.’9 Because the ordinary conception of time is so entirely caught up with order, power, and hierarchy, for Derrida, he tells us that such concepts ‘[do] not belong to ontology.’10 It is rather a form of ‘hauntology’11 that cannot be excluded from history even when liberal thinkers (in this particular case, Francis Fukuyama) try to read it out of the possible. This spectrality, the undeconstructable nub of justice/communism12 has a real effect in the world even if it does not actually manifest itself as such. Although he speaks of ‘perversions’13 of this specter that arise from ‘an ontological treatment of the spectrality of the ghost’14 (in other words attempts to make the specter a real and absolute thing as such), for Derrida: A messianic promise, even if it was not fulfilled, at least in the form in which it was uttered, even if it rushed headlong toward an ontological content will have imprinted an inaugural and unique mark in history. And whether we like it or not, we cannot not be its heirs. There is no inheritance without a call to responsibility.15 In this way, Derrida shows the power of hauntology. It is a claim on us that we cannot avoid. We can seek to rush headlong into a phantasmic future to avoid the demands of this claim. We can submit it to an ontological dogmatism in order to suppress it, but the claim does not exist in ontological time. Rather it haunts and spectralizes that time and us along with it. This ‘to come’ is therefore something which comes both

80  James R. Martel from the past and the future; a debt that we owe and a promise that we must fulfill, even if both of those conditions are neither certain nor absolute in any tangible way. For his own part, Benjamin is quite well known for the way that he thinks about time and its directionality in ways that subvert and radicalize normative teleologies.16 He frequently opposes, like Derrida, the rush to the future that Western liberal philosophy always orients us towards. For Benjamin, the key direction for radical change is not the future but the past. Thus, critiquing the social democrats of his day (who in his view had a reactionary understanding of time), in ‘On the Concept of History,’ Benjamin writes that: The Social Democrats preferred to cast the working class in the role of a redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the sinews of its greatest strength. This indoctrination made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nurtured by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than by the ideal of liberated grandchildren.17 Yet, Benjamin’s call to look backward instead of forward is not merely a reversal of the ontology and teleologies of time that both he and Derrida oppose. In fact, for Benjamin, time does not have an absolute directionality at all. He tells us further that: The historian who proceeds from this consideration [of joining ‘events that may be separated … by thousands of years’] ceases to tell the sequence of events like beads of a rosary. He grasps the constellation into which his own era has entered, along with a very specific earlier one. Thus, he establishes a conception of the present as now-time shot through with splinters of messianic time.18 This statement could be read as anticipating what Borges will have to say as well. Moments in time are not trapped in their temporal sequence, but rather can serve to destabilize and change both moments (he also tells us that ‘even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious,’ 19 demonstrating that the past is as available to change as the present). In this way, one cannot consider a moment in the past to be determinate for or the origin of a later moment. As Benjamin himself famously tells us about origins: By ‘origin’ is not meant the coming-to-be of what has originated but rather what originates in the becoming and passing-away. The origin stands as eddy in the stream of becoming and vigorously draws the emerging material into its rhythm. In the naked, manifest existence of the factual, the original never allows itself to become recognized; its rhythm stands open only to a dual insight. 20

Haunted by Derrida  81 For both Derrida and Benjamin, therefore, as for Borges as well, there is no sense that someone or something in the future cannot alter and redetermine someone or something in the past (and vice-versa, although that point is far less controversial). Insofar as both thinkers subscribe to this kind of thinking about time, it may be especially helpful to think of their texts in constellation, without one serving as being prior to or as the inspiration of another.

Reading ‘Force of Law’ and ‘Critique of Violence’ in Constellation Accordingly, if we take two texts that are normally read in a strict temporal sequence, Benjamin’s 1921 essay ‘Critique of Violence’ and Derrida’s 1989 essay ‘Force of Law,’ we might read them differently if we think of them being in constellation. Or, to use a Derridean term, we might think, not only of ‘Force of Law’ being ‘haunted’ by the ‘Critique’ but also (and this is more difficult to get our minds around but it is equally valid), think of the ‘Critique’ as being similarly haunted by ‘Force of Law.’ What new insights might come from applying each thinkers’ philosophy of time and interpretation to their respective and collective essays? When treated temporally, the standard reading is that Derrida largely agrees with Benjamin’s ‘Critique’ except for a post-script during which Derrida becomes extremely critical of Benjamin, even arguing that his claim that divine violence is bloodless could potentially countenance the holocaust since so much of the killing there was done without shedding blood (by gassing people to death).21 Thus, for example, Robert Zacharias writes: While it would be too much to say that the original essay [by Derrida] expresses no concerns at all about Benjamin’s text … the majority of his approving survey of the essay follows and endorses much of Benjamin’s thought, from the problems of political violence to the aporia at the heart of law, and for most all of it in between … In his post-scriptum, however, … Derrida suddenly distances himself from Benjamin’s work, fearing that the enigmatic conclusion of ‘Critique of Violence’ could allow it to be used to justify the most horrific form of violence. 22 Zacharias suggests that part of the problem may be that in Benjamin’s concept of ‘pure means,’ that is to say acts that are broken off from their own ends (what could be called their original motivations), Benjamin is threatening the very structure of Derrida’s own sense of temporality. Zacharias writes that ‘Justice, then, for Benjamin, arrives by disregarding what is to- come.’23 Perhaps more precisely, in Benjamin’s call for a definitive and absolute expiating divine violence, there is no space for the

82  James R. Martel uncertainty, the equipoise, of justice ‘to come.’ There is, it would seem, no way to reconcile the clear arrival of justice (however rare or cryptic it might be in Benjamin’s analysis) in the ‘Critique’ with the images of a justice that is always imminent but never quite manifest that Derrida describes in ‘Force of Law.’ For all the apparent agreement between these authors, it seems that in the end, there is an incommensurability here. But what if we looked at these two essays differently? As being not so much an original essay (Benjamin’s) and a response (Derrida’s) but rather two essays that reach out across time towards one another to change the way we read each one. I say this not to downplay what a lot of people dislike in Derrida’s essay, the critique of Benjamin based on his purported possible connection to precisely that force, Nazi Germany, that he most ardently opposed and which ended up costing him his own life. I don’t like that part of the essay either, yet I do think that there are ways to think of these essays as existing in tandem rather than as being in sequence that help to illuminate not only the connections between them but also the way that each essay may serve to push the other essay into deeper territory, to alter and intensify the way each of them is read (and by the other). For this reason, for the remainder of this essay, I want to look once again at how Derrida is haunted by Benjamin and how, in turn, Benjamin is haunted by Derrida.

Haunted by Benjamin Let me take the more straightforward case first. While Derrida is perhaps best known for speaking of ghosts and specters in Specters of Marx, in ‘Force of Law’ he also considers the effects of haunting and beings haunted. In that essay, speaking of the ‘undecidable,’24 the incalculable basis for deconstruction (and hence for justice) Derrida writes: The undecidable remains caught, lodged, at least as a ghost—but an essential ghost—in every decision, in every event of decision. Its ghostliness deconstructs from within any assurance of presence, any certitude or any supposed criteriology that would assure us of the justice of a decision, in truth of the very event of a decision. Who will ever be able to assure us that a decision as such has taken place? That it has not, through such and such a detour, followed a cause, a calculation, a rule, without even that imperceptible suspense that marks any free decision, at the moment that a rule is, or is not, applied?25 The ghostly nature of the undecidable is that which cannot be reduced to anything else; that ghostliness or spectrality is what ‘haunts’ this essay,

Haunted by Derrida  83 but it turns out that the ghost has a name, and that name is ‘Walter Benjamin.’ Later in the essay, Derrida tells us that: Text and signature are specters. And Benjamin knows it, so well that the event of the text Zur Kritik der Gewalt consists of this strange exposition: before your eyes a demonstration ruins the distinctions it opposes. It exhibits and archivizes the very movement of its implosion, leaving instead what we call a text, the ghost of a text that, itself ruins, at once foundation and conservation, accomplishes neither and remains there, up to a certain point, for a certain amount of time, readable and unreadable, like the exemplary ruin that singularly warns us of the fate of all texts and all signatures in their relation to law, that is, necessarily, in their relation to a certain police force. Such would be (let it be said in passing) the status without statute, the statute without status of a text considered deconstructive and what remains of it. The text does not escape the law that it states. It is ruined and contaminated, it becomes the specter of itself.26 Here, we see that Benjamin himself is a source of textual ruination (he also says that he ‘would love to write, maybe with or following Benjamin, maybe against Benjamin, a short treatise on love of ruins,’27 suggesting further the simultaneity rather than the sequencing of their writings). It is Benjamin, it could be said, that helps Derrida understand the way that a text can produce spectrality, even when it purportedly serves to explain and clarify what it is discussing. In this and other writings Benjamin favors, like Kafka before him (another of Derrida’s ‘precursors’), the transmissibility of a text over and above the truth or law that it seeks to transmit. Transmissibility itself, it could be said, is another name for haunting, a kind of passing on of a form devoid of any content (or even more radically, a form that serves to subvert and undermine the content, haunting it so that it cannot coalesce into truth or dogma). To give an example of how this works, in referring to ‘the status without statute,’28 Derrida is recognizing the spectral nature of Benjamin’s method (if one can use that word for what Benjamin is doing). On the surface of things, all seems normative in the sense that the ‘Critique,’ at least for much of the essay, appears to be a somewhat conventional, if far left, essay on the law. Hence the ‘status’ of the essay as an essay on law seems intact. But the ‘statute,’ the law’s own command over and presence in the text is what has been ruined, what has been haunted by the spectral writing of Benjamin himself. Derrida tells us that this becomes most clear when Benjamin introduces, towards the end of the text, his distinction between mythic and divine violence. At that point in the text, one could say that the jig is up. The formal structure of the text is revealed as a sort of textual Trojan horse, recognizable and familiar

84  James R. Martel but containing some central node that cannot be reduced to the truth of that text and which ‘ruins’ the text as such. Just as Benjamin elsewhere speaks of something being ‘completely useless for the purposes of fascism,’29 here too he demonstrates for Derrida how a text can, as it were, haunt itself, refuse a clear and sovereign revolution—thereby refusing that kind of textual authority—and instead preserving and indeed transmitting (as ‘status’ in this case) the radical kernel, that bit of (textual) justice that is yet to come. And just as the text itself produces a kind of spectrality, an undigested radical bit that remains to counter the force and power of the author in their own text, so too does Benjamin, via his texts, produce a kind of general spectrality as well, a ghost of a ghost as it were, that personifies the larger pattern of textual resistance that Benjamin—and thereby Derrida as well—engages in. If Derrida is indeed allowing himself to be haunted by Benjamin, this does not by any means suggest that he is always in lock step with Benjamin’s own work. This goes beyond the well-known (or infamous) point Derrida makes about the holocaust in the post-script to ‘Force of Law.’ Although he otherwise follows Benjamin’s essay very closely, there are several points where Derrida appears to veer away from him, at least to some extent. For example (and Zacharias notes this point as well), Derrida writes Let us leave the responsibility for this [the concept of a non-mediate function of violence] to Benjamin: the in some way disinterested, immediate and uncalculated manifestation of anger. What matters to him is a manifestation of violence that would not be means looking toward an end. Such would be mythic violence as manifestation of the gods.30 ‘Leaving the responsibility’ to Benjamin implies that in some sense Derrida himself is absolving himself of whatever he sees Benjamin as doing in the text as regards this concept. Earlier in ‘Force of Law,’ Derrida also writes that: Benjamin’s demonstration concerns the question of droit, recht, right or law. It even means to inaugurate, we shall be able to say it more rigorously in a moment, a ‘philosophy of droit.’ And this philosophy seems to be organized around a series of distinctions that all seem interesting, provocative, necessary up to a certain point but that all, it seems to me, remain radically problematic.31 It is true that Derrida concedes that being radically problematic or even ‘ruining’ a text (as noted previously) are not bad things in and of themselves, but here too there is a bit of distancing going on, as if Derrida is somewhat hedging his bets. He recognizes something truly radical in Benjamin’s essay, a basis for thinking about deconstruction in its political and legal senses, but he is not willing to commit fully to what it all implies. This relationship too suggests a bit of the nature of haunting

Haunted by Derrida  85 insofar as it seems as if, distanced or not, Derrida cannot in some sense not be affected by and cognizant of what Benjamin is doing. The very idea of haunting connotes a certain degree of involuntary concession, a mixed reception to put it mildly. Derrida of course gets much sharper in his post-script where he makes his well-known comments that offer that Benjamin may not be able to rule Nazism itself out of his concept of divine violence. But even if we leave that thought to one side, another line in his post-script is far more forceful than what he says in the earlier parts of ‘Force of Law’ about his own distancing from Benjamin more generally. Near the very end of the essay he tells us that It is at that point that this text, despite all its polysemic mobility and all its resources for reversal, seems to me finally to resemble too closely, to the point of specular fascination and vertigo, the very thing against which one must act and think, do and speak, that with which one must break (perhaps, perhaps). This text, like many others by Benjamin, is still too Heideggerian, too messianico-marxist or archeo-eschatological for me.32 Here, Derrida may be suggesting that Benjamin’s text is perhaps not haunted enough insofar as it comes to resemble (he says) those elements which they are both purportedly struggling against (i.e. notions of truth and eschatology, teleology and the like). I note in passing that in saying that Benjamin is ‘too Heideggerian,’33 Derrida is continuing to subscribe to a reading of temporal influence that is out of synch which ordinary ways of reckoning the flow of influences (which are always forward, later into the future). More generally, when the various parts of ‘Force of Law’ are taken as a whole, Derrida seems to be genuinely ambivalent as to the ultimate question of what, finally, Benjamin’s text does. It seems that the very radical nature of that text frightens Derrida to some extent, as if trusting Benjamin too much, allowing his haunting without any form of resistance, might lead to radical outcomes yes, but bad ones (like the Holocaust). Part of this discomfort seems to come in the way that Benjamin is openly theological (or ‘too’ theological) in a way that Derrida simply is not. It is really at the point in the ‘Critique’ that Benjamin begins to describe mythic and divine violence (the latter of which Derrida at one point argues actually means ‘Jewish’)34 that most of Derrida’s distancing measures seem to occur. But this discomfort with overt theology, it seems, is not all that is afoot here. In a move that is very typical for Derrida more generally (as denoted by his frequent use of the terms ‘on the hand … on the other hand’), he both allows himself to be haunted and resists that haunting in equal measures. That is, he recognizes the way that Benjamin epitomizes, as argued previously, the radical and undeconstructable nub that holds the promise (or to use Derrida’s own

86  James R. Martel term the ‘perhaps’)35 of justice even as he fears the kinds of chaos and unstructuredness that might flow from such an engagement, particularly if that engagement is done too fully (his use of the word ‘too’ as in ‘too 36 archeo-eschatological’ ­ is a bit of textual evidence for this claim). Yet, here we see the real power of Benjamin’s essay, the way that essay can really be said to haunt Derrida, despite his own reservations and hesitations. To read two texts in constellation is to see how each changes our reading of the other and so here, I would say that Derrida’s own response is shaped by the fact that, identifying the nub of justice, even if only as a perhaps, far outweighs the kind of hesitations and worries that Derrida evinces in his analysis of and responses to that text. That is to say, the radical presence at the heart of Benjamin’s text, it’s ‘own mystical foundation’ if you will, supersedes whatever attempt there is to tame it. Having seen it and identified it as cogently as he has (and there are few who are better than Derrida at deriving the deepest meanings from texts), Derrida is, as it were, forced to be haunted, changed by his own encounter with the concept of divine violence that he desires and fears in equal measures. Thus, whereas in the beginning of the essay ‘Force of Law,’37 Derrida keeps insisting that deconstruction has always been about justice (in effect denying or at least dampening the very purpose of the initial conference at which he delivers his talk), it might be that in his encounter with Benjamin—that is to say, his encounter in this text, his taking up the question of the ‘Critique’ at this particular juncture—it is only then that the link between deconstruction and justice becomes clear to him. Yet, by the same token (‘on the other hand’) that same link may be a bit too much for Derrida, threatening to pull deconstruction into territory that he is neither confident about nor even sure as to its direction, even as he remains pulled that way, haunted by Benjamin, all the same.

Haunted by Derrida At this point the reader may be thinking so far so good but what about the more difficult (because it runs counter to our normal understandings of temporal ordering) relationship: the way that Benjamin himself can be said to be haunted by Derrida? Here in particular, it is critical to suppress a sense that time works in one way only because to do so would hide from us the way that textual influences may go both ways. While it is of course not the case that Benjamin had ever read or even heard of Derrida, there is still a way that we can think of him being influenced by the later thinker in a way that might change our reading of his text. One way that Benjamin may be said to be haunted by Derrida lies in the way that he too may, for all of his radicalism, share some of Derrida’s concerns about both the power and the danger of what he is advocating for. One issue that that may evince some of this retroactive haunting involves the question of how to distinguish between Benjamin’s concepts

Haunted by Derrida  87 of divine and mythic violence. What, in other words, lets us know when human beings are acting on behalf of God (according to them at least, the stance of mythic violence) and when God or ‘Godliness’ is acting on its own behalf? On one level, Benjamin himself seems to give a clear distinction between these terms when he writes ‘Mythic violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake; divine violence is pure power over all life for the sake of the living. The first demands sacrifice; the second accepts it.’38 Here, we see that there are two different subjects for mythic and divine violence, one the subject who has been reduced to ‘mere life’39 and the other the living in all of its complexity and multitudinousness. As Benjamin shows in several places in the ‘Critique,’40 mythic violence is always anxious about its origins (a point I will return to a bit later), hence it demands sacrifice. Having no such anxiety about its own ontological (or perhaps more accurately, hauntological) origins, divine violence only needs to accept what is offered to it. As I read the ‘Critique,’ it would be a grave error to confuse mythic and divine violence because it is precisely when people claim to speak for God (or nature or reason or any of the other secularized versions of God that characterize modernity) that they are at their most idolatrous. As he makes clear in his text, for Benjamin, divine violence does not bring new truths into the world; it only serves to unmake false truths that have been speaking for, or projected upon, the divine itself (hence taking on mythic forms). And yet, for all of this, it is not always easy to tell the difference between mythic and divine violence. Benjamin himself may appear to muddy his own argument somewhat when near the middle of the ‘Critique’ he describes ‘educational power’41 as being seemingly a form of divine violence. He writes: This divine power [i.e., the power of divine violence] is not only attested by religious tradition but is also found in present-day life in at least one sanctioned manifestation. The educative power, which in its perfected form stands outside the law, is one of its manifestations.42 This appears to be a case where Benjamin himself may be conflating divine violence with human action although the next few lines complicate this impression. Benjamin goes on to say that These are defined, therefore, not by miracles directly performed by God but by the expiating moment in them that strikes without bloodshed, and, finally, by the absence of all lawmaking. To this extent it is justifiable to call this violence, too, annihilating; but it is only so relatively, with regard to goods, right, life, and suchlike and never absolutely, with regard to the soul of the living.43

88  James R. Martel In other words, this form of action (including ‘educative power’44 but also presumably many other kinds of actions as well), might seem to resemble the acts of God in their swift and absolute renditions of justice, but it does not share the quality of being miraculous or truly theological as an act of divine violence itself would. Benjamin preserves the ambiguity of the status of the living by barring them from having access to miracles or any other sorts of sign of divine favor. In this sense, it is not the presence or absence of the divine that is most at issue, but rather the way that presence or absence is read or responded to by the political community within which it occurs. Although this category of non-mythic human action (which has both violent and non-violent aspects) may be excluded from true divine power it is not without its own authorities and internal logics. As with the distinction that Benjamin makes between mythic and divine violence more generally, such acts can be said to be performed, not to control and dominate other human beings (by reducing them to mere life) but for the sake of the living as such. But in this case, they are done by the living for the living instead of by God (who in some sense cannot be said to live, at least not in the way that humans do) for the living. It may be that in engaging in this relatively careful parsing of terms, Benjamin is anticipating Derrida’s own anxiety about such categories and the effects that they might have on human politics. If Benjamin is anticipating and responding to Derrida concerns, the main difference between them may come down to a question of style. While Derrida more openly embraces his own ambivalent posture (‘on the one hand … on the other hand …’), Benjamin takes ambivalence itself as a kind of valid and quite active stance. More accurately, he shows how the navigation of plural and ambivalent questions (because unknown, or undecidable to use Derrida’s term) does not mean that the subject has no basis from which to act. Rather that position becomes the basis—and the only basis—from which action is possible. An example of how this works in the ‘Critique’ comes immediately after Benjamin’s discussion of educative power. He segues to a larger discussion about the extent to which divine guidance can continue to serve as a way to help or cause human beings to make decisions. Referencing the exact same concern that Derrida brings to the question of the sources of authority (whether if it is divine, for example, it could be used to justify just about anything), Benjamin writes that the premise of such an extension of pure or divine power is sure to provoke, particularly today, the most violent reactions, and to be countered by the argument that, if taken to its logical conclusion, it confers on men even lethal powers against one another. This, however, cannot be conceded.45

Haunted by Derrida  89 Benjamin goes on to famously write that even when it comes to an apparently unimpeachable and direct divine commandment such as ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ it is the case that Neither divine judgment nor the grounds for this judgment can be known in advance. Those who base a condemnation of all violent killing of one person by another on the commandment are therefore mistaken. It exists not as a criterion of judgment, but as a guideline for the actions of persons or communities who have to wrestle with it in solitude and, in exceptional cases, to take on themselves the responsibility of ignoring it.46 This statement is not altogether different from the way that Derrida himself thinks about the role and possibility of justice, albeit the latter does so from a much more overtly secular position. In both cases there is an acknowledgment that ultimate responsibility for a decision must rest with the subject herself. Each time she comes to make a choice, even one that she has chosen before, she must choose anew. Yet, Benjamin seems to be more attuned, or at least more comfortable than Derrida, with the fact that a decision will be made. In looking at the process of how such decisions are made, Benjamin notes that there are guidelines and suggestions (although nothing more than that) that represent a divine will. These guidelines—the commandment against killing being a key example—may positively (or negatively) affect the nature of the decision-making process; they may help to give shape and heft to that decision but they are not determinate. Thus, in thinking about the role of undecidability itself, it might be that Derrida focuses a bit more on the negative spaces that surround the possible decision, the fact of the impossibility of the decision as such. Benjamin, for his own part, focuses more on the decision that happens nonetheless. He acknowledges that decisions are being made and executed all the time and that the real political question is not whether it is possible to decide but rather how we make decisions, what do they draw upon, and how are they done both at the individual and at the collective level with some help from our cosmological or theological context. If Derrida’s being haunted by Benjamin means that Derrida is perhaps bolder and more radical than he’d like to be, I would say that the opposite may be said of the way that Derrida haunts Benjamin. In this case, however it’s not so much, I think, that Derrida makes Benjamin less radical but rather that he renders Benjamin perhaps a bit more humble than he might otherwise be. When we read the ‘Critique’ alongside ‘Force of Law,’ as well as several of Derrida’s more political books (Rogues47 being an excellent example, Politics of Friendship48 being another), the anxiety that Derrida expresses over the direction of Benjamin’s

90  James R. Martel radicality becomes more visible in Benjamin himself. It may be that as a result of this shared anxiety, Benjamin tempers himself and is more cautious about the kinds of claims that he makes about divine violence and the way that it might influence or even constitute human action than he might otherwise be. Through this dynamic, Benjamin’s treatment of divine violence becomes neither totalizing, nor nothing at all but something in between, a product of the productive tensions between Benjaminian radicality and Derridean anxiety and care. The fact that Benjamin tells us that the very idea of ‘educative power’49 (pedagogical violence might be a better translation) has nothing of miracles in it, serves as a way to better guard the barrier between the human and the divine. Not all of Benjamin’s readers share this anxiety. Thus, for example, Slavoj Žižek writes: When those outside the structured social field strike―blindly, demanding and enacting immediate justice/vengeance, this is divine violence. Recall, a decade or so ago, the panic in Rio de Janeiro when crowds descended from the favelas into the rich part of the city and started looting and burning supermarkets. This was indeed divine violence.50 A distinction that Benjamin might muddy at times in the ‘Critique,’ is for Žižek no distinction at all. In his view, human beings can indeed serve as the wrathful agents of God’s righteous violence. But Benjamin himself is perhaps more cautious than this and this caution, rather than making him more conservative or less revolutionary than Žižek, makes him, I think, more careful about the way he separates human and divine agency. In fact, I would even say that Benjamin’s caution here (perhaps enhance retroactively by Derrida’s own concerns) makes him more radical because it delineates and preserves the realm of human action; a zone of action that, when stripped of its mythic connotations, becomes purely and only human, a true secularity or atheism that is only achieved by engaging in a political theology that keeps God out of the realm of human doings entirely.

Mystical Foundations and the Elimination of Law A related area in which Derrida might help to temper or more precisely specify Benjamin’s own radical tendencies comes in the question of the ‘mystical foundation’ of law itself. In speaking of this foundation (which forms the subtitle of Derrida’s essay on Benjamin’s ‘Critique,’) Derrida cites a line from Montaigne wherein: ‘Custom is the sole basis for equity, for the simple reason that it is received; it is the mystical foundation of its authority. Whoever traces it to its source annihilates it.’51 This raises the question (which Derrida does not pose directly) of whether Benjamin is actually annihilating the law by probing too closely to its mystical foundation. If that is indeed what he is doing, is he being reckless in doing so? Is the annihilation of law something that we should welcome?

Haunted by Derrida  91 Derrida himself does not appear to seek such a form of annihilation as when he writes: The deconstructibility of law (droit), of legality, legitimacy or legitimation (for example) makes deconstruction possible. The undeconstructibility of justice also makes deconstruction possible, indeed is inseparable from it. The result: deconstruction takes place in the interval that separates the undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructibility of droit (authority, legitimacy, and so on). It is possible as an experience of the impossible, there where, even if it does not exist (or does not yet exist, or never does exist), there is justice.52 However critical he may be of law as a regime of power, Derrida does not entirely abandon law itself. Indeed it seems that although he repeatedly shows us that law and justice are not the same thing, we see a kind of relationship wherein justice may be said to emerge from the failure of law to be just. He also tells us ‘the fact that law is deconstructable is not bad news. We may even see in this a stroke of luck for politics, for all political progress.’53 For his part, Benjamin appears to be much less interested in preserving law, at least at first blush. Some thinkers seem to suggest that he does indeed seek the annihilation of law full stop.54 There are certainly times when Benjamin appears to support just such an outcome, as when he tells us in the ‘Critique’ that ‘Among all the forms of violence permitted by both natural law and positive law, not one is free of the gravely problematic nature … of all legal violence.’55 Here, it seems as if all law is in fact only a form of violence (taken in the sense of Gewalt which does not literally mean physical violence but rather force or projection). For Benjamin, the law is never about justice (an idea that Derrida would agree with, although for Benjamin the connection between law and justice is even more disentangled). Rather the law only exists for its own self-assertion (its Gewalt). Thus, Benjamin also tells us that: Where the highest violence, that over life and death, occurs in the legal system, the origins of law jut manifestly and fearsomely into existence … Its purpose is not to punish the infringement of the law but to establish new law. For in the exercise of violence over life and death, more than in any other legal act, the law reaffirms itself. But in this very violence something rotten in the law is revealed.56 This is why the law has to kill. It is haunted (in a more negative sense than I have been using so far) by its own lack of an ontological basis (hence the threat of hauntology). This sense of lack and anxiety is further reinforced when Benjamin turns to the concept of mythic violence which upon reflection turns out

92  James R. Martel to be his name for the human practice of law as a whole (along with other violent practices). And yet, for all of this, Benjamin does not abandon law, nor the idea of justice itself. While he formally leaves justice to the power of divine violence (saying that ‘Justice is the principle of all divine endmaking’),57 the possibility of human beings benefiting from this possibility allows for non-violent human practices to occur that may well include law (although an entirely different category and form of law). While Benjamin does not say much on what this other kind of law could be (and does not specifically call such a set of practices law in any case), he does give hints about what that practice might look like. He tells us that, among other things, in a non-violent practice of law there should be no contracts (because contracts are always backed up by State violence) and no sanction against lying (because to be able to prove that someone is lying assumes an access to truth that Benjamin’s political theology is utterly opposed to; as with justice, for Benjamin, truth is the province of the divine, not of the human).58 Here again it may be said that Benjamin anticipates Derrida’s own concern that in moving away from flawed and fetishistic models of law, the positive features of law, the way it gives a community a way to think about justice (even if it itself is not a conduit to justice), the way that it gives an opportunity for a community to think about its own values and responses, is not obliterated. Once again a kind of tempering may serve not so much as to render Benjamin less radical but rather to avoid a situation in which the ‘baby’ of justice is not tossed out with the ‘bathwater’ of law as it is practiced. This kind of alteration or effect serves here as well to retroactively bestow a kind of humbleness on Benjamin such that his notion that human beings (including himself) know nothing of truth is upheld, even in the face of a certainty that some kinds of false truth (like the practice of law) are utterly rotten. The ability to hold everything, even bad things, in question means that nothing is so certain that it is undeniably always a good thing or so fallen that it cannot serve more radical purposes in some way.

Conclusion In thinking about the two-way haunting that I have explored between Derrida and Benjamin, it is worth considering the nature of writing itself, insofar as writing is the vehicle in this case that connects these two temporal figures and moments. In some basic sense, writing is always written to the future. More accurately, it is written to a future interior because, upon being read at some point, the act of writing itself will have already taken place.59 In some sense then, writing itself is involved in some kind of Derridean concept of the ‘to come’ (or à venir). Such an insight allows us to see how the idea of the yet to come is both present and not yet, just as is the case with writing itself. Writing is already here but it is also always to come. The presence of a text assumes both a past, present and a future

Haunted by Derrida  93 and so, in this way, it becomes easier to think about how writing can be held in temporal constellation even in a case where the flow of normative time itself demands that we read a set of influences in one direction only. Benjamin has something to add to this conversation insofar as in a much later essay, ‘On the Concept of History,’ he describes the future as being potentially ‘homogeneous, empty time.’60 Such a vision of the future is Benjamin’s way of describing what the future ‘looks like’ from the perspective of mythic forms of time, when the future is held to contain a teleological culmination of the past and the present. This future is homogenous and empty because it has been subjected to the false uniformity of an imagined time that perpetuates capitalism and its ideological and mythical forms. Benjamin would counter this with precisely the very sorts of transtemporal connections that I have been describing in this chapter. He tells us that: The historical materialist approaches a historical object only when it confronts him as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a messianic arrest of happening, or (to put it differently) a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out of the homogenous course of history; thus he blasts a specific life out of the ear, a specific work out of the lifework. As a result of this method, the lifework is both and sublated in the work, the era in the lifework, and the entire course of history in the era.61 It is thus by invading one historical era with another that each moment or object becomes unfamiliar to itself, allowing for the kinds of reinterpretations that permit us to see two non-synchronous authors to speak directly to one another. If Benjamin envisions the exchange as such, it is Derrida who supplies the language of haunting and hauntology that serves to make visible and evident to us how these trans-temporal clashes might occur and with what results. Thinking of Derrida and Benjamin as haunting one another allows us to see a trans-temporal conversation without the weight of teleology determining what it is that we think we are seeing or reading, permitting us to see or read or think otherwise and having a sense of both texts that might be richer and more collaborative than any singular reading or reading in a particular temporal ordering might produce.

Notes

94  James R. Martel

5 Ibid., p. 27. 6 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 10. ­

20 Benjamin, Origin of the German Trauerspiel, p. 24. For a discussion of his notion of origins, see Samuel Weber, ‘Genealogy of Modernity: History, Myth and Allegory in Benjamin’s Origin of the German Mourning Play,’ Modern Language Notes, vol. 106, n. 3, German Issue, 1991, pp. 465–500. 25 Ibid., pp. 24–25.



Haunted by Derrida  95 4 4 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 48 Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 1997).



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Part II

Future Pathways Aesthetics

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5

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts Ashley Woodward

In any essay on Jean-François Lyotard, John Rachman writes: ‘Perhaps since Adorno no philosopher has worked as directly with “aesthetics,” and unlike some of his more “textualist” contemporaries, Lyotard was peculiarly concerned with the visual arts, one might even say with “the visual” in art.’1 As Rachman indicates, Lyotard was the most important aesthetician of the poststructuralist generation of French thinkers, whose work has special importance for the visual arts. However, his work in this area has largely been overshadowed by contemporaries who have received more attention in visual arts theory (and aesthetics more generally), but who were in fact far less engaged with it, such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, or Gilles Deleuze. 2 I would like to suggest, then, that one possible future for poststructuralism might lie in the belated reception of Lyotard as a philosopher of the visual arts. I will do this by first looking back to the historical reception of Lyotard’s work, in order to show how it tended to obscure the extensive treatment of art in his work. I will then explain how Lyotard’s work develops a ‘logic’ quite specific to a thinking of the visual. This ‘logic’ (in the most general sense: that is, a way of thinking, an account) stands in contrast with other forms of poststructuralism which have dominated its reception. While comparisons with other poststructuralist thinkers would also be relevant and useful— thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze, as well as Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, and so on—within the limited space of this chapter I will focus on a comparison of Lyotard’s work with Derrida’s. This choice is made for two reasons: first, the specificity of Lyotard’s treatment of the visual contrasts most markedly with Derrida’s on a philosophical level; and second, Lyotard’s reception in the Anglophone academy was historically skewed by Derrida’s prominence. Further work still needs to be done to bring the uniqueness of Lyotard’s work to light from under the shadow of Derrida, and the specific image of poststructuralism— a textual or discursive one— it continues to color. 3 This chapter contributes to such a task. Let us begin then with a brief account of Lyotard’s reception.

100  Ashley Woodward

Lyotard’s ‘Poststructuralist’ Reception As is well-known, ‘poststructuralism’ is a rather artificial grouping applied to a certain number of French thinkers by their Anglophone interpreters. Lyotard held frequent visiting professorships in the United States, beginning from the early 1970s, soon after the publication of his first major book, Discourse, Figure.4 A few translations of articles, representing the Freudo-Marxian ‘libidinal’ philosophy he was then developing, appeared in this decade, but it was not until 1979s The Postmodern Condition5 skyrocketed him to international prominence that this and other English translations began appearing in earnest. By this time, Lyotard had moved from his libidinal philosophy to a pragmatics of language, of which 1983s The Differend6 was the foremost expression. The Postmodern Condition appeared in English translation in 1984, and The Differend in 1988. While Lyotard’s earlier works, such as Discourse, Figure and Libidinal Economy,7 had stridently critiqued discursive models and the emphasis on language evident in other French thinkers, Lyotard’s focus on language in his works during the period of his widest reception lent credence to an assimilation of him to the textualist model of poststructuralism. Lyotard was accordingly read alongside Derrida, Barthes, Foucault, and so on as a further source for what in North American universities was called ‘Theory,’ a movement often centered in Comparative Literature departments, but with the ambition to destabilize the traditional boundaries between the different disciplines in the Arts and Humanities. The early receptions of Lyotard in English were thus primarily undertaken by people working in French or Comparative Literature departments, and, beholden to the discursive paradigm, they largely bracketed Lyotard’s extensive writings on art and artists. Two relatively early works on Lyotard in English would, prima facie, seem to have given due attention to Lyotard’s aesthetics. Yet both in fact skew attention away from the visual arts as such. Timothy Murray was the first English commentator to give some sustained attention to Lyotard’s writings on the arts, notably publishing, in 1984, a substantial review of texts by Lyotard on the artists Valerio Adami, Ruth Franken, and Shusaku Arakawa.8 Yet, very much in line with the paradigm of the time, Murray focuses here on Lyotard’s writings on art as texts, sidelining the art that they discuss. A few passages may be taken as representative of this focus: ‘Jean-François Lyotard’s collaborations with artists in the presentation of their catalogues evoke his concern for the “genres of discourse” comprising textuality … Lyotard’s untraditional essays … speak alongside images rather than about them.’ 9 Murray even questions whether these texts are even commentaries on art: Lyotard’s collaborations with Adami, Franken, and Arakawa tend to focus more on the texts’ status as figures or apparati [dispositif] of academic consensus than on the worth or value of commentary

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  101 itself. Put into question by Lyotard’s ironical narrations of self and other are the figures of judgement as such and the academic models of research and analysis constitutive of the language of judgement.10 Such an interpretation subordinates these texts to Lyotard’s other concerns at the time, as expressed for example in The Differend, and obscures his independent interest in art as such. Second, David Carroll’s 1987 book Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida devotes two substantial chapters to Lyotard, and would seem to have aesthetics, in some sense, as a focus. However, Carroll quickly dismisses this impression: This book is not focused on aesthetics, but rather on what I call paraesthetics. I use this term to indicate that I am here approaching art in terms of its relations with the extra-aesthetic in general. I am, for example, interested in the philosophical, historical and political issues raised by the question of form or the problem of beauty rather than in form and beauty as narrow aestheticist questions.11 Carroll focuses on the meaning of art and aesthetics for theory (that is, philosophy, history, and politics). This leads him to a selective use of texts by Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida: I have chosen to emphasize texts in which art and literature are dealt with in terms of more general theoretical problems—which means that certain of their commentaries on literary texts and art works are here treated peripherally or not at all. I concentrate on the dynamic relation between the aesthetic and the theoretical in their work which is, I would argue, more evident and dramatic in texts dealing directly with broader philosophical, historical or political issues than it is in certain of their commentaries on individual artists, poets or writers.12 So again this work skews attention away from visual art as such, and towards ‘theory’ in general, conceived in predominantly textual or discursive terms. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the first two monographs devoted to Lyotard appeared. These were Geoffrey Bennington’s Lyotard: Writing the Event 13 and Bill Readings’ Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics.14 Both of these works, excellent on their own terms, strove to explain the relevance of Lyotard’s work for literary studies, and contained minor experimental textual elements, really more reminiscent of Derrida than of Lyotard. Bennington explicitly excludes a consideration of Lyotard’s writings on art from his study, on the grounds that this work was still in progress (noting that at the time of writing, Lyotard was working

102  Ashley Woodward towards a book on the philosophy of contemporary arts— a book which appeared as Que peindre?: Adami, Arakawa, Buren in 1987).15 Of perhaps even more pervasive significance, Bennington employs a reading strategy which prioritizes Lyotard’s later work on language, and subordinates the former works to that perspective, presenting them as simply façons de parler (‘ways of speaking’).16 Similarly, Bill Reading’s Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics focuses on Lyotard’s arguments concerning language, and, except for a few brief exceptions, the ‘art’ of the title refers much more to literature and theatre than to the visual arts.17 A few of Lyotard’s writings on visual art did, however, become wellknown in the 1980s, especially the essay ‘Answering the Question, What is Postmodernism?,’18 which circulated widely as an appendix to The Postmodern Condition. In addition, high-profile international art magazines printed a few of his essays in the same period, notably ‘Preliminary Notes on the Pragmatic of Works: Daniel Buren’19 (October), ‘Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime,’20 and ‘The Sublime and the 21 Avant-Garde’ ­ (Artforum). In addition, his essay on American artist Barnett Newman, included in his essay collection The Inhuman, 22 has been widely cited. However, these translations did not seem sufficient to galvanize a good understanding of Lyotard’s philosophy of art, as for example an essay by Diarmuid Costello in the late 1990s attests, insofar as Lyotard is presented as a thinker of modern (in the Greenbergian sense), not ‘postmodern,’ art, on the basis of a quite restricted understanding of the kinds of art that interested him. 23 Throughout the 1990s and 2000s some attention was given to Lyotard’s aesthetics, but it remained limited and sporadic. For example, a relatively brief, but significant focus on the visual in Lyotard’s work was presented in Martin Jay’s 1993 book Downcast Eyes.24 In 2001, D. N. Rodowick gave Lyotard an important place in his book about the figural and new media, asserting that Lyotard’s first book Discourse, Figure needs renewed attention as a key poststructuralist text.25 An important Lyotard scholar of the next generation, James Williams, added a far more attentive discussion of the role of art in Lyotard’s oeuvre, but followed Carroll and others in maintaining a focus on its political implications, rather than claims about art itself.26 In 1998, the year of Lyotard’s death, John Rajchman highlighted the importance of aesthetics in Lyotard’s work— a dimension which, he stated, we are perhaps yet to understand.27 In the same year, the state of Lyotard scholarship in relation to the arts was well-stated by Sarah Wilson in her introduction to the English translation of Lyotard’s book on the painter Jacques Monory: ‘despite his extensive engagement with the arts, a Lyotard solely of the word, the discourse, not a Lyotard engaging with the image, the figure, is the Lyotard discussed in philosophy and literature departments throughout the world.’28 A significant turn occurred at the end of the first decade of the twentyfirst century. A brief survey of the materials which have only been made

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  103 available in English in this recent period indicates the scope of what was missed during the highpoint of Lyotard’s ‘poststructuralist’ reception. Discourse, Figure appeared for the first time in English translation in 2011, and between 2009 and 2013 there appeared, from Leuven University Press, a six volume, bi-lingual edition of Lyotard’s Collected Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists. 29 Notably, this included the first English translations of what I would consider, along with Discourse, Figure, the two other major books of Lyotard’s philosophy of art: 1987s What to Paint?30 and, dating from the early 1990s (and made available in French as well as English for the first time), Karel Appel: A Gesture of Colour.31 This series also includes a massive tome of collected essays on specific artists, often written for exhibition catalogues, most of them previously unknown in the English-speaking world. In addition to this, we can note, after 30 years of near silence, the recent upsurge of interest in the exhibition Lyotard directed at the Pompidou Centre in 1985, Les Immatériaux. This event is now becoming recognized as a landmark exhibition of the twentieth century because of its highly innovative design, and its prescient exploration of technology and new media art.32 Moreover, relatively recently there have appeared the first two monographs, in any language, devoted solely to Lyotard and art: Kiff Bamford’s Lyotard and ‘the figural’ in Performance, Art, and Writing, 33 and Graham Jones’ Lyotard Reframed.34 Around the same time, a special issue of Cultural Politics was devoted to Lyotard’s work in aesthetics, featuring work by younger scholars now focusing attention on this area.35 These works make significant advances in the Anglophone reception of Lyotard as a philosopher of the visual arts, yet his extensive and extremely rich works are far from having been exhausted. One possible future for poststructuralism, then, might lie in the further appreciation and dissemination of this dimension, which was largely missed in the first period of Lyotard’s reception.36 In what follows, I want to give a broadly philosophical account of how Lyotard’s brand of poststructuralism lends itself specifically to the visual arts (and visual arts ‘theory’). At a high level of abstraction, we might describe poststructuralism as reacting to structuralism by injecting some indeterminacy into the structuralists’ determinisms. For Lyotard, this indeterminacy comes from sensation, the paradigm case of which, for him, is the visual. Lyotard’s encounter with the visual artwork, as an ‘other’ of philosophy and discourse in general, might be thought of as a kind of ‘primal scene’ which generates the whole of his philosophy, much as does Derrida’s encounter with literature. So far, however, what seems to have largely escaped notice is that the very ‘logic’ at the heart of Lyotard’s work, which distinguishes it from textualists such as Derrida, marks it out as specifically relevant to visual art, and forms the heart of Lyotard’s own distinctive type of poststructuralism. It is this logic, which Lyotard names (among other things) ‘presence,’37 on which

104  Ashley Woodward I will focus here. Let us turn now to an elaboration of this logic, which concerns different conceptions of ‘difference,’ and involves a question of (quasi-)transcendentality.

The (Quasi-)Transcendental The way that I propose to situate Lyotard’s work on the visual arts, and at the same time demonstrate its originality in relation to Derrida and the mainstream of the first reception of poststructuralism, is to consider its place in the post-Kantian transcendental tradition. There is a precedent here in terms of the reception of Derrida, with Rodolph Gasché’s influential reading in The Tain of the Mirror and subsequent debates about the ‘quasi-transcendental’ nature of Derrida’s philosophy.38 Gasché introduces the term ‘quasi-transcendental’ in the context of his discussion of metaphor in Derrida’s work: metaphoricity is a transcendental concept of sorts. Although it is likely that the term I propose will meet with a good bit of disapproval, I shall call metaphoricity a quasitranscendental. With quasiI wish to indicate that metaphoricity has a structure and a function similar to transcendentals without actually being one.39 This structure is one of ‘referral,’ and its function is one ‘that accounts for the possibility and impossibility of the philosophical discourse.’40 Metaphor in Derrida is a transcendental insofar as it is a structural constraint which acts as a condition of possibility (and impossibility). On the other hand, it is not a transcendental (or is only a quasi-transcendental) ­ insofar as it (and the other ‘quasi-transcendentals’ which Gasché implies exist in Derrida’s thought) is erratic, contingent, and aleatory, rather than universal and necessary, as transcendentals are usually supposed to be.41 Like Derrida, Lyotard may be both situated and differentiated in terms of the transcendental tradition, such that we may characterize a specific thinking of something ‘quasi-transcendental’ in his work. From the start of his first book on art, Discourse, Figure, to his late writings, frequent remarks by Lyotard situate his approach to aesthetics in this tradition. Most immediately, he inherits this transcendental approach from phenomenological aesthetics, especially that of Merleau-Ponty and of his own supervisor for his Doctorat d’Etat, Mikel Dufrenne.42 Lyotard’s arguments in Discourse, Figure—regarding the critical examination of structuralism and phenomenology, and his ultimate recourse to psychoanalysis— are posed in transcendental terms. Yet the whole transcendental project is also radically overturned in Lyotard’s work, in ways that are characteristic of poststructuralism, but with a distinctiveness drawn from the fact that art is taken as the

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  105 privileged locus of indeterminacy. Since the inception of aesthetics in the work of Alexander Baumgarten, aesthetics has been posed as a way of ‘filling a gap’ in the system of philosophy. This was accentuated after Kant, as many were dissatisfied with his dualisms, and in some cases proposed art and aesthetic experience as having the capacity to overcome the tensions these dualisms were thought to generate. Most generally, the tension inherent in the transcendental project is between the subjective and objective sides— that is, the ideal constitution of experience by the transcendental structures of the mind, and the independent givenness of ‘empirical reality’—which together make experience possible. The problem, in short, is how the two sides, which Kant strives to distinguish, can nevertheless ‘meet’ in unified experience. In various ways, philosophers from Schelling and Hegel to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have tried to resolve this aporia, frequently positing some common unity ‘behind’ or ‘below’ the subject/object divide.43 All such paths, while often giving art a special role as exemplifying the occurrence of truth which unites the subjective and objective, ultimately subordinate the role of art to its meaning for philosophy. While broadly situated in this post-Kantian transcendental tradition, Lyotard, on the contrary, posits art as the locus of alterity. ‘The position of art’ he announces in Discourse, Figure, ‘is a refutation of the position of discourse,’44 including the discourse of philosophy. Lyotard’s concerns with art certainly remain largely philosophical, but they continually posit a remainder in art which cannot be subsumed by philosophical reflection and concept-formation. Moreover, in Lyotard’s work this approach extends to an extensive practice of commentary on art which cannot be reduced to a philosophical aesthetics. Just as Derrida uses literature to ‘contaminate’ the purity and authority of philosophical discourse, in like fashion it is visual art which Lyotard draws on for the same task. This concern to preserve the otherness of art, rather than subordinate it to philosophy, is what motivates the transformation of the transcendental project in his work, such that—like Derrida, but for different reasons—we could be justified in characterizing his philosophy as quasi-transcendental. ­ Lyotard’s appeal to art is to show, not how it can complete a philosophical system, but rather how it necessarily challenges such a possibility. The ‘fact of experience’ that Lyotard wants a transcendental explanation for is the fact of ‘avant-garde’ art. ‘How is art possible?’ is the question which he keeps returning to throughout his work. For Lyotard what is at stake in this question is the occurrence of ‘the event,’ that is, something radically new and unexpected. It is this very question which seems to demand a modification of the transcendental terms in which it is posed. For Lyotard, an adequate answer could not be given in terms of a priori, universal and necessary, ‘conditions of possibility.’ This would seem to determine in advance what art would be possible, and disqualify

106  Ashley Woodward the very newness and unexpectedness it is supposed to explain. Moreover, this would subordinate art to knowledge and undermine Lyotard’s contention that it contains a certain in- eliminable alterity in relation to conceptual thought. Instead of seeking conditions, then, Lyotard asks what it is that bestows the event.45 He nevertheless continues to describe this as ‘what makes art possible,’46 despite the fact that this does not consist in the ‘possibilities’ of art which would be determined in advance, but the possibility of the eruption of radical difference in the sensory field. Like other philosophers in this transcendental tradition (such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, or as we shall shortly see in detail, Derrida), Lyotard seeks to understand art as exemplary of the happening of truth, meaning, or sense as such. Once again, however, there is a very decisive shift in the way that Lyotard does this. In short, he insists that there is a specific meaning or sense (sens) to the sensible which cannot be taken up, without remainder, into the intelligible, and this is the dimension of alterity to which he points as making the event of art possible. Art can act as an event because it deploys sensation in a way which interrupts and disrupts the structures of meaning which weave our habitual ‘everyday’ experience. Immediately following Merleau-Ponty, but also a long post-Kantian tradition stretching back to at least Novalis,47 Lyotard makes much use of paradoxical and privative language to name that which makes art possible—its ‘quasi-transcendental.’ The quasi-transcendental condition or principle of the visible is the invisible; that of audible music is the inaudible; or in most general terms, the quasi-transcendental of anything ‘presentable’ is the unpresentable. The way that Lyotard comprehends what this privative prefix indexes, however, must be distinguished from Merleau-Ponty and many others in this tradition: for Merleau-Ponty, the invisible indicates a pre-given possibility of meaning or sense, the primordial ground of meaning which constitutes the meaning of any actual artistic occurrence.48 As Robert Burch notes (and Lyotard had also argued), Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the transcendental project makes it difficult for him to explain the eruption into the world of anything genuinely new.49 Lyotard’s invisible does not indicate a unity of sense, prior to the break between sensation and concept, which acts as a fond for our experience of the world. Rather, it indicates the radical alterity of sensation itself, and its capacity to act as presence. Art ‘makes the invisible visible’50 by drawing on this background of sensation which is invisible insofar as it, in general, resists synthesis by the mind, and it inscribes it ‘negatively’ in the visible— thus, bringing something previously unseen into the world. Generally speaking, we might apply the term ‘transcendental’ to accounts of meaning as such; that is, accounts of the structures which have the function of supplying the conditions of possibility (and impossibility)

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  107 of meaning. Lyotard uses the term ‘transcendental’ in this general sense when he compares the accounts of meaning given in structuralism and in phenomenology. These accounts, Lyotard argues, are specific to language and perception, respectively. Yet phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Dufrenne suggest that these accounts can be analogously brought together because they both involve difference as a structurally necessary feature. This is precisely what Lyotard contests, asserting that ‘the transcendental of language cannot be thematized on the same model as that of perception.’51 He gives several arguments for this, yet the contrast most elaborated throughout Discourse, Figure, is that of different types of difference: a structural difference between invariable units in a virtual system, in the case of language, and a variable difference in depth, in the case of perception. For Lyotard, these different types of difference make possible completely different orders of meaning, and involve a different form of value. Linguistic units have no value in themselves, but only by virtue of their difference with other units in the system of which they are a part (the famous Saussurean thesis). By contrast, Lyotard asserts, in the case of perception, that sensations have an immediate value in and of themselves. For example, he writes: ‘It has been possible to show that a blue, a red, a straight line, a spiral, a point, a horizontal, a diagonal, as perfectly isolated as possible … immediately brings about kinetic and coenaesthetic effects on the viewer’s body.’52 Now, it is possible to see Derrida’s thinking of difference— différance— as a (quasi-)transcendental which also conflates the types of difference operating in language and perception, as analyzed by structuralism and phenomenology. For Derrida, a differing and deferring in temporal and spatial dimensions is a characteristic common to language, perception, and consciousness, as he demonstrates in his readings of Saussure, Husserl, and others.53 Lyotard in fact argues that there is too much of the linguistic or discursive type of difference in Merleau-Ponty’s own phenomenology, and this is why, in Discourse, Figure, he appeals to psychoanalysis to provide a further conception of difference, which operates in both the linguistic and perceptual orders, in order to provide the transcendental account of art he seeks. This difference is the logic of the unconscious, which knows no negation or temporal succession, but ‘blocks together’54 incompossible elements in the same region. This transcendental is a kind of ‘invisible.’ Yet it is important to recognize, for the thesis that I am developing here, that this conclusion is reached from an initial decision to ‘take the side’ of the visual and sensation in general, and to find a (quasi-)transcendental which would best account for it. Lyotard’s early arguments, then, pass from pitting phenomenology against structuralism, to finding phenomenology inadequate and opting for psychoanalysis instead, but all in the attempt to account for art (and especially visual art). As noted, I would suggest that the transcendentals that Lyotard identifies

108  Ashley Woodward in response to his philosophical interrogation of the type of meaning operative in visual art should be termed ‘quasi-transcendentals’ for reasons similar to the ones that Gasché identifies in his study of Derrida: they are not universal and necessary conditions for the occurrence of the aesthetic event, which would delimit its possibilities in advance, but are rather what bestows the event, and to this extent, they are also aleatory and contingent. However, rather than exploring the complex ways in which Lyotard develops such notions by drawing on psychoanalysis, in the next section I want to move to the way that he frames the difference between his own work and Derrida’s in the 1980s, where he makes the differences between their notions of difference explicit, and develops the implications for an approach to the visual arts.

Differentiating Differences In a 1988 interview, Lyotard remarks that ‘[i]f there is a variation between my thought and Derrida’s, it is expressed in the extension given to the idea of difference.’55 In this interview, he then goes on to explain the ‘different differences’ in his own work and in Derrida’s around differing conceptions of time, linked to readings of different parts of Kant’s oeuvre: I would say that [Derrida’s] notion of difference mainly rests upon, it seems to me, an idea of time which comes from the transcendental deduction of the first Critique as it was deployed by Heidegger from his book on Kant to his essay on Husserl’s ‘Internal Timeconsciousness.’ This notion of time … is assuredly the schema of all schemas, that is to say the form of all internal syntheses of the given. Now this form of the synthesis of the given is elaborated in the Critique of Theoretical Reason; it is subordinated to a language- game, let us say, in which truth and falsehood are at stake … But in the third Critique, it is very clear that the minute examination of the syntheses at play in the aesthetic sensibility, in taste, without speaking of the Analytic of the sublime, bring us to the conclusion that temporality there is completely different again from the first Critique … And so one is led to ‘conceive’ … an aesthetic temporality which would not at all be of the order of difference [in the Derridean sense] … a state of time which, in comparison with that of difference, would appear as a suspension or an ‘interdiction,’ which would be in sum a sort of ‘interruption’ of difference itself. 56 These comments are dense and highly suggestive: it would be possible to draw them out at great length, through comparative readings of Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, Derrida, and Lyotard. Considerations of space do not allow us to take this path, but fortunately Lyotard goes on to

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  109 indicate a less circuitous way that we can explore them, one which links these quite specialized philosophical concerns with the visual arts: This [idea of time] refers to what I have been able to write in recent works concerning the visual arts … It seems to me that precisely what is important in aesthetic time is what can be called ‘presence.’ Not in the sense of the present, nor in the sense of what is there, but in that sense in which, on the contrary, the activity of the very minimal synthesis of the given into the very forms which are free (forms properly speaking, not merely schemas) is suspended … in short, a kind of stupefaction or stupidity suspending the activity of the mind.57 Lyotard describes this aesthetic time as a ‘spasm’ or a ‘stasis,’58 and as a direct, non-mediated relationship with the work of art. This is not an immediate experience of the meaning of a work (in a conceptual sense), but a relationship with its material (which Lyotard will more generally call ‘matter’59). Lyotard’s aesthetic ‘presence’ is then not at all Derrida’s ‘metaphysics of presence’60: the latter implies an identity, understood as a ‘self-sameness,’ which can be deconstructed through the temporal and spatial effects of différance (which Lyotard describes as finding its origin in Heidegger’s readings of Kant and Husserl61). On the contrary, far from implying identity, Lyotard’s notion of presence is itself an alternative notion of difference: it is the difference of the sheer diversity of sensory impressions that Kant refers to as the ‘manifold,’62 Mannigfaltigkeit, which he gives the mind the responsibility to synthesize. Aesthetic presence is then the interruption of the habits of the mind (which includes the application of forms to ‘tame’ aesthetic diversity by framing it within intuitions) by matter, understood as a kind of ‘difference-in-itself.’ While this description remains very abstract, Lyotard applies these ideas to the arts in a way he says ‘is not so enigmatic.’63 Citing Barnett Newman and Karel Appel, he explains that it refers to the way color works in their painting: ‘what is important to both is not the form within which color is held captive, like a material which depends upon its form to be made presentable, but very much to the contrary it is a question of material- color having in itself a power to suspend the formative activity of the mind.’64 In even simpler terms, what Lyotard appeals to and tries, paradoxically perhaps, to think and write about is that mysterious ability art has to make us feel powerless and ‘lost for words.’ By contrast, Derrida’s treatments of the visual arts remain within the register of the power of the word (even if they test that power’s limits). He readily admits that his own interests were far more focused on writing, and that his considerations of the visual arts extended his ideas, developed in relation to writing, to those arts: It is true that only words interest me. It is true, for reasons that have to do in part with my own history and archaeology, that my

110  Ashley Woodward investment in language is stronger, older, and gives me more enjoyment than my investment in the plastic, visual, or spatial arts … I am rarely overwhelmed by the beauty of pictorial or architectural works; that is to say, they don’t excite me. I rarely have my breath taken away by a painting.65 While Derrida would seem to be implicated in the arguments of Discourse, Figure, a more explicit criticism of Derrida’s capacity to account for the visual occurs in an interview from 1970, where Lyotard says: When J. Derrida talks of the trace, and … when he talks of archiwriting, the error, I think, is that of not dissociating what is letter and what is [l]ine. Its obvious that the line does not function like the letter. For the letter [is] made up of a set of distinctive features, and if it can bear meaning, this is because, just like speech, it offers the receiver easily recognizable elements, in a binary logic. This is not true of the line … One can in no way say that the line traced by Klee’s pencil on a piece of paper is loaded with effects of meaning in the same way as the letters he writes under the line, which say simply: Salto mortale, for example. ­Absolutely not. 66 After quoting this passage in Lyotard: Writing the Event, Geoffrey Bennington remarks that ‘Derrida would of course reply that the difference between line and letter is itself a trace.’67 Lyotard could reply to Derrida, however, that there is a type of difference (presence) which is an intractable remainder in the line, irreducible to the logic of the trace. Let us turn to Lyotard’s arguments which might support this. Lyotard elaborates the idea of ‘presence’ in the opening chapter of What to Paint?68 The chapter is structured as a dialogue between two voices, named ‘You’ and ‘He.’ The stake of the discussion is the question of whether ‘immediate sensuous presence’ is still relevant in the arts today, or whether the growing prominence of textual reflection, criticism, and ‘theory’ in general has rendered not only this presence, but our credulity towards the very notion, obsolete. ‘You’ voices the latter view, while ‘He’ defends the former. In a contemporaneous interview, Lyotard explains that while the position that ‘You’ represents is most obviously Hegelian, it also represents that of the ‘philosophers of difference.’69 He names only Jean Baudrillard at the end of the interview, but it is no stretch of the imagination to see Derrida as implicated also. It is in this text, in fact, that we get the clearest distinction of Lyotard’s own notion of difference—‘presence’—from Derrida’s différance, and how this distinction is important for a thinking of the visual arts.

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  111

Différance and Presence ‘Presence’ is contrasted with ‘intrigue.’ ‘Intrigue,’ in French, means both cunning and deceit, and narrative sequence or plot.70 In Lyotard’s use, it concerns all the mediations and deferrals that separate immediate sensory presence from how it is presented in the mind, with concepts and language. Intrigue concerns the histories, stories, and conceptual meanings that we overlay on sensory data; it refers to the textual weave of interpretations in which the sensory is captured, submerged, and deferred. In intrigue, the meaning of a thing is given through its relation to other things, rather than being taken ‘in itself.’ We can recognize here, then, ‘discourse,’ the model of meaning on which, despite complicating it, Derrida’s différance, metaphor, and related notions continue to rely. The position Lyotard interrogates and tries to overturn critically is the one whereby art dies and is superseded by aesthetics, because the sensible is always already a confused concept, and commentary better expresses the essence and meaning of art as sensory object. This is the famous ‘death of art’ thesis, which was explicitly Hegel’s, but which strongly persists today. Lyotard (‘You’) writes: The art of presence is dying out; the art of deferring it is expanding. If painting were … above all in search of presence, it would be on its deathbed, while, on the contrary, aesthetics would be thriving, since all it does is comment on the mediations that make sensory immediacy possible.71 The deferrals of the intrigues can be seen as analogous to the logic of différance, in which conceptual meaning disseminates itself infinitely through structures of signs, on what is essentially a textual, linguistic model of meaning. Derridean différance can be understood as intrigue, endless intrigue, contrasted with presence. Here, then, Lyotard contests this approach to the visual arts through appeal to a ‘logic of presence’ which is not, as we have seen, the metaphysics of the presence of Being, but sensory presence conceived as event. Lyotard (‘He’) writes: ‘Human language pushes sweetness, pink, and amber away, pushes the wasp away, making referents out of them and braiding a thousand intrigues about them. (Hi)stories, sciences, myths, fables—the mind stages its scenes and bestiaries.’72 Lyotard is not, however, so naïve as to suggest that this sensory presence can itself be grasped immediately, since to grasp it with the mind and language is necessarily to defer it. Neither is it strictly intelligible to say that presence comes ‘before’ the intrigue, since this temporal determination itself lies on the side of the intrigue: I accept that presence is not there from the start, that it presupposes all the a priori of language, that it assumes all the idioms of the

112  Ashley Woodward cultural and personal past, and that one had better speak of it as a cut through the middle of the thousand discourses rather than as their source—which would amount to including it again in a rhyming (hi)story, possibly a cosmology, but in any case a teleology.73 What is at stake, then, is to appeal to something about presence which is ‘demonstrated’ in painting, something we ‘experience’ when we see, but which always eludes all commentary and attempts at conceptual determination. Lyotard attempts to defend sensory presence as an ‘other’ to language, and its specific logic: not as painting ‘before’ the text (except in an indirect way), but in the text, interrupting the text, arresting the mind, and interrupting the intrigues. Lyotard’s sensory presence then does not deny the logic of différance, but simply seeks to show that there is also something else, something which acts in or beneath the textual weave, which cuts through its knots, and which, rather than a disseminating transport from one link to another, suspends the links the mind makes. This, then, is how Lyotard’s ‘logic of presence’ differs from Derrida’s logic of différance: by contesting the way that the visual must be thought, and given an account in language. To give Derrida his due, we must acknowledge that he does not subscribe to any simplistic thesis of discursive reductionism: on the contrary, he explicitly attempts to stretch discourse to its limits, and to make the non-discursive ­ present in discourse. This is in fact one of the things that he indicates is at stake in his writings on the visual arts: And if I love words it is also because of their ability to escape their proper form, whether they interest me as visible things, letters representing the spatial visibility of the word, or as something musical or audible. That is to say, I am also interested in words, paradoxically, to the extent that they are nondiscursive, for that’s how they can be used to explode discourse … as someone who is in love with words I treat them as bodies that contain their own perversity…—let’s say the regulated disorder of words. As soon as that occurs, language is opened to the nonverbal arts.74 And yet, this opening, which takes place through the bodies of words such as ‘parergon,’75 ‘trait,’76 or ‘subjectile,’77 seems then to treat the nonverbal in a way which remains largely determined by the quasi-transcendentals which are beholden to a linguistic form. Derrida seems to acknowledge this when he says that, while deconstruction is not limited to discursive texts, ‘it may be that a certain general theoretical formalization of the deconstructive possibility has more affinity with discourse.’78 From a Lyotardian perspective, it remains the case that the ‘logic’ that Derrida employs when writing about art (or any other non-discursive

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  113 matter)—that of the ‘differential trace’—remains a logic tied to language, consciousness, and knowledge. That is because, as we have seen, he draws his ‘quasi-transcendentals’ from structural linguistics, and a conception of temporality specific to knowledge, elaborated through the tradition with Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger. Derrida indicates this when he explains why he prefers the term ‘spatial arts’ to ‘visual arts’: Obviously, when I say spatial arts, that permits me in an economic and strategic fashion to link these arts with a general set of ideas on spacing, in painting, speech, and so on … For that reason I would speak of the spatial arts. It more conveniently allows me to link it with the notions of text, spacing, and so on.79 In framing his writings on art in ways which are fundamentally continuous with his notions of the text and his critique of the ‘metaphysics of presence,’80 Derrida misses this other kind of presence which is specific to the visual arts— sensory presence as it is apprehended aesthetically. This is a different difference to Derrida’s différance: in Kantian terms, it is the sheer diversity of the sensory before any synthesis. Its function is not to stretch out, to space, defer, and disseminate, but to punctuate, to interrupt, to bring the syntheses of the mind to a standstill. To indicate the differences between Derrida’s and Lyotard’s quasi-transcendental differences, we could use contrasting dynamic images: Derrida’s différance is centrifugal, always splitting a supposed self-same identity, while Lyotard’s notion of difference is centripetal, appealing to an incompossible ‘copresence’ which punctuates temporal succession. Of course, this sensory presence is then only thinkable in a conceptual context, and commentary has to take place in discourse, but the implications are that the approach to commentary, and to visual art itself, will be somewhat different. A detailed examination of the differences between Lyotard’s and Derrida’s texts on visual arts would be needed to do any justice to this point, but we may briefly indicate some key issues as follows: Derrida’s writings on visual arts tend to focus on the linguistic aspects of works, their explicit themes, considerations of the contexts and rules which frame art as art, and the borders between art and theoretical writings. By contrast, Lyotard frequently strives to describe the works themselves and how they function in terms of their material elements: form, color, line, and so on. He is attentive to the effects of the work on the body, the affect it transmits, and how it changes one’s experience of space and time. The focus is on the attempt to do justice in words to what cannot be put into words: the mute presence of the visual. For example, in Derrida’s text on Adami, ‘+R (Into the Bargain),’ 81 he engages in word play, proposing an analogy between drawing and the linguistic unit tr, and multiplying the later to weave complex textual lines around Adami’s images, describing their content and ‘riffing’

114  Ashley Woodward on the text they contain. In Lyotard’s treatment of the same artist, he appeals to something in the works he describes as ‘frankness’82 (franchise), which resists the apparent eloquence of the works; that is, their ease of interpretation according to depicted imagery and subject-matter. This frankness, which is the visual presence of the work, is elaborated through descriptions of line, color, and form in the works.83 However, we must be cautious in indicating how these different approaches to visual art, based on appeals to different quasi-transcendentals, might be ‘applied.’ It would also be a mistake to over-emphasize the differences between Derrida’s and Lyotard’s texts— a danger I am courting here in order to clarify a point— since the different approaches do not necessarily manifest in easily identifiable features. In the conclusion to The Tain of the Mirror, Gasché writes: it must be emphasized that Derrida’s developments concerning metaphor cannot simply, without mediation, be integrated into literary criticism … [O]wing to the particular status of this quasitranscendental, determined by the very specific philosophical problems to which it responds, Derrida’s theory of metaphoricity cannot be of any immediate concern to literary theory.84 The problematic attempt by American acolytes to extract a methodology for literary theory from Derrida’s work is of course well-known. Lyotard’s reflections on the visual arts no more give rise to anything like a fixed methodology for approaching and writing about those arts than Derridean deconstruction does for literary studies, and any such temptation must be forewarned. Rather than a methodology, which would give rise to a determined practice, Lyotard’s philosophy of visual art gives us concepts and strategies which seek to undermine any determinacy, and remind us that the attempt to transcribe the contact between the mind and the visual work into words cannot be guided in advance by rules. This indeed is the point of Lyotard’s poststructuralism: it introduces indeterminacy into the registers of the conceptual and discursive precisely through appeal to the visual.

Notes

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  115 Aesthetics, edited by Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (New York: Routledge, 2001) devotes one chapter to Foucault, and one (titled ‘Postmodernism’) to Roland Barthes and Derrida, but contains no substantial discussion of Lyotard. The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) contains an entry on Derrida consisting of four essays, while Lyotard is given a single essay. The entry on ‘Poststructuralism’ focuses on Ferdinand de Saussure and the linguistic paradigm, and on Barthes, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, and makes no mention of Lyotard. 4 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, Discourse, Figure, trans. Antony Hudek and Mary Lydon (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 5 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). 6 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). 7 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London: The Athlone Press, 1993).







116  Ashley Woodward 24 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth– Century French Thought (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 560–586.

29 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, Jean- François Lyotard: Collected Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists, edited by Herman Parret, 6 vols. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009–2013). 30 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, What to Paint?: Adami, Arakawa, Buren, trans. Antony Hudek, Vlad Ionescu and Peter W. Milne, edited by Herman Parret. Jean-François Lyotard. Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists, vol. 5 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013). 31 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, Karel Appel: A Gesture of Colour, trans. Vlad Ionescu and Peter W. Milne, edited by Herman Parret. Jean-François Lyotard. Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists, vol. 1 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009). 34 Graham Jones, Lyotard Reframed (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014).



40 Ibid.

A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts  117 Aesthetics,’ Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 50, n. 2, 2019, pp. 104–119.

4 4 Lyotard, Discourse, Figure, p. 7.



48 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ­ The Visible and the Invisible, edited by Claude Lefort, trans. Alfonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968); and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind,’ trans. Michael B. Smith, in The Merleau- Ponty Aesthetics Reader, edited by Galen A. Johnson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993), pp. 121–149. 4 Ibid. 6

118  Ashley Woodward

66 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, Dérive à partir de Marx et Freud (Paris: Union Generale, 1973), pp. 228–229. Quoted and trans. Bennington, Lyotard, p. 102. 67 Jean-François ­ Lyotard, Dérive à partir de Marx et Freud (Paris: Union Generale, 1973), pp. 228–229. Quoted and trans. Bennington, Lyotard, p. 102.

77 Jacques Derrida, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud, trans. Mary Ann Caws (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).



84 Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror, p. 318.

6

What Moves Music? Poststructuralism, Pulsion, and Musical Ontology Michael David Székely

A rhythm results which is a far cry from horse’s hoofs and other regular beats. John Cage1

The basic definition for pulsion is ‘the act or action of pushing or driving.’2 There is a similar definition in the context of health and medicine, but with a slight addition: pulsion as ‘a pushing outward or swelling.’3 So it is for Barthes as well. In one of several discourses concerning Schumann (perhaps his most beloved composer), Barthes refers to beat as whatever makes any site of the body flinch, however briefly, even if this flinching seems to take the romantic forms of a pacification. Pacification, at least in the Kreisleriana, is always a stretching out: the body stretches, distends, extends toward its extreme form (to stretch out is to attain the limit of a dimension, the very gesture of the undeniable body which here wins itself back).4 This passage is suggestive of what Barthes will elsewhere describe more explicitly in terms of pulsion. In this chapter, I wish to address how it is that, in the process of this ‘stretching out,’5 beat becomes pulsional. A certain way of speaking of health in the context of philosophy, art, and literature would, in one sense at least, align Barthes with other ‘French Nietzscheans’ who are emboldened by the Dionysian, which also entails seeing the arts as fulfilling a diagnostic or symptomatic role. Deleuze, for example, describes the writer as ‘not a patient but rather a physician, the physician of himself and of the world.’6 Moreover, to speak of health in such a way is to suggest a concurrent discourse concerning desire, an ‘erotics of…’ Providing some of the history regarding the term ‘pulsion,’ Johnnie Gratton discusses how as popularized during the 1970s, notably by Jean-François Lyotard and Barthes himself, the term pulsion fast became an important keyword among critics interested in combating the reductive

120  Michael David Székely schematism of structuralists hooked on the ideal of ‘scientificity.’ In its popularized form, the pulsion is essentially if not solely a libidinal force. As such, it takes its place in a broader energetics that seems to simultaneously invite and sanction the expressive paradigm as one of its most appropriate means of representation.7 Thus there can be little doubt that the Dionysian of Barthes and others is the same Dionysian of primal, ecstatic, intoxicated (and probably somewhat romanticized) rhythms as well. No doubt this is also the same Dionysian whose challenge to the detached, contemplative, and ‘disinterested’ Kantian observer is seen to have significant ramifications for aesthetics in general (from musician to listener to critic). But, lest one forget, this is still the same Dionysian who signaled a fundamental critique of subjectivity itself. It is in this sense that one finds pulsion as occupying a key role—a ­ subjectivating role (wherein any ‘subject’ presupposes a process of subjectivation). Ontologically, pulsion is, after all, fundamentally movement, and movement is fundamentally change. Musically, pulsion may be characterized as an intensity involving, but not limited to, such elements as rhythm, beat, force, and pulse. As typically linked to the drums and percussion, such elements are also said to provide the ‘foundation’ of a great many musics (in jazz, pop, and rock, for example, part of what is called the ‘rhythm section’). I will not seek to challenge such conventions, but I do wish to suggest—precisely by way of the assertion of pulsion as the primary concern throughout— a more robust, expansive reading of musical movement in general, including the ways in which such elements contribute to musical movement.

Meter, Accent, Rhythm Pulsion is not rhythm, but pulsion entails rhythm. In fact, rhythm is perhaps the most significant component of pulsion. But before exploring the relation between rhythm and pulsion further, some distinctions are in order. For example, rhythm is not musical meter, which is basically a notational device, an instruction. One might very well consider how different meters—for example, 3/4, 4/4, 7/4—might ‘feel’ differently in the context of different musical events. However, this ‘feel’ is nevertheless not meter; if anything, it is rather the result of how the meter is played, delivered, contextualized. When one asks questions concerning the functionality and feel of music, one is, in essence, speaking of musical affect— and it would seem rather counterintuitive to talk about musical meter itself in conjunction with any sort of significant musical affect. In a discussion of the music of the group Oval, Timothy S. Murphy, referencing Deleuze and Guattari, describes how ‘“meter, whether regular or not, assumes a coded form whose unit of measure may vary … whereas rhythm is the Unequal or the Incommensurable”; it is this

What Moves Music?  121 unequal element that is the imperceptible “difference that is rhythmic, not the repetition” of perceptible metre.’8 One doesn’t ‘feel’ rhythm as meter. Indeed, it is in the context of a discussion about listening more explicitly where Barthes comments that ‘by rhythm, too, listening ceases to be a purely supervisory activity and becomes creation, a rendering and registering of events. Without rhythm, no language is possible: the sign is 9 based on an oscillation, that of the marked and the non-marked.’ ­ There is a sense in which one might read such an insight through music as seemingly disparate as the improvised traditions of blues and jazz or the sonic maximalism of a John Cage. For the moment, I will consider the former. In a documentary film titled Bluesland, Robert Palmer problematizes the notion of a so- called ‘primitive’ music as it has been pejoratively applied to something like early blues from a rather different perspective: My feeling is that if you want to listen to something primitive, you should listen to Mozart. Because if you hear Mozart, there’s almost no rhythmic variation in it, it’s 1–2–3–4 forever. No cross-rhythms or polyrhythms to speak of. The way that music’s interpreted, all of the tonal qualities of the instruments tend to be very clean and pristine. There’s no kind of textural variety like you would get in the blues, in terms of roughening the texture out on certain words, playing around with the pitch on certain words. Nothing like that in Mozart.10 Those coming from a more ‘aestheticist,’ or autonomist-formalist, orientation would surely bristle at Palmer’s gesture here. All things being equal, such a view risks falling into the same trap as the very kind of limited thinking he is criticizing. Then again, all things are not equal, and clearly Palmer is pushing back against a way of thinking that has roots extending beyond the privileged perspective of a ‘music itself’ discourse to broader cultural concerns. Similarly, in the context of an interview with the late jazz pianist Andrew Hill, Ben Ratliff observes how Hill understood [Charlie] Parker’s comment about melody as rhythm as a refutation of the ‘Eurocentric’ music education he had grown up with—where melody is paramount, harmony accompanies it, and rhythm is the last part to worry about. ‘It opened my mind up to many possibilities,’ he said. ‘If everything is rhythm, then you just have these rhythms on top of each other. But they’re not polyrhythms or pyramids of rhythm; they are crossing rhythms.’11 What does Hill mean by ‘crossing’? What happens when rhythm is at least a more co-equal partner with melody and harmony? What happens when melody and harmony seem to be rendered with rhythm in mind, as opposed to the latter appearing as afterthought?

122  Michael David Székely Our slight digression concerning so- called ‘primitivism’ and rhythm in music will extend a bit further to the accent. In another one of his several Schumannian discourses, Barthes writes, ‘The accent is the music’s truth, in relation to which all interpretation declares itself.’12 A bold claim, to be sure—but one that, in essence, speaks to the accent’s cooperation with, and contribution to, rhythmic vitality. Deleuze and Guattari go even further, linking the accent even more explicitly to Mozart himself: ‘It is the accents that form the diagonal in Mozart, the accents above all. If one does not follow the accents, if one does not observe them, one falls back into a relatively impoverished punctual system [Palmer’s inverted ‘primitivism’ in the figure of Mozart].’13 An example of this ‘diagonal’ of which Deleuze and Guattari speak would be Hill’s crossing rhythms. They cut across the horizontal (i.e., melodic) and vertical (i.e., harmonic) axes of the Cartesian musical grid—which is probably more aptly framed in terms of movement and lines rather than axes and points. Deleuze and Guattari will elsewhere extend the concept of the diagonal— in this case, toward a notion of musical gesture as cutting across harmony and melody.14 In this sense, the accents in Mozart function like syncopation in jazz. The accents are the diagonals of Mozart’s music. They are so many floating disruptions (little jerks, twitches, stutters, and starts), and yet they still propel. They constitute how the music propels. The accents make Mozart ‘swing.’15

Beat, Flow Barthes often uses variations on beat, beats, and beating interchangeably with pulsion. What he says of Schumann’s Kreisleriana is a fitting exemplar of what he seeks in all pulsional music (or, perhaps, the pulsion that he seeks in all music): ‘What I hear are blows: I hear what beats in the body, what beats the body, or better: I hear this body that beats.’16 In his discussion of Barthes and music, John Mowitt argues more broadly that ‘beating is the concept through which Barthes makes music and theory answerable to each other.’17 That is, while claiming that Barthes divides the beat between linguistics and psychoanalysis—which ‘likewise divides the heart’18 —Mowitt further cites the significance of ‘beating’ for Barthes as the body’s paradoxical center— that is, the place where that which is most intimate and that which is most foreign correspond. It takes on a musicological importance by suggesting that rhythmic notation is to be indexed to an organ [i.e. the heart] suspended somewhere between nature and culture, thus challenging romanticism and formalism at the same time. To this extent, Barthes makes the beating heart matter to musical practice by pressuring the limit of what academic musicology might subsume under that heading.19

What Moves Music?  123 Just within this relatively brief passage, Mowitt provides us with at least a few insights that warrant a bit more comment. (1) If, as Mowitt suggests, Barthes sees music as dividing the beat between linguistics and psychoanalysis, then one might read this as representing simultaneously: (a) an attempt at a further semioticization of music (music as the ‘second semiology’ Barthes envisioned 20) and (b) an acknowledgment of music’s a-signification, ­ that is, as enacting a rupture between linguistics and psychoanalysis through a re-articulation of rhythm. (2) In ‘the place where that which is most intimate and that which is most foreign correspond,’ 21 I see the notion of beating as suggesting both: (a) a further corporealization (body, heart, rhythm) of beat and (b) an acknowledgment of music’s incorporeality (moving across/ passing between embodied states). It is in this sense that I understand Jean-Luc Nancy’s description of ‘that skin stretched over its own sonorous cavity, this belly that listens to itself and strays away in itself while listening to the world and while straying in all directions,’ 22 as a kind of embodied vitalism combining corporeality and incorporeality. This is ‘not a “figure” for rhythmic timbre,’ continues Nancy, ‘but it is its very pace, it is my body beaten by its sense of body, what we used to call its soul.’ 23 Furthermore, I see the relationship between corporeality and incorporeality as linked to the play of affect and immanence. Gregg and Seigworth define these in the context of affect theory, where affect entails ‘a gradient of bodily capacity … that rises and falls not only along various rhythms and modalities of encounter but also through the troughs and sieves of sensation and sensibility’ 24 and immanence describes a process of coming ‘into and out of the interstices of the inorganic and non-living, the intracellular divulgences of sinew, tissue, and gut economies, and the vaporous evanescences of the incorporeal (events, atmospheres, feeling-tones) … swells of intensities that pass between “bodies”.’ 25 What is Barthes’ complaint with a certain interpretation of Schumann?: The beats are played too timidly; the body which takes possession of them is almost always a mediocre body, trained, streamlined by years of Conservatory or career … he plays the accent (the beat) like a simple rhetorical mark; what the virtuoso then displays is the platitude of his own body, incapable of ‘beating’ … It is not a question of strength, but of rage: the body must pound— not the pianist. 26 This is echoed by Nancy’s broader claim that ‘to play music is to make it sound, and its sense is in its resonance … but music itself, in order to be music, plays on the sonorous resources of bodies that are struck, rubbed, plucked, and it plays them.’27 Music also plays the body. I read what Barthes will also refer to as ‘music’s body’28 as a kind of phenomenological

124  Michael David Székely taxonomy of elements and intensities. It is in this context that rhythm in particular ‘imposes itself like a texture of beats.’29 The hip-hop musical assemblage is an intensity of flows and affects. In the aesthetic discourse of hip-hop, ‘beat’ is neither merely what the drums (or whatever the primary rhythmic component) are doing nor the chosen meter that is most salient. Rather, ‘beat’—and the ‘flow’ that accompanies it— has more to do with the way the music moves. In one instance, Guattari writes that ‘the term assemblage does not imply any notion of bond, passage, or anastomosis between its components. It is an assemblage of possible fields, of virtual [potential] as much as constituted [actual] elements.’30 Of course, an assemblage, as a kind of body, does entail some aspect of passage, since passage entails movement. Similarly, Brian Massumi observes that, ‘when a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition: its own variation.’31 It is in this sense that Massumi further suggests that a body in motion is ‘abstract.’32 This explains why Massumi will also echo Deleuze in saying that what is needed is actually more abstraction, not less. First, the call for more abstraction correlates with a call to put things into motion more. Second, the abstraction in question is no less ‘real’: ‘Here, abstract means: never present in position, only ever in passing … pertaining to the transitional immediacy of a real relation— that of a body in its own indeterminacy.’33 Sensation and movement.

Force, Pulse, Feel In his essay ‘Lyotard on Postmodern Music,’ Ashley Woodward suggests that it is better to think of Lyotard’s work (particularly his writings on aesthetics and music) as ‘post-phenomenological’ (rather than ‘poststructuralist,’ for example). For Woodward, Lyotard ‘takes up themes and concerns from the phenomenological tradition but develops them beyond the scope of that tradition in a manner similar to those of other roughly contemporaneous French philosophers’ (e.g., Derrida, Nancy, Marion).34 As having worked through such notions as ‘consciousness in Husserl, Being in Heidegger, the flesh in Merleau-Ponty, life in Henry, etc.,’35 Woodward sees Lyotard as ultimately grappling with the phenomenological ‘paradox’ wherein typically, the conditions of the given are posited as not themselves being given. Thus Lyotard distinguishes in a work of art the given presentation— that which appears, which makes itself known to perception and thought— and the unpresentable, the elusive condition that enables what is presented to be art rather than an object of knowledge and to give rise to an aesthetic response.36

What Moves Music?  125 In the context of music, presentation is rendered vis-à-vis the ‘audible,’ whereas the unpresentable is rendered vis-à-vis the ‘inaudible.’ A ‘postphenomenological’ taxonomy of music in the spirit of Lyotard would need to account for drive, force, pulse, feel— and, ultimately, pulsion. More broadly, I read the audible/inaudible relation in Lyotard as analogous to the corporeal/incorporeal (material/expressive) relation that I have already encountered with respect to musical movement. 1 Can force be extricated from structuralism and phenomenology? In light of a structuralism that seeks meaning in structure, and structure in meaning, Derrida—who clearly presumes a connection between structuralism and phenomenology at the outset— asks and answers his own question in response: If meaning is meaningful only within a totality, could it come forth if the totality were not animated by the anticipation of an end, or by an intentionality which, moreover, does not necessarily and primarily belong to a consciousness? If there are structures, they are possible only on the basis of the fundamental structure which permits totality to open and overflow itself such that it takes on meaning by anticipating a telos which here must be understood in its most indeterminate form.37 This is to say that, in structuralism, force risks becoming erased precisely by the attempt to constitute its meaning solely vis-à-vis some origin or telos. In the passage above, meaning is primarily bound to intentionality, which is, of course, attached to consciousness. Thus, one possibility that might be gleaned from Derrida’s ostensible concern with force and signification— and the challenge to thinking through force and ­ signification—is a shift toward force as affect and a-signification: ‘To comprehend the structure of a becoming, the form of a force, is to lose meaning by finding it.’38 In the same breath, Derrida wonders what becomes of phenomenology once one realizes that force is not meaning, totality, intentionality, consciousness, structure, telos, or form. True, becoming (i.e., what passes between) is ‘the form of a force,’39 but to say that becoming is a form is to talk of a form that is form-less, ­ or, at the very least, to talk of form without being form. Moreover, as Derrida observes, ‘to say that force is the origin of a phenomenon is to say nothing. By its very articulation force becomes a phenomenon.’40 Its meaning is its expression. Hence force is not teleological, if one apprehends telos as rendered in conventional discourse as ‘end,’ ‘goal,’ ‘purpose,’ or, inversely, as ‘origin,’ ‘source,’ ‘intention,’ and so on. As such, Derrida concludes that ‘one would seek in vain a concept in phenomenology which would permit the conceptualization of intensity or force.’41

126  Michael David Székely 2 Similar to beat and flow, pulse simultaneously implies something more encompassing than accent or rhythm and more subtle than drive or force. Although Barthes looks mostly to his favorite examples of Western classical music, many of his claims could be further articulated by, for instance, a look at more modern and contemporary experimental and improvisational musical practices. For example, the composer Varèse sought ‘the reciprocal and simultaneous effects of independent elements intervening at prescribed but irregular intervals,’42 which I read as an extension of conventional notions of musical pulse that emphasize the repetition of discrete ‘points’ over time. One might presume such points to manifest sonically— that is, to sound— in any number of ways, as attacks, as strikes, as hits, and so on, and as loud, soft, and so on. But, of course, pulse can also be felt in the silences in between the sounds, as well as in silence itself, wherein silence is the marker, the ‘arrival’ of pulse. This is a similar observation with respect to pulse itself, which one can recognize as being either audible (actual) or inaudible (implied). Physiology observes pulse in terms of ‘stimuli.’ With this in mind, one might be tempted to describe pulse as not only repetition of discrete ‘points’ over time, but as repetition of discrete, but identical, points over time. After all, is this not how one tends to think of things like ‘beat,’ ‘groove,’ and so on? That is, one thinks of them as repetition, or, to put it more specifically, as repetition that repeats a sameness? For example, one recognizes the pulse of much pop/rock music vis-à-vis its ‘backbeat’ (‘audible’ emphasis on beats two and four in the context of a ‘straight,’ or ‘even’ feel, perhaps rendered most explicitly vis-à-vis the hi-hat cymbals), or of much jazz music vis-à-vis its ‘swing’ (‘audible’ and ‘implied’ emphases on beats two and four in the context of a syncopated, or, indeed, ‘swung’ feel, perhaps rendered most explicitly vis-à-vis the ride cymbal). On another level, however, physiology also renders stimuli fundamentally in terms of change. If one recognizes change as fundamentally difference over time, then what one is really talking about when one talks about pulse is repetition and/as difference. Deleuze and Guattari discuss the composer Pierre Boulez’s conception of ‘the “nonpulsed time” of a floating music … which has nothing but speeds or differences in dynamic,’43 rather than ‘the “pulsed time” of a formal and functional music based on values.’44 In truth, it might be the case that what Deleuze and Guattari are really talking about are rather different kinds of pulses—where what they call ‘pulsed time’ is more specifically that which is meted out in a more conventional way. Here, although repetition is neither (for reasons I have just discussed) ‘sameness’ nor ‘identical,’ it nevertheless implies such qualities. Consider the ‘implied’ sameness of a swing pattern in traditional jazz—marked more explicitly by the ride cymbal. Meanwhile, with ‘non-pulsed time,’ that which is repeated over time is even less beholden to the implication of

What Moves Music?  127 sameness. Or, if you will, it seems to delight more explicitly in difference. Consider how, in more experimental ‘free jazz’ or ‘free improvisation,’ all of the components of the drum kit are much less beholden to a ‘swing’ pattern, or to any conventional ‘timekeeping’ role, for that matter— and yet time, or the feeling of time does not disappear. At any rate, it seems as though a range of music entails, if nothing else, something like the confrontation of a ‘non-pulsed time’ with some encompassing ‘pulsed’ rhythm (even if polyrhythmic or arrhythmic, and in the next section I will look more closely at examples of drummers who employ this ‘non-pulsed time’ of pulsional drumming). It is precisely this confrontation, this internal play of pulse and flow, that links, for example, the Western classical ‘avant-garde’ tradition of Varèse, Boulez, Feldman, et al. to the more experimental and improvised jazz pioneered by musicians like Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, et al. 3 This discussion of pulse beckons us to revisit the notion of feel. Earlier, I moved away from meter and toward ‘feel’ precisely because feel was what made meter more than meter (the ‘Unequal’45 or ‘Incommensurable,’46 the ‘imperceptible difference,’47 as Timothy Murphy put it). As a sonorous, affective manifestation of rhythm, feel would seem well aligned with the notion of pulsion. Consider this lengthy, but instructive, passage from Derek Bailey’s Improvisation: An important part off all idiomatic improvisation is using the ‘feel’ of the rhythm, the forward movement sense as opposed to the mathematical understanding of the rhythm. In Indian music this is the laya. Usually described as the overall tempo of a piece, it is much more than that. It is its rhythmic impetus, its pulse. The musician who displays an exceptional rhythmical ‘feel,’ whose work has great rhythmic facility and ease, is described as ‘having a good laya’ … The vocabulary of Western classical music contains no equivalent for laya, either being incapable of recognizing its existence or preferring to ignore it. Probably the terms encountered in the description of space and energy serve better: continuum, kinetic, dynamic, equivalence, ballistic, centrifugal. Or—like those coined in Western improvisation: groove, swing, rock, ride—words of sexual derivation.48 It is unclear whether Bailey would extend such an inability to theorize an equivalent to classical India music’s laya to all Western musics, including the ‘non-idiomatic improvisation’ of which Bailey is both an advocate and practitioner. However, in keeping with improvisation as our heuristic model, I might wager pulsion as just such an equivalent: not ‘just’ rhythm, but the feel of rhythm; not ‘just’ forward movement (i.e., drive), or the impact of that forward movement (i.e., force), but the pulse of that

128  Michael David Székely forward movement. Pulsion is matter and energy, force and intensity, corporeality and incorporeality.

Pulsional Drumming: Graves and Coleman In this section, I apply the ongoing discussion of pulsion more explicitly to two ‘case studies’ in drumming. Our subjects all come generally from improvised jazz (sometimes referred to as ‘free jazz,’ or, more distantly, ‘free improvisation’—terms not without their own concerns). To be sure, pulsion is not at all restricted to drumming (recall Barthes’ own preferred example of the piano). Our choice of drumming has to do with how the workings of pulsion seem particularly ready at hand in its operation. 1 Merleau-­Ponty writes, ‘The perceived world (like painting) is the ensemble of my body’s routes and not a multitude of spatio-­temporal individuals.’49 This description might serve as the broader rubric—­a ‘flesh ontology’50 —for the way in which aesthetic production and perception function in John Corbett’s discussion of the drummer Milford Graves. Corbett observes how Graves’ independent limbs, which behave like ‘isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers,’51 create a ‘multivoiced percussion,’52 a ‘centerless rhythmatism,’53 a ‘positing of the body as an ensemble in itself.’54 Graves’ improvisational drumming is the analogue to Barthes’ ‘pounding,’ ‘beating’ Schumannian pianist. Beyond its being a radical extension of the accent and rhythm that exemplify the bodily emphasis of pulsion, Graves’ drumming also articulates (or re-­articulates) the threshold of materiality and signification (what Barthes called signifiance) that is the very hallmark of Barthes’ aesthetics. Graves’ drumming is, at any given moment, in time, out of time, over time, between time(s). It is audible time and implied time, all at once. It is a transversal drumming enacting what Michels, in his discussion of Barthes, describes as ‘“musculature, perceptions, desires, yearnings, and social relations,” an “intricate weave” of “rhythms, pressures, and volumes” … “pulsional incidents, the language lined with the flesh.”’55 Artaud concurs: All these sounds are linked to movements, as if they were the natural consummation of gestures which have the same musical quality, and this with such a sense of musical analogy that the mind finally finds itself doomed to confusion, attributing to the separate gesticulation of the dancers the sonorous properties of the orchestra—­and vice versa.56 Artaud’s passage is applicable to Corbett’s reference to Graves’ drumming on multiple levels. First, Graves himself, as a drummer, is a dancer

What Moves Music?  129 as well. One can speak figuratively in this way, of the drummer as dancer—but the link is quite literal as well. The body in a state of drumming is a dancing body. Second, Graves’ drumming body is ‘all these sounds linked to movement … the natural consummation of gestures.’57 Furthermore, Graves’ limbs, which play across different parts of the drum kit, are each dancers themselves (‘separate gesticulation[s]’58). Finally, what Corbett calls the ‘body as an ensemble in itself’59 in reference to Graves is analogous to what Artaud envisions in terms of the orchestra. Graves is an orchestra (in essence, the drum kit is a kind of orchestra in itself). He is exemplary of the wondrous ‘confusion’60 Artaud desires for his theater— dancers melding with the orchestra, ‘and vice versa.’61 2 Whatever instance of techné one might envision (here, in the context of music), one can typically study, digest, transcribe, or imitate a musical style, or a musical approach, at least to some degree, even if one could never exactly imitate a musician’s style. In one sense, this would be duplication, not imitation. In another sense, it seems at least insufficient (at most, misguided) to think of imitation in terms of sameness, in terms of exactness. Whatever the impetus to imitate might be, the very act of imitation presumes an engagement with something else, an engagement with something ‘other,’ a relation—which is to say, a passing-between. ­ In this sense, imitation will always be in-exact, ­ not the same. Put differently, imitation always presumes difference. In this sense, I apprehend the following musical example at the threshold of this conventional sentiment where imitation is concerned. And yet—if the expression of difference in this example is still imitable, its singularity (which, I would argue, is rooted in its pulsion) makes its imitability less accessible. In 1966, the saxophonist Ornette Coleman recorded the album Empty Foxhole 62 with his longtime collaborator Charlie Haden on bass and then ten-year-old son Denardo on drums. In the young boy’s playing, one can hear a kind of innocent intentionality that, to varying degrees, actually misses the mark musically— or does it? This is perhaps an intentionality under erasure, or even closer to a ‘non-intentionality.’ Recall the broader definition of pulsion at the outset as ‘the act or action of pushing or driving.’63 Consider the example of young Denardo’s playing by way of an attending quote from H. A. Murray: ‘these undirected and hence uncoordinated pulsions, so prevalent in childhood.’64 So prevalent in childhood, indeed! Granted, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to study, digest, transcribe, or imitate the drumming of the young boy. The profound affect of the young boy’s drumming lies precisely in the fact that, in spite of (or because of?) its incessant irresolution, it not only moves the music, but it arguably moves the music in rather unexpected, and unconventional, ways— drawing attention to its own musical signifiance. More specifically, the young boy’s drumming is an explicit example of

130  Michael David Székely pulsion. Where pulsion is concerned, its ‘rawness’ is simultaneously its sophistication. In this case, its lack of clarity clarifies.

Pulsion and Improvisation(ality) In What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari discuss ‘an area ab that belongs to both a and b, where a and b “become” indiscernible.’65 This idea is expanded upon in a lengthier passage from A Thousand Plateaus: For if becoming animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clear that the human being does not ‘really’ become an animal any more than the animal ‘really’ becomes something else. Becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes.66 Following Deleuze and Guattari, Elizabeth Grosz discusses how the ‘refrain’ of music—­or, the way in which music establishes a ‘territory’ (the most obvious example might be the ‘refrain,’ or ‘hook,’ in pop music, that is, any given song’s own version of ‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah …’)— will nevertheless ultimately submit to the ‘process of deterritorialization … removing it from the place of its “origin” and functionality.’67 Rhythm is once again pivotal here, particularly in terms of how it is intimately attached to music’s ‘vibratory force,’ immediacy, and viscerality. Rhythm simultaneously establishes and disrupts a territory. It is when its ‘territorial organization’ is disrupted that music works its ‘intensifying effects’: ‘Rhythms become detached from their functional role and operate instead as expressive qualities, seeking to resonate not only from within the territory from which they are extracted but outside, elsewhere, in the world beyond.’68 When Barthes writes that ‘the Buddhist way is precisely that of the obstructed meaning: the very Arcanum of signification, that is, the paradigm, is rendered impossible,’69 the broader context is framed by way of a hypothetical question with respect to some of his favored examples from the visual arts: What is the ‘paradigm’ of Masson’s semiograms? Or of Twombly’s paintings? Our Barthesian question in the present context of music is: What is the ‘paradigm’ of improvisation? Not improvisation as genre, to be clear—­but improvisation qua improvisation, improvisation in the act of improvising. Such a consideration leads, once again, to time, since, it should be recalled, rhythm is simultaneously affect and the passage of affect. In other words, rhythm becomes pulsional. Metrical-­ transcendent time becomes affective-­immanent time.

What Moves Music?  131 In discussing temporality in relation to what it means to think (i.e., the questioning of everything, ‘including thought, and question, and the process’70), Lyotard writes: We must distinguish between two ways of assuming the questioning, according as the stress is or is not placed on the urgency of the reply. The principle of reason is the way of questioning which rushes to its goal, the reply. It involves a sort of impatience in the single presupposition that in any case one can always find a ‘reason’ or a cause for every question. Non-Western traditions of thought have a quite different attitude. What counts in their manner of questioning is not at all to determine the reply as soon as possible, to seize and exhibit some object which will count as the cause of the phenomenon in question. But to be and remain questioned by it, to stay through meditation responsive to it, without neutralizing by explanation its power of disquiet … Derrida’s problematic of deconstruction and différence, Deleuze’s principle of nomadism belong, however different they may be, to this approach to time. In it, time remains uncontrolled, does not give rise to work, or at least not in the customary sense of the word ‘work.’71 Following Lyotard’s insight, then, one can observe how, on one level— I shall call it ‘general’ temporality (i.e., past, present, future)—temporality is best apprehended in terms of its relation to heterogeneity and immediacy. I return here to the gestural aspect of music, and, more specifically, of improvisation as gesture’s most fitting analogue in musical practice. When heterogeneous elements are brought together, Deleuze says, ‘something “crosses” between the edges; events explode, phenomena flash like lightening or thunder.’72 In other words, this is ‘becoming’ in all of its rhizomatic (intersecting, overlapping, folding) manifestations—for example, becoming-minor, ­ becoming-animal, ­ becoming-imperceptible, ­ becoming-music. It is in this broader context— the context of a musical becoming— that Deleuze and Guattari would take seriously (if still figuratively— recall the quoted passage that began this section) the story of the cicadas Agamben recalls in a discussion of Plato: ‘Singing, man celebrates and commemorates the voice he no longer has, which, as taught by the myth of the cicadas in the Phaedrus, he could find again only if he ceased to be human and became animal.’73 For his part, Derrida confesses with a note of caution that it’s not easy to improvise, it’s the most difficult thing to do. Even when one improvises in front of a camera or microphone, one ventriloquizes or leaves another to speak in one’s place the schemas and languages that are already there. There are already a great number of

132  Michael David Székely prescriptions that are prescribed in our memory and in our culture. All the names are already preprogrammed. It’s already the names that inhibit our ability to ever really improvise. One can’t say whatever one wants, one is obliged more or less to reproduce the stereotypical discourse. And so I believe in improvisation and I fight for improvisation. But always with the belief that it’s impossible. And there where there is improvisation I am not able to see myself. I am blind to myself. And it’s what I will see, no, I won’t see it. It’s for others to see. The one who is improvised here, no, I won’t ever see him.74 That Derrida believes in, and fights for, improvisation comes as no surprise. But is he not looking in vain for an opening through which ­improvising—­or more broadly music—­can be written? Granted, one must acknowledge the context here—­which is in part Derrida’s engagement with interviewing itself, or performing (or even better, with the very problem of the interview as performance). How are these ways of writing? Derrida might ask. Or: in what ways might they come to erase the possibility of writing? Or: how might they become erased under speech? Philosophy itself is not beyond suspicion here. Is it inevitable that philosophy, that philosophizing about music, puts music under erasure? Meanwhile, Barthes offers his own critique vis-­à-vis comments about the Japanese Bunraku dance form, which, he suggests, ‘of course excludes improvisation,’75 since ‘to return to spontaneity would be to return to the stereotypes which constitute Western “depth.”’76 Rather, he continues, citation rules, the sliver of writing, the fragment of code … As in the modern text, the interweaving of codes, references, discrete assertions, anthological gestures multiplies the written line, not by virtue of some metaphysical appeal, but by the interaction of a combinatoire which opens out into the entire space of the theater: what is begun by one is continued by the next, without interval.77 Writing before John Corbett (who had linked improvisation to the possibilities of ‘re-­reading’ and ‘the permanent play of threshold and transgression’78), Barthes says ‘Narrative or Transgression (no doubt one and the same).’79 This parenthetical note—­which conflates narrative with transgression—­is nevertheless particularly noteworthy. In the context of music, our own ‘Barthesian’ move will, somewhat paradoxically, seek to fold Derrida and Barthes upon themselves. That is, if one extends Barthes’ discussion of Bunraku toward music, one finds that, contrary to the aforementioned implication, there is nothing that precludes improvisation from using citation, or, more specifically, what he refers to as ‘fragment[s] of code.’80 For his part, Derrida offers his own ‘corrective’ to (or at least concern with) such citation: in short, deconstruction. The play of meaning does not ‘arrive’ in citation. Citation is part of the play of meaning.

What Moves Music?  133 It is in this sense that I wish to suggest that what is stake in Bunraku would at least mirror that of improvisation, or what might more accurately be called improvisationality. Interestingly enough, Michels makes this point in the context of a passage likening Barthes’ account of language to a kind of mysticism: Mystics teach that language must be abandoned altogether if the doors of perception are ever to be cleansed and men see things as they are, infinite. What is wanted in one’s gaze is not a category, which refers to other objects in other times and places, real or imagined, but an exclusive and extreme concentration on this thing, now.81 And yet, Michels says elsewhere, ‘something more than disruption occurs in the incongruous juxtaposition; something immediate and unnameable emerges from the depths of the writer and, if she is with him, the reader.’82 In his discussion of Barthes’ example of gay ‘cruising’ as a metaphor for mystical experience, Martin Jay concurs with Michels: Mystical experience is, of course, itself not easy to define, but in one of its guises it can plausibly support Barthes’s suggestive analogy. The quest for mystical experience, Michel de Certeau once pointed out, can involve the separation of utterances from the objective, formal order of theological statements, an order in which the act of uttering is subordinated to a system of formal meanings. Instead, it involves a more direct relation between the subjective act of uttering and the messages it utters.83 ‘The mystical utterance,’ Jay continues later, ‘steadfastly resists not only images, but also their transformation into a controlled order like a linguistic system.’84 How is this relevant to our investigation of music and pulsion? I invite the link between improvisation and mysticism to the extent that both are seen as embodied practices that engage in the precognitive dispersal of the intentional self, or ‘identity,’ in order to experience newer possibilities of connection, intersection, and intensity. On another level, there are other significant attributes of musical temporality, namely, the textures of this temporality. The more ‘mature’ approaches to a freer style of drumming (in improvisational or ‘free’ jazz, and other improvised music, for example) also resist strict meter and pulse, but there is still what I might describe as a kind of intentional unintentionality at work. ‘If,’ writes John Cage, ‘one says “Yes! I do not discriminate between intention and non-intention,” the splits, subject-object, art-life, etc., disappear, an identification has been made with the material, and actions are then those relevant to its nature.’85 The Dadaist Zen of Cage meets the affirming child of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra—a kind of physiological aesthetics.86 True, the kind of playing, the kind of musical signification, that Graves’ and the young Denardo Coleman’s drumming exemplifies often disregards meter, or

134  Michael David Székely specific and sustained rhythmic ‘feels’ (a rock feel, a swing feel, a pop feel, etc.) that state or imply a basically firm beat structure throughout. However, it would be a mistake to say that such drumming disregards time, and it would definitely miss the mark to say that it disregards rhythm. On the contrary, if there is a kind of atemporality to this drumming, it is equally ­ infused with a trans-temporality, in which different levels and intensities of musical time flow in and out of, and across, one another—an overflowing of temporality, and of musical signification. Moreover, calling this drumming ‘arhythmic’ merely because it does not imply meter or emphasize more recognizable rhythms and feels is clearly shortsighted. On the contrary, this playing is unabashedly polyrhythmic, infused with different rhythms that weave in and out of one another, even pointing to and anticipating one another, in no definitive pattern. Rather than lacking pulse and direction, this playing is, in fact, both propulsive and multidirectional. A saturation of rhythm and pulse, of musical signification—such drumming elucidates pulsion even more explicitly.87

Conclusion At one point in ‘Rasch,’ Barthes urges us to ‘read, listen to some of these Schumannian words, and see all that they tell about the body [in a state of music] (nothing to do with any kind of metronomic movement).’88 Here they are in abbreviated form: Bewegt: ‘something stirs without direction … a rustling agitation of the body.’89 Aufgeregt: ‘something waken, arises, wakes itself … provokes, irritates …’90 Innig: ‘your body is internalized, loses itself inside …’91 Ausserst innig: ‘you conceive yourself in a limit state … inside turns around, as if there were an outside of the inside…’92 Ausserst bewegt: ‘it throbs so powerfully that it might even crack—but it doesn’t crack.’93 Rasch: ‘directed speed, exactitude, precise rhythm … rapid strides, surprise, the movement of a serpent through leaves.’94 Taken together, such a taxonomy constitutes a pulsional music. The aforementioned examples of a freer, pulsional drumming were intended to engage a broader aesthetics and erotics of music, an embodied music at the threshold of corporeality and incorporeality, materiality and signification. Meanwhile, taken in the context of improvisation— that is, as resisting (if not necessarily eliminating) markers like genre and fixed referentiality— such a practice suggests what Jeremy Gilbert

What Moves Music?  135 has called ‘an improvisational dimension, which is to say a rhizomatic moment at which connections are made between musics, subjects, and ­ non-musical machines.’95 Here I might also leave behind, to some extent, the moniker of ‘improvisation’ itself, resisting the attempt to frame it—including its more specific derivations of ‘jazz,’ or ‘free jazz,’ or ‘free improvisation’—as a superior musical genre.96 Rather, what comes to the fore is an aesthetic that lends itself to both a sense of immediacy and a sense of displacement, blurring, dehierarchization: improvisation as rupture and connection. Connection across bodies. Once again, pulsion need not register through the drums. Rather, drumming has been the main conduit through which I have engaged a taxonomy of musical elements, culminating in pulsion. The lesson, again, is that pulsion extends beyond the typical qualities I might ascribe to musical experience—whether as composers, listeners, or performers. In this sense, the examples of the drumming of Milford Graves and the young Denardo Coleman could feasibly serve as exemplary musical analogues of the poststructuralist ‘Text’ (a la Barthes and Derrida), as long as one acknowledges such a text as operating at the threshold of language and the body (a la Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on a-signification)— which, again, is the very starting point for Barthes’ formative musings on music. Along with various other musical approaches that demonstrate a much more open style, one might say such drumming is ‘free’ (in most cases, a rather poor and ill-descriptive term for many creative improvised musics that are, to whatever degree, associated with the jazz tradition) not so much because of what it disregards, but because of how it both disrupts and integrates. It affirms precisely because of how its difference leads to connection. However, signification in musical gesture in general—and pulsional gesture in particular—is marked by this particu­ lar entanglement of materiality with temporality. One could describe the continuous variation—that sustains without being uniform, that repeats while also differentiating— as so many rhythms. However, pulsion is a better crystallization of the phenomenon that has marked our concern, since it is more alive to both the materiality and expressivity of musical movement. That is, pulsion, or, the pulsional, is what moves music along.

Notes

136  Michael David Székely 7 Johnnie Gratton, Expressivism: The Vicissitudes of a Theory in the Writing of Proust and Barthes (Oxford: Legenda, 2000), p. 102.



22 Jean-Luc ­ Nancy, Listening, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), p. 43. 23 Ibid.

What Moves Music?  137



6 Ibid. 3 40 Ibid., pp. 26–27.



4 4 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 48 Derek Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (New York: Da Capo, 1992), p. 4.

138  Michael David Székely 49 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ­ The Visible and the Invisible, edited by Claude Lefort, trans. Alfonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 247.



­



57 Ibid. 60 Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, p. 59. 67 Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 53.

What Moves Music?  139 77 Ibid.

80 Barthes, Empire of Signs, p. 55.



92 Ibid. 94 Ibid.

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Part III

Ethical Openings

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7

Not Just a Body Lacan on Corporeality Emma Ingala

The body should impress you more.

Jacques Lacan1

In no man is the relationship with the body a straightforward relationship. Jacques Lacan 2

Contemporary debates across the humanities and social sciences have given rise to a noticeable ‘materialist turn,’3 a ‘neo-materialism,’4 or ‘new materialisms,’5 which have had the general aim of combatting a supposed ‘somatophobia’6 or fear of the corporeal— and, more generally, of matter—that allegedly permeates the history of Western philosophy generally and the twentieth-century’s linguistic turn specifically.7 According to the readings effectuated by these new materialisms, the linguistic turn is responsible for reducing reality to an effect of language, of granting language too much power, and, with this, of paving the way for all sorts of social and cultural constructivisms that understand matter and the body to be the result of immaterial social norms, discourses, practices, and codes.8 Jacques Lacan often appears among the names of the thinkers guilty of over-inflating language,9 which has given rise to a position that Iris van der Tuin and Rick Dolphijn have labeled ‘Saussurian/Lacanian linguisticism.’10 A number of commentators have, however, defended Lacan against this charge by pointing out that, far from ignoring it, the body is omnipresent in his work—from his early formulation of the mirror stage11 until his later writings where it is linked to the notion of jouissance12 — with this extensive engagement allowing him to develop a materialism of his own.13 Such defenses tend to take place through one of the following lines of argument: (1) Although Lacan initially privileges the symbolic order— that is, the dimension of language— he eventually undergoes a ‘materialist turn’14 wherein the attention is shifted to the body, the drives and, more generally, to what he calls the real, resulting in ‘two successive Lacans’15 or even in three,16 with the last one being articulated

144  Emma Ingala around the notion of jouissance; (2) the body is an important concept for Lacan but the predominance of the symbolic order is never suspended, with the consequence that the body is unavoidably ‘overwritten/overridden by language’17; (3) there is an unsolvable tension, division, or cleavage between language and the body— and between the symbolic and the real—in Lacan’s theory18; and (4) the debate regarding Lacan’s linguisticism or materialism is premised on a supposed symbolic/real opposition that poses an ‘utterly false dilemma,’19 insofar as Lacan retains ‘a constant focus, throughout the entire course of his chronological development, on the generally neglected point of overlap between the “immaterial” Symbolic and the “material” Real.’20 Building on this last stream of interpretation, according to which Lacan’s thinking is constituted by continuity— albeit one certainly traversed by variations and shifts— rather than violent rupture(s), oppositions, or turns, this chapter argues that Lacan (1) rejects the notion that the body is a singular, substantial, individual, and unified entity that is clearly and neatly distinguishable from other entities; (2) dismantles and abandons the logic of binary oppositions— nature/culture, biology/society, language/matter, soul/extension, man/woman, and so on— that have tended to be used to consider it, 21 with the consequence that he (3) does not reduce the body to a purely social, cultural, or linguistic construction, nor does he conceive of it as a brute or primary matter that is informed, shaped, or more radically annihilated by the symbolic order. Instead, (4) Lacan reconceives corporeality as a relational field constituted by heterogeneous networks of moving relations or, in other words, as a chiasma of multiple elements and dimensions that do not pre- exist their entanglement but rather result from it. To develop this, I outline three different but interrelated conceptions of the body that are provided by Lacan and which correspond to the three registers of his theory: (1) the imaginary body that results from the mirror stage and whose image operates as the support for the identity of the individual; (2) the symbolic body that is marked and particularized by signifiers and which can therefore be conceptualized and spoken about; and (3) the real body, which is the body that cannot be imagined nor apprehended symbolically and which is traversed by drives. Importantly, these three bodies are not opposed to each other but exist in constitutive entwinement or, in Lacanian terms, knotting, wherein cutting one knot unties the other two. 22 By positing at least three intertwined, moving bodies, Lacan neutralizes the duality and foundationalism inherent in the logic of binary oppositions upon which his critics tend to base their arguments and points to an extremely complex and original conception of ‘the’ body— and by extension materiality— as a multiple relational field that is created and sustained through the ongoing interaction of the imaginary, symbolic, and real bodies.

Lacan on Corporeality  145

The Body as a Mirage The tripartite schema of the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real was explicitly enunciated for the first time by Lacan in a lecture in 1953, 23 and in those early years it was presented as the vertebrae of human existence; that is, as ‘those elementary categories without which we would be incapable of distinguishing anything within our experience.’24 ‘Symbolic,’ ‘imaginary,’ and ‘real’ are not substantives but substantivized adjectives, which give us a clue about their status. They do not denote three things or places but rather three properties and, more specifically, three different types of relations; three different ways in which the subject comes to be and relates to itself, to the world and to others. To outline this, it is perhaps helpful to briefly turn away from Lacan to Gilles Deleuze, who describes the relationality inherent in the Lacanian schema with the numbers 1, 2, and 3, which correspond to the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic respectively. 25 Real relations are nonrelations, which are nevertheless still a type of relation, albeit a failed one: short- circuits, missed encounters, traumatic events, interruptions in the intelligibility of our reality, and so on. They can be represented by the number 1 because this number is the unity and is, in its isolation, the absence of relation. Imaginary relations are relations of identity. They are dual or linked to the number 2 because identity is created through a process of identification with an external specular image, with what is deemed to be a duplication or reflection of the self. Finally, symbolic relations are established through and sustained by difference; they are differential relations wherein the related elements are not reflections of one another but differences that reciprocally determine each other— the number 3 incarnates these relations because it introduces an element between the two aspects of the specular reflection that prevents their mere identification. In spite of these differences, the three registers are not three independent and self- contained orders of relations but interdependent and reciprocally determined dimensions of embodied subjectivity. Importantly, the three dimensions are not united by a (pre-existing) core; ‘unity’ is created immanently from and through the relationality between the dimensions. The body for Lacan is then a multidimensional field constituted and destituted by the triad of imaginary, symbolic, and real relations. The first order that Lacan conceptualizes—from the late 1930s to the early 1950s—is that of the imaginary relations, which he first presents in the paper ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.’26 The body and, more precisely, its image play a key role in the construction of the imaginary. In this construction, the ego, self-awareness, and the individual’s sense of identity—which are the imaginary dimension of subjectivity— are formed through what Lacan calls ‘the mirror stage.’27 Between the sixth and eighteenth months

146  Emma Ingala of life, something transformative and configurative happens when the little baby recognizes for the first time and with great excitement her image in the mirror. The French psychologist Henri Wallon detected in this event the source of a process of psychological maturation and cognitive development in the infant through the acquisition of the notion of her own body. 28 According to Wallon, her identification with the image in the mirror allows the baby to overcome a deficiency. Up to that point, she only has a fragmented, partial, and disassembled vision of her body, and her motor skills and control are still very deficient. The mirror, however, returns to her the image of a coherent, homogeneous, and unitary body, and by identifying with it she anticipates a mastery that is yet to come. For Wallon, this constitutes a progress in the baby’s development and is the process through which the ego and the personal identity are constituted. Lacan, however, interprets this developmental stage not as a positive progressive moment or as an increase in awareness and cognition but, quite the contrary, as a regress and a mis- cognition (méconnaissance), 29 a ‘source of error.’30 What happens in front of the mirror is not an acquisition of knowledge but the consolidation of an illusion: the baby identifies not with what she is, which is a fragmented and dysfunctional body, ‘organic disturbance and discord,’31 but with a mirage of unity and mastery, with a fiction.32 The ego that results from this is, therefore, a constitutively illusory identity, 33 and so is the notion of the body that sustains the formation of the ego: it appears as unified, self- contained, and autonomous when in reality it is an unstable and constantly changing matrix of a manifold of relations. Every time we say ‘I,’ we are relying upon a fantasy with no actual correlate. While the mirror— a flat and shiny surface that nevertheless produces an impression of depth— propitiates this deception, the process of the formation of the ego and the notion of our own body is not restricted to the specular experience nor is it merely a stage.34 The first identification with the image in the mirror lays the foundation for further identifications with other images that, by accumulating one on top of the other as with the layers of an onion, 35 structure and shape personal identity. With the thesis that the ego and the notion of our own body are illusory, Lacan is not denying the materiality and reality of the corporeal dimension of the subject, on which he recognizes the potential anatomical and physiological effects of images36; rather, he is pointing to a specific materiality and reality of the body—its fragmentation, the body ‘in bits and pieces (corps morcélé)’37—that is foreclosed by the formation of the personal identity. In spite of the mis- cognition involved in this process, Lacan acknowledges that ‘the imaginary is surely the guide to life for the whole animal domain’38; that is, the identity of our self and our body is a sort of necessary illusion for the sake of our survival and everyday functioning, and it

Lacan on Corporeality  147 is so in at least two aspects: first, the (imaginary) body gives consistency to the subject by holding together its many facets and dimensions. Lacan uses two metaphors to illustrate this: in the first, the body works like a bag, an empty container that gives form and keeps together what in reality has no unity per se.39 The second metaphor is the small stepladder that in French is called escabeau,40 according to which the body is a sort of pedestal or stature that elevates and individualizes the subject and, with it, makes it look pretty (beau).41 Second, the mirror stage, which it will be remembered is that through which the imaginary body is created, establishes a demarcation and a relationship between the organism and its reality.42 However, for Lacan, we should not forget that this is nothing more than a functional assumption and that the demarcation between an inside and an outside is actually artificial, for the inside is only constituted through its identification with an outside—with an external image— or, in other words, through an alienation.43 ‘I’ and the image this ‘I’ has of her own body are actually, paraphrasing Rimbaud, an Other.44 The mirror stage is ‘the original adventure through which man, for the first time, has the experience of seeing himself, of reflecting on himself and conceiving of himself as other than he is.’45 The foreignness of the notion of the body is that which, according to Lacan, implicitly determines our way of talking about it: we say that we have a body, not that we are a body, and treat it as a property, ‘like a piece of furniture.’46

The Body as a Surface of Inscription More than 25 years after the first formulation of the mirror stage, Lacan returned to his notion of the imaginary to clarify that it is not simply an autonomous, unitary, and self- contained realm—in spite of the illusion of unity and identity that it generates with the construction of the ego and the image of the body. Rather, the imaginary is completely dependent on the other two registers of the triad. In this respect, it is neither chronologically nor logically prior to the symbolic and the real, and neither is it the case that Lacan’s theory moves from a first phase focused on the mirror stage to a second one marked by the discovery of the signifier.47 Lacan shows the intimate interplay of the three orders in the experience of the infant in front of the mirror: the identification of  the  baby with the specular image is made possible only by a third party that intervenes to sanction their correspondence. Lacan notes that in this experience, the baby usually turns round: with this nutating movement of the head, which turns towards the adult as if to call upon his assent, and then back to the image, he seems to be asking the one supporting him, and who here represents the big Other, to ratify the value of this image.48

148  Emma Ingala This third, mediating between the imaginary two— the child and her specular image—bears witness to the presence of symbolic relations that subtend the formation of personal identity as well as the composition of the image of the own body. On the other hand, the real is equally present at this stage under the foreclosed form of a fragmented body, a latent but haunting abyss of anxiety threatening to dissolve the illusion of the unified body, with the consequence that the individual is in ‘constant danger of sliding back again into the chaos from which he started.’49 The notion of our own body, therefore, is precariously composed ‘above’ the abyss of the real through the identification with the image of an other— the other in the mirror and the other bodies around us— which is made possible by the body of an Other that for Lacan is double: in the first instance, it is the body of the adult or caregiver holding the baby in front of the mirror, but this body is only the earliest instantiation of a more fundamental body, namely, the body of the Other that is language. According to Lacan, the Other of language and, more broadly, of the symbolic is not an ideal order or superstructure but a body: ‘language is not immaterial. It is a subtle body, but a body it is.’50 Lacan understands the symbolic as the register of language, which is not this or that language in particular but, following Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, any system of differences without a previous identity— namely, any system of differential relations whose elements reciprocally determine each other.51 For Saussure, language produces meaning not through identity or correspondence—wherein a specific word would univocally correspond to a particular thing—but through difference; that is, through differential relations among signifiers. The meaning of a word depends on the relation of this word with the other words included in the system. Saussure illustrates this with the example of a chess-piece: the knight is only what it is, not because it contains an internal, material, or essential property that defines it that way, but because of its relations to the rest of the pieces and to the chessboard. 52 If a piece happened to be lost or destroyed, we could easily replace it with anything— even a scrap of paper— that would signify its structural role and so keep playing. Analogously, subjects are constituted in a network of differential relations wherein what defines them is not buried in their innermost core— there is no such thing as deep psychology or an essential core for Lacan—but the relations in which they are embedded. For example, one only becomes a mother through a differential relation with a child, or a teacher through a differential relation with a student, or a rebel through a differential relation with authority. These are not inherent properties of subjects but the result of reciprocal determinations. Difference in language is generative of meaning, and Lacan’s conception of the symbolic is modeled upon this creative property of difference. For him, symbolic relations produce not only meaning but, more importantly, being. The symbolic is a body—the body of the Other, that is, of the languages, discourses, laws, and norms into which subjects are

Lacan on Corporeality  149 born—that makes possible another body, the symbolic body of the subject. This symbolic body coats with a manifold of signifiers—for example, ‘lean,’ ‘strong,’ ‘old,’ ‘sick,’ ‘tired’—the imaginary image of the individual’s body. In this sense, signifiers give birth to a dimension of corporeality that is completely dependent of and sustained by language, ‘to the point that it would not be there if it were not possible to speak about it.’53 There are at least three important consequences to this conception of the symbolic body. First, ‘our’ body is once again, as with its imaginary identity, engendered from the outside: it is the result of a process of alienation in the symbolic. The symbolic body is primarily the body conceptualized and characterized in words, but also the body shaped by cultural and social structures, norms, discourses, and practices. In this respect, it is a foreign body that borrows its physiognomy from the Other. Lacan portrays this condition with a variety of rhetorical expressions and topological figures: intimacy is in reality an ‘intimate exteriority or extimacy,’54 and the inside and the outside are interwoven and blended to the point that they cannot be told apart one from the other, as in the Möbius strip.55 From this, the body (1) appears not as a clearcut and individualized organism, but as a constellation of relations with images, words, symbols, others, other things and the Other, to the point that Lacan affirms that the Other ‘is the body’56; and (2) is inevitably alienated from the subject, which becomes to a certain degree dissociated from its own body, as manifested by the expression that one ‘has’ a body rather than one ‘is’ a body.57 Second, the symbolic body reveals itself to be not something given or primary but something secondary and constructed.58 One is not born with a symbolic body, but receives it from the signifiers, cultural norms, and differential relations into which one is born. This body is therefore the result of an entanglement of elements or symbolic system that, by describing the body in a particular way, create it. Interestingly, according to Lacan, sex is also symbolic and therefore secondary: ‘Man and woman…are nothing but signifiers. They derive their function from this, from saying (dire) as a distinct incarnation of sex.’59 Instead of being anatomical or biological, sexual difference is for Lacan the result of certain differential relations that distribute positions such as masculinity and femininity. Third, the body becomes a surface of inscription, a ‘locus [o]n which to put inscriptions [and] the first signifier.’60 This does not, however, mean that the body exists as an inert ‘thing’ that is symbolically over(in)scribed. ‘Body’ is a signifier, but it is the first signifier insofar as it is the site where signifiers are registered, the paper on which they are written, the place where they leave their mark: ‘the body is made to be marked.’61 Being the bearer of a mark or of multiple marks, the body constitutes the necessary ‘support’62 of a relation with the Other and its diverse manifestations: ‘the body makes the bed of the Other through the operation of the signifier.’63

150  Emma Ingala In particular, Lacan describes the process through which the body becomes a surface of inscription by means of the itinerary that takes the baby from organic needs to the formation of desire. At first, the baby’s body is an organism governed by basic needs for its survival: eat, sleep, and the evacuation of residues. When the Other, incarnated in the caregiver, interprets the baby’s signs and formulates them linguistically, it provides the baby with tools to express herself, articulate what she needs, and ask for it. When the baby is able to communicate what she wants, the need is transformed into a demand. With this, she discovers the treasure of language and a whole new world of nuances opens for her. However, words are not tailor-made for her needs, and something of the bodily experience is lost in its translation into signifiers. Nevertheless, this should not be understood in merely negative terms, for the demand and, in general, the access to the symbolic order of relations introduce a plus rather than a minus. Lacan maintains that demands have an additional dimension to that of the mere need and therefore bear on something other than the satisfaction of that need: they demand a presence and, more precisely, they demand love from the caregiver— not just food.64 Desire appears in the space created between these two poles: it results from the tension and disjunction between the appetite for satisfaction and the demand for love. Desire is not, therefore, desire of this or that particular object, but a dislocation that puts the subject in motion and cannot ever be fulfilled. Furthermore, insofar as desire is engendered by access to the Symbolic, desire will always be the desire of the Other in both senses: a desire that desires the Other and a desire that can be expressed only through the discourse of the Other.65 In this process, the organism and its physiological needs are transformed and displaced by a symbolic body shaped by language, marked by signifiers, and inaugurated by the desire of an Other. The reality of the organism certainly does not disappear but is scarred by the symbolic.66 The others that take care of the baby tell her stories, attribute words to her inarticulate manifestations, and hold expectations and fears that carve her little body accordingly. As Lacan puts it: The child is asked to hold in. He is made to hold in too long, to start to introduce excrement into the realm of what belongs to his body, and he starts to make it a part of his body, which is considered, at least for a while, as something not to be lost. Then, after that, he is told to let it out, again on demand. Demand has a decisive role here.67

The Real Body While reality is, for Lacan, the human world as it is structured by symbolic and imaginary relations, the real is the dimension of that which remains impossible to capture through images and words and which manifests

Lacan on Corporeality  151 itself as a traumatic hole or gap— Lacan calls it a troumatisme, fusing trou (hole) with trauma68 —in the fabric of the symbolic and imaginary constructions.69 Lacan uses the term béance to denote this ‘gap of being,’70 and this term is directly related to the body insofar as it is commonly used as an adjective in the phrase bouche béante (open mouth). An open mouth is an expression of surprise and incomprehension responding to something unexpected that appears as an irruption or interruption of intelligibility— something real. Additionally, the open mouth, as in Freud’s dream of Irma’s injection,71 is a dark cavity that insinuates something amorphous 72 and anxiety-provoking. ­ However, the link between the real and the body goes well beyond the mouth: ‘The real—merely introducing the term makes one wonder what one is saying. The real is not the outside world; it is anatomy too, it involves the entire body.’73 The originality of Lacan’s conception of the body lies not so much in his conceptualization of its imaginary and symbolic dimensions— which had been anticipated respectively by developmental psychology and structuralism—but in his elaboration of the notion of the real and in his understanding of the relationship between the three registers. The real prevents the body from being reduced to the image or notion that individuals have of themselves and to the symbolic body overwritten and overridden by signifiers, norms, discourses, and practices. It entails a dimension of the body that is not created by images and words and that dwells in their interstices. However, the relationship of the real body with the symbolic and the imaginary bodies is one of ambivalence. On one hand, the real manifests itself in the failures, suspensions, and interruptions of the symbolicimaginary reality; it appears as a tear in the fabric of this reality, as an uncanny presence that haunts our image or as a non-sense that disturbs the signifying chain. On the other hand, the encounter with the real—with these failures and suspensions—is the impulse that sets in motion and sustains the symbolic-imaginary constructions. The real is necessary for these constructions to work and not only an irruption that breaks them apart. This does not mean that the real body is previous or more fundamental, but just that the three dimensions depend on one another to function. Lacan presents the real body as a speaking body, although a body that speaks in a foreign language whose meaning escapes us and which sounds as pure noise.74 ‘The real, I will say, is the mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious.’75 If, with regard to the symbolic, the real body appears as a gibberish suspension of the signifying process or as a ‘gap in the Other,’76 with regard to the imaginary, the real adopts the form of a formless remainder that eludes representation: it is an ‘un-imaged residue of the body,’77 a ‘gap,’78 an uncanny presence that haunts the carefully crafted image of ourselves but that cannot be pinpointed or located. The experience in front of a mirror can quickly oscillate from the recognition of our image to the irruption of a ‘double

152  Emma Ingala that escapes me.’79 This real side of the body brings forward the disorder and fragments of the corporeal reality that were foreclosed in order to construct a unitary identity. However, the real is at the same time a condition for the body to become the (symbolic) support for and source of (imaginary) consistency for the subject. The (real) body is a necessary condition for the body to become a signifier and bear signifiers: it is that ‘from which all meaning emerges, but in a non- constituted form. This is what forms the ground.’80 The real as ‘ground’ is ‘what establishes an accord’81 or consonance between body and language, and for that reason is what can withdraw that accord at any moment. Analogously, the imaginary consistency of the body, the fact that it ‘doesn’t evaporate’82 and holds the organs together like an empty bag of skin, relies on a real body beyond the mere image.83 But what is this real body and what, if anything, can be said about it? To begin with, we can say what it is not: the real body is not the purely material and biological body or the living organism, nor is it the body before its entrance into the imaginary and the symbolic—for example, the infant’s body ‘before it is subjected to toilet training and instructed in the ways of the world.’84 These understandings of the real body erroneously presuppose that (1) the biological body or organism can be isolated from its environment and from the manifold of relations that constitute it, therefore overlooking the relational condition of corporeality in all its dimensions; and (2) we can conceive of the biological body independently of the symbolic categories and the imaginary images. The real body, however, is not what remains when all clothes are taken off,85 but something impossible to grasp and process. For this reason, Lacan maintains that the real body is interdit 86: its knowledge is inaccessible or prohibited to us, and yet psychoanalysis needs to find a way of saying ­ something about it between words, between the lines (inter-dit). According to Adrian Johnston, ‘as Real, the body is an inaccessible limit to psychoanalytic experience’87 and therefore psychoanalytic theory cannot say much about it in terms of positive knowledge, although this epistemological inaccessibility does not prevent the real body from playing a significant role in shaping the subject. However, it is important not to conclude too quickly from this that the only body we should be concerned with is the socially constructed body. Rather, Lacan’s attempt to approach the real of the body takes place through two directions: (1) a specific conception of flesh, anatomy, and organs; and (2) his theory of the drives and jouissance. The notions of ‘flesh,’ ‘anatomy,’ and ‘organ(s)’ must be understood not as being previous to the symbolic and the imaginary but as being correlative to them. Lacan explains that the first effect of symbolic relations on the body is a devitalization or mortification that produces a disjunction between the organism, the image of the body, and the body translated

Lacan on Corporeality  153 into signifiers.88 The sign marks the flesh and the body becomes separate from it,89 introducing a fissure within the corporeal. Borrowing an image from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Lacan affirms that ‘in the body there is always, by virtue of this engagement in the signifying dialect, something that is separated off, something that is sacrificed, something inert, and this something is the pound of flesh.’90 In this sense, Lacan interprets the concept of anatomy from its etymology: as a cut or dissection of the body.91 Only with this meaning can Lacan accept Freud’s statement that anatomy is destiny92: the cut, the fragmentation, the partition of the body due to its manifold of constitutive relations determines its destiny. With regard to organs, Lacan (1) emphasizes their relational condition, insofar as they are part of an organism and so part of a system of relations, as well as being an instrument that establishes relations93; (2) focuses on orifices and rims that are open to an outside— eye, anus, breast, ear, mouth, and so on94; (3) presents them as always divided or split, never as a unity, such as in his distinction between the eye and the gaze95; and (4) links them to the drives. The drives (from Freud’s Trieb) are not animal instincts but the specific form that psychic energy takes in humans due to their linguistic condition. They are neither purely psychic nor merely somatic, but lie ‘on the frontier between the mental and the physical.’96 Drives are the echo in the body of the demand of the Other—understood as language but also as physical others— the consequence of the infant putting her needs into words and, with it, accessing the realm of desire. The Other marks the body channeling its drives and creating erogenous zones. In order to be able to think the real body, Lacan follows Freud in treating the drives as ‘mythical entities.’97 In particular, he creates the myth of an organ that he calls ‘lamella’98 to conceptualize the libido or energy that gives content to the drives. In his latter seminars, Lacan’s conception of the drives leads him to understand the (real) body as an enjoying substance (substance jouissante), as ‘that which enjoys itself.’99 Jouissance100 is the concept he creates to account for all those drives that do not submit to the pleasure principle; that is, the principle according to which every mental process primarily strives toward gaining pleasure and avoiding tension or distress.101 Jouissance, hence, is not pleasure, but a different type of enjoyment. While desires that can be articulated in images or signifiers are desires whose end is to obtain pleasure, some drives are not moved by the promise of satisfaction and their motive cannot be conceptualized in imaginary or symbolic terms. For these ineffable and unimaginable drives Lacan coins the concept of jouissance. This, however, is not a form of enjoyment previous to or independent of the imaginary and the symbolic but emerges from the inscription of the signifier on the body102 as a ‘surplus’103 that cannot be accounted for by words, images, or the pleasure principle. Words mark the flesh; images give it a

154  Emma Ingala cohesion, a unity, and an identity; but these operations are not exact operations and they always leave an unbound (real) remnant. The real is a liminal dimension that cannot be thought but only experienced as an irruption, with Lacan appealing to the notion of jouissance to name this experience and present it as first and foremost a bodily experience.

Conclusion While there is far more that could be said about Lacan’s account(s) of the body, the schematic that I have developed in the preceding sections demonstrates that, contrary to those interpretations that accuse him of reducing corporality to language, he understands that the body is a complex and multilayered phenomenon. Lacan rejects the notion of a natural body not because he adopts a social and linguistic constructivism that neglects matter, but because he articulates a far more radical position that maintains that there is no such thing as an uncontaminated pure nature, a materiality neatly distinguishable from the symbolic and sociality. According to Lacan, the body is never a natural given that language overwrites nor is it actually ever ‘a’ body; that is, a discrete— natural or cultural— thing or organism. Rather, the body is a field of relations composed of a complex mixture of interacting elements: language, but also material resources, biological and physiological processes, environmental conditions, social relations, imaginary ideals, and so on. For this reason, Lacan insists that it is not, strictly speaking, correct to speak of ‘the’ body; we must speak of bodies instead. Indeed, he highlights that we are a complex constellation of imaginary, symbolic, and real bodies. This is not easy to grasp conceptually, for it challenges not only our long-held tendency to think about the body in and through binary oppositions— such as the mind/body or the nature/culture dualisms— but also our tendency to think of the body in singular, monadic terms. However, by positing the body as a complex relational field, composed of and resulting from the interplay between imaginary, symbolic, and real aspects, Lacan affirms a conception of corporeality that asks us to confront our unexamined presuppositions and prejudices regarding the body, and which, by extension, also proposes a difficult, if innovative, account of materiality. In this sense, his original but often misunderstood ontology of the body continues to have much to contribute to contemporary debates and thinking.

Notes 1 Jacques Lacan, Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 109.

Lacan on Corporeality  155 2 Jacques Lacan, Seminar XXIII: The Sinthome, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. R. Price (Cambridge: Polity, 2016), p. 128. 3 Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, ‘Introduction,’ p. 4, in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edited by Dianan Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 1–43. 4 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Teratologies,’ p. 160, in Deleuze and Feminist Theory, edited by Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 156–172. 5 Myra J. Hird, ‘Feminist Matters: New Materialist Considerations of Sexual Difference,’ Feminist Theory, vol. 5, n. 2, 2004, pp. 223–232. 6 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 5. 7 On the linguistic turn, see Michael Losonsky, Linguistic Turns in Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Ken Hirschkop, Linguistic Turns, 1890–1950: Writing on Language as Social Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 8 See for example Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 132. 9 Levi R. Bryant, ‘The Ontic Principle: Outline of an Object- Oriented Ontology,’ p. 262, in The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, edited by Levi R. Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman (Melbourne: re.press, 2011), pp.  261–278. Before the advent of the new materialisms, Lacan had already been accused of neglecting matter in benefit of the symbolic order. See, for example, Jacques Derrida, Resistances of Psychoanalysis, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naass (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 60. 10 Iris van der Tuin and Rick Dolphijn, ‘The Transversality of New Materialism,’ Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 21, n. 2, 2010, pp. 153–171 (p. 158). 11 Jacques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,’ in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 75–81. 13 Within the new materialisms, there have been attempts at formulating a Neo-Lacanism wherein the Real is no longer dependent on the symbolic order but the domain of ‘the blunt materiality of all things’ (Caleb Cates, M. Lane Bruner, and Joseph T. Moss III, ‘Recuperating the Real: New Materialism, Object- Oriented Ontology, and Neo-Lacanian Ontical Cartography,’ Philosophy and Rhetoric, vol. 51, n. 2, 2018, pp. 151–175 [p. 153]). It is, however, very doubtful that Lacan would have accepted this notion of ‘blunt materiality of all things’ as a domain clearly separable and distinguishable from the many dimensions entangled in the constitution of reality. For a non-‘new materialist’ account of the material dimension of Lacan’s thinking that nevertheless argues that it is ‘new’ based on its originality, see Gavin Rae, ‘The “New” Materialisms of Judith Butler and Jacques Lacan,’ forthcoming in Philosophy Today. 14 Adrian Johnston, Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2009), p. 121.

156  Emma Ingala

18 Aaron Schuster, The Trouble with Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016), p. 44. 19 Johnston, Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations, p. 122. See also Adrian Johnston, Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), p. 270. ­



­ ­ ­ 24 Jacques Lacan, Seminar I: Freud’s Papers on Technique, edited by JacquesAlain Miller, trans. John Forrester (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p. 271.



Lacan on Corporeality  157 32 Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,’ p. 76.

37 Lacan, ‘Some Reflections on the Ego,’ p. 15. 38 Jacques Lacan, Seminar III: The Psychoses, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), p. 9. 43 ‘The first effect of the imago that appears in human beings is that of the subject’s alienation. It is in the other that the subject first identifies himself and even experiences himself’ (Lacan, ‘Presentation on Psychical Causality,’ p. 148). 46 Lacan, Seminar XXIII, p. 133. See also p. 129. 49 Lacan, ‘Some Reflections on the Ego,’ p. 15. 53 Jacques, ‘Radiophonie,’ p. 409, in Autres Écrits (Paris: Seuil, 2001), pp. 403–447.

158  Emma Ingala will quote from the session in which the material is found. Translations are my own. 58 Lacan, Seminar XX, p. 5. See also Soler, ‘The Body in the Teaching of Jacques Lacan,’ p. 7. 60 Lacan, Seminar XIV, 10 May 1967. 64 Jacques Lacan, ‘The Signification of the Phallus,’ pp. 579–580, in Écrits, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 575–584.





Lacan on Corporeality  159







100 Lacan, Seminar XX, pp. 1–13.

102 Lacan, Seminar XX, p. 24. See also Jacques Lacan, Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), p. 177. 103 Lacan, Seminar XVII, p. 107.

8

The Ethics and Politics of Temporality Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity Rosine Kelz

Poststructuralist thought has been intensely concerned with questions of temporality. Moreover, from Jacques Derrida’s critique of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger,1 Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Henri Bergson, 2 and Michel Foucault’s engagement with genealogy, 3 to Judith Butler’s discussion of Laplanchian psychoanalysis,4 the human experience of living in time has been understood as having ethical and political implications. This chapter concentrates on a number of the later writings of Butler, 5 where she discusses how the ways in which we relate to our (personal) past influence notions of moral agency. Although Butler’s critique of the timeless autonomous subject necessarily involves a tacit understanding of the importance of temporality, the theme of ‘living in time’ is seldom discussed explicitly in her work. Nevertheless, I will show that Butler is highly sensitive to the temporal aspects of human existence. Even though her work is often understood as part of the ‘linguistic turn,’6 her interest in psychoanalysis and gender directs attention to the importance of infancy and embodiment—and thus to the human as an organism with a finite life span. Moreover, as she asserts with reference to Foucault, the distinct temporalities of human life spans are embedded within longer socio-historical time spans.7 She explores these relationships not only by arguing that one’s ability to be recognizable as a subject depends on one’s relationship with social and linguistic structures whose temporality exceeds one’s own, but also by appealing to a Foucauldian understanding of embodiment, where the body is a material effect within a network of relationships of power and knowledge. In this chapter, then, I argue that notions of time and temporality are central to Butler’s understanding of the relational self. Moreover, from her discussion of relationality, she develops an understanding of the relationship between moral and political agency that allows for an interlacing of ‘personal’ and ‘historical’ pasts. Her discussion of moral thought involves an insightful critique of narrative memory, where she develops an understanding of a non-linear past. While Butler acknowledges that telling stories about oneself is an important part of forming the relationships that bind people to each other, she criticizes any understanding of selfhood that is based on narrativity—the ability to provide

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  161 a unified and exhaustive story of one’s own becoming. In her critique, an understanding of temporality emerges that portrays one’s relationship to one’s own past as non-linear, riddled with aporias, ruptures, and ellipses that defy unified narration. Temporality, then, is not like a straight road that lies behind us and moves predictably into the future. I argue, however, that Butler’s understanding of memory could benefit from a more thorough engagement with notions of embodied time experience. I therefore draw on phenomenological notions of temporality, to ‘thicken’ Butler’s account of the situated, relational self. One could argue that bringing in a phenomenological understanding of bodily experience goes against the poststructuralist insistence on the ethical importance of interruption, ellipses, and the unknowable. Nevertheless, I will argue that experiences of rupture, event, and irreducible otherness only make sense against a background, not of sameness, or unchanging presence, but temporal flow, a familiarity of lived time. Moving from the past to present and future, the chapter closes by juxtaposing Butler’s engagement with mourning as a trauma that binds the self to the past, to an understanding of trauma as a general interruption of the self, involved in experience as such. This broader notion of trauma, as the encounter with the other, allows for an understanding of the future as interrupting the present. However, as I point out in closing, in political thought the persistence of the past has to be thought together with an opening of the future.

The Moral Self or ‘Do I Need to Be Able to Account for My Past?’ In her book Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler re-approaches the question of the subject by asking what it means to be a moral agent. With Nietzsche, she argues that in Western thought, being a moral subject has been closely interwoven with the ability to account for one’s past. In the Nietzschean critique, the moral subject comes into existence because of the accusation of the other, who demands that the self account for herself by justifying her previous actions. As Butler writes: For Nietzsche, accountability follows only upon an accusation or, minimally, an allegation, one made by someone in a position to deal out punishment if causality can be established. And we become reflective upon ourselves, accordingly, through fear and terror. Indeed, we become morally accountable as a consequence of fear and terror.8 On this understanding, moral subjectivity is coextensive with the internalization of societal norms.9 For Butler, however, this account of the moral subject needs to be amended in certain respects. Turning to Foucault’s later writings on poiesis, or ethical self-making, Butler

162  Rosine Kelz reminds us that moral agency and social rule following are not coextensive in Western thought, where reflexivity is also linked to autonomy. Becoming a moral subject then involves the ability to develop a form of reflexivity, where internalized norms are made explicit and, at a distance from the self, can become the topic of critique.10 Critique involves a movement of reflective separation, where, instead of accounting for one’s personal past, the self places itself within a broader social history to assess its position within a social structure that has preceded its own existence. The moral practice of situating oneself in critical relation to social and moral norms, however, is a complex endeavor. It has to remain delimited by the ways in which these norms establish the self. Norms prescribe what can meaningfully be ‘said’ and ‘who’ can be heard by others, issues that Butler concentrates on in her earlier engagements with Foucault.11 In other words, if our distance from societal norms becomes too large, we risk becoming unintelligible as subjects—one falls, so to speak, out of historical and social time. ‘Full’ autonomy must remain illusory, as it would imply the ability to step out of societal bonds that bind us not only to the scene of our personal becoming but also to our specific place in space and time. The movement of critique, while necessary for moral subjectivity, is understood by Butler as at the same time enabled and delimited by the necessary relationality of human existence. It is also in terms of relationality that Butler formulates her second line of critique against Nietzsche. Accounting for oneself by providing a narrative of one’s past to an other, she argues, is not always connected to an ascription of guilt and the threat of punishment. Instead, relationality, manifested through the address of an other who inquires ‘Who are you?’, is the pre- condition for subjectivity or selfhood as such.12 While Butler thus seems to accept that ‘giving an account of oneself’ is an important part of establishing a self, she questions the occasion and status of such narrative practices. Not only are these narratives not necessarily forms of justification, or admittances of guilt, but also the notion that one could ever fully account for one’s past actions needs to remain an illusion. Through her critique of cohesive narration Butler further develops her understanding of a relational ethics—and it is here that her understanding of temporality comes clearest to the fore. To further explore the role of personal narrative in establishing a sense of self, as a unique, temporal existent, Butler turns to the work of Adriana Cavarero. In her book Relating Narratives,13 Cavarero draws on the work of Hannah Arendt to argue that a cohesive, unified story of oneself, which reveals ‘who’ one is to oneself and to others, is important for one’s sense of selfhood and for developing political agency. Often, however, a person is not able to formulate such a story by herself. One reason for this is obvious: people are unable to remember their own beginnings. They depend on the narration of others to know what

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  163 happened to them in their first, formative years. More importantly, however, Cavarero also argues that the experience of societal oppression makes it difficult to understand oneself as the active protagonist of one’s own life-story.14 Things happen, but one has problems to establish cohesion and causal relationships between these events, and the self thus seems to remain without a story of her own. For Cavarero, this is where friendship can take on an important role. Through a dyadic connection between and ‘I’ and a ‘You,’ through the eyes of an intimate other, the self can re-appropriate her ‘own’ narrative, in which her temporal unity and uniqueness becomes palpable.15 For Butler, Cavarero’s account provides some important insights. She agrees on the importance of relationality, of one’s close connections with singular others, in which one experiences their, and one’s own, uniqueness.16 She also seems to agree that telling stories of one’s personal past plays an important role in these relationships.17 However, while, for Cavarero, uniqueness is revealed in the specific story about the self that is told, and a unified story of one’s past provides a sense of agental selfhood, Butler seeks to disentangle the notion of singularity from its association with an ‘existential romanticism,’18 which would link narrative selfhood to claims of authenticity. For her, singularity must remain without content. In making this point, Butler seeks to stress the importance of relationality—of one’s necessary exposure to others—above any understanding of unified, cohesive selfhood: my singularity has some properties in common with yours and so is, to some extent, a substitutable term … singularity has no defining content other than the irreduciblitiy of exposure, of being this body exposed to a publicity that is variably and alternately intimate and anonymous.19 While Butler takes Cavarero’s point that recognizing the uniqueness of every human being is morally relevant, she forcefully argues against the idea that a sense of self needs to be (re-)established via a (re-)construction of a unified narrative. She thus develops a critique of narrativity, where she emphasizes that the ‘empirical’ truth of the self exceeds any form of cohesive narrative. 20 Butler agrees with Cavarero that we are unable to recall or access much that is pertinent to the stories of our own becoming, because we are born ‘prematurely,’ unable to remember formative primary relationships.21 For Butler, however, one’s relationships with others cannot lift this veil of unknowability. Instead, unknowability is a core condition of selfhood. As she argues with recourse to Laplanchian psychoanalysis, the formation of a sense of self in infancy involves a process of internalization—where the content of the internalized will remain largely inaccessible and inexpressible.22 For Laplanche, the dependent newborn has no choice but to form

164  Rosine Kelz an emotional bond with its primary caregiver—she has to love the (adult) other. Importantly, however, the adult/other is temporally and logically prior to the infant. The other, in the form of the overbearing and enigmatic adult, first addresses the infant. The unconscious is developed as a response to this address, an address that the infant cannot avoid, but which she finds inscrutable and overwhelming. As the infant is unable to understand what the other wants she represses these excess demands. This first act of repression, however, is a deed that precedes any doer. The infant does not yet ‘possess’ an ‘I’ that acts, as the ‘I’ is an effect of the act of repression. The ‘I’ that emerges as a consequence of this primary repression will always retain traces of the enigmatic foreignness the infant first encounters in the address of the other. The other, Butler writes, is always there—‘in the place of where the ego will be.’23 Therefore, life ‘is constituted through a fundamental interruption, is even interrupted prior to the possibility of any continuity.’24 Butler sums up Laplanche’s position in the following terms: ‘The other is, from the start too much for me, enigmatic, inscrutable. This “too-­much-­ness” must be handled and contained for something called an “I” to emerge in its separateness.’25 This argument provides a corrective to Butler’s earlier engagement with psychoanalytic theories of mourning and melancholia and Foucault’s notion of assujetissement, where she highlights that becoming a ‘self’ involves the internalization of societal norms. Instead of concentrating on the violence of the encounter with the Other, here the enigma of the Other, which not only temporally exceed one’s own existence, but is also never fully accessible to conscious knowledge, is highlighted.26 As Butler writes, in living my life as a recognizable being, I live a vector of temporalities, one of which has my death as its terminus, but another of which consists in the social and historical temporality of the norms by which my recognizability is established and maintained. These norms are, as it were, indifferent to me, to my life and my death. Because norms emerge, transform, and persist according to a temporality that is not the same as the temporality of my life, and b ­ ecause they also in some ways sustain my life in its intelligibility, the temporality of norms interrupts the time of my living. Paradoxically, it is this interruption, this disorientation of the perspective of my life, this instance of an indifference in sociality, that nevertheless sustains my living.27 This ‘interruption’ of the temporality of the self by the time of the social world could never be fully conveyed through cohesive self-­narration, but it is, at the same time, the condition of possibility for any self. 28 For Butler, then, the telling of narrative pasts that establish the self must always remain at least partially fictional or ‘fabulous’29 (which, as she reminds us, Thomas Keenan had already pointed out). 30 In telling a story about one’s past ‘I am always r­ ecuperating, ­reconstructing, and

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  165 I am left to fictionalize and fabulate origins that I cannot know. In the making of the story, I create myself in new form(s). The narrative “I” is a creation “that is superadded to the ‘I’ whose past life I seek to tell.”’31 However, just as Butler recognizes that practices of self-­narration bind us to others, and can thus also have ethical and political significance, she also warns against pathologizing people who are not willing or able to ‘tell’ themselves in narrative form.32 For her, this amounts to a form of ethical violence, which seeks to enforce an unfillable demand for identity. She argues that the demand of narrative coherence may foreclose an ethical resource—namely, the acceptance of the limits of knowability in oneself and others. To hold a person accountable for his or her life in narrative form may even be to require a falsification of that life in order to satisfy the criterion of a certain kind of ethics, one that tends to break with relationality.33 And Butler continues: if we require that someone be able to tell in story form the reasons why his or her life has taken the path it has, that is, to be a coherent autobiographer, we may be preferring the seamlessness of the story to something we might tentatively call the truth of the person.34 By demanding narrativity ‘we (violently) require that another do a certain violence to herself, and do it in front of us by offering a narrative ­account or issuing a confession.’35 When we, instead, ‘permit, sustain, and accommodate the interruption, a certain practice of nonviolence may follow.’36 This might enable ‘a truth’ to emerge ‘that, to a certain degree … might well become more clear in moments of interruption, stoppage, open-endedness—in enigmatic articulations that cannot easily be translated into narrative form.’37 Ethics, for Butler, does not so much involve the acceptance of moral responsibility for one’s own deeds, but an acceptance of a responsibility for others. This stance, as she writes in Precarious Life, can be helped along by the recognition of one’s own intimate entanglement with others: I find that my very formation implicates the other in me, that my own foreignness to myself is, paradoxically, the source of my ethical connection with others. I am not fully known to myself, because part of what I am is the enigmatic traces of others. In this sense, I cannot know myself perfectly or know my ‘difference’ from others in an irreducible way.38 Butler’s ethics, then, is based on the acknowledgment of relationality and finitude. Finitude here means not only the inability to arrive at a

166  Rosine Kelz position of ‘full’ knowledge. It also means that what one can ‘know’ is not always expressible or understandable to others—and that also in this sense, humans are singular and unique beings. Further, as mortal, vulnerable beings, humans, like all living things, depend for their survival on social and material networks with others. Accepting both irreducible difference and necessary dependency in oneself and others, for Butler, is the ground of moral subjectivity. The way Butler writes about the relationship between memory and ethical obligation connects her work on the moral self with approaches of other ‘poststructuralist’ writers, where poststructuralism turns more explicitly to the question of ethics. For example, according to Jacques Derrida, the work of remembering is a form of moral obligation.39 It is precisely because perfect recall is impossible that memory is an obligation, where it is equally important to take into account the gaps and disconnects in memory as well as its coherence and continuity. Even if what we forget is not in our conscious control, we still have obligations to remember certain things that tie us to others. Here, the notion of personal memory is brought into close contact with shared history as a form of socially created memory. Like one’s personal past, history forms us, but cannot be known in its entirety. Butler and Derrida both draw on Levinas to assert that the weight of past immerses us, even though—or because—it is never fully representable.40 The historical, like the personal, past is not an origin to which one could return, but its traces are an indelible part of any presence. If one connects Butler’s account of personal memory to a notion of history as a form of collective memory, her critique of linearity also resonates with Hannah Arendt’s critique of the modern concept of history. For Arendt the catastrophes of war and genocide in the first half of the twentieth century belied the modern notion of a linear progressive history. Instead they left us with ‘a fragmented past, which has lost its certainty of evaluation.’41 Against the early modern notion of history, which she believes stifles the possibility for freedom in the present and future by making them necessary outcomes of historical progress, Arendt proposes to return to Ancient Greek and Roman notions of history. These, she argues, retain causality and context, but find them within the ‘light provided by the event itself, illuminating a specific segment of human affairs.’42 Contrary to the modern view of history, there is no independent existence of causality and meaning ‘of which the event would be only the more or less accidental though adequate expression.’43 Such an understanding of history, Arendt maintains, loosens the grip that historical necessity holds over political actors, while retaining stories and events of the past as shared reference points and examples for political discourse. The political sphere thus becomes open to the event—where the inter-actions

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  167 of singular actors allow for something new and unplanned, for fleeting islands of freedom, to emerge. The Arendtian freedom of the political sphere might be too inattentive to the persisting influence of sociolinguistic structures for Butler’s taste. Nevertheless, the similarities between their notions of personal past and of history show that an understanding of the past as non-linear can be understood not as diminishing, but as enabling agency.

Memory, Embodiment, and Lived Time While Butler points out the ethical relevance of leaving narratives of the past open, the assertion that narrative memory is not reliable or even always available might still appear bothersome to those concerned with the identity and integrity of the self. How, they might ask, do human beings understand themselves as beings that persist over time, if temporal continuity is not established in narrative form? Even though Butler alludes to the possibility of deriving a sense of self by drawing on notions of non-narrative memory and the importance of embodiment, providing an answer to this question is not the primary concern of her work. Drawing on discussions of memory that highlight these aspects might therefore help to alleviate some of the anxieties of those who worry that the loss of cohesive narration would leave us with a broken, disjointed, and suffering self.44 Turning to embodied existence in time also further contributes to a distinctly relational understanding of the self, where one’s basic physical functions rely on the organism’s relation to its (social) environment. In this section, then, I tie discussions of memory in early twentieth- century phenomenology and recent phenomenological engagements with neuropsychology to Butler’s ideas, not to criticize her conception of selfhood, but to provide it with a somewhat ‘thicker’ understanding of the importance of embodiment. Instead of understanding memory as conscious, controlled, and, often, autobiographical, memory can also be described as a multilayered phenomenon, which integrates a variety of ways in which embodied beings relate to temporal processes. Marcel Proust called one of these layers mémoire involotaire: a forceful, overwhelming sensual, non-narrative memory that overwhelms one’s sense of linear time.45 A sensory experience, like, for example, the smell of cut grass on a hot summer day, may unexpectedly trigger a journey back in time: my seeing from back then repeats itself, indeed, my whole bodily condition is reawakened as in a déjà vu experience. While explicit memory normally makes the past only representatively present, that means, in actual distance from the present, the past and the present literally coincide in such situations.46

168  Rosine Kelz Here, the coincidence of past and present, and the importance of sensual experience, are highlighted, relating temporality to the body’s relationship to the external world. Implicit body memory is another way in which the past remains ‘present.’ However, remembering might no longer be the right term, as this form of relationship with the past is even further removed from a conscious act of recalling the past. For Henri Bergson, implicit body memory shows that the past literally ‘builds’ the present and continues exiting in the present in its entirety.47 This mémoire habitude, as Bergson called it, ‘re- enacts’ ‘implicitly or unconsciously in bodily-practical implementations’48 what one has learned in the past. While typing this sentence, my fingers ‘remember’ the position of each letter on the keyboard, without me having to consciously recall the typing lessons that I took many years ago. Through repetition, acts become detached from the biographical past and become part of the present sensorimotor or bodily disposition: the lesson once learned bears upon it no mark which betrays its origin and classes it in the past; it is part of my present, exactly like my habit of walking or of writing; it is lived and acted, rather than represented.49 As I understand it, this notion of mémoire habitude makes possible what writers such as Foucault, 50 Butler, and Iris Marion Young, 51 in their different ways, describe as the formation of the body via everyday practices that give expression to often implicit social rules. As Thomas Fuchs writes: Bodily learning consists mainly in the gradual forgetting of what has to have been told or shown explicitly in the beginning, namely to the extent that learned action becomes a part of implicit bodily memory—becomes part of our ‘flesh and blood.’ From repetition results automatization, a process that integrates single movements within a uniform temporal gestalt, which is incorporated into unreflective bodily enactments52 Unlike conscious memory that can be expressed in narrative form, this underlying layer of bodily experience cannot be organized sequentially. It is not ‘passing by, but rather constantly growing through new experiences.’53 Like memory triggered by sensory stimulation, body memory ‘is also able to produce “subterranean connections” … between distant points of time in biography.’54 It is because one is not aware of their origin, or because the origin is diffused through one’s past and present, that some ‘bodily habits’ that are established by social norms, like, for example, gendered forms of sitting, walking, or, in Young’s famous

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  169 example, throwing a ball, are hard to shake, even when the underlying norms themselves have been extensively criticized. Through non-narrative, sensual, and embodied aspects of memory a ‘thicker’ sense of self begins to emerge. We know that we persist over time, then, not because we can tell definite stories of our lives, but because of multiple practices and experiences that bind the present to the past: the sensual ‘flashbacks’ triggered when we hear a certain melody, the ability to ride a bike, shared cultural references, the sight of my face in the mirror—which differs from the one on an old photograph but is still recognizably my own. These sensual and bodily forms of memory anchor us within a broader social time. Everyone has their specific connections to places, foods, music which have a deeper significance for them, even when they cannot consciously recall, or explain in story form, when they came into our lives or why they were/are important. These social environments also ‘form’ our bodies in specific ways, where the ways we walk and the intonation of our voices make us parts of a specific social group, a code we send to others, even if we are not conscious of it, and which, while by no means immutable, can be hard to shake. 55

The Continuous Presence, Trauma, and the Possibility of the Future Butler’s work on memory and (psychoanalytic) self-formation is a prime example of the central position that notions of interruption, rupture, and ‘non-presence’ play within poststructuralist thought. As previously outlined, for Butler, the relationship between self and other is one in which the ‘Other,’ understood as another person, as social norms, or as language, always interrupts the self—that is, the Same. Put in temporal terms, in Butler’s work, it is the past that interrupts the present—and this interruption carries an ethical demand. The demand of the ‘Other’ is the demand of relationality, and a demand for the acceptance of nonmastery, vulnerability, and unknowability. However, for the experience of interruption, of discontinuity, to appear as experience, I would argue, one also needs to have an experience of continuity. For the self to understand its past as interrupted and as interrupting the present, a sense of a temporally continuous, albeit changing, self also needs to be possible. While it is one of the core tenets of a certain poststructuralism that figures like ‘interruption,’ ‘trauma,’ ‘event,’ or ‘difference,’ come before sameness and continuity, this does not mean that poststructuralists can fully do away with these notions. Indeed, I will argue that the idea of temporal flow might avoid some of the more problematic aspects inherent in the notion of presence that some poststructuralist thinkers criticize. My guiding contention is that moving from past and memory to a ‘flowing’ present adds to the notion of continuity against which the

170  Rosine Kelz trauma of interruption takes place. Even though the present both involves and is interrupted by the past, it nonetheless also allows for a sense of the stability of ongoing temporal flow—it is only in the moment that we can sense the background condition of living in time. Moreover, while Butler’s work emphasizes the traumatic persistence of the past, and the trauma of loss and mourning (which in the present binds the self to the past), she also acknowledges that, in order to persist, the self needs to be oriented toward a possible future.56 For the remainder of this chapter, therefore, I will first turn to examine a notion of the flowing present, as a precursor to considering the importance of loss and trauma—which interrupts the flow of personal time—and its ethical and political implications. I close by briefly turning to the notion that not only the past, but also the future, can be thought as interrupting the present, which leads us back to an Arendtian understanding of the political sphere. In the previous section, I discussed connections between the experience of ‘self’ and an awareness of the persisting past. Memory, in the form of conscious recollection, but also in the form of sensory feeling and embodied ‘learning,’ however, is only one aspect of temporality. One’s most basic sense of self does not rely on a longer ‘historical’ account of existing in time, but on an ongoing background sense of living within temporal flows. This underlying flowing of time only occasionally comes to the foreground of conscious awareness, for example, when one is deeply involved in a task, or in meditation. What a person experiences then is not so much a feeling of timelessness than a sense of immediate temporal movement, which precedes any conscious engagement with the past or the future. Famously, Husserl seeks to describe the phenomenon of the ‘moving’ present via the example of listening to music. At the moment of hearing a sound, one still has in mind the preceding tone (retention in Husserl’s vocabulary) and ‘anticipates’ the next tone (pretention)—only in this way can people hear a melody as melody instead of a series of unrelated noises.57 It would not make sense to say that one remembers the last and anticipates the next tone—because the time frame is too short for such conscious phenomena to occur. Instead, the possibility of hearing a melody as a continuity shows, for Husserl, that time is not made up of a series of clearly distinct instances—of separate ‘nows’—but is always an experience in flow. For Husserl, this gives ‘width’ and directionality to the present. This largely unconscious ‘feeling’ of temporality is closely related to an awareness of embodiment. This bodily being-toward-the-world is the awareness of being a living body that exists within a living environment.58 As Fuchs asserts, ‘the primary locus of self-awareness is the body itself.’59 One thus becomes conscious of being oneself, via a basic feeling of being alive that ‘emerges deep inside the organism, only to

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  171 then direct itself, on higher levels of integration, towards the environment.’60 Together, awareness of time, body, and environment make up an implicit or pre-reflective self-awareness.61 A basic sense of self then derives from one’s awareness of being a living organism within an environment, where both organism and environment exist in time. Time awareness, moreover, depends on a complex interlacing of cognitive and other bodily functions. These are not reducible to sensory experiences of the external world (i.e., hearing music as temporally extended phenomenon). Our ability to experience external flow instead relies on its interrelation with internal processes, of which only some are open to conscious experience (the chemical signals pulsing through our brains at distinct intervals, the circadian rhythms of cellular functions, cycles of cellular division, the menstrual cycle, cycles of sleep and wakefulness, breath, recurring needs like hunger and thirst). As Fuchs writes, ‘the micro-temporality of experience’62 is bound to ‘periodical bodily processes’63 that ‘play a formative, if not a constitutive, role.’64 Repetitive movements of the body, like breath and heartbeat, produce a constant underlying rhythmization of the stream of consciousness, even if this is for the most part not consciously recognized. On a neurobiological level, recent research suggests that the central integration of such rhythmic bodily signals forms the basis of our sense of the duration of time. This integration is bound to several brain regions such as the insular and the inferiorparietal cortex, the middle temporal gyrus, and the operculum … Thus, the interoceptive experience of one’s own body not only provides a prereflective self-awareness, but also underlies the diachronic continuity of the embodied self.65 For an implicit awareness of the self as an ongoing existent in time, then, it is important that processes of different frequency and duration are interlaced: from the imperceptible processes of cellular communication, to the short rhythms of heartbeat, over the rhythmic recurrence of thirst or hunger, sleep and wakefulness, to the perception of changing seasons and finally the experience of oneself and others growing up and growing old. The present is never a clearly delineated time span but depends on the context in which it is invoked. Together with the various forms of memory discussed above these ongoing processes provide a thickly layered sense of passing time— experience comes not only from the intertwining of processes of different temporal extension, but also from the different forms of temporal flow they mark, where some processes appear as strictly unidirectional (i.e., the passing from puberty into adulthood) and thus well presentable in narrative form, while others highlight cyclical, repetitive aspects of time. This layered time is not only ‘embodied’; it also situates the living

172  Rosine Kelz organism within a social world. As Fuchs points out, contemporaneousness is an important aspect of human ‘being in time,’66 from the more explicit way in which people understand themselves as part of a specific generation to the organismic level, where each living being continuously seeks to synchronize its own cyclic processes with ‘cosmic rhythms.’67 Moreover, a ‘basic contemporality,’68 Fuchs asserts in similar terms to Butler, is essential to existence: ‘Infants move forward into a promising future because they feel contemporal with caring adults who structure the world to be an inviting place.’69 It is only then that a future orientation, what Butler with reference to Spinoza calls conatus as the desire to persist, can be maintained.70 The importance of temporal flow and synchronicity comes to the fore, Fuchs argues, only when we experience it as disturbed. While as a psychiatrist Fuchs concentrates on mental illness, and describes both schizophrenia and depression as ‘paradigmatic disturbances in subjective and intersubjective temporality,’71 he also writes about mourning, as an example for a disturbance of basic temporality most of us experience at some point in our lives. For Fuchs, mourning and grief can be conceptualized in terms of a loss of contemporality: ‘Grief reflects a break which has been experienced in one’s synchronicity with others— the mourner cannot break away from the shared past, whereas the social time keeps going on.’72 Denise Riley movingly writes about the sense of temporal unsettling she experienced after the death of her son. She describes her experience of mourning as ‘living in suddenly arrested time: that acute sensation of being cut off from any temporal flow.’ 73 Riley writes about the ‘curious sense of being pulled right outside of time, as if beached in a clear light.’74 Her description of temporality is particularly fitting, as she writes how ‘normal’ time, before the loss of her son, had ‘flowed’ but ‘had never been much like a clear stream, or a fluid held in a glass container, or any neutral liquid.’75 Normal time, in her words, is ‘no simple medium,’76 ‘nothing finely transcendent,’77 but ‘thick’—‘another aspect of “the flesh of the world”; active, changeable, and constitutive of … experience.’78 She speculates whether her prolonged state of ‘timelessness’ after the death of her adult child arose because her experience of being a mother had involved a sense of time as multiplied or layered, where her own lived time contained within itself the sense of the lived time of her child.79 With the death of her son, the fabric and direction of her own temporal existence unraveled. Her ‘timelessness’ made writing impossible, because writing requires a ‘feeling of futurity’80: ‘Narrating would imply at least a hint of “and then” and “after that.”’81 In her writings, Butler returns repeatedly to the experience of loss and mourning. For her, mourning is an occasion in which one becomes aware of how much the sense of self depends on one’s connections with others. The process of mourning, she writes, includes accepting ‘that by

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  173 the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly forever. Perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation.’82 And she continues, [w]hen we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost ‘you’ only to discover that ‘I’ have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost ‘in’ you, that for which I have no ready vocabulary, is a relationality, that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as the tie by which those terms are differentiated and related.83 For Butler, loss and mourning take on ethical and quasi-political significance. The trauma of loss, in particular when death follows from politically motivated violence, is an occasion from which we can fully experience our exposure to others and recognize our non-sovereignty or the impossibility of mastery. As Butler explains, if loss can be an occasion where the self becomes aware of its relationality, dependence, and thus vulnerability, grief can furnish ‘a sense of political community of a complex order.’84 Mourning thus has implications for theorizing fundamental dependency and ethical responsibility. If my fate is not originally or finally separable from yours, then the ‘we’ is traversed by a relationality that we cannot easily argue against … we would be denying something fundamental about the social conditions of our very formation.85 The experience of loss reinforces the insight that one is, and has to remain, unknowable to oneself, because selfhood emerges in one’s relationships to others: ‘if I do not always know what it is in another person that I have lost, it may be that this sphere of dispossession is precisely the one that exposes my unknowingness, the unconscious imprint of my primary sociality.’86 Mourning for Butler is not only a disruption of contemporality; it is also an occasion where one experiences the vulnerability that follows from relational existence. The experience of mourning, then, holds the possibility of ethical learning, where instead of shoring up an always somewhat ‘false’ or construed sense of sovereignty one accepts shared precariousness. From such an ethics of shared precariousness new political bonds, based on an understanding of the political distribution of precarity, can be formed.87 Mourning, as Butler is well aware, follows a previous interruption, another kind of ‘event,’ or even ‘trauma.’ If we accept that the self does not first emerge as an autonomous being and then become interrupted by the other, but depends for its very existence on the priority of the other, then mourning is the reminder of a primary relationality. We might ask

174  Rosine Kelz whether, instead of mourning (an interruption that binds the self to its past), concentrating on love, as a prior disruptive event, could ‘open’ the subject to the future. This argument hinges on the notion that, as Derrida puts it, any event, understood as experience in the proper sense, is ‘traumatic.’88 The notion of trauma is here broadened to describe any kind of ‘interruption’ of the subject, and of the familiar, any exposure to the other. As Derrida writes, ‘[b]y reason of the unforseeability, this irreducible and inappropriable exteriority for the subject of experience, every event as such is traumatic. Even an event experienced as a “happy” one … An event is traumatic or it does not happen.’89 In these terms, then, the ‘arrival’ of love is also ‘traumatic,’ because, as Steven Gormley explains, it tends to arrest ‘tendencies toward emotional self-­ protection  … to draw ourselves in and close ourselves off from being affected’90 by an other. ‘Love disarms our emotional defenses; it makes us vulnerable to the other.’91 As Iris Murdoch puts it, with the arrival of love ‘the centre of significance is suddenly ripped out of the self’92 and one ‘is shocked into an awareness of an entirely separate reality.’93 Importantly, when moving from the loss of the other to the arrival of the other, the temporal direction of analysis, and of experience, changes. While surely never free from traces of the past, the trauma of love breaks into the present as the possibility of something new, of the unexpected and unplanned. With the love of the other, as we have seen above, the self, as a movement directed toward an unknown future, is made possible. Importantly, here ‘future’ is thought of as what Derrida calls the ‘to come’ (l’avenir), that which cannot be known in advance, which arrives without planning or preparation.94 This is distinguished from le future as the plannable, foreseeable future.95 The latter, Derrida seems to suggest with Levinas, is not future proper but rather the continuation of the present. It is with the coming of the ‘real’ future that we are confronted with the new or the other, and thus with a situation of ethical decision, which turns out to be undecidable. In a number of contemporary writings on the political, this understanding of the future as a new beginning has played an important role.96 However, while this Arendtian understanding of the political, where the new arises from interaction, allows for the possibility of revolutionary change, as I have already noted above, it seems to unduly downplay the persistence of the past through the present into the future. Moving forward, it might therefore be important to develop an understanding of temporal flow that allows for novelty and the interruption of the event, while at the same time acknowledging that time, as a layered phenomenon, involves processes of diverging speed and duration, where some might last while others end or come into being. From this perspective, the past itself might be reconsidered as a source of novelty for the political sphere. As Elizabeth Grosz writes in her discussion of Bergson, the past can be understood as holding the virtual possibilities

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  175 for a variety of futures. From our position in the actual present as the only possibility realized, we can then relate to the past as a reservoir of missed opportunities: This is indeed the primary political relevance of the past: it is that which can be more or less endlessly revived, dynamized, revivified precisely because the present is unable to actualize all that is virtual in it. The past is not only the past of this present, but the past of every present, including that which the future will deliver. It is the inexhaustible condition not just of an affirmation of the present but also of its criticism and transformation. Politics is nothing but the attempt to reactivate that potential, or virtual, of the past so that a divergence or differentiation from the present is possible. Bergson is one of the few theorists to affirm the continual dynamism … of the past, its endless capacity for reviving and regenerating itself in an unknown and unpredictable future.97 Here, the emphasis is not on remembering the breaks, interruptions, or aporia of the past and acknowledging their lasting influence on the present, as in Butler’s writing, but on unearthing the missed opportunities and different pathways that ‘the’ past still holds as virtualities. By reviving what was possible in the past, but did not come to pass, we can open the future, without dismissing the constraining influence of past and present. The social negotiation of the past, then, is not only a negotiation about which past events should be highlighted in shared narrations; it is also a negotiation about what other worlds would have been, and still could be, possible.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to draw together poststructuralist and phenomenological perspectives on the self, and on the importance of temporal experience. While they are all concerned with questions of otherness, sameness, experience, and embodiment, they tend to set different emphases, which allow for a fruitful exchange. While I do not have the space to discuss these differences in the detail they deserve, I believe that Butler’s work, with her emphasis on the importance of a quasiontological account of infancy and embodiment, is well positioned to engage in conversation with phenomenological accounts that not only stress affective experience but also draw on (neuro-)biology to provide a more nuanced understanding of embodied existence. With her emphasis on otherness, relationality, and interruption, Butler also provides a good corrective to phenomenological notions of the self, which, because they start from the organism or the experiencing self, often have difficulty focusing on the importance of difference and relationality, a point that

176  Rosine Kelz is of foremost importance for ethical and political thought. Finally, the question of the relation between past, present, and future in Butler’s own writing merits a more thorough investigation, which needs to take into account both her earlier works and her most recent texts of performative politics.98

Notes 1 For a discussion of Derrida’s reading of Husserl see for example Neal DeRoo, Futurity in Phenomenology. Promise and Method in Husserl, Levinas, and Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), pp. 99–114. On his early, formative engagement with Heidegger see for example Jacques Derrida, Heidegger: The Question of Being & History, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 2 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1991). 3 Michel Foucault, ‘Society Must Be Defended’: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, edited by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003). 4 Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), pp. 53–55, 7–77. 5 I will concentrate on Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself and Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004). 6 The linguistic turn is a label for a diverse group of philosophical positions that developed in the mid-twentieth century. They share a skepticism toward the notion that language is a transparent medium for representing reality. Moreover, many thinkers of the linguistic turn understood forms of linguistic structure and the creation of meaning in language as closely related to, or analogous with, the formation of societal norms. 7 See for example Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 83–100. 8 Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 11. 9 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977). 10 Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 17. 11 Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, pp. 83–95. For a discussion of this, see Rosine Kelz, The Non- Sovereign Self, Responsibility and Otherness. Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and Stanley Cavell on Moral Philosophy and Political Agency (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 65–69. Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, pp. 31, 53. 12 13 Adriana Cavarero, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, trans. Paul A. Kottman (New York: Routledge, 2000). 14 Ibid, p. 57. 15 Ibid., pp. 55–65, 90–93. 16 Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, pp. 30–35. 17 Ibid., pp. 30–35. 18 Ibid., p. 34. 19 Ibid. 20 Butler’s critique of the narrative self shares some features with Galen Strawson’s criticism of what he calls a trend towards ‘Narrativity,’ as both take issue with notions of cohesiveness, unity, and exhaustiveness, which some

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  177

21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28

narrative theories of the self insist upon (Compare Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 51, and Galen Strawson, ‘Against Narrativity,’ Ratio, vol. 17. n. 4, 2004, pp. 428–452). Strawson argues against what he calls the ‘psychological Narrativity’ thesis, which assumes that human beings ‘typically see or live or experience their lives as a narrative or story of some sort’ (ibid., p. 428). This view, he argues, is often coupled with what he calls the ‘ethical Narrativity thesis,’ which ‘states that experiencing or conceiving one’s life as a narrative is a good thing; a richly Narrative outlook is essential to a well-lived life, to true or full personhood’ (ibid., p. 428). In different terms to Butler, Strawson highlights the variability of human experiences of living in time. For him, there are some people who indeed, to varying degrees, experience their life in terms of an ongoing narrative. These people usually experience their existence in time as ‘Diachronic.’ As a ‘Diachronic,’ Strawson writes, ‘one naturally figures oneself, considered as a self, as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there is the (further) future’ (ibid., p. 430). There are, however, also people who experience selfhood in what Strawson calls ‘Episodic’ terms (ibid.). These people do not experience or consider their selfhood as ongoing, stretching into the further past and future. An episodic person, Strawson explains ‘has little or no sense that the self that one is was there is the (further) past and will be there is the future, although one is perfectly well aware that one has long–term continuity considered as a whole human being’ (ibid.). Importantly, ‘Episodics are likely to have no particular tendency to see their life in Narrative terms’ (ibid.). While ‘Episodic and Diachronic styles of temporal being are radically opposed’ for Strawson, ‘they are not absolute or exceptionless’ (ibid.). Instead people might experience both forms of temporality, and thus also the point of personal narrative to various degrees at different times. Strawson’s point, then, is that, empirically speaking, narrative memory is not the only way in which human beings can be aware of their selfhood and their persistence in time. Similarly, Dan Zahavi (‘A Distinction in Need of Refinement,’ in The Embodied Self, edited by Thomas Fuchs, Heribert C. Sattel, and Peter Henningsen [Stuttgard: Schattauer, 2010], pp. 3–11) distinguishes between two concepts of selfhood—the extended and the minimal self. The former is similar to what Strawson understands as Narrativity thesis of the self, while the latter builds on phenomenological accounts of basic self and time awareness, which I discuss in more detail below. Zahavi argues that minimal and narrative notions of selfhood are not mutually exclusive but describe different aspects or moments of ‘being’ a self. This seems to be the same for Butler who takes a position that accepts ‘partial’ narrativity as an important aspect of being a self but denies the need, or even the possibility of unified, cohesive, narration. Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 20. Ibid., pp. 70–73. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid. Ibid., p. 54. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, pp. 68–69, 80, 83. For a critique of the violence and inequality implied in Butler’s discussion of the relationship between self and other, see Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 113, 182–183. Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 34. Not only, however, is one’s past inscrutable to oneself, at least to some extent. The structure of language and the scene of address in which one is

178  Rosine Kelz

29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46

compelled to tell one’s life story also preclude full, cohesive narration. To be understood, one has to adhere to linguistic rules, which curtail the expression of some aspects of our own becoming, even if one has a ‘pre-linguistic’ awareness or feeling of them—language can never fully ‘represent’ reality. Moreover, what the narrative will convey depends on what is heard and understood by the one we address with our narrative, and there is always at least some difference between what one person seeks to convey and what the other understands. As Butler writes, ‘the narrative structure of my account is superseded by … the structure of address in which it takes place’ (Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 39). Ibid., p. 37. Importantly, as Jacques Derrida notes, the fabulous or fictional should not be equated with the lie: ‘The fabulous and the phantasmatic have a feature in common: strito sensu, in the classical and prevalent sense of these terms, they do not pertain to either the true or the false, the veracious or the mendacious. They are related, rather, to an irreducible species of the simulacrum or even of simulation, in the penumbral light of a virtuality that is neither being nor nothingness, nor even an order of the possible that an ontology or a mimetology could account for or subdue with reason. No more than myths, but neither are they errors or deceptions, false witnesses or perjuries’ (Without Alibi, edited by and trans. Peggy Kamuf [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002], p. 28). Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 39. Ibid., pp. 63–64. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), p. 46. Derrida, Without Alibi, p. 163. See Jack Reynolds, Chronopathologies: Time and Politics in Deleuze, Derrida, Analytic Philosophy, and Phenomenology (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), p. 26. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt, 1978), p. 212. Hannah Arendt, ‘The Concept of History,’ p. 64, in Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 2006), pp. 41–90. Ibid., p. 64. For an example of this line of argumentation in psychoanalysis, see Roy Schafer, A New Language for Psychoanalysis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), pp.  22–56. This is also what Strawson describes as the Ethical narrativity thesis, which he sees as the ‘dominant view’ today, and finds in writers like Marya Schechtman and Charles Taylor (Strawson, ‘Against Narrativity,’ pp. 428, 435, 436). I would argue that Kelly Oliver (see Witnessing) and Adriana Cavarero (see Relating Narratives) also propose a form of Ethical narrativity. See, for example, Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1: Swann’s Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D. J. Enright (New York: Random House, 1992), pp. 60–63. Thomas Fuchs, ‘The Cyclical Time of the Body and Its Relation to Linear Time,’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 25, n. 7–8, 2018, pp. 47–65 (p. 55).

Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity  179 47 Henry Bergson, Matière et mémoire. Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988). See also Fuchs, ‘The Cyclical Time of the Body and Its Relation to Linear Time,’ p. 54. 48 Fuchs, ‘The Cyclical Time of the Body and Its Relation to Linear Time,’ p. 54. 49 Bergson quoted in ibid. 50 See, for example, Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 51 Iris Marion Young, ‘Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality,’ Human Studies, vol. 3, n. 2, 1980, pp. 137–156. 52 Fuchs, ‘The Cyclical Time of the Body and Its Relation to Linear Time,’ p. 54. 53 Ibid., p. 56. 54 Ibid. 55 It is also in this vein that I understand Butler’s earlier work on performativity and gender, which, paradoxically, has been criticized for being too voluntaristic and as overstating the rigidity of social norms. See, for example, Moya Lloyd, Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). 56 See Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, pp. 145–147; Butler, Precarious Life, p. 30; Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, pp.  71, 84–88; and Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), pp. 19–20. 57 Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893–1917), Husserlinana X (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 202. 58 Thomas Fuchs, Ecology of the Brain: The Phenomenology and Biology of the Embodied Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. vi. 59 Ibid. Ibid. 60 61 Ibid. 62 Fuchs, ‘The Cyclical Time of the Body and Its Relation to Linear Time,’ p. 50. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., p. 49. 67 Ibid. 68 Thomas Fuchs, ‘Temporality and Psychopathology,’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 12, n. 1, 2013, pp. 75–104 (p. 82). 69 Ibid., p. 82. 70 Judith Butler, ‘Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,’ p. 31, in Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 17–39. 71 Fuchs, ‘Temporality and Psychopathology,’ p. 84. 72 Ibid., p. 83. 73 Denise Riley, Time Lived, without Its Flow (London: Capsule Editions, 2012), p. 7. 74 Ibid., p. 12. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., p. 44. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Butler, Precarious Life, p. 21. 83 Ibid., p. 22.

180  Rosine Kelz 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

97 98

Ibid. Ibid. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, p. 28. In Butler’s understanding, the act of mourning can itself, under certain conditions, take on political significance. When death follows from state violence, as in the wars with which the United States and its allies reacted to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, or when death is entangled with societal neglect and indifference, an unwillingness to acknowledge the dead and make room for public mourning is a continuation of violence, where the very humanity of the victims and the legitimacy of their relationships to their loved ones are denied. See, for example, Butler, Precarious Life, p. 40. Derrida, Without Alibi, p. 136. Ibid., p. 159. Steven Gomley, ‘Rearticulating the Concept of Experience, Rethinking the Demands of Deconstruction,’ Research in Phenomenology, vol. 42, 2012, pp. 374–407 (p. 387). Ibid., p. 387. Iris Murdoch, Fire and Sun (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), p. 27. Ibid. David Couzens Hoy, The Time of Our Lives. A Critical History of Temporality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), p. 142. Ibid. For a discussion of this, see Oliver Marchart, ‘Time for a New Beginning. Arendt, Benjamin, and the Messianic Conception of Political Temporality,’ Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History, vol. 10, 2006, pp. 136–147. Elizabeth Grosz, The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 178. It would, for example, be instructive to further explore the roles of performativity and embodiment in Butler’s early writings on gender and her recent engagement with politics. See, for example, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), and Judith Butler, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

Part IV

Political Apertures

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

9

Re-thinking ­ Poststructuralism with Deleuze and Luhmann Autopoiesis, Immanence, Politics Hannah Richter

This chapter will make a case for the enfolding1 of Gilles Deleuze’s poststructuralist philosophy and Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systems theory to generate a theoretical perspective that captures the functioning of institutional-democratic politics in capitalist societies. The argument outlined might, for the reader familiar with both thinkers, contain not only one but indeed two points of surprise: first, the proposed link between Luhmann and Deleuze, thinkers who on first appearance seem to offer two distinct theoretical and political perspectives. Critical theorists have attacked Luhmann’s sterile, highly formalistic account of a society comprising functionally differentiated systems violently for undermining the possibility for critique and resistance. For example, in their coauthored volume Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie: Was leistet die Systemtheorie?, 2 Jürgen Habermas accuses Luhmann of functional determinism.3 For Habermas, Luhmann theoretically excludes the possibility that communication can inspire deliberative emancipation and transformation beyond the path-dependent reproduction of the constructions of its own making.4 Like Habermas, many Frankfurt School thinkers and students reject Luhmann’s theory because it ‘need not and does not sell itself to praxis via legitimation nor does it reflect on it,’5 providing, they feel, no ground to challenge existing societal conditions.6 Friends and colleagues of Luhmann recall empty classrooms for his seminars in the politicized early 1970s, recurring attacks—verbal, but also physical, with flour and eggs— as well as enduring gossip about Luhmann’s conservative, reactionary political stance.7 Luhmann, for his part, often refers mockingly to critical theory, which he views as being theoretically simplistic, a position exemplified by his comments on the ‘confident provinciality of the Frankfurt School.’8 Luhmann advocates the abandonment of the notion of critique in favor of a theory of second-order observation that explains the actual processes and operations that guide social life.9 At a first glance, this could not be further removed from Deleuze, who postulates the benefits of being ‘a little alcoholic, a little crazy’10 and

184  Hannah Richter whose philosophy aims at a pure critique of the images and habits of thought that hold in place the orthodoxies of philosophy and societal common sense in order to open up lines of flight toward a different way of thinking.11 The second potentially surprising aspect of my argument relates to my claim that linking the theories of Deleuze and Luhmann can reveal something about the functioning of democratic politics in the context of capitalist societies. This claim might appear contentious because of Luhmann’s rejection of a critical theory that aims to unpack the workings and effects of capitalism. In Luhmann’s systems theory, the economy is only one in a horizontal array of several social systems, which is selfreproductively closed off from the rest of society and thus does not hold a dominant position in structuring the relations of and spaces of agency in society as a whole.12 Furthermore, although Deleuze’s later writings with Félix Guattari clearly show his interest in critically analyzing capitalism as an axiomatic of social organization produced and reproduced in flows of desire,13 they tend to do so with a view to retracing the socio-historical evolution of axiomatic capitalism, as evidenced most clearly in their theory of State 14 formation in Anti-Oedipus. ­ Politics is not then attributed with the status of an independent sphere, as evidenced by the fact that the book does not feature a theory of politics, its actors, processes, or functionality.15 Thus, even when Deleuze is at his most explicitly political,16 the political quality of his work appears to lie in his exploration of where and how philosophy can function creatively to overcome the axiomatic reproduction of an ideational or societal status quo rather than in an analysis of how the practice of institutional-democratic politics functions under the conditions of axiomatic capitalism he draws out. I argue that both moments of surprise are ultimately less rooted in the works of Deleuze and Luhmann than in the diametrically opposed way that they have been read, used, and canonized. In the following, I will thus move beyond the canonical figures ‘Deleuze’ and ‘Luhmann’ to sketch out an exploratory enfolding of their theories. I suggest that this theoretical encounter between Deleuze and Luhmann opens up an innovative trajectory for a poststructuralist political theory that seeks to provide a critical understanding for the functioning of contemporary politics in practice. To carve out this innovative trajectory, it is the first aim of this chapter to demonstrate that the works of Deleuze and Luhmann overlap in central arguments and concepts, which are centered on the shared nodal point of ungrounded self-production, or autopoiesis, in sense. Both Luhmann and Deleuze theorize sense as the medium in which actuality, as it can be perceived, is made. This worldmaking in sense is, for both thinkers, grounded in nothing but previously made sense itself. It will be shown that Luhmann’s theory of systemic autopoiesis in sense

Deleuze and Luhmann  185 offers a relational understanding of creative genesis as ungrounded and radically immanent, which resists locating or specifying the constitutive force that charges it. Through a link to Deleuze’s analogous theory of continuously self-productive sense, I will focus on how creative genesis in sense always enfolds materiality and textuality but never essentializes or onto-genetically prioritizes either. Rather than taking a strong, antifoundational stance, Deleuze’s and Luhmann’s post-foundational theories17 of sense re-direct the analytical gaze away from the search for a grounding creative force toward the contingent but historically grown structures, processes, and procedures that have come to guide worldmaking in sense in practice. I argue that, in both Deleuze and Luhmann, this theory of selfgrounding in sense has political implications. Processes of sense-making determine not only the location of a collectively binding power, of politics, but even more fundamentally whether and under which conditions such a political center has a place in the sense relations of a society at all. Against this background, it is the second aim of this chapter to use Deleuze and Luhmann in conjunction to explore how, under contemporary social conditions, this reproduction of politics in its established form and place takes place on the level of sense. Luhmann conceptualizes contemporary politics as functioning self-reproductively by providing order in sense for society as a whole.18 Politics continuously actualizes particular lines of sense which ground the expression of meaning and momentarily keep at bay the complex multiplicity of alternatives which would make the former impossible. On the one hand, Luhmann’s autopoietic politics of sense-making can thus, I argue, provide a solution to the political puzzle of Deleuze’s ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’:19 what happens to democratic institutions under the conditions of radically decentered and deinstitutionalized power? While politics here loses any strong claim to collectively binding control, Luhmann allows us to think of political institutions as persisting through a different raison d’être— as a politics of providing orientation in sense. For Deleuze’s theory, the enfolding with Luhmann’s thought thus highlights how its political quality does not have to exhaust itself in the genealogical questioning of orthodox images of thought and the philosophical search for creative openings toward the new. Instead, it can be used to understand the practical workings of contemporary politics. On the other hand, I will argue that there is a remarkable parallel between the socio-historical development toward functionally differentiated societies described by Luhmann and the evolution of social machines toward axiomatic capitalism in Deleuze and Guattari. This parallel makes it possible to identify capitalist societies as conditioning a self-reproductive politics of sense-making. I argue that drawing out the capitalist underpinnings of Luhmann’s functionally differentiated

186  Hannah Richter society politicizes his radical insistence on the contingency of all social systemic actuality. 20 Beyond the impasse created by his relationship to the Frankfurt School, this allows us to appreciate the critical potential of Luhmann’s theory, which looks for the contingency (improbability) of what evolution led us to regard as normal and not surprising—be it … the existence of a complex apparatus that guarantees the possibility of refusing to learn from experience (the law), the commitment of society in general to grant to individuals the capricious use of resources (private property) or many other examples. All this is far from obvious, was once different and could have evolved in a different way. What is familiar to us could not be there or be different, depending on social conditions that can themselves be observed. Critical observation, which looks for the conditions that make these improbabilities normal … From this perspective, sociological systems theory could be seen somehow provocatively as the most accomplished form of the critical attitude— a reflexive form of critique.21

Relational Autopoiesis as Post-foundational Onto-genesis In this section, I argue that Luhmann and Deleuze develop analogous conceptions of sense as the self-grounding, synthetic medium in which the world, as it can be perceived, is produced. In the following, both theories of sense will be enfolded to develop a poststructuralist theory of immanent creative genesis. I argue that this approach to creative genesis in sense is innovative insofar as it explicitly involves both epistemic expression and materialization without giving primacy or priority to either. It further provides the basis for me to argue that this continuous self-production in sense is the societal function performed by contemporary politics in the second part of the chapter. In the following, therefore, I sketch out Luhmann’s conceptualization of autopoiesis as ungrounded, creative genesis in sense and link it to Deleuze’s analogous understanding of self-grounding creativity in sense. With this, relational self-production will be revealed to be open to materiality without ontologically essentializing or prioritizing the former, while Luhmann’s thought makes the radically post-foundational turn to relational immanence accessible. Luhmann encounters the concept of autopoiesis in biological and neurophysiological scholarship in the early 1980s, particularly in the works of the biological systems theorists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Exemplified by their early essay ‘What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain,’22 the constructivist neuroscience of Maturana and Varela identifies sensation as the result of a complex, internal process of secondorder production that happens in the sensory organ. Neuronal networks

Deleuze and Luhmann  187 do not react to external stimuli as they originate in the environment— they react first and foremost to themselves, according to rules that are internal to and generated by the autopoietic neuronal system. In contrast to an allopoietic, externally produced, and static machine, an autopoietic system ‘continuously generates and specifies its own organization through its operation as a system of production of its own components, and does this in an endless turnover of its components.’23 Luhmann adopts the concept of autopoiesis to radicalize the assumptions about relational self-production toward self-given purposes that structure his earlier organizational studies. 24 For Luhmann, selfreference ‘designates the unity that an element, a process, or a system is for itself. “For itself” means independent of the cut of observation [sic] by others.’25 The concept of autopoiesis completes the self-reference of relational systems. It decouples their self-production from any external stimuli or productive input. As a consequence, Luhmann’s systems produce not only the structures of which they consist, but importantly also the events that they continuously encounter as new and subsequently order into existing relations, which are reproduced in the process. 26 In contrast to other systems theoretic approaches in information theory, cybernetics, or Talcott Parson’s sociology, which focus on the processing of input by an ontologically given systemic entity, Luhmann’s systems are nothing but sets of continuously self-differentiating relations in sense. 27 For social and psychic systems, autopoiesis takes place in sense. Here, sense is the medium of ungrounded, fundamentally open but path-dependent ­ self-production. ­ In Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Luhmann describes autopoietic sense relations in the following way— providing none other than Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense as a reference: Sense exists only as sense of the operations using it, and hence only at the moment in which it is determined by operations, neither beforehand nor afterward. Sense is accordingly a product of the operations that use sense and not, for instance, a quality of the world attributable to a creation, a foundation, an origin. 28 In order to function self-referentially, Luhmann’s sense systems must constantly ‘be able to use the difference between system and environment within themselves, for orientation and as a principle for creating information.’29 Autopoietic reproduction relies on the event which the system encounters as new information to constantly re-introduce the difference between inside and outside, system and environment. Importantly, systems must thus be informationally open to be able to operate as functionally closed. They rely on information ascribed to an unknown outside, which is, however, co-produced with the systemic inside by its autopoietic relations, to continue to exist. In Luhmann’s systems theory,

188  Hannah Richter the ‘(subsequently classical) distinction between “closed” and “open” systems is replaced by the question of how self-referential closure can create openness.’30 In Luhmann, autopoiesis is a process of continuous distinction or differentiation between a relational inside and an outside that both do not pre-exist this process. Luhmann uses George Spencer Brown’s protomathematical calculus theory to define systems as nothing but continuously self-producing inside/outside distinctions in exactly this sense. In his short book Laws of Form, George Spencer Brown characterizes the differential of the calculus with two mathematical laws: (1) the law of calling, according to which the infinite repetition of a distinction produces the same value as the first distinction; and (2) the law of crossing, which states that a first distinction can always be altered by a second distinction.31 Through Spencer Brown, Luhmann identifies a system as relationally differentiated from a complex outside that is co-produced in this process of differentiation: The system continuously refers to itself by distinguishing itself from its environment. This is done … by drawing and maintaining boundaries … The distinction between system and environment is, therefore, constitutive for whatever functions as an element in a system.32 The ontic constituents located on either side of this grounding distinction—inside or outside the system— are the contingent products of a differentiation which, following Spencer Brown’s second law, can always be otherwise. Luhmann thus replaces pre-existing systems with a creative dynamic of differentiation that takes place against the chaotic complexity of an undifferentiated but always co-produced outside.33 Luhmann’s sense systems can only reproduce themselves autopoietically if they constantly rupture themselves, constantly creating new information that allows systemic differentiation to begin anew. Against this background, I argue that the ontological purchase of Luhmann’s theory for poststructuralist thought is that it provides a coherent understanding for how ungrounded, self-grounding ontogenesis takes place in sense and through events that are immanent to, and not a creative force on the outside of, the order of sense they disrupt, in a way that is firstly resolutely post-foundational and secondly genuinely open. Luhmann’s argument does not amount to a strong, definitive refutation of foundational primacy. On the contrary, he suggests that the existence of a foundational origin is irrelevant for his operative conception of difference because unity can only be observed ex post facto. Luhmann’s system is a differential unity always already put into operation. It has no access to the instance of its emergence— an original differentiation—because every distinction produced within the system takes place on the ground of a previous, contingent differentiation.

Deleuze and Luhmann  189 Actual processes of differential production are shaped by the pathdependencies of previous differentiations whose ground is never accessible in any supposed original constituents, but only as secondary to productive differentiation. Creative production must take place from a position that is always already differentially produced, contingent, and unobservable. The immanent position of observation always remains a ‘blind spot’ to the self-differentiating system. It can be observed from the outside, by other systems, but only as immanent to their respectively differentiated orders.34 Luhmann’s systems theory conceptualizes creative genesis as taking place in self-productive relations that have no foundation or ‘deep’ ontological existence beyond the contingent, always changeable ground of previously produced systemic relations. Because events are produced by the systemic inside, they only function ‘evental’ and unfold their creative power if they are made sense of as new information within the sense relations that constitute social and psychic entities. The evental creativity that drives processes of genesis cannot be retraced to an original source, be it material or epistemic; it can only ever be attributed to such a source on the always-already produced ground of sense. But Luhmann’s theory still makes it possible to think openness and genuine creativity within this autopoietic order of sense maintained through self-produced, contingently attributed events. Luhmann’s account of systems holds that they must constantly bring forth their own disruptive events to allow the constitutive distinction between its inside relations and an outside of unprocessable complexity to be drawn anew. At this point, I would like to suggest a productive link with Deleuze’s analogous theory of the creative sense-event, as developed in The Logic of Sense. Deleuze’s philosophy allows us to understand how a creative event conditioned by sense must always be open to material and epistemic singularities but without attributing creative primacy to either realm. In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze turns to Stoic philosophy to reverse Platonism and show that it is not the ‘cause’ of the idea but instead the creative mixture of the ‘effects’ or simulacra of language and bodies that generates sense. For Deleuze, sense is a creative medium sui generis because it emerges in the in-between space between idea, proposition, and object. The productivity of sense does not derive from and thus cannot be located in an idea, proposition, or object because it is precisely the productive excess that characterizes their interrelation. On the contrary, sense ‘ought to have something unconditioned’35 and functions creatively precisely as ‘the fourth dimension of the proposition … [S]ense, the expressed of the proposition is an incorporeal, complex, and irreducible entity, at the surface of things, a pure event which inheres or subsists in the proposition.’36 For Deleuze, the genesis of sense takes place between the series of signs and the series of matter. But importantly, he describes the allocation of

190  Hannah Richter the two series from which singularities are drawn as ‘unimportant.’37 For him, we could just as well think of series ‘between events and states of affairs … and inside the proposition between expressions and denotations.’38 Deleuze thus replaces the relationship between signifier and signified, where the philosophy of the linguistic turn situated the production of the world as we know it, with a duality immanent to sense and unfolding between the series of signs, or already expressed sense, and the series of yet to be made sense, defined here as material complexity.39 As in Luhmann, the allocation of creative singularities to either realm is secondary to the moment of relational synthesis in sense, and thus contingent. ‘It is no longer a question of Dionysus down below, or of Apollo up above, but of Hercules of the surface, in his dual battle against both depth and height: reorientation of the entire thought and a new geography.’40 Sense is always and equally both ‘a plane of thought and a plane of nature.’41 The surface of sense and its creative expressions escape grounding in both ontological depth and epistemological height. Deleuze’s sense emerges from always-already mixed series of bodies and states of affairs; the immanent relationality of sense is always-already present. While both signs and matter are constitutive for creative genesis in sense, this genesis always remains thoroughly ungrounded but immanently self-grounding. This means that the creative potentiality of sense cannot be retraced to a constitutive textuality or materiality located outside of the immanent surface of sense. Deleuze’s sense is generated by the quasi-causes ­ of signs, matter and bodies, which are enfolded and therefore synthesized in the expressive relation of sense.42 As Deleuze explains, How can we maintain both that sense produces even the states of affairs in which it is embodied, and that it is itself produced by these states of affairs or the actions and passions of bodies (an immaculate conception)? … When we say that bodies and their mixtures produce sense, it is not by virtue of an individuation which would presuppose it. Individuation in bodies, the measure in their mixtures, the play of persons and concepts in their variations— this entire order presupposes sense and the pre-individual and impersonal neutral field within which it unfolds.43 As a consequence, the creative event that Deleuze conceptualizes in The Logic of Sense is always a twofold sense-event. It includes a singularity that stipulates the production of something new, and a relation of past events that enfold this singularity in sense so that it can be recognized as evental, and thus become an event. ‘[T]he event is subject to a double causality, referring on one hand to mixtures of bodies which are its cause and, on the other, to other events which are its quasi- cause.’44

Deleuze and Luhmann  191 More explicitly than in Luhmann, Deleuze’s creative event is conceptualized in a way that is open to material-bodily creativity on the side of the evental singularity encountered by a self-reproductive relationality of sense. Beyond the strictly or at least latently epistemological genesis of the linguistic turn, here, ‘bodies and their mixtures produce sense.’45 However, at the same time, Deleuze’s theory of the creative event folds neatly into Luhmann’s ontological framework outlined above. Here, evental creativity is located in always-already mixed sense and its ‘splendid sterility of the expressed,’46 which includes bodies and matter but also ‘concepts in their variation.’47 Any attribution to materiality or textuality is secondary to the enfolding of a singularity in sense, which conditions its recognition as creative, and is thus a contingent product of the order of sense where this enfolding takes place.

Reading Luhmann with Deleuze and Guattari: The Postmortem Politics of Autopoietic Capitalism So far, I have shown that both Deleuze and Luhmann conceptualize creative genesis in a way that is open to material and textual creativity but is thoroughly immanent and therefore does not necessitate the ontological assumption and exploration of constitutive primacy. In the second part of this chapter, I will argue that the theoretical encounter between Luhmann and Deleuze has specific purchase for poststructuralist perspectives on contemporary politics. In particular, I will show that Luhmann’s political sociology can resolve the puzzle that emerges from Deleuze’s ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’48; namely, how the institutions of democratic politics reproduce themselves under the conditions of socially dispersed power. Furthermore, in contrast to those who, like Habermas, take Luhmann to be a conservative apologist of the status quo,49 reading Luhmann’s history of functionally differentiated societies through Deleuze and Guattari’s analogous account of social evolution makes it possible to appreciate the critical potential of Luhmann’s theory. The short postscript is arguably Deleuze’s most explicitly political piece of writing. It begins where Deleuze maintains that Foucault’s theory, which retraces a shift from the sovereign exercise of force on the bodies of citizens to the molding of subjects in institutional realms of confinement, ends.50 According to Deleuze, Foucault observes a gradual loss of controlling authority on the side of the political sovereign, insofar as he retraces the end of sovereign power grounded in the violent threat to take life, and the subsequent dispersion of power to a relational apparatus of disciplinary institutions held in motion by the hinge of the governed subject. Deleuze, however, argues that the disciplinary institutions so ‘brilliantly analyzed’51 by Foucault have lost the monopoly to

192  Hannah Richter reproductively exercise control, leading to a ‘crisis’52 to which all institutional ‘environments of enclosure’53 are subject: [E]veryone knows that these institutions are finished, whatever the length of their expiration periods. It’s only a matter of administering their last rites and of keeping people employed until the installation of the new forces knocking at the door. These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing the disciplinary societies.54 Deleuze argues that institutions have lost their importance as centers of governmental control because contemporary societies are characterized by a mode of governance that is dislocated and unconfined. This control is technologically mediated and exercised in the form of an automated, algorithmic modulation rather than an institutionally situated subjectivation.55 Societies of control modulate the ‘dividuals’56 that populate them, and are mere sets of data without the binding center of a subjectivity, through codes and passwords. Deleuze does not mention the institutions of democratic politics as such here. However, the institutional crisis he diagnoses must affect the institutions of democratic politics, whose foundational claim is the capacity to effectively regulate and steer social distribution and evolution in response to topical issues, longterm developments, and the will of the electorate.57 The question that arises is how this supposed crisis can be reconciled with the fact that, despite some signs of post-democratic fatigue, voter manipulation, and anti-democratic political attitudes, the institutional political systems of Western democracies are remarkably intact. If contemporary political institutions retain only little effective steering power in the societies they govern, if they are ‘finished’ in a political sense, as Deleuze argues, how and on which basis do they function and persist as political authorities? If this is the question which Deleuze’s post-script poses for poststructuralist political thought, I argue that Luhmann’s political sociology, developed most fully in the so far untranslated Die Politik der Gesellschaft, 58 contains a possible answer. Luhmann situates his political theory in the historical evolution of society toward functional differentiation. While primitive societies were horizontally segmented into a number of distinct realms, such as families or clans, Luhmann argues that increasing social complexity reduces the binding power of kinship relations and causes societies to be reorganized. Now, territorial segmentation along a center-periphery division allows for cultural, economic, and political advancements, such as political empires increasing in size, international trade relations, professionalized production, and a developed moral-theological system of ideas.59 These socio-evolutionary achievements produce differences in status and wealth, which in time condition a shift to hierarchically stratified

Deleuze and Luhmann  193 societies.60 This ‘stratification, on a social level, does not happen without a parallel political centralism,’61 instituting a political sovereign as the political, financial, cultural, and theological center of pre-modern societies. Following Luhmann, a further, drastic increase in the complexity of social relations from culture to science and economy at the brink of modernity then forces different social realms to functionally close themselves off from the rest of society. They form distinct, autopoietically closed social systems whose operativity is focused on a specific social function, such as art, legal regulation, or economic production.62 As a consequence, the political sovereign is no longer able to effectively control all social realms, which operate autologically according to their own logics of sense. In complex, modern societies, politics is now only one out of several social systems. While this makes sovereign control impossible, the need for a new kind of governance arises in these societies, which require a mechanism to cope with the permanently high social complexity which had allowed for rapid social evolution, but at the expense of permanent ontological insecurity. Faced with a multiplicity of alternative trajectories, the autopoietically reproductive continuation of sense has become insecure—for society as a whole as well as for the social and psychic sense systems inhabiting it. This connective insecurity is no longer concealed by the socially cohesive meta-ontologies of religion and morality, which have lost their binding force within modern, postEnlightenment Western societies. However, it now provides politics with a new raison d’être. The specific function through which modern politics reproduces itself is the decisional management of sense complexity.63 The exact phrasing used by Luhmann is important here: it is the functional responsibility of politics to ‘hold ready the capacity for collectively 64 binding decision-making.’ ­ In a society of autopoietically closed systems, which it cannot steer or even understand in their own operativity, politics performs its function for society not by producing effectively guiding decisions but by holding ready the capacity for producing social orientation. For Luhmann, the political system functions by continuously demonstrating the possibility of a political decision between alternatives. Recalling Deleuze’s puzzle of what happens to political institutions in societies of control, Luhmann’s response is that they reproduce themselves by providing orientation in sense—by decisionally producing distinct alternatives through which the course of social evolution can be understood. This requires the continuous recurrence of something to decide on. But it is not enough that the opportunity for decision-making returns—it must be accompanied by complexityreduction, which transforms chaotic social complexity into distinct lines of sense that form decisional alternatives.65 Autopoietic politics is a politics of sense-making—it reproduces itself not by resolving political issues but by producing them as part of a collectively binding framework of sense that defines society in its

194  Hannah Richter characteristics, developments, challenges, and possible resolutions. Politics is the functionally differentiated realm through which society observes itself and its own future.66 This ‘delegation of self-description’67 to the political realm replaces the need for demonstrating political functionality through the exercise of power as force. For Luhmann, the functional closure of a politics productive of orientation in sense, which is sustained in this way, is closely connected to the notion of democracy. Religious and ethical meta-ontologies are replaced by a rule-focused rationalization of governance immanent to the political itself, which remoralizes political goals and actions with a focus on the representation of the democratic will as the true function of politics. As Luhmann explains, ‘What we call “democracy” and link back to the institution of political actions is thus nothing else but the completion of the functional differentiation of politics. The system grounds itself on decisions which it has instituted itself.’68 However, this universalization of the self-produced political decision in sense intensifies the dilemma of autopoietic politics: it persists only insofar as it decides on an ever-increasing range of issues that it cannot effectively decide on, because it cannot comprehend the logics of sense these issues are emergent from. Contemporary politics thus reproduces itself through a systematic overburdening, which endangers exactly those connective decisions through which politics functionally persists. In this sense, institutionally developed democracy ‘is simply a self-reflexive condition of politics itself, in which the political system maximises its own ability to address its own constantly escalating complexity.’69 As a consequence, the problems waiting to be solved are unsolvable problems, because they reflect the functional-structural differentiation of the social system [as a whole] into the political system, but at the same time are based on the fact that the political system is only a subsystem in this functional differentiation of society. The … state secures its autopoiesis through the re-definition of unsolvable problems. There is certainly always something to do.70 Luhmann’s theory thus provides poststructuralist thought with a perspective to understand how and on what basis the institutions of contemporary democratic politics reproduce themselves under complex social conditions where power is socially dispersed. Therefore, in contrast to the prevalent view that Luhmann has no project of political critique, I argue that it is possible to make use of a theoretical analogy in the ways in which Luhmann and Deleuze and Guattari describe socio-historical evolution to read Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation as a critique of capitalism. In Anti-Oedipus, ­ Deleuze and Guattari employ the concept of the abstract machine to

Deleuze and Luhmann  195 describe the mode of functional relationality dominant in a particular society. Here, social evolution begins with the savage territorial machine as the most primitive form of social organization. Like Luhmann’s segmented society, the savage territorial machine operates through immediately productive, clear, and distinct relations between states, families, producers, and consumers or speakers and audience.71 Gradual centralization, through which the different territorial entities become enveloped by the despotic machine of the State, transforms this flat, territorial social organization into the hierarchical order of the despotic machine. The despotic machine of the sovereign State exercises control through a totalizing overcoding that subsumes the formerly distinct modes of social production under the logic of politics. Analogous to the pre- or early modern sovereign described by Luhmann, the despotic machine exercises control through the inscription of its own authority in all social relations, producing the socius it governs as a hierarchically stratified political unity. But in the course of further social evolution, this political overcoding of all social relations becomes, just like in Luhmann, impossible. The coded flows break open and give way to a state of free-flowing complexity that can no longer be contained by a territory or state but instead oscillates freely, self-referentially, and self-reproductively. In Deleuze and Guattari, this is the mode of social production and relational interconnection determined by the capitalist machine: [T]he capitalist machine begins when capital ceases to be a capital of alliance to become a filiative capital. Capital becomes filiative when money begets money, or value a surplus value … It is solely under these conditions that capital becomes the full body, the new socius or the quasi cause that appropriates all the productive forces.72 Deleuze and Guattari’s relationally totalized, self-reproductive capitalist machine clearly echoes the evolution of money from a measurement of or carrier for value to capital as a social relation in Marx. In the Grundrisse, Marx sketches out the evolution of money in its three social functions to maintain, transfer, or aggregate value, which remain materially confined as long as value always reflects a certain amount of labor-time necessary to produce the commodity it is linked to. This changes, following Marx, when the commodity is fully replaced by its price and, together with its use-value, disappears from the process of circulation. Money becomes capital, directed toward self-valorization.73 Capital relations, no longer bound to the material conditions of production or exchange that fix the value circulated, are now characterized by nothing but their own capacity for self-production— they reproduce capital as a relationality that is able to constantly integrate new singularities in its internal logic.74 As Deleuze and Guattari point out, the capitalist

196  Hannah Richter machine is ‘always ready to widen its own limits so as to add a new axiom to a previously saturated system.’75 Although Deleuze develops the political implications of this logic of capitalism to a lesser extent, his comments are nevertheless analogous to the state of contemporary politics conceptualized by Luhmann. Deleuze and Guattari show that the productive primacy of decoded capital flows is catastrophic for the despotic machine of sovereign politics: in a society whose flows the sovereign does not control, it can no longer reproduce itself through overcoding. Importantly, however, the rise of the capitalist machine is not lethal for the State: Decoded flows strike the despotic State with latency; they submerge the tyrant, but they also cause him to return in unexpected forms … It is now up to the State to recode as best it can, by means of regular or exceptional operations, the product of the decoded flows.76 Under the conditions of capitalism, the functioning of the political sovereign becomes retroactive— a ‘post-mortem ­ despotism.’77 This postmortem despotism is effectively powerless because it cannot steer the flows rendered unbound and complex by capital as a mode of social relationality.78 However, rather than becoming obsolete, post-mortem politics continues to persist within the parameters of a symbiotic relationship to the capitalist machine. Flows of capital reproduce themselves through deterritorialization— they decode, render unbound, induce complexity. But in order to do so, the capitalist machine constantly requires territories to decode. At this juncture, the retroactive political coding of the despotic machine provides capital with the necessary territorial stability; put in Luhmann’s terms, a temporary reduction of complexity, which can then be continuously deterritorialized. Under the conditions of machinic capitalism, the functional responsibility of politics now consists in reterritorializing, so as to prevent the decoded flow from breaking loose at all the edges of the social axiomatic. One sometimes has the impression that the flows of capital would willingly dispatch themselves to the moon if the capitalist State were not there to bring them back to earth.79 While unable to control and steer the flows of capital, the political coding of Deleuze and Guattari’s post-mortem politics territorializes sense to provide momentary orientation, which allows the deterritorialization of the capitalist machine to continue. The parallel inherent in Luhmann’s and Deleuze and Guattari’s theories of socio-historical evolution regarding increasing social complexity, which shifts the operativity of politics toward the self-reproductive

Deleuze and Luhmann  197 provision of orientation in sense, is striking. Against this background, I want to suggest that the issue of capitalism can be identified as the ‘elephant in the room’ of Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation, belying his mocking attitude toward Marxist critique and its ‘muscly metaphysics of materialism.’80 Specifically, Marx’s materialist history not only clearly inspires the three abstract machines of social relationality in Deleuze and Guattari but also shows significant kinship with Luhmann’s history of social systems. To be clear, according to Luhmann, what characterizes a particular historical stage of society and provokes evolution is not the state of material production, or the social dialectic it produces, but the way in which particular systems differentiate themselves in the medium of sense. However, material inequalities and exchange play a vital role in conditioning these changes. In Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Luhmann laments the ‘ambiguous state of research’81 on the role of economic advancements, such as extended trade relations and the accumulation of prestige goods by particular families, for instituting vertical inequalities as the dominant mode of social organization. However, he considers significant their role in rendering the reciprocal relations of segmented societies one-directional and therefore hierarchical.82 For Luhmann, the subsequent transition from hierarchical stratification to functional differentiation implies a shift from the primacy of the political to a primacy of the economic83 with regard to the mode of social organization.84 As Otto Bode points out, the functional logic of the autopoietic system is that of the liberal homo economicus. Both are machines that use particular codes to ensure that their relations operate toward whatever constitutes functional gain—for Luhmann’s system, this gain is autopoietic persistence.85 While Luhmann never explicitly classifies the logic of functional differentiation as economic, the idea of a functional ‘division of labor’86 between specialized social subsystems for the purpose of increased efficiency obviously parallels the theoretical roots of capitalism as developed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo.87

Conclusion This chapter has developed an exploratory theoretical enfolding of Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systems theory and Gilles Deleuze’s critical philosophy to carve out a poststructuralist political theory that is both resolutely post-foundational and practical-politically applicable. In the first part of the chapter, I developed a theory of sense as the ungrounded, immanently self-grounding relational medium that produces the forms of the world in sense. I showed that both Deleuze’s and Luhmann’s theories are centered on processual difference as constitutive of actuality. While differential constitution takes place against the background of a complex multiplicity, this multiplicity cannot be understood as the primary, active force driving differential onto-genesis because, for

198  Hannah Richter both Deleuze and Luhmann, it is co- constituted with and immanent to a relationality of sense. At this juncture, I showed that Luhmann’s theory of relational autopoiesis conceptualizes this processual genesis as thoroughly self-productive and therefore ungrounded. The evental ruptures, which a relational system perceives as external complexity in need of differential ordering, were revealed to be the immanent products of the sense relations that need the continuous return of events in order to continue. Against this background, Deleuze’s thought was used to highlight how the creative relationality of sense always incorporates both material and epistemic singularities. However, this creativity cannot be retraced to a constitutive materiality or a productive textual iterativity because it originates in sense relations that are always-already mixed with and exceed both realms. Sense can be made only on the ground of already made, already synthetic sense— every ontic or epistemic attribution is immanent to its relational productivity and thus contingent. In the second part of the chapter, I showed how a DeleuzianLuhmannian theoretical perspective can enhance our understanding of the functioning of contemporary politics. In particular, I argued that Luhmann’s theory of a functionally differentiated politics, which, under complex social conditions it cannot effectively steer, reproduces itself by providing orientation in sense, offers an answer to the question of what happens to political institutions in Deleuze’s societies of control. I also made use of the parallelism in Luhmann’s and Deleuze and Guattari’s accounts of social evolution to identify the logic of capital as underpinning Luhmann’s society of functionally differentiated systems. Having opened up Luhmann’s theory to a critical reading in this sense, the question remained as to whether there exists a ‘line of flight’ out of Luhmann’s functionally differentiated social systems. On the surface, both Marx’s revolutionary rupture and Deleuze and Guattari’s molecular change seem impossible—for Luhmann, functional differentiation is ‘irreversible’88 and without alternative.89 However, as outlined, the selfreproduction of all systems, including the political system, is only possible insofar as they continuously expose themselves to evental ruptures and the consecutive return of threatening complexity. While Luhmann locates any change that can result from such ruptures within the logic of functional differentiation, the extent of immanent change is at the same time, importantly, without limit. The content of systemic relations, and thus of the social world they condition, is completely contingent: ‘A social system is not, like an organism, fixed in its type. A donkey cannot become a snake, even if such a development was necessary for survival.’90 While the world of functionally differentiated systems and their autopoietic reproduction is the only world that Luhmann’s systems theory can see, his thought also reveals that ‘[t]his world is not the best of all

Deleuze and Luhmann  199 possible worlds, up to the basic elements of its socio- cultural and natural constitution it is always problematic, possible in a different form.’91 A poststructuralist theory that unpacks contemporary politics as functioning self-reproductively by providing orientation in sense can thus draw from Luhmann’s detailed sociological accounts to analyze the precise workings of this self-reproduction without subscribing to a social determinism that implies surrendering all prospects of fundamental change.

Notes



5 Friedrich W. Sixel, ‘The Problem of Sense: Habermas v. Luhmann,’ p. 194, in On Critical Theory, edited by John O’Neill (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 184–204. ­



8 Niklas Luhmann, quoted in Klaus Dammann, ‘Wohlwollende Interpretationen,’ p. 27, in Gibt es eigentlich den Berliner Zoo noch?’ Erinnerungen an Niklas Luhmann, edited by Theodor M. Bardmann and Dirk Baecker (Konstanz: UVK, 1999), pp. 24–28. My translation.

200  Hannah Richter 12 Niklas Luhmann, Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988). All translations from this text are my own.

20 Niklas Luhmann, Observations on Modernity, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 93–102. 25 Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz Jr. with Dirk Baeker (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 33). 26 Niklas Luhmann, Essays on Self- reference (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 2–35. 27 Hans-Georg ­ Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. ix. 28 Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998), p. 44. All translations from this text are my own. 29 Luhmann, Essays on Self- reference, p. 9. 30 Ibid. ­ 34 Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, pp. 186–188; Luhmann, Social Systems, p. 109; Moeller, Radical Luhmann, pp. 80–87. 36 Ibid.

Deleuze and Luhmann  201

40 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 132. 46 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 32.

54 Ibid., pp. 4–5.



202  Hannah Richter

64 Luhmann, Die Politik der Gesellschaft, p. 84. 65 Ibid., pp. 62–70. 66 Niklas Luhmann, Macht, 4th edition (Konstanz: UVK, 2012), pp. 168–169. All translations from this text are my own.

­

­ ­



Deleuze and Luhmann  203 84 Barben, Theorietechnik und Politik bei Niklas Luhmann, p. 128; Uwe Schimank, ‘Die funktional differenzierte kapitalistische Gesellschaft als Organisationsgesellschaft— eine theoretische Skizze’ (2010): http://www. fernunihagen.de/imperia/md/content/soziologie/sozii/die_funktional_ differenzierte_kapitalistische_gesellschaft_als_organisationsgesellschaft_ eine_theoretische_skizze.pdf (Accessed 10 October 2019).

87 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: Methuen, 1961); David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971). 88 Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, p. 707. 90 Niklas Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklärung 1. Aufsätze zur Theorie sozialer Systeme, 8th edition (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009), p. 18. All translations from this text are my own. 91 Otto-Peter ­ Obermeier, Zweck, Funktion, System: Kritisch konstruktive Untersuchung zu Niklas Luhmanns Theoriekonzeptionen (Freiburg/München: K. Alber, 1988), p. 155. My translation.

10 Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt S. K. Keltner

Revolt, from the Middle French révolter (first recorded use in 1502), describing an act of uprising against an established authority, has its origin in the classical Latin revolvere (fifth century), meaning to roll back, aside, or to the start, to turn again, to turn back, to return. The sense of turning or turning back is heard in the revolutions of celestial objects moving in a circular path or in the cyclical recurrence of a time of year. The classical term also referred to the rolling back or unrolling of a scroll in order to read it or to going back over something in thought or speech—revolt as the turning of reflection, the turning over, returning to, revolving around of thought and speech. It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that the term assumed its modern meaning: revolt as rising against an authority (e.g., religious, political, social). This turning against is what we hear today, but before the new meaning settled into rebellion, the sixteenth century witnessed another related sense of the term. To revolt also came to mean a drawing back or refraining from (a duty or custom, for example) or the withdrawal of allegiance, an assent from (1540). This second modern sense of revolt as departure, of turning from or away, can also be heard in the visceral sense of revolt as disgust, which the term also came to signal at this time (1548). Though now obsolete, the sense of turning from or away is still contained in the sense of rising against, insofar as there is no movement against without first turning from or away. Rebellion first presupposes the turning of refusal or rejection. Kristeva’s concept of revolt engages all of these meanings. Her first sustained attention to revolt in Revolution in Poetic Language1 (published in 1974) focused primarily on the modern political concept of revolt; more specifically and following Marx’s historical materialism, the role of modern art in social and historical change. Following Revolution in Poetic Language, however, Kristeva turns her attention to what she calls intimate revolt or the psychic life of meaning, drawing primarily on psychoanalysis, art, and the personal trials of individuals to examine the possibilities of revolt as a turning away or retreat from what she calls, following Guy Debord, the society of the spectacle. Revolt, for Kristeva, is a turning back or return to interiority, affectivity, and the past in a

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  205 quest for meaning. Thus, against the revolutionary’s emphasis on the future, Kristeva insists on a grappling with the past. Critics may here fault Kristeva for attending to the individual at the expense of the social or political. The criticism, however, fails to acknowledge the sense in which Kristeva’s analyses eschew dichotomies between the individual and the social or the personal and the political. In fact, Kristeva’s emphasis on the permeable borders of subjectivity and meaning ties the stakes of social and political formations to the personal meaning of everyday life and allows her to measure the benefits and limits that accrue to subjects in particular social-symbolic systems— thus revaluing the significance of the human person in a social and political context intent on its erasure. Kristeva’s interest lies in how subjects negotiate affect at the border of meaning in a culture that exploits a largescale crisis of meaning. In this, she seeks ‘tiny revolts,’2 —the revolt of the novel, of patients, female geniuses, wanderers, strangers, foreigners, women, Jews—revolts necessary to the creation of a new culture of revolt on which our future depends. This chapter examines the complexity of Kristeva’s concept of revolt in order to demonstrate its continuing relevance to social and political thinking more generally.

Revolution in Language Kristeva’s early interest in revolt in Revolution in Poetic Language focused on the way in which modern poetry specifically, but art and language more generally, contributes to social and historical change. The work opens with an indictment of contemporary philosophies of language and subjectivity for suppressing the bodily, material, socioeconomic, and historical forces constitutive of meaning. Contemporary philosophies of language, she says, are ‘the thoughts of archivists, archaeologists, and necrophiliacs,’3 substituting the abstract remains of the signifying process for the concrete process of its production. Contemporary philosophies of language have reduced language to a realm of distinct, static, disembodied objects, removed from the concrete experiences of embodied subjects. Likewise, they have reduced subjectivity to an epistemic position withdrawn from its material, socio-historical situation. The truth of subjectivity and language, in sum, is sought in abstraction from their meaningful production. Kristeva reformulates subjectivity and language as co-extensive and as a dynamic material process of meaning production. The subject, she insists, is a speaking being; an embodied being who means; a being who always intends something and speaks to another in a social and historical context. As speaking beings, subjects are constituted through language. Conversely, language is not simply denotative. Words do not simply refer to ready-made objects; nor are they simply used by separate, detached pre-linguistic subjects. Kristeva’s theory of the signifying

206  S. K. Keltner process abandons received conceptions of subjectivity and language that treat them as passive, disembodied, asocial, ahistorical things to instead examine the material, social, and historical conditions and dynamics of meaning production. Kristeva theorizes the conditions of meaning production in terms of a theoretical distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic. The semiotic and the symbolic are two modalities of the signifying process that are never experienced as separate, but are theoretically separable as two tendencies within signification. The term “semiotic” (Gr. semeion) is employed in its original etymological sense as a ‘distinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or written sign, imprint, trace, figuration.’4 The identification of the semiotic as such, that is, a mark, trace, and so on, signals its presence to the symbolic; yet, it cannot be reduced to it. The semiotic appears within but simultaneously withdraws from fixed meaning. It is the heterogeneous, affective, material dimension of language that contributes to meaning but does not intend or signify in the way that symbols do. One may think of the rhythms and tones of poetry or music—the affective dimension of meaning that is part of but remains heterogeneous to the symbol. The semiotic may thus be understood as outside of or prior to meaning proper insofar as it represents the excessive demand of affective, corporeal existence to accomplish expression. However, this demand must be qualified by social and historical conditions of symbolic meaning. The symbolic organizes subjects, objects, and others into a coherent unity. Hence, the symbolic may be further specified as the social-symbolic. Significantly, the semiotic and the symbolic are interwo­ ven in all discourse, and their relation makes signification possible— even when one is emphasized at the expense of the other, as in formalistic enterprises of thinking like math and logic or in expressive music. Because Kristeva’s theory of language is also a theory of the subject, the latter, like signifying systems, is ‘always both semiotic and symbolic.’5 Within the signifying process itself, Kristeva distinguishes between the subject as an ego or an ‘I,’ on the one hand, and subjectivity as a process of subject constitution. For Kristeva, the subject as an ego or ‘I’ is a moment or (linguistic) position conditioned by larger bodily and relational processes, and not a substantive (e.g., Man). Insofar as meaning and subjectivity are co-extensive, the speaking being is a being who means, that is, a being incessantly engaged in the activity of expressing or signifying; and language is a process inherent to subjectivity, rather than an object distinguishable from the subject. Subjectivity is a material dialectic of semiotic and symbolic, in which the tension between the two is productive of meaning and the subject’s position within language. Meaning is constituted in the dialectical tension between the semiotic and the symbolic, which Kristeva describes, on the one hand, as a semiotic discharge of energy in the symbolic or, on the other, as the giving of symbolic form and meaning to the semiotic.

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  207 The dialectic between the semiotic and the symbolic allows us to see why and how art and literature can be revolutionary. Art and literature fundamentally challenge and change meaning and subjectivity by reactivating semiotic drives repressed by social formations and giving new social and symbolic form to them. Kristeva explains this process by demonstrating the way in which the subject is constituted in language. The subject of enunciation is a subject who means and is thereby structured according to various, categorical relations, that is, semantic, logical, intersubjective, historical, and/or ideological. The subject of enunciation, Kristeva says, ‘always proves to be the phenomenological subject’6 —the transcendental subject of Husserlian phenomenology.7 She describes this subject as the ‘expansion of the Cartesian cogito’8 and as the ‘synthesizing unity’9 and ‘sole guarantor of Being.’10 Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s thetic phase, Kristeva asks whether the positing of objects and the natural world is not also the positing of the subject. For Kristeva, the thetic phase is ‘the deepest structure’11 of signification, but she is interested not in what the subject produces, but in how it is itself produced or producible. She is interested in what precedes the thetic, in its material conditions, which are conditions explored by psychoanalysis and its theory of the drives. The drives and primary processes theorized by Freud articulate the link between the psychosomatic realm and that of the sign. Rather than positing a (unified and unifying) transcendental subject of enunciation, psychoanalysis grounds signification in psychosomatic processes and a fragmented body. The thetic is not the origin of signification but rather a break in the signifying process, a break conditioning a subject in relation to objects. For Kristeva, psychoanalysis allows us to rethink the thetic not simply as the realm of positions and relations but as the very threshold of ‘two heterogeneous realms: the semiotic and the symbolic.’12 Kristeva develops her account by transposing a reading of Hegel’s dialectic and Freud’s theory of the drives. By emphasizing the work of negativity, Kristeva isolates the inscription of materiality in signification through ‘an affirmative negativity’13 or ‘a productive dissolution.’14 Negativity is a process of separation that prevents the immobilization of meaning or the thetic at the same time that it constitutes its unity: negativity ‘reformulates the static terms of pure abstraction as a process, dissolving and binding them within a mobile law … [negativity] does not destroy but rather reactivates new organizations and, in that sense, affirms.’15 Negativity is the differentiating process in which oppositions are born and die. Kristeva follows Hegel’s definition of negativity as the fourth term, rather than the third term (reconciliation or synthesis), of the dialectic. However, dissatisfied with Hegel’s idealist reduction of negativity to a teleologically governed third term—which erases the disruptive moment of meaning’s production— Kristeva seeks to rescue the conflictual nature of the process as one that is irresolvable. For Kristeva,

208  S. K. Keltner negativity is a disruptive law of separation that conditions oppositions and refuses to be resolved. As such, negativity indicates an excessive, affective moment heterogeneous to the Idea. For Kristeva, negativity unsettles meaning and subjectivity and thereby opens onto a semiotic motility that refuses resolution. That is, negativity indicates a material logic. To indicate the work of negativity as the logic of materiality, Kristeva examines an event of separation or rejection that, she says, both precedes and functions within Hegelian negativity. Starting from the thetic, negativity may best be characterized as separation or scission insofar as it indicates differentiation within unity. Bodily drives upset and desyn-thesize fixed meaning. Kristeva reserves ‘rejection’ as a term for subjective diachrony that indicates the bodily processes of differentiation that precede and condition symbolic differentiation. Both language and the body operate according to a principle of differentiation. By emphasizing the logic of rejection foregrounded by Freud, Kristeva demonstrates not only the disruptive-affirmative work of the semiotic in the symbolic but also the functioning of language in the body. The processes of differentiation conditioning language are already operative at the material level of the body. That is to say, rejection is already a process of signification but irreducible to static meaning; it indicates a material process of differentiation essential to the formation of the subject and meaning. Rejection is the name given to the dominant processes of differentiation, which the infant must go through if s/he is to become a subject of language. Anality is the privileged example, but one may also think of vomiting, birth itself, and the processes of detachment from the maternal body in general as modes of separation that function according to a logic of rejection. For Kristeva, these bodily processes of separation are never simply lost to language but are transformed into language as essential semiotic elements of meaning and subjectivity. If Kristeva emphasizes the negativity of the drives through separation, scission, and rejection, she does not thereby dispense with the affirmative moment of connection or binding. Rejection or negativity is not simply negation. Rejection constitutes ‘the key moment’16 in which unity is dissolved and yet remains ‘unthinkable outside unity.’17 Thetic unity is the ‘precondition and horizon’18 of rejection but one that is ‘always superseded and exceeded.’19 Rejection is a principle of connection in the sense that it is ‘the precondition of the binding that takes place on another scene.’20 While separation threatens unity, it also makes it possible. For example, a meaningful relationship like that of mommy-and-me is possible only if ‘I’ am distinct from her. It is only in losing the essential relation to the mother that ‘I’ can find her in language. Negativity or rejection identifies the material motivation at the heart of signification and vice versa. In the language of the semiotic and the symbolic, the semiotic is the disruptive law inherent in the symbolic; the symbolic is the affirmative binding of subjects, objects, and others in a meaningful world. This means that the subject never simply is and that meaning is

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  209 never one (or won). Again, the semiotic and symbolic cannot be understood as two closed wholes, nor simply as two parts within a whole, but rather as a material process of differentiation and non-differentiation that refuses any unity of subjectivity or meaning. The distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic might thus be better described as a permeable threshold between two poles in which each represents a term of the relation and the movement or process of relating, conditioned by separation. The logic of negativity is a ‘crossroad’21 in which the subject (and meaning) is produced and yet never unified. It is thereby ‘trans-­ subjective, trans-ideal, and trans-symbolic.’22 Freudian psychoanalysis provides a materialist dialectical logic that maintains subjectivity and meaning as open, traversable processes, but at least in Revolution in Poetic Language, it remains a theoretical discourse and thus abstract. For Kristeva, the materialist overturning theorized by Freud occurs concretely as the revolution in modern poetic language. Modern poetic language and artistic practice in general illuminate the concrete dialectical functioning of signification or what Kristeva calls signifiance. 23 Signifiance designates the unlimited and ceaseless operation of the drives in and through the language, understood as encompassing the social and historical subject, system, and institutions. Kristeva calls this heterogeneous process ‘a structuring and de-structuring ­ practice, a passage to the outer boundaries of the subject and society.’24 Signifiance indicates the ambiguity of the biological and the social-symbolic. On the one hand, biological urges are organized by social-symbolic systems; on the other, they exceed any and all particular social-symbolic formations. What remains excessive, heterogeneous, and material is transformed into a practice when brought to bear upon social-symbolic meaning in and through poetic activity. Poetic language resumes the semiotic within a practice that transforms and transgresses the thetic, giving rise to new formations of signification and, by extension, formations of subjectivity. Kristeva calls this process of meaning transformation the revolution in poetic language, where revolution signifies the disruption or what she calls the ‘negativation’25 of representation. Within the socio-economic context of capitalism, which orders the symbolic and regulates the thetic—repressing the transformative potential of the semiotic—modern poetic language introduces a negativity that transgresses the social-symbolic by ‘de-syn-thesiz[ing]’ thetic unity26 and thus opening new opportunities for meaning and subjectivity. The revolution in poetic language is a practice of language that reintroduces semiotic motility in the symbolic—disrupting, exposing, and transforming repressive social meanings and structures.

The Modern Failings of Revolt Following Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva’s interest shifts from large-scale social and historical change through the reactivation and

210  S. K. Keltner rearticulation of semiotic drives to the difficulties modern subjects face in the failure of social-symbolic systems to provide form and meaning to psychic life. The semiotic–symbolic relation measures the trials, failures, and accomplishments of meaning and subjectivity— their advent as well as their loss. In the 1980s, Kristeva focuses her attention on the severance of the semiotic and symbolic in modern life, subjecting subjects to affect without meaning and meaning without affect, or meaningless affects and affectless meanings. Drawing on history, religion, art and literature, philosophy, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, Kristeva interrogates the suffering world of modernity, an interrogation that fundamentally alters her approach to revolt. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980), 27 Tales of Love (1983), 28 and Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1985)29 deepen Kristeva’s analysis of the semiotic/symbolic threshold formative of signification by focusing on the concrete phenomena of abjection, love, and loss. For Kristeva, these three phenomena exhibit both permanent and historical crises of meaning and subjectivity. At the purely psychoanalytic level of description, Kristeva examines abjection, love, and loss as three primary mechanisms by which the preverbal infans initially separates from the maternal body through its exposure to and struggle with alterity— a process that is constitutive of an elementary disposition conditioning the subject’s access to socio-symbolic meaning. At the level of socio-historical and personal experience, abjection, love, and loss signify the subject’s encounter with the limits of meaning and being. The three texts, which Sara Beardsworth calls a trilogy, 30 constitute a complex interdisciplinary diagnosis of the modern subject in contemporary Western societies and present psychoanalysis and the artwork as privileged witnesses to the crisis of meaning and the subject. Kristeva delineates the significance of the semiotic within any sign-system as a motive force of the unfolding of meaning in history. In the essay ‘Nous Deux’ she succinctly summarizes her view: ‘there will always be a breach of subjectivity carrying out a hidden matrix of pre-symbolic forces able to make history move on through all its short and singular stories.’31 Contrarily, social and historical sign-systems must be understood as conditioning the emergence and meaning of the semiotic (at the level of cultural representation, as well as the theoretical frameworks by which we understand it). In this double sense, the crises generative of meaning and subjectivity are both permanent (the subject and meaning are constituted at the fragile threshold of semiotic and symbolic) and historical (the threshold of meaning and the subject always takes place within social and historical conditions that are themselves traversable). Because the relation between semiotic and symbolic is one in which the symbolic receives and negotiates the semiotic, giving it form and meaning, when the symbolic no longer functions in relation to the semiotic as the giving of form and meaning to it, the semiotic–symbolic

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  211 relation is one that is in crisis. The result is that socio-symbolic discourses (e.g., religious or secular discourses) appear empty, and the semiotic is discharged without regulation (e.g., violence against self and/ or others). Though there are historical analogs to our own crises of meaning—which Kristeva traces primarily through art— abjection, loss, and the lack of love are modern phenomena that emerge precisely within an historical crisis of the semiotic and symbolic. Kristeva’s histories of these phenomena seek to examine the conditions of their emergence in historical terms. The contemporary experience of abjection and loss, for example, is tied to the failure or ‘the symbolic collapse’32 of traditional symbolic codes (religious, political, cultural) to negotiate the fragile border of meaning and the subject. The dialectic between semiotic and symbolic breaks down as a result of events that exceed the symbolic reach of a meaningful sign system. At the personal level, one may think of the inconsolable loss of a loved one, characterized by the inability to represent the loss or the rejection of consoling (yet seemingly empty) words offered by well-intentioned friends. For Kristeva, such intimate experiences are not simply personal (as opposed to public) or pathological. Kristeva’s histories of abjection, love, and loss diagnose contemporary societies as undergoing a large-scale crisis of meaning, resulting in the inability to negotiate negative affects at the level of the individual. Modern crises of meaning resulting from the failure of traditional social symbolic systems are exploited by modern capital and its circulation of a virtual society of images. Following Guy Debord, 33 Kristeva designates modern life a society of the spectacle. The spectacle signifies the dominance of the mass media in everyday life, the education of children by television, the domination of political campaigns by news cycles and media coverage, and the silencing of global injustice by the governmentmedia- corporate oligopoly. The spectacle is not a determinate phenomenon identifiable within society or reality but rather upsets the assumed distinction between representation and reality. The spectacle is not an addition to reality but is the transformation of reality itself into spectacle, which reduces sensuous, social, and historical experience to the dominance of, and mediation by, visual representation. The spectacle thus describes modern experience and the entire realm of social activity, including the institutions, social and political practices, and ideological beliefs that support and ensure the economy of the spectacle. It is our (global) situation. Proceeding from Marx’s analysis of the historical analysis of capitalism’s reduction of being to having (in which the possession of an object replaces praxis and self- concern supplants the relation to others), Debord presents the subsequent stage of historical development, beginning in the 1920s, as a reduction of having to appearing. The economy of the spectacle raises commodity to a new level of abstraction free of any usevalue. That is to say, the object’s value lies solely in its function as an

212  S. K. Keltner image. With the reduction of personal and social life to the presence of the image, the primary relation the spectacle effects is separation or alienation (from the object, activity, and social and historical meaning of production). Debord calls separation ‘the alpha and omega of the spectacle,’34 concluding that ‘the spectator feels at home nowhere.’35 Kristeva’s presentation of the society of the spectacle, in both her creative and critical works, affirms Debord’s conclusion. She describes alienation, for example, as ‘the by-product of the spectacle.’36 Kristeva introduces a psychoanalytic dimension of analysis to Debord’s, thereby deepening the account of the spectacle by developing a description and account of the alienation of the modern subject in her own social-psychoanalytic terms. Kristeva’s concern for suffering leads her to analyze the alienation or separation the spectacle effects as the destruction of meaning, which marks, simultaneously, the collapse of psychic space and the disintegration of social and historical relations. In the 1990s, in particular, Kristeva confronts the loss of meaning directly in relation to the spectacle’s destruction of the modern subject’s capacity to create and sustain meaning. Psychic life, she insists, is ‘blocked, inhibited, and destroyed’37 by the society of the spectacle and foreshadows ‘a new humanity’38 that negotiates ‘metaphysical anxiety and the need for meaning’39 with psychopharmaceuticals and entertainment: ‘Wouldn’t it be great to be satisfied with just a pill and a television screen?’40 Kristeva’s dark irony demonstrates the danger in which she interprets psychic life to be in. The spectacle affects subjectivity by emptying it out, normalizing it, turning subjects into homogeneous automatons. For Kristeva, the ‘alter ego of the society of the spectacle’41 is ‘an amputated subjectivity’42 who lacks the capacity to represent and to question. The dominance of the image in contemporary, global societies thus effects the ‘spectacular reduction’43 of psychic life, giving rise to what she calls in the very title of her book ‘new maladies of the soul.’44 The new maladies of the soul—‘phantasmatic inhibition,’45 ‘false personalities,’46 ‘borderline states,’47 and ‘psychosomatic conditions,’48 for example— are not reducible to traditional classification systems. Importantly, what they all share is ‘the inability to represent’:49 the contemporary subject would be ‘an actor or consumer … who has run out of imagination’;50 the final result, she says, is ‘the halting of representation and questioning.’51 For Kristeva, the spectacle effects, at the level of the individual, the loss of the psychic life of meaning, which implies a reduction of both personal and social relations to the economy of the image. For Kristeva, the society of the spectacle embodies two new characteristics that both justify her attempt to rethink revolt and seem to exclude its possibility. The first concerns the status of power; the second concerns the status of the individual. Concerning power, Kristeva says that the new world order effects a new schematic regulation favoring the functioning of ‘business, speculation, and Mafia activity.’52 Not only are

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  213 traditional and modern conceptions of power rendered meaningless, but so too are outdated terms like “fascism” and “totalitarianism.” Contrary to the identifiable sources of power in past social and political formations, the society of the spectacle renders power invisible. In place of systems of real production, there is stock market speculation and the falsification of wealth; in place of laws there are measures; in place of culpability, public menace; in place of fault, damages; in place of responsibility, liability; in place of trials, delaying techniques; in place of justice, media theatricalization.53 The new regulation of power describes itself as democratic and liberal, but it is ultimately a ‘power vacuum.’54 The primacy of the new world market economy over bodies, relations, and solidarity points to the replacement of the subject with a new patrimonial individual—literally, I am simply the ‘property’55 (propre, self) inherited from my ancestors, the past, my genes. Ethical and political questions concerning my being are reduced to questions concerning whether my patrimony should be ‘remunerated or free,’56 ‘whether “I” can enrich myself or, as an altruist, forgo payment in the name of humanity or whether “I,” as a victim, am dispossessed of it.’57 If everything is consumed by spectacle, in contrast to those who get to play the game, ‘those we call marginal’58 —the exploited of the new world order—‘have definitively become excluded.’59 Which culture is left, aside from regressive fundamentalism or consumer culture? Given the spectacular reduction of subjectivity in the context of a new regulation of invisible power, Kristeva begs the question, who would revolt and against what?

Revolt Culture In the 1990s, Kristeva suspends questions of social and historical transformation in order to focus on the possibilities of revolt as the renewal of the psychic life of meaning. Kristeva defers the question of the future in order to focus on revolt as turning back or return to ‘interiority’ as an affective moment of heterogeneity that inscribes an affective disposition in the subject. Revolt as return is essential because it takes us back to the necessary moment of affectivity and through an active interrogation holds on, experiences, and undergoes it. Here Kristeva establishes an affective moment in subject constitution in modernity as a necessary part of revolt. This movement is a return to the subject’s fundamental, corporeal passivity as both rupture and condition of signification and meaning. It is a heterogeneity, Kristeva says, that cannot temporalize or, in the language of the semiotic and symbolic, remains excessive to the symbolic. Revolt as return, however, also enables linguistic expression. The interrogation and experience of affectivity are accomplished in words. Hence, novels and the talking cure of psychoanalysis become instances of revolt. Revolt, in Kristeva’s later thought, is the dynamic of subjective return to non-integratable heterogeneity that is articulated

214  S. K. Keltner or given signs. In revolt, subjectivity is characterized by a double move­ where men take shelter in ment: ‘this space to the inside [au-dedans] 60 ­ Because heterogeneity is ultimately referring to the beyond [au-delà].’ non-translatable, its narration is ceaseless, infinite. Revolt is, thereby, a double infinity that opens a ceaseless questioning that sustains psychic life. Such a position is what Kristeva means by a culture of revolt. Kristeva’s approach to revolt is most succinctly and significantly articulated in her exploration of time, which Kristeva insists is co- extensive with subjectivity. The subject is not in time but must itself be understood as time. In Time and Sense she says, ‘we are made of the same substance as time.’61 This leads her to seek ‘new figures of temporality’62 that resuscitates a culture and experience of revolt, by which she means questioning, resistance to normalization, a psychic life of meaning; ‘we all need an experience, by which I mean something unknown, surprise, pain, or delight, and then comprehension of this impact. Is it still possible?’63 In Intimate Revolt Kristeva asks: ‘What if— after the Copernican revolution concerning Earth and the Darwinian revolution concerning the species— the Freudian revolution were a revolution of the conception of time?’64 Freudian temporality is significant because it begins with the linear time of consciousness and inscribes a breach that frustrates time. This is what she calls ‘the scandal’65 of the Zeitlos. In relation to the traditional concept of time, Freudian time is initially aligned with the time of consciousness; and yet, beginning with The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud begins to conceive of the unconscious, the id, the pleasure principle, and finally the death instinct in terms of the Zeitlos—the ­ timeless or, even more literally, lost time. Though she claims that Freud’s conception of time distinguishes him, it is on Heideggerian terms that Kristeva formulates the significance of the Freudian insight. In The Sense and Non- Sense of Revolt and again more explicitly in Intimate Revolt, Kristeva advances a reading of the Freudian Zeitlos as ‘an impossible temporalizing’66 or a ‘temporality that does not ‘temporalize.’67 Kristeva takes the term “temporalizing” from Heidegger’s use of the verb zeitigen in Being and Time.68 The ordinary meaning of the term is ‘to bring to maturity’ or ‘bring about.’ Heidegger uses zeitigen in this sense in Division I of Being and Time. However, in Division II, Heidegger develops the etymological connection to Zeit (time) and its variations. He thereafter uses the term in a more specific, technical sense in order to account for the temporal conditions of existence as 69 ‘being-in-the-world.’ ­ ­ ­ Kristeva explains Heidegger’s use of the term as demonstrating that ‘even in ecstasy, even in an ecstatic state where time seems suspended, time, supposed time, is always already there.’70 Kristeva’s use of the term ‘ecstasy’71 here distorts Heidegger’s own deployment of the term and its variants. Heidegger develops temporalizing in terms of the unity of the three ecstasies— having been, the Present, and anticipatory projection toward the future. Temporalizing thus accounts for

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  215 our existence in a meaningful world, that is, the conditions of our historical being, the worldliness of the world, our grasp of the present, and our orientation toward the future. Nevertheless, the implication of Kristeva’s brief explanation of Heidegger’s use of the term is that it erases its most obvious temporal meaning, which opens questions concerning the very rupture of not only linear time, but also the Heideggerian account of temporality. Kristeva’s reference to ecstasy thereby recalls us to the significance of Freud, who posited a non-time that exceeds the modes of temporalizing conceived by Heidegger— a timelessness more archaic than temporality itself. Nevertheless, if the Freudian Zeitlos represents a challenge to Heideggerian temporality, insofar as the Zeitlos opens onto a sensible, spatial rupture of temporality, Kristeva nevertheless refuses to dispense with it. Heidegger’s notion of ‘temporalizing’ is essential to her theorization of a second dimension of Freudian temporality: expression or signification— albeit with significant points of departure. For Kristeva, the Zeitlos may thus be understood as a suspension or frustration of the everyday, meaningful modes of existence in the world. The literal sense of the German suffix ‘-los’ emphasizes a moment or instant of time that has ‘come off’ or ‘come loose’ and is no longer part of ­ or connected to ordinary, everyday time. The Zeitlos is thus ‘un-timed’ 72 —hence in the sense of ‘un-leashed’ or, as Kristeva says, ‘un-bound’ ­ the gaps, non-senses, and disavowals that punctuate the psychoanalytic quest. The Zeitlos is a broken off bit of time that has fallen from its meaningful place in the world. The originality of Freudian time lies in its revealing of a timelessness beyond time that, Kristeva says, ‘encroaches on a prepsychical time and approaches the somatic.’73 The Zeitlos marks the confrontation with a sensible, affective heterogeneity. Its rupture of time constitutes its scandalousness. Drawing on the Latin sense of scandalum as a detainment or impediment, Kristeva describes Freud’s scandalous time as a ‘detained temporality.’74 The Zeitlos is that upon which I ‘run aground,’75 a timelessness in which time itself is suspended. The Freudian Zeitlos, Kristeva claims, may be understood as both ‘opposed’76 and ‘appended’77 to Heideggerian time. The ambiguity of this relationship to Heideggerian time is clarified in Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, where Kristeva stages a polemic between Freud and Proust, on the one hand, and Heidegger, on the other. If Kristeva draws upon the Heideggerian conception of temporalizing in order to articulate the positive movement of time as the movement into language, she ultimately departs from Heidegger’s privileging of the future. In contrast to Heidegger’s privileging of death as the individuating principle of Dasein, Kristeva identifies the significance of Proustian time as a privileging of the past that forestalls not only the impatience of modern societies’ demands for progress and production but also concern itself 78 —the term Heidegger uses to delineate Dasein’s self-relation. She says,

216  S. K. Keltner [Proust] slows down the impatience of ‘Being-in-advance-of-itself’ by turning this achieved advance in the other direction … When he lingers over his remarks on the present, he interrupts it and expands it, preventing it from running ahead and reformulating itself as a project … Proust eventually forestalled not only impatience, but concern itself … [A]n anxiety pointed toward death is shifted toward a polyvalent sensibility … [Proustian Dasein] is a Being-aheadof-itself in reverse.79 Or, again: The writer is no philosopher … In the Proustian text the nontemporal nature of the unconscious (as Freud would have it) goes side by side with an overpowering awareness of Being. The psychic absorbs the cosmic and, beyond it, Being itself is diluted in style. So imaginary experience is not unaware of the temporality of concern. But it goes beyond it, in a search for joy.80 For Kristeva, the Proustian text provides an exemplary accomplishment of what she calls ‘revolt’ and what she identifies as the centerpiece of the psychoanalytic experience. The novel is privileged terrain for investigating meaning’s concrete conditions.

Future of Revolt While Kristeva seeks to identify and resuscitate a culture and experience of revolt, one may legitimately question the absence of any real sense of the future of social and political formations. Against the political revolutionary’s emphasis on the future, Kristeva prioritizes the past, and rather than engaging social and political frameworks and institutions, she multiplies her examples of revolt through the trials of her patients, autobiographical confessions, art and literature, and the lives and works of artists, philosophers, theologians, psychoanalysts, and saints. Anyone looking for a positive social and political philosophy concerned with identifying the nature of just social and political institutions and frameworks for the future will be grossly disappointed by Kristeva’s refusal to offer one. One may then ask how Kristeva’s concept of revolt should be understood and how her decision to multiply examples of revolts should be measured. If we all just work on ourselves a bit or read a novel, we’ll all be okay? Kristeva’s interest in the renewal of revolt is tied to her concern to examine the ways in which the future is closed off by traditional social symbolic systems, not only in their failures to provide meaning, but also in their privileging of progress, production, and development according to sedimented conceptions of the future. This is true for societies we call

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  217 liberal, as well as for communist societies and religious ideologies. All privilege a very specific conception of time as progressive development. This chapter has argued that Kristeva seeks new figures of temporality that challenge the traditional conception of time as the linear progression of now-points destined toward a predetermined future. Freud’s conception of an instant that breaks with linear time and Proust’s sensible space of memory offer new conceptions of temporality that fundamentally reorient the traditional valuation of the linear time of progress, thereby offering new models of connection and new meanings. In Intimate Revolt, Kristeva goes so far as to say that ‘[w]hat makes sense today is not the future.’81 In lieu of the future as that which we seek to determine and achieve, Kristeva proposes revolt as ‘the questioning and displacement of the past.’82 The future that Kristeva seeks to challenge represents the burial of the past, space, materiality, alternative temporalities, and new modes of connection embodied in the concept of revolt. At the start of ‘The Future of Revolt,’83 she says, ‘The need for connection might establish another politics, some day. Today, psychical life knows that it will only be saved if it gives itself the time and space of revolt.’84 Kristeva thus ties her thesis of revolt to a necessary suspension of a sedimented conception of the future. In ‘The Future of Revolt,’ Kristeva offers an alternative sense of the future embodied in her concept of revolt. Kristeva’s renewal of the concept of revolt to examine the possibilities of intimacy in modern life indicates a material temporal process by which the future is opened to plural and diverse possibilities of meaning and connection. Playing on Albert Camus’s rebel, who says, ‘I revolt, therefore we are,’85 Kristeva says, ‘I revolt, therefore we are to come [à venire].’86 ‘To come’ is the literal meaning of the French term for the future—l’avenir. ­ The shift from ‘I’ to ‘we’ in this formulation points to the forging of connections accomplished by revolt. Revolt is not simply a rebellion against some power effecting a separated position but a process by which new modes of connection are made possible. Thus, while Kristeva insists on the suspension of a certain conception of the future, she ties the concrete possibilities of the future to the emergence of new modes of connection. This conception of the future as the forging of new social bonds is indebted to her work as an analyst. Kristeva’s concept of intimate revolt is not the accomplishment of a solitary individual but rather depends on relations to others. In the psychoanalytic setting, the transference relation represents a chance encounter with another, requisite for the creation of meaning. Again, the speak-ing ­ being is a being who means, but a being that speaks to and for another, that is, signification, assumes a social relation of speakers. As noted, Kristeva’s privileged model for meaning creation is the experience of love, or amatory idealization. Amatory idealization is the encounter of an other that inscribes a rudimentary disposition of the subject in language. At the

218  S. K. Keltner purely psychoanalytic level, Kristeva calls this an archaic relation to the loving father of individual prehistory, or ‘the Third.’87 The transference with the Third is constitutive of meaning and subjectivity and delineates the symbolic possibility of the subject. In temporal terms, the Third is not the future but opens the future by enabling the creation of meaning that individuates the subject and connects her/him to another. Tales of Love describes love as the loss of the border between ‘I’ and Other, a state in which ‘“I” has been an other.’88 Love may thus be described as the experience of social binding or of community with another irreducible to but formative of signification. Tales of Love addresses the benefits accruing to the one in love and the illness besetting the one who lacks love. Kristeva privileges love as an affective-symbolic moment of connection necessary to the psychic life of meaning. This does not mean that Kristeva simply abandons the necessity of reimagining new social and political formations. However, rather than speculatively defining the nature of just social and political arrangements from transcendental arguments and a privileged epistemic perspective, Kristeva seeks concrete instances of revolt emerging from the lived experience of actual social and political realities. ‘The future,’ she says, ‘if it exists, depends on it.’89 By limiting herself to intimate revolts, Kristeva is able to examine larger social and historical formations insofar as the trials of individuals concretely expose, as well as critically and imaginatively negotiate, social and political problematics. Kristeva may be said to offer a form of social and political listening, inspired by her work as an analyst, that enables her to identify and reveal real opportunities for individuals and communities. Kristeva’s approach inscribes the permanence of a critical position always open to revaluing beliefs and forging new connections. By archiving a multiplicity of intimate revolts, Kristeva reveals alternative modes of social connection on which she hangs her hope for the future. She seeks to reveal alternative temporalities not heard in the discourse of mass media, government/politics, or corporate speech. But in the context of a new regulation of power that renders itself invisible and reduces alternatives to near silence, Kristeva identifies and archives the exemplary lives of those marginalized.

Politics and the Margin When addressing the significance of revolt and its future beyond the artwork, detective novel, or psychoanalytic session, Kristeva places her bets on the marginalized, the oppressed, or subjectivities deemed socially deviant. The stranger, the foreigner, the wanderer, the Jew, women, mothers— social beings conditioned by structural hierarchies, for Kristeva, condition privileged epistemic and existential insight. Difficult and dangerous, to be sure, but being situated as such is the condition of new beginnings. Indeed, Kristeva refers her own work to her status as a woman and a foreigner. At the close of Tales of Love, for example, Kristeva locates the

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  219 future of love in marginalized communities. She claims ‘there will be new codes of love’90 in those regions of experience where a ‘new map of the particular without property is being drawn,’91 and new, eternally temporary idealizations … captivate us. This is being talked about on psychoanalytic couches, sought after in those marginal communities that dissent from official morality— children, women, same-sex, and finally heterosexual couples (the most shocking because the most unexpected) … beneath the multifariousness of history, of stories, tenacious and permanent aspirations lie hidden.92 The final chapter of New Maladies of the Soul, titled ‘Women’s Time,’ concludes, ‘In our world, the various marginal groups of sex, age, religion, ethnic origin, and ideology represent a refuge of hope, that is, a secular transcendence.’93 In Strangers to Ourselves, Freud’s Jewishness is what conditions his insights into the strangeness of the psyche.94 The genius of Hannah Arendt, Collette, Melanie Klein, and Simone de Beauvoir is intimately tied to gender.95 Kristeva’s psychoanalytic models propose an Oedipus in revolt, Antigone, Anti- Oedipal, and transOedipal subjects.96 For Kristeva, marginalized subjectivities are situated differently at the threshold of meaning— that is to say, at the threshold of semiotic processes and the social-symbolic constitutive of meaning. Kristeva’s vision is radically different from what generally passes as social and political philosophy proper. Kristeva challenges us to abandon the received wisdom of traditional social and political philosophy by identifying and evaluating the significance of new beginnings as they occur concretely in the daily struggles of marginalized individuals and communities. Rather than philosophically deducing just social and political arrangements from transcendental arguments or proposing a new authority, Kristeva sets as her task a search for concrete instances of intimate revolt as the seeds of hope for new beginnings. This is, she admits, ‘a wager … on the future of revolt’97 as permanent questioning or interminable revolt. Kristeva seeks to open social and political formations of meaning to ethical challenge by revaluing the complexity and plurality of concrete experience as revealing larger significances. Kristeva challenges us to listen for the rhythm of a new beginning in multiple resistances to modern power as a future to come and dependent on the cultivation of revolt culture.

Notes 1 Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 2 Julia Kristeva, Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, vol. 2, trans. Jeanine Herman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 3 Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, p. 15.

220  S. K. Keltner 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 237. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 44. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 113. Ibid. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p. 147. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 119. Ibid., p. 117. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 69. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). Sara Beardsworth, Julia Kristeva: Psychoanalysis and Modernity (New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), p. 2. Julia Kristeva, “‘Nous Deux’ or a (Hi)story of Intertextuality,” The Romanic Review, vol. 93, n. 1–2, 2002, p. 7–13. Kristeva, Black Sun, p. 24. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson- Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994). Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 30. Julia Kristeva, The Old Man and the Wolves, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 102. Julia Kristeva, New Maladies of the Soul, trans. Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 8. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt  221 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Ibid. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid. Julia Kristeva, The Sense and Non- Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, vol. 1, trans. Jeanine Herman, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid. Kristeva, Intimate Revolt, p. 51. Julia Kristeva, Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, trans. Ross Mitchell Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 167. Kristeva, The Sense and Non- Sense of Revolt, p. 9. Ibid., p. 11. Kristeva, Intimate Revolt, p. 28. Ibid. Kristeva, The Sense and Non- Sense of Revolt, p. 16. Kristeva, Intimate Revolt, 31. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Maquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), p. 351. Ibid., p. 94. Kristeva, The Sense and Non- Sense of Revolt, p. 16. Ibid., p. 16. Kristeva, Intimate Revolt, p. 32. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 32. Ibid. Kristeva, Time and Sense, p. 312. Ibid. Julia Kristeva, Proust and the Sense of Time, trans. Stephen Bann (London: Faber and Faber 1993), pp. 25–26. Kristeva, Intimate Revolt, p. 5. Ibid. Kristeva’s third book on revolt, L’avenir d’une révolte (Paris: CalmannLévy, 1998), is published in English as the final section of Intimate Revolt. Ibid., p. 223. Ibid., p. 224. Ibid. Kristeva, Tales of Love, Chapter 1. Ibid., p. 4. Kristeva, Intimate Revolt, p. 5. Kristeva, Tales of Love, p. 7. Ibid. Ibid. Kristeva, New Maladies of the Soul, p. 216.

222  S. K. Keltner Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: 94 Columbia University Press, 1991). 95 Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt, vol. 1, Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words, trans. Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein, vol. 2, Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words, trans. Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Julia Kristeva, Colette, vol. 3, Female Genius: Life, Madness, Words, trans. Jane Marie Todd (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 96 Cf. Kristeva, The Sense and Non- Sense of Revolt; and Kristeva, Intimate Revolt. 97 Kristeva, Intimate Revolt, p. 268.

11 Strategies of Political Resistance Agamben and Irigaray Gavin Rae

The political implications of poststructuralist thought has long been a controversial topic,1 but it has recently come into contact— and, indeed, overlapped—with the issue of the relationship between poststructuralism and contemporary biopolitical theory.2 This is perhaps not particularly surprising given the pivotal role that Michel Foucault plays in both fields.3 Interestingly, however, this engagement has started to take place through alternative figures and, in so doing, has greatly expanded our understanding of both biopolitical theory and poststructuralism.4 This chapter contributes to that endeavor by focusing on and bringing together the political thought of Giorgio Agamben and Luce Irigaray.5 Little work has been done to explicitly explore the connections between these two thinkers. Ewa Ziarek is one notable exception to this, although her discussion is focused on Agamben’s account of potentiality and only very briefly mentions Irigaray’s account of sexual difference, before moving to the thought of Hannah Arendt to draw attention to the political dimension of Agamben’s thinking.6 In contrast, I aim to bring Agamben and Irigaray into direct and sustained engagement with one another through the mediation of the question of political resistance. While this will require discussions of Agamben’s account of potentiality and Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference, I understand and will show that both of these are inherently political concepts, with the consequence that there is no need to move to a third thinker to bring out their political importance. Indeed, my overarching argument is that focusing on the political dimensions of their respective thinking will demonstrate that, despite framing the issue in different terms, a similar political strategy of resistance can be discerned from Agamben’s and Irigaray’s work; one that aims to exchange a direct and head-on struggle against the dominant political logic that each diagnoses as structuring Western politics—biopolitics according to Agamben and phallogocentrism for Irigaray—with one based on, what might be called, a politics of deactivation. With this, the aim is to show that there are important but underexplored overlaps between Agamben’s and Irigaray’s thinking, especially in relation to the question of political resistance, that, when brought to light, illuminate their respective positions, reveal how biopolitical theory and feminist

224  Gavin Rae poststructuralism can complement one another and, indeed, point to a particularly innovative poststructuralist approach to politics. To develop this, I first outline Agamben’s account of homo sacer and his claim that Western juridical-political systems are and have been structured around a binary inclusion/exclusion opposition that is used to regulate life (zoē) itself.7 Although a number of commentators have maintained that there is no critical perspective inherent in Agamben’s analysis of biopolitics that points beyond it,8 I argue that there is and outline this by focusing on Agamben’s analysis of the Aristotelian conception of ‘potentiality,’9 from which he derives the notions of ‘impotentiality,’10 ‘inoperativity,’11 and ‘destituent-power’12 to develop a political strategy that makes a case for the initial deactivation of the biopolitical machine to re-conceive what he calls the coming politics. Although there is contention around his notion of the coming politics, I limit the discussion to the nature of the transition that brings it forth.13 This reveals that Agamben’s account of political resistance is premised on a particular conception of political exclusion, which is resisted not by merely including those excluded but by taking aim, through a concerted strategy of deactivation, at the logic that sustains the inner/outer, included/excluded oppositions. Having outlined Agamben’s analysis, I turn to Irigaray. On first glance, her early critique of the West’s phallogocentrism appears to have little to do with Agamben’s project, but I will argue that it actually shares a number of its logical presuppositions, insofar as she claims that Western thinking on sexual difference has been structured around a binary opposition wherein ‘woman’ is devalued and excluded from (masculinedefined) law, with this permitting the phallogocentric regime to better regulate her life.14 I subsequently examine her affirmation of the political importance of mimicry and laughter that aims at ‘jamming the theoretical machine’15 sustaining phallogocentrism to permit a rethinking of sexual difference in non-phallogocentric terms. Having shown that there are marked similarities in Agamben’s and Irigaray’s diagnosis of the logical structure of Western thinking and their political strategies to overcome it, I conclude that their continuing importance resides in their call for a new form of political resistance wherein, rather than simply affirm an alternative model, the long-dominant political logic based in certainty, conflict, and domination must first be defused to allow a rethinking of the categories structuring politics. With this, they move us from a politics of conflict and contestation to one of deactivation and openness.

Agamben, Biopolitical Sovereignty, and Homo Sacer Although discussed in Language and Death,16 published in 1982, Agamben’s most substantial engagement with the figure of homo sacer occurs 13 years later in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life where it forms the lodestone from which he analyzes Western juridicalpolitical systems. Agamben starts by noting that the Greeks had two

Strategies of Political Resistance  225 words for ‘life’: ‘zoē, which expressed the simple fact of living common to all living beings (animals, men, or gods), and bios, which indicated the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group.’17 The key point is that bios was always implicated as a socio-political form of existence, where specific laws and norms defined the appropriate form of life for an individual or group. Zoē, as a consequence, was largely ignored. Agamben notes, however, that Foucault returned to this distinction to show how at the beginning of the modern period— the nineteenth century to be specific18 —the socio-political turned its attention away from the already-formed structures of bios to the unstructured, ‘pure’ natural life of zoē. As a consequence, Agamben explains that Foucault held that ‘at the threshold of the modern era, natural life begins to be included in the mechanisms and calculations of State power and politics turns into biopolitics.’19 With this, ‘the entry of zoē into the sphere of the polis— the politicization of bare life as such— constitutes the decisive event of modernity and signals a radical transformation of the politicalphilosophical categories of classical thought.’20 Agamben’s fundamental problem with Foucault’s analysis, however, relates to the latter’s claim that biopolitics is a nineteenth- century phenomenon that usurped the juridical model of sovereignty that had dominated Western political thinking for millennia. As Agamben explains, Foucault’s analysis is constituted by the decisive abandonment of the traditional approach to the problem of power, which is based on juridico-institutional models (the definition of sovereignty, the theory of the State), in favor of an unprejudiced analysis of the concrete ways in which power penetrates subjects’ very bodies and forms of life. 21 Rather than being structured as a hierarchical pyramid, with power imposed on those beneath in a straightforward top-down model of imposition, Foucauldian biopower, on Agamben’s telling, operates with an alternative conception of power that subtends all, is not a priori hierarchical, and is productive rather than simply impositional. The result is a far more complex, plural, and multidimensional account of power that has dramatic implications for the creation of bodies, life, and politics. Agamben is concerned, however, that Foucault’s binary model leaves open the question of the mechanism or ‘the zone of indistinction (or, at least, the point of intersection) at which techniques of individualization and totalizing procedures converge.’22 In other words, Foucault insists that biopower operates to create bodies, both subjective and political, but his critique of the juridical model of sovereignty rejects the notion that there is a unitary center to ground such creation. Agamben suggests that this leaves us with a highly paradoxical logical structure that is orientated around an expressive moment of power— to create bodies— without it being strictly possible on Foucault’s telling for there to be such

226  Gavin Rae a ‘moment’ or ‘event’ (in a singular sense). In other words, Agamben’s basic charge is that in critiquing the juridical model of sovereignty, Foucault throws the baby of a central locus point out with the bathwater of hierarchy: he insists that the expression of biopower is continuous and non-juridical, but yet, in rejecting a central locus point of expression (which he associates with the unity inherent in the juridical model of sovereignty), he is unable, strictly speaking, to identify a ‘point’ or ‘moment’ from which this expression arises, nor, by rejecting the mediating role of law, can he explain how the various expressions of biopower congeal to create and sustain a ‘body politics’ or ‘biopolitics.’ Agamben’s solution is to reject Foucault’s binary opposition between juridical sovereignty, which is hierarchical and juridical, and biopolitics, which removes sovereignty and hence law to rather think in terms of immanent expressions of power. Instead, Agamben recognizes the importance of law for biopolitics without collapsing one into the other and in so doing escapes the logic of hierarchy that informs the juridical model of sovereignty. With this, Agamben rejects the binary opposition that he diagnoses at the heart of Foucault’s analysis by reinserting a unifying, mediating moment between law and biopolitics, although, crucially, this mediating moment is understood not in terms of substance or as ‘something’ but in terms of a lack or exclusionary moment. This lack is defined by and from the juridical sovereign— itself a somewhat paradoxical lack—but, in being excluded, continues to be bound to the juridical sovereign and juridical system that excluded it; after all, its status as ‘excluded’ depends upon the pronouncement of the juridical system/sovereign, with the consequence that even as it is excluded, it is always returned to, and so included in, the juridical system/sovereign that excluded it. Importantly, it is by being excluded/included in this manner that the individual is stripped of juridical-political protections and forced to exist as bare life (zoē). With this, the juridical sovereign can exert a biopolitics upon him. As such, Agamben concludes that juridical sovereignty and biopolitics are not opposed. ‘[T]he production of a biopolitical body is the original activity of sovereign power’23 and rather than being a form of power that historically succeeded juridical forms, ‘biopolitics is at least as old as the sovereign exception.’24 To explain this further, a brief word is needed on Agamben’s understanding of sovereignty, which is not defined in terms of a person per se or an action but a place within the juridical-political sphere. Specifically, the sovereign is the one who decides ‘the originary inclusion of the living in the sphere of law.’25 By deciding on who will be included within the law, which the sovereign creates and adjudicates, the sovereign also decides on who will count and exist politically within the polis. By extension, the sovereign’s decision also determines who does not exist within the sphere of law and so is other. Agamben claims that, rather than being synonymous with law or its absence, ‘the paradox of sovereignty consists in the fact the sovereign is, at the same time, outside and inside

Strategies of Political Resistance  227 the juridical order.’26 The sovereign is both within law— the sovereign is, in fact, the law—but also outside of law, with this being necessary for the sovereign to create law. For Agamben, it is this paradox that defines sovereignty: ‘There is a limit-figure of life, a threshold in which life is both inside and outside the juridical order, and this threshold is the place of sovereignty.’27 Existing on/as the threshold of the juridical order permits the sovereign to create the juridical order, decide on who is to be included in it, and, by extension, who will be given the protections that such status affords. What defines the sovereign, however, is not the positive moment of deciding who will be included in the juridical-political order, but the negative one that determines who will be excluded or abandoned from that order. To explore the nature and role of this excluded element, Agamben turns to the obscure figure within Roman law of ‘homo sacer (sacred man), who may be killed and yet not sacrificed.’28 This figure is important for Agamben because it describes a ‘human life [which] is included in the juridical order [ordinamento] solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed).’29 Paradoxically, and in a similar manner to the way in which the sovereign traverses the inside and outside of law,30 homo sacer is subject to a juridical sovereign decision that excludes ‘him’ from law, and hence the protection of the sovereign. However, as noted, this act of exclusion continues to include him by virtue of being the condition upon which his identity as homo sacer depends. As a consequence, homo sacer exists in a zone of indistinction between the inside and outside of law. He therefore blurs the boundaries of what is included and excluded from the sovereign. In occupying this blurry, indistinct position, homo sacer is turned from a particular form of life protected by law (bios) into the bare life that the Greeks associated with zoē. So, whereas the ancient Greeks distinguished between zoē and bios, or bare life and political life, the Roman figure of homo sacer undermines this binary opposition so that bios (political life) becomes synonymous with zoē (bare life). As such, political life (bios) becomes orientated to and from bare life (zoē). The figure of homo sacer therefore complicates, without destroying, the division between the inside and outside the law and, indeed, between law and life, and achieves this, not by mediating the two but by existing as an empty complex of opposites uniting while distinguishing different, contradictory terms and positions. For this reason, Agamben concludes that ‘[a]t once excluding bare life from and capturing it within the political order, the state of exception [i.e. homo sacer] actually constituted, in its very separateness, the hidden foundation on which the entire political system rested.’31 With the creation of homo sacer as the exception living within the rule, political life came to be constituted by a duality wherein homo sacer continued to exist ‘in’ the State but in a way that was liberated from it by virtue of his exclusion from law. In this way, homo sacer was an object of the disciplinary power of the State but also a subject

228  Gavin Rae that existed outside that power and, as such, had to make itself a political subject. Indeed, Agamben argues that it was the latter aspect of becoming a political subject that was taken up and extended in modern democracy, where individuals become ‘the subject of political power’32 as opposed to its object. Put simply, the basic idea underpinning modern democratic theory is that subjects make themselves into political entities through their own choice of political life (bios). This, nevertheless, requires that they are initially non-political lives, or, in Agamben’s terms, bare lives. It is from this bare life (zoē) that political life (bios) is ‘chosen.’ Crucially, however, modern democratic theory requires that bare life remain whenever the choice of political life is made. Only this allows the subject the continuous freedom to choose its political life, which is a condition of modern democracy. As such, Agamben claims that ‘modern democracy presents itself from the beginning as a vindication and liberation of zoē, and that it is constantly trying to transform its own bare life into a way of life and to find, so to speak, the bios of zoē.’33 In other words, modern democracy, in focusing and depending upon the subject who makes itself politically, depends upon and so brings to light bare life (zoē) to a greater and more explicit degree than previous configurations of the bios/zoē dichotomy. This is why he maintains that Today politics knows no value (and, consequently, no nonvalue) other than life, and until the contradictions that this fact implies are dissolved, Nazism and fascism—which transformed the decision on bare life into the supreme political principle—will remain stubbornly with us.34 The fundamental problem or danger with this, however, is that in focusing on bare life (zoē), politics (implicitly) strips individuals of the juridical-political protections afforded them as part of the juridical order, with the consequence that it can do with them as it wishes. Although the Jews in the concentration camps were the clearest and most shocking manifestation of the role that homo sacer plays within Western juridical-political systems, Agamben claims that the contemporary use of this logic is ‘moving into zones increasingly vast and dark, to the point of ultimately coinciding with the biological life itself of citizens. If today there is no longer any one clear figure of the sacred man, it is perhaps because we are all virtually homines sacri.’35

Overcoming Biopolitics: Inoperativity and Destituent-Power ­ There is significant debate in the literature as to whether Agamben offers us the possibility to resist and, indeed, overcome this biopolitical logic.36 Space constraints prevent an engagement with that debate, but

Strategies of Political Resistance  229 my following analysis is guided by the contention that, although his prognosis is certainly damning, there is a political program inherent in his thinking that posits the possibility of political resistance to biopolitics, even if the strategies that he proposes are very peculiar and, indeed, must be understood in a specific manner. In particular, I will suggest that his proposals offer a concrete challenge to the dominant logic of political resistance; a logic that emanates from and is tied to the hierarchy and domination inherent in the juridical model of sovereignty. To understand Agamben’s position, we must first turn to his analysis of Aristotle’s conception of potentiality. In the 1986 lecture ‘On Potentiality,’ Agamben explains that ‘the concept of potentiality has a long history in Western philosophy in which it has occupied a central position at least since Aristotle.’37 Indeed, he maintains that the question of potentiality is really one of agency and, in particular, ‘What do I mean when I say: “I can, I cannot”?’38 To respond, Agamben notes that Aristotle distinguishes between two senses of potentiality: First, ‘generic potentiality’39 describes what is meant ‘when we say, for example, that a child has the potential to know, or that he or she can potentially become the head of State.’40 Alternatively, second, ‘existing potentiality’41 refers to ‘The potentiality … that belongs to someone who, for example, has knowledge or an ability. In this sense, we say of the architect that he or she has the potential to build, of the poet that he or she has the potential to write.’42 Whereas generic potentiality is tied to alteration, insofar as the child ‘must suffer an alteration (a becoming other) through learning,’43 existing potentiality does not require this. Instead, ‘he is … potential, Aristotle says, thanks to a hexis, a “having,” on the basis of which he can also not bring his knowledge into actuality (mē energein) by not making a work, for example.’44 As such, existing potentiality is tied not to change per se but to the negative capacity to not act: ‘the architect is potential insofar as he has the potential to not-build, the poet the potential to not-write poems.’45 Agamben claims that this sense of potentiality, termed ‘existence as potentiality,’46 is key for Aristotle, insofar as it posits the ever-existing possibility ‘not simply to do this or that thing but potential to not-do, potential not to pass into actuality.’47 The fundamental issue here is not that potentiality to act is first, with the potential to not act in some way detracting from that originary positive moment. Rather, potentiality as action exists only because it ‘maintains itself in relation to its own privation, its own sterēsis, its own 48 non-Being.’ ­ To potentially be something is only possible because one can be other than one is now. It depends upon negating the present. ‘This relation constitutes the essence of potentiality. To be potential means: to be one’s own lack, to be in relation to one’s own incapacity.’49 Crucially, ‘Beings that exist in the mode of potentiality are capable of their own impotentiality; and only in this way do they become potential. They can be because they are in relation to their own non-Being.’50

230  Gavin Rae Fundamentally, impotentiality is tied to ‘passivity,’ that is, the ability to not act and in this not acting discover the positive, liberating moment. ‘This is the origin (and the abyss) of human power, which is so violent and limitless with respect to other living beings.’51 Indeed, Agamben claims that impotentiality is a primarily human attribute that ensures that humans are free: ‘To be free is not simply to have the power to do this or that thing, nor is it simply to have the power to refuse to do this or that thing. To be free is … to be capable of one’s own impotentiality, to be in relation to one’s own privation.’52 However, importantly, extolling the virtues of impotentiality is not simply to affirm non-activity. Impotentiality is not the absence of action, potential or otherwise, per se. Rather, Agamben points to the complicated structure between impotentiality, defined as not-being, and potentiality as a possible action, albeit one that depends upon the not-being of impotentiality; it is this that permits the possibility to act (or not) inherent in all potentiality. His point is that potentiality and impotentiality, action and passivity, do not form a binary opposition; potentiality always depends upon impotentiality, insofar as the possibility to act not only requires the possibility to not-do (=impotentiality) what one currently is doing, but also that this possibility to not-act (=impotentiality) is fundamental to every form of potentiality and so must always be ‘present’ throughout any potentiality. Put differently, if the potential to not-do (=impotentiality) did not exist, it would not be possible to do otherwise than what already exists, with the consequence that there would be no ‘potentiality.’ For this reason, ‘potentiality’ does not exhaust impotentiality, nor does it exist at the expense of the non-existence of impotentiality; ‘there is truly potentiality only where the potentiality to not-be does not lag behind actuality but passes fully into it as such.’53 It is only when impotentiality— the capacity to not-act—exists and is maintained in every action that potentiality to do otherwise remains; if not, there is no potential, only what is. Agamben’s analysis of impotentiality is highly abstract, but it does open the way for the development of a particular political strategy of resistance, insofar as it accepts that individuals not only always have the possibility of agency but also that it is impotentiality, or not-doing, that is far more powerful than the dynamic (positive) action inherent in potentiality. Rather than constructing an alternative per se that is then opposed to what currently dominates, the notion of impotentiality points to an act of destruction, albeit one that destructs through a sort of neutering, with such neutering deactivating the logic of dynamic imposition that governs the creation/destruction opposition. Agamben develops this further in the 2014 essay ‘What Is a Destituent Power?’ Here, two concepts are particularly important: ‘inoperativity’ 54 and ‘destituent power.’55 Agamben clarifies that ‘Inoperativity does not mean inertia, but names an operation that deactivates and renders works

Strategies of Political Resistance  231 (of economy, of religion, of language, etc.) inoperative.’56 Crucially, ‘[t]his essential inoperativity of man is not to be understood as the cessation of all activity, but as an activity that consists in making human works and productions inoperative, opening them to a new possible use.’57 In a similar vein to his appeal to impotentiality, inoperativity does not affirm inactivity per se, but a particular type of activity that aims to deactivate the current status, not to ‘reside’ in non-action, but to open up the panorama, the potentiality, for alternative forms of action. In turn, the affirmation of ‘inoperativity’ is tied to the notion of destituent power. It is here that the political intent behind Agamben’s analysis comes most fully to the fore. Western political theory has tended to account for political change through the notion of a constituent power that is ‘a violence that establishes and constitutes the new law’, 58 that is, a power that simply opposes the existing (constituted) law with a new one. In so doing, it conceives of political change in terms of an ongoing violent battle for supremacy between two constituent powers. If, however, as Agamben claims, the goal is to fully realize the impotential inherent in potentiality, with this requiring the affirmation of inoperativity, then the violent activity inherent in the constituent power model of political change cannot be the model depended upon. The action of the constituent power simply conflicts with the ‘passivity’ inherent in impotentiality and inoperativity. As such, Agamben insists on the need for a different form of politics and, by extension, a different form of political action based on ‘something that could be called “destituent power” (potenza destituente).’59 Rather than a power that contrasts one law with another (as in constituent power), the notion of destituent power aims to depose, or render inoperative, existing powers without immediately creating or imposing an alternative. The aim is ‘to return … to the potentiality from which it originates, to exhibit in it the impotentiality that reigns and endures there.’60 Returning this discussion to the exclusion/inclusion structure of Western juridical-political systems, Agamben’s basic point is that because these include what they exclude, strategies of political resistance cannot simply oppose themselves to its logic; their opposition (i.e., exclusion) immediately renders them complicit with the system rejected. A far subtler form of politics is required based not on a struggle for domination, which would simply reiterate the logic of biopolitics, but on the deactivation of the logic of violence, domination, and struggle that underpins the biopolitical logic. How this plays out must, fittingly, be made in each moment; it cannot be prescribed in advance and so is inherently immanent. After all, if Agamben were to prescribe concrete means to achieve it, he would be in danger of foreclosing future political action within predetermined boundaries in a way that would undermine his affirmation of impotentiality. Having proposed an alternative logic of political resistance based on deposing and making inoperative the dominant logic

232  Gavin Rae to open up the impotentiality that defines human being, Agamben subsequently leaves us with an open-­ended orientating challenge: ‘to think a destituent power we have to imagine completely other strategies, whose definition is the task of the coming politics.’61

Irigaray on Phallogocentrism Interestingly, I will now show that Irigaray also affirms a strategy of political resistance based on, what Agamben would call, inoperativity, although she uses a different conceptual apparatus, targets a different opponent, and, indeed, does point to a number of specific tactics to realize this strategy. Whereas Agamben claims that Western thinking and society have been structured from and around the inside/outside division inherent in biopolitics, Irigaray argues that the fundamental division structuring Western thinking is premised on the sexual difference. She does, however, maintain that this difference ‘has been forgotten, overlooked by the Western tradition’62 because ‘in the West, being is always understood as “one” or a “multiple of one”’63 or by ‘hierarchies and subordinations between One and the other, One and others, One and the multiple.’64 Therefore, rather than thinking of the sexual difference in terms of the difference(s) between the sexes, the dominant Western system of representation has made sexual difference ‘a derivation of the problematics of sameness [to be] determined with the project, the projection, the sphere of representation, of the same.’65 Irigaray affirms that it is the masculine that has been historically defined as the One with the feminine being that which is subordinate to the former, with the consequence that ‘[e]verything … has always been written in the masculine form.’66 Although the dominant model of representation professes that it accurately represents reality, Irigaray maintains that it is actually defined by the constitution of a logos, a language obeying rules such as those of self-­identity, of non-­contradiction, etc., which … have been designed to ensnare the totality of the real in the nets of language, and thus to remove it from sensible experience, from the ever in-­fi nite contiguity of daily life.67 Far from accurately describing reality, the dominant Western system of representation does not (aim to) describe or represent being per se. It creates a parallel ‘world’ divorced from the sensible one and structures it from and around the privileging of the masculine perspective, with everything else, including the feminine, defined by and from this originary masculine position ‘[o]r else carried back into mere extrapolation, into the infinity of some capital letter: Sexuality, Difference, Phallus, etc.’68 that acts as a placeholder for the originary point.

Strategies of Political Resistance  233 Even when the fundamental premise does not explicitly affirm a masculine perspective, Irigaray insists that the masculine is simply recuperated in the ‘new’ anchoring points created to ground the system of representation. For example, she notes that ‘[t]he Copernican revolution has yet to have its final effects in the male imaginary,’69 insofar as it removes the immediate human male as the locus of the universe only to re-instantiate ‘him’ as ‘the transcendental (subject)’70 who rises to a ‘perspective that would dominate the totality, to the vantage point of greatest power, [and] cuts himself off from the bedrock, from his empirical relationship with the matrix that he claims to survey.’71 She gives the further example of psychoanalysis’s turn to the unconscious, which relies upon a logic of ‘verticality’ 72 that returns the discussion to a singular point, which, when combined with Irigaray’s claim regarding the dominance of the masculine over the feminine, leads her to conclude that the single foundation is masculine; hence Lacan’s (and Freud’s) valorization of the phallus.73 However, as Irigaray points out, ‘[w]oman has no cause to envy the penis or the phallus.’ 74 This association is simply the clearest and most explicit expression of ‘the failure to establish a sexual identity for both sexes— man, and the race of men, has transformed the male organ into an instrument of power with which to master material power (puissance).’ 75 As a consequence, psychoanalysis reduces woman to the masculine perspective— ‘the clitoris is conceived as a little penis … and the vagina is valued for the “lodging” it offers the male organ’ 76 —and defines her ‘as the necessary complement to the operation of male sexuality, and, more often, as a negative image that provides male sexuality with an unfailingly 77 phallic self-representation.’ ­ Although Irigaray recognizes that this logic distorts ‘man,’78 she has little to say on this, if only because the masculine position is somewhat compensated because he is privileged within the established logic. In contrast, woman is both distorted and degraded. The former because ‘she’ is thought through or from those characteristics or modes of expression attributed to ‘masculinity’79 and, as a consequence, is made to express and define herself through a logic that ‘leaves [her] sex aside.’80 The latter because within that logic she is held to be inferior to ‘man’ and hence reduced to ‘the little structured margins of a dominant ideology, as waste, or excess.’81 Rather than being a full, individual partner, woman is reduced to an objectified appendage of the dominant masculine perspective. She is not then represented on her own terms but is portrayed as a devalued other to the privileged male. Because ‘she’ is other to him, she becomes what he is not, forever linked with mystery, to become, what Irigaray calls, ‘La mysterérique.’82 However, somewhat paradoxically, it is precisely because woman is excluded and distorted in this manner that Irigaray finds a moment of solace. After all, woman’s status as an outsider within the patriarchal

234  Gavin Rae system of representation presents her with the space from that system to do other than demanded by it: Her sex is heterogeneous to this whole economy of representation, but it is capable of interpreting that economy precisely because it has remained ‘outside.’ Because it does not postulate oneness, or sameness, or reproduction, or even representation. Because it remains somewhere else than in that general repetition where it is taken up only as otherness of sameness.83 Woman’s heterogeneous relationship to the system of patriarchal representation ensures that ‘[p]rovided that she does not will to be their equal … she does not enter into a discourse whose systematicity is based on her reduction into sameness.’84 As an ‘excess,’85 woman cannot be fully reduced to the sameness of masculinity or delineated by the signifying patriarchal system. Rather than clear and objective, woman becomes that which ‘cannot be expressed in words.’86 She comes across as ‘fuzzy,’87 ‘beyond all pairs of opposites, all distinctions between active and passive or past and future.’88 With this, woman plays something of the role that homo sacer plays in Agamben’s biopolitical schema; rather than clear- cut, it/she exists in a zone of indistinction between opposites. Of course, this means that when she is conceptualized by the patriarchal signifying regime, her actual fuzziness is distorted and turned into that which she is not; the devalued opposition of the masculine. But again, her excess from that system ensures that she is always a disquieting figure, always pointing to an otherness that cannot be reincorporated into the same. This ambiguous, excessive status is the ‘point’ from which ‘woman’ acts to evade, undermine, or confuse phallogocentrism. With this, Irigaray moves from describing woman’s status within Western systems of representation to prescribing what needs to occur for that system (and, by extension, the way ‘woman’ is represented) to be altered. This, however, first requires a word on a topic that quickly marked the reception of Irigaray’s early critique of patriarchy: the question of essentialism.

The Politics of Jamming In a 1998 debate with Drucilla Cornell, Elizabeth Grosz, and Pheng Cheah, Judith Butler admitted that when she first read Irigaray in the early 1980s, her reaction was one of dismissal: ‘I was not interested in [Irigaray’s] work at all because she seemed to be an essentialist and that was a term we used quite easily then, when we thought we knew what it meant.’89 This assessment is premised on the claim that Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference is constructed around a binary masculine/feminine division, and, crucially, that both are defined by definitive, a priori

Strategies of Political Resistance  235 characteristics, exclusive to each sex. Only by implicitly proceeding in this way was it thought that Irigaray could evaluate whether the Western system of representation accurately represents ‘woman.’ As Toril Moi argues, however, this leaves Irigaray in a problematic situation. After all, on Irigaray’s own terms, ‘[a]ny attempt to formulate a general theory of femininity will be metaphysical.’90 Therefore, ‘having shown that so far femininity has been produced exclusively in relation to the logic of the same,’91 Moi argues that Irigaray ‘falls for the temptation to produce her own positive theory of femininity,’92 which by ‘defin[ing] “woman” is necessarily to essentialize her.’93 For this line of thought, the fundamental problem with Irigaray’s thinking is that, although it claims critical force, it implicitly depends upon a number of the ontological assumptions that seem to reinforce the phallogocentrism to be criticized. Even if Irigaray clearly inverts the privileged term in the binary opposition constitutive of the logic of patriarchy so that it is the feminine, not the masculine, aspect that is affirmed, she continues to think that both terms can be defined, which appears to depend upon each ‘possessing’ definitive characteristics. As such, Irigaray’s critique seems to depend upon and reinforce the same logic of ahistoric essence as the patriarchal regime to be overcome. Indeed, by often parroting the attributes given to ‘woman’ by the system of patriarchal representation—for example, when she defines ‘woman’ as mysterious— Irigaray appears to simply strengthen those representations. As a consequence, her thinking was understood to contribute little to the project of female emancipation. This essentialist reading does, however, miss fundamental aspects of Irigaray’s analysis. As such, I will emphasize and follow the competing reading that insists that Irigaray’s early work on phallogocentrism actually entails a far more complicated, twisted, and circumvent approach to the issue, where, rather than simply attributing an alternative conception of essence to woman and affirming that as the ‘true’ nature of woman over the ‘false’ one found in phallogocentrism, she does something far more nuanced. After all, as Irigaray puts it, the tradition cannot simply be approached head on, nor simply within the realm of the philosophical itself. [I]t was necessary to deploy other languages— without forgetting their own debt to philosophical language—and even to accept the condition of silence, of aphasia as a symptom— historico-hysterical, hysterico-historical— so that something of the feminine as the limit of the philosophical might finally be heard.94 So, instead of simply affirming a fundamental rupture from the dominant patriarchal system of representation— an affirmation that would establish a binary opposition between patriarchy and a privileged alternative that would, inadvertently, re-instantiate the logic of binary oppositions

236  Gavin Rae that structures the logic of patriarchy95 —Irigaray can be understood to be making the bolder claim that ‘[o]ne cannot alter symbolic meaning by fiat, one cannot simply step outside phallogocentrism, simply reverse the symbolism or just make strident or repetitive claims that women are in fact rational.’96 Thought is embedded within and conditioned by its historical situation, with which it must contend. Any attempt to simply leave that tradition behind will most likely merely continue to implicitly affirm its premises, not least by implicitly establishing a binary opposition between ‘phallogocentrism’ and ‘post-phallogocentrism.’ Overcoming phallogocentrism has then to depend upon a far more sophisticated transitional model of change that occurs from within and passes through the parameters of that to be overcome. For this reason, Irigaray explains that she works ‘to go back through the masculine imaginary, to interpret the way it has reduced [woman] to silence, to muteness or mimicry [of masculinity], … from that starting-point and at the same time, to (re) discover a possible space for the feminine imaginary.’97 Furthermore, her defenders point out that the early essentialist reading of her work was underpinned by a problematic literal hermeneutical strategy. Not only were Irigaray’s descriptions of ‘woman’ taken as representing her actual views as opposed to those of phallogocentrism, but, by insisting that her statements could only be interpreted in a unitary fashion, her critics were, somewhat ironically, charged with subjecting her thought to a masculinist logic that valued literality and a single answer. In other words, whereas her critics charged Irigaray with continuing to depend upon the logic of patriarchy, her defenders turned that criticism against her critics to argue that they arrived at this conclusion only because they themselves were the ones who were locked within the logic of patriarchy and, as a consequence, interpreted her comments in accordance with phallogocentrism’s dependence on literality and a unitary truth. However, as Ping Xu points out, this literal, essentialist reading misses fundamental aspects of Irigaray’s early work, such as her affirmation of ‘mimicry.’98 Once these are taken into account, we see that, rather than simply affirming the logic of patriarchy, Irigaray merely temporarily adopts the language of the feminine as outlined in the phallocentric tradition ‘to exercise a resistance from within [that] discourse’,99 one that brings attention to the absurdity of that discourse, all the while showing the absence of any justification for it. Irigaray’s aim then is not so much to simply step away from the logic of patriarchy to an alternative ‘truth,’ but to ‘[t]urn everything upside down, inside out, back to front’100 as a means of ‘jamming the theoretical machine.’101 In a similar vein to Agamben’s critique of political resistance based on the notion of the constituent power, Irigaray notes that merely affirming another truth-system opposed to the patriarchal one would simply re-instantiate the logic of domination inherent in phallogocentrism. Only by passing through the patriarchal logic in a

Strategies of Political Resistance  237 particular way, using its rules, terms, and logic, can we confuse that logic to deactivate it. Repeating its tropes does not, however, mean that they are simply affirmed, but entails or can entail that we are, in a sense, playing with them by ensuring that the repetition is slightly ‘off’: The ‘subject’ sidles up to the truth, squints at it, obliquely, in an attempt to gain possession of what truth can no longer say. Dispersing, piercing those metaphors—particularly the photological ones— which have constituted truth by the premises of Western philosophy: virgin, dumb, and veiled in her nakedness, her vision still naively ‘natural,’ her viewpoint still resolutely blind and unsuspecting of what may lie beneath the blindness.102 Instead of simply abandoning the identity imposed on women by the phallogocentric system, Irigaray adopts it to pass through it to an alternative where the sexual difference is properly thought and respected. As noted, her overarching aim is to defuse the hierarchy inherent in phallogocentrism, with this political strategy sharing similarities with Agamben’s affirmation of inoperativity. However, whereas Agamben leaves open the particular tactics and activities that will deactivate biopolitics to inaugurate the coming politics, Irigaray does identify a number of political actions that can be employed to defuse phallogocentrism. In particular, three strategies can be gleaned from her early writings, although to be clear, these are by no means meant to be exhaustive. First, rather than appeal to formal logic to expose the flaws within the patriarchal model— a logic that depends upon a singular truth reached by a linear path and so returns us to the foundationalism and linearity inherent in that model— Irigaray insists on the need to use an alternative model of representation based around ‘riddles, allusions, hints, parables’103 and ‘curl(s), helix(es), diagonal(s), spiral(s), roll(s), twirl(s), revolution(s), pirouette(s).’104 The aim is to pluralize and add heterogeneity to our understanding so that rather than reduce the complexities of sexual difference to the unitary response demanded of and structuring phallogocentrism, the actual multidimensionality of sexual difference, including its ambiguities, is recognized and respected. Second, as noted, Irigaray appeals ‘to an initial phase … the one historically assigned to the feminine: that of mimicry.’105 She recognizes, however, that this can take two forms: ‘mimesis as production,’106 which she associates with the spontaneous production of music, and ‘mimesis … already caught up in a process of imitation … and reproduction.’107 Having noted that the latter has been historically dominant and has led ‘woman’ to reproduce herself through the masculine point of reference, Irigaray suggests that it is the first form of mimesis that holds out possibilities for women. Rather than conform to a prior model of action, women must find means to spontaneously mimic the patriarchal

238  Gavin Rae logic in ways that subtly undermine it. This, however, is ‘complex’ because it requires that it be possible to ‘copy anything at all … without appropriating them to oneself, and without adding anything.’108 There is no singular model for this. Irigaray’s own method takes place through an engagement with the philosophical tradition, wherein she undertakes ‘a fling with the philosopher’109 to highlight aspects of his thought that remain out of sight to him. This requires that she appear to affirm his position, all the while holding something back, which requires that she have such an intimate knowledge of that position that it appears to be her own. Only then can she take it to the limit, while continuing to remain divorced from it in the way that mimicry permits and demands.110 This duplicity allows her to make statements, perfectly in line with the logic of the thinker’s position, but which, by coming to it from a different angle, reveal the absurdity of the position to be rejected. So, by affirming the essentialist traits given to women by the patriarchal system, Irigaray is led to statements that strike the reader as simplistic and naïve. Because these statements are perfectly in keeping with the logic of patriarchy historically dominant, the revelation of her supposed naivety also betrays the simplisticity and naivety of the patriarchal system. Crucially, it does so from within the premises of that logic, rather than from an external competing ‘truth,’ and, as such, disarms the logic of domination inherent in phallogocentrism. Third, Irigaray complements these strategies with an exhortation to encounter the ethics of seriousness inherent in phallogocentrism with one orientated around and from laughter. Rather than react with outrage at the attributes given to her— a response that aims to reverse the position affirmed, but which by meeting it head-on merely depends upon and so reiterates the phallogocentric privileging of a logic of domination— woman must learn that the best way to disarm the absurdity of that logic is to laugh at it. This is not to trivialize it but to empty its meaning of content from within.111 In so doing, the aim is not to offer a theory of ‘woman’ or even to annihilate masculinity per se. ‘Its function [is] to cast phallogocentrism, phallocratism, loose from its moorings in order to return the masculine to its own language, leaving open the possibility of a different language. Which means that the masculine would no longer be “everything.”’112 Only once this is achieved and a space for the feminine opened from it can the sexual difference be thought as difference—rather than as the reduction of one sex to another—which, in turn, will allow both sexes to exist through the specificity of their respective sexualities. Irigaray’s early work on phallogocentrism is then far subtler than the early essentialist reading of her thinking recognizes or permits, insofar as she does not simply depend upon an essentialized theory of woman to oppose the one affirmed by phallogocentrism; she intentionally ‘carrie[s] out an inversion of the femininity imposed upon [her] in order to try to

Strategies of Political Resistance  239 define the female corresponding to [her] gender: the in-and-for-itself of [her] female nature.’113 Overcoming the phallogocentric tradition is not achieved, on Irigaray’s telling, by simply affirming an alternative ‘truth’ about ‘woman’; a maneuver that would not only repeat the phallogocentric discourse of power, dominance, and single truth but also raise the question of what justifies one conception over another. Instead, she (temporarily) adopts the premises of phallogocentrism to undermine it from within. The means to achieve this are subtle, complex, and openended, but the overarching aim is to use the coordinates of phallogocentrism against itself as a means of ‘jamming the theoretical machinery’114 supporting it.

Conclusion Although not claiming or aiming to be a definitive exposition of either Agamben’s or Irigaray’s thinking, I have brought them together on the question of political resistance to show that, despite the substantial differences in their overall projects, they both point toward a particularly innovative form of political resistance. Given the complexity and heterogeneity of their respective thinking, I have purposefully adopted a focused hermeneutical strategy with regard to each that limits the analysis to very specific, albeit important, aspects of their thinking. From this, a number of similarities abound. While they disagree on its content, both argue that Western thinking and culture are orientated from a single issue that is structured around a binary opposition: in Agamben’s case, the juridical division between those included and those excluded from legal protection, and in Irigaray’s thinking, the binary opposition inherent in phallogocentrism that privileges masculinity while necessarily devaluing and rejecting femininity. For both thinkers, then, the question of political exclusion looms large— indeed, in a strong sense, it is the issue that subtends and drives both their analyses— although again the focus of that exclusion is defined by their respective descriptions of the dominant logic of Western history. As a consequence, Agamben attends to the figure of homo sacer to identify the role that exclusion (/inclusion) plays within Western juridical systems and, in so doing, points to the possibility that we are all increasingly at risk of being juridically excluded so as to be all the more easily (politically) controlled and manipulated. Irigaray, in contrast, focuses on the exclusion perpetuated against women by the Western model of representation and aims to show how such exclusion is inbuilt and, indeed, fundamental to that model. By placing the question of exclusion at the heart of their respective analyses, both Agamben’s and Irigaray’s thinking are driven by a strong ethical component, even as they depart from one another in terms of how this ethical moment is structured and functions.

240  Gavin Rae I have, however, argued that the aspect of their thinking that is most strikingly similar refers to the strategies of political resistance that each proposes to undermine what they see as the dominant logic structuring Western society and thought: biopolitics in the case of Agamben, and phallogocentrism for Irigaray. Both agree that Western political theory has been structured around a model of change premised on a logic of contestation and domination, wherein one power attempts the forceful usurpation of the other in an endless spiral of violent insurrection and counter-insurrection. Rather than perpetuate this model of change by simply proposing an alternative political end to replace biopolitics/ phallogocentrism, Agamben and Irigaray put forward an alternative form of political resistance based on deactivating the dominant logic from within its own premises. Again, the specifics of their proposals are slightly different; in Agamben’s case the aim is to render inoperative the dominant logic, while Irigaray seeks to jam the patriarchal machine by playing with its representations, but the overall point is remarkably similar. Rather than simply proposing an alternative, competing form of and end for politics, Agamben and Irigaray aim to depose the dominant logic by deactivating it. Instead of this leading immediately to an alternative proposal, this clears a space from which to create a future politics. With this, we see that biopolitical theory and (feminist) poststructuralist theory share a particular and somewhat surprising conception of political resistance, point to an innovative account of political change based not on domination and contestation but on deactivation, and, in so doing, identify a number of the radical and original strategies that (a strand of) poststructuralist thinking proposes to foster political resistance and transformation; strategies that, I would argue, continue to be a rich resource for future political action and thought.

Notes 1 See, for example, Stephen K. White, ‘Poststructuralism and Political Reflection,’ Political Theory, vol. 16, n. 2, 1988, pp. 186–208; Alan Finlayson and Jeremy Valentine (eds.), Politics and Poststructuralism: An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002); Saul Newman, Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought: New Theories of the Political (New York: Routledge, 2009). 2 See, for example, Sarah K. Hansen, ‘Julia Kristeva and the Politics of Life,’ Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, vol. 21, n. 2, 2013, pp.  27–42; Gavin Rae, Critiquing Sovereign Violence: Law, Biopolitics, Bio-juridicalism ­ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019). 3 Michel Foucault (1926–1984) is, within the Anglo-American sphere, normally considered to be a central figure of poststructuralist thinking, while his association with biopolitical theory—very generally, describing the ways in which the body and politics interact— arises from the course he gave at the Collège de France in 1978–1979, translated as The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, edited by

Strategies of Political Resistance  241 Michel Senellart, trans. by Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Interestingly, Julian Bourg (From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought, 2nd edition [Montreal/Kingston: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2017] argues that Foucault’s turn to biopolitics was a consequence of a wider ethical turn within French thinking in the latter half of the twentieth century, a turn that brought to the fore questions of the body that had been downplayed during the linguistic turn that dominated the 1950s and 1960s intellectual scene. Needless to say, the development of biopolitical theory has been both widespread and dramatic. For a contemporary application of Foucault’s biopolitical theory see Miguel de Beistegui, The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 4 Given that this chapter focuses on Irigaray, it is apt that this has been particularly pronounced in relation to feminist strands of poststructuralism. See, for example, Cesare Casarino, ‘Sexual Difference Beyond Life and Death, or, Feminism and the Biopolitical Turn,’ Angelaki: A Journal of Theoretical Humanities, vol. 17, n. 2, 2012, pp.  95–103; Michelle Murphy, Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), esp. pp. 1–24; Jemima Repo, The Biopolitics of Gender (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Catriona Sandilands, ‘Feminism and Biopolitics: A Cyborg Account,’ in The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment, edited by Sherilyn MacGregor (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 229–238. 5 A shorter version of this chapter was presented at the Praxis Research Seminar, Centre for Philosophy, University of Lisbon, Portugal, on 4 February 2020. I thank Ricardo Mendoza- Canales for the invitation and the participants for their helpful and stimulating questions. 6 Ewa Ziarek, ‘Feminine “I Can”: On Possibility and Praxis in Agamben’s Work,’ Theory and Event, vol. 13, n. 1, 2010, DOI: 10.1353/tae.0.0109 (Accessed January 2020). 7 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).

9 Giorgio Agamben, ‘On Potentiality,’ p. 178, in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, edited by and trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 177–184.



242  Gavin Rae periods. Although it has been suggested that there is a cleavage within Irigaray’s thinking between so- called early and late works (see, for example, Alison Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006]), Irigaray herself has rejected such a binary division by identifying three complementary periods to her work: ‘The first a critique, you might say, of the auto-mono- centrism of the western subject; the second, how to define a second subject; and the third phase, how to define a relationship, a philosophy, an ethic, a relationship between two different subjects’ (Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Hirsch, and Gary A. Olson, ‘“Je–Luce Irigaray”: A Meeting with Luce Irigaray,’ trans. Elizabeth Hirsch and Gaëton Brulotte, Hypatia, vol. 10, n. 2, 1995, pp. 93–114 [p. 97]). Without being able to enter into that debate, my hermeneutical strategy in this chapter is guided by Irigaray’s own contention that there is a consistency to her oeuvre, insofar as all her writings are orientated against phallogocentrism—very simply, the systematic privileging of the male perspective— but that she engages with this issue from a variety of perspectives and directions to thereby introduce heterogeneity into the analysis and disrupt the unity that she associates with phallogocentrism. As such, in her early works, roughly prior to 1984’s An Ethics of Sexual Difference (trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993]), Irigaray is primarily but not exclusively concerned with the ‘negative’ project of disrupting or undermining phallogocentrism, while her subsequent works, themselves differentiated, can generally be understood to be proposing different ‘positive’ reconfigurations of the sexual difference so that the difference between the sexes is properly respected. Nevertheless, in this chapter I focus on her early writings, in particular Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985) and This Sex which Is Not One, trans. Catherin Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), while drawing on additional material when necessary to support or develop a point.

Strategies of Political Resistance  243

36 For example, Badiou (Logics of Worlds, p. 559) rejects the notion that Agamben offers a reconstructive political program. In contrast, James Martel (‘The Anarchist Life we are Already Living: Benjamin and Agamben on Bare Life and the Resistance to Sovereignty,’ in Toward a Critique of Violence: Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, edited by Brendan Moran and Carlo Satzani [London: Bloomsbury, 2015], pp.  125–38) and David Pan (‘Against Biopolitics: Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, and Giorgio Agamben on Political Sovereignty and Symbolic Order,’ The German Quarterly, vol. 82, n. 1, 2009, pp. 42–62) accept that there is one but disagree in their assessment of it; Martel affirms it, while Pan rejects it. 38 Ibid. 58 Ibid., p. 70.

244  Gavin Rae

76 Irigaray, This Sex which Is Not One, p. 23.





Strategies of Political Resistance  245 100 Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 142. 102 Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 136. 105 Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 76. 107 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 113 Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, trans. Alison Martin (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 63.

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Notes on Contributors

Emma Ingala is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain. She specializes in poststructuralist thought, political anthropology, feminism, and psychoanalysis, and is a member of the research groups ‘Metaphysics, Critique, and Politics’ and ‘Body, Language, and Power,’ the Institute for Feminist Research at UCM, as well as being the co-editor of the journal LOGOS. Her recent publications include co-editing (with Gavin Rae) the volumes The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (Routledge: 2019) and Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge: 2018), book chapters published by Beauchesne (France), Bloomsbury, and Edinburgh University Press, and numerous articles published in journals including Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, Ideas y Valores, Isegoría, Literature and Religion, and Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society. She has also been an invited Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the University of California, Berkeley, USA. S. K. Keltner is Professor of Philosophy in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at Kennesaw State University, USA, and President of The Southeastern Women’s Studies Association. She has published widely in continental philosophy and social and political theory and is the author of Kristeva: Thresholds (Polity Press: 2011) and the co-editor, with Kelly Oliver, of Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Work of Kristeva (State University of New York Press: 2009). Rosine Kelz holds a D.Phil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford, England. Her first monograph The Non- sovereign Self, Responsibility, and Otherness: Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler and Stanley Cavell on Moral Philosophy and Political Agency was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. She was previously an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Bio-Humanities at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign (2016–2018) and is currently a research associate in the research group ‘Politicizing the Future’ at the Institute for Advanced

248  Notes on Contributors Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, where she focuses on the roles of temporality and futurity in political thought. In addition, she engages with the ethical and socio-political implications of new biotechnologies, and writes on changing notions of the human, the animal, and nature in twentieth- century biology. Most recently she published an article on genome editing animals in Body and Society. Kevin Kennedy  is Lecturer in English at CY Cergy Paris University, France. He specializes in modernism, aesthetics, and literary theory. His publications include Towards an Aesthetic Sovereignty (Academica Press: 2014) and ‘Heterology as Aesthetics: Art and the Affirmation of Impossibility’ (Theory, Culture and Society, 2018). James R. Martel teaches political theory in the department of political science at San Francisco State University, USA. He also works on political theology, anarchist theory, comparative literature, postcolonial and critical race studies, feminist and queer studies, and critical legal studies. He is the author most recently of Unburied Bodies: Subversives Corpses and the Authority of the Dead (Amherst College Press: 2018) and The Misinterpellated Subject (Duke University Press: 2017), and is currently working on a manuscript tentatively entitled Disappointing Vision: Anarchist Prophecy and the Power of Unseeing. Gavin Rae is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He specializes in post-Kantian philosophy, with particular emphasis on socio-political theory and twentieth- century thought. He is the author of Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth- Century Theory (Edinburgh University Press: 2020); Critiquing Sovereign Violence: Law, Biopolitics, Bio-Juridicalism (Edinburgh University Press: 2019); Evil in the Western Philosophical Tradition (Edinburgh University Press: 2019); The Problem of Political Foundations in Carl Schmitt and Emmanuel Levinas (Palgrave Macmillan: 2016); Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze (Palgrave Macmillan: 2014); Realizing Freedom: Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being (Palgrave Macmillan: 2011); and the co- editor (with Emma Ingala) of The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (Routledge: 2019) and Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge: 2018). Hannah Richter  is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Hertfordshire, England. Her work seeks to develop innovative trajectories for post-foundational political theory through links to theories of complexity, systemic relationality, and emergent order, especially the work of Niklas Luhmann. In addition, she works on Italian theories of biopolitics and more recently the rise of Anthropocene discourses and ecological politics. She is the editor of the

Notes on Contributors  249 volume Biopolitics: Race, Gender, Economy (Rowman & Littlefield International: 2018) and her work has been published in the European Journal of Political Theory as well as the European Journal of Social Theory. Alan D. Schrift is F. Wendell Miller Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Grinnell College, USA, where he has taught since 1987 and served as Inaugural Director of the Grinnell College Center for the Humanities (1999–2007). He has served the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) as an Executive Committee Member-atLarge (2014–2017), and as a member of the Committee for the Status of Women (2003–2006, chair 2005–2006), and the Book Selection Advisory Committee (1998–1999). He has also served as Chair of the Program Committee of the North American Nietzsche Society (1998–2004), as a Member of the Program Committee of the American Philosophical Association Central Division (2003, 2006), and on the Program Committee of The Nietzsche Society (1989–1991, Chair 1989–1990). Schrift received his PhD in Philosophy from Purdue University in 1983. He works in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth- century French and German philosophy, with particular interests in Nietzsche and post-1960 French philosophy. In addition to over eighty published articles or book chapters in these areas, he is the author of three monographs: Twentieth-Century French ­ ­Philosophy (Blackwell: 2006), Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism (Routledge: 1995), and Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (Routledge: 1990). He has also edited 17 books, including the 8-volume History of Continental Philosophy (Acumen/University of Chicago Press/Routledge: 2010), The Logic of the Gift (Routledge: 1997), and, most recently, Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings of Jean Wahl (Fordham University Press: 2016). His current work focuses on editing The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, the Stanford University Press translation in 19 volumes of Nietzsche’s Kritische Studienausgabe (ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari). Michael David Székely  is Assistant Professor of Intellectual Heritage at Temple University, USA, where he teaches courses in philosophy and interdisciplinary humanities. His primary research interests are in Aesthetics/Philosophy of the Arts (especially the philosophy of music), Critical and Cultural Theory, and Continental Philosophy, with more particular interests in French poststructuralism (especially Gilles Deleuze and Roland Barthes) and the Frankfurt School (especially Walter Benjamin). He has published articles in such journals as Jazz Perspectives, Social Semiotics, Textual Practice, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Contemporary Aesthetics, Popular Music and Society, Papers of Surrealism, Cultural Logic,

250  Notes on Contributors and the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education, and has presented papers at the American Society for Aesthetics, the Canadian Society for Aesthetics, the American Comparative Literature Association, the International Society for Improvised Music, and the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy. Michael is currently writing a book on poststructuralism and music. He is also a practicing musician and composer, with particular interests in collective improvisation and popular music. Guilel Treiber  is a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Ethics, Social, and Political Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium. He is part of the Research Group of Political Philosophy, Leuven (RIPPLE) and a founding member of the recently established Foucault Circle BE/NL. He has been working on Foucault’s political thought for the last few years as part of his dissertation on the philosophy of political resistance, ‘On the Experience of Ourselves: An Analytics of Transgressive Resistance’ which he is now transforming into a book. More generally, he specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth- century French political thought and has published on issues relating to political philosophy, political resistance, and political agency. Ashley Woodward is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He is a member of the Scottish Centre for Continental Philosophy, the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, and an editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. His research concerns contemporary continental philosophy, especially in the areas of philosophy of art and philosophy of information, and the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-François Lyotard. His publications include Nihilism in Postmodernity: Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo (Davies Group: 2009); Understanding Nietzscheanism (Acumen: 2011); Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition (Edinburgh University Press: 2016) and, edited with Graham Jones, Acinemas: Lyotard’s Philosophy of Film (Edinburgh University Press: 2017).

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Bibliography  255 ———, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). ———, ‘Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,’ in Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 17–39. ———, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004). ———, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). ———, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009). ———, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Butler. Judith, Pheng Cheah, Drucilla Cornella, and Elizabeth Grosz, ‘The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Judith Butler and Drucialla Cornell,’ Diacritics, vol. 28, n. 1, 1998, pp. 19–42. Butler. Judith and Joan W. Scott, ‘Introduction,’ in Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. xiii–xvii. Cage. John, ‘Experimental Music,’ in Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), pp. 7–12. ———, ‘Experimental Music: Doctrine,’ in Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), pp. 13–17. Canivez. André, ‘Le Jury d’agrégation: Le cas de Charles Andler,’ Corpus, revue de philosophie #24/25, 1994, pp. 199–200. Carroll. David, Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida (London: Methuen, 1987). Casarino. Cesare, ‘Sexual Difference Beyond Life and Death, or, Feminism and the Biopolitical Turn,’ Angelaki: A Journal of Theoretical Humanities, vol. 17, n. 2, 2012, pp. 95–103. Cates. Caleb, M. Lane Bruner, and Joseph T. Moss III, ‘Recuperating the Real: New Materialism, Object- Oriented Ontology, and Neo-Lacanian Ontical Cartography,’ Philosophy and Rhetoric, vol. 51, n. 2, 2018, pp. 151–175. Cavarero. Adriana, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, trans. Paul A. Kottman (New York: Routledge, 2000). Challaye. Félicien, Nietzsche (Paris: Mellottée, 1933). Chervel. André, Histoire de l’agrégation: Contribution à l’histoire de la culture scolaire (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 1993). Cochet. Marie-Anne, ‘Nietzsche d’après son plus récent interprète,’ Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 38, 1931, pp.  613–641; vol. 39, 1932, pp. 87–119. Coleman. Ornette, The Empty Foxhole, Blue Note CDP-84224, 1994 (1966). Colloque de Royaumont, Nietzsche: Cahiers de Royaumont (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967). Coole. Diana, and Samantha Frost (eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). ———, ‘Introduction,’ in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edited by Dianan Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 1–43. Corbett. John, ‘Ex Uno Plura: Milford Graves, Evan Parker, and Schizoanalysis of Musical Performance,’ in Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 74–87.

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Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

Index

abjection 210–211, 220 absurdity 236, 238 actuality 184, 197, 229–230 aesthetics 3, 6, 29, 32, 97, 99, 101–105, 111, 114–117, 120, 124 affective 206, 208, 213 Agamben, Giorgio 9, 139, 223–232, 237, 239–243 agrégation 4, 20–28, 30–33 alienation 147, 149, 212 Althusser, Louis 5, 54–56, 60–62, 65–67, 70–71, 73–76 Arendt, Hannah 166, 176, 178, 219, 222–223 art 6, 8, 20–21, 25, 99–107, 109–116, 119, 124, 135–138, 204–205, 207, 210–211; contemporary 102–103, 116, 118; spatial 110, 113, 118; visual 6, 99–105, 107–115, 117–118, 130 autopoiesis 183–184, 186–188, 194, 200 Barthes, Roland 6, 56–57, 60, 71, 115, 119–123, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134–139 becoming 57, 67–68, 80, 125, 130–131, 160, 162–164, 228–229 being 177–179, 183, 205–206, 210–211, 213, 217–219, 225–227, 229, 232–233, 239, 242 Benjamin, Walter 5, 77–78, 80–95, 180, 243 biopolitics 223–226, 228–229, 231–232, 240–241, 243 body 6–7, 112–113, 119, 122–124, 128–129, 134–137, 143–154, 156, 158–160, 168–171, 178–179, 189–191, 208, 225, 240–241; biological 152; imaginary 7, 144, 147, 151; maternal 208, 210;

of music 124, 137; real 7, 144, 150–154; speaking 151; symbolic 7, 144, 149–150 Butler, Judith 7, 10, 155, 160–169, 171–173, 175–180, 234, 244 Cage, John 121, 133, 135, 138–139 capitalism 8, 59–60, 70, 73–74, 184, 194–198, 200, 209 choirboy 53, 55–57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75 condition of possibility 62–63, 78, 104–106, 164 corporeality 123, 128, 134, 143, 145, 147, 149, 151–155, 157, 159 criminals 54, 62–63 deconstruction 10–11, 35, 37, 51, 82, 84, 86, 91, 94, 112, 114, 116, 118 Deleuze, Gilles 4, 6, 15–16, 19–20, 25–30, 36, 56, 70–71, 99, 136, 138–139, 156, 183–187, 189–192, 194–201; and Felix Guattari 122, 126, 130–131, 137–139, 185, 191, 194–197, 202 democracy 5, 8, 52, 194 Derrida, Jacques 4–6, 9–12, 15–18, 25, 28, 30–32, 36–43, 45, 49–52, 77–95, 99–101, 103–110, 112–118, 124–125, 131–132, 139, 166, 174, 176, 178 Descartes, Rene 23, 24, 25, 31 différance 50–51, 107, 109, 111–112, 117–118 difference 4, 10–11, 17, 19, 27–30, 107–110, 113–115, 126–127, 129, 145, 148, 175, 187–188, 232, 242–243; sexual 9, 149, 155, 223–224, 232, 234, 237–238, 241–244 differend 100–101, 115

278 Index differentiation 175, 188, 208; functional 192, 194, 197–198; material process of 208–209 discourse 15, 17, 28, 30, 39, 41, 63–64, 72, 100, 102–105, 107, 110–113, 117, 148–151, 236; public 4, 35–36 divine 87–90, 92 economy 66–67, 69, 184, 193, 199, 211–212, 231, 234 embodiment 160–161, 163, 165, 167, 169–171, 173, 175, 177, 179–180 emergence 3–4, 15, 39, 42, 46, 48, 210–211, 217 enfolding 183, 185, 191, 199 episteme 17, 39, 41 equality 45–47 events 15, 78, 80, 82–83, 103, 106, 108, 110–111, 121, 123, 161, 163, 166, 173–174, 187–190 exclusion 9, 48–49, 61, 64, 227, 231, 239 existence 38, 41, 49, 51, 67, 161–162, 164, 172–173, 177, 186, 188, 214–215 feel 109, 120–121, 124–127, 134, 183 feminine 179, 232–233, 235–238, 241, 244 Fink, Bruce 154–158 flows 85–86, 93, 122, 124, 126–127, 170, 179, 184, 196, 202; temporal 161, 169–172, 174 force 64, 68–69, 79, 82, 84, 91, 120, 124–128, 137, 191, 194; productive 65, 195 Foucault, Michel 4–5, 9–12, 15–17, 27–29, 35–36, 40–41, 43–45, 49, 51, 53–76, 99–101, 115, 160–162, 176, 191, 225–226 France 10, 15, 20–21, 24–30, 33, 38, 41–42, 49–51, 55, 58–59, 69, 72, 74–75, 240, 242 freedom 46, 59, 166–167 Freud, Sigmund 15, 28, 118, 153, 156, 158, 207–209, 214–216 Funeral Orator 53, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75 genesis 25, 185–186, 189–191 Graves, Milford 128–129, 133, 135, 138–139

Guattari, Felix 120, 122, 124, 126, 130–131, 137–139, 185, 191, 194–198, 202 Habermas, Jürgen 183, 191, 199, 201 harmony 121–122, 136 haunting 5, 77, 79, 82–85, 93, 151 hauntology 5, 79, 91, 93 Heidegger, Martin 15, 17, 20, 27, 30, 105–106, 108, 113, 117, 176, 214–215, 221 history 16, 24–25, 31–32, 37–38, 43–44, 51, 70, 74–76, 78–80, 93–95, 109, 111, 166–167, 210, 244–245; and philosophy of science 24, 32; of philosophy 21–25, 31–32, 54; of reason 16 homo sacer 224, 227–228, 234, 241–243 human beings 57, 87–88, 90, 92, 157, 167, 177 Husserl, Edmund 15, 107–109, 113, 124, 160, 170, 176, 179 identification 133, 145–148, 206 Ideological State Apparatuses 55, 61–62, 64, 66, 70, 74–76 ideology 39, 55, 61, 65–67, 69, 74, 76, 219 images 80, 82, 99–100, 102, 144–153, 157, 159, 211–212 imaginary 144–148, 151–154, 156 impotentiality 9, 224, 229–232 individuals 41, 44, 64, 67, 69, 218, 228, 230 infant 146–147, 153, 164, 172, 208 inoperativity 9, 224, 228, 230–232, 237 institutions 20, 63, 66–67, 192, 194, 209, 211, 216; of democratic politics 191–192 intensities 59, 120, 123–125, 128, 133–134 interruption 108–109, 145, 151, 161, 164–165, 169–170, 174–175 Irigaray, Luce 3, 9, 223–224, 232–245 jouissance 152–153, 156 juridical order 227–228 justice 54, 58, 76, 78–79, 81–82, 84, 86, 88–89, 91–92, 94, 113 Kant, Immanuel 15–17, 23–25, 28–29, 105, 108–109, 113 Kristeva, Julia 3, 8–10, 12, 99, 204–222, 240

Index  279 Lacan, Jacques 5, 7, 51, 115, 143–159, 233, 244 language 6–7, 17, 36–40, 57, 70–71, 100–103, 107, 110–113, 133, 138–139, 143–144, 148–150, 152–157, 176–178, 205–209, 231–232, 235–236, 238 law 58, 78, 81, 83–84, 87, 90–92, 94, 186, 188, 201–202, 224–227, 231; force of 77–78, 81–82, 84–86, 89, 94–95 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 5, 15, 17–18, 30, 56 life 9, 59, 87–88, 91, 93, 146, 164–165, 177–178, 200–201, 222, 224–225, 227–228, 240–241; bare 224–228, 241, 243; political 35, 227–228; psychic 210, 212, 214 linguistics 56, 58, 122–123, 155 loss 18–19, 167, 170, 172–174, 210–212, 215, 218 love 83, 150, 154, 156, 164, 174, 210–211, 217–221 Luhmann, Niklas 8, 183–203 Lyotard, Jean-François 6, 99–118, 124–125, 131, 137–138 machines 65, 196–197 madness 39, 57, 60, 64, 71, 73, 75, 222 Marx, Karl 53–54, 60–61, 69–76, 79, 82, 94, 118, 195, 202 Marxism 5, 53–55, 59–63, 69, 79 masculinity 149, 232–236, 238, 244 materiality 128, 134–135, 146, 154, 186, 190–191, 201, 207–208 matter 40–41, 44, 52, 56, 109, 113, 127–128, 143, 154–155, 189–192 meaning 6–7, 9, 37–39, 42, 45, 105–111, 125, 132, 148, 152–153, 155, 204–213, 216–217, 219; creation of 176, 217–218; psychic life of 8, 204, 212–214, 218 melody 121–122, 169–170 memory 132, 161, 166–171, 217 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 104–107, 117, 124, 128, 138 mind 105–106, 109, 111–114, 121, 126, 128, 170, 178 mirror 52, 104, 114, 116, 118, 146–148, 151, 157; stage 7, 143–145, 147, 155–157 motion 124, 150–151, 191 mourning 8, 161, 164, 170, 172–174, 176, 178, 180

music 6, 119–125, 127, 129–137, 139, 170, 206, 237 mysticism 117, 133, 244 narrative forms 165, 167–168, 171 narrativity 160–161, 163, 165, 167, 169, 171, 173, 175–177, 179 negativity 19, 207–209, 242 new materialisms 3, 6, 11–12, 143, 155 Nietzsche, Friedrich 4, 12, 15–17, 19–20, 25–30, 32–34, 36–38, 40, 49–51, 54, 68, 75–76, 136, 139, 161–162 objectivity 39, 42, 44–47, 52 objects 51, 57–58, 124, 131, 133, 189, 206–208, 211–212, 227–228 opposition 15, 18–19, 28, 37, 62, 144, 207, 231; binary 9, 154, 156, 224, 226–227, 230, 235–236, 239 organism 7, 68, 147, 150, 152–154, 159–160, 170–172, 175 origin 18, 79–80, 87, 91, 93–94, 125, 130, 158, 166, 168, 204, 207 painting 25, 32, 109–113, 116–118, 128, 137 past 7–9, 53, 56, 77–81, 92–93, 161–164, 166–170, 174–178, 204–205, 213, 215–217; personal 7, 112, 161–163, 166–167 patriarchy 3, 233–238 perception 107, 124, 128, 133, 171 personal identity 146, 148 phallogocentrism 223, 232, 235–240, 242 phallus 158, 232–233, 244 phenomena 10, 15, 28, 37, 125, 131, 135, 210–211 phenomenology 10, 15–17, 30, 32, 104, 107, 116–117, 125, 176, 178–180 political: resistance 223–225, 227, 229, 231–233, 235–237, 239–241, 243, 245; sovereign 191, 193, 196, 226–227; strategies 3, 223–224, 237 politics 9, 11–12, 50–51, 76, 78, 101–102, 178–180, 183–185, 193–196, 201–202, 217–218, 223–225, 228, 231–232, 240–241; democratic 8, 184, 191–192; posttruth 36, 44, 48, 50 poststructuralism 3–7, 10–12, 36–37, 41–42, 48–51, 57, 99–101, 103–105, 107, 109, 111, 113, 115,

280 Index 223–224, 240–241; emergence of 3, 15, 20, 25, 28 poststructuralist: epistemology 36, 40; feminist theory 9 potentiality 9, 223–224, 229–231 power 11–12, 19, 38–44, 50, 59–60, 62–63, 65–70, 75–76, 79, 86–87, 109, 176–177, 179–180, 191–192, 194, 212–213, 225–226, 230–231, 239–240; constituent 231, 236; destituent 9, 230–232; educative 87–88, 90; relations 37, 43, 54, 62, 64–65, 67–69 presence 6, 103, 109–111, 116, 118 prison 29, 60, 62–64, 66–67, 73–74, 176 psychoanalysis 104, 107–108, 122–123, 152, 155–160, 178, 204, 207, 210, 213, 220–221 pulsion 6, 119–120, 122, 125, 128–130, 133, 135, 138 punishment 62–64, 161–162 reality 37, 41, 50, 145–147, 149–151, 155, 211, 232 relativism 41, 45–49, 52; epistemological 35–36, 40–41 repetition 10, 15, 19, 27–30, 121, 126, 168, 237 representation 120, 135–137, 209, 211–212, 232, 234–235, 237, 239–240 revolt 8–9, 204–205, 209–210, 212–214, 216–219, 221–222 revolution 8, 61, 72, 204–205, 209, 214, 237, 241 rhythm 6, 80, 120–124, 126–128, 130, 134–135, 139, 206 self 7–8, 145–146, 161–164, 167, 169–171, 173–175, 177, 211, 213; -hood 7, 160, 162–163, 173, 176–177; -reference 187, 200; sense of 162–163, 167, 169, 172 sensation 103, 106–107, 123–124, 137, 186 signification 38–39, 125, 128, 130, 134–135, 206–210, 213, 215, 217–218; musical 133–134 signifiers 7, 17, 38–39, 139, 144, 147–153, 158–159, 190 signs 6, 10, 15, 18, 28, 30, 38–39, 57–58, 88, 138–139, 190, 192

singularity 129, 136, 163, 190–191 social evolution 62, 191, 193, 195, 198 societies of control 192–193, 200–201 sovereignty 173, 225–227, 241, 243; juridical model of 225–226, 229 spectacle 8, 204, 211–213, 220 specters 79, 82–84, 94 speech 38–39, 65, 110, 113, 132, 136, 157, 204 Spinoza, Baruch 15, 23, 25, 28 structuralism 4–6, 10, 15, 29, 53–58, 60, 62, 69, 71–72, 103–104, 107, 125 structuralists 10, 17, 55, 57–58, 103, 120, 136 struggle 5, 54–55, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66–69, 72, 231 students 22–25, 27, 31, 33, 59, 73, 148 subject 11, 16, 87–89, 145–150, 152, 155–157, 160–162, 174, 190–192, 205–211, 213–214, 217–218, 225, 227–228, 242–244; modern 210, 212; moral 161–162; political 228; transcendental 17, 207 subjectivity 11–12, 43, 46, 120, 145, 205–210, 212–214, 218 surface 83, 147, 149–150, 189–190, 198 symbolic order 143–144, 150, 155, 243 synthesis 53–54, 106, 108, 113, 207 system 39, 41, 44, 57–58, 62, 67, 105, 107, 148, 187–189, 231, 234; differentiated 183, 198, 202 temporality 108, 113, 131, 133–135, 160–161, 164, 168, 170, 172, 177, 214–217 thetic 207–209 threshold 128–129, 132, 134–135, 207, 219, 225, 227 time 5, 18–19, 27, 58, 63, 77–83, 89–91, 93–94, 100–101, 108–109, 126–128, 130–131, 136–139, 164, 167–172, 177–178, 180, 214–215, 217, 221; aesthetic 109; awareness 171, 177; Freudian 214–215; Heideggerian 215; -lessness 170, 172, 215; linear 167, 178–179, 214–215, 217; lived 161, 167, 172; non-pulsed 126–127; normal 172; pulsed 126 totality 125, 232–233

Index  281 transcendental 38–39, 104, 106–107 transformation 4, 12, 36, 72, 78, 173, 175, 183 trauma 8, 151, 161, 169–170, 173–174 truth 4, 17–18, 35–52, 54, 82–85, 92, 105–106, 108, 236–239; post-, 4, 35–36, 44–46, 48–52; value of 18, 37–38, 40, 49

violence 65–67, 81, 84, 87, 91, 95, 164–165, 176–178, 180, 231; critique of 77, 81, 94–95, 243; divine 81, 83, 85–90; mythic 84, 87, 91 Wahl, Jean 16, 24, 26–27, 29–30, 33–34 woman 9, 11, 149, 155, 218–219, 224, 233–239, 242–245