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Marie Goes to Japan”: Thinking, Praxis, and the Possibility of the New

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Marie Goes to Japan”: Thinking, Praxis, and the Possibility of the New “Marie Goes to Japan”: Thinking, Praxis, and the Possibility of the New Margret Grebowicz University of Houston-Downtown Why “do” philosophy, if not to contribute to social consciousness (our own and those of our stu- dents and readers), to develop ideas for change, to articulate the desperations of the present and the possibilities of futures which will help people, however loosely we define “people”? This is one of the most popular objections to philosophy: that it is not practical, and therefore not really politically useful. And in today’s philosophical arena, this argument is directed specifically against postmodern philosophies. However, there is another sense of the word “postmodern,” which we often forget when talking about postmodernism. Lyotard wants us to think about that which resists institutionalization, homogenization, academic taxonomies, economies, and genealogies. The postmodern is the moment of ideological instability and confusion, of radical undermining of foundations and transgressing of boundaries. It is just another name for thought. In this essay, I attempt to describe a sort of postmodern praxis in terms of the Lyotardian notion of thought, discussing the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Hardt and Negri, and June Jordan. According to Jean-François Lyotard, philosophy is the genre of dis- course whose rule is to find its own rule. In other words, philosophy’s task is to find out what its true task is. What demarcates philosophy from all other discourses is this essential reflexivity, its continuous search for its own boundaries, functions, nature. We are left with the image of philosophy as a question folding back on itself, like a Magritte-inspired conceptual art piece, the kind which plays in an endless loop, even at the end of the afternoon, when the museum is closing. Such an image is hardly conducive to visualizing action, activism, and political commitment. And yet this is where philosophy points today: the pressure to engage with political problems is ever stronger. Why, after all, “do” philosophy, if not to contribute to social consciousness (our own and those of our students and readers), to develop ideas for change, to articulate the desperations of the present and the possibilities of futures which will help people, however loosely we define “people”? This is one of the most popular objections to philosophy: that it is not practical, and therefore not really po- litically useful. And in today’s philosophical arena, this argument is directed specifically against postmodern philosophies. The postmodern protagonist appears to us as a sort of Major Tom, whose apparent acceptance of his loss Janus Head, 8(2), 421-432. Copyright © 2005 by Trivium Publications, Amherst, NY All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 422 Janus Head of contact with Ground Control makes his an unlikely political hero. Perhaps the greatest dilemma for the postmodern thinker who consid- ers herself political concerns the idea that everything is a cultural construct. Postmodernists write about the construction of everything from knowledge and values to identity and even desire. To top things off, they are critical of humanism and democracy. But if values are mere cultural constructs, and humanism and democracy are undesirable vestiges of the Enlightenment, then on what grounds can we dissent politically, and after what should we model our new political visions? Do we not need some kind of certainty about something, like the certainty that all humans are equal, or that war is wrong, for example—a foundation, some kind of “political platform?” What does it mean even to call myself a feminist, when I am at the same time always returning to a sort of contemporary skepticism? After all, the angel on my right shoulder reminds me, it is not merely an historical accident that modern feminist thought originates in 19th century British political philosophy. It is because those philosophers were committed to equality, democracy, and the agency of individuals—in other words, they had some solid, smart commitments, from which specifically feminist critiques of society could be born. Without such a foundation, the postmodernist can talk all she wants about diversity, difference, and openness to the other, but she has, literally, no ground on which to stand. Interestingly, Lyotard takes on the question of how to do philosophy without foundations, even without commitments, in a short essay titled “Marie Goes To Japan.” The essay is the interior monologue of a fictional character, Marie, a middle-aged, French academic, traveling to Japan to give an invited presentation. Come to think of it, Marie’s situation is a lot like mine, here, today: she has come to deliver a paper. While resting up for her presentation, in her expensive hotel room, she expresses consistent disappointment with how self-indulgent and ineffective postmodernism has become. She complains that postmodernism has become a part of cultural capital, a sort of slogan for the commodified, institutionalized talk of the other, of becoming open to the other, experiencing difference. The idea of difference is not even different anymore, but the most predictable, least revo- lutionary thing one can say. Furthermore, the academy is so homogenized that her experience of delivering a paper in Japan is no different than her experience of France or anywhere else. Almost a decade after Lyotard’s essay appeared, at a conference in Rotterdam, I heard a more explicit articulation of this position in Slavoj Zizek’s declaration that postmodernism has taken Margret Grebowicz 423 over as the new hegemonic discourse. 1 Marie suspects that there is something fake about all this talk of dif- ference in such undifferentiated terms. She delivers her paper, accepts the questions, the applause, the honorarium, she does everything “right,” and knows, at the end of the day, that the academic institution called “post- modernism” and the lip service paid to alterity and difference have nothing at all to do with thinking. Thought, Marie muses, is unwieldy. It is slow, it takes time, it does not speak the language of production and consumption. Thought is reticent, stubborn and unmanageable, embarrassing. Thoughts are not “mine” to produce, copyright, own, sell, or exchange. Thought does not compete on the (appropriately named) “job market.” In another essay, Lyotard describes the situation like this: Thoughts are not the fruits of the earth. They are not registered by areas, except out of human commodity. Thoughts are clouds. The periphery of thoughts is as immeasurable as… fractal lines…Thoughts are pushed and pulled at variable speeds… When you feel like you have penetrated far into their intimacy in analyzing either their so-called structure or genealogy or even poststructure, it is actually too late or too soon… I then have the experience of how radically powerless I am to penetrate clouds of thoughts. As a pretender to being a philosopher and a writer, I confess I have no chance of avoiding being a shammer.2 We can imagine Marie, gazing out the window on her flight back to Charles De Gaulle, playing with this metaphor, knowing that all that expensive, technical, well-ordered talk of otherness, diversity, difference, hospitality, forgiveness, etc. had been performed by shammers, fakes, her- self included. Her colloquium, the global university system, even my own presentation, here, today—none of these things can accommodate thought. Thought is that which can’t be evaluated or organized into degree plans. Thought doesn’t graduate. Students are sometimes told that the university will turn them into “thinking adults,” or that thought is somehow connected to maturity, self-actualization, and agency. According to Lyotard, however, thinking is the opposite of adulthood, and he sometimes relies on the image of the infant: mute, unmanageable, and certainly an unsatisfying partner for conversation. I am reminded of a short story by Ray Bradbury called “The Small Assassin,” in which a mother suspects her newborn baby of trying to kill her. She returns from the hospital terrified of the child, begging her 424 Janus Head husband to somehow dispose of it before it disposes of her. The husband chalks this up to post-partum depression, until, of course, she turns up dead one sunny afternoon. And so, eventually, does he: indeed, this turns out to be a killer baby, small but deadly. This, however, is the least interesting part of the story. Bradbury’s genius lies in making us see the infant, and infancy in general, as something radically unknown and unknowable, unmanage- able, unpredictable, and, at bottom, creepy: She crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face. “Oh, Dave, once it was just you and me. We protected each other, and now we protect the baby, but get no protection from it. Do you understand? Lying in the hospital I had time to think a lot of things. The world is evil—” “Is it?” “Yes. It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren’t laws, then love does the protecting. You’re protected from my hurting you by my love. You’re vulnerable to me, of all people, but love shields you. I feel no fear of you because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, and immaturities. But—what about the baby? It’s too young to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it. And in the meantime be vulnerable to it.” “Vulnerable to a baby?” He held her away and laughed gently. “Does a baby know the difference between right and wrong?” she asked. “No. But it’ll learn.” “But a baby is so new, so amoral, so conscience-free.” She stopped. Her arms dropped from him and she turned swiftly. “That noise? What was it?”3 Alongside this image of the infant, quite different from the one we get in ads for diapers, Lyotard develops his technical notion of the “inhuman,” and this is precisely the level on which, he tells us, thought takes place.
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