The singular and the specific Recent

Peter Hallward

Not so long ago, theoretical insight was usually It should be obvious, however, that the mere defended in terms of its universal inclusiveness or insistence on particularity (on the ʻthis-nessʼ of things) powers of generalization. It used to be that any theory is unable to resolve any theoretical question what- worth the name – a theory of evolution or class conflict, soever. Hegelʼs famous analysis of the insufficiency a theory of the unconscious or of signification – shared of sense certainty is as conclusive on this point as something of the ambition and scope associated with is Lévi-Straussʼs well-known retort to Sartre, regard- the theories that marked the scientific revolution of ing the endless divisibility of any given moment or the seventeenth century. Today, by contrast, perhaps event.1 Any particularity can be broken down into an the most striking characteristic of many theoretical innumerable succession of constituent particularities, initiatives in the humanities is their equation of herme- or integrated into ever larger planes of intelligibility neutic legitimacy with an almost paranoid sensitivity and coherence: personal, temporal, semantic, biologi- to the specific or unique. Contemporary theoretical cal, cosmological… Radical nominalism is no more insight is couched in terms of adequation to the radic- sustainable a theory than Leibnizʼs hypothesis, in ally particular. Recent keywords include ʻcontextʼ, the face of Zenoʼs ancient paradoxes, of an actually ʻsituationʼ, ʻdifferenceʼ, ʻsubject positionʼ, ʻpluralismʼ, infinite division of things. Taken together, Leibniz and ʻpragmatismʼ, ʻaffiliationʼ, and a whole slew of terms Hegel confirm that the simple notion of the ʻparticularʼ affords no stable position between the infinitely small drawn from a composite of cultural geography and and the infinitely large. cartography – mappings, itineraries, borders, traject- The recently contested utility of postmodern theo- ories. If it is not uncommon, today, to hear muted calls ries provides exemplary corroboration of this point for the recognition of some sort of ʻuniversalʼ register – a point worth making with some insistence. From or domain, this universality is generally identified with the start, the story of postmodern theory is a narra- the medium required for the recognition of the greatest tive driven by pursuit of the particular and contingent possible diversity of particularities. as opposed to the universal and the necessary. Post- The more or less unquestioned assumption in much modernism is precisely a theory of pure particularity recent cultural theory or analysis is that what qualifies or radical fragmentation. It embraces the ʻset of cul- as specific is essentially a matter of context and scale. tural projects united by a self-proclaimed commitment The ʻspecificʼ seems to be what you get when you to heterogeneity, fragmentation and differenceʼ.2 From narrow the scope of an investigation to the apparently the supposed subversion of universals and the asserted irreducible component units of a problem. One of the contingency of identities, the postmodern derives a most consistent forms of reproach or counter-argument properly ʻirreducible pluralismʼ, a ʻplurality without thrown at yesterdayʼs theoretical initiatives (Derrida, normsʼ, a ʻboundless pluralismʼ in which ʻcultures are Lyotard, Jameson…) is that they are indifferent to being pluralised to the degree of total particularisa- particular contextual constraints. They are not ʻsitu- tionʼ.3 As Anthony Appiah writes, ʻa definition of post- atedʼ enough – the assumption being that a fully and modernism follows from the fact that in each domain self-consciously situated theory is almost by definition [its] rejection of [modernist] exclusivity assumes a adequate to the tasks of interpretation. This kind of particular shape, one that reflects the specificities of its argument is regularly made by critics like Said, West, settingʼ.4 Cornel Westʼs description of our ʻpostmodern Spivak, and many others working on issues of gender, politics of cultural differenceʼ pushes all the familiar ethnicity or community. buttons: it moves

6 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) to trash the monolithic and homogeneous in the The recent boom in postcolonial studies is perhaps name of diversity, multiplicity and heterogeneity; to the most obvious sign of the trend. In the wake of reject the abstract, general and universal in light of Edward Saidʼs work, many critics set out from a pre- the concrete, specific and particular; and to histori- occupation with circumstances in which the explicitly cise, contextualise and pluralise by highlighting the contingent, provisional, variable, tentative, shifting ʻsituatedʼ character of theory and agency is unavoid- and changing.5 able (if not enforced). However defined, postcoloniality seems to connote an apparently intrinsic specification The postmodern emphasis on fragmentation was sup- of position. Nothing is more orthodox in the domain of posed to lead, in short, to a newly sensitive attention postcolonial studies than an insistence on the multiple, to ʻcontextʼ, understood as the conditions governing the specific, heterogeneous nature of contexts and subject ʻconstruction of a plurality of subject positionsʼ and positions. But even here, how exactly this theoretical 6 ʻmultiple, specific and heterogeneous ways of lifeʼ. insistence is to be turned into critical practice remains But as a number of critics were quick to realize, a matter of vigorous debate. Some of the most widely things are not quite so simple. Nelly Richard points read versions of postcolonial theory – Homi Bhabhaʼs out that however much postmodern theory stresses most obviously – go some way towards identifying the ʻspecificityʼ and ʻpluralityʼ, particular quandaries of the postcolonial condition with the fact is that no sooner are these differences pos- the more properly universal qualities of articulation or ited and valued than they become subsumed into the ʻenunciationʼ itself, the ʻvicissitudes of the movement metacategory of the ʻundifferentiatedʼ, which means of the signifierʼ in Derridaʼs sense.12 Questions linger that all singularities immediately become indistin- as to how much postcolonial theory remains at least guishable and interchangeable in a new, sophisti- implicitly committed to a discourse so disruptive, so cated economy of ʻsamenessʼ.7 fragmented, so hybrid – so ʻdeterritorializedʼ – as to Not long after the term was first invented, critics deny its constituent elements any real particularity at who used (or attacked) the notion of the postmodern all. The risk is that we are left with an awkward choice warned against a ʻhomogenising pluralismʼ, and listed between fully ʻparticularizedʼ, more or less essentialist the ways in which postmodernity implies ʻcultural accounts of culture and identity, on the one hand, and, “de-differentiation” ʼ.8 As Hans Bertens knows, ʻfrag- on the other, what Fanon called ʻpeople without an mentarization may very well be a symptom of a less anchor, without a horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless 13 clearly visible homogenisation rather than the autono- – angelsʼ. As Aijaz Ahmad observes, mous process that it is often taken to be.ʼ9 Hence the the tendency in cultural criticism is to waver con- ever more insistent calls for a greater attention to stantly between the opposing polarities of cultural context and historical particularity, for ʻan ever more differentialism and cultural hybridity. We have, on complex understanding of difference and “margin- the one hand, so extreme a rhetoric against Reason and Universality, and such finalist ideas of cul- ality”ʼ as located in a ʻmultiplicity of contextsʼ.10 If the tural difference that each culture is said to be so heyday of ʻfullyʼ postmodern readings – that is, read- discrete and self-referential, so autonomous in its ings explicitly allied to the postmodernity preached own authority, as to be unavailable for cognition or by Lyotard and Baudrillard – appears by now to have criticism from a space outside itself.… At the other come and gone, it is because such readings have had end of the spectrum, we have so vacuous a notion real trouble meeting the challenge posed by this call of cultural hybridity as to replace all historicity with to particularization. Pure contingency, incommensur- mere contingency; to lose all sense of specificity in favour of the hyper-reality of an eternal and global- ability or fragmentation do not lend themselves to ized present.14 anything but an ad hoc specification. In general, however, what has guided the move to What sort of conception of the specific can offer a a position ʻbeyond postmodernismʼ is simply a still viable path between these two extremes? How are we more emphatic insistence on the particular, communal, to answer Peter Dewsʼs ʻplea for a style of thinking situated, embedded, embodied, and so on.11 The sup- which would be bold enough to offer interpretation remely theoretical bias of what might be called ʻhigh of the world expansive enough to frame all specific postmodernismʼ has, in critical practice, converged contexts of meaning, but [which] would at the same almost to the point of indistinction with what was time inscribe within itself the cautionary distance of once the explicitly anti-theoretical bias of empiricism, a critical reflection on its own proceduresʼ?15 pragmatism and conventional historiography (ʻwhat One way of approaching the question is to ask really happenedʼ) – the two fused precisely as a theory whether the fragmented plurality of subject positions of the particular and the contingent. are to be conceived as so many perspectives defined

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 7 in some sense through their relations with each other, importantly, it becomes possible to group together, as or rather as the singular derivation of one absolute, so many (almost incomparable) forms of a singular self-differing force – fragments, that is, of a single conception of individuation: various mysticisms (Zen, immanent unity, without constituent relations among Sufism, Ishrâq, Saint John of the Cross, Mallarmé, themselves. Is our postmodern heterogeneity the space Blanchot, Bataille), some forms of monotheism (Islam of a specific plurality, or of what, after Spinoza, Deleuze in particular), certain rationalisms (Spinoza, Leibniz), would call one self-modifying substance, one singular- political doctrines of absolute sovereignty (Bossuet, Le ity–multiplicity in which ʻeverything divides, but into Bret, Rousseau, Schmitt), some Marxist-Leninisms, itselfʼ?16 The alternatives are poles apart, but often and some theories of contemporary global capital- confused. If a specific individual is one which exists ism. The concept of the singular, as distinct from the as part of a relationship to an environment and to other specific, makes it possible to compare and assess the individuals, a singular individual is fundamentally workings of these otherwise incommensurable logics: self-individuating, beyond relationality as such. In the regardless of context, each posits a movement from absence of others, the singular properly creates the specific to singular, and each privileges one unique medium of its own existence (its own expression, in power or force that creates, more or less exclusively, Spinozaʼs sense). The singular is aspecific.17 Much of the medium of its existence and the criteria of its what passes for ʻspecificʼ in recent philosophy and operation – God, reason, the sovereign, the proletariat, literary criticism – most notably in certain fields of the market. Many of the most influential of recent French philosophy – should rather be understood and French thinkers, including Sartre, Deleuze, Levinas, evaluated as singular or singularizing. What is at Baudrillard and Badiou, may be read as contributions stake is our whole conception of individuality and to a similarly singular orientation. relationship, along with the sorts of authority invoked to interpret or transcend relations with others in the The specified broadest sense. Perhaps the most obvious way of thinking about indi- We know that the particularity of a given event viduals is to think of them as individuated by certain or individual cannot be grasped simply by reducing intrinsic, invariant and thus characteristic properties, the scale of inquiry towards the infinitely small, nor innate or acquired, racial or sexual, national or cultural, merely by intensifying the deictic register of analysis. physical or spiritual. The specified defines the realm It is essential, then, to distinguish general modes of of essence, where the demarcation of an individual particularization or individuation. I propose a three- (subject, object or culture) follows from its accordance term typology: singular, specific and specified. These with recognized classifications. The specified, as the modes have nothing to do with the size or scale of the participle suggests, is a result. It is the realm of the particularity in question, and each presumes a distinct passive or the objectified, the realm of what Bourdieu configuration of the universal. Briefly: the specified calls ʻthe substantialist mode of thought.ʼ18 It embraces reduces the universal to the status of the general or the sphere of allegedly inherent instinct as much as of normal; the singular creates its own universe, its entrenched habit: either way, it is ultimately a matter own universal criteria as immanent to its operation; of an almost automatic or unconscious conformity. the specific presupposes an empty, transcendental uni- Whether what is specified is identified as ʻnarrowlyʼ versal as the necessary medium of its open-ended rela- nativist and particularist, or on the contrary as human- tional field. The terms are familiar and the differences ist and universalist, makes little difference here. In involved are easily explained. Some of the compara- both cases, what counts is the conformity of actors to tive groupings and evaluations this typology enables, a presumed nature, and the consequent supervision of however, may be less immediately obvious and perhaps the relative authenticity of this conformity. more useful than the enthusiastic celebrations of pure The discourse of cultural authenticity and historical difference associated with ʻhighʼ postmodernism, on attachment, the Volkgeist elaborated by Herder and the one hand, or the ultimately reactionary assertions German Romanticism and later adopted by French of communal identity associated with some strands counter-revolutionary thinkers and nationalist prophets of cultural studies on the other. It becomes possible, like de Maistre and Barrès, must not be confused with for example, to compare thinkers as different as Mon- a notion of the specific as such. No more than an taigne, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Ricoeur and assumed historical unity or substantial universality, Bourdieu, in terms of their insistence on the essentially the mere celebration of a specified cultural particular- relational or specific nature of human reality. More ity cannot provide adequate ground for emancipatory

8 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) political claims per se. We must remember that it individuate itself only in the midst of societyʼ.23 The was the professed respect for specified cultural (rather specific is itself the relation between universal and than racial) differences which provided the guiding particular understood as subject – that is, this relation logic for initiatives like the apartheid Bantu Education understood as specific to a position or lived from an Act.19 Mere appreciation of the fact that ʻeveryone is interested point of view, however fluid or shifting.24 different and special in their own wayʼ belongs to Specific individuals exist only in their relations to such sophisticated institutions as Sesame Street and other individuals: these relations cannot themselves McDonaldʼs as much as to some recent postcolonial be the product of this specificity, but are its condition theories.20 Inasmuch as ʻthe main interest in life and of possibility. In other words, the specific subject work is to become someone else that you were not maintains a relation that is neither orientated toward in the beginningʼ,21 the first task of a concept of the fundamental consensus (Habermas), nor destined specific is to escape a specified determination – what for dialectical absorption in a third and higher term Burroughs calls ʻthe hopeless dead-end horror of being (Hegel), nor reduced to the status of a contingent just who and where you areʼ.22 construct awaiting imminent deconstruction (Derrida, Bhabha, Spivak). The specific sustains itself as ongoing The specific relation, in the refusal of a definitive specification, on By contrast with the objectifying passivity of the the one hand, or an apocalyptic singularization, on specified, the specific introduces an irreducibly sub- the other. When any cultural ʻidentityʼ ceases to be jective element, the dimension of the practical in configured in a relation that is emancipatory as a Kantʼs sense. The specific as distinct from the specified relation, it can indeed become a prison. The varied is a function of what we do rather than what we are; configuration of nationalism provides paradigmatic it is a matter of how we see, rather than who sees or illustration: the critique of nationalism as a general what is seen, and of what something means, rather concept is less important than an evaluation of its than what it is or commands. For example: a signifier positioned inflection (oppressive or resistant). It is is specific to a signified, but not specified by a referent; not cultural identity or subjectivity in general that are an I is specific to a you, without being specified as a repressive; rather, repressive relations-with others and particular person with particular attributes; a historical with ourselves make them so. account is specific to but not specified by the events The subject, then, is inevitably partial, interested: it relates. Individuals are more specific than specified ʻhe [il] is necessarily for one side or the other; he is if their individuality is primarily maintained through in the thick of the battle, he has adversaries…ʼ25 The certain ways of relating to situations and to other specific subject is not, however, specified by an inter- individuals. They are more specific than singular if est. As Marx knew, we are forever co-implied with our their individuality is conceived not as immediate and own history, made by us in specified circumstances self-constituent but as in some sense ʻevolvingʼ or beyond our control, and even the most ʻdispossessedʼ under way, as part of a wider process of mediation subjects are not determined or silenced by history.26 and diversification. Some such specificity is assumed, We might say that subjects become specific – that is, for instance, albeit in very different ways, by notions become subjects as opposed to objects – to the degree of aesthetic defamiliarization (an emphasis on per- that they actively transcend the specified or objectified. ception as such), (relations of existence To move from the specified to the specific, without before demonstrations of essence), and psychoanalysis yielding to the temptations of the singular: such is the (the development of character or neurosis based less only general goal of a critical theory of the particular on innate disposition than on distinct histories or as such. ʻrelations of desireʼ). To be sure, the equally specified approaches of By definition, a philosophy of the specific can only an exclusive nativism and a vapid humanism have so be a philosophy of the subject. The specific subject, long presented their conflict as one of global signifi- if it exists at all, stands apart from (relative to) the cance that there has sometimes seemed to be no real specified – that is, the objectified. But far from a return alternative position available. Today, however, there are to the singular Cartesian or phenomenological subject, clear signs that some such alternative is emerging with the specific implies a philosophy of the irreducibly new vigour. Important if uneven contributions to such social subject, the subject-with-others. Marxʼs familiar an alternative link, for instance, include the work of insight remains valid: ʻthe human being is in the most Pierre Bourdieu, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Judith Butler, literal sense a political animal …, an animal that can Edward Said, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, to

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 9 mention only a few of the more obvious names. All object together in one force, one creative power that share in the effort to demolish notions of human generates the medium of its existence. behaviour as specified by an intrinsic essence (class, This singular mode of individuation can take many race, gender or nation), so as to privilege the relations forms. The singularity of a creator-god provides the that make different groups specific to each other and to concept with its exemplary incarnation. Likewise, the the situation in which they come to exist. For instance, Big Bang assumed by most contemporary cosmologists Saidʼs long-standing commitment to the Palestinian is a singularity in the strict or technical sense: rather cause makes a point of distinguishing between the than an explosion occurring within an already unfolded automatic adoption of nationalist positions and a no field of time and space, it takes place as an ʻinflationʼ less partisan but far more ʻdistancedʼ argument with creative of its own ongoing space of expansion.29 The the nativist (Zionist) opponent, an argument that tries global market of multinational capital is singular in to balance some degree of territorial sovereignty the sense that it is neither specific to any particular with a genuinely oecumenical state. Butlerʼs militant part of the planet nor constrained by any logic outside critique refuses any kind of specified bodily identity, the immanent criteria of its own operation; it asserts so as to insist on the situated performance of gender. a univocal sphere of exchange value (the sole medium Gilroy eschews a corresponding racial essentialism, of its existence), abstracted from and unlimited by all so as to analyse the political investment of cultural other values – its purely financial criteria are entirely routes across shared, permeable spaces. Again, it is immanent to its operation. Diverse historical examples the implicit distinction of specific from specified that of the concept of the singular might include the one- distinguishes Stuart Hallʼs revaluation of the term ʻeth- beyond-being of Plotinus and Proclus; the God of the nicityʼ from older essentialist versions, which allows Qurʼan, of Suhrawardî, or Ibnʼ Arabî; Buddhaʼs void him to conceive of ʻa society of positionsʼ, ʻcompositeʼ or absolute plenitude [sunyata]; the king of Absolut- yet distinct, relative to each other. ʻWe all speak from ist political theory; Spinozaʼs absolute substance; the a particular place …, without being contained by that internally consistent rationality of the Encyclopédie; positionʼ, and identities are nothing more (nor less) the sovereign of Rousseau or Robespierre; Hegelʼs than ʻthe names we give to the different ways we absolute spirit; the idea of modern art promoted by are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the Mallarmé and Blanchot; the proletariat according to narratives of the past.ʼ27 Lenin and Mao; Heideggerʼs conception of Being.30 Whether these various projects fully succeed is The singular, in each case, is constituent of itself, not my concern here. But what any specific approach expressive of itself, immediate to itself. must eventually address is the question of just what Consider briefly Žižekʼs much discussed rereading it is specific to, and how. For at a certain point of of the Hegelian dialectic. The conventional reading abstraction from the specified, the minimally specific turns, of course, on the ultimate singularity of the risks becoming something qualitatively different Absolute, as realized through ʻthe self-mediation of – something properly singular; that is, one of a kind, the inner Notion, [whereby] all differences are “sub- unique. lated” in advance in so far as they are posited as ideal moments of the Notionʼs mediated identity with itselfʼ. The contemporary resistance to Hegel, then, is The singular easily explained as a ʻfear of “absolute knowledge,” as If a specific individual is one which relates to others, a monster threatening to suppress all particular, con- to itself, and to some kind of environment (symbolic tingent knowledgeʼ. And Žižekʼs alternative? Follow- as much as ʻnaturalʼ), a singular individual is one ing Lacanʼs reading of Athalie, he assuages this fear which transcends all such relations. Singular is pre- in the spectacle of something far more fearsome, a cisely that which does not relate. As the great Sufi reading of Hegel as an ʻeven more radical “monist” metaphysician Ibnʼ Arabî put it: ʻplurality consists than his critics dare to imagine: in the course of the of relations, which are non-existent things. There is dialectical process, difference is not “overcome”, its really nothing except the [one] Essence, [which is] very existence is retroactively cancelled.ʼ The Notion not in relation to anything.ʼ28 The singular ʻsubjectʼ does not come to realize itself as a positive pleni- is that which overcomes the distinction of subject and tude; rather, it exposes the radical ʻimpossibility of object. The singular is without others, and is subject to accordance between knowledge and beingʼ. Žižek thus no criteria external to or transcendent of its operation. flips the conventional reading on its head: the ʻ“One” The singular collapses (specific) subject and (specified) of Hegelʼs “monism” is not the One of an Identity

10 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) encompassing all differences, but rather a paradoxical “One” of radical negativity which forever blocks the fulfilment of any positive identityʼ.31 The point is that Žižekʼs reading, for all its post-deconstructive verve, is no less singular than the more traditional reading; both interpretations of Hegelʼs ʻsubstance becomes subjectʼ conform to the paradigm whereby the singular creates the medium of its own existence – and whether this be conceived as Absolutely full, as pure realization, or as Absolutely void, as pure contradiction, makes no properly specific difference.32 The way in which Žižek argues for ʻthe ultimate identity of the I and the Notionʼ provides a paradigmatic illustration of the singular paradigm as a whole: On the one hand, subject is pure nega- tive universality: an identity-with-it- self which ʻrepelsʼ, makes abstraction of, all its determinate [i.e., specified] content …; yet on the other hand, ʻIʼ is this abstract power of negativity which has come into existence in the very domain of its determinations; which has acquired ʻdeterminate-being.ʼ As such, it is … a vanishing point, the ʻother-of-itselfʼ eluding every deter- mination – in other words, a point of pure singularity. It is precisely this oscillation between abstract-negative universality (abstraction of all determinate content) or self-differentiation: ʻthe difference between the and the vanishing point of pure singularity, this “higher” and the “lower” moment – [here,] between ʻabsolute universality which is also immediately an law and crime, between thought and example – is con- absolute individualisationʼ, that constitutes, accord- ing to Hegel, ʻthe nature of the I as well as of the tained within the “lower” moment itself; is generated Notion.ʼ33 through its self-differentiation, through its negative self-relationship.ʼ34 It should come as no real surprise, There is no more characteristically Žižekian a move incidentally, to find that a similarly singularizing strat- than that singular ʻinversion by means of which the egy (the resolution of apparent binaries into virtual moment which negates the point of departure coincides ʻmonismsʼ: the molar as a mode of the molecular, the with this point of departure brought to its extremeʼ. striated as a mode of the smooth, the reactive as a For instance, merely ʻexternal opposition of particular mode of the active…) informs much of the work of crimes and universal law has to be dissolved in the that most eminent contemporary champion of an infra- “inner” antagonism of crime; what we call “law” is differential univocity, – his notoriously nothing but universalised crime.ʼ Again, borrowing anti-Hegelian thematics, again, makes for no ʻspecificʼ Derridaʼs familiar example, ʻ“truth” as opposed to difference here.35 “mere rhetoric” is nothing but rhetoric brought to As a rule, any fully singular conception of things its extreme, to the point of its self-negation …; the is always ʻequallyʼ singular on both ends of the spec- difference between rhetoric and truth falls within the trum, large and small. What is established through very field of rhetoric…ʼ the singular is unlimited. The singular itself, then, In each of Žižekʼs many illustrations, the specific can be indifferently described as infinitely compressed binary is resolved into a singular self-distinction (singular because punctual, without extension), or as

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 11 infinitely extended (singular because all inclusive, with- This is why the temporal mode proper to the singular out horizon). As Deleuze puts it, ʻthe whole ought to is the future anterior: it have been. belong to a single momentʼ; ʻthe smallest becomes the In most contexts, singularity is a fundamentally equal of the largest once it is not separated from what redemptive outcome. The singular is always immediate it can doʼ.36 And Žižek: ʻthe Whole is always-already to the real (first cause, vital energy, self-sufficient total- part of itself, comprised within its own elements.ʼ37 ity), but the singular as such is never given to us. Our This whole, of course, is no more of a ʻclosed totalityʼ given condition is, variously: sinful, warring, ignorant, than is its ʻsmallestʼ element; the singular must never passionate, superstitious, partial, personal, worldly. be confused with mere uniformity, which it negates The real is immediate, but is given as mediated, at every point. To individuate any one ʻsmallʼ unit as as ʻcovered upʼ, as framed by fantasy and delusion. radically unique (as either ʻidentity-with-itselfʼ or as The creator transcends and precedes creation, whereas pure ʻother-of-itselfʼ) is simultaneously to refer it back, creatures begin as specified, as ʻignorantʼ in Spinozaʼs via some kind of more or less immediate derivation, sense.39 The distinction of specific and specified is to one creative movement, be it Reason (DʼAlembert/ of no importance from a singular perspective. The Spinoza), Vitality (Deleuze/Bergson) or Spirit (Žižek/ singular creature exists as singular only in its becom- Hegel). (It is precisely this ʻmore or lessʼ, of course, ing-singular, and ultimately through what Deleuze that distinguishes Deleuze from Žižek, and Spinoza calls its ʻbecoming-imperceptibleʼ – imperceptible, that from Hegel). For instance: the radical particularity of is, according to specified or given criteria. Spinozaʼs modes, like that of Leibnizʼs monads, refers Any singular conception of individuation, then, directly back to the univocity of their substance and must include as least four components: (a) an idea of cause, as so many ʻdegreesʼ of a divine intensity. A the real, (b) an account of the given, (c) some means singularity in the technical sense of contemporary to dissolve the given, and (d) an affirmation of this physics implies an environment of unqualified (as dissolution as redemptive rather than destructive. If a opposed to relative) chaos. The singularity of any generic concept of the singular is to have any force, one commodity qua commodity implies – according this formal arrangement should apply across otherwise to the prevailing logic of neo-classical economics incommensurable differences of context, thematics – the eventual singularity of the market mechanism and purpose. The singular creates the medium of that commodifies it: the particular ʻonenessʼ of one its own existence; it comes to be in the absence of dollar is a function, ultimately, of the oneness of the relations-with others (i.e. beyond the given); it oper- market itself. ates without transcendent criteria. What it lacks is Now the singular is immediate to itself (as self- simply any constituent place for the in-between as affirming or self-negating), but its initial appearing such (as relative to its terms, rather than external to is typically obscured by some kind of interference or or subversive of them). mediation. Its immediacy is perceived, tautologically, At the limit, of course, the purely singular eludes to the degree that it is actively freed of mediation philosophical articulation altogether: an unqualified (social, ideological, psychological, figural), actively singularization results only in what Badiou calls an dis-covered, ʻunfetteredʼ or proclaimed. (Žižek would ʻanti-philosophicalʼ veneration of the Beyond, a mysti- say, following the later Lacan, to the degree that its cal communion with the One beyond being. Proclus subject ʻtraverses the fantasyʼ.) Genuine or appropri- and Wittgenstein could agree that of this One, as ate perception of the singular can only be literal or such, nothing can be said. The ultimately asymptotic real. It is seen for what it is only when the perceiver character of the singular, however, in no way limits its perceives herself as a direct participant in its sin- philosophical inspiration. Becoming-singular has been gularity, its ʻdriveʼ. This is what distinguishes the a fundamental, though far from exclusive, orientation ʻcreativelyʼ singular from the mere universality of for much of from Plato to Spinoza creation itself: while the singular properly creates its and Schelling to Heidegger. What is Spinozaʼs ethics own universe, the conventionally ʻuniversalʼ is rather other than a move from specified to singular, without an empty presumption of the specific. The singular ʻstoppingʼ at the specific? What is Hegelʼs dialectic, if obtains as singular only in the active transcendence of not the singularization of relationality itself – relation- the specific, its ʻsingularisationʼ.38 Which is to say that ality or negativity as creative of its own medium of if, in each case, the singular is posited as original (as existence, in the absence of any ʻtranscendentʼ criteria divine, rational, primordial, essential…), its realization external to its operation? And Kant: as the limited, as singular is (i.e. will be) always an end or result. constituent subjects of knowledge, we are indeed for-

12 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) ever specific to what we perceive, forever at a distance Laruelle provide paradoxical, rigorously idiosyncratic from the unknowably specified-in-itself – but what profiles of a singular ʻen-tant-quʼUnʼ, presented as is Kantʼs practical affirmation of the transcendental ʻwithout doubleʼ or ʻidioticʼ in the etymological sense.44 realm, of our noumenal freedom, if not a singulariz- Henri Corbin devoted his life to the explication of ation of the specific?40 We cannot know the Good the singular orientation of Iranian theosophy. Michel as a phenomenon, as ʻcontentʼ; the only medium for Henryʼs ʻideal phenomenologyʼ posits one oecumen- moral action is thus the form in which it creates its ical life force, where to be alive is to participate in own dimension (i.e. law). No sooner does Kant move the vital, all-inclusive ʻauto-affectionʼ.45 Lyotard posits from the impossibility of a noumenal knowledge to a world governed by pure multiplicity without any the affirmation of a noumenal practice than he turns coordination, a world composed of ʻincommensurable it into the basis for a properly singular, self-grounding differencesʼ or differences without relations between imperative, an ethics in which distinct positions are the differed; the role of philosophy is thus restricted properly interchangeable. to an essentially passive respect for the sublime or Singular philosophies ʻunpresentableʼ experience of this incommensurabil- ity. In various domains, Christian Jambet and Guy The singular-immediate mode of individuation, with Lardreau strive to think, after Lacan, the dimensions its quasi-mystical associations and ʻold-fashionedʼ meta- of the One beyond being, the legacy of Proclus adapted physical assumptions, might seem at first sight to have to a rigorously negative véracité beyond worldly or little relevance to our contemporary preoccupations. phenomenal coherence.46 Jean-Luc Nancy presumes a The most complex and insightful of its philosophical ʻsingular-plural beingʼ, where all individuals are both articulations are no doubt to be found among the early essentially singular and sustained in a pure ʻbeing- Buddhist sutras and the various strands of Neoplaton- withʼ beyond all specification, a communion beyond ism, from Plotinus to Spinoza and Molla Sadrâ. A relations with specific others as such. For Nancy, real fundamentally singular orientation, however, is no community can only be revealed, uncovered, in a less characteristic of the high modernist projects of state of dés-oeuvrement.47 Suspicion of community the later Heidegger (Being beyond beings), Blanchot runs deep in contemporary French philosophy.48 Like (ʻessential solitudeʼ), Bataille (ʻsovereigntyʼ) and Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe explores the dis- Althusser (singular ʻscienceʼ as opposed to ideologies astrous consequences of specifying communal ʻmythsʼ of the specific). This orientation, I would argue, is in Romantic literature, Heideggerʼs philosophy, and one of the most striking continuities across much of Nazi Germany. Lacoue-Labartheʼs subject is originally French philosophy from Bergson to Badiou, regard- less of chronological classifications. Deleuze, who is ek-static or ʻmimeticʼ, where ʻthe essence of mimesis is 49 perhaps the most significant single example of (and not imitation, but production ʻin its broadest senseʼ; influence upon) this more general orientation, sees the this production must be preserved as unlimited or philosophy of his generation as governed primarily self-constituent, without specificity or constraint. by the recognition that ʻthe function of singularity is Politico-aesthetic mediation of mimesis is, according 50 replacing that of universalityʼ.41 For his part, Badiou to Lacoue-Labarthe, the very form of catastrophe. sees in the widespread commitment to a singular Consider the most apparently incommensurable difference without specificity, to a ʻsubject without representatives of the trend: Deleuze, Sartre, Baudril- vis-à-visʼ, ʻa possible regrouping of Lacan, Sartre and lard, Badiou and Levinas. As Levinas writes, after myself, on the one hand, and on the other, of the Plotinus, ʻthe One, which every philosophy would 51 Heideggerians and, in some ways, Deleuze and Lyotard like to express, [is] beyond being.ʼ Such a One cor- … – a somewhat unexpected formal regrouping of the responds here, respectively, to the One as the purely philosophy of these last thirty yearsʼ.42 virtual or intensive (Deleuze); the One of conscious- Consider a few examples. Deleuze himself begins ness, nothingness, or freedom (Sartre); the One as pure with a critique of ʻspecific differenceʼ (Aristotle, simulation, beyond all specifying production-consump- Hegel). His ʻsingularitiesʼ figure as the anonymous, tion (Baudrillard); the One as Event and subtraction asubjective modes or ʻaffectsʼ of a single vital power (Badiou); the One as illeity, altogether Other, or ʻMost or force (difference, desire, puissance); they exist only Highʼ (Levinas). in the absence of all forms of relation, representa- (1) With Deleuze, what is given is specific differ- tion, equivocity, and introspection, in what he calls ʻa ence, the ʻshackles of mediationʼ, subjective interiority, world without othersʼ.43 Clément Rosset and François equivocity, signification, territoriality, desire-as-lack,

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 13 transcendence, Oedipus, the ʻlong errorʼ of represen- mutually exclusive; intersubjective relations are not a tation. The real is a vitalist, self-differing force of sustainable option. It is impossible, in other words, pure creation, absolute intensity or virtuality. The to relate to a néant (a consciousness). And a similar real is one cosmic desire that creates the infinite assumption of essential or primordial conflict, a mutual multiplicity of its objects (or modes). The real coheres exclusion of self and other, holds in the later Critique in a ʻworld without othersʼ; its singular modes or de la raison dialectique.54 The sole possibility of actualizations are no more related ʻtoʼ each other an escape from such conflict or indifference lies in than Leibnizʼs windowless monads. These actualiza- the fragile and ephemeral constitution of a ʻgroup in tions exist as so many ʻdegreesʼ of reality, arranged fusionʼ, a group that comes to be precisely through the along a single, purely quantitative ontological scale. transcendence of its constituentsʼ particular interests The singular nature of this reality is obscured in and relations: in this redemptive ʻpraxis there is no its very actualization in particular situations; fluid, Other, there are only several myselves [il y a des univocal reality tends toward a given or equivocal moi-même]ʼ.55 The problem again arises, therefore, of stasis. The great purpose of Deleuzeʼs philosophy how to maintain, in the absence of relation, the specific is thus to describe the various mechanisms whereby individuality of a consciousness as such. the given can be counter-actualized, deterritorialized (3) Baudrillard promotes one omnipotent though or otherwise realized. One becomes real, naturally, amorphous power of the simulacrum or image, a single precisely by abandoning the equivocal, the territorial, pull of ʻseductionʼ that transcends the production of the relative, mediate, the figural, the significant, the discrete objects and identities. After once reflecting, perceptible, and so on. All of the otherwise incom- masking or suggesting a reality, the sign in our post- patible ʻconceptual personaeʼ that populate Deleuzeʼs modern moment now bears no relation to any ʻexternalʼ work (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Masoch, Proust, Kafka, reality whatsoever. The sign is self-creative, source of Beckett, Bacon, Artaud, the nomad, the schizo, the its own simulacrum.56 Such ʻsimulation is no longer dice-thrower) pursue a similarly singularizing itiner- that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It ary. The obvious problem that arises is how to explain is the generation of models of a real without origin or the individuation of these self-singularizing beings reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes in a wholly deterritorialized space, without recourse the map, nor survives it.ʼ57 The map or model itself to some kind of intrinsic and determining – that is, creates the univocity of a newly ʻone dimensional ultimately specified – essence, thought or Idea, more systemʼ – ʻall secrets, spaces and scenes abolished in or less on the Platonic model. a single dimension of informationʼ.58 Liberated in a (2) So often thought to be at the opposite end of wholly smooth space, movement ʻconcentrates itself the philosophical spectrum from Deleuze and his con- in a single fixed point, in an immobility which is no temporaries, Sartre is of course concerned with the longer that of non-movement, but of a potential ubiq- anguished freedom of the individual consciousness. uity, that of an absolute mobility which, by traversing it The real, here, is the spontaneous, self-constituent ceaselessly and effortlessly, annuls its own spaceʼ. The sovereignty of this consciousness (or praxis): given result is a virtuality without others: as ʻeach individual illusions begin with the alienation of this subjective is condensed in a hyper-potential point, others virtu- freedom in some sort of objectifying identification ally no longer exist [les autres nʼexistent virtuellement (mauvaise foi or practico-inert). Consciousness ʻdeter- plus]ʼ.59 We live in an ʻobsceneʼ immediacy, without mines its existence at each moment …; each moment of criteria for reflection or critique.60 our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihiloʼ.52 (4) Badiou follows Sartre (and Lacan) in pursuit This creation is realized as the anguished assumption of a philosophy of the subject without others, un of freedom, in the absence of all ethical criteria for sujet sans vis-à-vis,61 understood as a ʻsubtractionʼ action.53 Consciousness is freedom as such – that is, from all established knowledges and communal norms. a purely aspecific indetermination or ʻnothingnessʼ, a Badiouʼs subject is a kind of radically self-constituent pure opening onto the world without mediation. By defi- nonconformist. What is given here is the realm of nition, this singular immediacy of consciousness can commerce and communication, the rule of language exist only in a world without others; the other, as con- and opinion, the status quo which aligns particularist ceived in LʼÊtre et le néant, is literally extra-mundane, identity politics as so many positions within global it erupts all at once, as ʻprimary absence of relationʼ, capital;62 Badiouʼs real is a function of unqualified as a ʻdrain-hole [trou de vidange] in the worldʼ. The subjective ʻtruthʼ. Where Baudrillard asserts ʻan object Other as subject and the other as subjected (object) are without subjectʼ, Badiou defends ʻa doctrine of the

14 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) subject without object, of the subject as the vanishing take place. It is as if these thinkers, appalled by the point of a procedure that originates in an eventmental violence of contemporary political conflict, retreat to supplement without purpose or patternʼ.63 An indi- a pre-political ethical realm in which conflict could vidual becomes-subject in its militant fidelity to a not arise at all, a realm in which the very ʻsubstance unique event, itself wholly without objective substance of the I is made of saintlinessʼ.71 There is a precedent – for example, St Paul as the apostle of a Christ for this, I would suggest, in the political philosophy proclaimed risen, Robespierre or Lenin as the subjects of the seventeenth century. of a revolution declared to have ended the ancien régime.64 Subjects remain subject in so far as they Specific alternatives hold true to an event (a cause) in the name of which It should go without saying that in perhaps all other they can act in the interests of all. Badiouʼs truths, respects, the philosophers mentioned here are effect- deployed in a number of different fields (politics, art, ively incompossible. Nevertheless, the fundamental science, love), are more ʻgenericʼ than specific. They adherence to a single orientation, despite such obvious persist in the sovereignty of their self-proclamation, divergences, is striking and suggestive. They all refuse on the model of a mathematical axiom.65 The subject, what I have described as a specific mode of relation like the truth it proclaims, is wholly without other and and mediation, and they all share a comparably self- devoid of external criteria: it is ʻpureʼ, ʻunrelatedʼ, the constituent first principle, a sovereign reality without very form of déliaison.66 others and without external criteria. This is not the (5) Levinas provides what is in a sense a limit case place to hazard an explanation for this convergence for the field in general: his ethical philosophy is built of perspectives. It may be that, as in the decades entirely upon a responsibility for the Other (Autrui), before Absolutism, the ʻspecificʼ wars of position that but this ʻpre-ontologicalʼ responsibility is conceived to mark the years between 1914 and 1945 seemed too be so absolute and so primordial as to transcend any disastrous, too costly, to permit anything other than possible relation or negotiation with the other (with a a singular resolution transcendent of the very idea of specific other). To be responsible is to be created, and position itself. the creature cannot ʻrelateʼ to a creator whose infinite To be sure, recent French thought offers some well- reality lies beyond and prior to the realm of finitude known alternatives to the singular paradigm. Merleau- and ontology itself. Given are: ontology, epistemology, Ponty, Camus, early Lacan, Ricoeur, Bourdieu all sameness, essence, ʻinterestednessʼ, cultural pluralism, insist, in different ways, on the essentially ʻrelationalʼ and the war of ʻallergic egoismsʼ.67 Real, then, are nature of experience, desire or reality. Foucaultʼs work those paradoxical traces of the One beyond Being, or provides an especially suggestive ʻspecificʼ counter- pure infinity: ʻthe idea of Infinity [i.e. of God] (which point to the singularizing logic of his friend Deleuze is not a representation of infinity) sustains activity (with whom he is so often aligned). Against Deleuzeʼs itself.ʼ68 The infinite Other is wholly aspecific, pure own very influential reading of his work,72 Foucault ʻbeyondʼ, and my responsibility for the Other is abso- might be read as moving away from an impossibly lute, immediate and without appeal, without criteria literal or immediate experience of the real ʻlimitʼ or (as ʻhostageʼ, ʻsubstitutionʼ, ʻunconditional obedienceʼ, dehors (madness, death, language-in-itself), toward ʻtraumaʼ, ʻobsessionʼ, ʻpersecutionʼ, etc.). Responsibility the composition of specific histories of how our experi- is a ʻrelation without relationʼ: ʻthe I qua I is absolutely ence has been specified and confined. Foucaultʼs early uniqueʼ, and in my ʻrelation withʼ the Other, ʻthe Other fascination with the limits of experience is less a form remains absolute and absolves itself from the relation of suicidal mysticism than an interest in the limits of which it enters intoʼ. 69 In other words, the alterity of our specification (the pure, ultimately abstract limit of the Other is simultaneously ʻthe alterity of the human that to which we remain, though minimally specified, other [Autrui] and of the Most High [Très Haut]ʼ. I am forever specific). His eventual understanding of phil- responsible for my (singular) neighbour because my osophy as ethical self-fashioning, the ongoing relation neighbour is an immediate reflection of her (equally of self to self and self to other, would thus be less singular) creator: ʻthere is responsibility and a Self the betrayal of an earlier intransigence than the culmi- because the trace of the Infinite … is inscribed in nation of a fully specific programme: the isolation of proximity.ʼ70 Like Lyotard, Nancy and Lacoue-Labar- a subjective experience from all specified conformity, the, Levinas pre-empts all specific conflicts of interest be it disciplinary, humanist or ʻalternativeʼ. Where by assuming a pre-conflictual ethical orientation that Deleuze tries to articulate a field of pure or immedi- ensures their just resolution ʻbeforeʼ they could ever ate difference, a deterritorializing difference whose

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 15 (virtual) relations are external to their (actual) terms, 4. Anthony Appiah, ʻIs the Post- in Postmodernism the Foucault explores the necessarily historical territory Post- in ?ʼ, in Padmini Mongia, ed., Contemporary Postcolonial Theory, Arnold, London, in which people are ʻmade subjectʼ, so as to ask the 1996, p. 58. eventual question: ʻwhat is or is no longer indispen- 5. Cornel West, Keeping Faith, Routledge, London, 1993, sable for the constitution of ourselves as autonomous p. 3. subjects?ʼ73 Foucaultʼs enduring goal is to alter ʻoneʼs 6. Henry Giroux, ʻPostmodernism as Border Pedagogyʼ, in Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon, eds, A Postmodern way of seeing, to modify the horizon of what one Reader, SUNY Press, Albany NY, 1993, pp. 464–5, knowsʼ,74 ʻin order to be other than what we areʼ.75 479. Although Foucault uses different terminology, what he 7. Nelly Richard, ʻPostmodernism and Peripheryʼ [1987], in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader, calls ʻthe critical ontology of ourselvesʼ is very much Harvester, New York, 1993, p. 468. in keeping with the general effort to move from the 8. Charles Russell, Poets, Prophets and Revolutionaries, specified to the specific, without recourse to a singular Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985, p. 239; Scott authority or plenitude: Lash, Sociology of Postmodernism, Routledge, London, 1990, p. ix. The critical ontology of ourselves has to be con- 9. Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern, Routledge, sidered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, not London, 1995, p. 246. even as a permanent body of knowledge that is 10. Françoise Lionnet, Postcolonial Representations, Cor- nell University Press, Ithaca NY, 1995, p. ix. accumulating; it has to be considered as an attitude, 11. Honi Fern Haberʼs Beyond Postmodern Politics: Lyotard, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique Rorty, Foucault (Routledge, London, 1994), is a good of what we are is at one and the same time the example of the trend. historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on 12. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge, Lon- us and an experiment [épreuve] with the possibility don, 1994, p. 24. Like Lyotard or Deleuze, Bhabha con- of going beyond them.76 ceives of ʻdifferenceʼ as pure ʻincommensurabilityʼ or ʻuntranslatabilityʼ (pp. 207, 224); ʻwhat is at issue on the The specific is not something to be attained at some discourse of minorities is the creation of agency through future point of theoretical sophistication, or pending incommensurable (not simply multiple) positionsʼ (p. 231). Rather than relations between distinct cultures, some further restriction of perspective. The specific Bhabhaʼs difference relates to the creative vitality of must not be confused with the merely particular, nor ʻthe arbitrariness of the sign, the indeterminacy of writ- swept away in a singular conflagration. Specificity ing, [and] the splitting of the subject of enunciationʼ (p. is the very medium of our existence, the exclusive, 176). Bhabhaʼs major concept, hybridity, is ʻa difference “within” ʼ (p. 13), a difference without ʻbinary termsʼ (p. indifferent space for our unending work upon our- 14). selves – our interminable awakening and our fragile 13. Frantz Fanon, Les Damnés de la terre, Gallimard, Folio, despecification. Paris, 1991/The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington, Grove Press, New York, 1991 edn, p. 264/218 Notes (translation modified). 14. Aijaz Ahmad, ʻThe Politics of Literary Postcolonialityʼ I would like to thank Simon Gaunt and Peter Osborne [1995], in Mongia, ed., Contemporary Postcolonial for their careful readings of this article. Theory, p. 289. 1. Hegel, ʻSense Certaintyʼ, The Phenomenology of Mind, 15. Peter Dews, The Limits of Disenchantment, Verso, Lon- trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford University Press, Oxford, don, 1995, p. 13; cf. Dews, ʻThe Truth of the Subjectʼ, 1977; pp. 58–66; Claude Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sau- in S. Critchley and P. Dews, eds, Deconstructive Subject- vage, Plon, Agora edn, Paris, 1962/The Savage Mind, ivities, SUNY Press, Albany NY, 1998, p. 166. Weidenfeld & Nicholsen, London, 1966, p. 306/257. 16. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, LʼAnti-Oedipe: 2. Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi, ʻIntroductionʼ, Post- Capitalisme et schizophrénie, Minuit, Paris, 1972/Anti- modernism and Society, Macmillan, London, 1990, pp. Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert 9, 24. This diagnosis of fragmentation is broadly con- Hurley et al., University of Minnesota Press, Minne- sistent regardless of the (often very different) values it is apolis, 1983, p. 91/76. assigned. Cf. Alex Callinicos, ʻReactionary Postmodern- 17. ʻIn-difference with respect to properties is what in- ism?ʼ, ibid., p. 110; Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, Verso, Lon- dividuates and disseminates singularitiesʼ (Giorgio don, 1992, p. 137; Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Agamben, The Coming Community [1990], trans. Discourse of Modernity, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, Michael Hardt, University of Minnesota Press, Minne- 1987, pp. 336–41; Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, apolis, 1993, p. 19). Duke University Press, Durham NC, 1992, p. 14. 18. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason, trans. Randal John- 3. Stephen White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, son et al., Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, 1998, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 11; p. 4. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, University 19. Cf. Adam Kuper, South Africa and the Anthropologists, of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984, p. 122; Agnes Routledge, London, 1987. Heller, ʻExistentialism, Alienation, Postmodernismʼ, in 20. ʻLetʼs Be Friendsʼ, Sesame Street Live, at Madison Andrew Milner, ed., Postmodern Conditions, Berg, New Square Garden, New York, 7–23 February 1997, spon- York, 1990, p. 11. sored by McDonaldʼs.

16 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 21. , Dits et écrits, Gallimard, Paris, 1994, slaveryʼ (Spinoza, Ethics, part IV). Spinozaʼs disciple vol. 4, p. 777. Deleuze concurs: ʻwe are born cut off from our power of 22. William Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded, Grove action or understandingʼ (Deleuze, LʼIdée dʼexpression Press, New York, 1967, p. 151. dans la philosophie de Spinoza, Minuit, Paris, 1968/ 23. , ʻ1857 Introductionʼ, Grundrisse, trans. Mar- Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin tin Nicolaus, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 84. Joughin, Zone, New York, 1990, p. 286/307. ʻ[T]hinking 24. As Laclau points out, the essential task of a contem- is not innate, but must be engendered in thoughtʼ (Dif- porary theory of the subject begins with a ʻredefinition férence et répétition, p. 192/147). of the existing relation between universality and particu- 40. As Žižek rightly points out, Hegel simply goes further larityʼ (Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s), Verso, Lon- in this direction than Kant himself (Žižek, Tarrying with don, 1996, p. vii). Cf. Brian Martine, Individuals and the Negative, Duke University Press, Durham NC, 1993, Individuality, SUNY Press, Albany NY, 1984, pp. xv, 1, pp. 20–21). 75. 41. Gilles Deleuze, ʻUn concept philosophiqueʼ, in Cahiers 25. Michel Foucault, ʻCours de 14 janvier, 1976ʼ, Dits et Confrontations, no. 20, 1989, p. 90. écrits, vol. 3, p. 127. 42. Badiou, ʻLʼEntretien de Bruxellesʼ, Les Temps modernes, 26. ʻI am not the prisoner of History.… The density of His- no. 526, 1990, p. 23. As Levinas notes, ʻthe overcoming tory determines none of my actionsʼ (Frantz Fanon, Peau of the subject–object structure [is] the idée fixe of the noire, masques blancs, Seuil, Paris, 1952, pp. 186–7). whole of contemporary thoughtʼ (ʻMeaning and Senseʼ, 27. Stuart Hall, ʻNew Ethnicitiesʼ [1989], in Stuart Hall: in Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. Adriaan Theodoor Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, Routledge, Lon- Peperzak et al., University of Indiana Press, Bloom- don, 1996, p. 447. ington, 1996, p. 41; cf. Vincent Descombes, Modern 28. Ibnʼ Arabi, Fusus, in Reynold A. Nicholson, Studies in French Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cam- Islamic Mysticism, Cambridge University Press, Cam- bridge, 1980, p. 216). This perspective runs counter to bridge, 1978, p. 152. the general view of recent French theory (here, Lyotard 29. A singularity is ʻa state of infinite curvature of space- and Deleuze) as ʻfavour[ing] the supervention of a mic- time. In a singularity, all places and times are the same. ropolitics which will attend to the local and the specific Hence the big bang did not take place in a preexisting without recourse to some grand programmeʼ (Docherty, space; all space was embroiled in the big bangʼ (Timothy ʻIntroductionʼ, Postmodernism, p. 4). Endorsements of Ferris, The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) such assumptions are too numerous to cite. Report, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997, p. 17). 43. Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, Minuit, Paris, 1969, 30. I provide a much more detailed though still preliminary pp. 355–61. survey of these and other examples in my doctoral dis- 44. See in particular Clement Rosset, Le Réel: Traité du sertation, ʻWriting in the Singular Immediateʼ, Depart- lʼidiotie, Minuit, Paris, 1977; LʼObjet singulier, Minuit, ment of French and African-American Studies, Yale Paris, 1979; François Laruelle, En tant quʼun, Aubier, University, New Haven CT, 1997. Paris, 1992; Principes de la non-philosophie, PUF, Paris, 31. Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do, Verso, 1996. London, 1991, pp. 61, 66, 68, 69. 45. Michel Henry, LʼEssence de la manifestation [1963], 32. Žižek takes his argument to its logical conclusion: the PUF, Paris, 1990; Cʼest moi la vérité, Seuil, Paris, radical implication of Hegelʼs dialectic is not merely the 1996. ʻsublation of the [particular] differenceʼ but ʻthe experi- 46. Guy Lardreau and Christian Jambet, LʼAnge, Grasset, ence of how the difference was always-already sublated; Paris, 1976; Guy Lardreau, La Véracité: Essai of how, in a way, it never effectively existedʼ (p. 62). dʼontologie négative, Verdier, Paris, 1993; Discours 33. Žižek, For They Know Not, p. 47 (referring to Hegelʼs philosophique et discours spirituel, Seuil, Paris, 1985; Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller, Allen & Unwin, Fiction philosophique et science-fiction, Actes Sud, London, 1969, p. 583). Arles, 1988; Christian Jambet, La Logique des orientaux, 34. Žižek, For They Know Not, pp. 32, 41. Seuil, Paris, 1983; La Grande Résurrection dʼAzamuth, 35. See my ʻDeleuze and the Singular Immediateʼ, forth- Verdier, Paris, 1991. coming in Angelaki, vol. 5, no. 2, Summer 2000. 47. Jean-Luc Nancy, LʼÊtre singulier pluriel, Galilée, Paris, 36. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie, PUF, Paris, 1996; Le Sens du monde, Galilée, Paris, 1993; La Com- 1962/Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, munauté désœuvrée, Christian Bourgois, Paris, 1986. Columbia University Press, New York, 1983, p. 81/72; 48. In Blanchotʼs tortured version, real community must Différence et répétition, PUF, Paris, 1968/Difference be experienced through and as ʻthe absence of com- and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, Columbia Univer- munityʼ; through the dissolution of relationships in a sity Press, New York, 1994, p. 55/37. Singular ʻauto- communion-in-death, we must ʻmake the final silence affection [is the] conversion of far and nearʼ (Cinéma resoundʼ (Maurice Blanchot, La Communauté inavou- 2, Lʼimage-temps, Minuit, Paris, 1985/Cinema 2: The able, Minuit, Paris, 1983/The Unavowable Community, Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, trans. Pierre Joris, Station Hill Press, Barrytown NY, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989, p. 1988, pp. 12/3, 38/19. Cf. Todd May, ʻThe Communityʼs 111/83). Absence in Lyotard, Nancy and Lacoue-Labartheʼ, Phil- 37. Žižek, For They Know Not, p. 46. osophy Today, vol. 37, no. 3, Fall 1993. 38. Examples include the alignment of particular wills in 49. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, ʻTypographyʼ, in Typography, Spinozaʼs ʻreasonableʼ polity and Rousseauʼs volonté Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, ed. Christopher Fynsk, générale, and the fusion of particular interests in the Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1989, p. univocity of One proletarian disinterest. 80. 39. In Spinozaʼs terms, we begin our ethical journey as 50. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, La Fiction du politique, the plaything of our passive affects, in ʻimpotence and Christian Bourgois, Paris, 1987; Musica Ficta, Chris-

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 17 tian Bourgois, Paris, 1991. Derrida is the most obvious trans. Philip Beitchman and W.G.J. Niesluchowski, omission from this discussion. Space does not permit Semiotext(e), New York, 1990, pp. 164–6/112–13. an adequate assessment of his position. Suffice it to 61. , Manifeste pour la philosophie, Seuil, say, tentatively, that he straddles in some sense the two Paris, 1989, p. 74. modes of the singular and the specific. On the one hand, 62. Alain Badiou, Conditions, Seuil, Paris, 1992, pp. 218, he posits a range of concepts whose integrity is rigor- 223. ously sovereign, pre-ontological or pre-relative: différ- 63. Baudrillard, LʼAutre par lui-même, pp. 72, 79–80; Alain ance, iterability, supplementarity, the trace, writing, text- Badiou, ʻSaisissement, dessaisie, fidélitéʼ, Les Temps uality, and so on. These concepts are not co-implied modernes, vol. 1, nos 531–3, October 1990, pp. 20– with specific (differed) elements, but productive of them. 21. On the other hand, Derrida always insists that any par- 64. Cf.Alain Badiou, Théorie du sujet, Seuil, Paris, 1982, ticular ʻexpressionʼ of différance is always specific to a p. 143; cf. LʼÊtre et lʼévénement, Seuil, Paris, 1988, particular situation or text. Deconstruction is nothing if pp. 201–2; 235–7; Saint-Paul ou la fondation de lʼuni- not reading-specific, and in his insistence that the pre-on- versalisme, PUF, Paris, 1997. tological concepts of différance, iterability and so forth 65. Badiou, Conditions, p. 240; cf. Peter Hallward, ʻGeneric are always necessarily co-implied with the language of Sovereignty: The Philosophy of Alain Badiouʼ, Ange- presence inherited from metaphysics, Derrida sometimes laki, vol. 3, no. 3, December 1998, pp. 87–112. grants this specificity an effectively transcendental status 66. Alain Badiou, ʻDʼun sujet enfin sans objetʼ, Cahiers (as indeed he must). Confrontations, no. 20, Winter 1989, p. 21. 51. Levinas, ʻEnigma and Phenomenonʼ, in Basic Philo- 67. Emmanuel Levinas, ʻEssence and Disinterestednessʼ, in sophical Writings, p. 77. Basic Philosophical Writings, Indiana University Press, 52. Jean-Paul Sartre, Transcendence de lʼego [1937], Vrin, Bloomington/Indianapolis, 1996, p. 111. Paris, 1988/The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existen- 68. Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini, Martinus Nijhoff, tialist Theory of Consciousness, trans. Forrest Williams Livre de poche edn, The Hague, 1961/Totality and and Robert Kirkpatrick, Noonday Press, New York, Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis, Du- 1957, pp. 79/98–9. quesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1969, p. 13/27. 53. Jean-Paul Sartre, LʼExistentialisme est un humanisme, 69. ʻTranscendence and Heightʼ, Basic Philosophical Gallimard, Folio edn, Paris, 1996/Existentialism and Hu- Writings, p. 19; Totalité et infini, p. 79/80; Basic Philo- manism, trans. Philip Mariet, Methuen, London, 1948, sophical Writings, pp. 16, 28. ʻThe Other comes to us pp. 40–43/36–8; cf. LʼÊtre et le néant, Gallimard, Paris, not only out of context but also without mediationʼ 1943/Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes, Philo- (Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 53). sophical Library, New York, 1956, pp. 70–71/33. 70. Levinas, Totalité et infini, p. 23/34; Basic Philosophical 54. Sartre, LʼÊtre et le néant, pp. 314–15/256–7, 286/230, Writings, pp. 91, 141; cf. Totalité et infini, pp. 200/183, 313/256, 502/429; Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la 324/291. raison dialectique [1960], vol. 1, Gallimard, Paris, 71. Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 23, my em- 1985/Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1, trans. Alan phasis; ʻthe norms of morality are not embarked in Sheridan-Smith, New Left Books, London, 1976, pp. history and cultureʼ (Basic Philosophical Writings, p. 242–7/130–36. 59). 55. Sartre, Critique, vol. 1, pp. 495/394–5. 72. Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, Minuit, Paris, 1986. 56. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacres et simulations, Galilée, 73. Michel Foucault, ʻWhat is Enlightenment?ʼ, The Fou- Paris, 1981, p. 17. cault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, Pantheon, New York, 57. Baudrillard, Simulacres, pp. 10–11. 1984, pp. 33–4. 58. Jean Baudrillard, ʻThe Ecstasy of Communicationʼ, 74. Michel Foucault, LʼUsage des plaisirs, Gallimard, Paris, in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic, Bay Press, Port 1984/The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley, Vin- Townsend WA, 1983, p. 131. tage, New York, 1990, p. 17/11 (translation modified). 59. Baudrillard, LʼAutre par lui-même, pp. 36; 37. 75. Michel Foucault, ʻArchéologie dʼune passionʼ [1983], 60. Jean Baudrillard, De la séduction, Galilée, Folio edn, in Dits et écrits, vol. 4, p. 605. Paris, 1979, p. 245; cf. ʻSuprématie de lʼobjetʼ, in Les 76. Foucault, ʻWhat is Enlightenment?ʼ, p. 50. Stratégies fatales, Grasset, Paris, 1983/Fatal Strategies,

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