Innovation and Negation Steven Shaviro Wayne State University

Criticism

Volume 50 | Issue 2 Article 8

2008 Innovation And Negation Steven Shaviro Wayne State University

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Recommended Citation Shaviro, Steven (2008) "Innovation And Negation," Criticism: Vol. 50: Iss. 2, Article 8. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol50/iss2/8 INNOVATION AND Paolo Virno’s newly translated book, Multitude: Between Innovation and NEGATION Negation, is somewhat misleadingly Steven Shaviro titled, since it has very little to say about the concept of the multitude as featured in Virno’s previously Multitude: Between Innovation and translated book, as well as in the Negation by Paolo Virno. Trans. work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, Negri. Rather, it is a text composed and Andrea Casson. Los Angeles: of three essays: a longish one about Semiotext(e), 2008. Pp. 188. $14.95 jokes and the logic of innovation, paper. fl anked by two much shorter ones that deal with the ambivalent legacy of humanity’s linguistic powers. The fi rst essay argues against the notion, crystallized by Carl Schmitt but held more generally in the “common sense” of political philosophy and conceptual thought (from Hob- bes, we might say, through Freud, right down to Steven Pinker), that any democratic or liberatory political theory is founded in the naïve view that human nature is innately harmonious and good, whereas the more “realistic” view of the human capacity for “evil” mandates belief in a strong and repressive state. Virno argues, to the contrary, that if we are to worry about the “evil” in human nature—which is really our “open- ness to the world,” or our underdetermination by our biology, which is what makes it possible for us to have “a virtually unlimited species- specifi c ambivalence”—then we have all the more reason to worry about what happens when the power to act (to do evil as well as to mitigate it) is concentrated in something like the state’s “monopoly of violence.”

Theorists of the state, from Hob- mercilessly. Since there is no possi- bes to Schmitt, posit the transition bility of returning to a prelinguistic from a state of nature to a civil state, state, the only solution to this poten- involving the rule of a sovereign (in tiality for evil is to potentialize lan- the conservative version), or the rule guage to a further level, make it go of law (in the liberal version), as a meta-, have it refl ect back on itself, defense against this innate aggres- in a “negation of the negation.” The siveness that would be endemic to power to objectify and kill is also the state of nature. But Virno says the power to heal, to establish “re- that this transition is never com- ciprocal recognition.” Just as the state plete; even a sovereignty based on of exception is the ambivalent locus laws still has to declare a “state of both of tyrannical imposition and of exception” in order to maintain its democratic redemption, so the rule; and this state of exception is, in potentiality of language is the am- effect, a return to the never-surpassed bivalent locus both of murderous “state of nature.” The state of ex- destruction and of the elaboration ception is a state in which rules are of community, or of the multitude. never fi rm, but are themselves sub- But both of these essays are little ject to change and reinvention. We more than footnotes to the long cen- move back from the fi xed rules to tral essay, “Jokes and Innovative the human situation that gave rise Action,” that comprises most of the to them in the fi rst place. Though book. Virno rather curiously takes the “state of exception” has often Freud’s book on jokes as his pri- been described as the totalitarian mary text, despite disclaiming any danger of our current situation, it is interest in the Freudian theory of also a state in which the multitude the unconscious. All of his exam- can itself elaborate new practices ples of jokes come from Freud, but and new forms of invention. he reclassifi es these jokes in terms The third essay in the book makes of their status as public acts of ex- a similar argument, in a somewhat pression (“performative utterances” simpler form. Sympathy with oth- in a way, though precisely they do ers of our kind is an innate biologi- not positively refer back to institu- cal endowment of our species—here tions in the way that a performative Virno makes reference to recent utterance like “I sentence you to a discoveries involving mirror neu- year in prison” does), as gestures that rons. But language frees us, for both disrupt the “normal” functioning of good and ill, from this state of sym- a rule, and as “paralogisms” (logical pathy. Language gives us the power fallacies, or defective syllogisms). of negation, which is the ability to The point behind all these classi- deny the humanity of the other (the fi cations is a Wittgensteinian one. Jew, the “Musselman,” the nonwhite) Most of the time, in “normal” situa- and hence to torture and kill them tions, we apply rules to concrete ON PAOLO VIRNO’S MULTITUDE 321 situations unproblematically. But in the case because Virno, as we have fact a rule is never suffi cient to dic- seen, defi nes basic human, species- tate how it is to be applied in any specifi c, and biological regularities situation whatsoever—any attempt not as a fi xed “nature” but precisely as to do so involves making a second an underdetermination, a reservoir of rule to explain how to apply the fi rst potentiality—something whose in- rule, then a third rule to explain completeness can only be given how to apply the second rule, and so fi xed form by the still-more-inde- on in an infi nite regress. There is al- terminate, and still-more-open-to- ways an incommensurability be- potentiality, power of language. tween abstract rules and pragmatic Language is what fi xes our biologi- acts of applying those rules. We cal potentiality into specifi c forms, have to appeal, as Wittgenstein but it is also (as jokes witness) what says, to actual practices in a given allows us to rupture any given fi x- “form of life.” But these forms of ity and reconfi gure things other- life are themselves subject to change. wise. Wittgenstein’s return to the A joke is a disruptive intervention “regularity” of empirically observed in this process; it introduces an “ab- human nature as the court of last ap- errant” application of a rule, thus peal for what cannot be guaranteed exposing to view the inherent in- or grounded by rational argument is commensurability between rule and also a kind of return to the state-of- application. It throws us back upon exception-as-state-of-nature, or to the “form of life” in which the lan- the moment when language fi rst guage game of which the rule is a emerges out of our innate drives, part is embedded. It exposes the both reshaping and giving form to contingency of the form of life, the these drives, and opening them up to way it could be otherwise. It returns a still more radical indeterminacy. us to what Wittgenstein calls “the Virno claims that this is what is common behavior of humankind.” happening, in miniature, in jokes Virno interprets this “common when they twist intentions and behavior” to be our species-specifi c laws, multiply meanings, and turn biological endowment (basic “hu- seemingly fi xed principles into their man nature”)—or the “regularities” opposites, or into sheer absurdity. of human behavior that ultimately He therefore takes the joke as a underlie all rules, but which ex- miniaturized version, or as a par- plicit rules cannot fully encompass. adigm case, of innovation and cre- The gap between an explicit rule ativity in general. The way that jokes and the way we can apply it refers play with and disrupt previously back to this prior gap between rules fi xed and accepted meanings is a and the regularities upon which they small version of the way that any are based, but which they are never form of social innovation or cre- able to encompass. This is in turn ativity alters relations that were 322 STEVEN SHAVIRO previously taken for granted or seen everything that it would come to as fi xed. take on the form of a pre-assumed Ultimately, Virno says that jokes (grammatical) statement, rather than and all forms of social innovation a merely empirical one. These things play on the indeterminacy between can and do change over the course grammatical statements and empiri- of time. One language game morphs cal statements—an indeterminacy or mutates into a different one. For that is the major focus of Wittgen- Virno, this is where social inno- stein’s last writing, collected in the vation takes place. Jokes are the volume On Certainty. Wittgenstein simplest example of such a process says, on the one hand, that certain of change: one in which “an openly statements are not in themselves ei- ‘fallacious’ conjecture . . . reveals in ther true or false, because they ex- a fl ash a different way of applying press the presuppositions that we the rules of the game” (163), and are already taking for granted and thereby changes the nature of the pointing back to when we make any game altogether, or allows us to judgment of truth or falsity. For stop playing one game and to play Wittgenstein, it is a weird category a different one instead. Virno ex- error to assert the truth of a state- pands this reading, in order to sug- ment like “I know that I have two gest that it really comprises a theory hands,” because we do not “know” of crisis in Wittgenstein, so that his this so much as we already presup- naturalism is something more than pose it whenever we learn some- just a passive cataloging of various thing, or come to know something. “forms of life”—something, he My sense of having two hands is says, that is “stubbornly ignored by precognitive (which is precisely why all of Wittgenstein’s scholars” (163). I do not have to check all the time to How useful and convincing is make sure that I really do have two all of this? To my mind, the best hands, neither more nor less). part of Virno’s argument is the last On the other hand, however, and thing I mentioned: his parsing at the same time, Wittgenstein says of Wittgenstein on the shadowy that this pre-knowledge is not abso- and always-changing boundary lute. Over time, there can be shifts between the “grammatical” and the in which sorts of statements are em- “empirical.” I think this is a more pirical ones (that can be true or false), informal and naturalistic version of and which statements are founda- what Deleuze calls “transcendental tional or grammatical ones (already empiricism.” At any given moment presupposed in an act of cognition). there is a transcendental fi eld that I might lose one of my hands in a determines what is possible and horrible accident, for instance. Or what is not, and that delineates for some empirical fact might become us the shape of the empirical (which so central to my understanding of cannot be interpreted without it). ON PAOLO VIRNO’S MULTITUDE 323

At the same time, not only is this at greater length within the frame- “transcendental fi eld” not an absolute work of a post-Kantian aesthetics, (in Kant’s language, as transcenden- and that this aesthetics needs to be tal it is precisely not transcendent), affi rmed precisely against the temp- but it is also itself something that tation (all too common in current has an empirical genesis within academic discourse) to render it in time, and that varies through time. “ethical” terms. (This is an argu- Now, doubtless this always-open ment that needs to be set forth in possibility of shifting the boundary detail, but I lack the space to do it between the empirical and the tran- here). On the other hand, I fi nd scendental, or of turning one into Virno’s silence on matters of politi- the other, is where creativity and in- cal economy quite disappointing novation are located. The bad, or in someone who explicitly presents mainstream, interpretation of Kant himself as a Marxist or post-Marxist is the one that always insists upon philosopher. Rather than deepening the necessity of separating the a sense of how we might under- transcendental (the regulative, the stand the “multitude” in the frame- norm) from the empirical—that is work of contemporary global cap- how you get Habermas, for instance. italism, Virno opts for a much vaguer, A much better Kantianism is the and context-free, understanding of one—it can be found explicitly in how social and cultural change is Lyotard, for instance; and I would possible. He prefers to speak in argue that it also works implicitly in terms of the state, and of the foun- Whitehead and in Deleuze—that dations of law and sovereignty, rather sees the gap or incommensurability than in terms of modes and rela- between the transcendental/regu- tions of production. I know my po- lative and the empirical not as a sition here is an unpopular one, but barrier so much as a space that is I am enough of a “vulgar Marxist” suffi ciently open as to allow for in- to think that these sorts of political- novative trans formation. philosophy distinctions are too vague So to this extent I fi nd Virno’s and abstract to have any sort of trac- formulations (including his reading tion when they are separated from of Wittgenstein) extremely useful. “economic” considerations. (Again, But I also fi nd his discussion curi- this is an argument that needs to be ously bland and incomplete, and pursued at greater length than I have this because of its failure (due to its the space to do here.) “naturalistic” orientation?) to say But the limitations of Virno’s ar- enough either about aesthetics, or gument in this respect are most evi- about political economy. I think, dent when he discusses the forms of on the one hand, that the view of cre- social change. Basically, he lists two. ativity and innovation implicit in Vir- One of them is “exodus”: the Israel- no’s discussion needs to be thought ites, faced with the choice between 324 STEVEN SHAVIRO submitting to the Pharaoh and re- innovation with the disclaimer that belling against him, instead made this involves “a meaning of the term the oblique move of leaving Egypt ‘entrepreneur’ that is quite dist- altogether. This, for Virno, is the inct from the sickening and odious exemplary situation of changing the meaning of the word that is preva- parameters of what is possible, chang- lent among the apologists of the ing the rules of the game instead of capitalist mode of production” (148); just moving within an already-given and yet, immediately after this ca- game or form of life. The obvious veat, he goes on to explain what he reference, beyond the Bible, is to the means by “entrepreneurial innova- Italian “autonomist” movement of tion” by referring to the authority of the 1960s/1970s, which is the point of Joseph Schumpeter, the one theorist origin for Virno’s thought just as it is of the entire twentieth century who for Negri’s. Now, much as I admire is most responsible for the “sicken- the emphasis on obliqueness rather ing and odious” meaning that Virno than on dialectical oppositions, I ostensibly rejects. Virno insists that, also suspect that the idea of “exo- for Schumpeter, “it would be a mis- dus” is a too easy one—in the sense take to confuse the entrepreneur that when capitalism subsumes all with the CEO of a capitalistic enter- aspects of contemporary life, outside prise, or even worse, with its owner.” the factory as well as inside, it is actu- This is because, for Schumpeter, en- ally as diffi cult to fi nd a point of trepreneurism is “a basically human exodus as it is easy to make the aptitude . . . a species-specifi c fac- declaration that one is doing so. ulty.” However, this disclaimer will “Lateral thinking” is a business buzz- not stand. On the one hand, the en- word more than an anticapitalist trepreneur is not the same as the strategy. Things like “open software” CEO or owner, only because the and “creative commons” copyright former refers to a moment of “in- licenses are not anywhere near as vention,” whereas the latter refers radical as they sound—if anything, to an already-established enterprise. they not only coexist easily with a When the businessman ceases to in- capitalist economy, but also presup- novate actively, and instead simply pose a capitalist economy for their reaps the fruits of his market domi- functioning. All too often, what we nance, then he has become a CEO celebrate as escapes from the capi- instead of an entrepreneur. Bill talist machine in fact work as com- Gates was a Schumpeterian entre- fortable niches within it. preneur in the 1970s; by the 1990s But Virno’s other form of change, he had become just another CEO. “innovation,” is even more problem- The owners of Google, whose in- atic. It seems to me to be symptomatic novations surpassed those of Mi- that Virno introduces his discus- crosoft, are now making the same sion of what he calls entrepreneurial transition. Even if the entrepreneur ON PAOLO VIRNO’S MULTITUDE 325 is not yet a CEO, his actions are in- relentless machinery, or monstrous telligible only in the framework of body, of capital accumulation. a capitalist economy. If the entrepreneur is successful, then he inev- —Wayne State University itably becomes a CEO. To say that Schumpeterian entrepreneurship is a basic human aptitude is precisely to say (as Virno doesn’t want to say) that capitalism is intrinsic to, and inevitably a part of, human nature. I think that Virno’s reference to Schumpeter is symptomatic, because it offers the clearest example of how he fumbles what seems to me to be one of the great issues of our age, which is, precisely, how to disarticulate notions of creativity and innovation and the new from their current hegemony in the business schools and in the ways that actually existing capitalism truly functions. Virno fails to work through this disarticulation, precisely because he has already preassumed it. I myself don’t claim by any means to have solved this problem—the fact that we can neither give up on innovation, creativity, and the new, nor accept the way that the relentless demand for them is precisely the motor that drives capitalism and blocks any other form of social and economic organization from be- ing even minimally thinkable—but I feel that Virno fails to acknowl- edge it suffi ciently as a problem. In consequence, for all that his specu- lation in this book offers a response to the Hobbesian or Schmittian glo- rifi cation of the state, it doesn’t offer any response to the far more serious problem of our subordination to the