Towards an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm: Animal Politics

Criticism

Volume 59 | Issue 1 Article 11

2018 Towards an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm: Animal Politics, Metamodelization, and the Pragmatics of Mutual Inclusion Colin Gardner University of California, Santa Barbara, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism

Recommended Citation Gardner, Colin (2018) "Towards an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm: Animal Politics, Metamodelization, and the Pragmatics of Mutual Inclusion," Criticism: Vol. 59 : Iss. 1 , Article 11. Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol59/iss1/11 TOWARDS AN A fascinating by-product of recent interest in vitalist philoso- ETHICO-AESTHETIC phies of becoming—particularly PARADIGM: in the area of affect theory—has ANIMAL POLITICS, been the import of the works of METAMOD English anthropologist–cyberneti- ELIZATION, AND cist Gregory Bateson, in particular his seminal 1972 book Steps to an THE PRAGMATICS Ecology of Mind. Bateson broke OF MUTUAL down ecology into a series of three INCLUSION areas: the material (ecology, bio- Colin Gardner physical); the social (cultural and human); and the perceptual, which treats the mind as an interactive sys- What Animals Teach Us about tem characterized by an exchange Politics by Brian Massumi. of information: “Difference that Durham, NC: Duke University makes a difference,” as he put Press, 2014. Pp. 152. $79.95 cloth, it. Bateson argued for the innate $22.95 paper. interconnection and interpenetra- tion of the three ecologies to the point of always deterritorializating them towards an infinite outside that guarantees their difference and becoming. More importantly, this is also a de-hierarchized sys- tem, where humans are given no more preference than nonhumans or material objects, and neither is raised above the worlding capa- bilities of nature. In this sense, geo- morphism, anthropomorphism, and biomorphism are equally embedded, with the aesthetic acting as a vital catalyst. Bateson’s project has a clear connection to recent explorations in ecosophical aesthetics, in particular the ground- breaking work of Félix Guattari. In Chaosmosis (1992, English 1995), The Three Ecologies (1989, English 2000), and What Is Ecosophy? (2013,

English 2018) Guattari developed a philosophy (in Baruch Spinoza’s processual philosophy of the eco- sense) “to be Filled in according to logical through the use of asignify- Appetite” (38). Massumi fills out ing components that think beyond the second half of the book with the conventional split between sub- three supplementary essays that ject and object, human and non- apply Bateson’s ludic principles to human, subjectivities and world, (a) writing, where, according to transforming the ecological into Deleuze and Guattari, the human a machinic, decentered ethico- “becomes-animal” most intently aesthetic paradigm, a subjectivity (specifically through the role of without a subject. the “anomalous” in Franz Kafka’s Enter Brian Massumi’s What Metamorphosis [1915] and Herman Animals Teach Us about Politics Melville’s Moby Dick [1851]); (b) the (2014), which also draws heav- zoological reduction of the animal ily on Bateson but in this case one to an object of spectatorship (via a of his more underutilized essays, constructed zone of indifference), “A Theory of Play and Fantasy” and the concomitant need for a (1972).1 Wittily written and rich mutual inclusion of the animal and in philosophical scope (in addition the human via an enactive, sym- to Bateson, Deleuze, and Guattari, pathetic gesture of double deter- the work encompasses Henri ritorialization (producing a zone Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, of indiscernibility of difference); Giorgio Agamben and Raymond and (c), lest one fall into abhor- Ruyer), Massumi has structured rent speciesism and anthropomor- his book as a form of practical phism, “Six Theses on the Animal user’s manual geared towards a to be Avoided” (91). Massumi’s greater, creative vitalism of life (in main objective in the supplements Friedrich Nietzsche’s sense of “that is to open a gap between Bateson’s dark, driving power that insatiably original theory of animal play and thirsts for itself”).2 The book’s title the affirmative politics that might essay is a relatively short reflection flow from it, whereby “[o]nly an on animal play as the staging of a enactive ecology of a diversity of metacommunicative paradox, an animal practices, in a creative ten- expression of difference and sin- sion of differential mutual inclu- gularity on one hand and, through sion, can begin to do the trick” (89, vitality affect, mutual inclusion and his emphasis). transindividuality on the other. So what does Bateson’s theory of These open-ended, fluid ludic ges- play consist of, and how does it force tures are followed by a series of us to rethink the very nature of fourteen propositions that act as a instinct and, by extension, politics? preliminary sketch for a practical Firstly, as Massumi points out, we ON WHAT ANIMALS TEACH US 167 must rethink the human as imma- in for the suspended analogue: nent to animality, for “[e]xpress- real combat. “In a single gesture,” ing the singular belonging of the argues Massumi, “two individuals human to the animal continuum are swept up together and move in has political implications, as do all tandem to a register of existence questions of belonging” (3). This where what matters is no longer entails moving beyond anthropo- what one does, but what one does morphism, not just in relation to stands-for” (5). animals, but also to ourselves as This level of abstraction is game’s standing apart from other animals, “-esqueness,” its metacommuni- “our inveterate vanity regarding cative level that self-reflexively our assumed species identity, based mobilizes the possible, a situation on the specious grounds of our (or in Deleuze and Guattari’s ter- sole proprietorship of language, minology, a people) to come as vital thought, and creativity” (3). In this gesture. In this sense, metacom- sense, Massumi’s project has obvi- munication precedes its denotative ous Spinozist roots, attempting to communication, for the latter needs construct an animal politics and the prehuman level as a precondi- carry it to the limit of what it can tion for language: “Animal play do by forging new rhizomic con- creates the conditions for language. nections with other bodies through Its metacommunicative action a combination of sympathy and builds the evolutionary foundation creativity. In this respect, the proj- for the metalinguistic functions ect begins and ends in play. that will be the hallmark of human For Bateson, animal play revolves language, and which distinguish it around the reciprocal imbrication from a simple code” (8). As Bateson of differencings through mutual himself ludically puts it, “These inclusion in a process of contin- actions in which we now engage do ual variation. Massumi illustrates not denote what those actions for this through an analysis of a play which they stand would denote.”3 In fight between wolf cubs, which is this sense, the ludic gesture meta- similar to (through abstraction) its communicates: it comments on analogue, actual combat, whereby what it’s doing as it does it—“I’m “[e]ach ludic gesture envelops a not biting, I’m nipping”—thereby difference in a display of simi- opening the analogical gap, but at larity” (4). Similar to, but not the the same time the gesture’s abstrac- Same. In short, the ludic gesture tion puts into play a conditional stages a paradox whereby a wolf difference. Combat is also present cub bites and at the same time but held in suspense by the stylism says, “This is not a bite, this is not of the play and its ludic logic (not a fight, this is a game,” standing unlike the prerehearsed moves in 168 Colin Gardner professional wrestling). The result attention” (35). By anticipating the is a zone of indiscernibility without partner’s countermoves, point and differences being erased: game and counterpoint generate a mutual combat are performatively fused inclusion that might be dubbed without being confused, their dif- “sympathy” or, alternatively, ferences actively coming together. “primary consciousness” (36). This is another way of saying “Sympathy is the transindivid- that ludic gestures produce tran- ual becoming brought into being sindividual transformation via by intuition’s acting out,” notes a performative act while at the Massumi. “Sympathy is the mode same time retaining their affec- of existence of the included middle” tive force across the ludic divide. (35, his emphasis). As the think- Thus, the power of affect in the ing–doing of life, sympathy thus abstraction is no less profound plays out (and at) the in-between, than that in its analogue: the play but immanently from the inside, bite can induce just as much fear not from an outside overview (like as its combat equivalent. What is cognition). In other words, this is important here, however, is what not a dialectical move but rather Massumi calls “the included mid- a genealogical one, in Nietzsche’s dle” (35). When play and combat sense of unearthing the origins of come together, their union creates bodily forces. a third dimension—the included Ultimately, and this is per- middle of their mutual influence. haps Massumi’s key point and However, animals and humans what brings him most clearly react differently to this mutual into alignment with Guattari’s interface. While humans experi- ecosophy, is that what animals ence paradox as a breakdown of the teach us about politics is the phil- capacity to think—which causes osophical equivalent of play’s agitation and, in extreme cases, metacommunication—namely, paranoia—animals are activated by metamodelization. According to it: in play the animal actively and Guattari, metamodelization reori- effectively affirms paradox, rais- ents theoretical activity by taking ing its actions to a metacommuni- into account the diversity and inter- cative level where it prepares itself connectedness of modeling systems for the rigors of combat by having themselves. It is by its very nature rehearsed the moves in advance. transindividual: “I have proposed So how might this be a lesson in the concept of ontological inten- politics? Because the ludic presup- sity. It implies an ethico-aesthetic poses collaboration or, as Massumi engagement with the enunciative argues, “The ludic gesture is impo- assemblage, both in actual and vir- tent unless it captures the other’s tual registers. But another element ON WHAT ANIMALS TEACH US 169 of the metamodelisation proposed and Art History. He is the author of here resides in the collective char- critical studies on Joseph Losey and Karel 4 Reisz for Manchester University Press and acter of machinic multiplicities.” Beckett, Deleuze and the Televisual In short, metamodelization privi- Event: Peephole Art (2012) for Palgrave leges the primacy of the supernor- Macmillan. He is currently coeditor of two anthologies with Professor Patricia mal tendency in animal life so that, MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University): as Massumi concludes, Deleuze and the Animal (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and Ecosophical What we learn from animals Aesthetics (Bloomsbury, 2018). is the possibility of construct- ing what Guattari calls an NOTES ethico-aesthetic paradigm of natural politics (as opposed to 1. Gregory Bateson, “A Theory of Play and Fantasy,” in Steps to an Ecology of a politics of nature). The idea Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago of natural politics has been Press, 1972), 177–93. well and truly debunked 2. Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses by critical thinking over and Disadvantages of History for the last century. Now it is Life,” in Untimely Meditations, trans. R[eginald] J[ohn] Hollingdale, ed. time to relaunch it, well and Daniel Breazeale, Cambridge Texts in -esquely—marshaling all the the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: powers that the false nature Cambridge University Press, 1983), provides.” (38, his emphasis) 57–124, quotation on 60. 3. Bateson, “Theory of Play and Fantasy,” 180 (his emphasis). Colin Gardner is Professor of Critical Theory and Integrative Studies at University 4. Félix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico- of California, Santa Barbara, where he aesthetic Paradigm, trans. Paul Bains teaches in the departments of Art, Film & and Julian Pefanis (Bloomington, IN: Media Studies, Comparative Literature, Indiana University Press, 1992), 29.