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Deleuze and Guattari's Last Enigmatic Message Isabelle Stengers

To cite this Article Stengers, Isabelle(2005) 'Deleuze and Guattari's Last Enigmatic Message', Angelaki, 10: 2, 151 — 167 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09697250500417399 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09697250500417399

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experimenting with what is philosophy? or many, Gilles Deleuze’s last message, What Fis Philosophy?, written together with Felix Guattari, came as a surprise, even as something of a disappointment. Indeed, in What is Philosophy? we face a strong differentiation between the creations which are proper to philo- sophy, to science, and to art. I will leave art aside and concentrate on the differentiation between philosophy as a creation of concepts, and science as dealing with functions. More precisely, I will try to approach the striking affirmation that concepts isabelle stengers and functions may well intersect, but only after each has achieved its own specific self-fulfilment. ‘‘It is in their full maturity, and not in the process DELEUZE AND of their constitution, that concepts and functions necessarily intersect, each being created by their GUATTARI’S LAST 1 own specific means.’’ ENIGMATIC MESSAGE This affirmation, proposed without any expla- nation, has caused many to wonder or even to feel betrayed. Deleuze and Guattari were associated with the affirmation of productive connexions, the creation of deterritorializing processes escaping This question will be my starting point. But I fixed identities, transgressing boundaries and static will not stay within Deleuze and Guattari’s text classifications, destroying the power of exclusive but rather follow Deleuze’s own advice: we disjunction, that is the either/or alternatives, such should be interested in tools for thinking, not as, for instance, doing either science or philosophy. in an exegesis of ideas. An idea is always engaged Many would have anticipated a joyful celebration in what he called a matter, always a specific one. Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 of a free experimental interplay between scientific An idea needs to be so engaged in order for the references and philosophical ones. Some would how and the why this idea indeed matters, have taken for granted that the open character of the kind of difference it makes, to come into the process of the constitution of scientific enun- processual existence, what Deleuze calls ‘‘actua- ciations would have been emphasized, as well as its lization’’ or ‘‘effectuation.’’ This is all the more undetermined boundaries with politics, econom- so when we deal with the enigma of a choice: the ics, cultural imperialism, and so on. Why did they ‘‘why’’ of this choice should not lead back to choose to produce a seemingly ‘‘classical picture,’’ the authors’ intentions; it is a question that puts with a mature science facing a mature philosophy, the reader of What is Philosophy? at risk, a as illustrated by ‘‘great philosophers’’? question the answer to which must be created

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/05/020151^17 ß 2005 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of Angelaki DOI: 10.1080/09697250500417399

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and effectuated following a line that belongs specific ‘‘bad will,’’ what forces it to think and neither to the initiators nor to the reader but create, as opposed to goodwill, being allowed to happens ‘‘between them.’’ think by consensual evidence. Even the joyful Not commenting but effectuating means experi- affirmation of productive connexions may turn menting with a line that is not that of the book, but into ‘‘goodwill,’’ leading ‘‘to an absolute disaster which, if the effectuation is not a failure, should for thought whatever its benefits might be, connect different aspects of this book that other- of course, from the viewpoint of universal wise would appear as independent. The effectua- capitalism.’’5 tion line I will experiment with stems from my The experimentation on What is Philosophy? I conviction that, in spite of the seemingly ‘‘classi- will propose stems from this guess. I will try and cal’’ outlook of What is Philosophy?, which address disappointed Deleuzian ‘‘friends,’’ who disappointed many readers, this book may well wonder about Deleuze’s suddenly ‘‘acritical’’ turn, be the most ‘‘political’’ of Deleuze’s books.2 It is who deplore the fact that he seems to have his one book that addresses its reader as if he were suddenly forgotten he has been thinking all his perhaps a friend, but at that twilight hour ‘‘when life ‘‘against’’ the image of thought associated with one distrusts even the friend,’’ even the one who dominant philosophy, and has chosen to celebrate had most enthusiastically followed the great open- all ‘‘great philosophers.’’ I will experiment with ing of possibilities that Deleuzian themes have the feeling that, at this twilight hour, What is inspired. Here, the crucial problem may well be Philosophy? asks us to consider what Deleuze’s that ‘‘we lack resistance to the present,’’3 and to favourite ‘‘conceptual persona,’’ the idiot, keeps resist here does not mean to criticize or to saying while others hurry towards consensual denounce but to construct. goals: that ‘‘there may be something more For instance, when we read that ‘‘philosophers important.’’ ‘‘Something more important’’ does have not been sufficiently concerned with the not mean something which would transcend our 4 nature of the concept as philosophical reality,’’ disagreements and reconcile us around a sacred the point would not be, or would not only be, to cause. The idiot is unable to mobilize or convince; deal with a question of special interest for perhaps he can slow down the mobilization and philosophers, a closure on a professional domain, have some mobilized certainties stutter. it would be part of the problem of this lack of The idiot will never acknowledge that some- resistance, a problem that science and probably art body has correctly understood what was more also share, entailing the very strong likelihood of important. It is the task for everyone to learn and their destruction. But the point is also not ‘‘how to feel where and how his or her slowing down and avoid destruction’’ as if it were the central stuttering actually happened. My experimental question, as if our world would lose its very soul reading stems from the feeling that Deleuze and if philosophy, or science, or art were to become Guattari were both addressing their epoch, that is part of a destroyed past. If, as I read it, What is their friends, and distrusting it and them, asking Philosophy? is indeed a political book, the point is Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 us to think with the epochal fact that bad will as that learning how to resist is a task which tolerates such can no longer be taken for granted. This is no economy. No great masterword (mot d’ordre) why my reading will take the reader to a still more designating a common enemy may spare those who belong to a threatened practice from asking acritical position. It may well be that what we what kind of specific vulnerability this enemy is vitally need now is to honour what forces us to exploiting since he (or it) does not need to use escape goodwill and consensual thought, what violent, repressive means. Thus the seemingly indeed causes us to diverge and to think, each modest task of a ‘‘pedagogy of the concept’’ may with diverging means. And it may well be that well be the only way for philosophy to situate itself what we have to honour will designate us as among other threatened practices, each from the survivors, having to disentangle ourselves from point of view of its own specific capacity to resist. all the words which designated our survival as For each of them, the point would be its own something we did deserve.

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matters of fact and states of affairs dramatize this challenge I will designate them all using the opposite term that I suspect the Let us first address the question of scientific translators wished to avoid: ‘‘matters of fact.’’ functions, and begin with a small problem It seems that Deleuze and Guattari accept that of translation. When the translators of What is functions may be defined by a reference which Philosophy? dealt with the claim that scientific would be characterized as a ‘‘matter of fact,’’ that functions refer to ‘‘des e´tats de choses,’’ they chose is as ‘‘holding together’’ by themselves, and not as to translate ‘‘e´tats de choses’’ as ‘‘states of affairs.’’ obtaining their definition from the states of affairs This has rather strange consequences when those and the power dimensions that those states of ‘‘states of affairs’’ are contrasted with ‘‘things’’ affairs include. A reader of Mille plateaus, who (and after that with ‘‘bodies’’6). With the literal enjoyed the characterization of ‘‘Royal Science,’’ translation ‘‘state of things,’’ the contrast does not can only be disappointed. I was such a reader, and bear on affairs as distinguished from things, but on it is this first disappointment which led me to a the presence and absence of ‘‘states.’’ This is a political reading of What is Philosophy? meaningful contrast. Indeed, the triumph of the I now need to complicate the problem by notion of ‘‘state,’’ at the centre of dynamics, is recalling another aspect of the situation, the conditioned by the independence of the dynamic explicit thesis of Deleuze and Guattari that I variables entering into ‘‘state functions.’’ Deleuze started with, namely that it is only in their full and Guattari’s characterization of ‘‘things’’ as maturity that philosophy and science may inter- entailing variables that are functions of each sect. In other words, Deleuze and Guattari seem to other (energetic coordinates of coupled systems) create a privilege for what is usually called thus rather elliptically dramatized the challenge ‘‘science made’’ against the vivid, open, risky which produced nineteenth-century thermody- construction of ‘‘science in the making,’’ while namics, with the distinction between external, most contemporary studies privilege ‘‘science in controlling variables and internal ones, and the the making’’ as the relevant access to science. In loss of the realist value associated with the new order to dramatize this strange choice, I will refer kinds of (thermodynamic) state functions which to the contrast between ‘‘science made’’ and now derive from entropy. ‘‘science in the making’’ as characterized power- I would guess that the ‘‘state of affairs’’ fully by Bruno Latour in his well-known Science in translation stems from the fact that the usual Action8 by a double, Janus-like figure. One face is translation for ‘‘e´tats de choses’’ is ‘‘matter of that of a beardless youth describing the risky fact,’’ and that ‘‘matter of fact’’ belongs to an production of scientific facts and their social empiricist tradition that the translators could not constructive dimensions, as this production endorse. ‘‘States of affairs,’’ in contrast, may refer requires the coming together of people whose to the lucid, social constructivist stance that interest must be gained and who participate in the whatever scientists’ claims, they can never very definition of the meaning and importance of escape states of affairs for some purified ‘‘matter the scientific facts. The other face is that of an old Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 of fact.’’ Whatever their achievement, it will bearded man explaining the robustness of science always refer to a ‘‘state of affairs.’’ But then by its truth, by its objectivity, by its respect of would what we call ‘‘things’’ or ‘‘bodies’’ not settled matters of fact, and so on. transcend our ‘‘states of affairs’’? It may well be This Janus-like figure may be sufficient to that here the translators stopped trying to under- explain why Deleuze and Guattari claimed that stand (those pages are the most elliptical and philosophers should refrain from intervening in obscure ones in the book, anyway). the collective construction of ‘‘science in the My guess may well be wrong, but I will take it as making,’’ even if the young beardless scientist a problematic starting point. Let us forget about is quite ready to welcome them, to quote them, the distinction between states of things, things, and to gain their interest. They should resist the and bodies;7 the challenge is that they are not temptation, resist being seduced by the openness described in terms of ‘‘affairs.’’ In order to of ‘‘science in the making,’’ and also resist

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believing that there would be ‘‘new sciences’’ may indeed appear as the most important chal- contradicting the closed, dogmatic character of lenge, in political terms, because the price paid for ‘‘science made,’’ because the two faces offer no the reduction of experimental achievement to a contradiction but a contrast, a contrasted unity. normal, rational operation is the general authority The kind of science that the youth has learned is attributed to such an operation, that is the the bearded one. He is speaking about a problem definition of science and scientific expertise as in construction but he knows that if he is to what I would call the thinking head of mankind. succeed, if the story of the construction is to be This is why social constructivism may so easily be told as the story of a scientific achievement, it will identified with political emancipation against the be told in the terms of the bearded old man. In authority of science. other words, the dreams of the youth, his ambi- The bearded dreams may well entail important tions, are bearded ones. If he succeeds and gets the problems of political power, but following my beard of his dreams, philosophers will be left reading of the original political stance of What is outside because the successful, stable, ‘‘mature’’ Philosophy? there is something that is still more definition of matters of fact will be related to important. Indeed, the result of the denial that science’s own specific means. science would have ‘‘specific means’’ is that, But Deleuze and Guattari also ask philosophers whatever the scientific proposition, we know how to resist understanding a description such as to resist. We would not need to create in order to Bruno Latour’s as a denunciation: the bearded resist the bearded dream, we would just need to old man would just be lying since what he recognize it. It is because of this instant recogni- celebrates – the power of ‘‘matters of fact’’ as tion that many readers will have identified Bruno purified from ‘‘states of affairs’’ – would just be a Latour’s problematic contrast between the two socially stabilized state of affairs. They ask us not faces of the scientist as ‘‘social constructivism’’: to consensually recognize that if philosophers are they ‘‘recognized’’ the possibility of deriding the left outside ‘‘mature science’’ then it is not, or not old bearded face, of claiming that behind any only, because the ‘‘mature’’ scientists have scientific (matter of) fact there is a (state of) affairs acquired the social power to claim that their dressed with the social power to parade as results are ‘‘purely scientific.’’ Indeed, when authorizing scientific claims. This is precisely the Deleuze and Guattari defined the ‘‘creation of path Deleuze and Guattari refused to take when scientific function by science’s own specific they chose to celebrate the mature scientific means’’ they certainly did not agree with the old function (and matter of fact) as a creation (science bearded-face explanation, but they nevertheless is a creation of functions). asked us to relate science as creation with science’s A socially stabilized state of affairs, having ‘‘own specific means,’’ which are associated, one acquired consensual authority, allowing scientists way or the other, with the possibility of a scientist to feel that they know what they are saying, or that getting a beard. they can define what they are observing, is the very Of course, the temptation to denounce the characterization of what Deleuze and Guattari Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 bearded old face is strong. A bit too strong for me proposed to name ‘‘functions of the lived’’ (fonc- when the contrast between the two faces is not tions du ve´cu): functions whose arguments are alive – some so-called sciences do indeed seem to consensual perceptions and affections. For those be born with a beard. This is why I will concentrate functions, there is no creation, only recognition. on experimental sciences; in their case we certainly Deleuze and Guattari wondered whether all the may imagine, wish for, and struggle for a less human sciences should be included in this dissociated or amnesic personality than the Janus category: however sophisticatedly presented or one, for a bearded old man who would remember statistically verified they would constitute just and celebrate the adventurous social process which scientific opinion. But they did not hesitate with any scientific achievement entails, instead of regard to logic as it comes to dominate philosophy describing the achieved result as the direct when philosophy follows the route marked out consequence of a normal, rational method. This by Frege and Russell:9 logicism heralds the very

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triumph of goodwill functions depending on states lack of resistance. The dissociated personality of of affairs, functions whose argument depends on the Janus-like scientists, the way the bearded old consensual recognition. For Deleuze and Guattari, man describes as a matter of general methodology identifying science or whatever other practice as the scientific definition of a matter of fact, a question of ‘‘states of affairs only’’ is not a ‘‘lucid indeed poisons scientists and makes them unable statement’’ but is the denial of their relation with to resist the reduction of their practice to ‘‘creation.’’ In other words, there is certainly a technoscience, to resist the blind confusion strong appeal in the ‘‘states of affairs’’ disenchant- between what Deleuze and Guattari insist must ment of science, but it is a consensual appeal,10 be defined as creation and the general power to which creates no possibility of resisting the manipulate. But we are also poisoned, lacking probability that the ‘‘functions of the lived’’ will resistance to the present, when in all sincerity we come to define everything. Such a ‘‘lucid’’ denounce the bearded dreams of science, forget- identification has a strong sense of truth, but this ting to create the means to resist being joined by is the poisoning taste of resentment: it means others who have undertaken to destroy the telling scientists: ‘‘wake up, you are just like dreamer. Resistance is a matter of creation, not everybody else.’’ And, as is always the case with of sincerity. Deleuze and Guattari were not resentment, it is participating in the destruction ‘‘sincere’’ when celebrating mature science; they of what is more important, namely the capacity to did not participate in a sincere, consensual belief resist. in the ‘‘autonomy of science.’’ Celebrating mature I will certainly not take as a confirmation of my science as creation, they endeavoured to create thesis the dreadful historical irony that social means – philosophical means – to tell another constructivism may be described as unwittingly story, to escape the consensual opposition between collaborating in the destruction of those very the claims of a bearded science and the critical aspects of science that it derided. As we know, deconstruction of these claims. This is the process scientists are now asked more and more insistently of creation I now wish to continue. to renounce their dreams and to deserve the money they get. And in order to deserve money scientific functions as creations they are asked to forget about the distinction between scientific matters of fact and states of Let us start again, explicitly taking into account affairs. For instance, biotechnology, and the what Deleuze and Guattari seem to ignore, namely possibility to insert new genes in a genome, in the social constructive activity of science in the no way means that biology would be able to define making. How do we nevertheless characterize the function articulating the so-called genes with (mature) scientific functions and their referred the features they are meant to explain, but this matters of fact as creation; that is, how do we resist does not matter: what matters is that the produc- the image of science as a simple case of social tion of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has construction, producing functions of the lived? a very interesting strategic meaning for industrial How do we tell, when a scientific function has been Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 states of affairs. This is not a confirmation that created, that something new has entered the implies that the social constructivist analysis world? would be ‘‘objectively’’ guilty, as Stalinists would Again, Bruno Latour helps us here. In put it. But it is confirmation that we live in a Pandora’s Hope11 he describes the kind of ‘‘state dangerous world and that when one takes the easy of affairs’’ the ‘‘young’’ unbearded scientist must consensual path of denouncing and deconstructing organize in order to succeed in meeting the others’ dreams, there is always the danger of demands of a ‘‘science in the making.’’ This is discovering that one has strange bedfellows. a complex task indeed, as it includes four kinds ‘‘There is something more important,’’ ‘‘we of ongoing, distinct, and correlated processes lack resistance to the present.’’ ‘‘We,’’ here, means of social construction. In order for his work to all of us, whatever our (good)will. Each practice is be possible, to gain importance, and to achieve weakened by its own poisons, is infected by its own consideration, an innovative scientist has to form

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alliances with state or industrial powers, so as to kind of easy separation that the art of distances is get them to decide that they indeed need the kinds meant to promote. But it means addressing the of results he is working to obtain. He has to making of Links and Knots as entailing those achieve academic recognition, meaning that the ‘‘specific means’’ which scientists define as what academic demands and criteria for the new matter, what they have to protect, what makes the innovative field will then be the relevant ones, as specificity of a scientific achievement. autonomously produced and discussed by col- What does it mean to achieve Links and Knots? leagues in this new field. He has to succeed in Scientists are certainly not linked together by their mobilizing the world, meaning getting the needed common bearded submission to rationality or resources, i.e., the relevant instruments but also objectivity, or by some goodwill which explains the ambitious, innovative well-educated students how they are able to listen to each other and with an interest in, and loyalty to, the new field. respect the rules of rational discussion. As I will Finally, he has to produce a public representation try to show, the link is not among humans as such of this field, that is have it accepted as the but exists only because those humans confer on the legitimate outcome of scientific progress, as creation of reliable Knots, i.e., to the creation rationally answering important questions which of reliable references between function and matter do or should interest everyone, and/or as promis- of fact, the power to link them, to force them ing positive consequences for human development to interact and entertain the kind of agonistic and well-being. cooperation on which this achievement As such, each of these four processes of depends.When Galileo wrote that one man will construction is not specific. Their strong correla- win against a thousand rhetoricians, whatever their tion is already more specific, because if one of gift for persuasion or the authority of their them fails then the others will be denounced as references, if this one man has the facts on his pathological in one way or another. But what side, we usually recognize it as some kind of makes them all properly scientific is the fifth positivist statement. And indeed Galileo was in the ongoing activity which Latour characterizes as the process of building the first public representation making of Links and Knots. This designates the of experimental science, producing a state of kind of activity most scientists would define as affairs where experimental facts claim the power what truly matters, the actual production of those to silence both philosophers and theologians. very matters of fact that the bearded old scientist But we should not forget that the Galileo will later use as sufficient by themselves to explain who was writing was himself the product of the scientific achievement. the first experimental achievement, the first Indeed, the first four activities, as Latour experimental knot. characterizes them, do construct a ‘‘state of In The Invention of Modern Science, I char- affairs’’ with a rather peculiar stake. They create acterized this achievement as the ability to short- a relation with an outside which must be both circuit the sceptical argument which refers any actively interested and also placed at a distance general statement to the power of fiction. I Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 (with a different kind of distance in a different described the event of the experimental invention kind of space for each one). In all cases the which produced Galileo as its spokesperson as distance means that whatever the success of those ‘‘the invention of the power to confer on things the four processes of construction, it must be possible power of conferring on the experimenter the power to present and describe them as nourishing the to speak in their name.’’12 Power intervenes three making of Links and Knots, as being conditions times in this description, each time, as I will now for the achievement, not the explanation of this show, with a different meaning. achievement. If one claims that it is a matter of ‘‘Invention of the power to confer on ...’’ refers presentation only, Latour’s description will be to Galileo in the very process of discovering the reduced to simple social constructivism, and lose power of the first experimental device, the inclined any relevance for reading What is Philosophy? plane. This device did give him the power to Avoiding this claim does not mean accepting the transform a usual state of affairs, a consensual

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function of the lived perception of falling bodies, gave the Galilean body the power to allow Galileo into a scientific matter of fact correlated to a to remain mute, to show just the facts. scientific mathematical function. Indeed, the ‘‘...the power to speak in their name.’’ It is power of the inclined plane was to transform the because Galileo can present himself as essentially fact that heavy bodies do perceptively fall into an mute that he can claim that he has the power to articulated fact, defined in terms of independent speak in the name of the falling bodies. He is just variables, variables whose value can be modified representing the thing. The so-called objective at will, and the articulation of which produces a scientific representation is an event because it may functional (state) description. In other words, the claim to be authorized by what is represented, reference of a mathematical function to an experi- while what is represented has no human voice. But mental matter of fact is neither some kind of right who will be interested in this claim? Who will belonging to scientific reason nor is it an enigma, celebrate as an event the fact that Galileo is able to but actually the very meaning of an experimental represent the way in which a body falls in a achievement. frictionless environment? Galileo needs colleagues ‘‘...a thing having the power of conferring on who will take as primordial the verification that a a human ...’’ is the very definition of what the knot has indeed been created, that none of their experimental ‘‘knot’’ achieves when tying a matter objections can defeat it. He needs colleagues who of fact to a scientific function. ‘‘Knot’’ is a very will accept being linked not to him, and not happy word and this achievement is a case of what because of his persuasive power, but by the Deleuze and Guattari called a ‘‘marriage against production of the knot. In other words, in order nature.’’ The idea that science would ‘‘naturalize’’ for the specific character of his achievement to be anything is a complete nonsense. It would mean verified, he needs not the goodwill of colleagues attributing to nature what we must describe as an agreeing with him but the specific bad will of event, the local entanglement between two lines colleagues for whom what first matters is to test the which generally have nothing in common. Before reliability of the witness he claims to have the event, falling bodies and the problem of the produced. kind of knowledge we can gain about things were In order to celebrate the successful knot, scientists will sometimes announce that ‘‘Nature mutually indifferent. There was only a discursive has spoken.’’ This triumphal statement is reference, among others, to the perceptual fact obviously misleading, but the way in which it is that bodies do fall down. Such a falling down had misleading is important. Indeed, the point is not no power to force thinking, it was consensual the traditional philosophical one, namely that evidence. All heavy bodies do fall down. This things are mute and only humans speak. The apple is a heavy body. Thus this apple will fall point is that if nature had indeed spoken, all down if I open my hand. After Galileo, you no humans would be concerned. Listening with longer have apples, or a tree crashing to the respect would be the normal answer. A knot, a ground, or a man falling from a window. You have ‘‘marriage against nature’’ on the other hand, is Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 something new: a Galilean body, a body which can always a local, selective event. The only ones exist nowhere but in the lab or in the sky, since its concerned are those who belong to the two lines, motion must approximate a frictionless one in those non-humans which can effectively, that is order for the function to have any power of experimentally, be defined as reliable witnesses, definition. Correlatively, the line of human discur- and those humans – those I call competent sive argumentation about the definition of valid colleagues – who will consider it as crucial to knowledge as opposed to interpretation and fiction their own active practice to verify that a colleague has bifurcated. One particular functional inter- was indeed authorized to claim the triple power pretation has got a reliable witness. Galileo no achievement. Those and only those will be linked longer has any need to argue; he is able to turn his by the event as a matter of collective concern, back against his human brothers, to cut any kind exploring the consequences, testing the ‘‘if ..., of intersubjective debate. The experimental device then maybe ...’’ that may follow as eventually

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entailed by the event. A ‘‘marriage against nature’’ ‘‘Mime,’’14 but would create by its own means is never between ‘‘man’’ and ‘‘nature,’’ which what busy scientists so easily forget, namely the would mean a convergence, an adequate knowl- ‘‘dignity of event’’ that makes them busy. This is edge at last. The marriage knot produces a a case of vital communication between diverging divergence, it links these kinds of humans, adventures and a demanding, selective one for the endorsing very strong specific obligations, and sciences, as the question of the event they are those kinds of phenomena, verifying very selective in the process of effectuating would leave so much requirements. of today’s so-called science ‘‘born with a beard’’ It takes the production of Links and Knots as aghast and speechless. the fabrication of an actively diverging adventure, Such a perspective has a dreamlike quality, embodying Deleuze’s claim that there is no however. It may help philosophers to resist, but we relativity of truth but there is truth only of what need to know what they have to resist, to is relative.13 There is a scientific experimental characterize the kind of present they lack resis- kind of truth because science is relative to the tance to. We thus need to go back to the social adventure of the creation of Links and Knots, to construction of science, to Bruno Latour’s four the creation of knots and the production of links as correlated social processes of construction. what scientists explore together. The important Philosophers have no part in the creation of point here is that there are many kinds of Links and Knots but we now have to ask which adventures, and each has its own truth and its part scientists propose they play in ‘‘science in the own kind of loyalty, as it affirms its own diverging making,’’ a part Deleuze and Guattari refuse when value. We may think here of the adventure of they ask that philosophers refrain from interven- making a movie, of writing a text, and also of an ing before a science is ‘‘mature.’’ alpinist’s careful and risky climb, or of a mathe- matician in the process of producing a demonstra- science and its public tion, or even of a judge hesitating about his or her judgement. The important point is that none of I have already emphasized how misleading the these adventures needs to belittle the other ones in statement ‘‘Nature has spoken’’ is. I now have to order to affirm itself. Each of them is by definition emphasize how it dramatically expresses one of the a minority adventure, as Deleuze and Guattari ways in which the scientific adventure may become positively characterize a minority as that which an epic, the scientist then becoming the thinking does not dream of becoming a majority. And it is head of mankind, the one who is able to get out precisely because a minority collectively produces of the cave, to escape a world of mere opinion, a divergence without a dream of convergence, of of arbitrary human fabrications and conventions. representing a future majority or consensus, that The ‘‘Nature has spoken’’ statement is part of the some transversal connections are possible. A public representation of a scientific achievement, writer can understand something about an alpin- and so are all other more sophisticated epistemo- ist’s discipline, or a mathematician about the logical versions of scientific objectivity: their Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 judge’s selective and creative processing of a case. common feature is the demand that we all feel This is the way I understand Deleuze and concerned. Guattari’s proposition about the complementary Returning to Latour’s characterization of lines of science and philosophy. Science would ‘‘science in the making,’’ it is now crucial to actualize and effectuate the event of the created note that the four correlated processes he distin- knot as it produces its many consequences, taking guishes are marked by a strange contrast. A or not taking into account objections following the scientist will never tell a colleague, a demanding states of affairs. And philosophy would counter- ally or a provider of mobilizing resources that effectuate the event and isolate, that is create, its ‘‘Nature has spoken,’’ and that they have to listen. concept. Not reflecting on science but diverging Their interest has to be won, and cannot be from science. Indeed, such a philosophical dismissed as blind. In contrast, the public desig- ‘‘counter-effectuation’’ would not be a strange nates all those who are bound to be concerned,

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whose interest does not have to be won, but may be to feel what is now happening. The kind of demanded. Science must matter for the public adventure I have just characterized may be which is thereby defined as mere opinion, to be relevant for Galileo Galilei, Robert Boyle, Louis convinced that it is its only chance to escape Pasteur, and Fre´de´ric Joliot-Curie, but not, irrational belief and blind interests. emphatically not, for contemporary biomedicine Since Galileo, the epic story of scientific or biotechnology. Indeed, in those cases we can say progress, grounded on facts as opposed to arbi- that the art of distance required by demanding trary opinion, has been part of the public construction of Links and Knots has been swept representation of science, requiring and maintain- away, and that we are dealing with a new kind of ing a definition of the public as having to trust articulation between powers. It will no longer be science as the only way to escape opinion. And possible to tell the tale of those developments here, unhappily, philosophy enters the scene, but without having for the leading protagonists those not as a creation of concepts. The kinds of powerful allies who are quite ready to accept philosophers that the public representation of nominal definitions provided it means new science needs will not be partners in the produc- possibilities for industrial innovation. tion of links and the creation of knots but allies What has been bound lacks resistance against participating in the public representation of appropriation. But the reverse may be the case. science – allies whose interest must not be won, The only chance for science to resist its appro- whose goodwill is demanded. But the nature of this priation, to survive as a minority diverging demanded goodwill is rather undetermined: philo- adventure, may be to break the bind, namely the sophers are welcome if they put their own means, old strategic alliance with the great consensual, whatever they may be, at the service of the image convergent theme of the struggle of reason against of thought that science requires. It may be through mere opinion. This bind is indeed what makes a direct celebration of the opposition between scientists unable to defend themselves, that is to rational science and opinion but it does not need to try and produce kinds of alliances other than the be: as long as a philosopher helps, one way or the ones which are in the process of appropriating other, in enforcing the idea that opinion is some- them. They cannot call in those that they defined thing to be criticized and overcome, a strategic as mere opinion. They are alone, feeling betrayed, alliance is possible and scientists may include him feeling that mankind is betraying its thinking in their public representation. Even Heidegger has head. been so included. Now, at last, we face the problem of modifying, It may be interesting to approach the situation I not destroying, the old bearded face in Latour’s have just described with the concepts that Deleuze Janus-like figure, the face unable to celebrate a and Guattari used in Mille plateaus in order to scientific achievement in words other than those describe how the war machine was ‘‘encasted’’ by which present the general, consensual triumph of the state. Indeed, when science is presented as a rationality over opinion. And here we have to convergent epic, scientists come to be respected as avoid any consensual, majority masterwords, such Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 a ‘‘caste’’ in the famous ivory tower. But as a cast as a general democratic right of the public to they are captured, bound into the service of the participate, nicely turning what was mere opinion (modern) state by their static identification with into an untapped source of wisdom. The bind the rational, apolitical aim they come to embody. will not be broken. Scientists will be polite, but The public representation of science is no mere indifferent. Indeed, they know the hard work it ideology; it is the bind, what makes it possible to takes to gain allies, to gain autonomy, to mobilize. transform the diverging creations of science into Already their colleagues, if they are not in the the kinds of convergent values the state needs for same field, have only a very vague idea about the its own production. And we could then describe issues at stake. How could ‘‘sovereign’’ citizens of the present-day situation as the transition from goodwill be able to participate in those complex being encasted to being appropriated proper. Read constructions? The consensual transformation of Donna Haraway’s Modest Witness, for instance, the ‘‘ignorant public’’ masterword into the

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‘‘citizens’’ masterword is an Empty Great Idea. It their own diverging lines of escape, their own will not work. ways. These may be called ‘‘objecting minorities,’’ Does an idea work? Is it able to make a minorities producing not as their aim but in the difference? What kind of difference? These are very process of their emergence the power to the questions of pragmatism. It is a ‘‘pragmatic’’ object and to intervene in matters which they distinction I am drawing between the ‘‘citizens’’ discover concern them. The emergence of these masterword and the ‘‘public’’ involved in the divergent, problem-creating, multiple, ‘‘empow- public representation of science, the public that is ered’’ minorities is what I would define as an asked to accept science as authority. While citizens unknown of our epoch. It does not concern the are a goodwill, convergent, political fiction, and as sciences specifically but it is the only possibility such lack resistance to the present, the public is I can envisage against the probability of the much more interesting because the problem with scientific adventure being appropriated – that is, the public is its eventual bad will. being destroyed. Here I am following the path opened in John Deleuze and Guattari ask that we think ‘‘par le Dewey’s The Public and its Problems. Dewey milieu,’’ meaning both without going to the root argued powerfully against the abstract ideal of or to the final aim of a question and taking into citizens who would be able and interested in account the environment that this question participating in all political decisions, as they are requires and creates. The emergence of empow- entitled to do. In order to resist accepting demo- ered minorities already produces a very interesting cracy as just an empty word, he created a new transformation in the ‘‘milieu’’ of science, com- conception of the public. ‘‘In no two ages or places pletely foreign to the ‘‘fundamental questions’’ is there the same public’’15 because the Deweyan about the grounds or aims of knowledge, but public is not something which exists, but some- effectively modifying the scientists’ dreams, which thing which emerges around a problem, and bound them to the state and capitalism. In recent emerges as an objecting power not as a sovereign years, the fact that public minorities were able to judge. The emergence of the public is an event, and object has been a source of great surprise for for Dewey the identity of the state is the historical concerned scientists. Among competent collea- translation of a succession of such events, the gues, objections certainly do matter. In order to transformation of the scope and nature of the construct an alliance, to mobilize, or to gain responsibility of a state being the static answer to autonomy, objections have to be taken into the successful emergence of a new public. account and negotiated. But the public was The Deweyan public is not as such part of a identified as something which was either ‘‘against creation process, however: it emerges, objects to, science’’ or ‘‘supporting science.’’ Some scientists and demands the solution to a problem. It asks now begin to wonder whether the powerful allies the state to answer, to provide the solution. who claimed to protect them against an irrational Furthermore, Dewey was unable to get beyond public were not instead using the public repre- the mere hope for a new emergence of the public sentation of science as opposed to ‘‘mere opinion’’ Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 since he had to acknowledge that the modern in order to silence objections that they discover so-called democratic states coincide with the indeed do matter, and indeed put into question the silence of a bound, remarkably passive population, blind divide into the so-called scientific, objective with a general lack of resistance to the double definition of a problem on the one hand, and power of the state and capitalism. ignorant irrational beliefs and traditional values on However, there may be a small, precarious the other. possibility, part of our epoch, that a new kind of I am now in a position to address the question of public is emerging, and that such a public may be what philosophers may have to create for a vital able to make another kind of difference. In communication between science and philosophy’s contrast with the Deweyan public, what we now diverging adventures to be possible and to give see emerging and stuttering has features of what each of them some means to resist their respective Deleuze and Guattari called ‘‘minorities,’’ creating and probable destruction. We need specific,

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philosophical means to escape our own encasted Anglo-American tradition of adventurous – non- academic claims, more ancient ones than the analytical – empiricism: scientists’. The opposition between ‘‘mere opinion’’ and what transcends opinion was the The English nomadize over the old Greek earth, broken up, fractalized, and extended to poison which modern science, since Galileo, the entire universe. We cannot even say that inherited from philosophy and used to produce they have concepts like the French and the its own public representation. But when we come Germans; but they acquire them, they only to philosophy it is not a matter of public believe in what is acquired – not because representation only, it is a common-sense consen- everything comes from the senses but because sual conviction we philosophers inherit before we a concept is acquired by inhabiting, by pitching begin to think. one’s tent, by contracting a habit [...] Wherever there are habits there are concepts, and habits are developed and given up on the a pragmatic concern for conventions plane of immanence of radical experience: they One way of characterizing the role that philosophy are ‘‘conventions.’’ That is why English philo- has played in the epic representation of science sophy is a free and wild creation of concepts. To what convention is a given proposition against mere opinion leads to the problem of due; what is the habit that constitutes its ‘‘convention.’’ Philosophers would ratify by their concept? This is the question of pragmatism. own means the great divide between what are only (105–06) ‘‘pragmatic conventions’’ on the one hand, which ‘‘work’’ but may be analysed away in terms of With each new convention, something new has habits, settled interests, and the balance of power, entered the world, a new tent has been pitched, and on the other what is worth thinking about, and not on a settled ground that would explain its beyond mere states of affairs. And here we may stability but in a process of fractalization: the new make a brief return to the problem of social ground is produced together with the new tent constructivism. The fact that social constructivists pitched upon it. In each case the pragmatic entered the scene as those who were betraying the ‘‘it works’’ may be counter-effectuated as it entails role that the public representation of science considering what has been created in this case, the attributed to philosophers is something that new ‘‘it works’’ now resounding, as an event which requires attention. Indeed, you cannot betray a the convention, always this convention, effectu- role without first claiming it, here claiming it for ates. What may become a matter of consensus, the your job to test the great opposition between functions of the lived, settled interests and balance science and mere convention. But social construc- of power that will be used afterwards to explain tivists did not see themselves as philosophers. It is or justify it, does not explain a convention. A thus possible to take up the role of philosophers convention is never explained by something else, it while claiming to belong to fields such as sociology proceeds from a creation, a ‘‘marriage against or cultural studies. nature.’’ And yes the scientific achievement of an Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 I would propose that social constructivists were experimental knot is a convention, but it is not able to assume the role of philosophers without ‘‘only a convention,’’ it fractalizes the ground recognizing it because they ‘‘knew’’ what conven- following its own diverging demands, its own tions are, that is, they recognized them, as a matter definition of what matters and how. of the ‘‘functions of the lived.’’ As a result of this The awful, despicable pragmatic ‘‘it works’’ proposition, I would stress that escaping their role may then become a matter of concern, of evalua- in the public representation of science implies that tion, not of disqualification. For instance, the philosophers create the means to escape such a strength of the proper scientific convention, the consensual recognition. reliability of the created knots, may be evaluated And it is precisely such a creation that Deleuze as achieving a convention which depends specifi- and Guattari celebrate in the vibrant homage cally on the power successfully conferred on things they pay to pragmatism as associated with the to intervene in human affairs and discussions. But

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the possibility for the thing to become an actual, functional being is taking into account. No crucial part in a scientific convention has as its function can deal with learning, producing, or condition that all competent objections are to be empowering new habits, as all require and achieve taken seriously, as it must be verified that the the production of different worlds, non-consensual experimental device gives the experimenter the worlds, actively diverging worlds. There will be no power to answer those objections. The thing is not scientific explanations, be they psychological, able to make a difference ‘‘by itself,’’ it is enabled sociological, cognitivist, or neurophysiological, to make this difference by and for a collective of the way new, non-consensual, diverging habits which is enabled to test this difference, which is may come into being. It is probably what Fe´lix linked by the obligation not to silence a relevant Guattari had in mind when, in Chaosmosis,he critique. This is why the power of such a called for a new paradigm that would be an ethico- convention changes in nature as soon as it leaves aesthetico-political one. It is tempting to think that its birthplace and concerns human affairs where all such a paradigm, as it aims at making the creation protagonists are not enabled to object, where some of new perceptual and affective habits a matter of are a priori defined as not mattering. The concern, should privilege art, which is the third effectuation of the event, the meaning of the ‘‘it kind of creative adventure characterized in What works,’’ radically changes as soon as the tent is is Philosophy? pitched on the settled ground of interests and But here we must slow down and pay attention. power, and as soon as the habit of the public to There may be something more important. We accept being addressed as powerless, mere should not forget that the very possibility of opinion, unable to object and propose, is an associating science, art, and philosophy to creation ingredient in its concept. first testifies for a depopulated world. These are To repeat the precarious political pragmatic practices that are now in danger of lacking hope I presented, it is only if we become able, as resistance to the present, of being appropriated, philosophers, to put scientific achievements on the but they are also the surviving ones, the ones same plane of immanence together with other which were tolerated or domesticated, ‘‘encasted’’ diverging conventions, each with its demanding while so many others were destroyed by what we definition of what matters, that we can stop call ‘‘modernization.’’ As a result, these practices poisoning this hope, that we can share, instead, must also be considered from the point of view of the pragmatic concern for the itinerant process the price they pay for their domesticated or of creation of new ‘‘it works’’ as they mark the tolerated survival: diverging prices but heavy process of empowerment of new minorities, with ones anyway. Deleuze considered the price philo- new actively diverging ‘‘habits’’ that must be sophy paid when it was associated with the triple celebrated each time as something new entering ideals, all of which imply judgement and may the world and indeed as modifying it. When enter into the strategic alliance against opinion: Deleuze and Guattari emphasized the need for a ‘‘pedagogy of the concept’’ they were contemplation, reflection, and communication. I Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 pragmatists because pedagogy means the have considered the price science pays as present- creation of a habit, here learning the ‘‘taste’’ of ing itself in the guise of the old fight of reason concepts, being modified by the encounter against mere opinion. Instead of considering with concepts. the price art may be paying, I will stress The Deleuzian definition of science as dealing that Guattari’s ethico-aesthetico-political para- with functions is precious for protecting this digm may as well designate ‘‘magic’’ as the pragmatic concern against any scientific paradigm. neo-pagan and political activist witch Starhawk 16 Whatever the function, be it produced by a does. That is, not in supernatural terms successful marriage against nature or by a lived but as an experiential and experimental art, consensus about what matters and how, any daring to try and test what it takes and what it function requires a stable world, allowing for a requires to produce ethico-aesthetico-political stable articulation between those aspects the empowerment.

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survivors to measures that are not very respectable, rational or reasonable. ...To think is always to follow the We no longer burn witches, but taking interest in witch’s flight.’’17 Indeed, it may be that if empowering processes needs the knowledge that philosophy was able to survive its Greek origin, we risk having those words used against us. to resist many threatening presents, it is because it Indeed, it may well mean facing such accusations unwittingly captured, in a disguised manner, as irrationality, superstition, and regression: back something quite different from rational argumen- to Plato’s cave. My conviction is that, as philoso- tation. It may be that the ‘‘prephilosophical plane’’ phers, we may and indeed have to ‘‘counter- it built on and secretly, unwittingly continued effectuate’’ this eventual accusation. And here I was inhabited not only by urban Sophists, as is must go not beyond Deleuze but elsewhere. In officially recorded, but also by those others whose approaching the question ‘‘What is philosophy?’’ not very respectable, rational or reasonable my first concern is to resist words that would measures the sophist art of language had already characterize our right to exist while ratifying our urbanized. And it may well be that if you separate own domestication and the destruction we philosophy from what it profits from and secretly, survived. unwittingly continues, then you kill philosophy. This is why I choose to take the risk of using the For Deleuze, Russell, Wittgenstein, and others term ‘‘magic,’’ just as witches themselves take this are killers. But my conviction is that, as philoso- risk. For them the very fact of naming magic as phers, scientists, and artists, we cannot save what they are doing is already an act of magic, ourselves from such killers alone, by our own producing the needed experience of discomfort means only. We have to think in front of those who which makes perceptible the power over us of did not survive. And this conviction is also a consensual functions of the lived. If those contem- speculation for the future, a future where philoso- porary witches took it upon themselves to call phy could play a part in the kind of environment themselves witches, such a shocking name, it was needed for Guattari’s ethico-aesthetico-political in order to produce the living, disturbing memory paradigm, an environment able to resist the power of the Time of Burning, the destruction of the of consensual functions. Counter-effectuation may Great Art, which happened in the very epoch when well be philosophy’s specific active divergence, its Man as the majority standard came to impose active way of resisting such a power. However, as converging, consensual functions of the lived, Deleuze rightly remarks, it may be presented explaining away as illusions and superstitions as a Stoic, or a Spinozist one, amor fati.A every active divergence except the three surviving great model for bad weather, for dangerous ones – philosophy, science, and art. To name times, certainly, but a bit too ‘‘beautiful’’ a themselves witches is to present themselves as model for my taste. If in all goodwill we accept survivors, and what I ask is that we, as philoso- such a model, how do we avoid using words that phers, understand ourselves, as far as we resist the will also ratify the destruction of obviously non- power of functions of the lived, as survivors. Stoic or Spinozist witches and thus lack resistance Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 Naming witches and magic does lead towards to the great tale of progress which justified their the question ‘‘what is philosophy?,’’ with a doubly destruction? antagonistic move. On the one hand, it leads back I thus claim that philosophers need to honour towards the historical origin which may certainly the active divergence that counter-effectuation be associated with their repudiation, with the creates with words which exhibit in a more open, choice of public and consensual arguments against self-jeopardizing way the not very respectable, or dangerous powers, to be excluded or domesti- not very public, measures which do enable cated. But on the other hand, it leads towards the philosophical creation. Amor fati is not compro- power of transformation that Deleuze associates mising enough, it seems too much of a general, with the philosophical concept as such when he converging ideal, and the path it needs may quite writes, for instance, that thinking ‘‘implies a sort easily become an ethical, solitary version for the of groping experimentation and its layout resorts old majority tale of Mankind having to get out of

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Plato’s cave. We may well stress, with Deleuze, in his original home town, Cambridge, as if it the need for a pedagogy of the concept, meaning defaced the noble college he had so long inhabited. the need to learn how to encounter the power of We may well say that Whitehead’s failure was concepts and the witch’s flight that it induces. But complete from the usual pragmatic point of view, it took Deleuze his whole life to reach that ‘‘point since our world is still dominated by the modern of nonstyle, where one can finally say ‘What is it abstractions he wanted to displace, the mutually I have been doing all my life?’’’18 I think we have a incoherent abstractions of transcendent freedom, vital need to be more explicit about why the as attributed to humans, and of functional expla- pedagogy of concepts matters and enables philo- nation, as objectively defining the world. But the sophers to resist the present. We need to present important point is the kind of ‘‘bad will’’ that ourselves as indebted to something we call forced his adventure and which is a condition for concepts, because it is only through encountering reading him. Never did a philosopher so prag- the efficaciousness of concepts, through experi- matically develop and give up ( faire et de´faire) menting with the witch flight they produce, that concepts in utter disregard for the kind of pious we may become philosophers. loyalty we so easily dedicate to what aims at truth. It is indeed something very hard for a Stoic or a The problem in reading Whitehead is that the Spinozist to admit: the truth of the relative implies witch’s flight that his concepts do create cannot be being in debt, not an infinite debt, to be sure, but a disentangled from his explicit definition of the task debt which needs to be openly, self-jeopardizingly, of philosophy: it should take care of our abstrac- cultivated. It is much more comfortable to tions. As the equipment, both the tools and the produce deep, beautiful meditations about an lure, for feeling and thinking, abstractions need author not being the author of what he or she ‘‘engineering.’’ But to define philosophy as an writes than reaching this point of nonstyle when engineering of abstractions puts to the test our you simply affirm that writing is not a spontaneous wish to go beyond abstractions of our own making, activity of human goodwill but puts the writer in to escape the prison of our own fabrication. debt to what makes him or her write. Whitehead asks us to accept leaving aside any Debt must be honoured. This is the lesson kind of dramaturgy, any kind of dramatic presen- I learned from the witches. They do not need at tation of philosophy as thinking the unthinkable all to believe in a Goddess as a supernatural, or addressing what cannot be represented. He transcendent being, but they learned the prag- endeavoured instead to counter-effectuate abstrac- matic need for empowering rituals honouring a tions, pragmatically evaluating and modifying the power whose answer is nothing other than the very kind of lure and constraint that abstractions process of empowering, of becoming able to resist provide, going so far as to include the creation of the present, which the ritual is made to induce. a concept of God, as he discovered that such a In order to make this point a little more concept was required by the problem as he was concrete, I will finally turn to an example: that constructing it. How can we take on that engi- neered concept of God after so many years of Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 of the very strange flight, truly a witch’s flight, of Alfred North Whitehead, this mathematician- celebrating the Death of God, or deploring his final turned-philosopher who most perfectly embodies absence? the English way of doing philosophy to which ‘‘This concept is required by the problem I Deleuze and Guattari paid homage. construct and because of the way I constructed it. It may be that another definition of the problem honouring what makes us our modern abstractions impose on us would need able to diverge? no God, but this in no way puts it into question.’’ This could be Whitehead’s answer, and the Whitehead’s adventure was indeed a strange, self- discomfort becomes explicit: does he believe that jeopardizing one, and he paid the price for leaving he is free to go against the very pride we cultivate the consensual ground. His name has been oblit- in being able to live without God, or the very erated by English philosophy, and in particular solitude we suffer having to live without God, and

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all that because of the way he constructed his process of creation of odd and habit-disturbing problem? We may feel the same kind of experience concepts, openly speculative ones, openly of discomfort as with the witches’ Goddess. The constructed ones. Goddess is just a fiction, how can we honour Her? In order to try and feel the efficaciousness of The fact that Alfred North Whitehead was a those concepts, you have to accept a witch’s flight mathematician-turned-philosopher may explain far from the ground of any secure good-willed why he dared to conceive philosophy as an opposition or settled habit. But you then may taste openly constructive adventure and a self- their power which may resemble that of a magic proclaimed speculative one. Mathematicians are formula, as they empower becoming in the used to giving mathematical existence to very devastated landscape of our impassable contra- strange beings, provided they fulfil mathematical dictions. Indeed, Whitehead’s concepts are neither constraints and are needed for unfolding a true nor false, they do not refer to any state of mathematical problem. Those beings are like affairs, nor to any matter of fact, nor to any poles for the tent they are pitching; their value is experience transcending the engineering of to allow the problem to achieve its full amplitude abstractions. They are efficacious, deliberately in order to arrive at a successful working solution. engineered in order to deprive thought of any Mathematicians are probably those who know best power to judge or explain away part of our that they are not free, that the problem that they experience in the name of another part of our construct is what matters. They know that an experience, without creating the kind of confusion answer has meaning only because and through the we fear if we stop judging and explaining away. constructive adventure of the problem that their What we discover instead is the rather strange question induces. This is why creative mathema- possibility of appreciating judgement or explain- ticians do not need to dream of the power of ing away together with what is judged or explained converging recognition. What they honour is the away, all put on the same plane, all exhibiting in power of the question to which they are indebted their own diverging ways creativity as the ultimate because this question empowers them, forces them they all exemplify and which exists nowhere but in to think and create as mathematicians. What they its exemplifications. may teach us is that to honour is not to believe in a It may be that a mathematician was needed to transcendent power but pragmatically to call forth dare to take the philosophical step of pragmati- the ‘‘marriage against nature’’ that any empower- cally engineering concepts as witches engineer ment process requires. rituals, in order to induce and experiment with the Whitehead gave to a very simple question the empowering transformation those concepts power to force him to think and create as a produce and the new lures for feeling they philosopher: how to produce coherence where create. When a mathematician concludes ‘‘it (modern) incoherence rules? And he gave its full works!’’ he is celebrating the truth of what is amplitude to the problems his demand for relative, the only kind of important truth, the coherence entailed, accepting the thought all the Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 truth of the problem which has achieved the way down to its consequences; that is, creating the production of its own specific empowering means means to dramatize and not to tame the incoher- ence of modern thought. For Whitehead, no and obligations. But so also do the witches hopeful, good-willed, fuzzy interdisciplinary celebrate when their rituals produce the empower- unity, no dream of some ‘‘half-way house’’ where ing presence of the Goddess to whom they functions would sweetly loose some of their power, pragmatically define themselves as indebted. So allowing for something which could resemble also could a philosopher celebrate, or an artist, or a philosophical concept of freedom, or at whoever knows that what empowers their creation least its function of the lived version. No is not theirs. And so should we learn to celebrate seducing terms promising both to explain and scientists when announcing the coming into being to give room to what we should protect of a new matter of fact endowed with the power to against explanation. Instead, the most fabulous act as a reliable witness.

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At the very end of his life, in Some Problems 1 G. Deleuze and Fe¤lix Guattari, What is of Philosophy, William James wrote:19 Philosophy? (London:Verso,1994)161.Hereafter WP. 2 I am speaking of Deleuze only, here, because We can and we may, as it were, jump with both Guattari wrote openly political books. It is not by feet off the ground into or towards a world of chance that my text will end with a free interpre- which we trust the other parts to meet our jump tation of Guattari’s ecosophy, introduced in – and only so can the making of a perfected TheThree Ecologies. world of pluralistic pattern ever take place. Only through our precursive trust in it can it 3WP108. come into being. There is no inconstancy 4Ibid.11. anywhere in this, and no ‘‘vicious circle’’ unless a circle of poles holding themselves 5Ibid.12. upright by leaning on one another, or a circle of 6Ibid.122. dancers revolving by holding each other’s hands, can be ‘‘vicious’’. The faith circle is so 7 Forget it on this occasion, but the distinction congruent with human nature that the only is nevertheless a most important one. Indeed, it explanation of the veto that intellectualists pass offers a line of escape from the Great Sad upon it must be sought in the offensive Problem of scientific reductionism, and its poison- character to them of the faiths of certain ing consequence: the very sad role accepted by persons. philosophers when they see their task as that of defending human values, experience, or responsi- Here may be the great lesson of speculative, bility against its reduction to scientific explanatory conceptual pragmatism, and it sounds like a frameworks.When a scientist affirms that experi- dangerous, self-jeopardizing one indeed, since we ence should be, and will be, naturalized, explained know that not only are there many diverging kinds (away) in‘‘scientific terms,’’ we forget to ask ‘‘which of jumps, but that some jumps are dangerous ones. function, referring to what?’’ We recognize the Leaving the common, settled ground is always a inexorable advance of scientific knowledge that risk. This, however, is no argument against what will reduce experience, one way or another, to William James calls the ‘‘faith circle’’ as it is not properties of ‘‘the central nervous system.’’ This indeed is a ‘‘state of affairs,’’dominated by consen- something we would have ‘‘discovered’’ but some- sual recognition. Philosophers try to define human thing non-modern traditions knew very well. They experience in such a way that it would exhibit knew that parts of the world which come and meet a recognizable irreducibility to ‘‘scientific some jumps may be devouring ones, and that some properties,’’ and scientists take such definitions may become devouring ones if we do not know as their aim, as what they have to explain how to honour them when we have called them up. away. Both science and philosophy are thus Fe´lix Guattari’s ethico-aesthetico-political para- poisoned by the state of affairs they produce for digm thus implies that we can learn from the one another. non-modern wisdom, learn 8BrunoLatour,Science in Action: How to Follow Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011 how to care without vetoing Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, the jumps or reducing them to MA: Harvard UP,1987). some functions of the lived. 9WP135. This may be why he told of the need for an ‘‘ecosophy.’’ 10 Consensual does not mean dominant but may be connected with the majority/minority contrast proposed in Mille plateaus.Apositionmaywellbe affirmed by a qualitatively minority group and will notes be a majority position if it presents itself as what should be accepted by everyone, i.e., as a poten- I am happy to thank the members of the GECo tially consensual claim (even if such a consensus (Groupe d’E¤tudes constructivistes) for their most would mean defeating powerful illusions, ideolo- inspiring comments and critiques. gies,balancesofpower,andsoon).

16 6 stengers

11 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,1999) 99^108. 12 (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000) 88. 13 W P 13 0. 14 Ibid. 159. 15 John D ewey, The Public and its Problems (Athens: Ohio UP,1991) 33. 16 Dreaming the Dark (Boston: Beacon,1997). 17 W P 41. 18 Ibid. 1. 19 Reprinted (Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P,1996) 230. Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution Psy Press Titles] At: 22:32 4 March 2011

Isabelle Stengers ULB, CP 175/01 50 avenue F. Roosevelt 1050 Brussels Belgium E-mail: [email protected]