parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 1– 3

Introduction: talking/having sex

KurtHirtler,Ola Stahl&Ika Willis

In issue 17of the Vertigo comic Transmetropolitan ,SpiderJerusalem wakes upin bed with his assistant, Yelena: ‘What happened?’he asks himself. ‘Well, obviously,I know what happened’. Butwhen she wakes up,Y elena insists –repeatedly– that ‘nothing happened’. ‘I’msticky’, Spiderargues; ‘ Something must have happenedto make me sticky’. ‘Nothinghappened. Nothing at all. Nothing. Nothing!’Yelena reiterates, though,in increasingly largeand messy lettering. 1

If sex is nothad, then, nothing happens,it would seem. This commonplace enough formulationnonetheless perhapsdemonstrates the potentialenormity of the task which this issue of parallax has set itself in takingon the title having sex – a word which shouldbe read here bothin the Butleriansense of‘ biological’sex as a dimorphismproduced as the e Vect ofcompulsory heterosexuality andenforced by beingcast as prediscursive in relationto gender, and in the sense of‘ sexual intercourse’as anactivity similarly circumscribed byheteronormativepresumptions aboutwhat itis to‘ have sex’. (These preliminaryand tentative deŽnitions will, of course,be fuckedwith inthe course of having sex.) Nothing happened ,as asynonym for sex was not had ,beginsto make visiblethe intricate conjunctions ofdesire,signiŽ cation, reproduction,evolution, technology, familialstructures, ‘nature’..., which can always besummonedwhen the term ‘sex’is deployed;it hints ataparticularunderstanding of‘sex’as that which makes itpossiblefor something, anything, everything tohappen. Here we movefrom Transmetropolitan’s Yelena to TheBallad of Halo Jones’s Glyph, a character who has changed sex somany times that ze (it?)no longer registers as human: Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:32 18 November 2009 Iremember Istartedo V asagirl.That much I’mcertain of.Or maybe Istartedout as aboy.Never mind– itdoesn’ t really matter.The thing is,I wasn’t happyas agirl...uh... or maybe I wasn’t happyas aboy...So I hada totalbody remould that turnedme intoa boy... orpossiblya girl[...] 6months afterthe treatment Istartedregretting my decision.So I hadanother remould to turn me back towhatever Istartedout as. Over the next Žve years, Ichanged my mindabout whether Iwanted tobeaboyor agirlforty-seven times [...]Eventually, Iwasn’t aboyor a girl.I wasn’t anything. Icouldn’t even remember what I’dbeen originally.The doctorswere equallyconfused. Also, my personalityhad been completely erased[...] Iwasn’t aboy,I wasn’t

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals parallax DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027902 1 agirl...I was justa cypher, asortof glyph [...]Iwalked throughthe crowdedstreets andnobody even lookedat me... They juststared straight throughme. It was as ifI’ dsomehow slippedbeneath the threshold ofhuman awareness. 2

A.Gargett’s essay marks outsome lines of ightfrom this use of‘ sex’as deŽning andcircumscribing the human,in its explorationof the posthumanerotics of Natacha Merritt.

Any understandingof sex asthe conditionof possibilityof humanness –with an eye tothe Freudian-Lacanian traditionwithin which beinghuman must be beingsexed – risks operating,as DrucillaCornell puts it in this volume,according to ‘ the need to protectthe law ofsexual di Verence as amatter ofmaking civilization safe for heterosexuality’. According toone all-too-familiar consequence ofsuch a conŽguration, a strict regulationof sex –technological ifnecessary, butonly insofar assuch technological intervention bringssex intocloser alignment with ‘nature’– is necessary tosecure the futureof humanity:to ensure that ‘nothing’will nothappen. The outcry overthe recent ‘designerbaby’ case in which twodeaf women chose a deafsperm donorto increase the oddsthat their second child togetherwould also bedeaf need only bementioned, I think, in orderto suggest that such deployments of‘sex’are by no means yet defunct.

Myra Hird’s careful attentionto biological models begins to solicit –inthe Derridean sense ofat once evokingand shaking in its foundations– oneof the couplingswhich underpinsthis progressivist-evolutionaryassumption that ‘nature’will, throughsex, regulatethe reproductionof the species in the directionof ever betterand better organisms:the couple sex and reproduction .Somecrucial groundworkfor a psychic and legal decouplingof these terms has, ofcourse, been laid by Drucilla Cornell, who continues tothink the relationbetween psychoanalysis andlegal and political discourse,and to develop strategies forunderstanding and respecting the sexuate beingof individualswithin ademocraticpolitical-legal system, in aninterview inthis volume.Mary Conway,too, turns ourattention to the di Yculties with which submittingsex tothe law and/orhaving sex as alegalsubject are fraught in her reading of Eight Bullets ,asurvivor’s account ofhomophobic violence.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:32 18 November 2009 Which bringsus tothe questionof whether andhow sex, once had– or if had, a questionof conjunctionleft openin the punctuationof Alex Garc ´’aDu¨ttman’s essay, precisely where Spidersought to close itdown (‘ something must have happened’= sex was had=‘obviouslyI know what happened’) –can bespoken. It is clear in Transmetropolitan 17that we are,of course,to understandthat the oppositeof Elena’s words(that is,the oppositeof ‘ nothing’; that is,‘ sex’) did occur inthe space between issues, andit takes only acursory glance at ThePsychopathology ofEverydayLife to warn usnotto believe what aspeaker tells usabouthis, her orhir sex –nor,on the other hand,to believe that aspeaker is not telling usaboutsex, even ifhe, she orze appears tobe speaking about something else entirely. As in TheBallad of Halo Jones , it is having sex that makes communicationpossible; but as in Transmetropolitan it is sex, also,that can make communicationimpossible, by inverting andundermining the meanings ofwords. Introduction 2 Ifwe arenot to repeatthe gestureof consigning sex toaprediscursive domain,then, we may have towonder whether andhow languagehas sex: whether andhow sex has language:whether, in short,sex andlanguage can cohabit,and how sex plays througha speaker,or through writing – how sex is reproducedphono/ graphically. 3

Steven Shavirogives us apeepat a phonographicerotic in his Deleuzean reading of Bjo¨rk’s andChris Cunningham’ s videocollaboration, Allis Full ofLove . Stephen Muecke’s oraltopography of sex in‘The Fall’, DimitriosEfstratiou’ s readingof the Baudelaireanlesbian as asite ofsomatic-semiotic resistance to‘ sex’as anormal- deviantbinary, Adrian Rif kin’s ‘porno-theory’and Calvin Thomas’ s explorationof metaphoricity,all couplesex with writingin di Verent, butequally stimulating, ways. Lynn Turner, onthe otherhand, while noless sexually graphic/graphically sexual, examines the functioningof already-establishedrelations,asking whether the couple must submitto the logicof marriage in her examinationof the translationcontract between Derridaand Benjamin.

The reference Ihave madeto Transmetropolitan and TheBallad of Halo Jones leads me toconclude byremarking onthe appearanceof apanelfrom HotheadPaisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist onour front cover. In amedium– comics –oftenassociated with the productionand reproduction of heterocentric hypermasculinity, HotheadPaisan’ s creative andrepeated interventions around,precisely, the notionof ‘ having sex’in all its meanings make her the ideal(anti-)cover girlfor this issue of parallax. We aregrateful to Diane DiMassa for permission to reproduce her here.

Notes

1 WarrenEllis, DarickRobertson & Rodney ofHalo Jones (London:Titan, 2001 [1986]) (no Ramos,‘ Yearof the Bastard5’ , Transmetropolitan pagenumbers). 17(New Y ork:DC Comics/Vertigo,November 3 This formulationindicates our debt to the work 1998),pp.1– 2. ofBarbaraEngh. 2 AlanMoore & Ian Gibson,‘ I’ll NeverForget Whatsizname’, Book2, prog3, The Complete Ballad Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:32 18 November 2009

parallax 3 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 4– 7

ARomanHoliday 1

AdrianRifkin

Davidand his companionhad strolled upthe hill tothe Church ofSan Pietro al Montorio,it was abrightbut chilly morning,Rome in the early springtime, the usual,ambient smell ofwisteria notyet released bythe warmingsun. They were curiousto note an elderly couple,very bourgeois,elegantly dressed,camel hairand tweed,stooping at the roadsidewith scissors anda plastic bag.On closer inspection they saw that this distinguished,carefully beglovedpair were cutting nettles and otherfresh springweeds, nodoubt to make some exquisitesoup quite alien toa northern palate.The ideaof abourgeoisscavenger was alreadysomething ofashock, preparingthem alittle forthe other,expected butalways rather shocking contrasts ofthe church itself. They wouldonce againsee the high seriousdecorations of the Renaissance chiming with the brash,blue velvet drapedover the seating andcovering the central aisle,left permanently in place forthe stream ofupper class marriages which the church ofSanPietro al Montoriomakes its speciality. There isnodoubt, Davidthinks pompouslyto himself, that marriagesmake iteven moredi Ycult to lookat art than dotourists. And the arthistorian, of course, is nowhere atourist, everywhere aworker.

AsDavidand his friendenter the Church they see that onewedding had just Ž nished andthat there will bea fullhalf hourof grace beforethe next onewould begin. Davidmakes straight forthe Sebastiano,his friendto gaze upinto the little chapel onthe otheraisle, the onewith the complex ceiling bysome followersof Bernini. Davidcan never looklong enough at this particularwork thoughI doubtthat he really sees deeperinto it each time he takes uphis positionin the church. His attachment seems moreof a minorfetish than amajora Vair.Y et todayhe does Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:37 18 November 2009 notice how close Christ’s calf andfoot come tothe viewer’s face,a melting,lightly scented intimacy forall the strainingof the passion.He alsothinks abouta poem that Michelangelo hadwritten toCavalierion the back ofaletter sent tohim byhis friendand student Sebastiano– oneof those agonizedlittle verses that presents desire as pure suVering,and su Veringas the only reasonableclothing fordesire. It would bemore interesting toknow what Sebastianohimself hadhad to say in the text he wrote,as really itmakes nosense, now,these days,David re ects, tofeel like that, as Michelangelo haddone. Mercifully it’s moreand more of a lost experience, like any healing afterholocaust. But now he remembers aboutthe plague,the anxieties ofsex that have risen upto Ž ll the vacuumleft bythe defeatof the oldabjection. Another kindof labour, has safe sex becomea labourof love, and love in its turna labourof safety?

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals 4 DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027911 And what desireis there atthe back ofthis fresco, written behindit, within the blandlyfrozen professionalismof the scene? The beatersbeat; Christ fulŽ ls his role which is tosu Ver andredeem; the column,it doesn’ t take much toread it, the column reminds usofthe father’s law towhich andby which we arebound, it surely is the phallus tothe castrated crotch ofdivine salvation, and it doesn’t take awhole apparatusof language theory, pre- or post-Lacanian, to track the slippageof this metonymy. DavidŽ nds the imagefascinating, but not sublime, for there is no systematic excess, notension inimagination,nothing more surprising than that eshy calf; justthe grimŽ nality ofthe endgameof the Passion,the drearywork ofobedience toanextrinsic anda hostile law that regulateshuman a Vectivity. The rules aremade upbefore the scene, rather like the rules ofa goodworkout – the trainer’s voice barks the breathless grunts –31– 32– c’mon, tighten those butts,just one more, 33– 34– justone more, for the perfect industrialbody, the perfect industrial salvation,for those who agreeto the rules, that is.So it also reminds him ofthe most grizzly bitsof Sade, those terriblemutilations as the 120 Journe´es drawto their orgiasticclose andthe axiomsof libertinageexhaust themselves inthe comprehensive realizationof their law –alaw underwhose rulethe divisionof the bodybecomes the most complete,prophetic expression ofthe divisionof labour,executed forthe ratioof a system which producespleasure only as astrategically necessary excess toensure its own free function.Three commoditiesare produced as rewards in these three scenarios ofproduction, and they arenamed salvation, health and annihilation...

And then anew awareness; that the imagemay noteven bebeautiful, not as Kant mightallow, ‘ Forms which bytheir combinationof unity and heterogeneity serve as itwere tostrengthen andentertain the mental powers...’No, he half regrets the conclusion, butit makes goodsense. The Passionbelongs with Sade.Sade’ s atheism isnothingif notskin deep,and like the theologyof the passion,it confoundsagency with (active) obedience. (Wedding guests areŽ ltering into thechute now, cosseting theirknees on velvet stools, breaking the two men’s absorption in theirrespective object)

As he tries toŽ ll the fresco with desire,David is awareof the slight discomfortthat will sometimes come uponthe conscientiously trainedhistorian who tries topull

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:37 18 November 2009 some materialso rudely out its past,to distort it and bloat it with his own longing –the moreso when itisnoteven ‘his period’. Butthis unease accidentally sharpens his relationto the image.Desires now slipthrough the membrane ofhis caution,Ž ll the space between him andthe concave wall. Quietly,unnoticed, the sublimeis brewingin this hollowspace.

Now the twoof them arewalking back downthe hill, fora late second breakfastor an early lunch. Withoutspeaking to one another they wonderif this will bein one ofthe chic cafes near SantaMaria or one of the morepopular restaurants ofthe VialeTrastevere. Davidis pleasedwith himself, quitesmug; he feels that the time inSanPietro has somehow increased his credibilityas an arthistorian, and between the imaginedmenus, he is trying toframe the title foran article. Then he falls: suddenly, atonhis face,facing downhill, his elbowsby his side,and his palms rasp parallax 5 alongthe crumbling,gritty asphalt. It isnothis lifethat ashes beforehim rightnow –justthese few ideas:in Caravaggio’s Conversion ofSaint Paul Iwouldhave fallen on my back andwhy have Ifallen, anyway; then –is itthe faultof the paintingor shouldI nothave worn these new shoes today,with their toosti V soles andsolid heels? and,in consequence –doI needFreud or just a cobbler?did I renew my tetanus injection?So, as he pushes himself up– his friend(who knows the answer toall these questions)is rather annoyedby the spectacle, anddoes not move to help him –he realizes the sharp painin his ankles andhis hands. He stares athis palms intently, now like StFrancis receiving the stigmata,and wriggles his feet oneby one. Alittle bloodoozes through the tarry skin, and,quite unbidden, another image springs beforehis eyes. (Abarebutted muscle boy, his hands chainedto abeamabove his head, his leatherjeans tight around his ankles, is being ogged bytwo leatherclad,masked bikers in a tightening rhythm ofexchange and pleasure.) This is the moment ofsublimity, where the discordbetween painand pleasure transcends the reasonof the everyday, an immeasurableemotion of pure space, ofthe voidconcavity ofthe chapel in its rhyming with his own unnameddesire, an imageof the extension ofdesiresurpassing the imaginationyet miraculouslypresent.

Fora moment he tries tocling tothis intensity, butthe super-egovoice ofhygiene calls andrules. Find afountainto wash the wounds,which afterall areonly skin deep, a coVee toget the adrenalineback tolevel. Sittingin the cafe there is now nothingleft ofDavid’s episode,but a little sense offatigue,an alreadylost satisfaction, aresidualepiphany, which formulatesitself outof the fragments ofthe moment. Urgently, he must remember tobuy the whole strip-cartoonby T omof Finland, of which his visionwas only asingle page.

Years later the episodetakes the formof print, a short article aboutthe profanityof the Passionand Sade’ s eschatology.It beginslike this: ‘Davidand his companion hadstrolled up the hill tothe Church ofSanPietro al Montorio,it was abrightbut chilly morning,Rome in the early springtime’ ...

Note

1 This short pieceis one of a seriesthat Iwrotebetween them underlies his confusion.The fallon

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:37 18 November 2009 someyears ago to solve a numberof problems the mountdid take place, but the immediatevision concerninghow cultural theorists mightwrite of the Tomof Finland cartoon was introduced to aboutsex and its experience.I inventeda character giveit ateleology,so that the Passionof Christ calledDavid, who, while his lifewould resemble would, as it were,become the deferredaction of myown, would also act out where I wouldfear gaypleasure – anotherHIV reference.It seemed totread. Especially he wouldbe free to have inappropriate to write and publish too many pieces experienceswithout su Veringfear of essentialism, in this genre,that Icalledporno-theories, but but eachtime he didso, theory would take centre another appears in SueGolding [ed], The Eight stageas the uncanny otherof experience and Technologies ofOtherness (London,Routledge, 1997). disruptthe clarityof his actions.The readerwill It isentitled ‘ Slavery/Sublimity’, pp.146– 151,and notethat the sentiments Davidhere gives himself thereDavid gets into Kant in aBerlinsex-club. uptopredate the daysof triple-therapiesfor HIV, The seriousversion of ‘ ARomanHoliday’ appears hencethe remarkon work,love and safety. David’ s in Versus 2:1,1995, under the title of‘ Donot deeplyambivalent love of Sadeand unlimited love touch: Tom with Sebastiano,Kant andothers’ , ofPasolini, had they beenglossed, would have but waswritten atthe requestof the lateStephan neededthe spaceof a short book,but the relationGermer for Texte zur Kunst ,whereit Žrst appeared. Rifkin 6 Despitemy anxieties, the collectedporno-theories painting in Bamberg,of all places, and hung on will appearin their entiretyas soonas mywebsite, somestaircase there; all shiny and at,it hadto www.gai-savoir.com,is up and working. Only last bepointed out to me!! yearI sawa copyof the Flagellation,a life-sizeoil

Adrian Rif kin is Professorof Visual Culture & Mediaat Middlesex University, the authorof StreetNoises: Parisian Pleasures 1900–1940 (Manchester University Press, 1993) and Ingres then, and now (Re Visions:Critical Studies in the History andTheory ofArt) (Routledge,2000). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:37 18 November 2009

parallax 7 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 8– 20

FromFlesh toMa tter: Anti-Essentialist Circumscriptions ofSexuality in Charles Baudelaire’sPoetry

DimitriosEfstratiou

Baroqueallegory sees the corpse only fromthe outside. Baudelairesees italso from the inside. Walter Benjamin,‘ CentralPark’

Materiality,ReiŽcation and theNon-Reciprocating Gaze

This article elaboratesthe workinghypothesis that patterns ofsexual behaviourin Baudelaireacquire their particularsigniŽ cance in the context ofa broaderradical engagement with physical, semiotic andmnemonic materiality.Within the latter’s terrainconceptual andphysical acts arecast intorelief against the backdropof a peculiardialectic ofpostural sexual reciprocality andcognitive asymbolia. I argue that Baudelaireansexuality, especially that ofthe female characters, accommodates adimensionof physical materialitythat resists its transcendence intothe realm where drives and/orsocio-symbolic imperativesare inscribed. One ofthe traits this materialitytranslates intois agaze that doesnot acknowledge the human speciŽcity ofthe (male) other;another is the disturbinglyasexual character that the minimally corpuscularfemale bodyrepeatedly assumes. The unsettling sensuousness that the textual characters exudeshapes upantagonistically vis-a`-vis the resolutionof desire intothe cognitively andmorally domesticatedterritory of gender normativity while

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 exceeding atthe same time the protocolsof sexual deviance. The materialist problematicthat Baudelaire’s oeuvrearticulates betrays aprofoundengagement with the incursion ofreiŽcation into the zone ofcorporeal interiority. As such, his work enhances the semiotic/somatic layers that subtendand immanently underminethe essentialist behaviouralmapping of the sexual realm while maximising throughits allegoricallens the material/performativedimension slurred over in the resolution ofexperientialfragmentation into cognitive integrity.

After Walter Benjamin’s seminal work onBaudelairea certain critical consensus has been reached concerning the reality ofsocio-economic reiŽcation beaching inonthe poet’s narratives. 1 What remains tobeseen is the particularin ections that itassumes in the realm ofsexuality, apartfrom those that determine the privileged,and

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals 8 DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027920 eminently traceable,image of the prostitute. 2 Textual depictionsof the oversexed, yet unsettlingly asexual female bodytypically revolve aroundthe bipolaraxis ofthe seraphic-versus-the whore. 3 This shouldnot, however, betaken tomean that Baudelaire’s angle replicates androcentric conŽgurations of woman. The sti V bodies ofthe narrators’s female partners exhibita monumental sexual intransitivity that cannot becontained within the perimeters oflesbian non-reciprocality.Their postural minimalresponsiveness merely serves tosustain the decorumof sexual rapportwhile simultaneously makinga mockery ofthe economy ofpossessor andpossessed that Baudelaireostensibly endorses only tosubsequently reverse, andthus deconstruct, the sexual protocolsthat supportit. Baudelaire’ s anti-naturalismexceeds the essentially re-integrateableand cognitively soothinglogic of sexual deviance and comes toundermine the essentialist foundationsthat monitorperceptions of human sexuality andtheir zeugmatic arrangements. Two ofthe ways inwhich his latent anti-essentialism vis-a`-vis sexuality shapes uparethe erosionof the auratic,reciprocal gaze that constitutes a sine qua non forthe cementing ofa reciprocally deŽned sexual identity,and the construal ofthe female bodyin terms that enhance its corporeal materialityand preclude its non-residualyielding to the matter-transcending realm ofsigniŽ cation and understanding. There is abattlebetween constatationand performanceraging in the Baudelaireanfemale body,and therefore much moreis atstake therein than justthe voidingof anessentially sanctioned perceptionof women andsexuality.

The dissolutionof the reciprocal gaze that most poemsin Les E´ paves [Flotsam] implicitly negotiateimpacts the narrativalsubject’ s capacity tohave his desire recognisedand socially mediated.Ideally, ocularcomplementarity implicates the eroticizedsubjects ina specular symmetry ofmutually recognizable subjectivities. The partiesconcerned areexpected torespond to each other’s ocularcall. In this case, the oppositeholds true. The non-reciprocity ofthe gaze is an explicit given of the poetry,and a factorseriously contributiveto an overallerotic and auratic loss. The male textual narratorscovet the female bodywhile construing itin terms of reiŽcation of the organiclife within. Itiswithin this construal that oneofthe pervasive concerns that renders Baudelaire’s poetryparadigmatic for our ( post-)modernity, viz. the riftbetween perceptionand cognition, materializes. The narrators’s gaze reiŽes the female other,objectiŽ es her andaims toact outthe recognitionof self that the staring protagonistseeks while atthe same timeretaining the distance that isrequisite Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 tothe preservationof aura.The female partners’s eyes, though,have lost the ability toreciprocate a gaze ofrecognition. 4 In Benjamin’s words,‘ sexus [has] detached itself fromeros’ . 5 This loss anddetachment, however, arenot passively accepted. Benjamin’s multivalent addressof the issue ofreiŽ cation in its variousramiŽ cations has enhanced the fragileequilibrium between its hellish and redemptivedimensions. Within the parametersof melancholy allegoryfoundational to Baudelaire’ s endeavour,a positionis carved outwherein the reiŽed human bodyis both acknowledgedin its fragmentary materialspeciŽ city andtreated as harbouringa politicallytransformative potential. Benjamin writes in‘KonvolutJ’ that ‘The unique importanceof Baudelaire resides in his beingthe Žrst andthe most uninching to have taken the measure ofthe self-estranged human being,in the doublesense of acknowledging this being andfortifying it with armoragainst the reiŽed world.’ 6 Acknowledging, anddoing justice to,the reiŽcation immanent tothe human parallax 9 dimensionmeans alotmore than unilaterally demotingit to an epiphenomenonof socio-economic exigencies. The melancholic-allegorical Žxationon the creaturely and,by extension, the bodilyrealm subtends bothBaudelaire and Benjamin’ s work andrelates toboth writers’ determination to redeem the forsaken object,the commodity,the human body, immanently. Itisnotonly the historical continuumwith its progressivistmythologies that, both writers agree,must beblastedapart, 7 but also the synecdochic continuumof the naturalhuman bodythat Baudelaire’s allegorical ragerips apart in the interest ofmicrologically upholdingthe corporealmonad’ s potentialto deplete the devolutionof the bodyinto a soothingmetaphor of social organicity. 8 The politicallytransformative potential indwelling in the redemptionof corporealreiŽ cation is, however, morepoignant in Benjamin. 9 In Baudelaire reiŽcation encompasses asuprahistoricalcomponent that protrudesinto the sublation ofperformative exigencies intothe zone ofhistorical mindfulness ( Eingedenken ). Benjamin’s palinodesover Baudelaire’ s lack ofpolitical awareness may inpart be attributedto this situation. 10

In the followingpoem, ‘ A ` celle quiest tropgaie [To Her Whois tooGay]’ , from the section Les E´ paves [Flotsam],11 the preservationof erotic aura is staked uponthe salvagingof a minimalceremonial distance. This is supposedto transpire through the transformationof the female bodyinto a somatic ciaroscuro landscape.In a stunning reversal ofestablished values, however, the qualitiesof this naturalrealm arepresented as inimical tothe speaker,who ultimately voices his hatredof nature as much as his forcedadmission of it as acategoryconstitutive ofhis perceptionof the other.12 Fromthe initialconception ofthe womanin naturalterms,

Tateˆte,ton geste, tonair Sontbeaux comme unbeau paysage; Le rirejoue en tonvisage Commeun vent fraisdans unciel clair. Yourhead, your gestures, andbearing Are as lovely as abeautifullandscape; Laughterplays overyour face Like acoolwind in aclear sky.

onepasses torepulsion towards nature, and aggressivity towardsthe womanwho is Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 seen toembody its qualities:

Pourcha ˆtierta chair joyeuse, Pourmeurtrir ton sein pardonne´, Et fairea `ton anc e´tonne´ Une blessure largeet creuse, 13 Soas tochastise yourhappy  esh, Tobruiseyour pardoned breast, And cleave intoyour astounded side Awidedeep wound.

The chastisement in questionre ects asadomasochistic logicwhich is present throughoutBaudelaire’ s work,sadomasochism signalling primarilya complicationof Efstratiou 10 the reciprocal mediationand objectiŽ cation of self andother. Punishing the other amountsempathetically inthis poetryto punishingoneself 14 since there isaconstant palindromicmovement between empathetic identiŽcation with, andaversion to, the female presences.

The motifof the abortedgaze is clearer in‘ Les Bijoux’: ‘Les yeux Žxe´ssur moi, comme untigre dompte ´,/D’unair vague et reˆveurelle essayait des poses,/ Et lacandeur unie a `lalubricite ´/Donnaitun charme neufa `ses me´tamorphoses; [Her eyes Žxed onme,like atametigress, /With avagueand dreamy look striking variousposes, / And candourtogether with wantonness /Gave anovel charm to her metamorphoses;]’. 15 It is aunitybased on antitheses that prevails here: ‘eyes Žxed’yet with a‘dreamyand vague look’ , ‘candour’and ‘ wantonness’, continuous ‘metamorphoses’. The Žxed eyes donot denote an identity-acknowledginggaze, but bearthe qualitiesof asenseless beast(a tigress) whose appealto humans emanates fromits threatening nature,self-su Yciency, andbehavioural intransitivity. 16 The toposof the womanas lurkingand self-transforming presence serves asthe organising principle.The lookemanates froma source that doesnot hail the other’s speciŽcity. The narrator’s excitation rises inproportionto the specular mutabilityof the woman: ‘Je croyais voirpar un nouveau dessin /Les hanches del’ Antiopeau buste d’ un imberbe[I thoughtI saw byvirtue of atransformation/The hips ofAntiope and a stripling’s bust]’.The French ‘bust’translates as either ‘bosom’, ‘chest’or, most signiŽcantly, ‘sculpture (depictingthe upperpart of one’s body)’. The latter deŽnition may serve as asemantic foilfor the enhancement ofthe passagefrom nature to the reiŽcation of the human dimensionimplied in the monumentalityof sculpture, a persistent theme throughoutthis poetry.Baudelaire tries todefend the auraand remoteness ofthe given ( ergo the beastly, intransitive qualityof the woman) against the encroachment ofvolitional and distance-reducing gaze.Y et,his enterprise leads tothe mortiŽcation of the physical dimension,to the gradualreiŽ cation of the human body.The bodyturns to funereal monument 17 repeatedlyin his oeuvre,and through the concrete reality ofhis dialectical corpuscularimages.

CorporealMateriality ,Cognitiveand Sexual ReiŽcation

The sexual economy regulatingthe narrativalsubjects’ interaction is apointerto Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 the widerretreat ofone’ s capacity toabsorb and process experience. The transformationof the female bodyinto a space ofcontention where the physical and mental capacities ofthe male narrator(s) areput to the test, testiŽes tothis retreat. The characters’bodies serve as the vessel wherein sexuality undermines identity insteadof serving asachannel wherein the subject’s truth can beconsolidated.The distress oversexual orientationand fulŽ lment experienced bythe Baudelairean subjects symptomizes an incisive disarrayof identity layers that failto coalesce into unassailablesubjectivity. Baudelaire’ s sexed-upcharacters exudea crossover appeal. Asubversive aversionto the feminine realm coupledwith the encodingof post- coitalmelancholia intovirtually every character’s social gestures overwhelms any expectationof psychosexual equilibrium.Baudelaire manages tofeed an amazing amountof coded behaviour, decoy manoeuvres andsexual innuendointo his character proŽles. Visiblealienation e Vects accompany the hectic eroticallure of his parallax 11 characters andcounterbalance apervasive sense ofsexual entitlement partially responsiblefor their unsettling aura.

Baudelaire’s sexual linguafranca is replete with instances offrustrated sexual gratiŽcation, a conditionthat exceeds the intensity andperiodicity of amere deviation froma naturalform, and is thereforeimmanently inscribed.The texts arefull of attempts oflovers manque´toattainsome formof fulŽlment, sometimes viarecourse toempathetic memory.All they endup with is consumptionof sex devoidof any liningup of the cores ofsexual experience intounivalent sexuality. The ‘mannequin puissant’has alreadyturned into ‘ de´brisde squelette’18 bythe timethe male narrator struggles todistil a modicumof meaning fromthe experience he has had.The narrativalsubject leases himself outas apsychotic grapplingwith the metamorphoses ofperceptionalgivens. The uidityof perceptionin this case marks the overwhelming ofconceptual equilibriumdue to the non-commensurability ofthe perceived scenes with meaning-imbuingcognitive and moral frameworks. ‘Les Me´tamorphosesdu vampire’literalizes the inundationof perceptionby aspecular mobilitythat deprives the seeing subject fromany cognitiveand sexual anchoring.Again, the Baudelairean toposof the woman/beastturning into soulless reiŽed object (skeleton in this case) viathe pathof waning naturalityo Vers aprofoundcomment onthe inherently reiŽed character ofall eroticand, by extension, conceptual experience:

LES ME´ TAMORPHOSES DUVAMPIRE La femme cependant,de sa bouchede fraise, En se tordantainsi qu’ un serpent sur labraise, Et pe´trissant ses seins sur le fer deson busk, Laissait coulerles mots toutimpre ´gne´sdemusk: [...] ‘‘Je remplace [...] La lune,le soleil,le ciel et les e´toiles! [...] [...]jene vis plus Qu’une outre aux  ancs gluants,toute pleines depus! Je fermailes deuxyeux, dans mafroide e ´pouvante, Et quandje les rouvrisa `laclarte ´vivante, A` mes coˆte´s, aulieu du mannequin puissant Quisemblait avoir fait provision de sang, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 Tremblaientconfuse ´ment des de´bris desquelette , Quid’ eux-meˆmes rendaientle cri d’unegirouette Oud’ uneenseigne, aubout d’ unetringle defer, Quebalance le vent pendantles nuits d’hiver. 19 THEMETAMORPHOSES OFTHEVAMPIRE Meanwhile the woman,uttered these words Fromher strawberry mouth,writhing like asnake On abrazier,and chaŽ ng her breasts onthe steel ofher corset, Musk-penetrated words: [...] ‘‘Iwill replace [...] The moon,the sun, the sky andthe stars! [...] Efstratiou 12 [...]Isaw but Aslimy gourddripping with pus! Iclosed my eyes in aŽtofhorror, And when Ireopenedthem tothe stronglight, Ifoundnext tome, instead of the powerful mannequin Which hadsatiated herself with blood, The rattlingbones of a skeleton, Raspinglike aweathercock Or asign-boarddangling from its ironframe, Which the windswings ona winter night.

The passagefrom ‘ serpent’to ‘ skeleton’via the intermediate‘ mannequinpuissant’ teases outthe hypothetical essence ofthe female partnerthrough successive layers ofrepugnant naturality. The conditionthat is revealed underneath the natural overlay is notdeviational, but typical andexemplary. The naturalstratum covers up the emblem-corpse inan attemptto prolong the defensive motionof understanding andsexual accountability. 20 The corpse asmodelof erotic partnership strikes atthe core ofasupra-historicalphenomenon. The meaningless yet allegoricalfemale body enhances the reiŽcation that complicates the transitionfrom material given tothe concept, the diremptionof physis intopetriŽ ed fragment.

With respect tothe female’s bodyreduction to allegorical emblem andthe complicationof specular symmetry that this metamorphosisentails, Christine Buci- Glucksmann seems toinsinuate this impossibledialectic ofperceptual Ž xations and de-auraticized,cognitively silent andnon-reciprocating objects of ocular desire: ‘Now,the ubiquitousmetaphors of the eye andthe petrifyingdual look (divine/ infernal), like all the correlates exhibitedby the image,deŽ ne the Baudelairean theatre ofthe modernand of the feminine.Or rather,modernity is this theatricality which is constantly eroticising thenew .Forif the eye functions here as the organof the passions andof their aggravation,the theatre forits partis unrealand lacking in aVect’.21 The petriŽcation of the female bodyand the non-a Vective dimensionof the ‘theatre’where non-reciprocality is stagedpoint up the recalcitrance ofthe physical sensorium tothe imperativesof essence. It alsoo Vers acritical purchase onthe shading oV ofphysical matter intoa sexuality-riddenbody that iscoerced intoobeying the dictates ofconfessional sex regimes. 22 It is the very constitutionof sex, the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 deploymentof sexuality enjoinedwith its commensurate ‘injunctionto know it,to reveal its law andits power’23 that isatstake inthe gradualcorporeal emaciation of the female bodyin Baudelaire’ s poetry.F romthe regimentedsexual esh onemoves notto the essence fundaments ideallyunderpinning it, but to the inexible solidity ofmatter-rich butsense-void corporealarmature that isapointerto aradically other economy ofpleasure, or rather challenges the very logicof economy as such. This physical minimalism allegorically rehearses in reverse formthe process ofthe mortiŽcation of the materialdimension inherent in the formationof concept, and thus undercuts any attemptto transcribe the BaudelaireanmortiŽ cation of the human body in exclusively historicist terms asthe e Vect ofthe market commodiŽcation of the human body.24 This doesnot mean, however, that there areno distinct historical responses tothe latter.Baroque allegory is most relevant here since itwas deployed in orderto grapple with the meaningof this transformation.Baudelaire di Vers from parallax 13 his baroquepredecessors, however, in that he resisted the ultimatesalvational leap intotranscendentalism that they undertook. 25

Inbroaderterms, the non-integrationof sexual experience within sexuality-stabilizing cognitive-moralensembles that the abovepoem engages is symptomatic ofaprofound withering ofexperiential certainties andsexual normativity.One can hardly speak ofanexperience in the propersense ofthe wordhere. Also, the narrators’s obsessive zoomingin onparts of the women’s bodiesin a way that shatters their synecdochic organicity,plus the specular uidity vis-a`-vis the female body,are entwined with a widercomplication of analogicalrepresentation that cannot leave organicistaccounts ofsexuality intact. Icontend that they ensue on,and allegorically corroborate,the diVractionof the substantialunity and homogeneity of the represented Želd,which unityis indispensablefor stable representationand the ultimatecontainment ofsexual deviance, say female homosexuality,within acognitively assuagingzone.

The enhanced awareness ofthe materialdimension of reality givens exhibitedin Baudelaire’s poetry,with the human bodybeing the predominantparadigm, responds tothe texts’s engagement with the contingent character ofcognitive/ semantic and sexual positivism.The montage ofisolated and often petriŽ ed human fragments, of the partsof the female anatomythat the narratorsclose upon as ifin seeming oblivionto the whole person,points to a hollowingof human naturethat is not, however, mournedfor. ‘ Une Martyre’with its Delacroix-esquedissection ofan eroticizedeven ifbarteredbody, exhibits the uncanny attributionof esh-like qualities tothe woman’s accessories while her mutilatedbody is voidof any vestige of corporeality:‘ Un basrosa ˆtre,orne ´decoins d’or,a `lajambe, / Commeun souvenir est reste´;/La jarretie`re, ainsiqu’ un oeil secret qui ambe,/ Dardeun regard diamante´[Aesh-colouredstocking, adoredwith goldclocks, /rests onher leg like amemory;/ Her garters,just like asecret eye that glints, /Give o V a gemlike glare]’.26 The corpse-like qualitiesof the female bodyinscribe reiŽcation and materialitywithin the core ofputative fertility. The whole pictureis accentuated in counterpointto the poetry’s self-understanding in dialogical,conjunctural terms. However, itis the contiguityof two facets ofbodily reiŽ cation that is evident: reiŽcation as boththe outcomeof a concrete historical arrangement offorces and the permeationof history andmemory bythe materialityof semiotic inscriptions, whether they beunderstood as languageor as puresense-less physicality. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009

There arenumerous examples ofthe marmorealaura of the female bodyin the examined texts. All testify tothe reiŽcation of naturalitythat isendemic inthe deepest layers ofnaturality,in the sexed upandyet ultimately frigidbody that shouldideally bethe site ofunimpeded vitality insteadof the supportingchora ofgender-erasing transgression. Aperennial agon overthe possibilityof the rehabilitationof sex along cognitively integrallines is playedout in numeroustextual instances where the female bodyis bothvolatile and sculpturally solid.Indicatively, in ‘Le Le´the´[Forgetfulness]’ onereads: ‘ Viens sur moncoeur, [...] /Tigre adore´,monstre auxairs indolents; //Je veux dormir!/ /J’e´taleraimes baiserssans remords/ Surton beau corps poli comme lecuivre [Comeupon my heart,[...] / Adorabletigress ,monster in your indolent airs;//Iwant tosleep, ...//Iwill lavish mykisses withoutremorse / Onyour beautiful bodythat is polishedlike bronze ]’(emphasis added). 27 The stressed materialityof the Efstratiou 14 female bodytranslates anew economy ofjouissance beyond the male symbolic sovereignty, aswell asthe materialdimension of the human bodythat doesnot yield tosense andsovereign sexuality. The aggressively augmentedmaterial in ections of the bodybetray the ruptureof modernist self-conception with sexual binomialism andradically preemptthe dialectical anamorphosisof the transgression ofsex and sense. Representationalmotions puriŽ ed oftestimonialimport and a sexual mobility deprivedof essentialist mooringsimpregnate the Baudelaireantext with its instances ofcognitiveand moral black-outs andqualify the spasmodicsomatic rapportsof his protagonistsas instances ofa performative and material love .This latter encompasses varioustropes of inherently abortedsexual perceptionthat still retainthe graceful decorumof self-reexive consciousness. The ambivalentreciprocal enhancement and underminingof attributes that partakeof materiality and plasticity in the above mentionedpoem, (‘ tigress’and ‘ indolentairs’ on one hand, and a body‘ polished like bronze’on the other) corroboratesthe gesturalcharacter ofsexual understanding. What emerges throughoutis ‘the very ‘‘origin’’ ofthe [physical] text, the material trace orthe materialinscription that wouldbe the conditionof possibility and the conditionof impossibility of the text ‘‘itself’’’. 28

Baudelaire’s insistence onthe nonsensical materialityof the sexually reiŽed human bodybears down upon the possibilityof conceptually capturinghuman sexuality in terms ofunderlying essence fundaments.Also, his avoidanceof a lexicon of unconscious-begotten forces allows readinginto his work amost promisingresistance torendering desire answerable totranscendent laws in the service ofpsychogenetic immanence ortothe sexual caveats that arelegitimated in the interest ofsanctioning the cultural/politicalimperatives of the social Želd. 29 The predicamentof the Baudelaireancharacters is nowhere banalisedinto the frustrationof their e Vorts to access the truenature or referent oftheir desirethat hypothetically wouldbe glimpsed negatively throughthe veil ofrepression. The poetryteases outthe socially asymmetrical formationsof desire and sexuality, andshowcases this asymmetry as the cause ofthis predicament’s genesis. The social twist given todesire, however, is never reducedto a historicist determinism that wouldreplicate the teleologyof biogeneticessentialism onthe level ofsocial interaction.The parallelerosion of naturalityand sexuality, andthe melancholia ittriggers, point to the inŽltration of human sexuality bya material,semiotic logic.The female body,as the privileged terrainwhereupon the corpuscularvoiding of natureis madeto transpire,is gradually Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 divestedof its symbolic, aesthetic andnatural qualities only totransform intoa sense andsex-void sign whose signiŽed is the trace left behindby the disappearanceof its meaning.The disintegrationof subjectivity that the internal colonizationof desire bysense-less materialitysolicits, radicalizes psychogenesis tosuch anextent that the extraction ofhomocentric contents turns intoŽ ctional pursuit.This radicalization hinders the smoothinternalization of man by/intoman viathe bridgeof sexual and/orlinguistic communication.

My usageof the term ‘material’has throughoutresonated with the Kristevian sense ofthe semiotic,pre-symbolic arrangement ofthe somatic forces beforethey are invested in signiŽcation. 30 Semioticprocesses, which include ‘displacement, condensation,alliterations, vocal andgestural rhythms’ , 31 Žnda subtleecho in Baudelaire’s cadaverizationof the female bodyand his narrators’s witnessing oftheir parallax 15 female partners’s autarkyand intransitivity in terms that pointto another economy offemale jouissancebeyond the competitionwith the male partner’s symbolic power. Baudelaire’s female presences resist hermeneutic assimilationto the extent that they pointto a wholly di Verent economy ofdesire. With regardto the woman-turned- skeleton orbronze sculpture alotmore is atstake than the corporealsurface whereuponthe historical conjuncture has inscribed its parcelling andprostituting commodiŽcation of the human dimension.This female Žgureshapes upasthe realm wherein ‘the feminine interior(meaning the psychic space and,at the level ofthe bodilyexperience, the vagina-anuscombination) can then cease beingthe crypt that enclosed the deadwoman and conditions frigidity’ . 3 2 The tense dialectic ofcorporeal opulenceand somatic emaciationin Baudelaire’s poetryobeys the necessity tohollow outany pockets ofinwardness wherein fundaments ofessence can beingrained. 33 The female corpse-emblem, additionally,is an e Vect ofthe abjectdimension that inheres inBaudelaire’ s poetry.The corpse that is revealed underneathlayers of covering esh asthe deepesttruth ofthe other‘ signiŽes the supervalence ofthe body, the body’s recalcitrance toconsciousness, reason orwill’ . 34 The corpse signiŽes the excess ofsensuous physicality vis-a`-vis cognitionand reference andthe body’s recalcitrance toits annexation bythe sexual, viz.cognitive,realm.

Baudelaire’s radicalizationof the reiŽed character ofhuman experience andsexuality andhis allegoricalbelabouring of itarenot, however, impenetrableto the dimension ofthe social productionof individuals and desire. 35 Baudelaire’s poetryconŽ gures sexuality neither in terms ofan infrastructure 36 noras an epiphenomenonof socio- economic determinations,but as abehaviouralensemble that shapes upin the crossroads between social injunctions andthe collapse ofvaulting cognitive and moralframeworks that necessarily brackets the former.On the oversexed yet sti V Baudelaireanbody one can readthe inscriptionof socio-moral imperatives. Beyond that,however, this bodyexhibits anuncanny materialitythat doesnot simply translate the reifyingparcelling imposedby market conditions,but also the materialdimension ofhuman experience andsexuality that cannot betranscended intoan organon ofsense, instinctual drives,or instrumental reason.The hardly legibleprimal inscriptions underneaththe sex-ratiŽed superscripts in the Baudelaireanpalimpsest cry outa resistance tocompulsive sex understoodin terms ofessence.

Baudelairerefused to dumb down the societal dimensions ofsexual andsocial Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 privationand chronicled the intertwining oflack qua desireand its social fabrication. In the corporealityof his imagesand the unsettling physicality ofhis characters he gives oV the notionthat history isinscribedon the human bodynot only inthe form ofsocially imposeddrills butalso in the way individualsrelate tothemselves, totheir physicality, totheir desire. 37 However, the aggressive voidingof sexual normativity andits erodingspilling over beyond the cognitively secure site ofprostitution into morehabitable spaces constitutes oneof the primaryaxes ofBaudelaire’s engagement with the bodyand sexuality that disruptsboth essentialist andreductively historicist accounts ofhuman sexuality. What is more,it puts in abeyance the perpetually embattledcognitive caveats that sustain bothangles andimperils their spurious legitimationon the basisof covertly naturaland/ orovertly social determinations. The non-conjunctural dimensions ofreiŽcation are equally pressing andare inserted byBaudelaire within the deeperlayers ofhuman sexuality where they areseen to Efstratiou 16 subtendthe passagefrom perceived scene toconcept. This voidingof naturality, which the metamorphosisof the female bodyinto senseless physical matter comes totranslate, respondsto concerns that aresubsumed under a broaderproblematic ofsubjectivity andcognition vs. linguistic performancethat exceeds the topicalityof the sexual angle.His allegoricalcynicism ‘violatesthe scene ofpleasure,ripping apart the myth ofsexual love.’38 It isasign ofBaudelaire’ s inexhaustible actualitythat he labouredunder a radicalconstrual ofsomatic performativitythat wouldnot be catharized intoeither sexual normativityor deviance. In his poetryone sets o V with the imperativesof the esh, the injunctions ofsex andthe excitement they provoke in orderto gradually gain purchase onthe contingencies ofthe performative.In Warminski’s words,‘ There is nodirect, immediate, royal road to the performative, toaction and the act, politicalor otherwise. Pretendingthat onecan godirectly is sheer delusionand a guaranteethat nothingcan happen,nothing will ever happen.’39

Notes

1 Twoseminal studies that addressthe issueof becoming human in the whore’’ [‘Central Park’, reiŽcation in WalterBenjamin’ s treatmentof p.42].The implicationis that thereis a socially Baudelaireare Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of transformativepotential inherent inthe allegorical Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project enhancementof the reiŽed, commodiŽ ed body. (Cambridge(MA): MIT Press,1989) and Christine 3 With [Baudelaire]the fetishistic andthe angelic Buci-Glucksmann, Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of elementalmost never come together’ [Benjamin, Modernity,trans. PatrickCamiller (London: Sage ‘ Central Park’, p.37].The commoditydimension Publications,1994). Indicatively, on reiŽcation and inherent in the humanrealm is radicalized in the sexualitysee Buck-Morss, The Dialectics ofSeeing ,poetryin congruencewith the allegoricaleye pp.188–90. Susan Buck-Morss, ‘ The Flaneur,the zoomingin onthe femalebody. Sandwichmanand the Whore:The Politicsof 4 SeeBenjamin, Baudelaire,p.149:‘ The expectation Loitering’, New German Critique ,no.39 (1986), arousedby the lookof the humaneye is not pp.99–141 contains relevantinsights onthis issue.fulŽ lled. Baudelaire described eyes of which oneis 2 Benjaminobserves that ‘Baudelairenever once inclinedto say that they havelost the ability wrotea whore-poemfrom the perspectiveof the tolook’ . whore’[‘ Central Park’, New German Critique , no. 34 5 Benjamin, Baudelaire, p.148. (1985),p.42]. This shouldnot beread as implying 6 Walter,Benjamin, The Arcades Project , trans. that Baudelairewas caught up within an HowardEiland andKevin McLaughlin androcentricself-serving perspective assigning the (Cambridge(MA) andLondon: Harvard University prostitutethe sociallyconvenient spaceof the Press,1999), p.322; emphasis added. pathetichuman commodity. The poetin 7 Benjaminrepeatedly characterizes Baudelaire’ s Baudelaireknowingly prostitutes himself to the enterprisein termsthat directlyderive from his Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 market.His angle is that ofthe poetas commodity.own agenda: ‘ Tothe notion ofprogress in the SeeWalter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: ALyric Poet historyof art, Baudelaire opposes a monadological in the Era ofHigh Capitalism ,trans. HarryZohn conception’[ The Arcades Project , p.298]. (London:V erso,1997), p.34 where Benjamin 8 Relevantinsights on the materialdimension in focuseson anearlypoem in which market-orientedBenjamin are o Veredin GerhardRichter, Walter writingis explicitlyaligned with prostitution:‘ Moi Benjamin and the Corpus ofAutobiography (Detroit: quivends ma pense´eetquiveut e ˆtreauteur/ IwhoW ayneUniversity Press, 2000). sellmy thought andwant tobe an author!’. 9 With respectto the roleforgetting plays in the Politicalmindfulness must concentrate on the retention ofunconscious impressions in Freud’s encasedpotential indwelling in the human theoryand Benjamin’ s appropriationof it in his commodityas whore calling out for redemptive distinguishing between Erfahrung (collectively allegoricalunderstanding: ‘ In the allegoricalthe mediatedexperience corresponding to me´moire deceptivetransŽ guration of the worldof the involontaire ) and Erlebnis (sensoryexperience and commodityresists its distortion.The commodity memoryobeying the imperativesof a more attemptsto look itself in the face.It celebratesits consciousemergence), Theodor Adorno voices his parallax 17 concernover Benjamin not havingformulated a 15 Baudelaire, Oeuvres Comple`tes,vol.1, p.158. proper‘ distinction betweengood and bad 16 SeeBenjamin, Baudelaire,p.150:‘ Thedeeper the reiŽcation’ [Henri Lonitz (ed.), Theodor W.Adorno remotenesswhich aglancehas toovercome, the and Walter Benjamin: The Complete Correspondence strongerwill be the spellthat isapt to emanate 1928–1940,trans. NicholasWalker (Cambridge: fromthe gaze’. Polity Press,1999), p.321]. One could transpose 17 On the ‘funerealmonumentality’ characterizing Adorno’s question‘ asto how far this forgetting Baudelaire’s poetryand the ‘paranoidfear’ [viz. reiŽcation] is one that iscapable of shap- mobilizedin orderto confront it,see Paul de Man, ingexperience’ onto the realmof corporeal ‘Anthropomorphismand Trope in the Lyric’, in performativityand bodily reiŽ cation, that is,to The Rhetoric ofRomanticism (NewY ork:Columbia what degreethe materialsensorium can be sublated UniversityPress, 1984), p.259. into the substratumupon which sexualand 18 See‘ LesMe ´tamorphosesdu vampire’ , historicalexperience can be gauged. The extent to Baudelaire, Oeuvres Comple`tes,vol.1, p.159. which the mortiŽcation of the femalebody in 19 Baudelaire, Oeuvres Comple`tes,vol.1, p.159; Baudelaire’s workharbours a transformative emphasisadded. potentialon the levelof the socialconstitutes the 20 SeeW alterBenjamin, ‘ Central Park’, p.51: realanxiety here and must be embedded within ‘Baroqueallegory sees the corpseonly from the the broaderproblematic of whether the immanent outside.Baudelaire sees it alsofrom the inside’. redemptionof the somatic qua semioticever Seealso Benjamin, ‘ KonvolutJ: Baudelaire’, p.329. transcends the planeof allegorico-melanc holic 21 Buci-Glucksmann, Baroque Reason , p.166. cathexis. 22 10 SeeMichel Foucault, The History ofSexuality , Compareindicatively ‘ KonvolutJ’ [J42a,10] on vol.1, trans. RobertHurley (London: Allen Lane, Baudelaire’s ‘fatalism’and resignation with [J56a, 1979),p.58. 5]where Baudelaire’ s refusalto align himself with 23 Foucault, History ofSexuality, p.157. the ‘ethosof journalism’is seenas anindicationof 24 SeeTheodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , ed. his betrayinghis ownbourgeois class. There is a GretelAdorno and Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Robert tensecounterpoint of avowed admiration for, and Hullot-Kentor(London: Athlone Press,1997), empathywith, Baudelaireand inhibitions relating p.281:‘ Oneof the modelsof artmay be the corpse tothe poet’s allegedaestheticism and political in its transŽxed and imperishable form’ . The incapacitation.Benjamin’ s preoccupationwith reiŽcation of the deceaseddating back to Baudelairebears the traitsof a perennial agon primordialtimes lies behind aesthetic duration, through which he struggledto crystallize his own accordingto this hypothesis.The historical forms concernsmost of which he sawas being encased that this reiŽcation assumes, from mummiŽ cation inthe French poet’s work.V erdictssuch asthe one topreservation in verbalsigniŽ cation, translate a voicedin ‘Paris– The Capitalof the Nineteenth society’s broaderself-understanding. Century’to the e Vectthat ‘Baudelairesuccumbs 25 Seethe crucialpassage on the transcendental tothe infatuationof Wagner’[Benjamin, Baudelaire, twist ofthe Germanbaroque in WalterBenjamin, p.172]must always be contextualized within a The Origin ofGerman Tragic Drama ,trans. John diVuseempathetic appreciation of the archetypally Osborne(London: V erso,1998), p.232. On this modernpoet. 11 CharlesBaudelaire, Oeuvres Comple`tes, 2 vols. ed. leap,Baudelaire’ s resistanceto metaphysical ClaudePichois (Paris: Bibliothe `quede la Ple ´iade, transcendentalismand Benjamin’ s stancesee Max

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 1975). Pensky, Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the 12 ‘In the oppositionto nature announced by Play ofMourning (Amherst(MA): Universityof Baudelairethere lies primarily a deep-seated Massachusetts Press,1993), esp. pp.151– 83. Buck- protestagainst the ‘‘organic’’’ [Benjamin,‘ Central Morssstresses Baudelaire’ s ‘refusalof the Christian Park’, p.45]. solutionof spiritual resurrection’ and his 13 Baudelaire, Oeuvres Comple`tes,vol.1, p.156. knowingno recourse but to‘ holdonto the ruins’ Translationin CharlesBaudelaire, The Complete [Benjamin,( J56,1)],yet ascribes to Benjamin Verse,2vols.,ed. and trans. FrancisScarfe (London: the programmaticintention tomove beyond AnvilPress, 1986), pp.279– 80. Baudelaire’s ‘politicalresignation [...] which 14 On the connectionbetween this sadomasochistic ultimatelyontologizes the emptinessof the logicand Baudelaire’ s allegoricaldismantling of historicalexperience of the commodity’( The the organicdimension, see W alterBenjamin, Dialectics ofSeeing ,p.197,p.201). Beyond the sphere ‘KonvolutJ: Baudelaire’, in The Arcades Project , ofintentions, however,Benjamin remained p.354:‘ Sadismand fetishism intertwine in those substantiallycaught up within the logicof the imaginationsthat seekto annexall organic lifeto the allegorical immanent redemptionof the commodity; sphere ofthe inorganic ’(emphasisadded). alogicthat wasinstantiated in both his choice Efstratiou 18 ofpreferred themes (the Germanbaroque and 31 Kristeva, Black Sun, p.65. Baudelaire)and the speciŽcs of his Gru¨bler 32 Kristeva, Black Sun, p.79. methodology.The reciprocalmediation of 33 Iamfully aware of the potentiallyself- melancholyand the allegoricalenhancement of underminingaspects of Kristeva’ s agenda.The the objectthat Benjaminwill Ž nd in Baudelaire’s semioticchora must necessarily be approached poetrywas already there in the Germanbaroque within the broaderterrain that the symbolic,the drama.Despite the ‘disconsolateeveryday Law, demarcates. The latteris not onlyprohibitive, countenance’of the ‘banalobject’ and the butalso generative. See Judith Butler’s cogent ‘disappointedabandonment of the exhaustedcritique of a latent essentialismunderlying emblem[...] the amorphousdetails which canonly Kristeva’s schemasin ‘The BodyPolitics of Julia beunderstood allegorically keep coming up’ . In aKristeva’, in KellyOliver (ed.), Ethics, Politics, and sentencethat sumsup traits that canbe seen to DiÚ erence in Julia Kristeva’s Writing (NewY orkand relateboth toBaudelaire and his ownwork, London: Routledge, 1993), pp.164– 78: ‘The female Benjamindeclares that ‘the onlypleasure the bodythat isfreedfrom the shacklesof the paternal melancholicpermits himself, and it isa powerfullaw may well prove to be yet another incarnation one,is allegory’ [ Origin, p.185]. ofthat law,posing as subversive, but operatingin 26 Baudelaire, Oeuvres Comple`tes,vol.1, p.111. the serviceof that law’s self-ampliŽcation and 27 Baudelaire, Oeuvres Comple`tes,vol.1, p.155. proliferation’[ p.178].Kristevian signiŽance has not 28 AndrzejWarminski, ‘ ‘‘Asthe PoetsDo It’ ’ :On exhaustivelyaddressed the possibilitythat the the MaterialSublime’ , in TomCohen etal. (eds), semioticand the symbolicare not ontologically Material Events:Paul de Man and the Afterlife ofTheory disjunct.I Žnd the transgressionof the symbolic (Minneapolis(MN): Universityof Minnesota Press, bythe semioticparticularly relevant to rephrasing 2001),p.28. the constitutivecrisis of reason and evidentiality 29 SeeGilles Deleuze and Fe ´lix Guattari, Anti- that Iengagein the examinedtexts, but always Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia ,trans. Robertwithin the frameworkFoucault demarcated when Hurley,Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane(London: he criticizedsex asacausalprinciple. See Foucault, Athlone Press,1984), p.74. They write: ‘ Castration The History ofSexuality ,p.154.For a more andoedipalisation beget a basicillusion that makes comprehensiveappraisal of Kristeva’ s projectand usbelievethat realdesire-production is answerableits relevanceto a transgressivepolitics see Suzanne tohigher formations that integrateit, subject it to Guerlac,‘ Transgressionin Theory:Genius and the transcendent laws,and make it servea higherSubject of La Re´volution du langage poe´tique ’, in Ethics, socialand cultural production; there then appears Politics, and Di Ú erence in Julia Kristeva’s Writing , akindof ‘ ‘unsticking’’ ofthe socialŽ eldwith pp.238–57. regardto the productionof desire,in whosename 34 ElizabethGross, ‘ The Bodyof SigniŽ cation’ , in allresignations are justiŽ ed in advance’. John Fletcherand Andrew Benjamin (eds), Abjection, 30 SeeJulia Kristeva, Black Sun:Depression and Melancholia and Love: the Work ofJulia Kristeva Melancholia ,trans. LeonS. Roudiez(New Y ork:(London and New Y ork:Routledge, 1990), p.92. ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1989), pp.39, 41, 42, 35 SeeEugene Holland, Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: 65,66. It isessential to clarify that the ‘primal The Sociopoetics ofModernism (Cambridge:Cambridge object’behind mourning and melancholia the loss UniversityPress, 1993). ofwhich isnegated in andthrough languageand 36 SeeGilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, the passagefrom semiosis to signiŽ cation, the trans. HughTomlinson and Barbara Habberjam Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 ‘ultimatecause of conveyability,exists only for and (New Y ork:Columbia University Press, 1987), through discourseand the alreadyconstituted p.101:‘ Wedonot believein generalthat sexuality subject.Positing the existenceof that otherhas the roleof aninfrastructurein the assemblages language[the semioticin this case]and even of an ofdesire,nor that it constitutes anenergycapable otherof language, indeed of an outside-of-of transformation or of neutralization and language,is not necessarilysetting upa preserve sublimation.Sexuality can only be thought asone formetaphysics or theology. The postulate ux amongothers, entering into conjunctionwith correspondsto a psychicrequirement that Western other uxes[...] But psychoanalysis has produced metaphysicsand theory have had, perhaps, the everything– exceptexits’ . goodluck and audacity to represent. That psychic 37 SeeDeleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, p.112: requirement iscertainly notuniversal ;Chinese ‘Historyis constantly beingremade, but conversely civilization,for instance, is not acivilizationof the it isconstantly beingmade by each of us, on his conveyabilityof the thing initself;it israther one own body’ . JacquesLacan’ s admissionof the ofsign repetition and variation, that isto say, of linguisticparameter as formativeof desireand the transcription’[ pp.66–7; emphasis added]. subjectin distinction tonotions ofgenetic and parallax 19 immanentpsychogenesis, also, does not potentiallyintimacy to the periodicalfestivals in which the precludethe e Vectsof collectives on humans.His communitymanifests itself ’readslike Benjamin. contention that ‘what weare faced with [...]isthe SeeJacques Lacan, ‘ Aggressivityin Psychoanalysis’, increasingabsence of all those saturations of the in E´ crits: ASelection ,trans. AlanSheridan (London: superegoand ego ideal that arerealised in allRoutledge, 1989), p.26. kindsof organic forms in traditionalsocieties, 38 Buck-Morss, The Dialectics ofSeeing , p.188. formsthat extendfrom the ritualsof everyday 39 Warminski,‘ Asthe PoetsDo it’ , p.28.

Dimitrios Efstratiou has recently obtaineda PhD onthe poetryof Charles Baudelairefrom the University ofWarwick with the supportof the British Academy. He is currently workingon Walter Benjamin’s concept ofmemory andexperience. [email protected] Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009

Efstratiou 20 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 21– 31

The EroticLifeofMa chines

StevenShavir o

What isitlike tobe acyborg?What doesit mean tobeavirtual,‘ posthuman’being? What doesit look like? Howdoes it feel?

Iwant toapproach these questionsby lookingat amusic video.Chris Cunningham’ s videofor Bjo ¨rk’s song‘ All Is Full Of Love’was madein 1999.The songŽ rst appeared on Bjo¨rk’s 1997album Homogenic;what wehear in the videois notthe albumversion ofthe song,but a later remix byMark Stent. 1

Questions ofvirtuality, and of posthumanity, are much in the airtoday. W elive in atimeof massive technological, aswell associal andpolitical, change. Much ofthis change has todo with globalization,that is tosay, with an economy that networks itself ubiquitouslyacross the planet,thanks tothe instantaneous transnational communicationof  ows ofinformation and money. Concomitant with this transformationis adevaluingof the materialand the local.This is oftenexpressed in terms ofa switch fromphysical reality tovirtual reality. T ouse the terms of ManuelCastells, wearemoving in the directionof aculture foundedon a‘space of ows’that replaces the old‘ space ofplaces’ , anda ‘timeless time’that replaces the timeof history andmemory, as well as the timeof daily routine under industrial capitalism. 2 In line with these transformations,the dominantnarratives ofthe new technological culture arecyberŽ ctions ofdisembodiment. W eourselves aresaid to bemadeout of ‘information’, rather than bodiesand physicality, oreven atomsand forces. And this informationis generally seen asbeinga patternthat can beincarnated indiVerently inany numberof material substrates: carbon,silicon, whatever. The

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 mind,supposedly, is softwarethat can berun on many di Verent kinds ofhardware. Somecomputer scientists (forinstance, Hans Moravec andRay Kurzweil 3 ) even wax rhapsodicalabout the prospectof abandoning our archaic, fallibleorganic bodies,and downloading our minds intocomputers or robots, sometime in the foreseeablefuture.

In line with this, imaginativecyberŽ ctions –science Žction novels andŽ lms –have oftenexpressed an extreme ambivalence regardingthe body.That is how William Gibsonpresents the problematicof virtual reality in Neuromancer ,the canonical text ofcyberpunk science Žction.At the very start ofthe novel,Gibson describes how his protagonistCase ‘ livedfor the bodilessexultation of cyberspace’ . Casehad ‘ a certain relaxed contempt forthe esh. The bodywas meat’. When his nervous system

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals parallax DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027939 21 was hacked, sothat he couldn’t jack in tocyberspace any more,‘ itwas the Fall’. Case‘ fell intothe prisonof his own esh’. 4

Asimilarambivalence can befoundin the Wachowski Brothers’immensely popular 1999 Ž lm The Matrix.5 In this movie,all ofphysical reality as we know itturns out tobeamere virtualsimulation, run by evil machines inorderto confuse andexploit us.The Žlm’s fantasy ofredemptioninvolves rejecting the constraints ofphysicality, thus allowingthe heroto negotiate the worldwith all the uidityand power that video-gamespecial e Vects areable to provide. Neo (Keanu Reeves) can manipulate aspoon,making it  oatin the airor do whatever else he wants, precisely because he knows that ‘there is nospoon’ . The Žlm thus tries tohave itboth ways: it denounces virtualreality as aprison,but o Vers salvationin the formof an even greaterimmersion in virtuality.

Many critical thinkers have respondedwith fearand alarm to the apparent virtualizationof human existence. Theorists as di Verent as Arthur Kroker,Albert Borgmann,and Hubert L. Dreyfus have warned us,in apocalyptic terms, aboutthe dangersof the virtual. 6 Iaminclined tothink, however, that all such warnings are futile:they have alreadycome toolate. For as Katherine Hayles arguesin How We BecamePosthuman ,atransformationalong these lines has alreadyhappened. There is nogoing back. W ecan nolonger think ofourselves in terms ofthe old-fashioned, centred liberalhumanist subject.W earealready posthuman. What remains open tocontestation, according to Hayles, is what sort of posthumanwe areturning into. She expresses the hopethat we can reject fantasies ofdisembodiment and mental omnipotence,and instead Ž nda moreembodied form of posthuman existence. 7

Itisinthis spiritthat Iaminterested inBjo¨rkandCunningham’ s ‘All Is Full ofLove’ video.I will arguethat the videoprovides a counter-Žction tothese moremain- stream narratives ofvirtualdisembodiment. Bjo ¨rk andCunningham do not critique virtualization,so much as they openup its potentials.They (re-)Žnd or rediscover the bodyat the very heart ofvirtual reality andcyborg-being.

The videois aminiaturescience Žction narrative.It’ s aboutrobots. But Cunningham posesthe questionof virtuality largely in formaland perceptual terms. Indeed,he disclaims any deepthematic content tohis videos:‘ There’s nointelligence behind Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 them’, he says in an interview. ‘I’mnottrying tomake asocial statement orlet peopleknow what Ithink aboutthings. The videosthat Idoare pure manipulation ofsound and picture, and most decisions aremade on a reex action’. 8 Indeed, Cunninghamedits his videosmore for e Vects oftime andrhythm than he doesfor narrativeor meaning. ‘ All Is Full ofLove’ is best understoodin terms ofthis reex action,this synaesthetic manipulationof sound and picture.

ChrisCunningham has asynaesthetic sensibility. He is unusuallyattentive tothe interplay ofimagesand sounds. In his work,we never getthe impression(so common in mainstream music videos)that the imagetrack isjustan illustrationof the music onthe soundtrack. Nordo we getthe oppositeimpression (familiar from Hollywood Žlms) that the soundtrack’ s sole purposeis toground and validate the actionon the imagetrack. ButCunningham’ s strategy is alsonot the classically modernistone – Shaviro 22 such as we getin Godard’s Žlms, most notably– ofa radicaldisjunction between soundand image. There isnoalienation-e Vect inCunningham’ s videos.Rather, we getan ongoing,dynamic giveand take between the senses. Soundsand images continually relay oneanother, respond to one another, and metamorphose into each other.

Marshall McLuhan famouslyargues that each change in the mediawe use correspondsto a change in the ratioof oursenses. Cunningham’s videosarticulate a very diVerent logicof sensation than those that dominatedmost ofthe twentieth century. They exemplify andexplore a new regimeof perception and of a Vect, one that is juststarting totake shape in this new worldof global capitalism, genetic manipulation,virtual reality, and electronic, digitalmedia. I mean this notonly in terms ofthe obviousrelevance ofwhat the videois about,but much moreimportantly, in terms ofCunningham’ s manipulationof the digitalmedium.

Another way toput this is tosay that,whereas Godardradicalized the formof cinema, Cunninghamis radicalizingthat ofvideo.Michel Chion,the leadingtheorist ofŽlm sound,says that the biggestdi Verence between Žlm andtelevision isthat the formeris anchored byimages, and the latter is anchored bysound. But in music videos,he suggests, ‘the music video’s imageis fully liberatedfrom the linearity normally imposedby sound’ ; andthe relationof sound and image tracks ‘is often limitedto points of synchronization[.. .]the rest ofthe timeeach goesits separate way’.9 Cunninghampushes these formaltendencies as faras he can: partlyby elaboratesound/ imagecounterpoint, and partly by making these ‘pointsof synchronization’central foci,around which all the otherelements ofbothsound and imagetracks circulate.

It’s cold,ice cold,and all the moreseductive forthat. Bjo ¨rk has always been the palest ofthe Ice People.But here she is whiter than ever. Forin this four-minute video,she is an android.She is beingput together on an assembly line,even as we watch. In place ofskin, asmoothwhite Žbreglass shell Žts overher frame.This shell is composedof many separateplates. Some of them haven’t been attached yet. In Bjo¨rk’s neck, inher arms, andon the sideof her head,we still see the underlying circuitry. There areplastic tubes,and wires, andknots ofmetal andblack vinyl. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 The videois mostly astudyin di Verent shades ofwhite. Everything is streamlined, minimal,sleek, andelegant. Everything is clean, almost sterile. This highly stylized lookrecalls the bastardizedmodernist design of certain science Žction Žlms. Ithink particularlyof Stanley Kubrickand George Lucas. In fact,before he startedmaking music videos,Cunningham worked for a year anda half onset designfor Kubrick’ s long-plannedbut never-realized science Žction Žlm AI (the Žlm has nowbeen made, alas,after Kubrick’ s death,by Steven Spielberg).As forLucas, Cunninghamsays in an interview: ‘Star Wars is such afucking fundamentalin uence in my work.It’ s all white costumes againstblack walls –everything’s very classy’. 10 It is typical of Cunningham’s sensibility that he praises Lucas forthe ‘classy’abstractions ofhis visualdesign, while deliberatelyignoring his cheesy, self-consciously retro,feel-good narratives andcharacters. parallax 23 What’s most notableabout the visualdesign of ‘All Is Full Of Love’is what itexcludes. In followingcues fromKubrick and Lucas, andreverting tocool shades ofwhite, Cunninghamgoes against nearly everything else that has characterized science Žction Žlm andvideo for the last twenty years. In particular,he eschews the dominant visualstyle ofrecent science Žction Žlms: the dystopianpostmodern clutter pioneered byRidleyScott in BladeRunner .11 Scotttransposes the look(oblique lighting, shadows, chiaroscuro,o V-kilter camera angles) andfeel (urbanparanoia, exoticism, the femme fatale) of Žlm noir intofuturistic terms. Aworldin which the real has been entirely penetratedby technologies ofsimulation is Žguredby Scott in the formof a dark, grimy,rainy, overcrowded night-time cityscape. The darkness impliesnegativity, as abackdropagainst which the excessively perfect formsof simulation (the icy blonde beautyof the replicants, orthe alluringsmiles ofthe women’s faces onthe enormous videobillboards that loomover the city) areprojected. The result is adoubly distanced nostalgiafor a lost real.Scott’ s invocationof Žlm noir stirs upfeelings of alienationand vacancy. And these feelings aredoubled by ouroppressive awareness that this invocationis itself notauthentic, butonly asimulation.

Scott’s approachhas becomethe standardway toŽguresimulation and virtual reality in science Žction Žlms, upto and including such recent works as The Matrix. (Even though The Matrix isalsoevidently inuenced bythe lookand feel ofAmerican and especially HongKong action Ž lms, a noir sensibility still shines throughin numerous formaldetails, like the set designof its grimnon-virtual world, as well asinits overall paranoidsensibility.)

ButCunningham moves in atotallydi Verent direction.He works with gentle modulationsof light,degrees ofwhiteness andluminosity. I can best describe this in terms ofa distinctionmade by Gilles Deleuze. Discussing silent Žlm ofthe 1920s, Deleuze distinguishes between French impressionist cinema lighting– in which darkness is simply the absence oflight, or light at degree zero –andGerman expressionist cinema lighting,in which darkness isacontrasting, negativeprinciple, always engagedin adialectical battleagainst light. 12 The German expressionist traditionis morefamiliar to us today,in largepart because the same use oflighting, with the same metaphysical connotations,is carriedover into the Žlm noir of the 1940sand 1950s. Scott’ s accomplishment in BladeRunner is toadapt the lightingof expressionism and Žlm noir forcolour Ž lm; he andall his imitatorsin science Žction Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 Žlmmaking have thereby extended alegacy that goesback atleast as faras Lang’s Metropolis:aradically dualistic,even Manichean, visionof the world,that gainsadded powerfrom being projected into an imaginedfuture.

Cunningham,however, moves inanentirely di Verent direction.He istrying tomake acolorversion, not of expressionism and noir,butof something entirely di Verent and less well known. Byimpressionism,Deleuze ismostly referringto the French ‘lyrical realism’of the 1920sand 1930s: the Žlms ofsuch directorsas Jean Epstein, Marcel L’Herbier,Jean Gre´millon,and (the best known today)the early Jean Renoir.While Cunninghamis evidently moreKubrickian than Renoiresque,he isfarmore lyrical, andless obsessedwith symmetry andrigidity, than Kubrickwas. In any case, his videosespouse what can best becalled apluralisticmonism, in sharp contrast tothe radicaldualism of the expressionist tradition. Shaviro 24 All this isplayedout in formalterms, especially inthe natureof the lighting.In ‘All Is Full Of Love’, there is noduality between white andblack, andtherefore none between real andvirtual. There arefew coloursto be seen. Nearly everything is a shade ofwhite. The video’s lightingranges froma harsh white, toa mutedblue- white glow,to a few white lines gleamingin the darkness. And alsothere areno fast camera movements, andno shock cuts orjump cuts. It’s as ifthe worldhad been bleached andrareŽ ed, and chilled tonearly absolutezero. And in the midstof this, we have apersistent focusupon Bjo ¨rk’s androidbody, as well as with her face and her voice.

Bjo¨rk’s face is blank andimpassive, a perfect mask. Her eyes, nose,and mouth are delicately modelled.Otherwise, the surface ofher face is entirely smooth.Bjo ¨rk’s eyes utter,and her mouthmoves slowly andprecisely, as she sings ofendless love: ‘Twist yourhead around, / It’s all aroundyou. / All is fullof love, / All around you’. Bjo¨rk speaks English almostwithout an accent. Buther pronunciationis oddly toneless. She sings the way Iimaginean alien would,or a mutant.Her voice is ethereal, almost disembodied.It seems to oatin mid-air,as ifit had come froma vast distance.

Iwant todwell fora moment onBjo¨rk’s face andvoice, because they arethe only things that distinguishher. They arethe sole featuresthat allowthe machine tobe Bjo¨rk, rather than anybody-at-alland nobody-in-parti cular.Everything else about her iswholly anonymous,and tends todissolve back intothe blank walls behindher. The Bjo¨rk android’s eyes, nose,and mouth are exquisitely modelled.They areslits in the mask, holes in what is otherwise an absolutelysmooth expanse ofwhiteness.

This Bjo¨rk-mask mightbe understoodin contrast towhat Deleuze andGuattari call faciality:‘The inhuman inhuman beings:that iswhat the face isfromthe start. It is bynature a close-up,with its inanimatewhite surfaces, its shining black holes, its emptiness andboredom’ . 13 Deleuze andGuattari are referring here, ofcourse, to the close-up in classic Žlm: the way aface Žlls the screen, establishing an emotional reference point,and creating apowerfulbond of identiŽcation for the audience.This close-up correspondsto the Žxed formof bourgeois or Cartesiansubjectivity, at the very heart ofmodern Oedipal narrative. Faciality isnotin itself subjective,Deleuze andGuattari say, because itis what actually produces subjectivity.As such, faciality Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 is the abstract,dominant standard that brandsus with identity,and transforms us intoa certain kindof willing, obedient subjects. And onemore thing: Deleuze and Guattariemphasize the imageof black holes ona white surface, because this dominatingface is bydeŽ nition white. They Žnda primordialhorror in this white face, this mask that historically deŽnes the power,authority, and privilege of white people.

It is notby accident that Ibringup questions of race here. The history ofpopular music inthe last Žfty years, predominantlyin the United States,but also in Europe andthroughout the world,is ahistory ofinterchanges between black peopleand white people( primarily;of course, other groups have alsoplayed their parts).Or, toput it less idealistically,this history has beenone of repeated appropriation sby whites ofinnovationsby peopleof colour.It’ s arecurrent event, fromElvis’ relation parallax 25 torhythm andblues, all the way tohow,today, white American suburbanteenagers have adoptedblack urbanhiphop as their rebelliousmusic ofchoice.

The recent history oftechnology isfraughtwith racial issues aswell. There has been alotof talk in America recently aboutthe ‘digitaldivide’ . White people– andto some extent Asians as well –have hada disproportionateshare ofaccess tothe WorldWide W eb,compared to blacks, Latinos,and other groups. But I think itis less aquestionof access than itis oneof invisibility:an issue that has been raisedin recent years in the work in ‘whiteness studies’by David Roediger and others. 14 We areoften told, for instance, that the WorldWide W ebtranscends colour,and that in virtualreality itdoesn’ t matter what race youare. But what this really turns out tomean,in practice, isthat everyone onthe Webis presumedto be white. Whiteness is the unmarked,or default, term ofracial identiŽcation in America andEurope today;so when race is notexplicitly mentioned,whiteness is there byunconscious assumption.It remains tobeseen whether the increasingly massive presence ofAsia onthe Webwill change this dynamic.

Butin aEuro-American context, atleast, itis extremely importantthat, in ‘All Is Full Of Love’, Bjo¨rk is insistently markedas beingwhite. (This is something that Bjo¨rkhas alsoexplored in some ofher otherwork, such asher musical collaborations with Tricky.) The invisible,unmarked, taken-for-granted term loses its dominance, when itis madevisible andpointed out as such. Bjo¨rk is sopale in this video,and her featuresare so tenuous, that they seem tocapture whiteness atthe very pointof its emergence. Which isalsoto say, ofcourse, at the pointof its vanishing. Indeed, despitetheir prominence,these white featuresare scarcely there. They givethe Bjo¨rk androidjust a bareminimum of presence. Butthis bareminimum, this tiny sliver of whiteness, is precisely the point.Bjo ¨rk deploysher whiteness as something that is rareand singular, and even perverse. Whiteness isanalien mutation.Which means that itisnolonger the norm.The same thing can bestated in the terms ofDeleuze andGuattari’ s faciality:if the face ofdomination emerges outof blankness and negativity,then in the Bjo¨rk androidthe face is beingdeprivileged. Bjo ¨rk’s features areso barely there, that facialityŽ nds itself onthe verge ofreturning back tothe nothingness whence itcame.

Somethingsimilar happenswith Bjo¨rk’s voice.Shimmering washes ofsound Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 accompany the song’s vocals. Densely layeredstrings playa thick, dissonantdrone. Ghostly harparpeggios rise outof the murk.The original,album version of‘ All Is Full ofLove’has nopercussion.The videoremix addsa slow, synthesized beat.This steady rhythm groundsthe songsomewhat. ButBjo ¨rk pays itno mind. Her voice driftsaway fromany Žxed pulse.She phrases the notes unevenly, nowstretching them out,and now shortening them. She hovers aroundthe beat,without ever landingprecisely onit.In Bjo¨rk’s singing,time becomes elastic. It seems tohave lost its forwardthrust. It nolonger moves ata Žxed rate.It dilatesand contracts irregularly,following the contoursof the voice.

In Western culture,as the deconstructionists have taughtus, the voice is generally taken tobe a sign ofinteriority, authority, and authenticity. It is supposedto come fromdeep within, orfrom on high. Think ofthe voice ofGod, or the authoritywe Shaviro 26 unreectively grantto voice-overs in Žlm; as well as the usualcinematic emphasis onthe speaker orsinger. But Bjo ¨rk undoesthis dominance,thanks tothe exible, oating,unanchored quality of her singing.Purpose and linearity areundone. There’ s nomorehierarchy ofhigher andlower, inner andouter, soul and body, melody and accompaniment. There areonly modulationsof sound and image and feeling.

It is adoublemovement, adoubleseduction. On the onehand, Bjo ¨rk’s voice is dehumanized.It sheds the richness oftexture andtimbre that individuatesa singing voice.Instead, ittends towardthe anonymity andneutrality of digital, synthesized sound.It becomes less analogue,less vital,and less embodied.The livingperson moves closer tobeing a machine. Buton the otherhand, and at the same time,the natureof the machine is alsotransformed. At the heart ofthis digitalblankness, a new sortof lifeemerges. Precisely because Bjo¨rk’s voice has lost its humanistic depth, itis now ableto  oatfree. Spare and without qualities, it is opento the minutest uctuationsof rhythm andtone. The voice wavers andhovers, onthe very edgeof perception.In this way, itweaves itself anew, tenuousbody. At the same timethat Bjo¨rk herself is recast as adigitallyprogrammed android, the digitalmachine itself becomes moreanalogue, and more nearly alive.

This process is evident throughout‘ All Is Full Of Love’. At the start ofthe video, the camera pans upward,through cables andwires, towhere the Bjo¨rk androidis splayedout upon a longplatform; at the end,it slowly pans downagain, revealing the operatingroom to be a sortof machinic set. BehindBjo ¨rk, the walls arean antiseptic white. Other machines arebusy working on her. Their exible arms poke andpry into her. They attach apanelhere, andtighten aboltthere. Acylinder turns, emittinga shower ofsparks. Alight ashes underan openhinge. W atergushes backwards, seepingout of the drainand leaping into the spout.Nothing is inert. Everything has acool,sensuous presence. Every mechanical objectin the videoturns onits axis, orglistens, orthrusts andwithdraws. Every materialsubstance ows,or splashes, orsputters,or spurts.This all takes place incounterpoint to the owofthe music. Wesee all these processes in extreme close-up.The videothus reveals the eroticlife of machines.

Usually, wethink ofmachines as beinguniform in their motions.They aresupposed

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 tobe more rigid than livingbeings, less opento change. But‘ All Is Full ofLove’ systematically reverses this mythology.It suggests that robotsand cyborgs mightwell bemoresensitive than weare.They mighthave moreexquisite perceptions than we do.They mightrespond, more delicately, tosubtler gradations of change. It’s justa matter ofgiving them the propercapacities, and then programmingthem correctly. This is the utopianprospect of the cyborg,the boundary-crossingfusionof human andmachine famouslydescribed by DonnaHaraway; she says that cyborgs cut across all three ofthe ‘leaky distinctions’whose permeabilityis afeatureof postmodern existence: 1)between human andanimal; 2) between human/animal(organism) and machine; 3)between physical andnon-physical. 15 In fact, Bjo¨rk has exploredsome ofthese boundarycrossings in othervideos: particularly the metamorphosesand boundarycrossings between human andanimal. ‘ All Is Full ofLove’ , ofcourse, concentrates onthe second andthe thirdof these leaky distinctions.All inall, it parallax 27 marks Bjo¨rk’s most radicalcrossing-over, justifyingHaraway’ s exuberantclaim that ‘cyborgs areether, quintessence’. 16

Haraway’s sense ofleaky distinctions appliesequally to the machines portrayedin ‘All Is Full ofLove’ , andto the machine that the videoitself is.As McLuhan says, machines areŽ rst ofall extensions ofourselves. Weprojectthem outwardsfrom our bodies,and then they take ona lifeof their own.All machines, andall media,are ourprojections in this sense: notjust in fantasy, butliterally andphysically. Just as ‘the wheel is an extension ofthe foot’, and‘ the bookis an extension ofthe eye’, so too,McLuhan says, ‘electronic circuitry [is]an extension ofthe central nervous system’.17 Film spectatorshiphas traditionallybeen understood in terms offantasy: as asortof imaginary identiŽ cation. But even ifthe movies work this way (orused towork this way), the new digitallyprocessed videosdo not. Rather than using traditionalcinematic concepts tounderstand music videoslike Cunningham’s, we woulddo betterto see them in McLuhanesque, non-psychological terms: assensorial relays, as modulatorsand ampliŽ ers ofemotion, or even as prosthetic extensions of our brains.

The spectatorof ‘ All Is Full Of Love’is very di Verent fromthe normativeŽ lm spectator,as understoodby classical Žlm theory.The usualpolarities of cinematic vision(between subject andobject, between active lookingand passive being-looked- at,or between identiŽcation with andobjectiŽ cation of the image)no longer function in the digitalrealm. (Of course,this is notto deny that,for instance, many music videosstill objectifywomen’ s bodiesin traditionalways. Butthe formshave changed, even when the content has not.)In the moreintimate medium of digital video, the opposedpoles of cinematic perceptioncollapse intoa single self-a Vecting, self- reexive circuit. The viewer is includedin the autoeroticfeedback loop by means of which Bjo¨rk caresses herself. And also,the videospectator is moredirectly alistener –rather than justa viewer –than is the case with classical Žlm spectatorship.F or the music envelops andcaresses the videospectator, all the moreso inthat its source cannot belocated. Sound su Vuses the entire space of‘ All Is Full Of Love’, in the same way that uorescent lightingdoes. The digitalmedium is thus fully audiovisual. It is even tactile, inthe way ita Vects the spectator.At the same time,it keeps a certain reserve. It remains enigmatically distantand cool.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 This seeming paradox,the conjunctionof distance with ahigh degreeof tactile involvement, is central toMcLuhan’ s notionof ‘ cool’, as opposedto ‘ hot’, media. 18 The frenzied feedbackloops of audiovisual perception go together with aspecial kindof detachment: that cold,ironic vision that isbothBjo ¨rk’s andCunningham’ s. Such aseductive, sensuous impassivity,as Iargueelsewhere, isnotunrelated to the aesthetic stance of disinterest in Kant’s ‘Analytic ofthe Beautiful’, inthe Žrst partof TheCritique ofJudgment .19 It’s partof what Isee as anew, postmodernaestheticism: a disaVected, ironically eroticpursuit of beauty, in striking contrast tomodernism’ s heroic questfor the sublime.As Cunninghamwonderfully says inan interview: ‘My aimis tomake imagesthat arestyle-less butbeautiful’ . 20

Ifall the machines inthe videohave an eroticlife, why shouldBjo ¨rk herself beany diVerent? Soon,we see that there aretwo Bjo ¨rkandroids,instead of one.They face Shaviro 28 each other,singing by turns in shot andreverse-shot. One ofthem holdsout her arms inanimploringgesture. The otherlowers her headbashfully. A moment later, the Bjo¨rk androidsare together in the frame,making love. W eview them froma distance, insilhouette.They kiss, andslowly caress each other’s thighs andlegs and buttocks.All the while, the othermachines keepon making adjustments totheir bodies.Sexuality and reproduction are entirely separateactivities, thoughthey both goon simultaneously. Are the Bjo¨rk androidsso enraptured with each other,that they areoblivious to their own construction? Ordoesthe process somehow enhance their bliss? In either case, their motionsare so slow andformal, and yet entirely uid (in contrast toour usual associations with the ‘mechanical’) –as tosuggest a superhumanstate ofgrace.

The tenderness ofthis scene deserves extended comment. Cunninghamsays in an interview that the videois ‘acombinationof several fetishes: industrialrobotics, female anatomyand  uorescent lightin that order[...] Igotto play around with the twothings Iwas intoas ateenager:robots and porn’ . 21 Nonetheless, despitethis deliberatecynicism, the videodoes not come across asyourtypical adolescent male sex-and-power fantasy. Maybeit is thanks toBjo ¨rk’s guidingin uence. Or maybe it’s the happyresult ofCunningham’s uorescent lightfetish. Butin any case, ‘All Is Full OfLove’has quitea di Verent feel than dothe obligatorypseudo-lesbian scenes in pornoŽ lms aimedat an audienceof heterosexual men. There arenone ofthose close-ups oflegs andthighs andjiggling breasts, none ofthose rapidcuts, andnone ofthose fakeorgasmic moans. More, the videodoes not come toany sortof (sexual ornarrative) climax. Instead, itmaintains asustainedpitch ofcalmly distanced rapture.

Everything aboutthe videofurthers this impressionof ecstatic quietude.The video conveys, ormanufactures, or transmits, acertain a Vective tone(what Deleuze and Guattaricall anon-climaxing plateau).And Ithink that this toneis moreimportant than any psychological questionswe mightraise. Indeed, one can plausiblyread the videoboth as lesbian (a Yrminga non-phallic female sexuality), andas auto-erotic and auto-aVecting (displayinga narcissism that is alsopresent elsewhere in Bjo¨rk’s personaas apopicon). But all such readingsare strangely unsatisfying.Human psychology somehow seems besidethe point,when the videopoints so powerfully to aposthumanreinvention ofboth mind and body. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 Psychoanalysis is most oftentaken as adeconstruction ofthe supposedlyunitary bourgeoissubject, and as aliberationof the forces repressed within it.I want to suggest that this isfartoo limited a view; the decentred psychoanalytic subjectis not something that comes afterthe Cartesian,bourgeois subject, but something that is strictly correlative with it.In contrast, anew, posthumansubject will have topoint away fromFreudian and Lacanian conceptions ofdecentred subjects, as much as fromthe unitaryCartesian one. The whole frameof reference has tobe di Verent. Wehave tounderstand the body/mindin otherterms, accordingto the playof otherstructurations andother forces. The current computer-basedanalogies to the mind,common amongcognitive scientists, areas desperately simplistic as the old Cartesianismwas; butit needs tobe answered andcomplexiŽ ed by something that respondsto the new digitalmodels as intimately aspsychoanalysis respondedto the parallax 29 Cartesiannotion of auniŽed ego. I don’t really know what formthis new theorization will take;I Žndthe promisingbeginnings to such an approachin the Bergson-and Deleuze-inuenced work ofsuch recent theorists as Keith Ansell-Pearson, Barbara Kennedy, andespecially BrianMassumi (who has deeplyin uenced the current essay).22 Butin any case, ‘All Is Full ofLove’ is oneof those works that doesn’t illustrate theory,but precedes itandprovokes it. In this video,Bjo ¨rk andCunningham areinventing anddeveloping new formsof sensibility, ones that arepotentially appropriateto our cyborg future. The theorist’s job– as inthe present essay –isto followup on their hints, trying toexplain, formulate, and systematize these singular inventions.

Perhaps the digitalis notthe oppositeof the analogue.It is rather the analogueat degreezero. The worldof continuities and colours that we incipientposthumans know has notdisappeared. In ‘All Is Full Of Love’it has justbeen chilled, andcut intotiny separatepieces. These pieces have then been recombined,according to strange new rules oforganization.They have congealedinto new emotions,and new formsof desire. In its own way, the machine isalsoa sortof  esh. It moves; andas itmoves, itfeels. As Bjo¨rk embraces Bjo¨rk, the digitalcelebrates its nuptialswith the organic.

And that is why Idon’t buythe fantasies andfears ofthose who say that virtual reality will liberateus –oralienate us –fromour bodies. I think that current technological changes can becorrelatedwith changes inthe ways wesense andfeel ourincreasingly media-saturatedworld. And in the longerrun, these changes will increasingly a Vect the actualmatter ofourbodies, as well asthe ways wethink about ourbodies. Our bodies may well becomemore mechanized, andat the same time, moreethereal andmore di Vuse.Y etforthat very reason,we need notto think about the changes reactively, in terms ofwhat we will have supposedlylost in comparison with ourpresent suppositions.For even inthat coolvirtual realm, even when we have becomeposthuman cyborgs, we will still have some sortof bodies. W ewill still have tenderness andyearning, and still need tomake love.

Notes

1 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009 Chris Cunningham andBjo ¨rk, All IsFull ofLove The Nature ofInformation at the Turn ofthe Millennium (ElektraDVD, 1999). (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2000); and 2 SeeManuel Castells, The Rise ofthe Network Society: HubertL. Dreyfus, On the Internet (London and Volume 1ofThe InformationAge: Economy, Society, and NewY ork:Routledge, 2001). Culture (Oxford:Blackwell, 2000 [Second Edition]). 7 SeeN. KatherineHayles, How WeBecame Posthuman: 3 SeeRay Kurzweil, The Age ofSpiritual Machines Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 2000); and Hans (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1999). Moravec, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind 8 Cunningham, quotedin KevinHolly and (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2000). Matt Fretwell, Director File: Chris Cunningham 4 WilliamGibson, Neuromancer (NewY ork:Ace, (http://www.director-Žle.com/ cunningham/, 1984), p.6. accessed7/ 13/2001). 5 WachowskiBrothers, The Matrix (Warner 9 Michel Chion, Audio-Vision, trans. Claudia Brothers,1999). Gorbman(New Y ork:Columbia University Press, 6 SeeArthur Kroker, Spasm:Virtual Reality, Android 1994),p.167. Music and Electric Flesh (NewY ork:St. Martin’s 10 PeterRelic, ‘ Chris Cunningham’(Interview), Press,1993); Albert Borgmann, Holding onto Reality: RES 1:4(fall 1998). Shaviro 30 11 RidleyScott, Blade Runner (The Ladd 18 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Company,1982) Extensionsof Man (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 12 GillesDeleuze, Cinema 1:The Movement-Image , 1994),pp.22– 32. trans. HughTomlinson and Barbara Habberjam 19 ImmanuelKant, The Critique ofJudgement, trans. (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, WernerS. Pluhar (Indianapolis,IN: Hackett, 1986),pp.40– 55. 1987),pp.43– 95. 13 GillesDeleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand 20 SarahKent, ‘The Beautyof Stylelessness’ , Time Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia ,vol.2, trans. Out UK(September2000). BrianMassumi (Minneapolis: University of 21 Anonymous,‘ Caution:The Žlmyou are about Minnesota Press,1987), p.171 towatch deals with adultthemes and contains 14 SeeDavid Roediger, Towards the Abolition of startling originalityfrom the outset’, Dazed and Whiteness: Essayson Race, Politics, and Working Class Confused 55(June 1999). History (London:V erso,1994). 22 SeeKeith Ansell-Pearson, Germinal Life: The 15 DonnaJ. Haraway,‘ AManifestofor Cyborgs’ , DiÚ erence and Repetition ofDeleuze (Londonand New in Simians,Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of York:Routledge, 1999); Barbara Kennedy, Deleuze Nature (Londonand New Y ork:Routledge, 1991), pp.149–181, here pp.151– 154. and Cinema (NewY ork:Columbia University Press, 16 Haraway,‘ Manifesto’, p.153. 2001);and Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: 17 Marshall McLuhan andQuentin Fiore, The Movement, AÚ ect Sensation (Durham,NC: Duke Medium isthe Massage (NewY ork:Bantam, 1967), UniversityPress, 2002). pp.26–40.

Steven Shaviro teaches in the CinemaStudies Program at the University of Washington.He is the authorof TheCinematic Body (Minnesota,1993), Doom Patrols: ATheoreticalFiction About Postmodernism (Serpent’s Tail,1997), and articles about cyberculture andrecent North American Žlm. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:38 18 November 2009

parallax 31 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 32– 45

EternalFeminine: Natacha Merritt ‘Digital Diaries’; Postfeminist DeleuzeanFigurations

A. Gargett

Digital-Diariesis anew kindof book, deŽ ning anew kind ofexpression: digital,sexual, personal,private, public, raw, erotic,bold, self-conscious ...froman artist who thrives on contradictionand deŽ es all stereotyping. (Manifesto– www.digitaldiaries.com)

The armaturestructuring the projectlocates variousconjunctions between feminist notionsand those ofDeleuze andGuattari: primarily, the conceptualizationof diVerence that isnotsubordinated to identity or the same, andwhich facilitates the beingof becoming and a radicalform of multiplicity deŽ ned by an outside– ‘the abstract line’/ ‘the line of ight’/ ‘deterritorialization’. In this scheme the ‘feminine’ isunrepresentable,‘ she’is the site of‘an-other system ofrepresentation’. In the work ofNatacha Merrittone discovers aDeleuzean impetusat work. Like Deleuze, Merrittis interested inrethinking the unityof feminine identitywithout resorting to humanism. Merritt’s cyber-images, like Deleuze’s mechanic couplings,are a ‘Žgure’ ofinter-relationali ty/receptivity that deliberatelynegates categoricaldistinctions. Ultimately the process is expandedthrough Merritt’ s images,a workingthrough ofthe feminine historical condition,speciŽ cally the mass images/concepts/ representations ofwomen,before woman can emerge intodi Verence andparticularly

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 into the diVerence of‘ becoming-woman’.

The bodyor the embodimentof the subject,is akey componentin the feminist strugglefor a redeŽnition of subjectivity;it is tobe understoodas neither abiological nora sociologicalcategory, but rather apointof overlapbetween the physical, the symbolic andthe materialsocial conditions.

The starting pointfor a feminist redeŽnition of female subjectivity isparadoxical.In feminist theory oneis articulatedvia the ‘feminine’, butthis is nota stable essence/ deŽnition but rather the site ofmultiple, complex andpotentially contradictory sets ofexperience, deŽned by overlapping variables. The female subject thus presented isoneof the terms ina process that shouldnot/ cannot bestreamlined intoa linear,

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals 32 DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027948 teleologicalform of subjectivity –itis alternatively the site ofthe intersections of subjective desireand wilful social transformation.

This deŽnition of the female subject asamultiple,complex process is an attemptto rethink the unityof the subject,without reference tohumanistic beliefsand without dualisticoppositions, linking insteadbody and mind in anew ux ofself. The implicationsare far-reaching. What counts as human in aposthumanworld? What is atstake is the questionof how toevolve formsof representation for alternative female/feminist subjectivity.

The challenge is howto reassemble avisionof subjectivity afterthe certainties of genderdualism and sexual polarizationhave collapsed,replaced by notions of process, complexity, andthe multi-layeredneo-technology ofthe self.

This text ‘animates’a Deleuzo-feminist programby applying it to an investigation ofthe digital/photographicwork ofNatacha Merritt.This process aims toilluminate advances the variousfeminist Žgurationsof a new female subjectivity gainby an intersection with the Deleuzean projectof transforming the imageof thinking and the visionof subjectivity as an intensive, multiple,and discontinuous process of interrelations.

The concern tothink di Verently aboutthe contemporarycondition draws together Deleuzean critical philosophywith feminist theory –the necessity toredeŽ ne/ reŽgure/ reinvent theoretical practice andphilosophy within it,in a modethat is notmolar/ reactive/sedentary, butrather molecular/active/nomadic.The central imperativethat unites these lines isthe crisis ofthe philosophicallogos and the need toinvent new imagesof thought to replace the classical systems ofrepresentation of theoretical discourse.The challenge forphilosophy and feminism is how tothink about/account forchanging conditions/livingprocesses oftransformation. 1

ConnectingDeleuze’ s critiqueof the languageof metaphysics tofeminist theory, Deleuze is relevant notonly forwhat he says aboutwomen (the positivityof desire andsexuality andembodied sexed identities),but also for the redeŽnition of thinking, andspeciŽ cally ofthe theoretical processes asanon-reactive mode,that complements aDeleuzean conception ofsubjectivity. 2 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 The embodimentof the subject is forDeleuze aformof bodilymateriality. The body is conŽgured as the complex interplayof highly constructed social andsymbolic forces. It isaplayof forces, asurface ofintensities –puresimulacra withoutoriginals. Deleuzean theories connect tofeminist strategies because ofthe de-essentialism of the body/sexuality/sexed identities.The embodiedsubject isaterm ina process of intersecting forces/a Vects, spatiotemporalvariables that arecharacterized bytheir mobility/changeability/transitory nature.Accordingly, forDeleuze, thinking is not the expression ofin-depth interiority or the enactment oftranscendental models– itis away ofestablishing connections amonga multiplicityof impersonal forces.

The feminist intersection with Deleuzean thoughtis the necessity toimage the activity ofthinking di Verently. parallax 33 ‘Yourbody is the vehicle foryour wildest adventures’(Emily Jenkins)

The primarytheorem ofNatacha Merritt’s work isthe convexity ofher sense ofself andsexuality. She wants tobe able to discuss it,debate it, expose itand enjoy it.

What ifa younggirl decided to document her personallife with her digitalcamera? And what ifthe most importantaspect ofher personal lifewas her sexual experimentation? 3

Natacha Merritt displaysa distinctive predilectiontowards bondage, p.v.c. and Arab straps. She likes tohave sex inhotels with men and/orwomen.And particularlyshe chooses torecord it on a Nikon Coolpix900 Digital Video Camera.

Merritt likes todeliberate over the imagesshe produces,after which she selects those which have acertain beautyor meaning– itcould be the signiŽcance ofthe ‘other’ she was with orthe lightingin the roomor the visualafterglow of acertain moment in time– afterwhich, she downloadsthem ontoher website where explicit editsof her sex lifeare forever preserved in cyberspace. 4

The trajectory ofMerritt’s radicalsexual self-discovery, obsessionand expression, is locatedin an autonomouszone constructed fromthe blank spaces ofhotel rooms, the abstractions ofcyber-space andultimately her ownimagination. In this space, the illicit becomes explicit –beyondthe parametersof denial and dismissal the notionsof a validityof what women doand don’ t like,should and should not do, areinvalidated. Merritt addresses the invisibilityof the ‘feminine’– bothin lifeand art– the conŽnement ofa female inner lifeinto convenient outlines.It isastrategy tosubvert avalue-system that inferiorizes afemale perspective. In this respect she adoptsa ‘languageof conceptualism’but transforms itintosomething morepersonal. Body,gender, sex –this isthe thematic complex that motivatesMerritt. This ‘physical art’sets outto question/re-positiontraditional images of the bodyin the posthuman condition.She appearsas oneof the most inner-directed ofcontemporary artists totallyfearless andoriginal. It isan art,primarily visual, but ultimately ofthe interior lifeinto which visionleads. Merritt’ s artis directly basedon her sexual experiences. Her favouritemotif is herself. She wants toopensecrets anddisintegrate their power byexplicit communication.The imagesshe producesare hedonistic, immediately intimate,self-obsessed, impetuousand vehement. She draws onextreme situations, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 butthe manner in which she communicates is resoluteand homogeneous. 5

Iintendto scream, shout,race the engine,throw tantrums in Bloomingdalesif I feel like it,and confess intimatedetails about my lifeto complete strangers...I intendto do what Iwant todo and be whom Iwant tobe and answer only tomyself, that is,quite simply, the bitch philosophy. 6 I’mjustdoing what Iwant todo. That’ s how the whole thing happened.And I’mgonnakeep on doingit tomorrow,whether people like itor not, I’ mstill gonnado it. 7

The central thematic that Merritt’s art/pornerotic docu-soap investigates is an acknowledgingof awoman’s sexual experience/desires/fantasies –ana Yrmation of Gargett 34 beingand sexuality. In additionit isthe ideaof connection; connection with herself, with others andwith the meaningbehind things which is integralto her project. 8

The morein loveI amwith aperson,the betterthe photosI take because that’s how my eyes work.I start seeing things that aremore beautiful.9

The key tointerpreting Merritt’ s ‘DigitalDiaries’ is her understandingof the relationshipbetween the camera andthe contemporarymedia-scape, and more speciŽcally between women andcameras. 10 The camera has becomeher perpetual silent partner,transforming Merritt’ s relationshipsinto a perverse post-structuralist ‘me´nagea `trois’, serving bothto displaceand intensify her sexual experiences. While the camera lens has traditionallybeen associatedwith the objectiŽcation of woman, Merrittre-claims itasatoolof self-reinvention. Hence the hotel sex, the clean sheets, anonymousrooms, blank personas.There isnonarrative, no past– each new room anew identity,a new set ofpossibilities, a new Merritt.‘ It’s aboutbeing able to constantly adaptand change andthat itself is an art’, she elaborates.‘ Itry notto holdonto the pastbecause that’s what itis –the past,that’ s why Idocumentit. I let things go,it’ s an easier way ofliving. I try tomove forward, to push myself, to bein aconstant state ofchange because Ithink lifeis healthier that way’. 11

Sex permanently structures ourcultural perceptions, but it isapparentthat between the imageand the actualitythere exists adistortingmirror of conicting agendaand expectation.Therefore when women initiatea ‘new’narrative/ perspective, what primarilyappears straightforward becomes problematic.W omenenjoying sex and displayingan alternative itinerary.The explicit expression offemale sexual desireis noticeablyforever absent. Positive sexual desireis basedon seeking self-a Yrmation throughconnection, in all its multifariousforms.

It is cogently appropriatethat the Internet shouldbe Merritt’ s principalmedium of presentation:the ultimateconstruct forweb-cam culture,with its convergence of narcissism andvoyeurism and all the contradictionsthat unleashes. The Internet is aparticularlyapposite ‘ location’for Merritt’ s self-exploration. 12

Merritt’s artistic venture, indigital-imagingis nolonger just a matter-formrelation. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 What is signiŽcant in the event ofthis process is amaterial-forcerelationship. Sensation,according to Deleuze in ‘What is Philosophy?’, is notrealized inthe materialwithout the materialpassing completely intothe sensation, intothe percept or aVect. Solong as the materiallasts, the sensation enjoys aneternity inthose very moments. The artist takes aspeciŽc typeof material, which has energetic elements, ormolecular elements, andsynthesizes the disparateelements insuch away that the formcaptures these intensities. Merritt’s imagesmay equallycapture this modulation ofmaterial-force. Sensation comes froma purepower that over-ows all domains andtraverses them. This poweris that of‘ rhythm’, which is deeperthan vision,‘ a logicof the senses’that is non-rationaland non-cerebral. 13

Itisaconditionof deliriousviewing, with adetachment beyondshock that formulates the psychological plateauupon which Merritthas constructed her art.This notion parallax 35 makes sense ofher art’s unfailingpsychological intensity. The qualityof aroused visionthat is engendered.

Merrittproduces ecstatic visions that obliteratetime and imaginative distance. Merrittis anartist because her work aims beyondmere sensations ofthe erotic.Her work’s initialimpact is the Žrst stage ina three-stage progression.After the primary impactof the imagecomes the realizationof its blatantartiŽ ciality –that is,a consciousness ofthe work as aself-disclosed rhetorical construction. Then the integrationof this knowledgewith the e Vect ofthe image,entering intoa complicity with the artist tocreate ameaning with the work.This issucceeded byanawareness ofapleasurein the beautyof the imageas amadething.

Merritt’s work functions aesthetically as painting-likeart, not as asimple extension ofpopular-porno/ cultural forms.However, we must notnegate her acknowledge- ment ofthe forms,notably pornography/ erotica,that inspireher. She doesindeed extend the popforms, adapting their rhetoric ofextreme experience. She distils for prolongedexamination, in still images,some ofthe frenzied ‘truths’that aregenerated in ashing montageacross the media-scape.It is amatter notof surface imitation butof profound analogy, as between the intentions ofart, which causes pleasure, andof sex, which creates sensation. The common term ofMerritt’ s operationsis an essential-deŽnitive, vital-detachment.

The sense ofone’s bodyis shapedby varioussocial institutions.This doesnot however implythat onehas toaccept regulationwithout protest, and it does not mean that there arenot many micro-institutionsthat can o Ver alternatives. What this does mean is that oneis taughtto live bya multitudeof invisible institutionalrules, and whether onerebels againstthem oradheres tothem, onedeŽ nes oneself in relation tothem. Everyone islivingin and negotiating through a network ofthese rules. We travel atwisted passagebetween extremes that bothfrighten andfascinate.

Merritt’s work concerns areconception ofthe ways in which sexed subjects are understood,opening up the terrainfor exploration. If bodiesare to be reconŽ gured notonly must their matter andform be rethought, but so too must their situation andspatio/ temporallocation. Via Merritt’ s imagesit is possibleto initiate a preliminaryinvestigation of the space-time ofthe feminine body. 14 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009

The female body-subject’s relationto space andtime is notpassive. Space is not simply anempty receptacle, independentof its contents –rather,the ways inwhich space is perceived andrepresented dependson the natureof the objectspositioned ‘within’it, and additionally, the kindof relations that the subject e Vects with those objects.Space makes possibledi Verent types ofrelations but in turnis transformed accordingto the subject’s a Vective/instrumental relationswith it.The ‘spatiality’of space has tobe theorized using the objectsas its indices.

Itisthe subject’s positioningwithin space bothas the pointof perspectival access to space, andalso as an objectfor others in space, that gives the subject acoherent identityand an abilityto manipulate things, includingits own bodyparts, in space. However, space doesnot become comprehensible tothe subject byits beingthe Gargett 36 space ofmovement; rather,it becomes space throughmovement, andas such, it acquiresspeciŽ c propertiesfrom the subject’s constitutive functioningin it.

Deleuzo-feminist strategies connect inquestions of di Verence, diVerence capableof beingappreciated/ conceptualized inopposition to the dominance/regimeof the One/the Self-same/structure ofbinarypairs. In conceptualizing adi Verence inand ofitself, adi Verence that isnotsubordinated to identity or the same, Deleuze invokes twoforms of energy andalignment: the process ofbecoming and the notionof multiplicity– abecomingbeyond the logic/constraints/conŽnes ofbeing, and a multiplicitybeyond a multi-centring ofproliferating subjects.

Amultiplicityis nota pluralizednotion of identity, but rather an ever changing/ non-totalizablecollectivity, an assemblage deŽned through its capacity toundergo permutations/transformations– its dimensionality.

Multiplicitiesare deŽ ned by the outside:by the abstract line,the line of ightor deterritorializat ionaccording to which they change in natureand connections with othermultiplicities. 15

The notionof becoming functions toprovide non-teleological notions of direction, movement andprocess. Becomings arealways becoming-something.Becomings are always speciŽc movements, speciŽc formsof motion and rest, speeds andslowness pointsand  ows ofintensity –they arealways amultiplicity,the movement of transformationfrom one ‘ thing’to another that in noway resembles it. 16

Deleuze andGuattari suggest that becomings involve amediatingthird term, a relationto something else towhich the subject relates, andthrough which relation itenters intoconnections. If the division,the binaryopposition, between sexes can beconsidereda molarline ofsegmentation,then the process of‘ becoming-woman’ consists in the releasing ofminoritarian fragments/ particles of‘ sexuality’(sexuality nolonger functioning on the level ofthe uniŽed, genitalized organization of the sexed body);lines of ightwhich breakdown and slip into binary aggregation. The process of‘ becoming-woman’is adestabilizationof molar-feminine-id entity. This process ofthe multiplicationof sexualities is astage in the creationof a nomadic

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 line/aline ofbecoming towards an ‘imperceptibility’which disintigratesmolar structures.

Althoughall becomingsare already molecular, including becoming- woman,it must besaidthat all becomings beginwith andpass through becoming-woman.It is the key toall otherbecomings. 17

Becoming-womandisengages the segments/constraints ofthe molaridentity in order tore-invent andbe ableto use otherparticles, ows,speeds andintensities. Becoming- womaninvolves aseries ofprocesses/ movements, outside/beyondthe Žxity of subjectivity andthe structure ofstable unities,it means goingbeyond identity and subjectivity,fragmenting and freeing up lines of ight,releasing multiplesexes that identityhas subsumedunder the One. 18 parallax 37 Awomanhas tobecome-woman, but in abecoming-womanof all man ...Abecoming-minoritarianexists only byvirtue of a deterritorializedmedium and subject that arelike its elements. There is nosubject ofbecoming except as adeterritorializedvariable of a majority:there isnomedium of becomingexcept asadeterritorialized variableof a minority. 19

Becoming-womanis the mediumthrough which all becomingspass: a pointin atrajectory/movement towardsa microscopic fragmentingof processes which Deleuze andGuattari describe as ‘becoming-imperceptible’. This becomingis the disintegrationof all identities(molar/ molecular,major/ minor),the release of inŽnitely microscopic lines, aprocess ofpassage/ motionto complete dissolution,an immanent direction/internal impetus,the freeingof absolutely minuscule microintensities ofthe nth degree.

The system orline ofbecomings followsa ‘scientiŽc’ chain ororder of being from the most complex organicforms to inorganic matter, down to the smallest point/ quantumof energy/ subatomicparticle.

Deleuzean thoughtis oneof movement, ofdi Verence, acartographyof force rather than formthat aims toproduce a certain qualityof ‘ stuttering’. In this regardhis work providesa pointof mobilization in the ongoingmovement todestabilize and re-think space. The Deleuzean projectis tofree thoughtfrom that which captures/ captivates it,to free thoughtfrom the ‘transcendental illusionsof representation’ , to giveit back its capacity toe Vect transformationsor metamorphosis, to make things scatter andrealign. 20

Thoughtis primarilytrespass andviolence, the enemy, andnothing presupposesphilosophy: everything beginswith misosophy.Do not countupon thought to ensure the relative necessity ofwhat itthinks. Rather, countupon the contingency ofan encounter with that which forces thoughtto raise upandeducate the absolutenecessity ofanact ofthoughtor apassionto think. The conditionsof atruecritique and atruecreation are the same: the destructionof an imageof thought

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 which presupposesitself andthe genesis ofthe act ofthinking in thoughtitself. 21

Deleuze proposesa new understandingof di Verence, inwhich thoughtasserts its full force as event, as materialmodiŽ cation, as movement beyond.In acertain sense Deleuze’s work is aboutthe unthoughtto exterior, the ‘outside’. Deleuze doesnot abandonbinarized thought; rather, binarized categories are played o V againsteach other,they arerendered molecular and analyzed in their molarparticularities, so that the possibilitiesof their reconnections, their re-alignment in di Verent ‘systems’, isestablished,the outsideis the transmutabilityof the inside,a ‘virtual’condition of the inside,as equallyreal, as timeis the virtualof space. 22 The outsideinsinuates itself intothought, drawing material outside of itself, outsideof what is expected, producinga space itcan then inhabit– an outsidewithin/ as the inside. Gargett 38 Farfrom restoring knowledge, or the internal certainty that itlacks, tothought, the problematicdeduction puts the unthoughtinto thought,because ittakes away all its interiorityto excavate anoutside in it,an irreduciblereverse-side, which consumes its substance. ThoughtŽ nds itself taken overby the exteriorof a ‘belief’ ,outside any interiorityof a ‘belief’,outsideany interiorityof a modeof knowledge.23

It is inthe disjunctionof series that the outsideis active inthe productionof an inside.In consequence, forDeleuze, the middleis always the privilegedpoint of initiation,why thoughtis best captured‘ in between’. Thoughtstarts in the middle, atthe pointof intersection oftwo series/ events/processes that temporarilyshare a milieu.‘ Becoming’is bodilythought, the means viawhich thought/forceinvent new series, metamorphosingnew bodiesfrom interactions. It is an interactionbetween bodieswhich releases something fromeach, andin that encounter, makes real a virtuality– aseries ofenabling/ transformingpossibilities. Thought is what enacts between acause andits habituale Vect –between beingand another. It is aŽssure between ‘strata’that awaitssomething new toemerge. It is an unhinging,a derangement,a re-ordering.

The Deleuzean process evacuates the insideof the subject,forcing it to confront its outside,evacuating it, and in that actiondestablishing its systematicity/organization/ functioning,allowing a part/featureto mutate into a new arrangement/system to endlessly deect/ become.

What Deleuze aims atis the a Yrmationof di Verence in terms ofa multiplicityof possible diVerences – diVerence as the positivityof di Verences. Deleuze’s scheme prioritizesthe a Vective foundationsof the thinking process. Therefore ideasare redeŽned as ‘nomadic’forms of thought, o Veringa theoretical resistance toall mental/theoretical codiŽcations.

In the Deleuzo-Nietzschean feminist modelthe bodyis nota Žxed essence ora naturalgiven. The bodyis viewedas theoretical ‘topos’, anattemptto overcome the classical mind-bodydualism of Cartesianorigins, in orderto think anew aboutthe structure ofthe thinking subject.The body,therefore, is an interface, aŽeldof Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 intersecting materialand symbolic forces. The bodyis asurface where multiplecodes areinscribed –itis alinguistic construction that capitalizes onenergies ofthe heterogeneous/discontinuous/ unconscious complexion.The bodyis asituatedself, an embodiedpositioning of the self. 24

This can bevisualized through Natacha Merrit’s digitalphotographs which present the unrepresentable aspects offemale subjectivity/sexuality, an a Yrmation of a de-essentialized bodymutating into a Želdof alternative signiŽcation.

This theory ofsexual di Verence is basedon the beliefthat ‘the feminine’is that which is excluded in masculine space/systems ofrepresentation, because ‘she’is in excess ofit/ unrepresentable.The ‘feminine’therefore delineates the possibilityof ‘an-other’system ofrepresentation. parallax 39 In Merritt’s work this theory is turnedinto a ‘visual’strategy ofbecoming-woman. 25 This pragmatic,post-feminist account considers widerquestions of abstract machines, assemblages andperspectival thinking.W omanthus mightbe perceived as partof a molecularprocess, within amachinic assemblage oftechnological,material, social and otherforces, notjust cultural or biological. This means that the search foran exit- pointfrom phallo-logocentric deŽ nitions of ‘ feminine’requires a process ofworking throughthe imagesand representations that the masculine knowingsubject has created ofwoman as other.Merritt’ s becoming-womanis away ofre-tracing/ reversing the multi-layeredlevels ofsigniŽcation/ representations ofwomen. The ‘feminine’is afocal pointvia which strategically motivatedrepetitions, new deŽnitions and representations may emerge.It is an active process ofbecoming,a neo-pragmaticturn on subjectivity –subjectless subjectivity– the becoming-womanis the realm ofthe a Vective, the transitivist andthe fusional.The aimis tore-wire anddeploy the concept ofbecoming womanas particles oras Žbres,as an element within acritical neo-pragmatics.It transforms concepts of‘ femaleness’into new sets ofrelations, into material  ows of molecularity.This rewiringof processes is ‘immanent’to material  ows;such ows arenot conceptually drivenbut ‘ a Vectively’driven. Natacha Merritt’s work takes this ideainto thinking ofthe art/photographicimage, and therefore here we have anew set ofvocabularies, where a Vectivity/feeling/intensity becomepertinent as processes ofmolecular,and material  ows.Such vocabulariesenable di Verent ways ofthinking, outsidethe conceptual,or representational, of the visualexperience. 26

In eVect this catalyses as radically otherthe female/sexed/thinking subject,who is positionedin an asymmetrical relationshipto phallocentric logic.The repetition/ reassertion offeminine positionsis adisruptivestrategy that engenders di Verence. Merritt advances astrategy ofextreme sexualization throughembodied female subjectivity.Frustrated by the categorizationsof an artworld still framedin terms oforiginators and originals, creative moments andauthoritative claims, the digital zone appealedto her. The pixeledwindows caughther eye. She hadnever been ableto accept the boundariesbetween media,the bordersbetween senses, the blueprintsof authenticity towhich her work was supposedto conform.Cameras had given her the chance toexplore the technical potentialof imagingmachines, butshe wanted her pictures todance andscream, taste andsmell, touchand contact senses still tocome. It seemed toher that computerswere alreadymelting andmultiplying the senses andthe channels onwhich they were transmitted andreceived. The Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 computer-generatedimage in the virtualworld provides a space where the unspeakablecan bespoken.

On the computermonitor, any change tothe imageis alsoa change tothe program:any change tothe programmingbrings another image tothe screen. This is the continuityof product and process atwork in the textiles producedon the loom.The program,the image,the process, andthe product:these areall the softwares ofthe loom. Digitalfabrications can beendlessly copiedwithout fading into inferiority;patterns can bepleated and repeat, replicated folds across ascreen. Like all textiles, the new softwares have noessence, no authenticity. Just asweavings andtheir patterns arerepeatable without detractingfrom the valueof the Žrst onemade, digital images Gargett 40 complicate the questionsof origin and originality, authorship and authoritywith which Western conceptions ofart have been preoccupied... Womenwere amongthe Žrst ofthe artists and photographers,video artists andŽ lm-makers topick upon the potentialof the digitalarts. 27

There isafurtherlevel asMerritt’s work intersects with Deleuzo-feminist processes, which intensiŽes its amplitude.It isa‘line ofight’that operatesin between di Verent discursive areas,moving through diverse spheres ofdiscourse.

The ‘female’artist todaycan e Vectively functiononly in atransitory mode,moving forward/passingthrough, creating connections with/where things were previously disconnected orapparently unrelated. In the feminist context this epistematic nomadismworks ifit is e Vectively situated/locatedin ‘in-between’zones. 28

Interms ofNatacha Merritt’s work with her pixel-Žxated visions fromthe ‘no-place’ ofhotel bedroomsto the evacuatedzone ofcyber space, the questionbecomes: What represents human ina posthumancondition? What is the view ofthe self that is operational,in the zones ofmedia-scape and information  ows? 29

The bodyin the cybernetic model/Žgurationis neither physical normechanical, nor only visual.It is alternatively acounterparadigmforthe interactionbetween an inside/outsidecontinuum. It is an analysis ofnot only justthe bodyor technology, butwhat occurs between them. The imagesthat Merrittproduces constitute a postmetaphysical construct. This cybernetic feminine Žgurationilluminates the intersection between feminist theory andDeleuzean lines ofthought. 30

Feminist Žgurationsrefer tothe multiple/many, heterogeneousimages feminists adoptto designate the projectof becoming-subject of women: a view offeminist subjectivity as multiplicityand process.

The cybernetic Žgurationis oneattempt to come toterms with the new ‘nomadism’ characterizing the feminine position. 31 The strategy ofredeŽning female subjectivity requiresprimarily a methodof working through the catalogueof images/ concepts/ representations ofwomen andfemale identityas they have been codiŽed in the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 contemporarymedia-scape. As aconsequence ofthe way inwhich phallo-logocentric languagedesignates female subjectivity/identity,before feminists can discardthe signiŽer ‘Woman’it needs tobe re-deŽ ned/ re-animated,reviewing its multifarious complexities, because these complexities come todeŽ ne the feminine.

Tracing aDeleuzean trajectory changes/transforms. Anew symbolic system ofthe feminine cannot bee Vected bystraightforward violation. Rather anew direction/ metamorphosiscan only beachieved throughde-essentialized embodiment– a re-orientationof the multi-layeredstructures ofone’ s embodiedself. In this regard,in Natacha Merritt’s work,a continuedinvestigation of the feminine as the female feminist subjects ofsexual di Verence –requiresa deconstruction anda re-aYrmation.As with Deleuze there cannot besocial change withoutthe construc- tionof new forms/conŽgurations of desiring subjects as molecular/nomadic/ parallax 41 multiple.The stratagem ofthe female artist is toresist the recodingof the subject inanotherself-representationa lsystem andanimate open spaces ofexperimentation, ofexplorationand transit. The cartographyof the feminine can beestablished from followinglines of ightthrough the existing structures enacting disruptiveactions. In this repetitionresides the potentialfor opening up new angles ofvision, new itineraries.

Notes

1 Furthersee Ian Buchananand Claire Colebrook structure of philosophyas an activitycan be ofuse (eds), Deleuzeand Feminist Theory (Edinburgh: andinspiration to the aimsof feminist theory. Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2000). 3 NatachaMerritt, ‘DigitalDiaries’ : see 2 SeeRoss Braidotti, Patterns ofDissonance www.digital-diaries.com (Cambridge:Polity Press/NewY ork:Routledge, 4 In asenseMerritt isencouragingan engagement 1991).Deleuze’ s redeŽnition ofideas as nomadic with amaterialawareness of the image,returning formsof thought o Versa theoreticaldefence against the spectator/observerto an awarenessof the allmental and theoretical codiŽ cation. Deleuze materialityof the image,to its molecularstructure, seesthe philosophicaltext asthe termin an in connectionwith the molecularityof thosebodies intensiveprocess of fundamentally extratextual which view.What aDeleuzeanapproach o Vers is practices.These practices have to do with atheoryof the imageas ‘ becomingwoman in displacingthe subjectthrough owsof intensity or sensation’, which conceptualizesnew structures of forces.An importantimplication of this newdesire outside structuralism and psychoanalytic conceptualscheme is the wayin which it altersthe paradigms.New interventions in Žlmtheory have termsof the conventionalpact between the artistbegun to discover the signiŽcance of the material, andhis/ herviewers. If the philosophicaltext isthe matter,the machinicand embodied eye of vision. actof readingon the modelof connection, the text (SeeC. Gledhilland L. Williams, Re-inventing Film isrelinquished into the intensiveelements that Studies [Londonand New Y ork:Arnold, 2000] and both sustainthe connectionsand are generated by L. Williams(ed.), Viewing Positions:Ways ofSeeing them.The artist/viewerbinary couple is split up Film [NewBrunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity accordingly,and a newimpersonal mode is Press, 1994]) A Deleuzeantrajectory extends these requiredas anappropriateway of proceeding. The ideasto account for newly recognized structures of impersonalor postpersonal style allows for a webexperience emanating from ‘ becoming’and the ofconnections to be drawn, not onlyin termsof aestheticsof sensation,the movementsand energies the artist’s ‘intentions’and the viewer’s ‘reception’of the Žlmicexperience. The current concernwith but ratherin amuchwider, more complicated set ‘bodies’, andwhat they constitute,has resonance ofpossible interconnections that blurestablished/ for new theories outside of those located within hegemonicdistinctions ofclass, culture, race, psychoanalyticor semiotic paradigms. It is sexualpractice, etc. This philosophicalstance necessary to move away from a concernwith the imposesnot onlythe conventionalacademic roleof subjectivity, or the deŽned positionality of

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 requirementsof passionless truth, butalso the aviewingsubjectivity, in relationto constructions passionateengagement in the recognitionof the of desire. theoreticaland discursive implications of rethinking 5 NatachaMerritt grewup in San Francisco.She the subject.This choiceof atheoreticalstyle leaves went toParis to study law but afterthree months an energizedspace for the explorationof abandoned her studies for a muchmore exciting subjectivity,calling for a ‘passionatedetachment’ part-timejob; taking digital photographs of herself in theorymaking. (This expression,originally and models with herCasio, at atimewhen digital developedby Laura Mulvey in Žlmcriticism, has cameraswere rare and expensive in Europe. beentaken up andadapted by DonnaHaraway in Merritt quicklydiscovered the advantagesof this ‘SituatedKnowledges: The ScienceQuestion in technology.On her return toSan Franciscoshe Feminismand the Privilegeof ParticalPerspective’ showed her workon the Internet. Progressing andin ‘ACyborgManifesto: Science, Technology chronologicallyfrom the daysof her Ž rst Casio andSocialist-Feminism in the LateTwentieth QV110digital camera to her newer,more Century’, both in Simians,Cyborgs and Women sophisticatedNikon Coolpix 900, Digital-Diaries (London:Free Association Press, 1991). Deleuze’ s charts countlessstories of unfamiliar spaces, redeŽnition ofthe image/the practice/textual unknown facesand chance encounters. See also: Gargett 42 EmilyJenkins, Tongue First (Adventures InPhysical Massumi(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Culture) (London:Virago Press, 1999); Pat CaliŽa, Press,1987), p.9. Public Sex:The Culture ofRadical Sex (Pittsburgh, PA: 16 TheDeleuzo-Guattarian explanation of the CleisPress, 1994); Susie Bright, Sexwise (Pittsburgh, velocityof becoming constantly emphasizesthe PA:CleisPress, 1995). waybecoming-other refuses imitation/ analogy, 6 ElizabethWurtzel, Bitch: InPraise ofDi Ý cult Women refusesto represent itself as like anything/ (London:Quartet Books, 1998). somethingelse, alternatively, becoming is the 7 SeeNatacha Merritt, ‘BedtimeStories’ (interview catalysationof lines/ forces/intensities fromthe byRachel Newsome), Dazed and Confused 66 ( June boundariesand constraints ofŽ xedidentity to the 2001),pp.156– 57. transformationsand problematization of identity: 8 Furthersee Teresa de Lauretis, ‘ Eccentric an Eskimo-becoming[...]does Subjects:Feminist Theory and Historical not consist in playingthe Consciousness’, Feminist Studies 16:1(1990) and Eskimo,in imitatingor ‘Uppingthe Anti (sic)in FeministTheory’ , in identifyingyourself with himor MarianneHirsch and Evelyn FoxKeller (eds), takingthe Eskimoupon yourself, Conicts in Feminism (NewY ork:Routledge, 1990); but in assemblingsomething MarianneMacy, Working Sex:An Odysseyinto Our betweenyou and him, for you Cultural Underworld (NewY ork:Carroll and Graf, canonly become Eskimo if 1996). the Eskimohimself becomes 9 Merritt, ‘BedtimeStories’ somethingelse. The same goes 10 D.Tuer,‘ Pleasuresin the Dark:Sexual forlunatics, drug addicts, and DiVerenceand Erotic Deviance in anArticulation alcoholics[...]We are trying to ofFemale Desire’ , Cineaction 10 (1987). extractfrom madness the life, 11 SeeMerritt, ‘BedtimeStories’ . Alsosee Sallie which it contains,while hating Tisdale, Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of lunaticswho constantly killlife, Sex (NewY ork:Anchor, 1994). turn it againstitself. We are 12 SeeTeresa de Lauretis, Technologies ofGender tryingto extract from alcohol (Bloomington,IN: IndianaUniversity Press, 1986) the lifewhich it contains, andJane Flax, Thinking Fragments (Berkeley,CA: withoutdrinking. Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1990). 13 SeeDeleuze and Guattari, What isPhilosophy? , GillesDeleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. trans. G.Burchilland H. Tomlinson(London: HughTomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New Verso,1991), pp.167– 68 andDana Polan, ‘ Francis York:Columbia University Press, 1987), p.53. Bacon:The Logicof Sensation’ , in Constantin V. 17 Deleuzeand Guattari, AThousand Plateaus , p.279. Boundasand Dorothea Olkowski (eds), Gilles 18 ElizabethGrosz, ‘ AThousandTiny Sexes: Deleuzeand the Theatre ofPhilosophy (NewY orkand Feminismand Rhizomatics’ in Boundasand London:Routledge, 1994), pp.229– 54. Olkowski(eds), Deleuzeand the Theatre ofPhilosophy , 14 ElizabethGrosz, Space Time and Perversion (New pp.187–210. Yorkand London: Routledge, 1995), pp.25– 43. 19 Deleuze& Guattari, AThousand Plateaus , p.292. Bodiesspeak, without necessarily talking, because 20 This termDeleuze utilizes in rethinking they becomecoded with andas signs. They transgression– not howto stutter languagebut speaksocial codes. They become intextuated, makelanguage itself stutter: Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 narrativized;simultaneously, social codes, laws, It iswhen the languagesystem normsand ideas become incarnated. If bodies overstrainsitself that it begins aretraversed and inŽ ltrated by knowledges, tostutter, tomurmur, or meanings,and power, they canalso under certain tomumble, then the entire circumstances,become sites of struggle and languagereaches the limitthat resistance,actively exhibiting themselves on social sketchesthe outsideand practices.The ‘inscriptive’approach to theorizing confronts silence.When the the bodyvia Nietzsche, Foucault and Deleuze is languagesystem is so much concernedwith the processesby which the subject strained,language su Vers a ismarked, transformed, constructed or exhibited/ pressurethat deliversit to positionedwithin variousregimes of institutional, silence. discursive,and nondiscursive power as aparticular kindof body. GillesDeleuze, ‘ HeStuttered’ , in Boundasand 15 GillesDeleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Olkawski(eds.), Gilles Deleuzeand The Theatre of Schizophrenia, vol. 2:AThousand Plateaus ,trans. Brian Philosophy, pp.23–29. parallax 43 21 GillesDeleuze, DiÚ erence etRepetition (Paris:PUF, experienced.This apparentcontradiction is an 1968),p.139, and DiÚ erence and Repetition , trans. exempliŽcation of Deleuze’ s ideasof the PaulPatton (NewY ork:Columbia University ‘interstitial’or the ‘in-between’. Sothat this Press,1994). deŽnition of‘ body’is really no longer seen in 22 The ‘Virtual’is the unsaidof a statement/the eithersingular categorisation, but acomplexof unthought ofthought. It isreal and apparent, but both andmore. The bodyis the unknown space mustbe ‘ forgotten’momentarily for a clear ofthe molecular.It isnot deŽnable as a single statementto be produced as a transitorysurface entity. Itcannot beconstrainedto the individuated eVect.The taskof philosophy is to explore that bodyof  esh andblood, as opposed to mind. inevitableforgetting instant, tore-engage Ratherit isan amalgam,but not necessarilya statementsto their conditionsof appearance. See ‘whole’notion ofallthese. ‘ Body’in this sensehas Deleuze& Guattari, What IsPhilosophy? , pp.156–57 anewand  uiddimension, which encompassesall and 160. individuated,social, cultural and a Vectivespaces. 23 GillesDeleuze, Cinema 2:The Time Image , trans. This isa reformulationof life as ‘ body’– bodyas HughTomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: life.It is‘ intensity’and ‘ a Vect’which molecularly Universityof Minnesota Press,1989), p.175. constitute this bodyof life. 27 24 Deleuzesuggests the outsideof thought aslife SeeSadie Plant, Zeros+Ones: Digital Women +The itself,as impetusand resistance of lifeto categories New Technoculture (London:Fourth Estate, 1997), andto push beyondthem. In Cinema 2:The Time- pp.189–90. 28 Image Deleuzelinks the unthought tothe body, See:Ross Braidotti, ‘ FromShe-Self to She which canno longerbe conceived in termsof Other’, in GiselaBock and Susan James (eds.), beinga mediumof thought ora resistanceto it Beyond Equality and Di Ú erence (London:Routledge, (Plato/Descartes):instead, the bodyis the motive 1992),outlining a newtheoretical structure of ofthought, its energizingpoint. (Deleuze, Cinema generaluniversalism. 29 2, p.189.) Dismemberment:countermemory. Forget what 25 Usingthe term‘ woman’then inDeleuzeis not it’s for,and learn what it does.Don’ t concentrate tomaintain essentialist deŽ nitions ofthe term on orgasm,the meansby which sexremains ‘woman’, but isused in newways to rewire the enslavedto teleology and its reproduction.A new termin molecularrhizomatic assemblage, not asa generationhas forgottenwhat its organswere literaldeŽ nition ofthe molar‘ woman’. Camilla supposedto be doing for their senseof self or the Griggersprovides an exampleof the socialand reproductionof the species,and have learned machinicassemblages of ‘ becomingwoman’ when insteadto let their bodieslearn what they cando she describeshow women’ s livedexperiences of withoutpreprogramming desire, to make of one’ s the 1990sare rewired as assemblages of body/ bodya placefor the productionof extraordinary mind/matter– andthe molecular.(Camilla polymorphicpleasures, while simultaneously Griggers,‘ Preface,Becoming-W oman’in Becoming- detachingit fromvalorization of the genitalia.This Woman: Theory Out ofBounds [Minneapolis: isonly the beginningof aprocesswhich abandons Universityof Minnesota Press1997], p. ix.) In the modelof a uniŽed and centralized organism, termsof a molarpolitics for feminist theory, it is the organicbody, organized with survivalas its nolonger possible to deŽ ne the concept‘ woman’ goal,in favourof a diagramof  uidsex. Flows of ashaving any universal value, or having any intensity, their uids,their Žbres,their continuums andconjunctions of a Vects,microperceptions, have

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 essentialvalues. If weare to take on boardthe replacedthe worldof the subject.Now there are philosophicalpremise of assemblage, of acentredsystems, Ž nite networksof automata in molecularity,then the term‘ woman’can no longer which communicationruns fromany neighbour to beconceivedthrough binaryterminology. ‘ Woman’ any other. cannot merelybe described as part of a binary, butapartof anassemblageof processesconnecting Onceit losesthe reproductive andforming in newalignments within culture, point,sex explodes beyond acrossthe social,the libidinal,the material,the the humanand its proper psychological,the biological,and personal spaces desires.Coded into twodiscrete ofour existences, as GriggersexempliŽ es. sexesand deŽ ned by their 26 Therealmost appears to be a contradictionin reproductiveorgans, human terms.Deleuze suggests that the ‘body’is not a bodiesalso imply a multiplicity phenomenological,corporeal lived body, but isan ofmolecular combinations assemblageof forces, intensities etc.And yet with bringinginto playnot onlythe Merritt’s workwe conceive the ‘body’being manin the womanand the the spacewhere the felt andunthought are womanin the man,but the Gargett 44 relationof each to the animal, its objectpersons or things, but the plant, etc.:a thousand tiny the entiresurroundings that it sexes.Every uniŽ ed body traverses... an alwaysnomadic concealsa crowd:inside every andmigrant desire ... [Herbody] solitaryliving creature is aswarm hadrefused to go along with ofnon-creaturethings. Even the man’s deŽnitions oforganic life. mostuniŽ ed of individuals is On the learningcurves of her intimatelybound up with body,she discoveredthat it networkswhich takeit pastits simplyhad too many and too ownborderlines, seething with uidzones to count asone. vastpopulations of inorganic (Plant, Zeros+Ones, p.206.) lifewhose replications disrupt 31 SeeDonna Haraway, ‘ AManifestofor Cyborgs’ , eventhe mostperverse Socialist Review 15:2(1985). The cyborgas afeminist anthropocentricnotions ofwhat Žgurationis an illuminatingexample of the it isto have either a sexor intersectionbetween feminist theory and Deleuzean sex itself. linesof thought in their commonattempt to come (Plant, Zeros+Ones,pp.204–05.) toterms with the posthumancondition. The body 30 Toexplore what the female/cyberneticbody in the cyborgmodel is neither physicalnor cando is no longera questionof liberating sex, mechanical– noronly textual. It israther a ofsexual freedom, or authenticity. It isnot a counterparadigmfor the interactionbetween the matterof remembering ‘ herself’but insteadof inner andthe externalreality. It isan ultra-modern dismemberingthe onesex which has maintained readingnot onlyof the body,not onlyof machines, continuity, amatterof making bits of bodies, its but ratherof what goeson betweenthem. As a partsor particular surfaces throb/ intensify, for newpowerful replacement of the mind/body their ownsake and not forthe beneŽt ofthe entity debate,the cyborgis apostmetaphysicalconstruct. ororganism as awhole. The Žgurationof the cyborgreminds us that metaphysicsis not an abstractconstruction –it is She neverbelieved in the practicalontology. An importantmoment in disguisesshe wore,the cover Haraway’s cyberneticimagery is the notion of storiesshe wroteto conceal ‘situatedknowledges’ . Answeringimplicitly the the rhythms andspeeds of standardhumanistic accusation that emphasison nonhuman sex,the molecular multiplicityleads to relativism, Haraway argues machinicelements, their fora multifacetedfoundational theory and an arrangementsand their syntheses antirelativisticacceptance of di Verences – which composedthe thing they emphasizinga networkof di Verences,especially calledherself. Instead she isin the diVerencesorganic/ inorganicand human/ touch with the microprocesses machine,in oppositionto the primacygranted to which turn her on,tapping into the binaryopposition of masculine to feminine in the planeof impersonal desire sexual diVerencetheories. Haraway proposes a which liesin waitfor human sex, kindof de-essentialized, embodied genealogy as adesirewhich doesnot takeas the strategyto undo the dualism. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009

Natacha Merritt iscurrently workingon exhibitionsof her work andcontinues to work onher website www.digitalgirly.com

A.Gargett received aPhD in philosophyfrom the University ofW arwick andan MAinArt History fromLondon’ s CourtauldInstitute. Research interests include philosophy/art/Žlm/culturaltheory. Notable publications include ‘The Matrix: What is BulletTime?’ – ‘Doppleganger:Exploded States ofConsciousness in Fight Club’–(www.disinfo.com/)‘StrangeDays’ (Virtual Spaces) (Journalof Cognitive Liberties2:3)and ‘ Symmetry ofDeath’ (V ariacionesBorges 13/ 2002)Film criticism appears on and .Other work available3AM magazine/Left Curve/Nasty/Azimute/RichmondReview

parallax 45 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 46– 56

Must DesireBe Tak en Literally?

CalvinThomas

Theworld must bemade to mean. –StuartHall Itis much harderfor man to letthe other come through him. Writing is thepassageway, theentrance, theexit, thedwelling placeof the other in me. –He´le`ne Cixous ‘My booty-hole got asign say ‘‘exit only’’ ’. –fromconversation unavoidablyoverheard on anAtlanta subway.

The writer ofthese wordsis aforty-something year oldman who has never been fuckedin the ass. Indeed,for a variety ofreasons, this writer may very well goto his gravewithout ever having been fuckedin the ass. 1 Notutterly astranger tosome relatively thin andshallow formsof receptive analeroticism, this writer has nonetheless never known –exactly, physically, literally, truly,madly, deeply – what itfeels like,much less what itmeans (tothe extent that meaningmust beassigned toit), to be ass-fucked, has never experienced what LeoBersani has ironically describedas ‘the seductive andintolerable image of a grownman, legs high in the air,unable to refuse the suicidalecstasy ofbeinga woman’. 2 That istosay, Imyself, personally,in myownpersonhood, in myownbody, have never negotiatedwith the

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 ‘seductive andintolerable image’ of being fucked in the ass as anything otherthan image,as anything more(or less) than metaphor.Of course,the extent towhich I Žndthis imageseductive only as image,merely as metaphor,may well indicatethe extent towhich Imust Žndit intolerable as embodiedfact, since Ihave, infact, never toleratedit. And yet, asthose who have encountered mywork onmasculinity andthe male bodymay know,this writer has indeedbeen unableto refuse Bersani’s variouselaborations of anal sex asmetaphor– for ´ebranlement ,forself-shattering, for the abdicationof phallic power,for the exuberantdiscard of hyperbolicsubjectivity, fora beneŽcent crisis in andof the masculinist self. 3 Ihave allowedmyself tobe seducedby the thrust ofBersani’s arguments,by the coldintimacy, the analbattery, ifyouwill, ofhis words.Ass safely covered,legs notraised high inthe airbut tucked demurelybeneath awriter’s desk, Ihave nonetheless taken in those words,those

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals 46 DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027957 letters (inevitably emblems ofan other’s desire),even if,literally, physically, Ihave taken in,and apparently desire to take in,nothing (or little) else. And therein lies a question( posedin my title) as well asatension,if not a tale:a tension between the ass-fuck taken literally andthe ass-fuck taken asliterature,between analsex as bodily experience andanal sex asametaphorboth available and attractive toa writer who has never really had(much) analsex butwho discerns abeneŽciently analand transformatively sexual relationshipnot only between himself andhis own andothers’ words,but between himself andthe social reality that he inhabitsand that inhabits him,the worldwhose meanings hehelps make andunmake, and by whose meanings he is madeand unmade. It is this tension that Iwouldlike toexplore brie y, but maintainindeŽ nitely, here.

What promptsthe abovedisclosure aboutmy signal lack ofexperience –nota sorrowfulconfession oftransgressing limits butan admissionof the rather sorry limits ofmytransgressions, ofmyfailureto have beentransgressed –is,speciŽ cally, asweet invitationfrom the editorsof parallax towrite forthis special issue on‘ HavingSex’ . AsIunderstand,the invitationitself was issuedas aconsequence ofsomeone’s having hearda keynote talk Irecently gaveat a masculinity studiesconference inthe UK. 4 In this talk,called ‘HowMale BodiesMatter to Feminist Theory’, Iattemptto demonstratethe valueof critical masculinity studiesto both queer theory andthe feminist politicalproject. 5 The discussion beginsby visitinga debatebetween Judith Butlerand Rosi Braidotti about ‘ gendervs. sexual di Verence’, takes its cue from Braidotti’s call fora feminist dirty-mindedthinking, proceedsto think dirtilyabout some writings onstraight male subjectivity byCatherineW aldbyand Brian Pronger, and,after a considerationof Lee Edelman’s notionof homographesis, ends with a critiqueof what Itake tobe some homophobicmanoeuvers in apoemby the American poetGalway Kinnell called ‘Holy Shit’, awork that Ireadas overly holy and insuYciently shitty. 6 Formy purposeshere, Iwouldlike totouch on W aldby’s andPronger’ s comments, briey revisit what Imadeof them in my talk,address how my audienceseemed torespond to what Imade,and to situate their responses within the problematicof the literal/literary tension with which Iopened.

Inseparateessays, bothCatherine W aldbyand Brian Pronger posit anal receptivity, rather than castration anxiety, asthe moredestabilizing spectre ofthe hyperbolically phallic subject.Both view psychic resistance toanal reception as partof the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 motivatingforce behindmisogynist andhomophobic projective violence, and, correspondingly,both see feminist andqueer political potential in attempts to dephallicize the straight male bodyby openly celebrating, or celebratively opening, the heterosexual male anus.

Waldby,in ‘Destruction:Boundary Erotics andReŽ gurations of the Heterosexual Male Body’, describes ‘eroticdestruction’ as desubjectivation,as ‘the temporary ecstatic confusions wroughtupon the everyday sense ofself bysexual pleasure’. 7 She suggests that ‘while the ritualsof heterosexual sex can andoften do enact [a]non- reciprocity of[erotic]destruction [...] they can alsoplay out disturbances andsecret reciprocities in this eroticeconomy’ . 8 Because conventional heterosexual non- reciprocity dependsupon a ‘hegemonic bodilyimago of masculinity’that conforms with an understandingof the male bodyas ‘phallic andimpenetrable’ , the parallax 47 heterosexual male anus can becomea site ofsigniŽ cant disturbances in,and destructions of,the ritualsof straight sex. 9 ‘The ass’, writes Waldby,‘ is softand sensitive, andassociated with pollutionand shame, like the vagina.It isnon-speciŽc with regardto genital di Verence in that everybodyhas one.It allows access intothe body,when afterall only women aresupposed to have avulnerable interiorspace. All this makes anal eroticism asuasive pointfor the displacement orerasureof purely phallic boundaries’. 1 0 It alsomakes forW aldby’s nicely concludingquip that ‘what theoretical feminism needs now is astrap-on’. 11

Correspondingly,in ‘ On YourKnees: CarnalKnowledge, Masculine Dissolution, DoingF eminism’, Prongersuggests that what is atissue is notmen doingfeminism butfeminism doingmen, orrather,that the masculine aversionto beingdone, being penetrated,is what speciŽcally prevents men ‘fromembodying feminist insights’. 12 The ‘pointof masculinity’ , Prongersuggests, is

tobecome larger, to take upmore space, andyield less ofit. It is the oppositeof feminine anorexic desire[...] The expandingphallus is protectedby the otherside of this desire:the closed anus.Just as the phallus realizes its masculinity bytaking space, sothe tightanus protects masculine space byrepelling invasion. Masculine desire protects its own phallic productionby closing oriŽces, bothanus and mouth,to the phallic expansionof others. Rendered impenetrable, the masculine bodydi Verentiates itself asdistinct andunconnected. It isconqueringand inviolable [...] The discourseof genderterritorializes men’s bodiesby constructing this formof desire, simultaneously channeling itand damming it up [...] through metaphoricallygeneralized or sexually speciŽc phallic expansions andanal contractions. 13

Inmy talk,I dwelt atgreaterlength onWaldby’s andPronger’ s interventions, which IŽndquiteattractive andproductive, but I alsovoiced reservations aboutwhat could betaken as their apparentliteralism, aboutthe impressionthey mightleave that only literally ass-fucked men arein the positionto reconŽ gure heterosexuality or embodyfeminist insights. The problemhere isnotonly that some men wholack the literal experience may yet beable somehow toenact the desiredpolitical agenda, butalso that othermen whohave the experience regularly,perhaps on adailybasis, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 may yet dolittle ornothingfor that agendaand may otherwise actively work against it.If wedoconsider the ass-fuck asaformof so-called ‘radicalsex’ , then the problem, as Bersani putsit, is the ‘assumptionthat radicalsex means orleads toradical politics’14 when in fact there is nonecessary, natural,or even particularlyclear connection ortranslation between oneand the other.It isn’t that there is no conceivable connection whatsoever, butthat, in Bersani’s words,‘ the ways inwhich having sex politicizes arehighly problematical’; 1 5 the ‘process bywhich sexual pleasure generates politics’is ‘extremely obscure’. 1 6

The fact that this generative process is atbest obscure,if even existent, means that, unless we arecontent tolet itrest in obscurityas an unspokenarticle offaith, that process must bebrought to meaning, must, as StuartHall putsit, be ‘ madeto mean’.17 Like everything else in‘the world’, itmust be articulated ifitistoberealized Thomas 48 atall. There is,perhaps, as SamuelBeckett putsit, an ‘obligationto express’ even ifŽ nally orfoundationally there is ‘nothingto express’ . 18 In my talk,I endedup turningto expression, toarticulation – tothe metaphorof writing and the writing ofmetaphor– asaway ofdisturbingthe problematicresidual literalism ofWaldby’s andPronger’ s essays. Moreto the point,I turnedto writingas ametaphoricalmeans of ´ebranlement ,ofself-shattering, ofexploding the ideologicalbody of straight masculinity itself. Iturnedto writing as what He´le`ne Cixouscalls ‘the passageway, the entrance, the exit,the dwelling place ofthe otherin me’, towritingas that which doesnot Ž nally express, a Yrm,or convey ‘me’but which ceaselessly carries ‘me’ away,disperses ‘me’, ‘tears me apart,disturbs me, changes me’. 1 9

Quiteobviously, the ‘writing’in and of Cixous’ ecstatic writingis, for me, highly sexually charged.But in the turn to that writing,I seemingly charged away fromthe ‘sexually speciŽc’ in the literal sense andtowards what Prongercalls the ‘metaphorically generalized’, the generationof metaphor. Having made that turn, however, Ithen focused,and will presently focusin greater detail here, onwhat mightbe called the anti-generative in writing,not on its expressivity, noron any ‘creativity’traditionally linked topaternity, maternity, orany otherimperative of the successful heterosexual reproductionof ‘ life’, butrather onwriting’ s intimately sexual connection, its degeneratively metonymic connection, tomurderousor suicidal ecstasy, tofailure, to ‘ death’– its connection, inother words, to the rectum, to‘ the gravein which the masculine ideal[...] ofproudsubjectivity isburied’. 20 I suggested writing as Durchfall,as the general metaphorical/metonymical economy in which cultural monuments collapse intocultural droppings,in which ‘phallic expansions’ and‘ analcontractions’ may beinverted andsubverted into anal expansions and phallic contractions (contractions, that is,of the hyperbolicsubject, not of the tumescent penis:there’ s neither anything wrongwith erections noranything particularlysalutary about‘ shrinkage’per se, itseems tome), andI o Vered this metaphorically generalized rectal expansionas aperverse sortof ethical methodof preventing straight men frombeing the villains –the greatbig assholes –offeminist andqueer politics. In short,positing ‘ successful’normative hetero-masculinity as unconscionable,I submitted,and resubmit here, conscientiously failedwriting as a modelof conscientiously failedmasculinity, anti-generative butpotentially politically productive.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 Beforeexpanding this theme any further,however, Iwouldlike tocomment briey onwhat Itookto be my audience’s response tothese writerly elaborations.On the onehand, unless Ionly imagine,a palpablesense ofunease seemed tohover overthe fact that Iwas speakingso profusely about anal and fecal matters atall. Even thoughabject artists andtheorists ofthe body(not to mention producers of hyper-stupid,scatological Hollywood Ž lm) have beenengaged in rudelycorporeal performativediscourse for some years now,that discoursecan still provokediscomfort when itexplicitly bringsthe privateto a public.As Tim Deanputs it, ‘ excrement remains anextraordinarilydi Ycult topicfor sustained discourse’ . 2 1 Coupledwith the audience’s anxiety, however, unless my imaginationruns wild,was asense ofrelief that Iwas, in the end,engaged only atthe level ofdiscourse: I was, afterall, ‘ only talking’and, bringing even morerelief, I was only talking aboutonly talking.I don’t mean tosuggest that anyone inthe audienceactually fearedthat Iwas likely, in a parallax 49 moment ofperformative excess, toconfront them with the truesubject ofmy discourseby literally droppingmy trousers,spreading my butt-cheeks, ordoing anything unspeakablyworse in the way ofletting the solaranus shine. Idomean that Isensed abitof anxiety-assuagement overthe fact that,though I seemed tobe talking ina discomfortingway aboutanal sex anddefecatory e Zorescence, Iwasn’t ‘really’addressing these matters directly atall butmerely employingthem as metaphorsfor writing.

Onthe otherhand, I deŽnitely sensed amongsome members ofthe audiencea more politicalunease, suspicion, or disappointmentin regard to exactly what hadrelieved the others: the fact that Iwas only writingabout only writing,only talking about only talking.That is tosay, some inthe audiencewondered (aloud, during q&a) aboutwhat mightbe called the politicaluse-value ofthe metaphor(as ‘mere’ metaphor)of anal expansion. If the anus,or more speciŽ cally the ass-fuck, does entail some sortof transformativepotential as anavenue forexploding the ideological bodyof straight masculinity, then what happens tothat potential,isn’ t itreally squandered,through the recourse tometaphor,the privilegingof the metaphorically general overthe sexually speciŽc? If the ass-fuck as radicalsex isthoughtor spoken orwritten of‘ merely’as metaphor,what then becomes ofthe possibilityof ‘ real’ change –the point,as wordsinscribed instone atLondon’s HighgateCemetery have it,being not merely tointerpret the worldbut to change it?As the oldboy interred beneath those wordsmight have putit, in orderto abolish the idea ofhegemonic masculinity, the idea ofthe ass-fuck is su Ycient. It takes actual ass-fucking toabolish actualhegemonic masculinity. 22

AlthoughI understandand even share boththe imputedrelief of the Žrst groupand the announcedsuspicions ofthe second, Ibelievethat neither isultimately warranted. Toexplain why, andto further expand my general theme, let meturnto the title of this essay, which o Vers as aquestionwhat Jacques Lacan issues as an imperative.I refer to the E´ crits,toSection V of‘The Directionof the Treatment andthe Principles ofits Power’, which bearsthe title ‘Desire must betaken literally’. 23 Imperatives themselves areusually meant tobe taken literally: onehears ofrhetorical questions, butrarely ofa rhetorical imperative.F orLacan, however, the imperativeto take desireliterally neither means norimpels us totake it‘ literally’ if we take the latter instance ofthe wordto refer tothe directly physical, corporeal,instinctual, non- Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 symbolic, ornon-social. Much rather,for Lacan, totake desire‘ quitesimply, literally’ means totake it,not simply atall, to the letter, ‘a´ la lettre’:24 the literal inthe letter- ly sense is what dividesus fromthe ‘literal’in the physical sense, andthat very divisionis what endlessly opensup desire. ‘ Desire’, Lacan insists, ‘notthe drives’, 25 andLacan’ s insistence here is nothingless than the insistence ofthe letter itself, its insistency rather than its consistency :‘Forthe signiŽer, by its very nature,always anticipatesmeaning byunfolding its dimensionbefore it [...] Fromwhich we can say that itis inthe chain ofthe signiŽer that the meaning‘ ‘insists’’ butthat none of its elements ‘‘consists’’ in the signiŽcation of which itis atthe moment capable’. 26

What originallyprompted Lacan’ s insistence onthe letter’s insistence inits relation todesire was Alexandre Koje`ve’s descriptionof desire itself as ‘the revelationof an emptiness, the presence ofthe absence ofa reality’. 2 7 In Lacan, this revelationis Thomas 50 coupledwith anunderstandingof languagein which the word,as MauriceBlanchot putsit, ‘ isnotthe expression ofathing butrather the absence ofthis thing [...]The word’, writes Blanchot, ‘makes the things disappearand imposes upon us the feeling ofauniversal want andeven ofits own want’. 28 Taking this conation of desirewith language,in which the twoare revealed as virtually the same no-thing,and compoundingit with Saussure’s designationof languageas anarbitrary,conventional, diÚ erential system withoutpositive terms, Lacan then introducesF reudiansexual diÚ erence understood(or arbitrarilyand conventionally imposed)interms of‘castration’. In eVect, Lacan lets the mother’s ‘castration’, her ‘no-thing’, her putativelack of/desirefor the phallus (andour paternally prohibitedbut always alreadyimpossible desireto be the phallus forher) stand in as metaphorsfor the ‘universal want’that is inscribed in every speakingsubject qua speakingsubject. Her speciŽcally sexual ‘lack’metaphorizes ourgenerally linguistic dehiscence. In Lacanian terms, then, we speakingsubjects areall ‘castrated’in language and by language, are all separated fromthe literal (the mother’s real body)by the literal (the father’s name andno, nom et non),andthis understandingof linguistic separationas bothcastration and‘ universal want’has the e Vect –asmany ofLacan’s critics pointout – ofuniversally phallicizing andhence heterosexualizing the desirefor all meaning andthe meaning ofall desire.

Somuch for(overly) rudimentaryLacan. 29 Butthere arecomplications, the most salutary ofwhich Ican best foregroundby pointingout that amongLacan’ s inuences we Žndnot only Freud,Hegel, Koje `ve, Saussure,Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, and(alas) Heidegger,but also Georges Bataille. 30 Forit is with Bataillethat the ‘rock of castration’can besaid to crumble. It is with Bataillethat we geta revelationof languagenot as the singularityof castration (andhence the sacriŽce ofvariety) but rather asoneof the varieties ofsacriŽcial experience: languagenot only asemptiness butalso as excess, notas lack butas expenditure.If forLacan the symbol is the murderof the thing,for Bataille that murderis never atransparently ‘clean kill’but rather afundamentally messier a Vair.31 Torephrase Lacan andBlanchot byway of Bataille,one might say that the word– particularlyas italways inevitablypasses througha body– is notonly ‘apresence madeof absence’ 32 butalso a presence madeof abjection. The wordneither fully expresses things normakes them completely disappearbut rather soils andsaturates them, andus, drawing us (down? back?out?) into a general feelingof abjectionand even ofits own abjection.F ollowing Bataille,and Julia Kristeva, onecan say that tospeak, to signify oneself, toput into Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 playthe ‘essence’of self, which isthat itis itself ananti-essential e Vect ofthe signiŽer, is notonly tosplit oneself alongthe lines ofenunciation/ enounced,or of subject/ object:it isalsoto expel oneself, tospit oneself out,to abjectoneself within the very motionthat oneclaims toestablish oneself. Or, toquote Kristeva directly, onecan ask: ‘Doesone write underany othercondition than beingpossessed byabjection?’33

Possessed ornot, I myself amdrawn (down?back? out? – in any case, repetitively) tothe moments in Lacan that seem most tobear the trace, the stain,of Bataillean expenditure,particularly as those moments always conspicuously pertainto the movement ofwriting. Lacan refers, forexample, to his own publicationsas ‘poubellications ’,playingon the French wordfor waste basket andassigning his writing the status ofwaste. 34 He suggests in Seminar XI that ‘The creator will never participate in anything otherthan the creationof a small dirtydeposit, a succession ofsmall parallax 51 dirtydeposits juxtaposed’ . 35 Also in Seminar XI,Lacan writes of‘ that vertigo[...] of the white page,which, fora particularcharacter [...]is like the centre ofthe symptomatic barragewhich blocks o V forhim every access tothe Other. If, quite literally, he cannot touchthis white pageat which his ine Vableintellectual e Vusions come toa stop,it is because he apprehendsit only as apiece oflavatory paper’ . 36 Finally (andI’ membarrassedto think how many times I’ve citedthese twosentences, butthey initiatedso much ofwhat Icall my thinking that Ireally can’t help myself ), Lacan writes, ‘Forthis subject,who thinks he can accede tohimself bydesignating himself in the statement, is nomore than such an object.Ask the writer aboutthe anxiety he experiences when facedby the blank sheet ofpaper, and he will tell you who is the turdof his phantasy’. 37

What strikes me aboutthese passages is how little they seem toconcern castration orcastration anxiety. Whether Lacan is writingof his own ‘poubellications ’, the dirty depositsof ‘ the creator’, the e Vusionsof ‘ aparticularcharacter’ , orthe vertiginous anxiety of‘ the writer’in general,these passages all suggest amoreformless sortof anxiety ofabjection, what Ihave called a‘scatontological’anxiety (note Lacan’s emphasis onthe copulain the last quotedsentence), underlyingand perhaps anteceding castration anxiety. Castrationanxiety itself, asIhave argued,can function toformalize and contain an earlier,more fundamental, more amorphous anxiety, pavingthe way, as itwere, forthe installationof its possessor onone side or the otherof the binaryof symmetrical sexual di Verence.38 Abjection,on the otherhand, like the Bataillean informe´,is never socleanly ordecisively contained.Thus, tobring abjectioninto play by foregrounding the corporealin the productionof language (myproject,in anutshell) istocast the scene ofwritingotherwise than as anemptiness yearning tobe literally Žlled (perhapsby the bigdick of‘ real change’). Rather, the scene ofwriting – the blank page,the expectant silence ofan audiencewaiting for aspeaker tobegin – is revealed as anothersort of opening,a passageway,both an entrance andan exit,for the other(s) in me andfor me in the other(s): an oracular oriŽce, ifyou will, that is tobe linguistically massagedand relaxed andlubricated in the interests of communication ,touse noblander word, but ‘ communication’in Bataille’s doublesense notonly ofthe restricted economic exchange ofmeanings between subjects butas anothername forgeneral economy,for that ecstatic space ofimpossible community in which solidiŽed subjectivities dissolve anderected meaning collapses. 39 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009

–Or rather,in which subjectivities are said todissolve andmeaning is said tocollapse. After all,even in Batailleancommunication, the dissolutionof linguistically constitutedsubjects takes place inlanguage;the collapse ofmeaning is laiddown in writing.Certainly Bataille in ‘ real life’participated in all sorts oforgies, but fortunatelyhe andhis acephalic cohorts never actually broughto V their planfor a literal human sacriŽce: jouissance perhapsabounded, but no onereally ever really lost ahead,and acephalia (headlessness) itself thus remains ametaphor. 40 Or, to put it anotherway, ifthe corpse is‘the utmostof abjection’, 41 itisn’t that,or anything else, tothe corpse itself. If, asNietzsche tells us,‘ truths’are metaphors that have forgotten that they aremetaphors, and the ‘will totruth’ is aconcealed ‘will todeath’ , then acephaliais ametaphorthat, like any other,stays alive byforgetting to forget itself as metaphor. 42 AsFoucaultsuggests, the theoretical legacy ofNietzsche, Freud,and Thomas 52 Marx is the interpretativerealization that there is nothingto interpret that is not itself alreadyan interpretation,and interpretative activity stays alive bysituating itself within that endlessly interpretativeframe. F oucaultwrites: ‘If interpretationcan never becompleted,this is quitesimply because there is nothingto interpret. There is nothingabsolutely primary to interpret, for after all everything is already interpretation,each sign is in itself notthe thing that o Vers itself tointerpretation butan interpretationof other signs’ . Foucaultgoes on tosuggest that ‘the deathof interpretationis tobelieve that there aresigns, signs that exist primarily,originally, actually, ascoherent, pertinent,and systematic marks. The lifeof interpretation,on the contrary, is tobelieve that there areonly interpretations’. 4 3 Wecan situate Foucault’s interpretationin Lacanian terms, andbring the questionof desire back intothe mix, byjuxtaposingtwo remarks in Seminar XI.Inone,Lacan suggests that ‘notto want todesire and to desire are the same thing’: 44 that is,desire, as the presence ofthe absence ofa reality,desires tocancel itself outas desireby appropriatingthat absent reality.In the otherremark, Lacan states bluntly that ‘Desire,in fact, is interpretationitself ’, 45 which remark Idesireto interpret as meaning that interpretation,as the desirefor a factualtruth, desires tocancel itself outas interpretationby the Žnal appropriationof that truth.

What we areleft with, then, afterNietzsche, Freud,and Marx, and in the wake of Bataille,F oucault,and Lacan, is asocial reality fromwhich ‘reality’is terminally missing, aworldin which interpretation‘ only’interprets interpretation,metaphor ‘merely’metaphorizes metaphor,and desire desires nothingbut desire – aworld,in otherwords, that, to the extent that we remain in it,must literally be‘ madeto mean’. It was with this fundamentally butnon-foundationa lly dirtybusiness ofwor(l)d makingthat Iattemptedto engage my audience(to return now tothem) with my little acephalic tale ofthe ass-fuck as ametaphorfor the collapse ordiscard of a certain sortof straight male subjectivity.What Iwill say here, as Itumbletowards aconclusion, is that the particularform of subjectivity underquestion is, like all others, written:itis itself an assemblage ofmetaphors, is madeout of words and imagesthat arethemselves made,socially andhistorically produced,however viscously they may circulate throughthat instance ofmateriality we call ‘the body’. Since the self tobe transformed is itself ametaphor,the metaphorof the ass-fuck – pace ourburied friend at Highgate– may besu Ycient todo the trick. After all,what are‘ acephalia’, ‘the ass-fuck’, ‘radicalsex’ , and‘ radicalpolitics’ if notmetaphors for Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 the possibilityof change? And justas hetero-masculine dominationhas always dependedon the denialof receptive analeroticism, hasn’ t italso always depended onbeing closed tothe possibilityof change, onmetaphors that forgettheir metaphoricity,on the naturalizationof history, on what Bourdieuin his recent Masculine Domination has referredto as the eternalizationof the arbitrary? 46 For the hetero-masculine subject,who apparently thinks that he can notonly accede to himself butkeep his ass covered bydesignatinghimself inthe statement, beingopen tochange means notonly the recognitionthat the meaningof desireis the desireof meaning,but that the metaphorof the ass-fuck isthe ass-fuck ofmetaphor,and that that recognitionliterally is the ass-fuck itself. Just ask the writer.

What this writer wouldlike toend up saying tohis audienceis that those members who arerelieved tothink that my talk is only talk aremistaken: tothe extent that parallax 53 we communicate atall, we really are‘ having sex’. Tothose disappointedthat my cock-assed metaphorsremain merely metaphorical,I wouldo Ver the reminderthat the historical struggles weareengagedin will never cease tobestruggles overmeaning in asemiotically fabricatedworld. In the course ofthose struggles, some ofus have discovereda strange strategic politicalvalue in the metaphorsof dissolution,failure, andcollapse, more so than we have in those ofagency, solidarity,and success. We like tolinger insistently over,rather than toredeem orrepair, the productivetears inthe social,psychic, andcorporeal fabric. Foucault once declaredthat hewrote‘ in orderto have noface’ . 47 Some,I have argued,write in orderto have nofeces. I write totear myself anew asshole, tohave myself torna new asshole, thoughI fail, most likely, even atthat.And ifIclose this essay now byprofessingthat abjectfailure tofail, it is only away ofreminding myself, andany audienceI mighthave, that the writer ofthese words,by virtue of being ‘ the writer’, byvirtue of writing‘ these words’, has always been fucked in the ass.

Notes

1 Amongthese reasons I perhaps attermyself by Matter toFeminist Theory’ , in Judith Kegan not includingthe conditionof the assitself, which, Gardiner[ed], Masculinity Studiesand Feminist Theory: despitemy advancingage, I liketo think ofasstill New Directions ,(NewY ork:Columbia University fuck-worthy,even if I don’t liketo think ofits Press,2002), pp.60– 89. beingfucked. 6 RosiBraidotti, with Judith Butler,‘ Feminismby 2 LeoBersani, ‘ Is the Rectuma Grave?’, October Any Other Name’, diÚ erences: AJournal ofFeminist 43(Winter 1987), p.212. Cultural Studies 6.2& 3(1994),pp.62– 99; Lee 3 TheseBersanian tropes proliferate not onlyfrom Edelman,‘ Tearoomsand Sympathy, or, the his ‘Rectum’but alsofrom The Freudian Body: Epistemologyof the WaterCloset,’ in Henry Psychoanalysis and Art (NewY ork:Columbia Abelove,Miche `leAina Barale, and David M. UniversityPress, 1986); The Culture ofRedemption Halperin[eds], The Lesbian and Gay StudiesReader (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1990); (NewY ork:Routledge 1993), pp.553– 76; Galway Homos (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, Kinnell, Imperfect Thirst (Boston:Houghton Mi Zin, 1995);and from Tim Dean, Hal Foster, and Kaja 1994).References for Waldby and Pronger are Silverman,‘ AConversationwith LeoBersani’ , givenbelow. October 82(Fall 1997), pp.3– 16. For my 7 CatherineW aldby,‘ Destruction:Boundary misappropriationsof Bersani, seeMale Matters: Eroticsand the ReŽgurations of the Heterosexual Masculinity, Anxiety,and the Male Body onthe Line MaleBody’ , in ElizabethGrosz and Elspeth (Urbana:University of Illinois Press,1996); my Probyn [eds], SexyBodies: The Strange Carnalities of title essayin Calvin Thomas,Joseph O. Aimone, Feminism (NewY ork:Routledge, 1995), p.266. andCatherine A. F.MacGillivray[eds], Straight 8

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 CatherineW aldby,‘ Destruction:Boundary with aTwist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Eroticsand the ReŽgurations of the Heterosexual Heterosexuality (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, MaleBody’ , p.267. 1999);and ‘ CulturalDroppings: Bersani’ s Beckett’, 9 CatherineW aldby,‘ Destruction:Boundary Twentieth Century Literature 47:2(Summer 2001), pp.169–96. Eroticsand the ReŽgurations of the Heterosexual 4 MaleBody’ , p.268. The conference,on ‘Posting the Male: 10 Representationsof Masculinity in the Twentieth CatherineWaldby, ‘ Destruction:Boundary Century’, organizedby Daniel Lea and Berthold Eroticsand the ReŽgurations of the Heterosexual Schoene-Harwood,was held at the Research MaleBody’ , p.272. 11 Centre forLiterature and Cultural History at CatherineWaldby, ‘ Destruction:Boundary LiverpoolJohn MooresUniversity in Augustof Eroticsand the ReŽgurations of the Heterosexual 2000,and I wouldlike to take this opportunityto MaleBody’ , p.275. 12 thank the organizersfor inviting meto speak at BrianPronger, ‘ On YourKnees: Carnal this event. Knowledge,Masculine Dissolution, Doing 5 The talkhas sincebeen published as ‘ Re- Feminism’, in TomDigby [ed], Men DoingFeminism , eneshing the BrightBoys: or, How Male Bodies (New Y ork:Routledge, 1998), p.69. Thomas 54 13 BrianPronger, ‘ On YourKnees: Carnal 30 ForLacan and Bataille, see Elizabeth Knowledge,Masculine Dissolution, Doing Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan ,trans. BarbaraBay, Feminism’, pp.72–73 [emphasesadded]. (NewY ork:Columbia University Press, 1997); 14 BrianPronger, ‘ On YourKnees: Carnal CarolynDean, The Selfand ItsPleasures: Bataille, Knowledge,Masculine Dissolution, Doing Lacan, and the History ofthe Decentred Subject (Ithaca: Feminism’, p.205. CornellUniversity Press, 1992); and Fred Botting 15 BrianPronger, ‘ On YourKnees: Carnal andScott Wilson, Bataille,(NewY ork:Palgrave, Knowledge,Masculine Dissolution, Doing 2001). Feminism’, p.206. 31 Foran exampleof such messiness,consider the 16 BrianPronger, ‘ On YourKnees: Carnal sectioncalled ‘ TheSacriŽ ce of the Gibbon’in Knowledge,Masculine Dissolution, Doing ‘The PinealEye’ , in AllanStoekl [ed], Visions of Feminism’, p.208. Excess:Selected Writing, 1927–1939 (Minneapolis: 17 Stuart Hall,‘ The Rediscoveryof ‘ ‘Ideology’’ ’, Universityof Minnesota Press,1985), pp.79– 90. in JulieRivkin and Michael Ryan [eds], Literary 32 JacquesLacan, E´ crits: ASelection , p.65. Theory: An Anthology ,(NewY ork:Blackwell, 1998), 33 JuliaKristeva, Powers ofHorror: An Essayon p.1050. Abjection,trans. LeonS. Roudiez,(New Y ork: 18 SamuelBeckett, Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1982), p.208. My and aDramatic Fragment ,RubyCohn. [ed],(New earliersentence also tropes Kristeva: ‘ Iexpel York:Grove, 1984), p.145. myself,I spitmyself out, I abjectmyself within the 19 He´le`ne Cixous,‘ Sorties’, in JulieRivkin and samemotion through which ‘‘I’’claimto establish MichaelRyan [eds], Literary Theory: An Anthology , myself’,p.3. (NewY ork:Blackwell, 1998), p.583. 34 In ElizabethRoudinesco, Jacques Lacan , trans. 20 LeoBersani, ‘ Is the Rectuma Grave?’, p.222. 21 BarbaraBay, (New Y ork:Columbia University Tim Dean, Beyond Sexuality ,(Chicago:University Press,1997), Roudinesco writes of the ‘anxietythat ofChicago Press, 2000), p.267. 22 aZictedLacan whenever the terriblequestion of My allusionhere is to Marx’ s ‘In orderto publicationarose. ‘ ‘Poubellication ’’,he wasto call it abolish the idea ofprivate property, the idea of later,a pun on‘ ‘poubelle’’(trash can),perhaps communismis completely su Ycient.It takes actual referringto the residueor waste that mightin his communistaction to abolish actual private viewbe the objectof his dearestdesire’ , p.319. property’, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 35 JacquesLacan, The Seminar ofJacques Lacan, Book 1844,in RobertC. Tucker[ed], The Marx-Engels XI:The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis , Reader,2ndedition, (New Y ork:Norton, 1978), ed.Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. AlanSheridan, p.99. (NewY ork:Norton, 1981), p.117. Further 23 JacquesLacan, E´ crits: ASelection ,trans. Alan referencescited in the text. Ihaveto admit that Sheridan,(New Y ork:Norton, 1977), p.256. I’mcheatinga bithere, since in this passageLacan 24 JacquesLacan, E´ crits: ASelection ,pp.146,176n5. 25 isspeciŽ cally talking about painting rather than JacquesLacan, E´ crits: ASelection , p.256. 26 writing,but I think that his commentsabout the JacquesLacan, E´ crits: ASelection , p.153. 27 painteras ‘ creator’can be applied to, or perhaps AlexandreKoje `ve, Introduction to the Reading of depositedon, the ‘poubellished’writer as well. Hegel: Lectures onThe Phenomenology ofSpirit , Allan 36 Bloom[ed], trans. JamesH. Nichols,Jr., (Ithaca: JacquesLacan, The Seminar ofJacques Lacan, Book CornellUniversity Press, 1969), p.5. This text XI:The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis , pp.268–269. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 collectsthe lectureson Hegelthat Koje`vedelivered, 37 ´ JacquesLacan, E´ crits: ASelection , p.315. andLacan attended, at the E coledes Hautes 38 E´ tudesfrom 1933 to 1939. For‘ scatontology’vs. castration anxiety, see my 28 MauriceBlanchot, ‘ LeParadoxe d’ Aytre’ , Les Male Matters .On castrationanxiety and hetero- Temps Modernes (June 1946):1580. Cited in Herbert normativity,consider D. A.Miller,‘ AnalRope’ , in Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories , ed. Diana Social Theory ,(Boston:Beacon, 1960), p.xi. Fuss,(New Y ork:Routledge, 1991), p.135– 36: 29 Fora muchless rudimentary, and much more ‘Alignedwith [the]subject’ s heterosexualization(as queer-friendly,Lacan, see Tim Dean’ s important what mostbrutally enforces it), castration anxiety Beyond Sexuality (Chicago:University of Chicago maynot Žnally beall that anxiogenic.For while Press,2000), particularly the chapter‘ LacanMeets such anxietyno doubt occasions considerable QueerTheory’ , p.215–268. In e Vect,Dean queers psychicdistress, neither in the longrun canit fail Lacanby privilegingthe Lacanof the realand the tobe determined by the knowledgethat it enjoys objet a overand against the Lacan(and the the highest socialutility in tendingto conŽ rm Lacanians)who stand(s) behindand support(s) the heterosexualmale identity in aworldwhere, if this symbolicorder. precious,but precarious identity is not exactly parallax 55 rewarded,the failureto assume it isless 41 JuliaKristeva, Powers ofHorror: An Essayon ambiguouslypunished. At the pointwhere Abjection, p.9. 42 castrationanxiety is taught toanticipate its FriedrichNietzsche, ‘ On Truth andLying in an redeemingsocial value, it immediatelycarries Non-MoralSense’ , inRaymondGuess and Ronald ultimatereassurance; its normalizingfunction Speirs[eds], Birth ofTragedy and Other Writings allowsit tobe not justthought, but evenlived, as (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999), normalitself ’. 146.Actually the exactwording is ‘ truths are 39 SeeBataille, ‘ TwoFragments on Laughter’, illusionsof which wehave forgotten that they are illusions,metaphors which havebecome worn by Guilty,trans. BruceBoone, (V enice,CA: Lapis frequentuse and have lost all sensuous vigour’ . Press,1988), p.139. Forthe willto truth asawillto death, see Friedrich Wehaveto distinguish: Nietzsche, The Gay Science ,trans. WalterKaufmann, –Communicationlinking up two beings( laughter (NewY ork:Vintage, 1974), p.282. ofachild toits mother,tickling, etc.) 43 Michel Foucault,‘ Nietzsche,Freud, and Marx’ , –Communication,through death,with our in JamesD. Faubion[ed], EssentialWorks ofMichel beyond(essentially in sacriŽce) – not with Foucault, 1954–1984: Volume Two: Aesthetics, Method, nothingness, still lesswith asupernaturalbeing, and Epistemology (NewY ork:The NewPress, 1998), but with aindeŽnite reality(which Isometimes pp.275,278. Foucault’ s ‘nothing tointerpret’ call the impossible ,that is:what can’t begrasped remindsme of Beckett’ s ‘nothing toexpress’ , and, (begreift) in anyway, what wecan’t reachwithout though it remainsunexpressed, I think that there dissolvingourselves, what’ s slavishlycalled God). isimplied in Foucaultan ‘obligationto interpret’ If weneed to we can deŽ ne this reality that correspondsto Beckett’ s ‘obligationto express’ . (provisionallyassociating it with aŽnite element) ForBeckett’ s inuence on Foucault, see James ata higher(higher than the individualon a Miller, The Passionof Michel Foucault (Cambridge: scaleof compositionof beings)social level as the HarvardUniversity Press, 1993). 44 JacquesLacan, The Seminar ofJacques Lacan, Book sacred,God or created reality. Or else it can XI:The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis , remainin an undeŽned state (in ordinary p.235. laughter,inŽ nite laughter,or ecstasy in which 45 JacquesLacan, The Seminar ofJacques Lacan, Book the divineform melts like sugar in water). XI:The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis , Formy comments on the scatontologicalaspects p.176. ofBataillean laughter, see Male Matters . 46 PierreBourdieu, Masculine Domination , trans. 40 Fordetails of Bataille’ s sacriŽcial plans, see RichardNice (Stanford University Press, 2001). Stoekl’s introductionto Visionsof Excess . See also 47 Michel Foucault, The Archeology ofKnowledge , PaulHegary, Georges Bataille: Core Cultural Theorist trans. A.M.Sheridan Smith (NewY ork:1972), (London:Sage, 2000). p.17.

Calvin Thomas( [email protected])is associate professorof English at GeorgiaState University inAtlanta. He is the authorof MaleMatters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and theMale Body on theLine andthe editorof Straight with aTwist: QueerTheory and theSubject of Heterosexuality .He is currently workingon a bookthat he wants to Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:39 18 November 2009 call MoreMale Matters: Adventures in Abjection .

Thomas 56 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 57– 70

TranslationReadingSex

Lynn Turner

Fragments ofavessel, in orderto bearticulated together must follow one another in thesmallest detail, although theyneed not belike one another. So,instead ofmaking itself similar to themeaning, to the Sinn ofthe original, thetranslation must rather,lovingly and in detail, in its own language, formitself according to themanner of meaning oftheoriginal, tomakeboth recognizable asthebroken parts ofthe greater language, just as fragments arethe broken parts ofa vessel. Forthis very reason translation must inlarge measurerefrain fromwanting to communicate... 1

In the followingpassages Ibeginto articulate an eroticizationof the text without prescriptionand without end. This is partlyfrom within the terms ofwhat Alice Jardine once called Jacques Derrida’s ‘pornosophy’. 2 Yet italsobreaks with the letter ofthat pornosophyand comes toŽ nda greaterradicality available via W alter Benjamin’s work ontranslation.Although Benjamin may notimmediately spring to mindto ground an emergingpolitics and poetics of queersexuality, certainly Gayatri Spivakhas namedtranslation as an eroticrelation bound to undo the translator’s ‘(selv)edges’. 3 Here, however, IappropriateBenjamin speciŽ cally forhis uprooting ofmetaphor as itattempts toroot kinship andreproduction in naturerather than language.While Derrida’s work is frequently hospitableto that ofBenjamin, ‘ Des Toursde Babel’risks reinscribing the seminal logicthat ‘DieAufgabe des U ¨ bersetzers’

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 arguablydisplaces. Even thoughDerrida is, of course,sympathetic tothe translation ofthe site ofreproductionfrom nature to language, my concern isthat the hymeneal discourse eVecting this turnhampers the style oftranslationas intercourse. 4 Rather than seek tocorrect, ortodiscipline,the translationof ‘The Task ofthe Translator’, this papercontributes to its afterlifebearing in mindthe somewhat divergentreadings oVeredby Derrida, Carol Jacobs, andPaul de Man. 5

Tessellate this

Benjamininsists that natureshould be read from the perspective ofhistory andnot the reverse. This isclosely linked tothe resistance tometaphor in so far as itclaims

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals parallax DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027966 57 tofunctionthrough natural resemblance. 6 DeMan,Derrida and Jacobs all alighton the Žgurationof Ž gurationenacted byBenjamin. All atŽ rst glance agreethat a complex operationis atwork that can bebrie y summarized as the displacement ofmetaphor even as compellingmetaphors are called upon.That aparticular (metaphysical) imaginaryleashes languageto sexual reproductionhas been addressed byDerrida often; hence itis unsurprisingthat he focuses onthis connection here. Speakingof the use ofnaturalistic tropesby Benjamin, he writes:

The allusionto the maturationof a seed could resemble avitalist or geneticist metaphor;it would come then, insupportof the genealogical andparental code which seems todominate this text. In fact it seems necessary here toinvert this orderand recognize what Ihave elsewhere proposedto call the ‘metaphoriccatastrophe’ : farfrom knowing Žrst what ‘life’or ‘family’mean whenever we use these familiarvalues to talk aboutlanguage and translation; it is rather starting fromthe notion ofalanguageand its ‘sur-vival’in translationthat we could have access tothe notionof what lifeand family mean. 7

This seems tosupport the kindof linguistic somersaults that IbelieveBenjamin to be making.I amhappyto agreethat the meaningthat weascribe tosuch terms as‘life’ and‘ family’derives fromlanguage rather than the otherway around:this could well supportthe disseminationof such terms. However, the cautionaryconditionals that appearwhen Derridawishes toindicate doubt as towhether Benjaminreally is supportinga ‘genealogicaland parental code’ also crop up in the sentence locating the inversion ofthis code.This contrasts with Jacobs’s assertion that the ‘unfamiliarity’of ‘ The Task ofthe Translator’is ‘nowhere’‘ moreintensely sensed than when the essay turns tothe familialrelations between languages’. 8 Rather than state that this inversion is necessary, Derridasays that it‘ seems’necessary. This is notan early indicationof something that will befound to be undecidable. Nor is it an isolatedinstance ofambiguity. At several junctures in ‘Des Toursde Babel’ Derridaexpresses concern regardingthe status ofhis own readingof Benjamin (not least that he ‘ought’to have readone of Benjamin’ s ‘overly enigmatic’other texts, ‘OnLanguageas Such andon the Languageof Man’). 9 Indeed,Derrida himself has frequentrecourse tofamilial tropes. This ‘stems’partly from his use ofMaurice de

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Gandillac’s translation,and partly from the persuasiveforce ofthese very tropes.If familyis an instance of‘ metaphoriccatastrophe’ that obscures itself as such, posing itself asthe conditionof ( generation of )metaphor,rather than beingone among others, doesthe Towerof Babel turn out to be its ruin? 10

Inreadingacross the German originaland the French andEnglish translations (and having absorbedJacobs’ s commentary), deMan clearly sees the ironicfulŽ lment of ‘DieAufgabe des U ¨ bersetzers’when that Aufgabe isunderstoodas afailure.He details some ofthe variousways bothHarry Zohnand Gandillac runaground in their eVortsto match Benjamin: matching Benjaminwould be an index oftheir resistance tothe foreignlanguage that they translate. Myepigraphpieces togethera quotation comparingthe piecingtogether of a translationwith the brokenparts of a vessel. Assembled fromZohn, Jacobs andde Man,it awkwardly restores the crucial passage Turner 58 relaying the relationbetween the fragments as metonymical withoutimplying that these brokenfragments couldever make upa totality.As deMan insists:

What we have here is an initialfragmentation; any work is totally fragmentedin relationto this reineSprache ,with which ithas nothing in common,and every translationis totallyfragmented in relationto the original.The translationis the fragmentof afragment,is breaking the fragment– sothe vessel keeps breaking,constantly –andnever reconstitutes. 11

That these fragments fragmentis crucial formy appropriationof this material.And, althoughde Man only remarks uponZohn’ s misleadingattachment tothe reassemblage ofthis vessel, itis alsothe hinge ofDerrida’ s reading.Derrida, as deMan takes some delightin reporting,reads Benjamin in French.

Priorto detailing the relationshipbetween twofragments that Derridaconjures, I want toremark uponthe tropologythat makes sense oftheir union.The task ofthe translator is Žrstly ‘the [deŽnite notindeŽ nite article] commitment, duty,debt, responsibility’‘ towhich oneis destined(always bythe other)’. 12 Fromthe beginning then ‘alaw’[indeŽ nite article] is ‘atstake’ . 13 Beingresponsible to this law of translationimplies the possibility,that onemust guardagainst, of ‘ afall,an error andperhaps a crime’. 14 The ‘horizon’(evoking both distance andthe future,the ‘to come’) ofthe task inhand is a‘reconciliation’. 1 5 ‘And all that in adiscourse multiplyinggenealogical motifs and allusions –moreor less than metaphorical– to the transmission ofafamilyseed’ . 1 6 Immediately succeeding the paragraphin which letraducteur , der U¨ bersetzer,isidentiŽed asmasculine andas anheir,Derrida questions the prosopopeiaat work: ‘ the bondor obligation of the debtdoes not pass between adonorand a doneebut between twotexts’ . 17 AgainI concur with the foregrounding oftext overempirical donor or donee. Y et,if we areto understand the originaland the translationas the relationof text totext (since, Benjaminasserts, nowork ofart is intendedfor its reader)must this relationremain indebtedto the ‘transmission of afamilyseed’ through the Žgureof atranslator,in the masculine? Forthere remains adebtor– the personof the translator –whose commitment is torespond to the ‘strugglefor the sur-vival ofthe name,the tongueor the lips’. 18 From this invocation ofBabel,of the name ofGodthat alsonames confusion(of tongues, of lips) Derrida Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 makes animportantmove. Benjamin, as isfamiliar,compares translationto literary criticism: Derridamakes ametaphoricalequivalence ofhis reading– supervisedby Babel– andtranslation. 19 However this is notmerely any translationto which he refers butthe forbiddenone – the translationof translation. His readingtranslates Gandillac’s translationof Benjamin (from F rench toFrench). There is an ironyin playhere, probablymore than one.While Derridagradually unravels the double bindof Babel (the propername, God’ s own name,the name that yet becomes common propertyand confuses propertyin beingitself Confusion)along the lines ofthere must benotranslation/ there must betranslation– inwhich case Babelitself Žguresas the translationof translation or the (inaugurating)metaphorof metaphor –he is alsoworking with atranslationthat compoundsreproductive tropology (to which Ishall return). Butthen, althoughthe original‘ pleads’for translation, there is nodebtor: ‘ the doubleindebtedness passes between names’; ‘the mortalbodies’ parallax 59 ‘disappearbehind the sur-vival ofthe name’. 2 0 Wehave movedfrom the afterlifeof the original tothat ofthe name.The propername isthat which shouldnot be translated, that which ‘contracts the relation’between the mortalsubject andthe name. 21 Thinking this contract moves the readerinto more recognizable Derrideanterritory markinga shift away froma languagecontract that supposesa single languageand that supposesthe transmission oflanguage without remainder (the logicof communication)and towards one that supposesan apriori‘ contract between two foreignlanguages as such’which ‘engage’to allow every othersubsequent contract. 22 The singularityof this contract issuch that itoccurs only as trace. As the condition ofpossibility of all othercontracts this singularcontract is transcendental. Derrida then re-poses the questionof transcendentality: does‘ kinship amonglanguages’ requirethis contract orsupplyit with its Žrst instance? That he‘engages’the language of(aparticularmodel of )kinship todiscuss kinship between languages,or the origin oflanguages,is notirrelevant. Derridarecognizes that Benjamindoes not fall into ageneticist account ofthe history (origin)of languages, but speaks oftheir a Ynity –only revealed bytranslation. But for Derrida the ‘enigma’of the kinship among languagesis staked with particularresonance uponthe name.The questionof the name,and speciŽ cally ‘the propernames atthe edgeof the language’arise as that which cannot butrequire to be translated. 23 Fromthis contract overthe im/possibility ofthe transmission ofthe name which doesnot obey an aprioritranscendental contract butinstantiates it– ‘gives birth’to it – as quasi-transcendental,Derrida links this contract tothe ‘symbolon’yet inaway inwhich Benjamindoes not stipulate but‘ nodoubt’ ‘suggests’ via the tropeof the vessel. 24 This vessel as amphorais markedas the metaphorthat is notone and around which turns this shift in metaphoricitythrough being renamed in this text as an ‘ammetaphor’. Here the diVerences intranslation of this mesmerizing imagebecome apparent. The vessel – caught only infragmentation in Jacobs’s andde Man’s reading– iscomparedto the translationsomewhat di Verently here. Derridakeeps the tropologyof growth and describes the afterlifeof the originalin the translationas its growth.The translation is notthe reproductionof the originalbut the extension ofit. However, Derrida curtails his account ofthis afterlifeto growth directed towards ‘ completion’because a‘‘‘seminal’’ logic must have imposeditself onBenjamin’ . 2 5 Surelyit is a‘seminal logic’that Benjamin’s text sets adrift– thereby lendingitself toa counter-tropology of‘ monstrosity’? And,although Derrida, de Man, Jacobs, Benjaminand the argumenttowards which Imoveall agreethat the originis nota pointpresent to Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 itself, diVerent questionsare posed by anoriginsatisŽ ed bya‘complement’and one which requiresa supplement.Although the German Erga¨nzung can refer toboth words,Derrida at Ž rst refers tothe relationbetween originaland translation as complementary ,byimplication as the comingtogether of two partswhich then complete each other,only later referringto Benjamin’ s metaphorsas ‘supplements’. 26 Surely itis Derrida’s own disorientingsense ofsupplementarity that moreŽ ttingly characterizes Benjaminiantranslation?

Clearly Derridawishes toread Benjamin as e Vecting acritiqueof a metaphysical notionof truth, exhorting his readersnot to leap too hastily uponit, as, a coupleof pageslater, he will adviseus notto immediately assume the presence ofthe phallus behindthe veil ofthe royalrobes and not to assume that the vessel composes a totality.Y etatthis pointin the circuitousdetours of this text the persuasiveforce of Turner 60 aparticularheterosexual economy nevertheless holdscourt. This metaphor,that is, this ammetaphorof the vessel which transports nopresence, is recapitulatedonce more.This time the translation‘ espouses’the original.These ‘twoadjoined fragments’– wouldthis espousalfunction as such ifwe saw the translationand the originalas themselves fragmented?(this fragmentationfacilitating the very possibility oftranslation,not to mention iteration) – ‘complete each otherso as toform a larger tongue’.27 Again,Derrida uses completion– andhis phrasingcompletes itfurther since here the fragments themselves form a‘largertongue’ rather than ‘make both recognizable as the brokenparts of the greaterlanguage’ . 28 And,immediately prior toannouncing that the contract which he has readin Benjaminis the ‘hymen or marriagecontract with the promiseto produce a child whose seed will giverise to history andgrowth’ , Derridarefers tothis readingas ‘atleast’ ‘ my interpretation– my translation,my ‘‘task ofthe translator’’ ’. 29 The pathfrom interpretation to translationmay besmoothed by the similarity of‘ interpreter’to ‘ translator’, but interpretationis directedtowards the decipheringof meaning, a routewhich leads tobad translations accordingto Benjamin. And also,and ironically, in the very passagewhere Benjamincompares translationto the literary criticism ofthe Jena Romantics, this iswhere he says that there can benotranslation of translation,‘ since itcan nolonger be displaced by a secondary rendering’. 30 Arguably,as Jacobs suggests, the modeof Benjamin’ s own text itself ‘performs’an ‘exemplary’‘ act of translation’in the sense ofcriticism. 31 Abyssally itdoes itself the thing itdescribes, bypassingany service tothe reader’s comprehension, in fundamentally altering,or ‘translating’, every term wemightexpect toprovide a clear deŽnition of the meaning oftranslation. Seemingly familiarwords become defamiliarized. They ‘relentlessly turnon their pastmeanings’ becoming ‘ incomprehensibly foreign’. 32 Is this alsothe case in ‘Des Toursde Babel’ ?

Is itthe same sortof comparison that is beingmade when Derridacompares translationwith marriageand when Benjamincompares itwith philosophy,literary criticism andhistory? Can marriage join in the same series ofnon-resemblances, producedas nonsensuous similarity?Marriage or hymen –such quaintterminology –arise in Derrida’s readingof Mallarme´. 33 Canthey similarly arise fromtranslation? Insofar as the hymen, that istosay marriage– these wordsthat apparentlysubstitute foreach other– arethe locus ofa linguistic dislocation,then yes, perhaps.But no insofar as this undecidabilityitself (inscribed througheach wordmeaning the other, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 yet the presence ofthe oneimplying the absence ofthe otherand vice versa) isonly imaginableaccording to a particular modelof marriage, a particular model of heterosexuality entailinga particular fantasy offemale passivity. 34 This alsobegs the questionof how transferable,how translatable,Derrida’ s names are.If the pointof the several ‘quasi-transcendentals’is that they are‘ quasi’, they arecontingent not universal operations,they operatesimilarly butnot identically, they arenot each other’s metaphor,they may breach the constitutionof insideand outside but do not claim toactually be outside,then shouldwe hastily readthe task oftranslation as a marriagecontract? Even as onewhich is only ‘quasi’-transcendental yet remains predicatedupon the delivery ofa(male) child whose seed generates history?Even if the possibilityof this task isbuiltupon failure? This isthe narrativeof insemination that Derridaknows very well, andanyway, ‘Benjaminsays asmuch’: asthe original growsin the translation,Derrida adds, ‘ like achild’, telling us that he is ‘adding’ parallax 61 (yet asasupplementor acomplement?). 35 It seems crucial toremark here that texts arenot children: children aretexts. Yet in what sense arewe in the domainof childbirth?Admittedly, in apassagediscussing the afterlifeof the originalin the translationZohn translates ‘Wehen’by ‘ birthpangs’ , andGandillac by‘ douleurs obste´tricales’. DeMan, by contrast, claims that this su Veringis notnecessarily reproductive or even connotative ofthe human .36 Istress the latter since the tropologyof the human is something that marks adistinctionbetween these three authors’ readingsof ‘ DieAufgabe des U ¨ bersetzers’. This is notto frame Derrida himself as ahumanist when his work diagnosesthe conditionsof metaphysics. Yetin diagnosing the metaphorof metaphor enabling the kinship oflanguages through a highly idealizedkinship ofmen andwomen, there is little trace ofa deconstruction ofthis heterocracy. DeMan’ s anti-humanism is discussed most explicitly in relationto furtherinfelicities oftranslation consequent uponGandillac’ s indebtedness to phenomenology– the ‘overridingphilosophical pressure inFrance’ when he made histranslation. 37 Where Benjaminspeaks of‘dasGemeinte’and the ‘Art desMeinens’, which deMan translates as the di Verence between what is meant andthe way in which languagecrafts that meaning,Gandillac retains anotionof intentionality,and supportsthis with afootnotereferring the readerto Edmund Husserl. Derrida reproducesGandillac. 38 However, deMan then pointsout that while ‘the meaning- function[of language] is certainly intentional’we cannot say the same thing about the way inwhich we mean. 39 Moreover,this additionalyet crucial componentof the makingof any meaningat all

is as such notmade by us as historical beings,it is perhapsnot even madeby humans atall. T oequatelanguage with humanity atall [...] is in question. 40

Itisnotthat there is aphenomenologyof language:this is precisely what is atstake. As he renames this discrepancy as that between grammarand meaning we can recognise the indebtedness lying between the work ofdeMan andthat ofBenjamin. 41 Jacobs alsosingles outthe passagein Benjamindiscussing this discrepancy fora lengthy translation.Although she doesso in orderto demonstrate the trials of Benjaminfor his translators, itis striking that the di Verence between acomplement anda supplementalso features here. Zohn,in attemptingto make English sense of the diVerence between what we mean andhow we mean,ends upshifting from Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 supplementing to complementing; he translates: ‘intentionand object of intention complement each ofthe twolanguages from which they arederived; there the object iscomplementary tothe intention’. Whereas Jacobs writes ‘[the manner ofmeaning] supplements itself in bothlanguages from which they arederived. The manner of meaning in them supplements itself intowhat is meant’. 42 This disarticulation of meaning,this insinuation ofthe formalproperties of language,is much moreunsettling.

Addressing gown

Beforecommitting himself tothe Žgureof the child Derridaswerves andspeaks of the growthof the child that isthe original asits own child rather than the reproduction ofitself in anew andseparate existent. 43 If this swerve mightlever us away from Turner 62 the implicationof a matingbetween originaland translation why incorporatethe Žgureof marriage? 44 Here the promisepromises a ‘kingdom’(recalling Babelas the name,language and city ofGod) which is the reconciliationof languages. This kingdomof reconciliationhowever can never bereached. It remains ‘untouchable’. 45 The promiseremains unfulŽlled. Musing upon the ‘untouchable’Derrida wonders why the ‘ammetaphorof Benjamin’ reminds him ofthe hymen ‘morevisibly ofthe weddinggown’ . 4 6 Tofollowhis curiouslocution literally, in the spiritof translation, itwould seem that itis the propername ofBenjamin hovering at the edgesof ‘DieAufgabe des U ¨ bersetzers’that recalls the hymen. ‘Benjamin’becomes the untouchablehymen that letraducteur wants totouch, Derrida says as much. And he knows that even afterhe laboursbehind another man, Gandillac, something ‘intact’ and‘ untouchable’of Benjamin remains. After the translationhas been made,after the marriage(hymen) contract has been consummated andthe hymen broken,there is still hymen (marriage),an intact untouchableremaining ‘ intraduisable’. Butin what directionwas that weddingdress heading?Reconsidering the ammetaphorsof Benjamin– this timeclearly the idiosyncratic Žguresused by him –Derridafocuses onthose that appearorganic. SigniŽ cantly this devolves uponthe impossibilityof translating translationsince, as Benjaminwrites,

If languageand content constitute acertain unityin the original,like fruitand rind, the languageof translationenvelops its contents invast foldslike an emperor’s robes. 47

Remindedof a(white) weddinggown, the emperor’s robesin Derrida’s hands become ‘white ermine, scepter andmajestic bearing’. 48 Aside fromthe invention ofthe colour ofthis fabricand the presence ofa sceptre, the slippagefrom wedding gown to the royalcape is perhapsfacilitated by ‘ une robe’ (arobe or a dress), while Ko¨nigsmantel literally oVers us aroyalcoat or cloak. However, these robes‘ wed’their metonymy that is the bodyof the emperor,‘ this sideof the symbolic contract’in contrast to the naturalistic metaphorof fruit and rind (by implication,the otherside of this contract).49 This distinctionof before and after is Derrida’s readingof Benjamin, althoughmetaphors, including expressly naturalistic ones,as Benjaminremarked, turn uponthemselves alone.The robe,like the sceptre, is posedby Derrida as the visiblesign ofthe law (the weddinggown, remember, was the morevisible metonymy ofthe hymen); however, ‘what counts iswhat comes topass underthe cape’. 50 If we Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 donot immediately assume the presence ofthe phallus underthe capeand before the law,guaranteeing the law,if we consider the originalfrom the perspective ofthe translation,consider that this fabric,this textile that isthe Ko¨nigsmantel,is that which producesthe law which itenfolds, rather than beingitself informedby an apriori law guaranteedby the phallus,what comes underthe cape? 51 Why is it ‘diYcult to separatethe king fromthe royalcouple’ , ‘this coupleof spouses(the bodyof the king andhis gown,the tenorand the tongue,the king andthe queen)that lays downthe law andguarantees every contract fromthis Žrst contract’?52 What isitthat goeson underneath robesthat arewedding gowns that arehymens? Bothking andqueen arecovered bythe same cape,the materialmetaphor of the white dress, metaphor ofthe white sheets, metonym ofspilledblood. Is the makingof atranslationa mating afterall? Are wedestinedto anarrativeof originsafter all? If natureis tobe thought ofinterms ofhistory then sex is textual,and while the texts ofdeconstruction indeed parallax 63 proliferatesexual tropologieswhy shouldthis onebe couched interms ofthe wedding night engagement ofthe kingand queen? This critiquedi Vers fromthe one anticipatedin advance andgenerously named‘ false decency’by Geo Vrey Bennington. 53 Ihave nointerest inreserving the hymen as andfor the properly feminine.I questionwhat virtuethe hymen (marriage)serves andwhether this necessarily results in coextension with translation.Does extending this particular ‘feminine’predicate to broader structures necessarily ‘trouble’‘the dominant discourse’, asBenningtonsuggests, ifit does not also refuse totake the construction ofits place within acontingent (butread as universal) heterosexual hymeneal narrativeas read?Need there behymen (marriage)?And Benjamin,‘ we know,does notpush matters in the directionthat Igiveto my translation’. 5 4 In addingto the text Derridaembroiders upon it. 55 And adding‘ isnothingother than givingto read’ ; however, lest anyone shouldtake this as alicense to‘ addany oldthing’ under the pretence ofreading:

itis nota questionof embroidering upon a text, unless oneconsiders that toknow how toembroider still means tohave the abilityto follow the given thread. 56

Dothe many threads ofthis royalrobe ‘ prescribe’an embroideredimage of (hetero)sexual union(to cement that unionthat isavessel, that isahymen)? Adding tothe text, in this earlierformulation, is notsimply aquestionof aneedle piercing inert matter towhich itcontributes a new threadbut is the a Vective risk of‘ getting afew Žngers caught’. 57 Since all deconstructive activities arerepetitive or iterative, Ilike toreadthis risk asalsoa repeatedgesture: Ž ngers catching inthe text. Although the latter Žgureis notusually remarkedon in the context ofDerridean erotics, it has certainly caught my attention.Unlike the Žgureof the translationcontract drawn upby the king andqueen, these Žngers deliriouslyweave an erotics without prescriptionand without end: whose ‘Žngers’are these? Which/whose ‘text’is this? The articulationand multiplicity of Ž ngers distinguishes them fromboth penis and the phallus,no matter towhom they belong,and this is atthe level of techne not simply physis.

What ifabsence ofhymen [marriage] and absence ofmarriage[hymen] were thought Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 together?This doublenegative might add up to a lesbian sexual Žgure,or a non- normatively heterosexual sexual Žgure– or,via a slightly tendentiousappropriation ofthe work ofMonique Wittig, the lesbian as the name forthe destructionof the normativeheterosexual organizationof bodies.For what relevance couldthe hymen have inalesbian sexual economy?Evidently, Ihave some sympathy with the Irigaray who wrote ‘Between us,there’s norupture between virginaland nonvirginal. No event that makes us women’. 5 8 However, in my appropriationof Derrida’ s deŽnition of readingas aneroticpractice, the sex itproducesis farfrom jealously non-penetrative, as these supplementary Žngers imply.Irigarayan ‘ touching’can then beintensiŽ ed as friction.F rictioninterrupts the idyllof ‘When ourlips speak together’. If Le Corps Lesbien59 names, lists, performsthe destructionof the bodyand ‘ the [Baudelairean] motifof the androgyne,the lesbian orthe barrenwoman is tobe dealt with in relationto the destructive violence ofthe allegoricalintention’ then Benjaminand Turner 64 Wittigcome togetherassociating the lesbianwith the smashing ofthe organicand organization. 60 It is hymeneal organizationthat must beshattered.

FirstContract

Evidently this isnota matter ofsimply clearing upamisunderstandingand returning fullauthority to the wordof Benjamin.All addresses to‘ DieAufgabe des U ¨ bersetzers’ can beframedas areturn toorigins only insofaras that Ursprung, asBenjaminsays, ‘althoughan entirely historical category,has, nevertheless, nothingto dowith genesis’ butforcefully ripsthe materialof emergence intoits rhythm. 61 It is in this sense of the originthat is notone that Benjaminis read‘ always andalready in translation’. 62 Origin‘ itself’is in translation.This is notthe same as grantinghis translators permissionto cloak him in any oldgarment. Licence for‘ expression’in translation is grantedin the legaltexts that Derridaalso cites. Expression, moreover,is what allows the formalattire of the translationto be copyrighted – tohave adegreeof authority,of originality. The law,as Derridaindicates, cannot tolerateany breach ofthe boundarybetween originaland translation and the exception which is expression is tightly demarcated.Likewise the law (which wouldbind bodies) can only proceedon the understandingthat translationoccurs between twodistinct languages.Benjamin’ s task however, requiresthe translator’s strictest Ždelityat the level of the manner ofmeaning such that the targetlanguage allows itself tobecome aVected bythat ofthe original.Hence itwould be hard to describe this task asone solicitingfreedom of expression when itisoneof freedomfrom communication. If the targetlanguage gives itself uptothe onethat ittranslates byfollowingthe fragmented detailsof its form,this ironically threatens notonly comprehension butalso the distinctness ofeach language– bothbetween andwithin each one.For, ‘ Towin back purelanguage formed in the ux oflanguage is the violentand simple powerof translation’. 63 This ambition,for Derrida, ‘ promisesa kingdomto the reconciliation oflanguages’ , andfor him this ‘properlysymbolic’ event is amaritalunion that ‘appealsto a languageof the truth’. 64 Maritalrhetoric andits rootin the law here becomes moreapparent. To legislate, to regulate, the law must have distinct parties towhom itisaddressed,indeed it produces those partiesas distinct (with the promise oflegally sanctioned reconciliationthrough coupling). Calls forthe legalizationof lesbian marriageare thereby tornbetween endingthe economic andsocial privilege Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 accordedto a heterosexuality wrappedin the recognitionof the state 65 and the assimilationof the lesbian as force tothe only modelof kinship recognized inlaw. Fortranslation to ‘ promisea kingdom’(the name,the tongueand the city ofGod) the Žgureof the vessel wouldhave toadd up to the same thing as the Towerof Babel.Is the vessel justanother tour,in the sense oftrope, of Babel?

Lips service

‘Babel’marks the failureof the Shem tobuild a name forthemselves, monumentalizedin the formof an incomplete Tower.Called to a halt byGodwho insteadimposes his own name,Babel, upon ‘ their’Tower, the Shem likewise are barredfrom universalizing their own tongue.‘ Babel’becomes the sign ofthis barin parallax 65 sofaras t/His name marks botha singularity,the propername ofGod,that cannot betranslated, and a common noun,confusion, that needs tobe translated while signalling the imperfectionof any such translation.The Tower,like the Name,is destinedto remain incomplete, to remain its own remains, its own ruin.The Tower ofBabelis the translationof translation,then, inthe sense that Derridameans when he elsewhere writes

[I]t isnecessary still toinhabit the [spatial]metaphor in ruins,to dress oneself in tradition’s shreds andthe devil’s patches –all this means, perhaps,that there is nophilosophical logos which must not Žrst let itself beexpatriatedinto the structure Inside-Outside. This deportation fromits own site towardthe Site,toward spatial locality isthe metaphor congenital tothe philosophicallogos. Before being a rhetorical procedurewithin language,metaphor would be the emergence of languageitself. 66

Babelas the (paternal)metaphor of metaphor allows the emergence oflanguage. Like the Tower,the vessel isits own ruin.Does it alsoinstate aname,a tongueand acity? DoesBenjamin’ s comparisonof translation with the fragments ofa vessel really have such grandiloquentdesigns? F oritdoesnot have aname,and it belongs toa rather less elevated artform than that ofarchitecture, less inclined to aunta signature.Perhaps itsu Vers frommechanical reproduction.Perhaps the vessel displaces the Toweras ornament (that which is assumedto be merely additional, inessential) displaces structure indeconstructive readinghabits. A vessel isalsorather moreconnotative of mobilitythan isaTower;it posits the groundin adi Verent way, even as the liquidform of the sea.Y et italso has its owntongue – if‘ speech’is translated as ‘lip’(as insome translations ofGenesis). Is the lipof the vessel one when itis only ever fragmented/ing?Is itan assemblage oflips?Or isthis lipa rim, toturn this metonymy in still anotherdirection? 67

Torejoin an earliercitation, if the powerof translation lies in winning back pure language,then this reineSprache ‘nolonger means anything andno longer expresses anything’and as

expressionless andproductive word, is that which is meant in all Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 languages– all communication,all meaning,and all intention ultimately meet[ing]with astratum in which they aredestined to extinction. 68

DeMan ‘locates’this purelanguage as the ‘permanent disjunctionwhich inhabits all languagesas such, includingand especially the languagesone calls one’s own’, 69 recalling his earliercommentary onthe concept ofirony which concludedthat the latter is the possibilityof permanent interruption,the ‘permanent parabasisof the allegoryof tropes’ . 70 He further– andthis is vital– links this essential disjuncture within languageto history:

As such, history isnothuman, because itpertains strictly tothe order oflanguage;it isnotnatural, for the same reason;it is notphenomenal, Turner 66 in the sense that nocognition, no knowledge about man, can be derivedfrom a history which as such is purelya linguistic complication. 71

And,since ironymay always interruptany narrativeline, including any historical genealogicalline –history asgenealogyor as patrilinyis precisely what itinterrupts –history cannot bereiŽed, shored up within azone protectedfrom textuality; neither can the subject,neither can the translator. 72 Departingfrom commonsensical understandingsof translation as the transportof meaning from one language into anotherand addressing itself topure language, the task ofthe translator is ‘nota prioriexclusively referredto man’ . 73 The productiveword that destines meaningto extinction is the consequence ofliterality in translation.In bothJacobs’ s andde Man’s texts the word,in a wordfor word translation, is the key element –notthe sentence (the emphasis onthe wordleads Derridato the name 74 ). Since Ho¨lderlin’s translations ofSophocles constitute valuable‘ monstrousexamples ofsuch literality’ in Benjamin’s eyes andsince pursuingsuch literality is ‘noo Vspring’ of comprehension, Jacobs is notled to the familiarrhetoric ofchildbirth: instead of ‘conventional, naturalreproduction, what results [intranslation] is ateratogenesis in which the limbs ofthe progenyare dismembered, all syntax dismantled’. 7 5 (So dissimilarto what we call natureis the productionof this progeny– the translation –that bothZohn and Gandillac obscureit by reinstating the su Veringof language as childbirth,as discussed above).This dismemberment isonly broughtto a halt by the holy text. And herewith turns the subtlest andmost confoundingironic moment breaching Benjaminand Derrida’ s texts. Forwhat kindof a halt is this? Under the supervisionof Babel, for Derrida, Gandillac wrote‘ La`ou` le texte, imme´diatement, sans l’entremise d’unsens [...]rele`ve dela ve ´rite´oude la doctrine, il est purement et simplement intraduisable’. 7 6 Apparently calling ahalt tobabble, Jacobs translates ‘Where atext belongsto a truth ordoctrine immediately, without the mediationof meaning,in its literalness oftrue language – that text is absolutelytranslatable’ . 77 This absolutetranslatability has nothingto do with the transportationof meaning– the received understandingof translation– butwith history as aninhuman linguistic complication.Hence itcould just as well be‘ untranslatable’.

Toreturn tothe doublebind of ‘Des Toursde Babel’; the kingdompromised by and

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 as the reconciliationof languages in the translationcontract is never fulŽlled as anything otherthan promise,for as Derridawrote elsewhere, ‘Notonly is there no kingdom of diÚ e´rance, but diÚ ´erance instigates the subversionof every kingdom’. 78 The law oftranslation is nota determinedtranscendental conditionof possibility Ž xing languagefrom without: ‘ itgrants alibertyto literality’and ‘ ceases tooppress insofar as itis nolonger the exteriorbody or the corset ofmeaning’ . 79 Acorset constrains incontrast tothe voluminousfolds of the king’s robes.Y et,those robesare a wedding dress which is ahymen, and‘ withoutthis desirefor virginity no desire whatsoever wouldbe set moving’. 80 If all desirerests uponthe desirefor presence, forthat which is proper, Žgured as adesirefor virginity cathectedas hymeneal ,then all who desireare metaphysically boundheterosexual men: letraducteur reviens .Again,Irigaray: ‘ The advent oftheir desire,Not of ours’. 8 1 And while there may beothereconomies, even saidto be feminine as He´le`ne Cixoushas suggested,this is the necessary onethat parallax 67 generates any others.On the onehand, clearly Derridaarticulates the natureof this desireas phantasy, elsewhere writingthat

the desireor the phantasm ofthe intact kernel [oflanguage] is irreducible– despitethe fact that there is no intact kernel. [...]andthere never has been one.That’ s what onewants toforget, and to forget that onehas forgottenit. 82

This is the mask ofmetaphysics that obscures the originaryviolence ofspacing by violently assuming the possibilityof space as place (presence) vianaming in and throughthe violent exclusion ofan other,the fundamentally domestic inaugural divisioninto Inside andOutside. 83 Spaceas place as presence is furthercathected as innocent andas intact (innocence as intactness) in orderthat any instance of invasioncan belegislated as either the approvedbehaviour of a representative of the law oran assault performedby acriminal other.Y etonthe otherhand, faithfully followingthe structure ofthe Tower ofBabel as the translationof translation in orderto reveal the name ofGod as bothincomplete andpurely linguistic, doesn’ t this structure need tobe ‘ solicited’a little more,ruined a little more? 84 If the translationcontract as quasi-transcendentalis meant tomediate God’ s Word,even tomake itless oppressive,yet itis still delimitedas hymeneal andthe prerequisite ofall otherdesires andcontracts, then has its institutionalforce beenshaken very much at all?

Notes

1 WalterBenjamin, cited in Paulde Man, The 9 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.175.He subsequently makes Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis:Minnesota sporadicreferences to this text. UniversityPress, 1993), p.89, incorporating de 10 Iarriveat the ‘elementaryruins ofkinship’ Man’s remarksabout both his ownand Carol in arelatedpaper: ‘ The courseof a general Jacobs’s translation ofthis passage. displacement/The courseof the choreographer’, 2 This remainsone of the bestreadings, in English, in Martin McQuillan& IkaWillis (eds.), The Origins ofthe sexualpolitics of Derrida’ s work.Alice ofDeconstruction (Northwestern UniversityPress, Jardine, Gynesis:ConŽ gurations ofWoman in Modernity forthcoming). (Ithaca, NY:CornellUniversity Press, 1985). 11 De Man, Resistance, p.91. 3 GayatriSpivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine 12 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.175. (London& NewY ork:Routledge, 1995), p.180. 13 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.175. 4 14 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 JacquesDerrida, ‘ DesTours de Babel’ , trans. Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.175. JosephGraham, in JosephGraham (ed.), DiÚ erences 15 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.175. inTranslation (Ithaca,NY: CornellUniversity Press, 16 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.175. 1985).Walter Benjamin, ‘ The Taskof the 17 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.175. Translator’, in Illuminations ,trans. HarryZohn 18 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.183.Irigaray’ s useof the lips (London:Fontana, 1992). toŽ gurefeminine impropriety could usefully 5 CarolJacobs, ‘ The Monstrosity ofTranslation: supplementthis struggle.See her ‘ When ourlips ‘‘The Taskof the Translator’’ ’,in Inthe Language speaktogether’ , in This SexWhich IsNotOne , trans. ofWalter Benjamin (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins CarolynBurke (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity UniversityPress, 1999), p.126, n.1. Originally Press, 1985). publishedin Modern Language Notes ,December1975. 19 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.183. 6 Asindeed is this simplesentence: whatever 20 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.185. synonymI chooseto suggest relation, the OED 21 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.185. takesme ‘ home’to genealogy. 22 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.185. 7 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.178[emphasis added]. 23 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.188. 8 Jacobs,‘ Monstrosity’, p.80. 24 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.188. Turner 68 25 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.188[emphasis added]. When what extent [...]has the performative‘ ‘queer’’ Jacobselsewhere writes of Benjamin’ s substitution operatedalongside, as a deformationof, the ‘‘I ofthe word‘ conception’by ‘ anotherterm that willpronounce you...’ ’ ofthe marriageceremony?’ See proveequally seminal in its excessiverepetition – her Bodies that Matter: onthe discursive limits of‘ sex’ ‘‘translation’’ ’,Ireadher as ironic. See In the (NewY ork& London:Routledge, 1993), p.226. Language ofWalter Benjamin , p.107. 45 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.191.Neither de Man nor 26 For‘ complement’see Derrida, ‘ Tours’, p.188,Jacobs nor Zohn usethis wordin eithertheir and‘ supplement’p.189. commentaryon or translations ofBenjamin. It 27 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.191. doeshowever lend itself to Derrida’ s ownŽguration 28 Asin deMan’ s translation;de Man, Resistance, ofthe hymen. p.91. 46 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.191. 29 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.191. 47 Benjamin,cited in andtranslated by Jacobs, 30 Benjamin,‘ Task’, p.76.De Man discussesthis Language ofWalter Benjamin , p.78. pointalso, p.82. 48 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.194.He does not provide 31 Jacobs, Language ofWalter Benjamin ,p.76any textual reference for this description.Zohn [emphasisadded]. simplysays ‘ royalrobe’ , Jacobs’s uses‘ emperor’s 32 Jacobs, Language ofWalter Benjamin ,p.76.To robe’ . diagnosethis linguisticturn asnegation, 49 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.194. psychoanalyticallyspeaking, would be to perform 50 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.194. afurther negation– this timedenying the textual 51 Irevisitthe subjectof the ‘Ko¨nigsmantel-piece ’ in status ofpsychoanalysis itself. To read it asan my‘ TranslatingJohn Malkovich’, Performance Auf hebung wouldbe to miss the waythat Benjamin Research 7:2 (2001). refusesthe resolutionof dialectic. 52 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.194[emphasis added]. 33 SeeJacques Derrida, ‘ The DoubleSession’ , in 53 Bennington impliesthat the onlyobjection to Dissemination ,trans. BarbaraJohnson (Chicago,IL: the formulationof the hymencould come from Universityof Chicago Press, 1983), and also, in feministswishing to defend it asbelongingproperly referenceto Blanchot, ‘ The Lawof Genre’ in toa discretefemale body, to protect it as DerekAttridge (ed.), Acts ofLiterature (New York & untouchablefrom the advancesof textuality. See London:Routledge, 1992). his ‘Derridabase’in Geo VreyBennington &Jacques 34 Commonsensically,she iscompletely passive in Derrida, Jacques Derrida , trans. GeoVreyBennington the sensethat no accidentalactivity has stretched (Chicago,IL &London:Chicago University Press, herhymen; her auto-a Vection,if it isassumed to 1993),p.227. existat all, is assumed to be non-penetrative; she 54 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.195. iscomplete in the senseof sealed. Derrida’ s 55 ‘Onecan of course embroider on this cape...’ insistenceupon marriage occurring between two Derrida, ‘ Tours’, p.194. partiesimmediately elides religions which instate 56 Derrida, Dissemination ,pp.64and 63. polygamy,as well as making an appealto a 57 Derrida, Dissemination , p.63. heterocraticimaginary. 58 Irigaray, This Sex, p.211. 35 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.191. 59 MoniqueWittig, The Lesbian Body ,trans. David 36 De Man, Resistance, p.85. leV ay(Boston,MA: BeaconPress, 1986). 37 De Man, Resistance, p.86. 60 WalterBenjamin, ‘ Central Park’, New German 38 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.200. Critique 34(1985), p.35. 39 61 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 De Man, Resistance, p.87. WalterBenjamin, The Origin ofGerman Tragic 40 De Man, Resistance, p.87. Drama (London:V erso,1998), p.45. 41 John Mowitt Žrst suggestedto me that the 62 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.195. relationbetween De Man andBenjamin can be 63 Benjamin,cited in andtranslated by Jacobs, seenas one of debt. p.83. 42 Jacobs, Language ofWalter Benjamin , p.81. 64 Derrida,p.200. 43 Togo with the ow,as it were,of a literaryor 65 Judith Butlerprecisely delineated the stakesof poeticbirth, wemight listen toone particular staterecognition as the prescriptionof desire resonanceof Cixousand Cle ´ment’s book, La Jeune in her lecture‘ Is kinship alwaysalready Ne´e,obscuredin its translation (as The Newly Born heterosexual?’, CentreCATH,University of Leeds, Woman), namely La! Je uneNais (literally,There! I, 14May, 2001. awoman,am being born). La Jeune Ne´e as the title 66 Derrida,cited in MarkWigley, The Architecture of ofa book,a propername of sorts, has truly Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt (Cambridge,MA: The demandedan impossibletranslation. MIT Press,1993), p.105. 44 WhileJ. L.Austin citedmarriage vows as a 67 DiscussingGenet with John Mowitt earlierthis paradigmaticperformative, Judith Butlerasks ‘ to year,he pointedout to me that the erotic parallax 69 metonymyof language – tongue– lipalso evokes 76 Gandillac,cited in deMan, Resistance, p.80 a rim. [emphasisoriginal]. Seeing the irony,de Man says 68 Jacobs, Language ofWalter Benjamin , p.83. that he isquitesure that Derridawould be ableto 69 De Man, Resistance, p.92. explainthat ‘translatable’or ‘untranslatable’in this 70 PaulDe Man, ‘TheConcept of Irony’ , in context makesno odds. 77 Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis:Minnesota University Benjamin,cited in andtranslated by Jacobs, Language ofWalter Benjamin , p.89. Press,1992), p.179. Here de Man stills sees 78 Benjaminas o Veringhope beyond the dialecticof Derrida, Margins ofPhilosophy ,trans. AlanBass destruction– therebyraising dialectic to a higher (Brighton:The HarvesterPress, 1982), p.21. 79 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.204. stagein its cycle,continuing its ascent.His lecture 80 Derrida, The Ear ofthe Other: Otobiography, on ‘The Taskof the Translator’implies that he Transference, Translation ,trans. PeggyKamuf and revisedthat opinion. AvitalRonell (Nebraska: University of Nebraska 71 De Man, Resistance, p.92. 72 Press,1988), p.116. Jacobssees the putting into questionof the 81 Irigaray, This Sex, p.212. translator,in whosename the essayis written, as 82 Derrida, Ear, p.115. its openingirony. 83 See Wigley, Architecture , p.118. 73 Benjamin,cited in andtranslated by Jacobs, 84 Soliciting– ‘shaking inawayrelated to the whole Language ofWalter Benjamin ,p.87.Zohn’ s Benjamin (from sollus,in archaicLatin ‘‘the whole’’ ,and saysthe reverse(‘ Task’, p.71). from citare,‘‘toput inmotion’’)’ .JacquesDerrida, 74 Derrida,‘ Tours’, p.187. Writing & DiÚ erence,trans. AlanBass (London: 75 Jacobs, Language ofWalter Benjamin , p.83. Routledge& KeganPaul, 1978), p.6.

Lynn Turner ([email protected])is aLecturer inVisual Culture at Goldsmiths College,University ofLondon. Related articles consideringthe erotics, poeticsand politicsof cinematography, choreography, translation and the name can befound in TheOrigins ofDeconstruction (eds. MartinMcQuillan &Ika Willis, Northwestern) as well as PerformanceResearch (7:2and 8:1) and TheJournal ofVisual Culture (1:3). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009

Turner 70 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 71– 85

OralSex With ACapital ‘O’: Sex, Violence And The Limits Of Representation

MaryT.Conway

In May 1988,on the Pennsylvania leg ofthe AppalachianTrail, Claudia Brenner andher loverRebecca Wightwere the targets ofStephen RoyCarr’ s rie blasts. Brenner andWight were ‘having sex’when the shootingbegan. Wight was murdered, butBrenner survivedto experience the state-appointeddefence attorney’s attempts tojustify the shootingon the groundsthat the mere sight oftwo women having sex was suYcient cause formurder. Seven years later,Firebrand Books published Brenner’s account, Eight Bullets: One Woman’s Story ofSurviving Anti-Gay Violence .1 Co-authoredwith Hannah Ashley, the explicit goalsof the bookare to drawattention tothe increase inanti-gayviolence, andto regaindiscursive control overthe murder andshooting.

Inanarrowway, these aims areaccomplished; the booktour drew mediaattention tothe increase inhomophobichate crimes andBrenner seemed acourageoussurvivor retelling the tragedyon radio and in live appearances.Unfortunately, Eight Bullets alsoaccomplishes the oppositeof its intent, andoften more convincingly. This is,in part,because the same discursive logicthat Eight Bullets relies onto argue against hate crimes has aconstitutive rolein enablingif not producing hate crimes. By relying solely onrational, juridical logic, by conceding tothe acceptable terms of current policydebates, Eight Bullets can nothelp butboth celebrate andderogate the lesbian desireand the lesbian murderit witnesses. Bothresponses falsify the account, an act that perpetuatesrather than amelioratesthe problem.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Eight Bullets is alsothe story ofBrenner’ s transformationinto a politicalactivist. As bothvictim andstory-telling survivor,she has adualaim: to apprehend the horror ofthe event, anddescribe her recovery fromit. Occasionally wesee glimpses ofthe formeraim pulling her descriptionaway fromjuridical rational logic. One hospital scene depicts Brenner hallucinating the killer’s face afterbeing unable to recall itfor police.At othermoments, Brenner recalls her night terrors andfear of strangers. ButBrenner’ s recountingis in the service ofactivism, anddepicting the horroris overtaken bythe needto present arecovered crediblelesbian. Her irrationalfears arepart of her diagnosis(Post-T raumaticStress Syndrome)and recovery rather than ofthe trauma.At the endof the book(when we learn that her account was edited foruse inNationalLesbian andGay Task Force speeches), Brenner writes, ‘It amazes me that my reactions andfeelings aboutthe shootingcan transform andslide into

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals parallax DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027975 71 words’.2 This essay recovers those moments where the transformationisn’ t seamless, andwhere the slidingis moreof acrash. These aren’t celebrations ofgaypride ( like the moments ofthe community’s support)or details of derogations against queers (like the moments with Carr).Instead, these moments areglossed over because they can’t beŽ ttedinto a politicalprogram for liberation; they arevaluable however, because they hint ata largersystem ofmeaning production that underwrites and thereforepreŽ gures hate crime andour responses toit.

Speakingin T ongues: Brenner’s Account

In all the reportsit always says that we were makinglove when the shootinghappened. W eweren’t really inthe middleof heavy sex. We were playing– kissing androlling around. At some pointI think Rebecca hadsaid take o V yourshorts, and we were having –notoral sex with acapitalO.S., but...we were... playing.It was all really nice, kindof idyllic. In fact,very idyllic... Why Imentionthat is that Iwas only partiallydressed when the shootinghappened. Rebecca was fully dressed.The imagein the reportsis that we were inthe middleof a passionatesex act. Ihave always said‘ makinglove’ because Iamparanoid they will discredit ourrelationship by saying, ‘ Oh, they were only playingaround.’ 3 [ellipses original]

When examined closely, what mightpass simply as strangeness in this Žrst excerpt isrevealing.The ellipsis, the dominantmetaphor, and blatant contradictions are the three lucrative odditiesof conventional realist writingthat Iwill addressin analyzing Brenner’s Žrst account ofthe shooting.

Ellipses can beused to indicate either ahesitationor an omissionfrom the passage. The ellipses in Eight Bullets work in bothof these ways, butthey alsomutate into a new thirdfunction. The elliptical pausedoes signal the imminent locationof the rightwords, but in contradistinction,it also serves todrawattention to the absence of the rightword. Because the availablewords are inadequate (and, as Iwill argue later,contradictory), this silence marker alsomarks amorepermanent silence, that Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 is,a silence atthe level ofdiscourse.The ellipsis indicates notthat the evasive words can besummoned, but that adequatewords can’ t even beencouraged to come out when atemporalspace is openedup for them in the sentence. 4

These twoelliptical functions pervert intoa thirdsort. The permanent hesitation, andthe omissionthat is completedwith the reader’s silence, must berecognized to work eVectively. Butonce recognized,the ellipses ask the readerto step outsideof reason,temporarily: a hesitationthat continues foreverdenies itself. Aspace is secured, throughthe perversionof the deŽnitions (something is alsowhat itis not); butit is only atemporaryspace, andit threatens todisappear if looked at directly. This thirdellipsis operatesnot at the level ofthe sentence (pause)or the work (completion),but at the level ofdiscourse. There isnoresource fromwhich todraw ifone desired to eliminate this ellipsis, in the way most otherellipses may be Conway 72 eliminated;yet, this shortageof discursive resources is compensatedfor cleverly in what initiallyappears to be a ham-handedmetaphorical choice.

Metaphorsfor sexual activity have becomenaturalized to such an extent that they oftenpass as literal language.Not so with the metaphoricalsubstitution used here, ‘notoral sex with acapitalO. S...’With all the resources todescribe many sorts of sex acts (metaphorically, clinically, pornographically),Brenner abandonssexual terminologyaltogether. She selects insteada metaphor about language and therules governing expression through language. The metaphorinvokes the rulefor the punctuation of propernames .This terministic choice issynechdochic ofadilemmathat goesbeyond this passageand indeed this book:the ‘propername’ for what she andRebecca were doing.

This metaphoricalchoice begsthe questionof the propername forunilateral, lesbian, oralsex performedwith moderateintensity. 5 By describingsex as metaphoricalfor rules aboutproper names, Eight Bullets warns that an answer is notdirectly forthcoming.Embedded in the answer, the question(what isthe propername?) sets intomotion a circuit ofperpetual questioning.

Like the ellipsis, this curiousmetaphor is symptomatic ofthe lesbian’s relationship tothe heterosexual discursive regime.Brenner, like otherdeviants operatingin a logic diVerent (in some ways) fromtheir own,is structured bythis system soe Yciently that when she attempts toleave it,‘ merely’by naming her activity, she invokes the same constraining logic.This metaphormay beunderstood initially as artless. But the metaphoralso argues for the book’s inabilityto be bothliberatory and legitimate. That is,the book’s largerargument is miniaturizedin this metaphorabout the rules forproper names fordeviant sex.

Inthis battleover naming and meaning, ellipsis andmetaphor are joined by the use ofblatantcontradictions. Reliable real lifeaccounts avoid,minimize, orargueaway contradictions.And, as Brenner is advisedby her legalteam, her credibilityis key in prosecutingCarr. However, there areblatant contradictions, on the same page.

In the excerpt that beginsthis section, Brenner starts bycorrecting ‘all the reports’ which saidthey were ‘makinglove’ . She writes that itwas really ‘play’in which they were engaged.Five sentences later she returns to‘ makinglove’ : Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 The imagein the reportsis that wewere in the middleof apassionate sex act. Ihave always said‘ makinglove’ because Iamparanoid they will discreditour relationship by saying, ‘ Oh, they were only playing around’.6

Brenner performsand then arguesagainst the same nominalmanoeuvre. Concerned that the mediais saying ‘makinglove’ , she counters that they were really ‘playing’; then, worriedthat the relationshipseems casual sex rather than monogamous(‘ playing around’) she returns to‘ makinglove’ . The discursive resting-places seem alreadymarked andlimited to these twochoices. As soonas the dominantlogic arrives todetermine the meaning,this queernominalist-in-practice ees tothe term newly vacant. And then back again.While potentiallydizzying, this perpetualmotion is atactic todeal with limitedresources withouttotally acquiescing to the dominantdiscursive system. 7 parallax 73 Brenner can’t invent her own wordsfor lesbian sex orshe wouldbe largely unintelligible,speaking in tongues.Instead, she switches, contradicts herself, andso destabilizes the meanings ofthese words.If she can bothadopt ‘ play’and then renounce ‘play’when usedby others, then what we, andshe, and‘ they’, mean by ‘play’, isnotconsistently clear. When providedwith inadequateresources todescribe her sex, this illogicalnaming serves as aresponse that does make sense, given the book’s explicit goalof reclaiming control overthese events throughlanguage.

Brenner’s use of‘play’stands outhere, butshe has atleast oneantecedent: ‘consent’ in rapelaw. Legal scholar CarolePateman reminds us that consent theories treated women asunreasonableand incapable of consent. Butbecoming capable of consent was noadvance. Propriety holds that awomancan notindicate desire and be respectable; consenting must resemble resistance, ornon-consent. Since the answer from‘ respectable’women is always ‘No’, the man must beable to read the ‘Yes’in what looksto be another ‘ No’: rapists,then, aresimply badinterpreters. The impossiblecontradictions are, Pateman argues, a sign that we lack alanguagefor consensual relations.Brenner’ s strange workings alsoindicate a lack.

This lack registers bypagetwenty-Ž ve, asthe readerlearns moreabout the limits of representationthan aboutthe events. Astruggleseems underway,one that Brenner cannot win, atleast notwhile workingwithin this rationalframework. While the signs ofthis struggleare interestingly nonsensical, later in the bookBrenner’ s blind faithmakes her complicit in ashocking, violent blindsiding.

VentriloquizedEpithets: the Killer’ s Account

‘Now tell me the truth,’the trooperasked, ‘ didyou really see them kissing?’Carr had mentioned earlier that he hadseen ‘the girls’kissing. He hadalso talked distastefully ofthe Mennonites because he didn’t like the fact that the men kissed the men andthe women kissed the women.Carr laughed and said they were doinga lotmore than that. After he settled himself in the brushon Friday afternoon, Carr said, he saw ‘the girls eatingeach otherout’ . 8 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Turning the page,after being subtly butsurely disengagedfrom any stable terms to describe their activity, the readerruns smack intothe same epithetthat justiŽes queer bashing.Brenner’ s evasionof concrete descriptionsresults, in part,from the fearof these common derogations.Attempts tosubvert names forlesbian sex, toavoid any correspondence with aheterosexual logic,are made with the knowledgethat any description(queer or not) bears the same characteristics as the killer’s description. Brenner’s descriptionof their last moments beforethe murdercan beused, unchanged,as an epithet.As evidence ofhis homophobia,and therefore his guilt, Brenner tries touse Carr’s wordsagainst himself. Yet,Carr’ s words,maintaining a certain heterosexual logic,simultaneously bearthe stampof approval while they emanate froman admittedmurderer. Carr’ s words,intended as his indictment, work equallyas an indictment oflesbian sex. Conway 74 Weknow aboutCarr’ s homophobia,but confusion about addressees andaddressors insentences twoand three triggersparanoia: maybe the trooperis homophobic,too. AlthoughBrenner repeatedlycommends the authoritiesso that we know these cops have been‘ good’, the fact that,as she pointsout often, the policeand the state have beenand still arepart of the problemis underscoredin this ambiguity.It seems that there is noway todescribe what they were doingwithout indicting herself. Brenner isnotalone in this conundrum:other representations ofsexual acts meet similar limits.

In terms that areby now familiar(if notnotorious), legal scholar CatherineMacKinnon arguesthat patriarchy (andits most egregiousand e Ycient symptom,pornography), creates these discursive limits.In Only Words,she addresses women exclusively: ‘You learn that languagedoes not belong to you, that youcan notuse itto say what you know,that knowledgeis notwhat youlearned from your life, that informationis not madefrom your experience’ . 9 Sopatriarchy enforces andis maintainedby language. She writes that ‘Socialinequality is substantially created andenforced – that is, done –throughwords and images. Social hierarchy cannot anddoes not exist withoutbeing embodiedin meanings andexpressed in communications’. 1 0

Anita Hill’s testimony atthe SenateConŽ rmation hearings ofClarence Thomas illustrates this constraint. MacKinnon arguesthat when Hill is precise, rather than euphemistic,in representing Thomas’s harassment, the morepornographic is her testimony: ‘Yourtestimony that youwere sexually abusedproves your abuse, which deŽnes youas sex, which makes itincredible and impossible that youwere sexually abused’.11 Hill’s testimony is aresonant example,with far-reaching consequences, butMacKinnon’ s argumentis limitedby its politicalaim that brooksfew qualiŽcations. Her solutionis substitution:place women in power.MacKinnon’ s solutionassumes that what makes languagemisŽ re inthe testimony ofvictims is exclusive topatriarchy, rather than language. 12 ButStewart’ s analysis ofthe Meese Commission Report on Pornography sees a diVerent culprit.

The 1986 Report was commissionedby the ReaganAdministration to Žndthe grounds toban pornography. Its descriptionsof porn, however, areindistinguishabl efrom pornography:the Report reinscribes its target.Rather than indictingporn, it indicts ourbelief in transcendent language.The Report is‘adiscourseon the very natureof discursiveness’. 13 In Stewart’s light,the limits onsexual languageare a qualityof Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 representation,rather than ofpatriarchy. Language is constrained,and constrains its users. Stewartand MacKinnon’ s disagreementis palpablein the next example: Brenner’s criminalizationunder cross-examination.

MakingSex Speak: theCross-examination

Brenner’s account resists throughnon-sense, andCarr’ s account exacts violence and paranoia.Both accounts are,as well, inaccurate. When Defence Attorney Michael Georgeasks, ‘What,actually, were youdoing’ ? Brenner’s reply anticipatesthe reader’s: ‘Ihadbeen waitingfor this’ . The readeris misled (Carr’s andBrenner’ s accounts areof a mutualsex act) untilpage 138 when the Defence Attorney’s accusatory questioningreveals that she was the passive recipient.Why doesBrenner parallax 75 allowthe defence attorneythe deŽnitive word?Not because the defence attorneyis dastardly,however temptingthis explanation.The answer isnotan evil toeradicate, butis insteadthe very mechanism bywhich we possess self-consciousness. In short, Brenner allows Georgeto corner the truth market because she has noother choice. And exercising this forcedchoice ofvisibility criminalizes her even asshe testiŽes as victim. Foucault’s account ofsubject productionexplains Brenner’s ‘decisions’.

This courtroomscene, which doublesBrenner’ s assault,reminds me ofFoucault’ s cautionary:‘ Visibilityis atrap’. 1 4 Eight Bullets insists that exposinghomophobic events help prevent their recurrence: detailingthe worst derogationscan nothelp butargue forequal rights forqueers. Given how silence maintains homophobia,speaking out seems logical.However, willing visibilityto be a solutiondoes not make itso.Critic PeggyPhelan arguesthat simply increasing the numberof minority images doesn’ t admitthe complex relationshipbetween visibilityand political power. 15 She writes: ‘If representationalvisibility equals power, then almost-naked youngwhite women shouldbe running W estern culture’. 16 Eight Bullets is drivenby the need tobe politicallyuseful, and making-visible is an importantpart of that usefulness. Yet the strategy that underwrites the bookis alsothe source ofits demise,and produces the oppositeof what itintends.

Subjectsare produced by knowledge systems (amongthem the juridical),which use diVerence tomeasure andnormalize individuals.A new Power, 17 called intobeing with the subject’s invention,is notin opposition to knowledge, but coterminous with it.Attempting to check this Power( proudlesbian counters pathologizing),butunable tobe a juridicalsubject withoutthis Power,Brenner submitsher body/memory as evidence, butit is turnedagainst her. Brenner andthe defence attorneyare occupying availablesubject positionson the gridof Power relations, and those inBrenner’ s positionoften, unwittingly, extend their own domination.F oucaultwrites:

In short this Poweris exercised rather than possessed; itis notthe ‘privilege’, acquiredor preserved,of the dominantclass, butthe overall eVect ofits strategic positions– an e Vect that is manifestedand sometimes extended bythe positionof those who aredominated. 18

What is determinativehere is the history ofdisciplining and punishing discourses Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 aboutsex. Carr’s epithets ‘de-naturalize’their sex, buthe is merely drawingupon these scientiŽc-juridical discourses. Brenner’ s strategy reects this punishing discursive history:a suspect subject,she foregroundstheir committedrelationship in the attemptto legitimize the sex. She writes, ‘What happenedwas, when we were layingdown – andas Isaidto you, we were involvedin arelationshiptogether, so we were aVectionatetogether’ . 19

Welearn less aboutthe sex/shootingthan we doabout Brenner’ s modelEast-coast community,whose depictionis abetterlobbying tool for mainstream acceptance, than publicsex. When the defence attorneyuses ‘common sense’to accuse Brenner ofinstigating the attack (they were puttingon a show fora normalguy pushed to the edgeby the show –sohe shot them), we understandthe futilityof, and the necessity for,such ademonstrationof relationality.Like many activist programsand Conway 76 Queer Studiesapproaches, Brenner sees salvationthrough the celebrationof, not homoerotics,but homogeneity. Brenner de-eroticizes their sex, inan attemptto purchase alegitimatesubject status,but pathologizing discourses limither tothree- dollarbills. Despite Carr’ s pre-trialconfession, Brenner is,unbelievably, sometimes construed as aperpetrator.

Despitethe judge’s exclusion, the defence arguedthat the women’s sex act instigated the attack. Brenner laudsthe system’s fairness evident in the pre-trialexclusion. But the explanatoryvalue of the defence’s logicis toopowerful to be thoroughlyexcluded. Under cover ofthe cross-examination, itis smuggledback intorespectability, without objectionfrom the prosecution.Brenner’ s status shifts, fromvictim toconspiratorial deviant,temporarily, but convincingly. In the cross-examination, we see Brenner’s dualidentity through an ambivalentjuridical apparatus. W as she unjustiŽably and brutallyattacked while makinglove in the context ofa continuingromantic relationship?Or was she understandably 20 riddledfor a lifeof non-procreative,clitoral carnal satisfactionthat exhibitionistically permeates andpoisons the historic woods with its disregardfor relationships and tradition? Victim orvixen? NationalHate CrimeLegislation would unequivocally declare Brenner andWight victims, butthat legislationis still pending,indicating the strength ofo Ycial pathologizingdiscourses. 21

The cross-examination, intendedto get at the truth ofthe event, producesinstead twofacts aboutthe juridicalsystem: juridicalknowledge is inconsistent, contradictory andunreliable, and the Stateis ambivalentabout prosecuting hate-crime. The shot- riddledbloody corpse andBrenner’ s scars indicatevictims, butdiscretely assigning guiltbecomes di Ycult, given Brenner’s problematicstatus as victim anddeviant. Even thoughthey hadthe weapon,a confession, andDNA evidence, Brenner sees her credibilityas central tothe prosecution’s success.

Brenner’s predicamentin the legalsystem can bebetterunderstood if wemoveaway fromthe simple either/ordesignation of innocence orguilt,and if we focusinstead onthe competingclash ofher multiplesubjectivities. But political programs don’ t Žndthis refocus useful.As philosopherW endy Brownpoints out (in the case of women’s studiesprograms), the refusalto reckon with subject-productionasmultiple andnecessary wreaks considerablehavoc. 22 FollowingFoucault, Brown argues that

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 the variousforms of discursive poweraren’ t merely additionsto who we ‘really’are –rather these discourses are how we are.She writes, ‘Wearenot simply oppressed butproduced through these discourses,a productionthat is historically complex, contingent, andoccurs throughformations that donot honor analytically distinct identitycategories’ . 23 Women’s studies(and other identity-based Ž elds) simplifyhow subjects come intobeing. Brown argues that di Verent subjectivitiesare not additive orinterchangeable, asthe top-downnon-F oucauldianmodel implies. W ecan see the need fora complex modelin the legaluses of‘ privacy’:

Like rights themselves [...]privacy will sometimes beregarded as advancingemancipatory aims, sometimes deterringthem; insome cases itwill beseen tocloak the operationof inequality,while inothers itwill beseen as assisting in the elaborationof equality doctrine. 24 parallax 77 Subjectsare produced along many dimensions,some ofwhich contradict each other. Brenner’s prosecutionteam knew abouther contradictoryposition vis-a`-vis the law andso strategized tomaximize her credibility.But initially Brenner jeopardizedher credibility,when she desexualized their relationshipto police, unsure if they’ d be protectorsor oppressors. Brenner can’t help butbe a dividedsubject – her helpers areat the same time her oppressors– butthe bookdoes its best tounify her. One can’t simply addthe victim tothe criminal identitywithout forfeiting consistency. Women’s studies’additive notion of subject-productio ncan’t account forBrenner’ s reluctance todivulge that she’d been‘ having sex’(making her acriminal) while she was shot (making her avictim). Brownwrites that we never appearpublicly:

as the complex, compound,internally diverse anddivided subjects that we are.While this couldbe seen as asymptom ofthe law’s deŽciency, asign ofits ontologicalclumsiness andepistemological primitivism,more signiŽ cant forpurposes of this essay is what it suggests aboutthe di Yculty ofanalytically graspingthe powers constitutive ofsubjection, a di Yculty symptomatizedby the law’s inabilityeither toexpress ourcomplexity orto redress the injuries carriedby this complexity. 25

Brownsuggests we investigate subjection’s complexity; forher, the inabilityto grasp identitycontradictions is notas much law’s deŽciency, as itis an overall misunderstandingof the powersof subjection. I suggest that we can see both (subjection’s complexities andlaw’ s deŽciency) when we lookto other discursive forms.The democratizingof deviance wesee inthe text makes the search forother formsof discourse even morecompelling.

DemocratizingDeviance

While Brenner’s doubledassault atthe hands ofthe juridicalsystem is indeed tragic,we see ademocratizationof such punishment in the trial’s displayof amore generalized notionof deviance. The defence attorneyquestioned Brenner:

‘At any pointduring that afternoon,to yourknowledge, did either you Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 orRebecca puton a show formy client?’ ‘No.’DeŽ nite. ‘At any time duringthat day,did you, or tothe best ofyourknowledge, Rebecca, intentionally tease my client?’ ‘No.’ Firm. ‘At any pointduring that entire day,did either you,or to the best of yourknowledge, Rebecca, purposefullyreveal any partsof yourbody tomy client?’ ‘No.’Adamant. 26

Pathologizingdiscourses aretoo rich andreliable a resource tobe excluded from this trial;despite the judge’s pre-trialexclusion ofthis line ofquestioning,the defence attorneywas notheld incontempt. However, the line ofquestioning opens the Conway 78 deviantcategory, to re ect the ubiquitouscharacter ofthe knowledge/powerthat ordersand describes. Even as the cross-examination partlyundoes Brenner’ s aim,it alsointroduces a sortof generalized deviance that eventually includes all bodiesseen as objects.

The defence line ofquestioning begins with the ideathat Brenner andWight were performingfor Carr, not interacting with each other.The ideathat they were ‘teasing’ Carrby having sex resituates lesbian sex aspathologicaland as aformof aggression towardsthe excluded male.Y et,the defence’s last questionis di Verent: itdisintricates the particularpathology ( lesbian sex) fromthe general ideaof apathologizedbody/ object/subject.Simply revealing bodyparts (not even necessarily female bodyparts) mightbe cause forCarr’ s attack. Pathology,the productionof di Verences among subjects, is notdeployed simply anddiscretely in the cross-examination, because it isn’t simple ordiscrete. Instead, the ubiquitousand dispersed workings of pathologizing/producingsubjects creates atypeof deviance that migratesout of the lesbian coupleto a mixedgender logic. This mobilitysuggests an underlying characterization ofsexuality in general as deviant,and a deviance ofthe object generally understood.All bodiesat all times, byvirtue of their beingbodies, are pathological,a Freudianclaim that Elisabeth Grosz updates. 27

In Space,Time, and Perversion ,Grosz pointsout the conceptual incoherence ofsexual deviance.28 Sexualityis itself deviant,so claims tosuperior deviance aremeaningless. She alsorefuses the romanticizationof deviance, with its attendantsentimentality. ForGrosz, unlike MacKinnon, there is nooutside to patriarchy, where deviance becomes dominant.

Grosz expands butdoes not domesticate lesbian desire.She understands the appeal ofpurely political approaches but points out that such investigationsperpetuate a will toknow lesbian desirethat:

may bepart of the very tamingand normalization (even ifnot heterosexualization) ofthat desire.This dependsto a largeextent on the status ande Vects ofthe discourses oneuses. Perhaps now is the timeto rethink what discourses these shouldbe. 29

Sofar in this essay, I’ve lamented the lack ofresources todescribe ‘having lesbian Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 sex’and ri e blasts, andattributed that lack toa heterosexual discursive regime; then Ibroadenedthe source ofthe lack toinclude systems ofknowledge production andtheir need toorder all subjects, in orderto produce them. ButI wouldbe dissatisŽed with simply democratizingthe Žxwe’re in:Hate Crimecontests such democraticimpulses, and should be eradicated.Instead Ithink that trauma(a topic strangely absent froman essay that deals with lovers beinggunned down during sex), has something tosay. The questionis, how tosay it?

ReasoningAbout Trauma:T raumaticReasoning

The inadequaciesof the three accounts (Brenner’s, Carr’s, andthe defence attorney’s) promptthe question:what really happened?This questionwill notanswer any of parallax 79 the problematicsanalyzed here. Indeed,the questionis partof the problem.What frameworkwould provide the sortof questionthat wouldnot further the problem– ofhomophobia, the limits onlanguage, and the participationof the dominatedin the systems that dominatethem?

Brenner’s story –traumatic,sad and terriŽ c –shouldbe told, especially since the silence aboutsexual perversionis complicitiousin the limits imposedon her recounting.But through what means, then, ifwhat appearsto suggest itself as the answer (the pen is mightierthan the rie, isn’ t it?),instead furthers the system she arguesagainst? There isaclue inthe book’s cliche´ddepictions.During the trial,she recalls the dayof the shootingas aspringafternoon’ s hike with annoyinginsects. She writes ‘It was asifany couplewas enjoyingan afternoontogether by astream’. 30

Any couple,any afternoon,any stream. In her understandablereluctance todivulge herself (she was, afterall, shot atfor being seen), Brenner retreats intothe safety of ‘everyone’s’ understanding. Y et,recourse tothe universal creates many problems. First, the generalizations mightnot be general enough;many readers will nothave hadthese idyllic experiences. Then, some ofthose who have hadthese experiences mightreject beinggrouped with the deviantBrenner. Appealsto universals ofsex andlove are in contradistinctionto a discursive history that has producedher as deviant,and therefore incapable of such claims. Butmost importantly,Brenner’ s is aparticularexperience, andit is violatedonce again,when she universalizes.

The twonoun phrases ofthe book’s subtitle, One Woman’s Story ofSurviving Anti-Gay Violence,exemplify the di Yculty ofnegotiating the competingdemands of the particularand the universal. Anti-gay violence is asocial phenomenon,scientiŽ cally studied,and statistically tracked. What happenedto Brenner andRebecca Wightis indeedan example ofthe largerphenomenon, but it is much morethan that.The experience has excess that can’t besubsumed into the universal, andthis excess is madeapparent in the story’s refusalto be neatly containedin the languageof larger social phenomena.

In Eight Bullets ,the over-reliance onthe rationalforms of discourse creates uncontrollable,migrating, and mutating prose. Unwanted behaviours,unless one

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 shifts discursive andepistemological frames. Forms ofrepresentation not governed bysuch strict rules (logic,correspondence toan observableworld, and Ž delityto actualevents) have adi Verent set ofconstraints. Butthese alternative formsalso have a diVerent set ofoptions. Moira Gatens examines howthe exclusion ofother optionsin rapediscourses victimizes anew. 31 Gatens calls onthe anti-juridical tradition,from Spinoza to Deleuze, tochallenge reason’s transcendence overo Ycial discourses; reason’s tyranny lies inits transcendence. In Eight Bullets ,reason constrains toproduce, alternately, astory that is inaccurate andthe very violence ittries to eliminate.Gatens resituates reasonso that itis among,rather than above,other formsof thought:

Reason,or the powerof thought,thus cannot beseen asatranscendent ordisembodiedquality of the ‘soul’or mind,but rather, reason, desire, Conway 80 andknowledge are embodied and express, atleast in the Žrst instance, the qualityand complexity ofthe corporeala Vects.32

My suggestionhere is akin toGatens’ s: onediscursive genre –narrative– succeeds withoutreason and its totalizingimpulse. It is tothe strengths ofpoetic expression I now turn.

Poeticexpression can acknowledge the slippagebetween intentionand reception, andcan notonly accommodate,but also encourage, contingency andparadox. The diYculty in suggestingpoetic expression (besides charges ofpollyannaism 33 ) is the impossibilityof supplying formulas that wouldguide such expression. Yet,this resistance tothe formulaicis oneof the valuablecharacteristics ofpoetic(rather than rhetorical) strategies. If the poeticform of expression isnotanticipated, it alsowon’ t be as eVectively thwarted.No counter-arguments rise fully formedwith the poetic form.Instead, the poeticform is Žrst apprehendedin formsof thought sometimes logicalbut also empathic, associative andidentiŽ catory.

Representations that dwell onthe particularityof a circumstance, that don’t rely on audiences recognizing accepted modesof argument, require the auditorto ‘ hear them out’; because ofthis particularity,auditors are denied the opportunityto abbreviatethe telling with adismissively comprehendinguniversal.

Understanding interms ofuniversals, those formsof reasoningheld inhighest esteem bythe system Brenner was workingwithin, prohibitsthe same understandingfor which she aimed.In her haste todemonstrate the fully formedscab, andperhaps the noblescar, Brenner elides her very particularwound. And despitethe detours, the woundis what the bookis about,or more precisely, the wounding.Because of the shooting’s trauma(e Vects which she can notacknowledge andremain the reliable narrator),Brenner writes aboutsome surrogateuniversalized experience. Yet,‘ We shouldremember that the very Žrst deŽning traitof the traumais’ , asStewart writes, ‘its ‘‘intensity’’ ,the degreeto which itresists incorporationinto the economy ofthe subject andso incapacitates that subject’. 34 And since the woundingitself cannot andshould not be redeployed, perhaps the probingof the woundcan articulate(if notan approximation)a yet-to-be-articulatedform of understanding. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Trauma and TheDifferend

While the appealto poetics might sound na ¨’ve, Lyotardmakes abrilliantargument forjust such amove.Consider his less politicallycharged example:

Supposethat an earthquakedestroys notonly lives, buildings,and objectsbut also the instruments usedto measure earthquakesdirectly andindirectly. The impossibilityof quantitatively measuring it does notprohibit, but rather inspires inthe minds ofthe survivors the idea ofa very greatseismic force.The scholar claims toknow nothing aboutit, but the common personhas acomplex feeling,the one arousedby the negativepresentation of the indeterminate. 35 parallax 81 The immeasurableaspect doesnot negate the event; instead,it re ects its unfathomabledepth. At times, Brenner struggles with the ine Vablequality of her experience, butthere’ s apoliticalprogram to be supported, so the struggleis minimized.She understands implicitly which ofher knowledgeclaims will bemost highly regarded.

In The DiÚ erend,Lyotardtakes the compellingexample ofjustice forHolocaust victims. He writes:

Tohave ‘really seen with his own eyes’a gaschamber wouldbe the conditionwhich gives onethe authorityto say that itexists andto persuadethe unbeliever.Y et itis still necessary toprove that the gas chamber was usedto kill atthe timeit was seen. The only acceptable proofit was usedto kill is that onedied from it. But if one is dead, onecannot testify that itis onaccount ofthe gaschamber. 36

Logicand justice areat cross-purposes here, butsince we dependexclusively on juridicaldiscourse for justice, the problem( logicpreventing justice) is not recognizable.A misrecognitionoccurs andcontinues the injury.What was awrong (the attack) iscompoundedbecause itistranslated injuridicallanguage as adamage (Carr’s sentence). Dispensationoccurs andatrocities are equated with ameasurable andtangible quantity.

BothBrenner andHolocaust survivors areabused after their injuryby the clash of competingphrase regimens. Lyotard’s descriptionof Holocaust victims resembles Brenner’s circumstances as well:

It is in the natureof a victim notto be able to prove that onehas beendone a wrong.A plainti V issomeonewho has incurreddamages andwho disposes of the means toprove it. One becomes avictim if oneloses these means. One loses them, forexample, if the authorof the damagesturns outdirectly orindirectly tobe one’ s judge. 37

The Courtis, at the same time,Brenner’ s perpetratorand the source ofher potential compensation.The culpritfurthering Brenner’ s abuseis not,as itwould seem at Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Žrst, the homophobicdefence attorney,or even the history ofpathologizingdiscourses that precededthe defence. InLyotard’s light,privileging rational systems ofthought producesinjustice:

The victim doesnot have the legalmeans tobear witness tothe wrong doneto him orher. If he orshe orhis orher defendersees ‘justice done’, this can only bein spite of the law.The law reserves the authorityto establish the crime, topronounce the verdict andto determine the punishment beforethe tribunalwhich has heardthe twoparties expressing themselves in the same language,that ofthe law.The justice which the victim calls uponagainst the justice ofthe tribunalcannot beuttered in the genre ofjuridical or forensic discourse.But this is the genre in which the law is uttered. 38 Conway 82 Lyotardnames a diÚ erend ‘the case where the plainti V is divestedof the means to argueand becomes forthat reason avictim’, which takes place ‘when the ‘‘regulation’’ ofthe conict is donein the idiomof one of the partieswhile the wrongsu Vered by the otheris notsigniŽ ed in that idiom’. 39 Unfathomableatrocities, by deŽ nition, resist beingput into juridical language. The di Verend results fromour insistence that all legitimateknowledge must bescientiŽ c/ rational.

Lyotardreverses the hierarchy, andargues that all discourseis dependentupon narrative(even mathematical formulas).ScientiŽ c knowledgecan describe and producetruths, butonly narrativecan prescribe andproduce justice. The gap between truth andjustice can’t bebridged with the rules ofscientiŽ c truth;only narrativecan bridgethe gap.Queer analyses ofderogations of queerness arriveat truth,but as we saw in Eight Bullets ,the over-reliance oninstrumental reason ensures that such analyses won’t arriveat justice.

Lyotardsuggests asolution:

Togive the di Verend its dueis toinstitute new addressees, new addressors,new signiŽcations, and new referents inorderfor the wrong toŽ ndexpression andfor the plainti V tocease beinga victim. This requiresnew rules forthe formationand linking ofphrases. Noone doubtsthat languageis capableof admittingthese new phrase families ornew genres ofdiscourse. Every wrongought to be able to be put intophrases. Anew competence (or‘ prudence’) must befound. 40

This new competence wouldtake the formof bearingwitness todi Verences (rather than glossingover them, as was donein the Žrst instance) byŽ ndingnew idioms for them.

The immeasurableaspect ofthe earthquakeand the murderduring sex creates in the witnesses afeeling,which isthe recognitionof awrongthat can’t bephrasedfor lack ofan ideolect.

Deleuze’s comparisonof the writings ofSade and Masoch reveals an important relationshipbetween ‘having sex’and representation. In Masochism,he writes ‘Sexual modestycan notbe related to biological fear, otherwise itwould not be formulated Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 as itis: ‘ ‘Iamless afraidof beingtouched and even ofbeingseen than ofbeing put intowords’ ’ ’. 41 Anew ideolectis necessary toreckon with such experiences. Rather than gloss overdi Verends, narrativehelps usreckon with the lack ofanidealspeech situation.42 Narrative works in terms ofparticulars, not universals; andit helps us witness inregimen-appropriateways. Eight Bullets doesn’t use particulars,and doesn’ t providean opportunityto witness in aregimen-appropriateway. Narrative fails by the standardsof instrumental reason,but by relying oninstrumental reason Eight Bullets failsand fails by its own standards(argue against Hate Crimeby portraying trauma).Here, instrumental reasonisn’ t simply adeadhorse, but a rottingcarcass, addinganother wrong to the wrongof Wight’ s corpse andBrenner’ s trauma.

At this point,a careful readermight wonder if justice was served andCarr found guilty.I want toresist providingthat information,not to frustrate the reader,but parallax 83 because Ibelievethat justice can notbe served within the rational/juridical framework.I can try merely toreport Carr’ s sentencing, butgiven the use towhich such informationhas been put,how doI distinguishmy reportagefrom other uses which celebrate andderogate? Carr was sentenced tolife,but justice was notserved. And the continuedover-reliance onthe legalsystem toprovide justice (an over- reliance which motivatesthe questionabout the sentencing) is,I amarguing, part ofthe problem,rather than asolution.

Notes

1 ClaudiaBrenner and Hannah Ashley, Eight qualiŽes her dismissalof deconstruction by Bullets: One Woman’s Storyof Surviving Anti-Gay Violence referringto an exception:Lyotard’ s essaythat (Ithaca, NY:FirebrandBooks, 1995). preŽgures the book (The DiÚ erend )towhich Itie 2 Brenner, Eight Bullets , p.188. myhopes on atthe endof this essay( pp.114–115). 3 Brenner, Eight Bullets , p.25. MacKinnon exceptsLyotard, but does not gointo 4 Ofcourse, non-queer speakers have similar his theory. problemswith the ine Vabilityof language when 13 SusanStewart, Crimes ofWriting: Problems in the confrontedwith traumaticevents. My pointhere, Containment ofRepresentation (NewY ork:Oxford atthis stageof the argument,is that deviantsex, Press, 1991), p.236. whether interruptedby ri e blastor not, is 14 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth renderedine Vableby legal, moral, criminological, ofthe Prison ,trans. AlanSheridan (New Y ork: andpsychological proscription. Later, we will see RandomHouse, 1979), p.200. howBrenner’ s strangeaccounting forces a 15 PeggyPhelan, Unmarked: The Politics ofPerformance broadeningof the deviantcategory to impose limits (NewY ork:Routledge, 1993). on allsubjects’ speech. See Pierre Blanchot, The 16 Phelan, Unmarked, p.10. Writing ofthe Disaster ,trans. Ann Smock(Lincoln: 17 Foucaultcapitalizes Power to denote his more Universityof Nebraska Press, 1995); and Pierre complex conceptualization of Power, and to Bourdieu, Distinction ,trans. RichardNice distinguishit fromprevious ideas of power. I use (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1984). upper case to denote Foucauldian power. 5 Here,I’ vetrieda clinicalapproach to description, 18 Foucault, Discipline and Punish , pp.25–26. afterdeciding against the pornographic,and the 19 Brenner, Eight Bullets , p.132. metaphorical.It isnot satisfactory.I don’t intend 20 Brennernotes that juryselection would have sarcasm,but detachment, as though the topicwere been di Ycult giventhat it wasboth acapitalcase rebuildingan engine.It doesnot work. andinvolved lesbian victims. Indeed one of the 6 Brenner, Eight Bullets , p.25. reasonsthey decidedto settle is the fearthat ajury 7 SeeMichel deCerteau, The Practice ofEveryday in ruralPennsylvania wouldinclude many who Life,trans. StevenRendall (Berkeley, CA: weresympathetic to Carr’ s revulsion. Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1984). 21 Brennercites numerous cases where the 8 Brenner, Eight Bullets , p.110. ‘homosexualpanic’ defence excuses murder of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 9 CatherineA. MacKinnon, Only Words queers. (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 22 WendyBrown, ‘ The Impossibilityof W omen’s 1993), p.6. Studies’, diÚ erences: AJournal ofFeminist Cultural 10 MacKinnon, Only Words, p.13. Studies 9:3(1997), p.79. 11 MacKinnon, Only Words, p.67. 23 Brown,‘ Impossibility’, p.4. 12 MacKinnon overarguesand invites dismissal. 24 Brown,‘ Impossibility’, p.79. Butthe argumenthas somemerit. Her argument’ s 25 Brown,‘ Impossibility’, p.79. formmatches its content. She denouncesand 26 Brenner, Eight Bullets , p.139. objectiŽes penises, representing what she seesas 27 SigmundFreud, Three Essayson the Theory of porn’s power:humiliation and harassment of Sexuality,trans. JamesStrachey (New Y ork:Avon, women.The reader’s objectionis evidencefor her 1965). majorclaim. Second, I believeher overargument 28 ElisabethGrosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays iscalculated and that she isaware of a subtler onthe Politics ofBodies (NewY ork:Routledge, 1995). versionof language, but believesshe can’t a Vord 29 Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion , p.171. the luxuryof subtlety. I saythis becauseshe 30 Brenner, Eight Bullets , p.132. Conway 84 31 MoiraGatens, ‘ Feminismas ‘ ‘Password’’: (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, Re-thinkingthe ‘‘Possible’’ with Spinozaand 1988),p.56. Deleuze’, Hypatia: AJournal ofFeminist Philosophy 36 Lyotard, The DiÚ erend, p.3. 15:2(2000), p.59. 37 Lyotard, The DiÚ erend, p.8. 32 Gatens,‘ Feminismas ‘‘Password’’ ’,p.59. 38 33 Lyotard, The DiÚ erend, p.30. Naiveteis aluxury,but an informedearnestness 39 Lyotard, The DiÚ erend, p.9. maybe a necessity.Resistance to, and assaults 40 Lyotard, The DiÚ erend, p.13. against,poetic expression are long-standing and 41 GillesDeleuze, Masochism,trans. JeanMcNeil ‘useful’(Platonism; Enlightenment epistemology; (NewY ork:Zone Books, 1991), pp.16– 17. Pragmatism;and capitalism’ s inuence in 42 determiningvalue). But untested strategies wait to Theideal speech situation is Habermas’ utopic bearticulated through the poetic. visionof instrumental reason. Jurgen Habermas, 34 Stewart, Crimes ofWriting , p.281. Communication and the Evolution ofSociety , trans. 35 Jean-FrancoisLyotard, The DiÚ erend: Phrases in ThomasMcCarthy (Boston,MA: BeaconPress, Dispute,trans. GeorgesV an DenAbbeele 1979).

Mary T.Conway is VisitingAssistant Professorof Speech Communicationat Temple University, Philadelphia,P A19122,USA. Her work has been publishedin CameraObscura , Wide Angle, Journal ofAdvanced Composition Theory , and RoadBike Magazine. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009

parallax 85 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 86– 93

‘Thisswirling ofimages’ AnInterviewwith Drucilla Cornell

What followsis the transcript ofan interview conductedby email between Drucilla Cornelland Ika Willis.

Ika Willis: Inyour work, you arecareful to attend to thefundamental importance ofgender identity toindividuation inpsychoanalytic theory. Atthesame time, you insist that ‘asamoral and political matter, women must beleft free’ . It seemsthat thereis both adeepinterrelation and adisjunction betweenthe psychoanalytic account ofgender identity and thephilosophical (moral-political) ideal offreedom in your theory, and that much ofthe energy and forceof your work proceedsfrom the ways in which eachdiscourse’ s account ofsex inects the other’ s. Would you agreewith this, and inwhat ways haveyou found thetension betweenpsychoanalytic and legal-political discourse tobe itself productive ofnew ways ofthinking about sex and identity?

DrucillaCornell: I agreewith youthat there is atension between traditional psychoanalytic accounts ofgenderidentity and the wayinwhich genderis understood as akindof discursive categorywithin the realms oflaw andpolitics. Indeed, this tension isatthe heart ofmy understandingof the imaginarydomain. I have recently written that aninterpretationof Lacan’s work couldbe renderedconsistent with the imaginarydomain. But for this tohappen with respect toLacan’ s account ofsex andsexual identiŽcation, we must re-think the meaning ofsymbolic castration and extricate Lacan fromhis seeming endorsement ofthe needto protect the law of sexual diVerence as amatter ofmaking civilization safe forheterosexuality. ConservativeLacanians in France notoriouslyfought against the billfor gay and lesbian parity.But I have arguedstrongly in BetweenWomen and Generations: Legaciesof Dignity that they aretaking Lacan tooliterally when they try tomake the law of

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 sexual diVerence inLacanian psychoanalysis coherent with actualpolitical and legal reforms.Traditional notions of gender – those partof Freudian ego psychology, for example –which assume that there isanormalpath of sexual developmentand that there isapsychic loss tothe individualif that pathisn’ t followedare certainly contrary tothe imaginarydomain. In any case, Ithink that what is productiveabout psychoanalysis forlegal and political discourse is that itproblematizes the overly simplistic notionof the individualthat has dominatedmuch politicaltheory –the ideathat individualssimply arewhat they areand that wemust take the preferences ofsuch individualsliterally; that,in otherwords, there isnoway toget beneath the face valueof who an individualis. Although I think psychoanalysis can help us understandmore deeply the process ofindividuationthat must beprotectedin order forus tobe able to claim ourperson as amatter ofright, I don’t think we should

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals 86 DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027984 use psychoanalysis as acorrective topeople’ s ostensibly false preferences, certainly when itcomes tosex andsexual identiŽcation. That is tosay, Lacan shouldnot be enlisted ine Vortsto develop a psychoanalytic theory of‘ false consciousness’with respect tosex andsexual identiŽcation. I disagreewith the ideathat we coulduse psychoanalytic theory tochallenge the normalcy ofsomeone’ s sex orsexual identiŽcations. As Imentioned,this was the mistake ofthe conservative Lacanians whobattled against gay and lesbian rights inFrance. Still,with this warning inplace, many schools ofpsychoanalysis giveus ways ofconceptualizing individuation,sex, andsexual identiŽcation that help us rethink what sexual freedommight mean and how itmight be translated intoan actuallegal and moral right.

IW: In At The Heart Of Freedom you say that once theimaginary domain is protected,the psychic and ethicalchanges thus enabledwill be‘ leftto us’, and argue forthe legal protection of theimaginary domain and theinclusion ofwomen in thecommunity ofmoral individuals ‘as an initial matter’. Theimaginary domain thus appearsto besomehow prior to thesorts ofpsychic, ethical, political and aestheticchanges you envisage in thepresent and forthe future. Could you talk alittle about this question ofpriority? Must thespace of the imaginary domain belegally protectedbefore psychic change can takeplace?

DC:The space ofthe imaginarydomain does not need to be legally protectedbefore psychic change can take place.In orderto see why, itis necessary toreturn tohow I place the imaginarydomain within the context ofmodern social contract theory, particularlythe work ofJohn Rawls. Rawls assumes the idealrepresentatives behind the veil ofignorance would be the heads ofhouseholds, indeed patriarchs. But since these representatives areideal, there is noreason in Rawls’s theory toassume they wouldbe men. Butlet’ s forgiveRawls as aman ofhis own timeand say that in his politicalimaginary they were patriarchs who couldrepresent the interests oftheir household.T raditionally,before women were given the rightto vote, it was assumed in western democratictheory that women didnot have the capacity torepresent themselves; andso men shouldbe the only ones representing themselves, their wives, their children, andeveryone else. My solutionto this problemin Rawls isnotto turn the idealrepresentatives intoactual people (as is donein what has recently beencalled ‘open-eyedsocial contract theory’by certain liberals) butto presume that such ideal representatives have alreadybeen given the moraland psychic space toself-represent their sexual di Verence throughthe imaginarydomain. Thus, rather than heads of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 householdsbeing the idealrepresentatives, we wouldsimply have representatives who were presumedto have claimed their imaginarydomain and hence represented their sexual diVerence. At this level, sexual di Verence is notactual; it is something like a transcendental necessity that is presumedto be addressed by the idealized representative. There areno men, women,gays, lesbians, transsexuals, transvestites behindthe veil ofignorance any morethan there areblacks orLatinas. There are individualswho have claimed their imaginarydomain and thus have the capacity to represent themselves as persons andperform the task demandedof them in the hypothetical experiment Rawls calls the veil ofignorance. Again, it’ s notthat these idealrepresentatives aresexless; it’s rather that what sex they mightbe in actuality is notrelevant atthis level ofabstraction. What is relevant, though,is that despitethe Real ofsexual di Verence (Imean ‘Real’, ofcourse, in Lacan’ s sense), all the ideal representatives have the capacity forself-representation andthus wouldno longer be parallax 87 heads ofhouseholdswho assume the positionof representatives. Toput the same point diVerently, Rawls actually broughtreality intohis hypothetical experiment in the imaginationby claiming that heads ofhouseholds were the best representatives. He didso in partto justify why these representatives wouldbe morally motivatedto protect the savings principle;the principlethat says acertain amountof resources must be guaranteedfor the next generation.I think there isanothersolution to Rawls’ s problem that doesnot involve bringingreality intothe imaginedsocial contract. Within the social contract tradition,the priorityof the imaginarydomain must beunderstood structurally. Because Rawls’s representatives areideal, we must alreadypresume the equalityof all formsof sexual di Verence since these formsmust berenderedirrelevant toone’ s capacity forself-representation. Wecannot allowany arguments aboutwhy gays andlesbians areunable to represent themselves behindthe veil ofignorance. As amoraland legal right no less than asaradicalideal, the imaginarydomain is meant toprotectthe rightof all ofustoclaim oursexual freedomboth in the manner that we have sex (this issue of parallax,afterall, is called ‘havingsex’ ) andin the way inwhich we identifyourselves as havingsex. Ihave soughtin this conceptualizationto avoid the theoretical snare ofcreating arightto sexual freedomthat re-establishes what Wendy Brownhas called the woundedattachments ofgender identiŽ cation. In this way, the rightin questionis universalizable toall human beingswho must inoneway oranother represent their sexuate being.Once we come downfrom the level ofthe ideal,we realize, ofcourse, that none ofus can betransparent toourselves andthus know that ourself-representation is authentic.This bringsme back toyour Ž rst question.Psychoanalysis always teaches ussomuch aboutwhat we cannot know about ourselves andthat we must rely onothers toknow ourlimits andour creative powers. Butthe reality that noself-representation can betruly authentic in an existential sense doesnot mean that we shouldn’t begiven the rightto pursue our own representability. In fact,we needthe imaginarydomain so desperately precisely because ourself- representations arealways in ux as we engagewith others andwith ourown unconscious stirrings, sexual andotherwise. The imaginarydomain opens up the space in which we can beginto feel free toplay with sexual personaethat areinseparable fromour self-representations. The painof psychic closeting andthe shame that accompanies itwould no longer place such aheavy burdenon sexual freedom.

IW:In what ways and in what areasdo you seethe imaginary domain being claimedas aright today?What attempts tocreatemore and othersymbolizations ofthefeminine and sexual di Ú erence Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 doyou seenow or imagine forthe future, and what e Ú ectsdo you feelthese projects are having, psychically, politically and/or legally? How doyou understand therelation betweenpsychic and legal claims here– and should this last question berelated to your use ofthe aesthetic and your readings ofliterary texts in Just Cause as away ofarticulating therelationship between ‘representation’and ‘ideals’?

DC:In the last twenty Žve years, we have seen many gays,lesbians, transsexuals, transvestites, as well as feminists, claiming their moral,legal, and psychic rightto what Ihave called the imaginarydomain. If Ihadto o Ver animageof the imaginary domain,it would be one of stepping out of the closet intoa worldof your own imaginationin which visions ofwho youmight be swirl aroundyour head in arich Želdof possibility that nolonger contains the ‘cannots’we associate with the closet. The psychic openness ofthis swirling ofimages is what Ihave triedto promote in Willis 88 the legaland moral right of the imaginarydomain. The relationshipamong the aesthetic, my ownattempt to articulatewhat Imean byrepresentation,and how the imaginarydomain Ž guresas anideal,is quitecomplex. This complexity stems from my use ofthe wordof ‘ aesthetic’in the sense in which Immanuel Kant understood it in TheCritique ofJudgment .Toput this pointas simply asIcan, the aesthetic concerns the inevitablefact that ourrelationship to the worldfollows from the way we try to create it,live it,represent itto ourselves. Idonot mean forthe aesthetic toimply any given Želdof art objects, whether paintingor literature. And Idonot mean to pitthe aesthetic againstthe ethical. What Iwant tosuggest isthat the aesthetic way ofgrappling with andcreating ourown world is the very basison which we can envision new ways ofbeingin the world,the very foundationof ourcapacity tothink critically andself-re ectively aboutethical ideals.The ‘aestheticization ofethics’ comes fromKant’ s understandingthat the transcendental imaginationserves as a limitto reason. W ecan think ethically only throughour imagination because our rationalityinevitably runs upagainstthe unthoughtof the imagination.But we never justre-imagine for the sake ofre-imagining.It isalways forthe sake ofa betterand morejust way ofre-imagining. Imagining from the standpointof an idealized humanity always demandsan ethical imperative.

IW:What is theimportance ofconsciousness-raising to you? You havewritten about theimportance ofyour own consciousness-raising group, Las Gren˜udas ,in your own struggle and life.How does this relateto theimaginary domain? Could it besaid that theimaginary domain fulŽls someof the samefunctions as aCRgroup on adi Ú erentlevel –theprotection ofa spacein which sex (forexample) can beimagined di Ú erently through the‘ lifting’of restraints on theappropriate meanings ofsex(es)?

DC:My experience ofconsciousness-raising issomewhat unusualfor a white feminist ofmygeneration.As Iwrotein ‘Las Gren˜udas’, my consciousness-raising groupwas African-American andLatina with the exception ofmyself. Ithink the relationship between consciousness-raisingandthe imaginarydomain could be put like this: if the imaginarydomain is toopen the gates ofthe psychic prisonsin which somany ofuslive asfaras oursexuality isconcerned, then creating andcommitting ourselves togroups like Las Gren˜udascan help us actually explorewith each otherwhat we want todo collectively as well as individuallyto re-imagine who we can be.My consciousness-raising grouphelped me confrontmy whiteness byforcing me to engagewith others whose experience oftheir sexual di Verence was completely Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 diVerent frommine. People could have their moraland legal right to the imaginary domainprotected and never actually pushthemselves toengage with others soas to beconfronted with all the ways in which we live outour identiŽ cations –sexual, racial,ethnic, andso on – throughthe innumerablehierarchies in ourown society. By itself, then, the imaginarydomain is simply never enoughto ensure that people will actually make use ofmoral and psychic space toface whothey areand who they mightbe in any actualsociety.

IW:Theuse ofthe term ‘ family’for the sorts ofarrangements you envisage in Freedom for parenting and theregistration ofhorizontal intimate associations entails aradical rethinking ofthe meaning ofthe term ‘ family’as it is currently being used bythe ‘ family values’lobby to enforce heterosexual monogamy. What is thestrategic or philosophical importance ofretaining theterms ‘family’, ‘marriage’, etc? parallax 89 To someextent you use terms like ‘sex’and ‘family’, broadly deŽned, as thebasis fora possible/ future overlapping consensus, saying in Freedom:‘Sexand desireare common denominators, and byvaluing themfor themselves, peoplecan seethe freedom that should begiven to all othersin the name ofthefundamental public values ofapolitically liberalculture’ . What work needsto bedone onsuch termsin orderthat they can bevalued forthemselves, separatedfrom their heteronormative functions as policing what counts as ‘sex’, ‘family’, etc?

DC:As yourightly pointout, I use the word‘ family’broadly to separate my own positionfrom the oneassociated with early attempts (forexample, in the Soviet Union) tohold in conict investments inpersonalassociations with social andpublic responsibility.From my childhoodin the 1950s,I remember the red-baitingthat arguedthat communism necessarily woulddo away with the family,communalizing women andchildren. But,as Iarguedin TheImaginary Domain , AttheHeart ofFreedom , and Just Cause,what was deniedin the ‘actually existing socialist states’was the right toan imaginarydomain in which peopleare allowed to play freely with their sexual personae,love a Vairs,and personal a Yliations.Ultimately, forme, this attemptto separatemy understandingof the imaginarydomain from the frankly foolishcharge that I’mobliteratinglove, romance, andits importanceto people, was why Iheld ontoterms like sex andfamily. Nevertheless, my pointin Atthe Heart ofFreedom is that these terms needto be freedfrom the stranglehold ofheterosexual normativity. Feminists todaymust beresolute in their demandthat particularkinds offamilies andwhat counts as a‘normalfamily’ can nolonger be mandated by the state.

IW:Your aim is to end heterosexual privilege and compulsory heterosexuality, not heterosexuality ‘itself ’.Whileyou would, ofcourse, resist giving ‘content’to thekind offree heterosexuality that theimaginary domain would protect, it seemsto methat thesubtraction ofprivilege and normativity fromheterosexuality would in itself entail –even enforce– aradical re-thinking and re-representation oftheirsexuate being and intimate associations onthepart ofheterosexual people.For example, you state that ‘alesbian couple taking on parenting doesnot in any way interferewith aheterosexual couple’s right to parenthood’– but it must interferewith theway that couples imagine their relationship toparenthood (asnatural and privileged). Could you talk about this consequence ofthe protection ofa lesbian couple’s right to parenthood?

Foranother example,in Freedom you tacklethe question ofreimagining and resymbolizing prostitution and pornography through an emphasison theright offemale sex workers to choosethe Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 work theydo. Does a(symmetrical?)task ofreimagination haveto takeplace from the point ofview ofthe employer of sex workers or theconsumer ofpornography? How might this begin to happen?

Morebroadly, then, how can, and how must,theinvestments in power and privilege which are seemingly almost inseparablefrom investments in thesexuate being ofa white, heterosexual man (forexample), be restricted and reshaped?What possibilities doyou seefor changing theways in which whiteness, heterosexuality, masculinity areimagined bywhites, heterosexuals, men? And Žnally, whilst Iappreciatethat it is in many ways an unhelpful concept, could you talk alittle about theproblem of ‘ falseconsciousness’ in this context, that is, asit relatesto theways in which power and privilege inect the imagination and symbolization ofidentities?

DC:My dream,I suppose,if the imaginarydomain were ever truly recognized asa moraland legal right in any society, wouldbe that the compulsionof rigid gender Willis 90 roles and,with them, sexual orientationswould be attenuatedas ahorriblypervasive social force.Here I’mwith Jacques Derrida,the choreographer,in that myultimate dreamis anew dance ofsexual di Verence inwhich heterosexuality andhomosexuality wouldno longer be the neatly opposedcategories they arenow –onenatural, privileged;the otherperverted, banned, sometimes tolerated,but never respected. SoI think you’re rightthat there areradical consequences tothe protectionof a lesbian couple’s rightto parenthood. Lesbian parentingunavoidably separates the traditionaltie between reproductionand sexuality. Butit also challenges the idea, still prevalent in somuch psychoanalytic theory,that an actualfather is necessary fora normalcouple. Part of what Ihopeto achieve throughmy defense ofthe imaginarydomain is that the separationof reproductionand sexuality –unavoidable in alesbian couple– is broughtto a moreradical conclusion: we wouldno longer deny three women friends whowish toadopt a child the chance todo so simply because there areno sexual partners inthat family.As forthe roleof the employers ofsex workers andthe consumers ofpornography, both would have tore-imagine what pornwould look like ifporn sets were unionized.My guess is that foran employerof sex workers toaccept that his employees were unionizedwould considerablychange his view ofthese workers. Byopeningup the space fordi Verent kinds oferoticmaterials, we couldbring into being a di Verent kindof consumer who wouldnot turn to such Žlms simply toreassure white heterosexual men that they arestill inpowerand that their potency isnotbeing challenged byfeminism orany ofthe otherimaginary enemies oftheir sex. Iagreethat investments in powerand privilegeare integral to the way most white heterosexual men imaginethemselves as heterosexual. Butrather than restraining men andpushing their imaginaries ‘underground’– the fantasy ofsome feminists –Ithink ouronly solutionis tochange ourselves. If women weren’t socompelled to live outtheir lives within the conŽnes ofheterosexual normativity,if we all felt free toexplore other relationships with women,then perhapsall the fears that come alongwith beinga heterosexual woman wouldbe allayed, if not eradicated altogether. All the same, this doesnot preclude the importanceof critical disputeand argument about the necessary powerand privilegethat inhere in white heterosexual normativity.

IW:Thank you –that’s avery exciting and challenging response. One ofthe things that Imost enjoyin your work is just this refusal to closedown or stabilize theplay ofsexual possibilities, as well as your emphasison productive/creativestrategies ratherthan restrictive ones. Iwanted to ask Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 you to extend this answer intwo directions; Žrstly, could you expand on thenotion which seemsto behovering near theend ofyour answer that we can makeourselves free– not bysimply de-investing inour own relation topower, but byexploring our implication in less privileged identities/practices –turning to the‘ outside’of the circuit ofwhite heterosexual normativity? You also seemto imply that change is e Ú ectedby multiplying and exploring possibilities onless privileged axes, which then reacton and deprivilege thedominant termin theseries. Could you talk alittle moreabout thesorts ofrelationships you seeat work betweenagency and privilege?

DC:Paradoxically,when privilegeis livedin the context ofaccommodation to established norms ofcorrect andappropriate heterosexual behavior,it can alsobe aprisonhouse. It’ s nocoincidence that myŽrst bookwas called BeyondAccommodation ; Imeant andstill domean we must live andact in such away that is beyond accommodationto conventional norms ofwhite heterosexual femininity.Of course, parallax 91 Idon’t want tominimize the signiŽcance ofconfronting white skin privilege.But if this confrontationoccurs only byway of‘ white liberalguilt’ , then itjust re-inscribes the white social subject back intothe very privilegeit’ s supposedlydenying. If I merely exclaim, ‘Iamwhite! Iamwhite!’ , this doesnothing to challenge the hierarchical positionof dominance my whiteness a Vordsme in this racist society. I want toreturn tothe example ofmy consciousness-raising groupLas Gren˜udas,for itpoints to the freedomthat can emerge fromthe reclamation ofdevalued identiŽcations. ‘ La gren˜uda’is aSpanishslang expression oftenused by Puerto Rican mothers topointout totheir daughtersthat they lookblack. It is literally anexpression abouthair. But as ametaphor,it means that wildand unruly hairindicates awild andunruly spirit.In the context ofracism in the United States,it refers toa black girlwho doesnot take the opportunityto pass as ‘Hispanic’. Ourconsciousness- raisinggroup embraced a devaluedidentiŽ cation and a Yrmedits value– we became the wildspirits, the blackened ones,those whowere onthe margins andwho would notaccommodate the norms ofproper white femininity.I was the only white womanin the group.Y et byembracing this identiŽcation as awhite woman,I was actually freedfrom the politicaland ethical limitationsof being white and Anglo.Deprivileging privilege can only happenif we renew andreconŽ gure our representations ofdevaluedidentiŽ cations inthis way. Collective aswell asindividual agency was unleashed inLas Gren˜udasthrough the metaphoricrepresentation of ourselves: we refusedto accept the formalequality, white girlfeminism that was consideredthe only acceptable feminism ofour time.

IW:Thesecond direction Iwanted to takethis question in was how you seethe relation between sex/desireand power, which has beenendlessly discussed in theperhaps rather closed circuit ofthe debatebetween anti-pornography and sex-positive feminists and could certainly proŽt frombeing openedup in thedirection ofother theories. You say that porn would look di Ú erentonce porn sets wereunionized; could Itranslate that as ‘sexualized power would look di Ú erentif power wereless sexed’? Could you say alittle moreabout this interrelation of‘imaginary’power and ‘real’political power?What sorts ofspaces of intervention or possibility areformed there?

DC:Aunionizedporn set wouldlay barethe imaginaryŽ guresof the feminine that must bepresent to‘ propup’ the phallic agendaof the white heterosexual pornŽ lms producedby the mainstream pornindustry – Žlms that must always bedark and violent.Unionization would turn on the brightlights, as itwere, anddissipate both Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 the fantasy ofphallic powerand the darkness that comes alongwith it.Sex acts wouldbe priced, time limits set, andthere wouldbe a shopsteward empoweredto monitorcontractual relations,to make sure that contracts were actually honoredon the set. Just imaginea shopsteward calling time andthen saying,‘ Now we’re into overtime’, with women supportedby the fullpower of the unionasserting their rights atthe same time.The real powerof unionization is inŽnitely morepowerful than the imaginaryphallic powerthat deŽnes women as objectsto be cut, bruised, and fucked.Perhaps this is what youmean when yousay sexualized powerwould look diVerent ifpower were less sexed.

IW:Thetitle ofthis parallax issue is having sex,and it is intended to play o Ú a range of meanings around sexual practice,identiŽ cation and possession which arepresent in much ofyour thinking onsexuate being –theproblem you formulate in Just Cause as ‘how we areto besexed Willis 92 and to claim our personhood at thesame time’ . Sex( like race,nationality, and religion) is ‘had’ through aseriesof complex engagements with available meanings and deŽnitions, yetsexual orientation and practiceis perceived(at least in moralistic terms)as being aspaceof free choice and responsibility to agreaterextent than themore visibly determinedinheritances ofrace or nationality.

In Just Cause you observethat we comeinto theworld as ‘alreadyrepresented’ as man, woman, black, white, Anglo, Latino/a–is it thecase that we are‘ alreadyrepresented’ as straight? Is it true to say that identiŽcation as‘gay’or ‘straight’has adi Ú erentstatus –is inherited inadi Ú erent way –fromidentiŽ cation as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Christian’, ‘Anglo’, ‘Latin American’, etc? How doesthis a Ú ectpolitical struggles around sexual orientation and practicein theirinterrelation to struggles around ‘sex’(gender), nationality and ‘race’?

DC:I’mnotsure Ithink that sexual di Verence or,as we say these days,sexual orientation,is actually inheritedin adi Verent way than otheridentiŽ cations. I think it’s interesting tolookmore closely atthe word‘ straight’. Doweever actually imagine astraight man asotherthan white andanglo? I think ‘straightness’carries with ita set ofimagined characteristics, certainly ‘proper’straightness. Of course,many African-American men arestraight. Y et even ablack heterosexual man is,as Franz Fanon reminds us,always imaginedas sexually threatening andis thus still perverse in his heterosexuality. Ithink that what we needto analyze is the way that notions of‘gay’and ‘ straight’are deeply implicated in ourimagined notions of race, ethnicity, andnationality. Any strugglefor gay and lesbian rights will necessarily entail re-thinking sexual orientationas itis implicatedin the imaginedcharacteristics of race, nation,and ethnicity.

IW:You co-edited Deconstruction andthe Possibilityof Justice ,and your book Beyond Accommodation has thesubtitle ‘Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and theLaw’ . What relation doyou feelyour work bearsto deconstruction? Could you talk alittle about thepossibilities you see (ordon’ t see)for a queerdeconstruction, perhapsin relation to theapparent heterocentrismof Derridean Žgures like ‘hymen’, with its orientation around virginity/marriage?

DC:Interestingly enough,I think that deconstruction,particularly Derrida’ s intervention intoLacan’ s conception ofsexual di Verence, is queer.Derrida clearly seeks todeconstruct howthe very notionsof gay and straight, homosexual and heterosexual, turn onthe privilegingof what M.JacquiAlexander wouldcall heteropatriarchaldeŽnitions of sexual di Verence. ForDerrida, the very terms Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 ‘heterosexual’and ‘ queer’are heteropatriarcha lprecisely because they implythat onemust beeither/or.The new choreographyof sexual di Verence that he imagines wouldallow us todance circles aroundthese neat designationsof ourselves aseither oneor the other– straight orgay, man orwoman, masculine orfeminine. The imaginarydomain would give us the moraland psychic space forall ofus toenjoy ourqueerness as unique,creative, andplayful sexual beings.

Ika Willis isaPhD candidatein the Schoolof Fine Art, Art History andCultural Studies,at the University ofLeeds. Drucilla Cornell is aplaywrightand a professorof political science atRutgers University. Her most recent bookis BetweenWomen and Generations: Legaciesof Dignity (PalgraveMacmillan, 2002). parallax 93 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 94– 107

Re(pro)ducing SexualDifference

Myra J. Hird

Notthat it reallymatters whetheror not he[sic] everknows about thevast populations ofinorganic life,the ‘ thousand tiny sexes’which arecoursing through his veins with apromiscuity ofwhich hecannot conceive. He’s theone who misses out. Fails to adapt.Can’ t seethe point ofhis sexuality. Thosewho believein theirown organic integrity areall too human forthe future [to come]. 1

Sexual Reproductionand the ‘ Essence’of Sexual Difference

In publicdiscourse, (some) women’s abilityto sexually reproducehas longcounted as oneof the most obvioussigniŽ ers ofsexual di Verence. Whatever social,political andeconomic changes mighttake place toalter women’s positionin society, female sexual reproductionis seen as bothimmutable ‘ fact’and cause ofstructural diVerences between women andmen. Of the almostcountless references tofemale ‘materiality’as reproduction,my trainingas asociologistsecures Emile Durkheim’s renditionas aparticularlysharp thorn in my side.He writes that ‘society is less necessary toher because she isless impregnatedwith sociability[...] Man isactively involvedin itwhilst womandoes little morethan lookon froma distance’. 2 Not only doesDurkheim remind his readers that itis female bodiesthat can be( passively) impregnated,but this impregnationis limitedto  eshy materiality(babies). If male bodiesare (actively) impregnated,it is with decidedlynon-material sociality. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 In this paper,I focuson ideas about reproduction, with aview toproblematizing the assumptionthat human ‘reproduction’has much todo with either sex orthe constitutionof ‘ femininity’. Iarguethat human bodiesare constantly engagedin reproductionand only sometimes (andfor a short time) engagedin speciŽcally ‘sexual’reproduction. The networks ofbacteria, microbes, molecules andinorganic lifewhich exist beneath the surface ofourskin take little account of‘sexual’di Verence andindeed exist andreproduce without any recourse towhat we think ofas reproduction.Human imagination may belimited to a narrowunderstanding of ‘sexual’reproduction, but a proliŽc variety ofreproductivemeans occur in‘nature’. 3 These arguments will bemade through the use ofnon-linear biologyand more generally neo-materialism,which Isuggest arevaluable resources tofeminists

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals 94 DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000027993 concerned with exploring‘ the biologicalbody’ generally andfor thinking more speciŽcally aboutreproduction in anon-Darwinianframe. 4

FeministAccounts of Matter

Materialityhas longbeen asource ofconsternation forfeminist scholars concerned with questionsof sexual di Verence, basedon two critical assumptions. 5 Firstly, the constitutionof matter is largely Žguredas inert,stable, concrete, unchangeable and resistant tosocio-historical change. Consequently,when feminist scholars study materiality,it tends tobe in terms ofhow humans (such as scientists) interact with materiality,as thoughthere is nooutside of, or beyond, the cultural context. Viki Kirbyargues that contemporarycritical analyses’s insistence that itis the discursive eVects ofobjectsunder scrutiny, andnot the objectthemselves, belies aconstruction ofmateriality as ‘rigid,prescriptive’ and opposed to ‘ cultural determinationsthat areassumed to be plastic, contestable, andable to invite intervention and reconstruction’. 6

As aconsequence, feminist critiquesof science tendto focus on cultural analyses of materialitythat emergedwithin political,economic andsocial discourses during the eighteenth century (sociobiologyfor example), which beganto use science as akey source ofevidence for‘ solutionsto increasing questionsabout sexual and racial equality’. 7 These discourses cohered aroundthe institutionalizationof sexual diVerences between female andmale non-human andhuman livingorganisms. Throughthese variedanalyses, feminists forcefully arguethat the traditional separationbetween natureand culture isadiscursive artifactof post-Enlightenment Europeanculture. 8 As acorollary,cultural analyses have arguedthat science o Vers representations ofmateriality rather than the revelationof ‘ nature’as ontology.In short ‘there isnosuch thing asnatureor culture.Each isahighly relativized concept [...]nosingle meaningcan infact begiven tonature or culture in western thought’. 9 This is madeparticularly clear in Marilyn Strathern’s analysis ofthe absence of the nature-culture dichotomyin the Hagensociety ofthe PapuaNew Guinea Highlands.10 Indeed,Strathern arguesthat English modelsof nature, biology andreproduction are culturally speciŽc, as witnessed bythe Hagen people’s understandingof fertility as transsexual practice: the conversion offertility from Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 individualto clan use is manifestedby men, leadingStrathern toconclude that Hagen women donot reproduce at all. 11

The second, relatedassumption is that the primarymeans throughwhich the study ofmatter has been accessed, science, is principallya toolof patriarchy.Consequently, feminists oftenapproach science studiesboth reluctantly andnegatively. AsElizabeth Grosz notes,‘ naturehas been regardedprimarily as akindof obstacle againstwhich we needto struggle’ . 1 2 Thus, feminist analyses focuson reproductive technologies, pre-menstrual syndrome,menopause and birthing technologies in often-negative terms. Anne Witz explains:

Feminist sociologistshave, forthe most part,written againstthe grain ofcorporeality, in the sense ofaeshy materiality,in orderto Ž llout parallax 95 the absent,more-than- eshy sociality ofwomen traditionallyrepressed within sociologicaldiscourse. And forgood reasons. Precisely because they were sociologists,they didlatterly forwomen what masculinist sociologyhad formerly donefor men, andmen alone:they retrieved them fromthe realm ofthe ‘biological’, ‘corporeal’and ‘ natural’and instatedthem within the realm ofthe ‘social’. 13

And yet the di Yculty with social scientiŽc andcultural analyses ofthe representation ofmatter is that ‘providinga social explanation[...] means that someoneis ablein the end to replace some objectpertaining to nature by another one pertainingto society, which can bedemonstratedto beits truesubstance’ . 14 This eVects arecursive return tosociality andaway fromthe materialobject of study.The challenge, then, is‘how tothink the seemingly persistent materialdi Verences ofsex’. 15 Wemay access bodies throughlanguage and discourse, but this mediativeprocess doesnot entirely account forthe creationof material bodies. Anne Witz recognizes the ‘residual tacticity , the lost oruntheorized‘ ‘matter’’ ofbodies that lurk,unattended to, on the sidelines of the social’. 16 Butlersummarizes the challenge forfeminists thus: ‘itmust bepossible toconcede anda Yrmanarrayof ‘‘materialities’’ that pertainto the body,that which issigniŽed bythe domainsof biology,anatomy, physiology, hormonal and chemical composition,illness, weight,metabolism, life and death. None ofthis can bedenied’. 17 This iswhat BrunoLatour refers toascomprehendingthe ‘thingness ofthe thing’. 18

It is here that Iwant tosuggest that non-linear accounts ofbiology, and of reproductionmore speciŽ cally, area valuableresource forfeminists contemplating materialrepresentations ofsexual reproduction.Non-Darwinian biology challenges the hegemonic representationof sexual di Verence, includingsuch notionsas the immutabilityof sexual di Verence, feminine passivity andmale activity, andfemale sexual reproduction.As SharonKinsman argues:

Because most ofus arenot familiar with the species, andwith the diverse patterns ofDNA mixing andreproduction they embody,our struggles tounderstand humans (andespecially human dilemmas about‘ sex’, ‘gender’and ‘ sexual orientation’) areimpoverished. Shouldn’t aŽsh whose gonadscan beŽ rst male,then female,help us todetermine what constitutes ‘male’and ‘ female’? Shouldn’t anaphid Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 fundatrix(‘ stem mother’) informour ideas about ‘ mother’? There on the rosebush, she neatly copiesherself, depositingminuscule, sap- siphoning,genetically identicaldaughters. Aphids might lead us to ask not‘ why dothey clone?’but ‘ why don’t we?’Shouldn’ t the long- term female homosexualpair bonding in certain species ofgulls help deŽne ourviews ofsuccessful parenting,and help [us]re ect onthe intersection ofsocial norms andbiology? 19

With aview toexploring how knowledgeof non-sexual andsexual reproductive practices amongsthuman andnon-human livingmatter, and sexual behaviormore generally, mightenhance ourunderstandings of sexual reproductionand sexual diVerence, Iturn nowto a briefreview ofnon-linear materialism asausefulparadigm with which tobridge‘ matter’and ‘ culture’. Iwill arguethat non-Darwinianbiology, Hird 96 as non-linear materialism,is moreunstable and non-normative than traditional appealsto ‘ nature’.

Non-linearMaterialism

In an analysis that combines critical theory with physics, Karen Barado Vers an epistemologyfor comprehending ‘ things’(matter) that doesnot depend on a notion of‘ truth as afaithfulre ection ofa static worldof being’ . 20 Baraddevelops what she terms ‘agentialrealism’ to refer to(amongst otherthings) the natureof scientiŽc andother social practices, the natureof reality, the natureof matter andthe relationshipbetween the materialand the discursive inepistemic practices. 21 Agential realism seeks tomove beyond the traditionaldivision between ‘realism’and ‘ social constructivism’. Whereas in classical Newtonian physics there is an assumptionthat observationscan betransparent (that adistinctioncan bemadebetween observations andobjects), Niels Bohrargued this distinctionto be impossible. Bohr deŽ ned a ‘phenomenon’as the lack ofinherent distinctionbetween objectsand their agencies ofobservation. 22 This means that ‘reality isnotcomposed of things-in-themselves or things-behind-phenomena,but things-in-phenomen a’. 23 This ontologydoes not supposebeing as priorto signiŽ cation (as in classical realism andsome cultural feminist theory), butneither doesit understand being as aproductof language (as insome Derrideanand cultural formulations).Rather, agentialrealism examines the ways inwhich natureand culture intra-act,asforexample, how di Verent disciplinary cultures (such as feminist theory) deŽne what counts as ‘nature’and what counts as ‘culture’.24

Anumberof feminist scholars concerned with science studies,and non-linear biology speciŽcally, o Verinteresting anduseful ways of intra-acting with matter.For instance, SarahF ranklin arguesthat the most pervasive andpowerful representation of nature isasabiologicalentity; that the originof ‘lifeitself ’isrepresented inbiologicalterms as naturalselection andegg and sperm activity. 25 Franklin traverses conicting representations of,on the onehand, biology as telos oforganicsurvival throughsexual reproduction– traditionalneo-Darwinian accounts such asRichard Dawkins’s ‘selŽsh gene’– to,on the otherhand, the non-linearity ofgenes asinformationreproduction. One ofthe signiŽcant implicationsof the shift to‘ genomic governmentality’is that Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 ‘many of[biology’ s] formerfoundational Ž ctions arenow inthe reliquarybeside Lamarckism, [and]neither lifenor sex [arebranches] onthe same familytree that Darwinborrowed from the Bibleto begin with’ . 26 The transformationfrom linear evolutionto non-linear informaticlife is apointI will return tolater.

Like Barad,Donna Haraway developsa notionof materiality as bothmaterial and semiotic eVect. Haraway isparticularlyinterested intrans-species/cendence/fusions/ gene/genics/nationalthat disturbthe hierarchy oftaxonomic categories (genus, family,class, order,kingdom) derived from pure, self-contained andself-containing ‘nature’. ForHaraway, trans ‘cross aculturally salient line between natureand artiŽce, andthey greatly increase the density ofall kinds ofothertra Yconthe bridge between what counts asnatureand culture’ . 27 What appealsto meaboutthe concept of‘trans’is that itworks equallywell bothbetween andwithin matter,confounding parallax 97 the notionof the well-deŽned, inviolable self which precedes Western culture’s ‘stories ofthe human place in nature,that is,genesis andits endless repetitions’. 28 As Haraway argues,in these Western stories ‘history is erased,for other organisms as well as forhumans, in the doctrineof types andintrinsic purposes,and a kindof timeless stasis innatureis piouslynarrated. The ancient cobbled-together,mixed-up history oflivingbeings, whose longtradition of genetic exchange will bethe envy of industryfor a longtime to come, gets short shift’. 29

As Strathern, Barad,F ranklin andHaraway’ s analyses suggest,non-linear biology, andnew materialism moregenerally, has movedaway froman understandingof matter as astable,monolithic and inert entity, towardsa representationof matter as acomplex opensystem subjectto emergent properties.Manuel DeLanda traces the history ofthe philosophyof matter todemonstratehow simple behavior,deŽ ned throughthe emergingscience ofchemistry as matter that conforms tothe laws of deŽnite properties,became the majorfocus of scientiŽ c attention. 30 Tremendous gainswere madein understandingproperties of inert matter,but at the expense of recognizing what Deleuze andGuattari term the ‘machinic phylum’or the overall set ofself-organizing processes within the universe, includingorganic and inorganic matter,that is producedby non-linear dynamics. 31 By observingthe structures and processes whereby organicand non-organic matter self-organize, Deleuze was able toaddress the majorphilosophical concerns ofessentialism (that matter has its own essence a priori toculture) bysuggestingthat the formmatter takes comes frommatter itself, that is,spontaneous morphogenesis. 32 Deleuze andGuattari explain how diVerent structures (geologic,biological, socio-economic) areproduced through ‘strata’(homogeneous elements such as sedimentary rocks, species andsocial hierarchies) and‘ meshworks’(heterogeneous elements such as igneousrocks, ecosystems andpre-capitalist markets). 33

Taking intoaccount the ideathat matter possesses its own ‘immanent andintensive resources forthe generationof form from within’ might help us tothink about materialitywithout the usualaccompaniment ofessentialism, where matter is understoodas an inert container foroutside forms. 34 These observationsof matter mightaid feminist reections ontheories ofgender ‘ complimentarity’such as the divisionof labourin society andthe ‘public/private’divide. One ofthe reasons that Ithink nonlinear-materialist feminists increasingly engagewith Deleuze and Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Guattari’s work is because matter is notconceived undera ‘juridicaltranscendent plane’(i.e. in need oftranslation by humans) butas immanently self-organizing. 35 Deleuze andGuattari have developeda theory ofthe matteringof culture,as itwere, that,in reŽguring matter as molecular,mobile and dynamic, challenges the distinctionbetween human andnon-human, agentic andnon-agentic, stable and unstable.36

According tothis non-linear readingof history, matter is farfrom inert. Emergent hybridizationsare not solely the productof human agency, butare indigenous to networking opensystems. ManualDeLanda characterizes this non-linear history as ‘anarrativeof contingencies, notnecessities, ofmissed opportunitiesto follow diVerent routesof development, not of a unilinearsuccession ofways toconvert energy, matter,and information into cultural products’. 37 If Darwinpushed Hird 98 humanity,once andfor all, from the evolutionarypedestal, the physical sciences have since madeclear that evolutionhas noforesight: it is notheaded towards perfection.Evolution is bettercharacterized, in the wordsof Arthur Koestler,as an ‘epic tale toldby astutterer’. 38 AsDeLandaargues: ‘ naturalselection’ is ‘merely the failureof all possibleo Vspringthat areborn or hatched topersist andreproduce in the gameof life’ . 3 9

Science itself presents anincreasingly detailedpicture of matter asaself-organizing, networking,complex system ofemergent organicand nonorganic properties. Kevin Kelly outlinesthese emergent propertiesto include maximizing heterogeneity which ‘speeds adaptation,increases resilience, andis almost always the source ofinnovations’ . 40 Relatedto heterogeneity is the principleof seeking persistent disequilibriumas the ‘continuousstate ofsurŽng foreveron the edgebetween never stoppingbut never falling’. 41 Also includedis the principleof honouring errors: evolutionitself is ‘systematic errormanagement’ . 4 2 Finally, Kelly arguesthat emergent propertiespursue no optima, but have multiplegoals:

An adaptivesystem must tradeo V between exploitinga known path ofsuccess (optimizinga current strategy), ordiverting resources to exploringnew paths (thereby wasting energy trying less e Ycient methods).So vast arethe mingleddrives in any complex entity that itis impossibleto unravel the actualcauses ofits survival.Survival is amany-pointedgoal. Most living organisms are so many-pointed they areblunt variations that happento work, rather than precise renditions ofproteins, genes, andorgans. 43

In exploringthese emergent properties,non-linear science, orneo-materialism, aims notto distil matter’ s incalculable variationto a simple,single explanationof ‘reality’, butrather tonormalize these very di Verences.44 Indeed,Rabinow argues that if‘ nature’is to‘ retainany meaning atall itmust signify an uninhibited polyphenomenality ofdisplay’. 4 5

Tomy mind,one of the most importantthemes toemerge within non-Darwinian biologyis the notionof ‘ organicchauvinism’ . ManualDeLanda emphasizes that if naturehas a‘point’, itis the process itself, notthe coagulationof nature (of which ourbodies are a primeexample): Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009

In the eyes ofmany human beings,life appears to be a uniqueand special phenomenon[...] This view betrays an ‘organicchauvinism’ that leads us tounderestimate the vitality ofthe processes ofself- organisationin otherspheres ofreality [...]In many respects the circulationis what matters, notthe particularforms that itcauses toemerge [...]Ourorganic bodies are nothing but temporary coagulationsin these ows:we capturein ourbodies a certain portion ofthe owat birth, then release itagain when we dieand micro- organismstransform us intoa new batch ofraw materials. 46

What mightthese non-linear accounts ofmatter say aboutreproduction, and how mightfeminists use these accounts toframe analyses ofthe ‘reproducingbody’ ? parallax 99 ReproducingBodies

In this Žnal section Iwant tosuggest how the paradigmsoutlined by non-linear materialism mightapply to the Želdof non-linear biology.For some timenow Ihave increasingly immersed myself in the biologicalsciences, andmy forageshave ledto some interesting Žndings,which Idetailhere. 47 The most compellingrepresentation ofanon-linear system, inwhich multipleforms of matter-energy (includingminerals, biomassand genes) enter intonon-linear relationshipswith uncertain outcomes,is the body.48 In this section, Iwant too Ver some resources forthinking about reproductionin anon-Darwinianframe.

Interacting Bodies :Traditionalevolutionary theory constructed asystem ofhierarchical relationshipsbetween, andwithin, plantand animal species. However, contemporary non-linear biologyunderstands this relationshipas much moreof a meshwork than atop-downor bottom-up system. And replacingthe traditionaltwo-kingdom classiŽcation, scientists now speak ofŽve: bacteria,protists, fungi, plants andanimals. Mostof the organismsin four out of the Žve kingdomsdo not require sex for reproduction. 49 Species within these kingdomsinteract in dynamic ways, each with the potentialto change each other’s adaptiveenvironment. Forexample, only avery few primitivefungi are two-sexed. Schizophyllum, onthe otherhand, has morethan 28,000sexes. And sex amongstthese promiscuousmushrooms is literally a‘touch- and-go’event, leadingLaidman to conclude that forfungithere are‘ somany genders, solittle time’. 50

Only bytaking our skin as adeŽnitive impenetrableboundary are we ableto see ourbodies as discrete selves. Ourhuman bodies,like those ofother animals and plants, aremore accurately ‘builtfrom a mass ofinteracting selves. Abody’s capacities areliterally the result ofwhat itincorporates; the self is notonly corporealbut corporate’. 5 1 The cells in ourbodies engage in constant, energetic reproduction. Oyama refers tothis ‘mobileexchange’ of genetic, intra-andextra-cellular and environmental inuences asa‘choreographyof ontogeny’ . 52 Indeed,the millions of microbes which exist on,and in, our bodies makes ourtraditional deŽ nition of ourselves as single organismshighly problematic.Our cells alsoprovide asylum for avariety ofviruses andcountless genetic fragments. And none ofthis interaction requiresany bodilycontact with anotherhuman being. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009

Morethan Žfty synthetic chemicals owinto our bodies daily (including tinned vegetables,cigarettes, chemical detergents, makeup,DDT) andalter ourendocrine systems.53 Cosmicirradiation, the acquisitionof viruses andsymbiots andexposure tochemicals alsoalter, or add to, our DNA structure which producesvariation withoutsexual reproduction. 54 Endocrine-disruptingcompounds have been foundto beresponsible for a recently reporteddoubling in incidence ofhypospadias in the United States andEurope. 55 Childrenare at risk ofexposure to over 15,000 high- production-volumesynthetic chemicals; most ofthem developedin the last Žfty years. Morethan half have notyet been tested fortoxicity. 56 The eVects ofDDTandDDE have beenstudied on adiverse rangeof animals fromTiger Salamandersto Cricket Frogs.57 Anumberof researchers areinterested in the possiblecausal relationship between exposure in utero toenvironmental chemicals ande Vects onhuman sexual Hird 100 reproductionincluding sex ratio,disruption of androgensignaling, decreased sperm numberand quality, androgen insensitivity, testicular andbreast cancer, decreased prostateweight, endometriosis, decreased fertility,increased hypospadiasand undescended testes as well as adverse e Vects onimmune and thyroid function. 58 Again,each ofthese exchanges with the environment may e Vect variationsin sex andfertility withoutany recourse tosexual reproduction.

Evolving Bodies :Notonly have evolutionarybiologists replaced the two-kingdom schema with Žve-kingdoms,but the majordivision is nolonger between plants and animals,but between eukaryotes(cells with nuclei such asplastidsand mitochondria) andprokaryotes (such asbacteria). 59 Humanbeings evolved from the protistlineage. And protistsdeveloped meiotic sex, oneof the most common formsof reproduction in which all plants,animals andsexual fungiparticipate, whereby cell divisiontakes place byhalving the chromosomenumber. Thus, duringmost ofour evolutionary heritage,our ancestors reproducedwithout sex.

Notonly, as Ihave said,do we tendto think that reproductionon this planetrequires sex, buta pervasive heteronormativeassumption claims that sex must have some evolutionarypurpose. But as Margulisand Sagan argue, sex may have no evolutionarypurpose whatsoever. 60 The mere existence ofany particularanatomical trait(the appendixis the most commonly citedexample) doesnot mean this trait was an adaptationin the interests ofsurvival.Thus, rather than deliberateon how most livingorganisms are able to reproduce without sex, scientists aremore puzzled bythose species which do engagein sexual reproduction.Sexual reproduction consumes twice the energy andgenes ofaesexual reproduction. 61 After an extensive search onthe biologicalliterature on sex, Mackay concluded:

The most intriguingaspect ofmy research was why we have sex at all.After all,sexual reproductionin animals startedonly 300million years ago.Life on earth goton pretty well for3000 million years beforethat with asexual reproduction.[Sexual reproduction] takes moretime, it uses moreenergy, andmates may bescarce or uncooperative. 62

AsIhave alreadynoted, sexual reproductionis notnecessary forvariation. 63 In their Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 intriguingspeculation on the biologicalutility of sexual reproduction,as aminority practice, Margulisand Sagan argue that humans’relatively largetestes andpenises only make sense inthe context ofprevalent sexual promiscuity. 64 Only chimps have largertesticles than humans, andchimps aremore sexually promiscuousthan humans. From an evolutionarybiological perspective, sexual promiscuityis good because itadds genetic variety.In oneof the most extraordinarilycomprehensive documentationof homosexuality, transgender andnon-reproductive heterosexual behaviourin animals,Bruce Bagemihlconvincingly arguesthat ‘naturalsystems are drivenas much byabundanceand excess asthey areby limitationand practicality’ . 65 Rather than see gayparenting, lesbianism, homosexuality, sex-changing 66 and other behaviourin animals as aberrationsin needof explanation, scientists expect to Ž nd these behaviors, inabundance ,inastrongspecies orecosystem (Bagemihlrefers tothis as the ‘quietrevolution’ in biologicaltheory). parallax 101 At the chromosomallevel, whilst notwo people (except identicaltwins) have the same chromosomalconstitution, all humans share ninety-nine percent oftheir chromosomes. Eighty-Žve percent ofourgenetic variationoccurs within any nation, andonly Žfteen percent ofgenetic variationcan betraced between nationswithin any given race, andbetween races. 67 In terms ofour DNA structure, human beings have approximatelythree billionbase pairs, whilst corn andsalamanders have more than thirty times that number.About ninety percent ofhuman DNAhas noknown functionand is referredto as ‘junk’. 68 Only the remainingten percent ofour DNA is transcribed intoRNA andthen codedfor proteins. 69 Further questioningthe assumptionof sexual di Verence, mitochondria(organelles containingenzymes that regulatethe reactions that provideenergy forcells) contain DNAwhich is entirely inheritedfrom the mother.This means that the majority ofany human being’s DNA isinheritedmatrilineally. Indeed,through mitochondrial DNA, biologistshave been ableto trace the Žrst homosapiens toabout 600 thousand years. Evolutionarily speaking,it is the genes containedin the nucleus ofsperm, andin the nucleus and mitochrondriaof ova that survive. In contrast, the bodyas container ofthese genes orphenotypeof these genes never survives.

Reproducing Bodies :In contrast tothe minimal amountof speciŽ cally sexual reproductionthat some human beingsengage in, each ofus engages inconstant reproduction.Thus apartfrom the fusingof separate bodies, human beingsengage in recombination (cutting andpatching ofDNA strands), merging (fertilizationof cells), meiosis (cell divisionby halving chromosome number,for instance in makingsperm andeggs) and mitosis (cell divisionwith maintenance ofcell number).Margulis andSagan refer to‘ jumpinggenes, ‘‘redundant’’ DNA,nucleotiderepair systems, andmany otherdynamic genetic processes [that]exploit the ‘‘cut andpaste’ ’ recombinationof ancient bacteria-style sexuality that evolvedlong before plants, animals,or even fungior protistsappeared on this planet’. 7 0 Moreover,we constantly reproduceour own bodies as an essential featureof autopoiesis. W ereproduceour own livers every twomonths, ourstomach linings every Žvedays,new skin every six weeks andninety-eight percent ofour atoms every year. 71

Ourhuman bodieslive inapermanently fertilizedstate, with only ouregg and sperm cells qualifyingas sexed (haploid):the vast majorityof ourcells areintersex (diploid). And forty-fourof our forty-six chromosomes arecompletely unrelatedto sexual Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 diVerence. The only thing that doesnot exist is apure(Y orYY)male.There has been acase ofa boyborn with an XXconŽguration, however. This boy’s ovum split several times beforebeing fertilized by sperm, providing further evidence that parthenogenicreproduction extends tohumans.

DonnaHaraway highlights the key ironyof our evolving and reproducing bodies, that in biologicalterms sex precludes reproduction:

There is never any reproductionof the individualin sexually reproducingspecies. Shortof cloning [...]neither parentis continued inthe child, who is arandomlyreassembled genetic packageprojected intothe next generation.T oreproducedoes not defeat death any morethan killing orothermemorable deeds of words.Maternity might Hird 102 bemore certain than paternity,but neither secures the self into the future.In short,where there is sex, literal reproductionis a contradictionin terms. Sexualdi Verence foundedon compulsory heterosexuality is itself the key technology forthe productionand perpetuationof western Man andthe assurance ofthis projectas a fantastic lie. 72

ABacterialOntology?

Ihave triedto argue in this paperthat biologicalstudies suggest that ourcultural reiŽcation of sexual di Verence is basedupon a cursory andsuperŽ cial understanding oforganicmateriality. Far fromrevealing sexual dimorphism,at every materiallevel, ourbodies practice awonderfulcombination of intersex, reproductionand heterogeneousexchange with ourenvironment. It is ironicthat homogeneityin religion,nationalism, sexuality, race, ethnicity andgender is sooften encouraged overthe heterogeneity we need tophysically survive. Iwant toconclude byreecting uponthe human conditionfrom a non-humanocentric perspective. This reection invites us tocontemplate atheory ofresemblance concerned less with being than doing,anda theory ofthe bodyconcerned less with surface than with depth. By paying attentionto non-linear biologyit is possibleto acknowledge that human bodies, like all livingmatter, physically actualize sex diversity.Taking account ofour bodiesas engagingin constant non-binarysex, as biologicallyqueer, precipitates a reconsiderationof matter,the integrityof the self, sexual di Verence andreproduction.

Onthis point,I cannot resist endingwith the observationthat inourcollective action (doing),human beingsresemble beingsthat humans ironically revile –an argument mademore pointedly by a computer(forced to live onearth amongsthumans) than me:

I’dlike toshare arevelationI’ ve hadduring my timehere. It came tome when Itriedto classify yourspecies. Irealized you’re notactually mammals. Every mammal onthis planetinstinctively developsa naturalequilibrium with the surroundingenvironment. Butyou

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 humans donot.Y oumoveto an areaand multiply until every natural resource is consumed.The only way youcan survive is tospread to anotherarea. There is anotherorganism on this planetthat follows the same pattern.A virus.Human beings are a disease.A cancer of this planet.Y ou’re aplague,and we arethe cure. 73

Unlike Datafrom Star Trek, computerAgent Smithis tobe reviled because ithas the audacityto fear infection from humans. Perhaps Agent Smith’s fearof infection stems fromhuman beings’s nearly uniquepropensity to ‘ shorten all foodchains in the web,eliminate most intermediariesand focus all biomasson themselves. Whenever anoutsidespecies tries toinsert itself intoone of these chains, tostart the process ofcomplexiŽcation again, it is ruthlessly expungedas a‘‘weed’’ ’. 74 Indeed, humans seem tobe the only species onthis planetto Ž ght againstnon-linearity and parallax 103 diversity.In evolutionaryand species survival terms, human beingsmost resemble viruses which alsosurvive bycolonizing, and then consuming,new territories.

Butrather than resemble viruses we mightlearn fromanother microscopic organism that displaysa numberof advantages over humans, especially with regardto reproduction.Fewer than onemillion days have passedsince the birthof Christ. 75 Bacteria,on the otherhand, have been aroundfor about three billionyears. Sagan is rightto argue that ‘bacteriaare biochemically andmetabolically far more diverse than all plants andanimals puttogether’ . 7 6 On their curriculum vitaebacteria can boastto be the inventors ofall majorforms of metabolism, the ancestor ofall organismson earth andthe inventors ofmulticellularity, nanotechnology and metallurgy.Bacteria can alsodetect light,produce alcohol, convert variousgases and minerals, cross species barriers,perform hypersex, pass onpure genes through meiosis,shu Zegenes andsuccessfully resist death.Although the subject ofa paper in its own right,it is worth notinghere that much ofthe ‘bravenew world’of reproductivetechnologies is human mimicry ofwell-worn, millions ofyear old bacterialpractices. Ourremote ancestors continueto promiscuously exchange genes withoutgetting hung up on sexual reproduction.Bacteria are not picky andwill avidlyexchange genes with justabout any livingorganism anywhere inthe world, includingthe human body.Thus bacteriaare beyond the false male/female dichotomyof human discourse. 77 Since bacteriarecognize andavidly embrace diversity,they donot discriminate onthe basisof ‘ gender’di Verences atall. The bacteriathat movefreely intoand within ourbodies are already inŽ nitely ‘gender’ diverse,as aremost ofthe species onthis planet.Because oftheir extreme adaptability,which is enabledby their preference forsex diversity,in evolutionary terms the most likely ‘species’to survive onearth is indisputablybacteria. So in the tiredgame of identity, I wouldchoose neither goddessnor cyborg. 78 Iwouldrather bea bacterium.

Notes

Ithank the anonymousreviewers and the editors(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2000), of parallax fortheir veryinsightful comments p.160. regardingan earlierversion of this paper. 5 Kate Soper, What isNature? (Oxford and 1 SadiePlant, Zeros and Ones (London:Fourth Cambridge,Mass.: Blackwell, 1995), pp.119– 148. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Estate,1997), p.205. 6 VickiKirby, ‘ QuantumAnthropologies’ in L. 2 EmileDurkheim, Suicide (London:Routledge and Simmonsand Heather W orth (eds), Derrida KeganPaul, 1970), p.385. Downunder (PalmerstonNorth: DunmorePress, 3 Philip Cohen, ‘The BoyWhose Blood Has No 2001),p.54. Father’ New Scientist ,(7October 1995), p.16; Lynn 7 LondaSchiebinger, Nature’s Body (London: Margulisand Dorion Sagan, What is Sex? (New Pandora,n.d.), p.9. York:Simon and Schuster, 1997); Lynn Margulis 8 Ithank the anonymousreviewer of this article andDorion Sagan, Mystery Dance. On the Evolution forthis comment. ofHuman Sexuality (NewY ork:Summit Books, 9 Marilyn Strathern, ‘NoNature,No Culture:The 1991);Lynn Margulisand Dorion Sagan, What is HagenCase’ in CarolMacCormack and Marilyn Life? (Berkeley:University of California Press, Strathern (eds), Nature, Culture and Gender 1995). (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1980), 4 Iborrowthe term‘ neo-materialism’from Rosi p.177. Braidotti,‘ Teratologies’in Ian Buchananand 10 Marilyn Strathern, ‘NoNature, No Culture: ClaireColebrook (eds), Deleuzeand Feminist Theory The HagenCase’ , p.176–177. Hird 104 11 Marilyn Strathern, ‘NoNature, No Culture: FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse T M (NewY orkand The HagenCase’ , p.213.See also Donna Haraway, London:Routledge), p.56. Primate Visions.Gender, Race and Nature in the World of 28 DonnaHaraway, Modern Science (NewY orkand London: Routledge, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. 1989),p.427, n. 4. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse T M , p.60. 12 ElizabethGrosz, ‘ Darwinand Feminism: 29 DonnaHaraway, PreliminaryInvestigations for a PossibleAlliance’ , Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. Australian Feminist Studies, no.29 (1999),p.31. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse T M , p.61. 13 Anne Witz,‘ WhoseBody Matters? Feminist 30 ManuelDeLanda, ‘ Uniformityand V ariability: Sociologyand the CorporealTurn in Sociology An Essayin the Philosophyof Matter’ , Doorsof andFeminism’ , p.4. Perception3 Conference(1995). 14 BrunoLatour, ‘ When Things StrikeBack: A 31 ManuelDeLanda, War inthe Age ofIntelligent PossibleContribution of‘ ‘ScienceStudies’ ’ tothe Machines (NewY ork:Swerve Editions, 1991), p.7– 8. SocialSciences’ , British Journal ofSociology , vol. 51, 32 ManuelDeLanda, ‘ Immanenceand no.1 (2000),p.109. Transcendencein the Genesisof Form’ , 15 CeliaRoberts, ‘ Thinking Biological pp.499–514. Materialities’, Australian Feminist Studies , no. 29 33 ManuelDeLanda, ‘ Immanenceand (1999),p.131. Transcendencein the Genesisof Form’, p.509. 16 Anne Witz,‘ WhoseBody Matters? Feminist 34 ManuelDeLanda, ‘ Deleuzeand the Open- Sociologyand the CorporealTurn in Sociology endedBecoming of the World’, www.brown.edu/ andFeminism’ , Body and Society ,vol.6, no. 2 Departments/Watson_Institute/programs/gs/ (2000),p.10. VirtualY2K/delanda.html (2000),pp.1– 10. 17 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter (New York: 35 MoiraGatens, ‘ Feminismas ‘ ‘Password’’: Routledge,1993), p.66. Re-thinkingthe ‘‘Possible’’ with Spinozaand 18 BrunoLatour, ‘ When Things StrikeBack: A Deleuze’, Hypatia,vol.15, no. 2 (2000),p.60. PossibleContribution of‘ ‘ScienceStudies’ ’ tothe 36 GillesDeleuze, DiÚ erence and Repetition (New York: SocialSciences’ , p.112. ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1994); Gilles Deleuze 19 Sharon Kinsman,‘ Life,Sex and Cells’ in andFelix Guattari, AThousand Plateaus (London: MaraleeMayberry, Banu Subramaniam and Lisa Athlone Press,1987). Weasel(eds), Feminist Science Studies (New York: 37 ManualDeLanda, AThousand Years ofNonlinear Routledge,2001), p.197. History (NewY ork:Swerve Editions, 1997), p.99. 20 ManuelDeLanda, ‘ Deleuzeand the Open- 38 ManualDeLanda, AThousand Years ofNonlinear endedBecoming of the World’, www.brown.edu/ History , p.71. Departments/Watson_Institute/programs/gs/ 39 ManualDeLanda, AThousand Years ofNonlinear VirtualY2K/delanda.html (2000),pp.1– 10. History,p.71.To illustrate this point,we typically 21 KarenBarad, ‘ ScientiŽc Literacy- > Agential assumeurban centres are su Veringfrom an ever Literacy = (Learning + Doing)ScientiŽ c decreasingamount of ‘nature’. Hence,the familiar Responsibility’in M.Mayberry,B. Subramaniam routineof leaving the city’s ‘ratrace’ on the andL. Weasel(eds), Feminist Science Studies (Newweekend to search for ‘ nature’. ButNigel York:Routledge, 2001), p.230. Clarkargues that ‘wild’(organic) and ‘ urban’ 22 KarenBarad, ‘ ScientiŽc Literacy- > Agential(nonorganic) are far from exclusive categories. Not Literacy = (Learning + Doing)ScientiŽ c onlydo rat exceed human populations in any Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 Responsibility’, p.231. givencity ( literalizingthe aboveslogan more than 23 KarenBarad, ‘ ScientiŽc Literacy- > Agential peoplegenerally assume), cities constitute dynamic Literacy = (Learning + Doing)ScientiŽ c systemsof organic and nonorganic elements Responsibility’, p.235. which vigorouslycombine to produce emergent 24 KarenBarad, ‘ ScientiŽc Literacy- > Agentialproperties. Mike Davis notes that various ora, Literacy = (Learning + Doing)ScientiŽ c faunaand animal species including rats, coyotes Responsibility’, p.240. andraccoons all display unexpected and often 25 SarahFranklin, ‘ LifeItself. GlobalNature and chaoticresurrection within urbancenters. In the GeneticImaginary’ , in SarahFranklin, Celia California, for instance, where the gourmetfed cat Luryand Jackie Stacey (eds), Global Nature, Global ordog, and the occasionaljogger, has beenprey Culture (London:Sage, 2000), pp.188– 227. tomountain lions, these lions appear to be in the 26 SarahFranklin, ‘ LifeItself. GlobalNature and processof ‘ abehavioralquantum jump: the the GeneticImaginary’ , p.219. emergenceof nonlinear lions with alusty appetite 27 DonnaHaraway, forslow, soft animals in spandex’. SeeNigel Clark, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. ‘‘‘Botanizingthe Ashphalt?’’ The ComplexLife of parallax 105 CosmopolitanBodies’ , Body and Society , vol. 6, nos 57 EdmundClark, David Norris and Richard 3–4 (2000),pp.23– 30; Anne Whiston Sprin, The Jones,‘ Interactions ofGonadal Steroids and Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (New Pesticides(DDT, DDE)onGonaduct Growth in York:Basic Books, 1984); Mike Davis, Ecology of LarvalTiger Salamanders’ , General and Comparative Fear: LosAngeles and the Imagination ofDisaster (New Endocrinology ,no.109 (1998), pp.94– 105; A. Reeder York:Metropolitan Books, 1998), p.249. etal., ‘ Formsand Prevalence of Intersexuality and 40 KevinKelly, Out ofControl. The New Biology of EVectsof Environmental Contaminants on Machines (London:Fourth Estate, 1994), p.604. Sexualityin CricketFrogs’ , Environmental Health 41 KevinKelly, Out ofControl. The New Biology of Perspectives ,vol.106, no. 5 (1998),pp.261– 266. Machines, p.605. 58 Ann OliverCheek and John McLachlan, 42 KevinKelly, Out ofControl. The New Biology of ‘Environmental Hormonesand the Male Machines, p.605. ReproductiveSystem’ , Journal ofAndrology , vol. 19, 43 KevinKelly, Out ofControl. The New Biology of no.1 (1998),pp.5– 10; Robert Golden et al., Machines, p.605. ‘Environmental EndocrineModulators and 44 HarvieFerguson, ‘ Meand My Shadows:On the HumanHealth: An Assessmentof the Biological Accumulationof Body-Images in WesternSociety Evidence’, Critical Review ofToxicology ,vol.28, no. 2 Part Two– TheCorporeal Forms of Modernity’ , (1998),pp.109– 227; Geary Olsen et al., ‘ An Body and Society ,vol.3, no. 3 (1997),p.10. EpidemiologicInvestigation of Reproductive 45 PaulRabinow, ‘ ArtiŽciality and Enlightenment: Hormonesin Men with OccupationalExposure to FromSociobiology to Biosociality’ , in Jonathan Peruorooctanoic Acid’ , JOEM,vol.40, no. 7 Craryand Sanford Kwinter (eds), Incorporations (1998),pp.614– 622; Risto Santti etal., (NewY ork:Urzone Books, 1992), p.249. 46 ‘Phytoestrogens:Potential EndocrineDisruptors in ManuelDeLanda, AThousand Years ofNonlinear Males’, Toxicology and Industrial Health , vol. 14, History,pp.103–104. 47 nos 1/2(1998),pp.223– 237; Niels Skakkeæ k In this eVort,I havere-entered university as an etal., ‘ GermCell Cancerand Disorders of undergraduatebiology student. This experience Spermatogenesis:An Environmental Connection?’ has ledme to re-evaluate many of the APMIS,no.106 (1998), pp.3– 12; C. Tyleret al., preconceptionsI hadabout biologists’ perceptions ‘EndocrineDisruption in Wildlife:A Critical ofnature as inert andstable. Reviewof the Evidence’, Critical Reviews ofToxicology , 48 NigelClark, ‘ ‘‘Botanizingthe Ashphalt?’’ The vol.28, no. 4 (1998),pp.319– 361. ComplexLife of Cosmopolitan Bodies’ , p.25. 59 Mineralsand animals do not belongto separate 49 Lynn Margulisand Dorion Sagan, What is kingdoms.All of the Žvekingdoms have species Sex?, p.17. which produceminerals. Lynn Margulisand 50 Jenni Laidman,‘ Reproductiona Touch-and-go DorionSagan, What isLife? , p.29. Thing forFungus’ , Nature,(July 242000), pp.1– 2. 60 Lynn Margulisand Dorion Sagan, Mystery Dance. 51 DorionSagan, ‘ Metametazoa:Biology and On the Evolution ofHuman Sexuality (New York: Multiplicity’, in Jonathan Craryand Sanford SummitBooks, 1991), pp.70– 75. Kwinter (eds), Incorporations (NewY ork:Urzone 61 BruceBagemihl, Biological Exuberance. Animal Books,1992), p.370. 52 Homosexualityand Natural Diversity (NewY ork:St. AnnemarieJonson, ‘Still Platonic AfterAll Martin’s Press,1999), p.254. TheseY ears:ArtiŽ cial Life and Form/ Matter 62 Dualism’, Australian Feminist Studies ,no.29 (1999), Judith Longsta V Mackay,‘ Why HaveSex?’ ,

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009 British Medical Journal (2001),p.623. p.51. 63 53 TheoColborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Butthe myth that sexualityproduces greater PetersonMyers, Our StolenFuture (London:Little biodiversityis popularenough to have acquired its Brownand Company, 1996), p.199. ownnickname: The Red Queen Hypothesis . This name 54 Lynn Margulisand Dorian Sagan, What is Sex? isderived from the RedQueen in Alice in Wonderland (NewY ork:Simon and Schuster, 1997), p.19. whotells Alicethat she mustrun veryfast in 55 L.Paulozziet al., ‘ HypospadiasTrends in Two Wonderlandjust to stay in the sameplace. See AmericanSurveillance Systems’ , Pediatrics, no. 100 Lynn Margulisand Dorian Sagan, What is Sex?, (1997),pp.831– 834; H. Dolket al., ‘ Riskof pp.120–121. 64 CongenitalAnomalies Near Hazardous Waste Lynn Margulisand Dorian Sagan, What is LandŽll Sitesin Europe:The EUROHAZCON Sex?, p.33. 65 Study’, The Lancet,no.352 (1998), pp.423– 427. BruceBagemihl, Biological Exuberance. Animal 56 Philip Landriganet al., ‘ Children’s Healthand Homosexualityand Natural Diversity , p.215. the Environment: ANewAgenda for Prevention 66 Scientists haveobserved three kinds of sex- Research’, Environmental Health Perspectives , vol. 106, changinganimals in nature. Freemartins become no.3 (1998),pp.787– 794. intersexedwhen they becomeassociated in utero Hird 106 with an ‘opposite’sex twin. Chimeras have organs 70 Lynn Margulisand Dorian Sagan, What is with geneticallyfemale and male elements. Mosaics Sex?, p.181. 71 referto animals with amixtureof femaleand male Lynn Margulisand Dorion Sagan, What is traits,including diverse chromosome conŽ gurations Life?, p.17. 72 in diVerentcells in the body.See Bruce Bagemihl, DonnaHaraway, Primate Visions.Gender, Race, Biological Exuberance. Animal Homosexualityand Natural and Nature inthe World ofModern Science , p.352. 73 The Matrix.WarnerBrothers, 1999. Diversity, p.235. 74 67 Lynn Margulisand Dorian Sagan, What is ManualDeLanda, AThousand Years ofNonlinear History, p.108. Sex?, p.113. 75 Lynn Margulisand Dorian Sagan, What is 68 PaulRabinow, ‘ ArtiŽciality and Enlightenment: Sex?, p.14. FromSociobiology to Biosociality’ , in Jonathan 76 DorionSagan, ‘ Metametazoa:Biology and Craryand Sanford Kwinter (eds), Incorporations Multiplicity’, p.377. (NewY ork:Urzone Books, 1992), p.237. 77 Lynn Margulisand Dorian Sagan, What is 69 AnnemarieJonson reviewsarguments supporting Sex, p.89. the oppositeclaim that proteinsproduce DNA. 78 DonnaHaraway, ‘ ACyborgManifesto: Science, SeeAnnemarie Jonson, ‘Still Platonic AfterAll Technology,and Socialist-Feminism in the Late TheseY ears:ArtiŽ cial Life and Form/ Matter Twentieth Century’, in Simians,Cyborgs and Women Dualism’, pp.47–62. (NewY ork:Routledge, 1991), pp.149– 182.

Myra J. Hird is aLecturer in the Schoolof Sociology and Social Policy, Queen’ s University, Belfast.She is the authorof several articles onnew materialism,sexual diVerence, intersex andtransgender. She iscompletinga sole-authoredbook on the relationof intersex andtranssex totheories ofsexual di Verence. ([email protected]) Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:40 18 November 2009

parallax 107 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 108– 112

The Fall: FictocriticalWriting

StephenMuecke

Youhave invitedme tolunch because youwant topick my brains.So we meet at Central,then walk downthe roadto the Malaya.This is ourŽ rst meeting andI immediatelyŽ ndyou attractive. Over curry, which youŽ ndtoo spicy, youare curious aboutmy name.I say itis ofGerman origin,and means ‘little y’.Because you speak French Ican pointout that itis acognateof mouche:‘My name is Monsieur Mouche.’And youlaugh.

****

Once Jacques Derridaasked us fora name:‘ Wemust invent (aname) forthose ‘‘critical’’ inventions which belongto literaturewhile deformingits limits’. 1 The name we wouldhave given him was Žctocriticism, buthe went onanyway towrite, and perform,critically, andsometimes Žctionally, forinstance bytelling stories while makinghis philosophicalarguments. One common e Vect ofthis was the collapsing ofthe ‘detached’and all-knowing subject into the text, sothat his (oryour) performanceas writer includes dealingwith aproblemall contemporarywriters must face: how thehell did Iget here ?

Faced with masses ofways ofknowing things comingfrom all pointsof the compass, the contemporarywriter asks what now can legitimatehis orher pointof view, and then tends notto just add to existing views ofthe world,but traces apath(which the readerwill follow,avidly of course) showing how we gotto this position,and what isatstake. What is atstake forŽ ctocritical writingis the task of‘deforming’literature in aworldwhose politicsis moredeŽ ned by global transcultural relationshipsthan

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009 bypride in one’ s nationalliterature; by pragmatism more than idealism;by new ways offeeling emerging out of decades ofreading in amultimediafashion; and by the signiŽcant inuence ofnew post-structuralist philosophiesand post-modern literary experiments.

When criticism iswell-written, andŽ ction has moreideas than usual,the distinction between the twostarts tobreak down. It is alittle crisis because criticism can’t be reliedupon to ‘ keep its distance’, andŽ ction can’t berelied upon to stay in its imaginaryand sometimes politicallyirrelevant worlds. 2 The whole artiŽce ofliterary criticism was builtup in order to do one thing really; tounmask the secrets ofart. And the Žction was always there re-enchanting the worldby puttingon the beautiful masks againand again.

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals 108 DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000028000 Gilles Deleuze thoughtof a contrast which will serve me well in this essay, the distinctionbetween concepts andpercepts. 3 Criticismuses concepts andŽ ction percepts. Philosophy,according to Deleuze, is aboutthe invention ofnew concepts which have the abstractionand  exibilityto be taken upby others andused. Art, onthe otherhand, invents percepts, monumentalperceptions if you like, which are just there,either they work orthey don’t. They can stand alone.Y oucan use someone else’s percept,but it will bean imitation.And percepts andconcepts chase each otheraround successively masking andunmasking.

****

Yousmile atme, like aoweropening brightly. The sun must beyour reference, butit does not matter tous ifthe sun is there ornot, adjudicating. The smile is a percept,it is not in you or at me.Nobody invented the smile, we arethe bodiesin whose relationshipthe smile, as an ideaand a Vect, can manifest itself. CanI leave itatthat?No, things moveon andchange, the smile now is goneand you are talking abouta symbol in LesFleurs du Mal ,orsomething, and I want toknow what your smile meant, bywhich Imean,what concept can Iattach toit? The space between usdilates,it opens and closes with a Vect, feelings which arewarm orcool, fast or slow, sador joyous. As fast as Ithink Iknow what youreally mean,which has got nothingto do with yourinterior, there aremore words, half Žnished sentences, and the unbearablebeauty of the curve ofa lip.

Yourefer me toa website:Deleuze onSpinoza, his 1978lecture: ‘Sadness will be any passionwhatsoever which involves adiminutionof mypowerof acting,and joy will beany passioninvolving an increase in my powerof acting’ . Carrythat idea overinto writing, you say, andwe will always Žnda way tounblock creative ows.

Yoursuccession ofmasks outstripsmy unmasking,so that bythe next dayI have understoodnothing and you have becomea fantasy, sooverpoweringlypresent that all Iwant todo is loveyou, to bringsomething else intoexistence: moretrouble, no doubt.Fantasies thrive onvery little,on the glimpse,the hint, the allusion.If you know toomuch (all the secrets) there is nothingleft forthe imaginationto playwith, andthe ideawithers. And ofcourse there is anotherwho is always there, critical of everything, commenting.This toois nourishment. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009 Deleuze isimpatientwith peoplewho believe they can make anovel outof everyday perceptions,memories, notes orobservations.The task istoextract apercept,a bloc ofsensations which can stand alone,disconnected fromthe material( language),the authoror the reader.A sun-ower a` la van Goghis his head‘ hauntedby terror’ . 4 The shabbydetective invented byChandler or maybe Poe (the a Yrmationof the ideaof this character liftingout of those mean streets) has becomea giant,a god. He is everywhere andpersists in time,and cannot bedestroyed, such is the nature ofthe percept.Y oucan invalidatea concept, butnot a percept.

Perceptions areso  imsy, andmemory sounreliable. Can I piece togetheryour face, in my mind?It isjusta ash, then gone.As the ‘rest ofyou’ builds up its fantastical proportions.I have rungand said this cannot goon, we will meet, onelast time,but parallax 109 Ihave only seen youtwice, fortwo hours, then three quartersof an hour.W ewill have apicnic in the BotanicGardens. Iwill greetyou, and as youo Ver your face forthe cheek-kisses mygaze will insist, andthen ourkiss will buryitself inthe storm ofsensations Iwas talking about.Concept/ percept,who cares?

****

Iinvite youto the cinema, butyou say youcannot come.Y ouare stuck where you are,you say, writingyour thesis aboutsymbols andmeanings, andI imaginea paradisefull of  owers.In Vertigo,SamRohdie tells us,Scottie (the detective, played byJames Stewart) ‘falls in lovewith an image[...] fromthe beginningand so do we’.5 Iwatch iton video. It is aboutthe cinema as deception:

Kim Novak in Vertigo has multipleidentities. She isJudy Bartonmaking believeshe is MadeleineElster tomislead the detective ...Scottie is doublymislead. He followsa false trailand a false personand falls inlove with afalse identity,with MadeleineElster who is not MadeleineElster.

The actors masqueradeas characters whoin turnmasquerade as othercharacters in a mis-en-abyme structure which is avertiginousfall intothe loss ofrepresentation. Scottiewas never fully ‘himself ’;having beentraumatized by anaccident, hesu Vers fromvertigo. As he encounters KimNovak andher false identities(one of which is Elster’s deadgrandmother Carlotta V alde´zbequeathingsuicide as atragicfate) he falls forillusion again and again. Remarkably, his passionis the only thing which is real,it is vertiginous,‘ astate ofunbalance’ . Movement, notidentity, is the essence ofpassion.And cinema, where itbecomes the ricochet oflight intothe unknown.

‘At the end’, says Rohdie,‘ the Žlm restores Scottieto himself andthe truth.The price oftruth is dreadful:he loses Madeleine,and twice over,as Madeleinewho Žctively died,then as Judy who really doesdie, taking with her his illusionsand his happiness.’ 6 The detective is never happier,it seems, than when he is walking into the trapmade specially forhim, and in the context ofthe Žlm, the art,there is no exit. Only asdirectors,spectators andactors can wewalk away,but to other illusions? Foras Rohdiewisely observes: ‘Tosustain alove,perhaps to sustain all love,one Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009 can never bewholly genuineor completely oneself’. 7

****

Iwill goback tothe University toteach abouttexts andpitcher plants.Ce ´zanne’s paintings,I reckon, arenot representations ofMont Saint Victoire, they are‘ snares forthe eye’: the viewer’s gaze must becaptured in something like an organicway. 8 Sowhat kindof capture does the literary text perform,when itis nothingmuch morethan black tracks?

What isimportantin atext isnotwhat itmeans, butwhat itdoesand incites todo. What itdoes: the charge ofa Vect itcontains and transmits. What itincites todo: the metamorphosesof this potential Muecke 110 energy intoother things –othertexts, butalso paintings, photographs, Žlm sequences, politicalactions, decisions, erotic inspirations, acts of insubordination,economic initiatives,etc. 9

Its modeof captureis multiple,sensational. The writingteacher says: Make sure you cover sight,smell, touchand so on in yourstory. Ask yourselfat the endof each section: what has the readerfelt, and then also,what has the readerlearned? Percept andconcept.

****

Pitchers can beup to 7 inches long,curved anddecumbent, widening prominently towardthe mouth.Y oufall intothem. They arenot  owers,they areevergreen leaves, modiŽed into pitchers andarranged in arosette,the pitcher usually being fullor partly full of rainwater. Leaf colour varies frombright yellow-green todark purpleand most commonly amiddlevariation with strongred venation. The leaves, orpitchers, areproduced each year fromstems arisingfrom the rhizomes which can live 20to 30 years underthe ground.The leafedges are curled aroundand fused toform a liquid-holdingvessel, similar in shape toa cornucopia.

Howare the insects snared bythis carnivorousplant? They areattracted, visually nodoubt, to the colorfulleaf rosettes that only resemble owers (ah,yes; they areall masks), andthe redlip of the ‘pitcher’is particularlyattractive as alandingzone. The redveins that leaddownward are baited with nectar. And as we followthis lure,we reach the curve ofthe tube,which is linedwith Žne hairs,all pointing downward,so that we cannot work ourway back.The pitcher, like the text, is a one-way zone. We,the victims destinedto donate nitrogen, phosphorous and vitamins tothe plant,fall deepinto the pitcher, strugglingfor a while in the rainwaterand the dew.A digestiveenzyme soondissolves us.

The English call them Frog’s Britches, in Madagascarthey areknown as apongandrano (water drum).

You,my critical friends,have now learnedthe di Verence between the true ower andthe deceptive carnivoroustrap. This is something the insects which assure the survival ofthe nepenthes madagascariensis aredestined never tolearn. Attracted by Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009 beauty,they aresuddenly transformed from free ightinto a tumblingcadence. For each insect-victim ithappens only once. Butin writing,as KimMahood reminds us, we can doit over and over. Why? Because we can attach aconcept toa percept.

Ifall froma horse,over and over. In themoment offalling my bodyis charged electrifyingly with thesurge and sweat ofthe horse, to which Iamlinked in a ying arc. Forthis moment Iamraw energy, foamand sweat, volitionless, a momentum in theextremities ofhorsepower. This is less amemory than an experience Ihave againand again. When the link breaks andmy body ies away fromthe horse,hits the ground,hurt, collects itself, itturns intomemory. The story towhich Ineed togive a formis punctuatedwith charged moments ofthis nature,which donot lose their intensity with the passageof time. 10 parallax 111 Wefall forthe onewho resembles aower;this isthe operationof aromantic percept asoldand as complicatedas the bouquet.But to know the structure ofthe plant(or the text) as aconcept, is tobe able, incredibly, to climb outagain, wet, dripping, exhausted,on the lipof the worldagain. Now you know: that was some kindof trick. Youlook at the horizon,now, a little moreshrewdly, morecritically. Butthe fall! And youglance back with adeliciousshudder.

Notes

1 DerekAttridge, ‘ ‘‘This StrangeInstitution Called 5 Sam Rohdie, Promised Lands: Cinema, Geography, Literature’’: An Interviewwith JacquesDerrida’ , Modernism (London:BFI, 2001),p.107. in DerekAttridge (ed.), Derrida: Acts ofLiterature 6 Rohdie, Promised Lands , p.107. (London:Routledge 1992), p.52. See also, on 7 Rohdie, Promised Lands , p.108. Žctocriticism,Heather Kerr, ‘ Sympathetic 8 AlphonsoLingis, Excesses,Eros & Culture (Albany: Topographies’, parallax,no.19 (2001),pp.107– 126. StateUniversity of New Y orkPress, 1983), p.13. 2 SeeNoel King, ‘ Reading White Noise: Floating 9 Jean-Franc¸oisLyotard, Driftworks (New York: Remarks’, The Critical Quarterly, vol.33, no. 3 (1991). Semiotext(e),1984), pp.9– 10. 3 Seealso Ian Buchanan,‘ Deleuzeand American 10 Kim Mahood, Craft for aDry Lake: AMemoir (Mythopoeic)Literature’ , Southern Review , vol. 34, (Sydney:Transworld, 2000), p.28. no.2 (1998),pp.72– 85. 4 GillesDeleuze and Fe ´lix Guattari, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris:Minuit, 1991),p.160.

Stephen Muecke is Professorof CulturalStudies at the University ofTechnology, Sydney.He is co-editorof TheCultural Studies Review ,which regularlypublishes Žctocritical writing;or see his NoRoad (bitumen all theway) (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1997).stephen.muecke@uts. edu.au Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009

Muecke 112 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 113– 114

The Invisible Man

AlexanderGar c ´õ a D¨uttmann

Ihadcrossed Alma Parkunder lights newly installed,walked downChapel Street andturned right. After an absence offour years, Iwas todiscover that ThePrecinct hadceased tobe listed because ithad gone out of business. The buildingshad disappearedand given way toa residentialestate. Acomplex consisting ofa music cluband a bathhouse, ThePrecinct hadlooked like adepot.Through the back entrance, aightof stairs wouldtake me tothe Žrst oorwhere, fouror Žve times aweek, Iwouldproduce my membership card,a shiny piece ofplastic Icarriedin my wallet. In the middleof awidecorridor which joinedthe lockers andthe steam room,the outsizedcopy of a sculpted headappeared suspended above a channel of water.Stretched outon thick foamlayers ofblack furniture,my towel loosely wrapped aroundmy waist,I watched fragments ofvideosprojected onto a largescreen, action Žlms andcomedies, but no porn. On the groundlevel, asex clubfeatured an old- fashionedtrain wagon and a busof American design.This was atheme park.But the ideaof constructing sets forcasual sexual encounters didnot work andthe sex clubwas closed.It was transformedinto the music clubwhich Inever frequented. My way tothe bathhousewould take me pastthe parkinglot. There was the bus now.Distractions between my rented homeand ThePrecinct includeda 7Eleven store,a beat,the Astor Theatre, amilk shop.Though I was aregularcustomer, two particularvisits stick in mymemory.On oneoccasion, the streets were empty because ofafootygame. It must have been in the winter, atthe endof asunny day.I was ridingone of the green trams. In the spring,on a di Verent occasion,it had rained all afternoon.I was soakedwhen Iarrivedat the place.Do you want me todraw youa picture?I have aclear anddistinct visionof my itineraries,inside and outside

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009 ThePrecinct .Ihave forgottenall the bodies,the ones which refusedme orwhose approachI rejected –perhapsno thought is moreconceited than the thoughtof deliberateor compulsivechoice insex –the ones Inever saw because Isucked their cocks throughthe holes inthe woodencubicles, the ones which Itouchedand which rubbedthemselves againstme when, inthe steam room,we were standingin a circle. Iamunable to provide a descriptionof aspeciŽc fuck, whether Iwas involvedin it orwhether Ionly observedit. I step back fromthe massacre. What remains ofmy having sex onthe premises of ThePrecinct between, say, Apriland November 1997, isanalmost intoxicatingsense ofpurelyspatial connections, which Iwill never share with others,but which has me hopelessly and,you will think, nerdishly fallen fora city inwhich Ididnot stay. Arousedby acoldintoxication and not by the desireto indulgea warmly overowing evocation, I will have written this piece tomap the

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals parallax DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000028019 113 many spots,as if,of the pleasureand the despair,the expectation andthe disappointment,the hunger forand the satisfaction ofsex, mytruly sublimeneutron bomb,built methodically overall those months, hadleft behinda namingno less devoidof meaning than the accumulationof bodily parts and the transmission of bodily uids.Have Ihadsex

Alexander Garc ’´aDu¨ttmann is Professorof Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University. His publicationsinclude: AtOdds with Aids (StanfordUP, 1996), Friends and Enemies (Turia& Kant,1999), BetweenCultures. Tensions in theStruggle for Recognition (Verso,2000), Liebeslied/My Suicides ,incollaboration with RutBlees Luxemburg(Black Dog,2000), ArtEnding. ThreeAesthetic Studies (Suhrkamp,2000), and TheMemory of Thought. An Essay on Heidegger and Adorno (Continuum,2002). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009

Du¨ttmann 114 parallax,2002,vol. 8, no. 4, 115– 116

Book Review Kiss ofthe SpiderWom an

JoannaZylinska and the corporeal ’(p.77).Such momentsexpose the On spiders,cyborgs andbeing fragilityof egology. The subjectdoes not arriveat such an encounteras readymade but becomes scared through eachsuch encounter.This sexuatefacet to (Manchester, ManchesterUniversity Press, meetingevolves from Irigaray’ s writingsabout 2001) Levinas.The experienceof the Other isat once discursiveand corporeal : ‘an ethical relation (that) ‘Youspin me right round baby right round, like arecord involves notonly a face-to-face encounter but alsoa body to baby, right round round round’. body proximity ’(p.74).The Other in Levinasas Face –Deador Alive,1985. isof course not somethingto be seen or touched but somethingto be heard. The Facespeaks. Is the stylus stuck?Another return tothe sublime Zylinskawants an Other that coincideswith –anotherplay of ‘MyWay’, anotherexcursion by substance.This iswhy she advancesa theoryof Dorigento the ‘grisly rockes blake ’–trippingdown ‘de´criture fe´minine’which combinesan understanding memory’s chasmto dash ourselves on Kant’s of ´ecriture fe´minine with Lyotard’s notion of de´criture. Critique?Is the return ofthe sublimean experience ‘De´criture fe´minine’ names ‘apolitico-ethical discourse devoutlyto be wished? Joanna Zylinska weaves which winds itselfalong the paths ofthe bodily landscape fromits spindleside – twining oldthought with new and always defers the possibility ofultimate arrival ’ (p.38). –in such adeftand discerning way that thereis Theengagement with Cixousearlier in the text neverany risk of this writingdeveloping repetitive providesthe materialfor an ethics in which the conceptinjury. This provocativebook attempts to livingbeing and the speakingbeing can be recuperatethe experientialexcess within sublimity conated – inwhich Irigaraycan touch Levinas– which was‘ disappeared’through arestrictive in a‘synethics’. aesthetictradition epitomised by Burke and Kant. The newlyliberated aspect of the sublimeis similar Thebook is novelin that attwomoments Zylinska toLyotard’ s conceptionof that experiencein seeksto perform her arguments,to construct a bringingthe wandererabove a seaof clouds back spacewherein this meetingof aestheticsand ethics toearth, back to experiences grounded in the termed the femininesublime canbe encountered. everyday.The suggestedmicro-event is both an Theseinstances (titled ‘Webwords’)considerthe aestheticexperience and an ethicalproposal, a worksof LisaSt Aubinde Te ´ran,Orlan, and Laurie chanceencounter which wouldo Verthe possibility Anderson,whose artistic practices emphasise the foran ethicalmoment in which the Selfopens to fragilityof subjectivity. Orlan and Anderson also the incalculabledi Verenceof the Other.It opposes collapsethe dividebetween the naturaland the

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009 the deontologicalmorality expounded by Kant andtechnological world. It isdi Ycult tounderstand buildson the workof Levinas. Zylinska braids how we can encounter the worksof St Aubinde Levinas’s ethologywith aDerrideanunderstanding Te´ranor Orlanunexpectedly yet absolute surprise ofthe giftand hospitality to suggest a systemof is necessary for an ethicalmoment to take place. behaviourformed by a-rational acts of inŽ nite Orlanin particularcannot bemetwithout a search expenditure.The momentfor/ ofsuch anactmay engine,without a journeyinginto the machine, neverarrive. It isan (a)waitingethics. ‘ Acountry road. withoutan impatience,without an invitation. Atree. Evening ’.Deprivedof the certitudeof the LaurieAnderson provides a moreconvincing Other’s arrival;the Selfcan only anticipate like example,we might meet her asMuzak and face Estragon. the choiceof openingto such avisitationor denying its existence.The unconditionalopening that the ForLevinas the encounterwith the Other o Vered meetingwith the Other requiresis of necessity apossibilityfor epiphany, ethics wasreligious life. howeveran impossibility.How can the impossible Zylinska’s meetingis not spiritualbut sexuate.It beperformed? Zylinska’ s missionimpossible – can occur ‘in the dark nooksand crevices ofthe linguistic ‘Webwords’–isin its failureperhaps her greatest

parallax ISSN1353-4645 print /ISSN1460-700X online ©2002Taylor & FrancisLtd http://www.tandf.co.uk /journals parallax DOI:10.1080 /1353464022000028028 115 success.It isher examplesand not her argumentsin/ ofthe law,cannot beapplied to a situation which atsuch instances arefound wanting. that exceedsthat law,a situationwhich at certainmoments goes beyond what weknow as Thereare however problems with the book’s thesis. responsibility.The internee at Auschwitz presents Zylinskawants the ethicalencounter to be such amoment.Agamben is right toassertthat the accomplishedthrough the ‘inŽnite love ’that Derrida spectreof Auschwitzinhabits the ‘normalcy ofeveryday 3 describesin The Giftof Death .InŽnite loveis however life’ andtherefore an ethics which seeksto be of impossiblewithout the singularitywhich is the everydaymust attend tothe callof Auschwitz guaranteedby the apprehensionof death. Death andturn toanswer. Agamben advances the conŽrms the irreplaceabilityof the Itoitself. Muselmann asthe pointat which an ethics Responsibilitybegins from this recognitionof mustbegin. The Muselmann isan instance of death,the recognitionthat althoughI candie on undecidability,both manand non-man. A man behalfof the Other,I cannever die in placeof the whois aliveand yet not living,a manwhose death Other.I canalso not havemy death taken from cannot becalled death. If this isa manthen an me: ‘Everyone mustassume his own death, that isto say ethics that excludeshim, an ethics requiringa the onething inthe world that noone else can either give responsibleethics, is not anethics.This iswhy the or take: therein resides freedom and responsibility ’.1 The Muselmann mustbe where any ethics mustattempt problemwith Derrida’s eruditeand eloquent tobegin, it isat alterity’ s limit.Agamben recognises argumentwhich developsat this pointthrough a that bodyand discourse cannot becomeone. It is readingof Heidegger’s Being and Time isthat itdoes in their disunitythat an ethics mustbegin, in the not takeinto accounta placewherein death cannot lackthat isthis perpetualfracture between the beapprehendedas the possibilityof the impossible. livingbeing and the speakingbeing. Testimony Agambenpoints out in his essentialbook Remnants becomesthe ethicalgesture for Agamben. ofAuschwitz that in the lecture‘ Die Gefahr’, Testimonyas an ethics mustopen itself to the Heideggerrecognises that the Beingof death was Muselmann asits primarygesture. Zylinska’ s inaccessiblein the universeof the concentration- endeavourrepresents an importantaddition to the literatureon the ethicalthrough its engagement camp.As Agamben explains, death had become with the sublime.The needshe identiŽes for a the everydayand appeared commonplace. In such reformulationof our encounters with the Other is aspacedeath cannot beassumed, it assumes.It is acompellingone. It isan ambitiousproject which truethat deathcannot betaken away but this is seeksto move beyond meetings forged through becauseit cannever be possessed, it isnot givento distanceand an associationwith alterityinsistent the individual.For Derrida a personwho has not uponthe maintenanceof boundaries. As a book beengiven death – whocannot apprehenddeath that deservesto be read it isa pitythe pricewill –cannot bea responsiblesubject, cannot address provesuch asourceof anxietyto potential readers an Other with the giftof inŽ nite love.In the camps, anddeter their openingof/ towardsit. It isto be where‘ the prisonersexist everyday anonymously 2 hopedthat apaperbackedition will be forthcoming. towarddeath’ apossiblehumanity falls beyond Iamcertain that in this bookthere is ‘ something responsibilityand hence outside a certainethics. It happening’but ethics iscurrently insu Ycient to the isthe necessityfor responsibility which limitsboth taskZylinska sets it. (The restis lost.) Derridaand Levinas, and by extension Zylinska. Sincethe publicationof Agamben’ s bookit has becomeimpossible to conceive of an ethics that rootsitself in responsibility.The ‘ absolute Notes responsibility ’(p90)to the Other which Zylinska Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:41 18 November 2009 1 requiresfrom the Selfwould in factbe an absolute JacquesDerrida, The Giftof Death ,trans. David submissionto Law. Levinasian ethics despiteits Wills,(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, evidentcomplexity cannot escapethe jurisprudence 1995),p.44. 2 fromwhich it isultimately spun, the legalframe GiorgioAgamben, Remnants ofAuschwitz , trans. that is‘ responsibility’. Agambenhas tracedthe DanielHeller-Roazen, (New Y ork:Zone Books, juridicallegacy that underpinsresponsibility (in a 1999),p.76. 3 movewhich Derridamight term ‘ etymological GiorgioAgamben, Remnants ofAuschwitz , p.26. empiricism’) andmakes a caseagainst instituting anyethics requiringresponsibility. As a callto NicholasC hare, thought it mustbe answered. An ethics woven Universityof Leeds.

Book review 116 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 1–2

Editorial

DIE MEINHOF HAT ALLES VERRATEN. (Bild-Zeitung, 1972)

1972 and Germany is betrayed. Or rather, everything is betrayed. The headline of Bild-Zeitung stakes the terrain: MEINHOF BETRAYED EVERYTHING. And now, many German autumns later, we set the title of our project – writing (in) terror(ism). But what terrorism, and what betrayal, are we dealing with here? What is the betrayal of terrorism, or of the terrorist? And what is the terrain of this betrayal? Or indeed the terrain of terror?

By writing terror into terrorism, a significant transaction of meaning takes place – a practice of writing into – of writing terror into a signifying form. This is the first, the critical in a more classical sense, aspect of the underlying motivation behind this current issue of parallax. What economies of meaning does the term terror(ism) implicate? What practices of writing? And what practices are being written, are being subjected to writing? Indeed, as this is being written, we are witnessing a new kind of terror(ism) – and a new kind of war on terror(ism); territories have changed once more, and so is this not a terrain that needs to be terrorized?

Revolutionary political praxis demands, in the current situation, if not in general, a permanent integration of individual character and political motivation. That is, political identity. (RAF, 1971)

1971 and the RAF releases its first manifesto. A writing in terrorism. Or, perhaps, a writing in a state of terror, turned around its own sign, becoming terroristic writing. And so it presents us with the second dimension of this project, a more affirmative aspect: the absolute integration of individuality and political identity: the becoming political of the individual. Perhaps there is something more affirmative here, an ethics

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:42 18 November 2009 and an aesthetic – the creative production of life – playing beneath the dominant economies and transactions of writing (in) terror(ism). We might say, along with Marx, that these are the subterranean – and revolutionary – tunnels which always traverse the terrain of terror.

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000047936 1 In this issue of parallax then we seek to address our theme from two directions. A critical investigation of the representation of terrorism, or of the terrorist, remains, of course, a politically, socially and culturally significant project. However, an engagement with the political practices referred to as terrorism – an engagement taking us beyond negative critique, towards an understanding of terrorism as the production of dissident subjectivities, must also be undertaken. Without such a project terror(ism) signifies nothing but the terror it announces – and the creative and affirmative possibilities of radical and dissenting subjects disappears into the black hole of hopelessness.

Thanks to Simon O’Sullivan for his help, advice and support in compiling this issue.

Ola Stahl, Ika Willis, Kurt Hirtler Editors Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:42 18 November 2009

Editorial 2 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 3–13

Judging Terrorism

Andrew Benjamin

1.

Terrorist attacks are watched in disbelief. Terrorist attacks are watched as completely believable. Terrorist attacks are condemned without equivocation. Terrorist attacks engender equivocation concerning the relationship between means and ends. Describing an event as a terrorist attack may be accurate. Describing an event as a terrorist attack is a political stance used to deny the presence of a founding injustice.

Interrupting this list necessitates recognizing that there are moments of truth in every instance. As a term therefore ‘terrorism’ is inserted in a network of activities and is deployed and redeployed in the formulation of conflicting ethical and political positions. Rather than attempt to clarify this state of affairs by defining absolutely the way terrorism is to be understood, and therefore determining in advance who the terrorist may be, a different approach will be taken. The inherent ambivalence will be allowed to endure. An initial justification for the position resides in the fact that what cannot be precluded is the possibility that within any conflict both sides could use the means of terrorism. (This would not simply be the claim by one side that the other deployed the means of terrorism; it could actually be the case.) The bombing of a sovereign power by another will be viewed by those bombed as an act of terrorism. The bulldozing of houses and villages as a form of reprisal will be viewed by those made homeless as an act of terrorism. The destruction caused by a suicide bomber in a dense urban setting will, for its inhabitants and by extension all implicated in the act, count as terrorism. It is precisely this predicament that makes

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 it possible to approach terrorism in abstract terms as though a general definition would account for its particular use. Terrorism is not the province of one group. It is not thought in any one conflict that one side are the terrorists and the other not. This is the setting within which the term ‘terrorism’ will be approached.

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000047945 3 2.

One of the most obvious effects of the terrorist attack is the conception of object with which it works. (Object, in this context, is the one attacked; the subject is the one launching the attack.) When a bomb is placed in order to kill Protestants, or Muslims, or Israelis, etc., the act of destruction is necessarily indiscriminate. It is not just that it does not discriminate between those against whom the attack is aimed directly, and others who may become directly involved though the attack was not aimed at them. It turns all against whom the attack was directed into versions of the same; where sameness is defined by race, religion, ethnicity, nationality etc. While this may seem to be a claim about the particularization of a universal humanity it is not. Something else is involved. What is indicated is that terrorism is necessarily connected to the philosophical problem of identity.

The terrorist attack is always against an identity and in the name of another identity. Part of any response to terrorism has to recognize that it is inextricably bound up with this problem. Indeed, in order both to understand the issues involved and then to define the criteria in terms of which it is possible to develop arguments in relation to terrorism – and it is vital to add that what are important are arguments and not simple posturing – the connection to identity is of central importance. The argument is not that the question of identity is resolved and therefore closed in advance. The claim is that in order to understand what is occurring it is necessary to begin with the way in which identity works as the organizing term. Once it can be asked in whose name an attack is undertaken then the name cannot be easily, if at all, separated from the question of how the identity of the named is understood. Important here therefore is giving a type of specificity to the conception of identity involved. Precisely because it concerns a conception of identity that is bound up with a conception of sameness, it can be designated the sameness of identity. Such a formulation is important because the terrorist attack has to have a homogeneous conception of its object. Questions pertaining to the judgment of terror have to begin with this failure to discriminate. The politics of terrorism are then bound up with the politics of essentialism. This is even the case when it can be argued that there is a justification for the terrorist attack. The justification is that it is a calculated response against a movement that essentializes.

An act of terrorism, understood as a response, is the counter to an essentializing movement that comes from the outside. The mistake, however, is to think that this movement towards the sameness of identity is the denial of individuality, and thus has to be understood as the staging of an enforced anonymity. Precisely the opposite is the case. The terrorist attack – and here an analogy can be drawn with history of the concentration camp and with the ‘ethnic cleansing’ that characterizes the recent conflict in Bosnia – always has a determined object, because it determines its object as the object. The terrorist attack is bound up with, and is only possible because of, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 that determination. While it is clear that individuals are involved, what is under attack is not individuality having become anonymous, it is the group interpellated within the sameness of identity. As such what this establishes is an important link between this conception of sameness on the one hand, and violence and terror on the other. Benjamin 4 While there needs to be a distinction drawn between acts of terrorism and the situation in which in Arendt’s words ‘violence rules absolutely’, they have an important affinity. She describes the latter situation in the following terms:

Where violence rules absolutely, as for example in the concentration camps of totalitarian regimes, not only the laws – les lois se taisent as the French Revolution phrased it – but everything and everybody else must fall silent. It is because of this silence that violence is a marginal phenomenon in the political realm; for man, to the extent that he is a political being, is endowed with the power of speech.1

That violence which has become identified with the operation of a political regime in necessitating silence allows for its own interruption because, for Arendt, it stands opposed to the defining character of human being. While the social nature of being human and the articulation of that being through speech and argument cannot defend itself against the actualization of violence’s possibility, violence cannot use the means of speech and argument. Silence, while imposed, brings with it the ground of its being overcome. The point of affinity between the act of violence and ‘regime’ is human being. This is not a claim about human beings or about humanity as an abstraction but about the being of being human understood as an ontological category. And yet, as Arendt points out, the tradition is marked by acts of founding or constituting violence. What must be questioned is the extent to which such acts of constituting violence play a role in developing an understanding of terror. As will emerge, the value of Arendt’s formulation is in positioning violence and silence in opposition to speech. This will allow speech – though reworked in terms of the endlessness of negotiation – to be that which provides a basis both to judge and to counter claims either about terror or about terror’s possible justification. Leaving aside questions of their mythic status – though such questions will in the end be necessary – constituting acts of violence can either stand outside the realm of the human and thus appear as divine or unmediated violence, or in being incorporated into the realm of the human they can mark violence as mediated from the start.

The first understanding of constituting violence stands in need of the demythologizing move that would occur as a consequence of maintaining the position that violence is always mediated from the start. Once all these elements are taken together what can be seen to emerge is the setting in which the terrorist act can be approached. The elements that mark it out include two central inter-articulations. The first is between terror and the sameness of identity. The second is between the social and the ontological. What is important is how the components of this entire set-up interact. Again, there is an implicit philosophical argument here. What is being suggested is that not only does it have to be the case that terrorism can only be understood by thinking through the concept of identity articulated within it. There is the additional claim that it necessitates – again in order that it be understood – Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 the setting of the ontology of human being.

What, however, of the constituting act of violence? The insistence of this question lies in its inescapable link to a conception of the political that defines sovereignty in terms of war or opposition. Machiavelli, Hobbes and Schmitt, amongst others, will parallax 5 all figure in such a set-up.2 One of the constituting acts of violence to which Arendt refers is Cain’s murder of Abel. Despite its acuity, since it does not take up the problem of mediation, Arendt’s own interpretation will not be central here. Nonetheless, there is an element of the story that is of fundamental importance to these present undertakings. What is interesting about the story of the murder is the way it can be construed as a uniquely human concern.

3.

The entire section of Genesis IV, 1–15, in which this occurrence takes place, is concerned with fraternity, forgiveness and estrangement. Each of these terms involves alterity. An examination of ‘fraternity’ within the Hebrew bible reveals that what is at stake is the other person. Cain’s transgression elicits the plea for forgiveness and for the murder he is condemned to the life of the stranger. There is almost a folding of the story back in on itself. While there is no doubt that a murder has occurred, verse 10 stages a formulation that makes the question of alterity a human question. In verse 9 God asks Cain where his brother is. On a literal level the text is unproblematic. God must have known that his actual brother (Abel) had been murdered. And yet another reading would have God asking Cain about the presence of the other (the ‘brother’ as the sign of an ineliminable and thus primordial alterity; the other to the same). Cain’s reply has a certain infamy ‘I know not, am I my brother’s keeper?’ This is the question addressed by Cain to God. God’s response is the exclamation that Cain has murdered both his brother and future generations. The move from the present to the future (present in the text by the use of the plural bloods3) indicates that Cain’s question has greater extension than the mere moment of its being asked. What, however, of the question asked by Cain? It should be remembered that this is a question to which God could have replied. Moreover, it is the question concerning human relations. After all, under examination is the question of the obligations alterity brings with it. The question is asked in verse 9 and the verses continue with the recognition of the deed and the punishment without there being at any time a return to the question. The temptation is to say that the question is left in suspension without being addressed. However, that would make the failure to respond no more than a mere oversight. The important conclusion to be drawn is that God’s silence means that the relation to the other is a fundamentally human concern. While elsewhere there will be an important discussion concerning how the stranger is to be understood (Leviticus XIX, 33) it remains the case that fundamental to all these discussions is that self/other relations both define the human predicament – indeed they are the human predicament – and have to be regulated as part of human life. If there is an act of constituting violence then it occurs within the set up in which ethics was ethos from the start.4 It is not external and as such an act of violence would constitute that which took place as a consequence. Violence is always already internal to the construction of social being. What is also there from Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 the start therefore is the possibility of violence. However, it is neither divine nor pure violence. On the contrary it is the violence that is an inherent possibility within self/other relations. As such it is uniquely human. It is the idea of an inherent possibility that is of fundamental importance. An inherent possibility exists as a potential. Since there has to be a type of distinction between potential and its Benjamin 6 realization, this will have to mean that the actualization of this inherent possibility necessitates mediation. (The move from potential being to actual being involves mediation otherwise all that would be actualized would be the potential; moreover it would be actualized in toto.) The problem posed by the relationship between potential and actual existence is of great significance in this context because the move from a primordial self/other relation to the sameness of identity involves this potentiality.

As has already been made clear an ‘inherent possibility’ is linked to potentiality. Human being needs to be defined in terms of the relationship between potential and actual being. The task is determining how potential is to be understood. In the first instance it should be noted that it necessitates that violence always be mediated. Violence, while inherent, is never actualized as such. And yet, at first glance it could be argued that the potential, rather than accounting for the inescapable presence of mediation, is the human’s capacity for its own annihilation. It would be as though what founds human being brings with it the capacity for its own destruction.5 However, such an argument would misunderstand the relationship between potential and actual being. It is not as though violence is an option that has to be mastered continually or which expresses itself absolutely. That would only be possible if violence could be presented as unmediated. The necessity of mediation means that in the move from a potential to its realization, the distinction should not be thought as absolute but as a continuum. In other words, while violence is always mediated, violence is – is what it is – in its always being mediated. There is no violence outside mediation, existing in a state of divine purity. While violence is a potential, the fact that its actualization is always specific means that the site of violence is the site of human being. In the same ways as action is always mediated, human being is always mediated by its involving the plurality of human actions.6

In a general sense what marks self/other relations is the possible refusal of alterity; hence the force of Cain’s question. Refusal is a form of mediation. That refusal extends as much to the other as it does to oneself. Indeed, it is this twofold extension that indicates how the refusal needs to be understood. Refusal is not as simple as the denial of alterity. It also brings with it the denial of sameness. There is no pure alterity. What emerges therefore as a generalized position is that any form of original purity is impossible. This is not because there is a founding trace that marks the origin, but because any form of actualization is a mediation. In this context, there is only the co-presence sameness and alterity. The other is both same and other. What makes ethics ethos is that the predicament of human being is that the other is both same and other. What exists as an inherent possibility is the refusal of this founding complexity. Cain’s question needs to be rewritten. It is not as though the already present nature of self/other relations has to be recognized. It is also the case that the relations mark out the self’s relation to itself. Care becomes an original condition. It is not a duty to the other that has a ground outside that which determines Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 human being, but emerges because of the ineliminable self/other relations that define human being.7 What potential means in this context is that which allows for its own interruption as the moment in which an act takes place. Precisely because the self/other relation constitutes human being, that act may involve refusal; a refusal that may take the form of violence. parallax 7 Cain’s question therefore is the mark of a refusal. That fratricide is a possibility entails nothing more or less than the denial of the other’s presence as that which is given in the continual oscillation between same and other. The continuity of an oscillation allowing for individuation – allowing, that is, for subjectivity – means that the source of violence is as much the refusal of sameness as it is of alterity. To insist that a face on the level of its appearance is completely other is to deny those elements that remain the same.8 To insist that it is the same is to deny its alterity. (Outside of pragmatic determinations neither element can be privileged.) Human being involves the continuity of a negotiation with that which is, ab initio, same and different. Violence is not refusal tout court since violence is always mediated. Rather, violence is a form that refusal can take. While a great deal more needs to be adduced in order to develop how the primordiality of self/other relations is to be understood, a link between that relation and what was identified above as the sameness of identity needs to be introduced at this point.9

Prior to proceeding with establishing this link a note needs to be added on individuality. The reason for its addition is straightforward. It may seem that counter- posed to all essentializing moves is the individual. The individual would be prior to any attribution of identity; moreover the individual would have the status of being unique. What is unique has to be prior and have priority over all other attributions of identity. The difficulty with the term individual is that it is an abstraction. The individual has to be identified as that individual and in being thus identified the individual can be named. However, precisely because the individual cannot control or have mastery over everything that is done with that name, or in the name of that name – and here there is an important opening up of the individual to the philosophical and political problem of proper names – what this indicates is the extent to which, even at the limit, the proper name is subject to the same process of individuation that yields subjectivity. Individuality is an abstraction that once given specificity brings questions of identity and alterity into play. It is not as though there is any particularity marked out by the assertion of individuality.

4.

What was identified above as the sameness of identity can be understood as that move which attributes identity. The position from which the attribution is made is always external to the group being identified; moreover the group may be constituted as such by the ascription of an identity. Once discrimination is legitimated by its inscription in legislation, once it occupies the realm of popular culture by its incorporation into a chant or slogan, those named within it are given an identity.10 While that identity may be contested – or as is more likely its meaning refused – what occurs to the group, thus determined, takes place as a result of the ascription of that identity. For the National Socialist there were exact regulations determining Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 who was a Jew and who was not. The ascription of being a Jew was sufficient to deny German citizenship. (German citizenship had been ‘legally’ removed from Jews by the Nuremberg laws.) While not as rigorous, nor necessarily as horrifying, it remains the case that tests for the right to obtain or maintain citizenship continue to exist. The difficulty with arguments to do with autonomy as an end in itself occurs Benjamin 8 at this precise point insofar as the condition for autonomy may be the very moments of particularity that are effaced in its acquisition.

The terrorist attack positions those against whom it is launched as the same. In a brute physical sense this is the nature of the bomb blast. It is not anonymous flesh that is damaged or blown apart. It is always determined and thus mediated flesh. (Flesh is only ever embodied.) And, as has already been suggested, this may be in response to as similar, though not necessarily as violent, an ascription of the sameness of identity. What is occurring in such a situation would therefore be a clash between forced conceptions of identity. Both forms of action – the terrorist attack and that which may have prompted it – are themselves acts with ends. In neither case would it be possible to given an abstract or generalized account of these ends. Each instance would be specific. And yet, even in allowing for that specificity, is there a ground of judgment outside mere political utility; the utility of ends and means? The starkest question to which terrorism gives rise is the possibility of judgment that takes the setting – the complex of inter-articulations identified above – into real consideration. The point needs to be made clear. There is no attempt to develop a justification. Rather, the real question is the ground of judgment; i.e. developing a ground from which any condemnation of an act of terrorism would take place. (Again it should be remembered that terrorism is as much the province of states – even democratically elected states – as it is of those branded ‘terrorists’ by such states.)

The ground of judgment has to be one that recognizes the particularity of terrorist violence. What then is the relationship between the act of terror and the primordiality of self/other relations? What is the connection between Cain’s question and acts of terror? The answer cannot be that terror undermines self/other relations, or that terror strikes against humanity. Both claims involve a generalization or an abstraction that cannot be substantiated. Both the primordiality of self/other relations and any claim about humanity (where the latter claim is understood as referring to the being of being human) cannot be posed in complete differentiation from the continuity of their actualization. What the primordiality of the self/other relation entails – and this will be the case no matter what particularity is given to that relation – is a site of activity. It is not just that action involves the other or that it involves alterity of necessity. It is more emphatically that actions involve sites of negotiation. Actions begin to make up social being. The judgment of actions concerns the way they allow the continuity of social being to hold together. Part of that holding together is the possibility of activity within the domain of social being. If, for example, all Women, Muslims, Palestinians, are restricted by virtue of an essentializing form of identity attributed to them, then this is not wrong because it infringes upon their autonomy, or their individual liberty. It is an act that can be judged as it signals a failure to negotiate the primordiality of the self/other relation. Acts of restriction or exclusion that are based on the identity of sameness are premised on a refusal to accept the

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 predicament of human being. Expressed in this way, this means that attempts to rectify the situation – or even to engage with such situations – cannot take place as though all that were necessary were arguments to do with equality. Equality – understood as a version of sameness – is fundamental, and yet it cannot be assumed as an end itself. Arguments and practices, be they philosophical, cultural and/or parallax 9 political, if they seek to maintain the primordiality of self/other relations, will be different to ones based on securing (or negatively opposing) equality.

In terms of the possibility of judgment – a possibility bound up as much with evaluation as it is with the formulation of policy – the difference between what allows for the ineliminable presence of self/other relations, and the position that seeks to overcome them in the name of sameness, can be rewritten in terms of a difference between dissymmetry and symmetry. Maintaining dissymmetry involves working with more than the already present status of difference. There are two components to this position. The first is that maintaining involves activity. Since the differences in question cannot be resolved but provide a continual state of negotiation, what is important are the activities which, while allowing for pragmatic closures, nonetheless hold the sites of negotiation as continually open. The second pertains to how there could be a justification for such a set-up. In other words, what will provide the basis for this maintenance? The answer to this question has to do with the being of being human. Dissymmetry has to be understood as the original condition.11 Given this original condition, the response it can be said to envisage is one that is characterized by an affirmed reconciliation to irreconcilability. What would stand opposed to maintaining this set-up would be the attempt to efface it in the name of symmetry. Again what is being adumbrated here is the context in which the terrorist act occurs.

The terrorist act refuses, in the first place, the maintenance of dissymmetry as that which entails an endless negotiation with ineliminable difference; a negotiation always interrupted by the pragmatic necessity for decisions. In the second place what is also refused is any conception of symmetry other than one driven by the identity of sameness. The terrorist act has as its end a synthetic political realm, instituted in the name of a synthetic unity for a synthetic unity. This will account for why there is an important connection between the conception of identity at work within ‘ethnic cleansing’ and the terrorist act. While the terrorist attack involves these two different forms of refusal it only acquires particularity once it is brought into conjunction with what has already been described as the identity of sameness. The throwing of a bomb turns all against whom it is thrown into the same; i.e. they comprise the same object of attack and what is attacked is one and the same. It is an attack that refuses any type of negotiation; that refusal, in using the form of violence, is the most emphatic form that refusal can take. While the terrorist attack may seek justification in the claim that it is the only possible response to actions – perhaps even State- sanctioned actions which themselves may warrant the description ‘terrorist’ – that themselves fail to discriminate and in so doing construct an identity of sameness, the justification will fail precisely because the refusal to negotiate differences is not a response to the refusal to negotiate differences. What will interrupt an initial refusal is the continual insistence on how a state can be brought about in which a reconciliation to irreconcilability will predominate.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 The terrorist act can be identified as the act of violence that enforces an identity of sameness, and in which the nature of the act can give rise to no other response than that of violence. (The response may be another attack though in greater probability it will be an act ‘legitimated’ by a state and justified by either national or international law.) Both the terrorist act and such a response – a response open to the charge of Benjamin 10 terrorism – are characterized as forms of violence that are structured to refuse the possibility of negotiation. And here it is necessary to see a real confluence between pragmatic negotiations and the endless negotiation demanded by the primordiality of self/other relations.

Finally, it should be noted that the point made above concerning different analyses giving rise to different cultural and political practices is central here. Once it can be argued that the response to the denial of difference is the affirmation of differences – and what that means as a strategic possibility will differ, of necessity, from one context to another – then the political and cultural activity flowing from it will be markedly different from those linked to the bomb or the bulldozer. The affirmation and the denial of difference have to be understood in terms of self/other relations which in being maintained enjoin the continuity envisaged by the formulation reconciliation to irreconcilability.

5.

What is essential, and what has been attempted in the argument presented above, is that the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ not be identified with actions of a specific group, as though this attribution provided either a proper account of what terrorism is, or an adequate description of the nature of the group. Identifications of this form do not stem from any real political analysis of the causes of such actions, and nor would they account for why the terminology of terrorism would be used to describe them. The only way of circumventing the charge and counter charge of terrorism is by giving an account of terrorism that situates it within the context of social being. What has to be precluded is the move that would seek to justify a specific act – and again this claim will have to be true for both parties to any real conflict – by arguing that it is the inevitable outcome of a particular political or cultural situation. The reason that such an approach has to fail is twofold. The first is that it works without any attempt to give an account of terrorism independently of its uses as a tactic by particular groups or states. Secondly, and relatedly, the impossibility of resolving the problem of relativity is that the situation in which terrorism is possible, and where some would seek to justify it, is reproduced. Holding relativity to one side involves working with the recognition that terrorism is on the one hand bound up with the philosophical problem of identity, and equally has to be accounted for in terms of the nature of the relationship between violence and the primordiality of self/other relations. Once those relations are understood in terms of a founding and ineliminable dissymmetry – a dissymmetry that, while allowing for violence as a potential, is also sundered by such violence – then what this engenders is the ground in terms of which actions and policy can be judged. The challenge presented by terrorism is to develop a conception of judgment that escapes the hold of both moralism and the

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 politics of gestures. This can occur once it becomes possible to draw on speech. Speech needs to be understood as marking that which ties social being to the primordiality of self/other relations. Speech is the condition in which the endlessness of negotiation becomes possible. Maintaining speech, holding to its site, is to allow for that openness in which a reconciliation to irreconcilability can continue. parallax 11 Notes

1 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Harmondsworth: in that context. The other would be to look at the Penguin, 1963), pp.18–19. construction of ‘care’ (souci) developed by Foucault 2 One of the most emphatic presentations of this in Le Souci de soi. position is found in Schmitt’s argument that ‘the 8 That faces and bodies must always be the specific political distinction to which political interaction of genders, races, ethnicities, abilities, actions and motives can be reduced is that between disabilities will involve a complexity far greater friend and enemy’. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the than the simple logic of oppositions that male/ Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University female, white/ black, able-bodied /disabled etc. of Chicago Press, 1996), p.26. can provide. Here is the point at which a thinking 3 It is not his ‘brother’s blood’ that has been spilt, of difference can take on a more directly political the text is more complex, but his ‘brother’s bloods’. role. Again however, the philosophical question Most commentators understood the plural to concerns how difference is thought given that denote his ‘possible descendents’ (Rashi). Even on difference cannot be simply posited. Pursuing this a literal reading therefore the text opens beyond complexity can take many forms: see, amongst the moment. many others, Jean-Luc Nancy L’ ‘il y a’ du rapport 4 Even though Arendt does not draw a distinction sexuel; Cronenburg Crash; Partrick White The between the fratricide involving Cain and Abel Twyborn AVair; Franz Kaf ka Metamorphoses; Arthur and the one involving Romulus and Remus, it is Miller Focus. important, even for her own argument, to 9 It would be at this point that an engagement distinguish between them. The former affirms the with Levinas would need to take place. When for impossibility of a position defined outside the realm example Levinas argues for an ‘original of the social, while the latter locates the myth or irreducibility’ as a way of describing the relation origin outside sociality as its condition of existence. between self and other, the problematic element is The latter therefore is mythic in structure. how this apartness is to be understood. 5 It is clear that Ode to Man (330–375) in Dissymmetry, which is key to the relation, is being Sophocles’s Antigone, is central in order to presented in the context of this paper in terms of understand this potential. For Sophocles, human an ‘apartness’ that is also an ‘a apartness’. In being’s capacity for acting in a way that places it Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Transcendence et hauteur’ beyond that which defines its being is part of what (in Liberte´ et commandment [Cognac: Fata Morgana, makes a given individual the strangest (deinoteron) 1994]) with regard to the concern with the rights of of the strange (ta deina). Acting in a way that is man Levinas argues that; contrary to an understanding of the political nature Le droit de l’homme qu’il s’agit ainsi de faire of justice – and here the political can involve reconnaı¸tre est le droit d’un Moi. L’homme est respect for divine justice – means that the one who conc¸u comme un moi ou comme un citoyen – acts is, in virtue of those actions, apoliz. Being jamais dans l’originalite´ irre´ductible de son alte´rite´ without a polis need not be taken literally. The a` laquelle citoyen n’acce`de pas dans la re´ciprocite´ state of affairs it suggests is a refusal on the part of et la syme´trie. (p.42) the agent to act in accord with the propriety sanctioned, if not demanded, by the being of being [The right of man that is of concern has to be human. Despite its problematic status the most recognised as the right of an ego/self/I. Man is philosophically significant commentary on this conceived as an ego/self or as a citizen. Never in passage of the play is Heidegger’s. See Martin terms of the original irreducibility of his alterity to Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. which the citizen never accedes except in terms of Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University reciprocity and symmetry.] Press, 1959), pp.146–65. While the argument for a founding dissymmetry is 6 Taking this position a stage further necessitates accepted, that dissymmetry has to be set in the developing an ontology of original plurality. While context of an original relatedness. it cannot be argued for here I have attempted such 10 There is, of course, an extra dimension that an undertaking in The Plural Event (London: needs to be introduced here. Part of what is

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009 Routledge, 1993). involved in the ascription of identity – the sameness 7 Allowing care such a role opens up two different of identity – signals the general presence of the areas of investigation. The first would be to the crisis of identity. One of the disturbing elements is role played by ‘care’(Sorge) in Heidegger’s Sein und that the racist gains identity in hating. Racism is Zeit. The point of investigation would be the not the same as terrorism; nonetheless the link conception of identity and relatedness that emerged between them is the crisis of identity. For an Benjamin 12 important psychoanalytic investigation of racism pre-social. The force of Arendt’s Aristotelianism is that is concerned with crisis of identity see Daniel that it locates human being within the realm of Sibony, Le ‘‘racisme’’ ou la haine identitaire (Paris: the polis and thus as always already engaged with Editions de Seuil, 1997). the complex relationship between polis and nomos. 11 This is not to argue that this original condition is the state of nature. Nor is it to suggest that it is

Andrew Benjamin has taught in universities in the UK and the USA. He is currently Professor of Critical Theory at Monash University. His publications include; Present Hope (Routledge, 1997), Architectural Philosophy (Continuum, 2001) and Philosophy’s Literature (Clinamen, 2001). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:44 18 November 2009

parallax 13 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 14–27

‘To Cut Too Deeply and Not Enough’: Violence and the Incorporeal

Eleanor Kaufman

When terror would seem to be all around us, terror equated with the threat of physical violence, it is all the more imperative to articulate what it is that makes violence violent. On a certain level, it is obvious: when there is bodily injury or destruction, there is violence; but beyond that, there is the abstract and less overtly corporeal violence of a state or a multinational class that dominates those who are less powerful. This, too, is violence, but a violence less predicated on the immediately physical. It is not unlike Michel Foucault’s distinction between pre-modern sovereign societies, in which a monarch held the power of life or death over his subjects, and modern disciplinary societies where subjects are kept in line less by the direct threat of death than by a disciplinary structure such as the prison or school where those in power have visual if not physical sovereignty over those they govern.1 The point is not to show that one system is better or worse, but that they are different mechanisms of organizing power – each relying on violence of a particular sort. Rather than elaborate this distinction between immediate corporeal violence and more systemic, structural and incorporeal violence, I wish instead to examine the incorporeal attributes that lie at the heart of the most destructive corporeal actions. This will entail a turn to both an ontology and a phenomenology of non-human objects.

No one has gone further than the phenomenologists in delineating (often in spite of themselves) the secret life of objects. One has only to turn to almost any page of Sartre, Beauvoir or Merleau-Ponty to see a world peopled (?) with tables, chairs, inkwells, paper-cutters and the like. Though it is rarely stated as such, there is always an implicit attempt to broach the barrier of non-human ontology, to pose the question of what ontology might look like from an object’s perspective. Simone de Beauvoir captures this conundrum in her 1943 novel She Came to Stay when the central character Franc¸oise tries to imagine her old jacket being cognizant of its existence:

[The jacket] was old and worn [ fatigue´] but it could not complain as Franc¸oise complained when she was hurt; it could not say to itself ‘I’m

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 an old worn jacket’. It was strange; Franc¸oise tried to imagine what it might be like if she were unable to say, ‘I’m Franc¸oise, I’m six years old, and I’m in Grandma’s house.’ Supposing she could say absolutely nothing; she closed her eyes. It was as if she did not exist at all; and

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 14 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000047954 yet other people would be coming here and see her, and would talk about her. She opened her eyes again; she could see the jacket, it existed, yet it was not aware of itself. There was something irritating, a little frightening, in all of this. What was the use of its existing, if it couldn’t be aware of its existence? She thought it over; perhaps there was a way.2

This passage presents an object – the old jacket – as being absolutely devoid of a human consciousness, yet everything it ‘experiences’ is articulated at the level of the human: ‘it could not say to itself ‘‘I’m an old worn jacket’’’ or ‘it existed, yet it was not aware of itself’. On the one hand, we might interrogate Franc¸oise’s assumptions and ask if this is how the jacket would really describe itself to itself (would it see itself as old and worn or is this just Franc¸oise’s perspective?). Furthermore, how can Franc¸oise know for sure that the jacket does not realize its existence? It might not realize its existence on her terms, but perhaps it has other terms for self-realization, terms that might not entail attributes of oldness and wornness or even of a human ontology. Might the object somehow have its own object ontology that is not even perceptible by the human as such?

On the other hand, the passage above is already replete with markers of recognition that something is amiss: ‘It was strange’; ‘there was something irritating, a little frightening, in all this’. What is so strange and irritating and frightening? That the jacket cannot articulate its existence or that Franc¸oise cannot formulate an object ontology on anything but human terms that somehow miss the mark? Franc¸oise’s overt recognition of this impasse comes out most forcefully with the provocative yet undeveloped statement ‘perhaps there was a way’. It is this pointing to another way, to another ontology positioned at the limit of the human, that is so mesmerizing in the work not only of Beauvoir but also of Merleau-Ponty and especially of Sartre.

Sartre is at once the most resolutely human-centered of the phenomenologists and the one who most radically envisions an alternate universe where inert, inanimate objects hold sway. His oeuvre, and especially his two lengthy philosophical studies – Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason – are marked by an extreme dualism where the human is distinguished from and set off against the non-human. Any relation that obtains between the two sides is predicated on a fundamental separation. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated in Critique of Dialectical Reason, where the entire work is structured around the opposition between the practico-inert and praxis. Like the dualism of the In-Itself and the For-Itself that undergirds Being and Nothingness, the first term is at the same time distinguished from and in relation to the second; moreover, the first term is the more static, less animate and ultimately less desirable of the two terms.

The practico-inert is used in conjunction with a network of oppositionally defined terms Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 in the Critique. Foremost among them are the pairings series/group and anti-dialectic/ dialectic. The series is epitomized by Sartre’s famous example of people brought together solely because they are waiting for the same bus. Each has taken a number in advance that determines his or her place on the bus, a number that is itself determined by the order in which the passengers arrived and by no other intrinsic parallax 15 quality of the person. The people waiting for the bus are equivalent or exchangeable insofar as they are related to each other by their difference of number. Yet their relations with one another are passive, precluding any real possibility of reciprocity or active community. Albeit a complex and structured process, seriality falls short of a more spontaneous and dialectical group formation:

On this basis, it is possible to grasp our relations to the object in their complexity. On the one hand, we have effectively remained general individuals (in so far as we form part of this gathering, of course). Therefore the unity of the collection of commuters lies in the bus they are waiting for; in fact it is the bus, as a simple possibility of transport (not for transporting all of us, for we do not act together, but for transporting each of us). Thus, as an appearance and a first abstraction, a structure of universality really exists in the grouping; indeed, everyone is identical with the Other in so far as they are waiting for the bus. However, their acts of waiting are not a communal fact, but are lived separately as identical instances of the same act. From this point of view, the group is not structured; it is a gathering and the number of individuals in it is contingent. This means that any other number was possible (to the extent that the individuals are considered as arbitrary particles and that they have not collected together as a result of any common dialectical process).3

Because the waiting for the bus is done equally but separately, it constitutes a serial and not a group structure. The serial formation is constituted externally, passively from the outside, whereas the group is formed through a less regulated but more dynamic internal logic, the only formation that for Sartre is properly historical and worthy of the name of praxis.

Beyond mapping out these sets of distinctions, what is striking and of significance here is how active a role objects and inorganic matter play in Sartre’s dialectical system, even in their role as the negative term. For it is these objects that animate Sartre’s philosophy and often, it would seem, in spite of him. What Sartre’s thought paradoxically makes possible, as he states in the passage above, is ‘grasp[ing] our relations to the objects in their complexity’. This complexity appears in the lines immediately following when Sartre writes that ‘the unity of the collection of commuters lies in the bus they are waiting for; in fact it is the bus’. For one so careful to demarcate the human from the inanimate, this marks an odd ontological slippage, where the collection of the commuters is the inanimate bus and their being is on some level indistinguishable.

On the next page of the Critique, Sartre repeats the same gesture of drawing an ontological equivalence between inanimate objects and something that might seem Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 intuitively incomparable (such as the people waiting for the bus in serial fashion). In the passage that follows, it is the temporal concept of future possibility that is equated with inorganic matter: ‘And whatever ordering procedure is used, seriality derives from practico-inert matter, that is to say, from the future as an ensemble of inert, equivalent possibilities (equivalent, in this case, because no means of forecasting them Kaufman 16 is given): there is the possibility that there will be one place, that there will be two, or three, etc. These rigid possibilities are inorganic matter itself in so far as it is non- adaptability’.4 Once again, an inanimate object and a conceptual category are related at the level of their being (‘These rigid possibilities are inorganic matter itself’). Although both terms are relegated by Sartre to a secondary and not fully realized status, this is nonetheless achieved by a willingness to imagine the non-human in a language generally reserved only for the human. This is the double movement of Sartre’s work, that in the process of making rigid distinctions he inadvertently opens a way to go beyond the limitations of these very distinctions. What I hope to suggest is that Sartre provides the tools for thinking a continuity between the human and the non-human, even and in fact because he is simultaneously arguing for their radical separation.

Throughout the Critique, Sartre highlights (and here quite literally underlines at the level of the text) the words or phrases that suggest an absolute link between human and non-human even while he is dismantling or, as in the passage that follows, qualifying that linkage: ‘Normally, at the present level of our investigation, the human object and the inanimate tool do not become identical; rather, an indissoluble symbiosis is set up between the humanised matter of the material ensembles and the dehumanised men of the corresponding human ensemble’.5 On the one hand, the very notion of the ‘indissoluble symbiosis’ between human and thing is already anticipating a strain of thought customarily linked with thinkers as varied as Merleau- Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, Lyotard and Haraway.6 In this sense, it could be argued that Sartre is closer than is customarily thought to those thinkers generally regarded as reacting against him and that furthermore he anticipates anti-humanist theories that are the mainstay of so-called post-structuralist thought.7 While this position is certainly defensible, my more extreme claim is that, precisely in the underscored disavowal, Sartre actually goes further than the thinkers who follow him in imagining, at the phenomenological level, a continuity between persons, concepts and things.

Sartre, like Beauvoir in the example of the jacket, continuously imagines encounters between persons and inanimate objects. Often, as in the following sentence, such an encounter is expressed in the conditional: ‘Man lives in a universe where the future is a thing, where the idea is an object and where the violence of matter is the ‘‘midwife of History’’. But it is man who invests things with his own praxis, his own future and his own knowledge. If he could encounter pure matter in experience, he would have to be either a god or a stone’.8 In expressing the impossibility of the human ever truly experiencing pure matter, Sartre nonetheless envisions a limit situation where this very impossibility might take place – the virtually unthinkable scenario of the human actually being a stone (caillou),9 as it is here presented in the conditional tense. If the human might actually experience (i.e. be) pure matter, then this is a pure matter inextricably bound to violence and history: here, in another jarring equation, the ‘violence of matter’ is none other than the ‘midwife of History’. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 Insofar as Sartre explores the boundaries between the human and the non-human, he also suggests new ways of conceptualizing the complexity of the relation between matter and violence.10

111 parallax 17 Just as Sartre provides, when read against the grain, the parameters for thinking the continuity between the human and the non-human, he also provides the conceptual structure for thinking the continuity between the violent and the non-violent. This can be extrapolated from his notion of the radical break constituted by the act of cutting. In an elaborate explication in Being and Nothingness of the way nothingness is the point of separation or cleavage between past and present, Sartre injects (almost as if it were a parenthetical aside) a counter-example of a knife cutting a piece of fruit in two:

It remains to explain what this separation is, this disengaging of consciousness which conditions every negation. If we consider the prior consciousness envisaged as motivation we see suddenly and evidently that nothing has just slipped in between that state and the present state. There has been no break in continuity within the flux of the temporal development. For that would force us to return to the inadmissible concept of the infinite divisibility of time and of the temporal point or instant as the limit of the division. Neither has there been an abrupt interpolation of an opaque element to separate prior from subsequent in the way that a knife blade cuts a piece of fruit in two. Nor is there a weakening of the motivating force of the prior consciousness; it remains what it is, it does not lose anything of its urgency. What separates prior from subsequent is exactly nothing.11

Although Sartre takes great care in arguing that it is nothing and not an object that separates past from present, he nevertheless constructs a model of temporal continuity that is continuous precisely because nothing intervenes to separate previous from subsequent. What, then, is so entirely different about the knife cutting the fruit? It seems that the parallel structure of the fruit example secretly gestures to the same response: nothing. Yet there is a violence, even at the level of the verb, about the act of cutting (and this even if the thing cut is not human), a violence that does not seem equivalent to the non-violence in the alternate possibility of nothing separating prior from subsequent. But what if, here too, we were to suggest a fundamental continuity between violence and non-violence, terms which are separated, like the parts of the fruit, by the act of cutting – the act of violence – itself ?

Before returning to this question, it is interesting to note that such a counterintuitive logic has been much more elegantly elaborated in mathematics, and in fact had the force of a breakthrough when it was outlined by Richard Dedekind in 1873. In his small pamphlet entitled ‘Continuity and Irrational Numbers’, Dedekind sets out to do an arithmetic proof to explain continuity, something usually accounted for in the differential calculus only by geometric explanations. He goes about this by proposing the notion of the cut, for he argues that it is only by hypothesizing an absolute break in the rational numbers or along a straight line that the continuity of the line can Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 be established. He writes:

The above comparison of the domain R of rational numbers with a straight line has led to the recognition of the existence of gaps, of a certain incompleteness or discontinuity of the former, while we ascribe Kaufman 18 to the straight line completeness, absence of gaps, or continuity. In what then does this continuity consist? Everything must depend on the answer to this question, and only through it shall we obtain a scientific basis for the investigation of all continuous domains… [I]n the preceding section attention was called to the fact that every point p of the straight line produces a separation of the same into two portions such that every point of one portion lies to the left of every point of the other. I find the essence of continuity in the converse, i.e. in the following principle: ‘If all points of the straight line fall into two classes such that every point of the first class lies to the left of every point of the second class, then there exists one and only one point which produces this division of all points into two classes, this severing of the straight line into two portions’.12

Dedekind further elaborates this proof – what he calls the ‘principle of continuity’ (also known as ‘the Dedekind cut’) – by linking it to theorems of infinitesimal analysis or the study of what constitutes infinity. As Alain Badiou writes of Dedekind in Le Nombre et les nombres, ‘Dedekind is a true modern. He knows that the infinite is more simple than the finite, that it is the most general attribute of being, an intuition from which Pascal was clearly the first to draw the radical consequences with respect to the site of the subject’.13 In addition to envisioning the infinite as an attribute of being – something that will be discussed in what follows with regard to the concept of the incorporeal – there is also an implicit relation of continuity established between the finite and the infinite, in other words, between two distinct logical systems.

It seems that Sartre, much like Dedekind but less explicitly, provides a way of thinking continuity between the human and the non-human, between the animate and the inanimate, between the past and the present and between the violent and the non- violent precisely because he is able to think the radical separation of these terms, to make a cut between them.

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I wish to turn now to the discussion of violence in Walter Benjamin’s celebrated ‘Critique of Violence’ and trace a submerged subtext – that of the non-human – that at once helps elucidate the implicit distinction between the violent and the non- violent and also opens up the possibility of theorizing the non-violent with a rigor that is customarily only reserved for the question of violence. Building on Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence,14 Benjamin distinguishes between two kinds of violence, mythic violence and divine violence; the first works in the service of the law and the state while the second poses a threat to the very foundations on which the law and the state are built. As Benjamin writes, ‘[I]f mythical violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 destroys them; if mythical violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood’.15 Following Sorel, Benjamin takes the political strike as the example of mythical violence and the proletarian general strike as the disruptive divine violence that aims not at a specific injustice in one part of the parallax 19 system but at an overhaul of the entire system in the name of justice itself. Benjamin continues by relating this distinction to two different notions of life: ‘Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake, divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living’.16 Here, Benjamin makes a subtle distinction between two kinds of life, what Giorgio Agamben has characterized as zoe: (naked life) and bios (form-of-life), life that is only about the act of being alive versus life that is in some sense an exploration of its own form and potential, an opening to the future.17 Benjamin applies this distinction conditionally to non-human forms of life:

Man cannot, at any price, be said to coincide with the mere life in him, no more than with any other of his conditions and qualities, not even with the uniqueness of his bodily person. However sacred man is […] there is no sacredness in his condition, in his bodily life vulnerable to injury by his fellow men. What, then, distinguishes it essentially from the life of animals and plants? And even if these were sacred, they could not be so by virtue only of being alive, of being in life. It might be well worth while to track down the origin of the dogma of the sacredness of life. Perhaps, indeed probably, it is relatively recent, the last mistaken attempt of the weakened Western tradition to seek the saint it has lost in cosmological impenetrability.18

The reference to the plants and animals foregrounds the embattled oppositional logic that structures the entire essay, a logic that is not far removed from what we have seen in Sartre. There is a strong opposition between the two forms of life, similar to that between the two forms of violence, with life for itself and mythical violence taking a subordinate position to ‘sacred’ life and divine violence. It is worth noting that, whereas for Sartre only praxis and the group formation are properly dialectical and hence superior, for Benjamin it is mythical violence that is caught up in a dialectic between law-making and law-enforcing violence and only the superior divine violence that is outside of the dialectic. In both cases, however, the conditional phrasing of the example exposes a hidden dialectic between the human and the non- human that is foregrounded at the very moment when it is called into question (as when Sartre writes ‘if [man] could encounter pure matter in experience, he would have to be either a god or a stone’). So, too, the conditional dialectic appears in Benjamin’s cryptic sentence ‘even if [plants and animals] were sacred, they could not be so by virtue only of being alive, of being in life’. On the one hand, plants and animals are different from the human, but on the other hand, if they were hypothetically sacred in the same way, their form of life would follow the same structure.

This is the great impasse that both thinkers – as well as Beauvoir in the opening example of the jacket – inadvertently confront: given that the human and the non- human are fundamentally separate, can one even use an example taken from the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 realm of the non-human in the service of an admittedly human logic? And, by the same token, if it is imaginable that both human and non-human function in similar fashion, is there not a greater continuity between them? While it is the latter position that, in the spirit of Dedekind’s principle of continuity, is the stake of my argument, it is a position irreparably haunted by the problem of the limit, the problem that Kaufman 20 any attempt at confronting the non-human must entail the recognition that, from a human perspective, the non-human can only ever exist at the limit of what it is possible for the human to think. But this limitation does not foreclose the imperative of posing the question and attempting an answer.

Such an answer resides in the margins of Benjamin’s text, in the marginal space that is allotted not only to the non-human but also to the non-violent. In a singularly confounding passage, Benjamin suggests that non-violence is only possible in the realm of objects as opposed to persons: ‘Is any nonviolent resolution of conflict possible? Without doubt. The relationships of private persons are full of examples of this… [They] never apply directly to the resolution of conflict between man and man, but only to matters concerning objects. The sphere of nonviolent means opens up in the realm of human conflicts relating to goods’.19 Benjamin here reveals a strange alliance between non-violence and the world of objects. Though the objects would seem to signal a subsidiary domain, the non-violent is much more ambivalent, for it ultimately connects back to pure violence. In the terminological chiasmus employed throughout ‘Critique of Violence’, divine violence is repeatedly linked to the bloodless general strike and implicitly to the non-violent. In their formidable readings of this text, both Jacques Derrida and Werner Hamacher emphatically equate the seemingly mutually exclusive terms of divine violence and non-violence. Derrida writes in ‘Force of Law’ that ‘we shall see […] how this non-violence is not without affinity to pure violence’.20 Hamacher makes the link between pure violence and non-violence even more explicit: ‘The proletarian strike is pure political violence, pure means, and thus non-violent, as the strikers’ aim is not one of new legislation or of modified work within the constraints of state violence – that is, not a positively determinable purpose beyond the strike but precisely the strike itself in its unmediated mediacy. This strike directed toward the annihilation of state violence by way of suspension of all positing violence – in other words, directed toward nothing – can be described as being without intention’.21

If we follow Derrida and Hamacher in this linking of divine violence and non- violence, then, returning to Benjamin, the object or good (which is linked by him to non-violence) would implicitly also be linked to divine violence or pure violence. Yet how can one say an object is purely violent or the recipient of violence? In addressing this question, Derrida employs the double logic outlined above, which both distinguishes human violence from non-human violence and in the very mode of distinction employed points to a possible and unexplored continuity between the two terms. He writes the following by way of a provocative aside: ‘In the space in which I’m situating these remarks or reconstituting this discourse one would not speak of injustice or violence toward an animal, even less toward a vegetable or a stone. An animal can be made to suffer, but we would never say, in a sense considered proper, that it is a wronged subject, the victim of a crime, of a murder, of a rape or a theft, of a perjury – and this is true a fortiori, we think, for what we call vegetable or mineral Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 or intermediate species like the sponge’.22 Although this passage overtly situates the human as distinct from the animal or vegetable in that violence is a uniquely human category, so many of its subtle phrasings qualify, and by qualifying undermine, the categorical nature of the distinction being outlined. ‘In the space in which I am outlining these remarks’ implies that in another space the distinctions would be parallax 21 different. ‘We would never say, in a sense considered proper, that [an animal] is a wronged subject’ suggests that in some improper (but perhaps desirable?) sense it would be. ‘And this is true a fortiori, we think, for what we call vegetable or mineral or intermediate species like the sponge’ implies that what ‘we think’ might be inaccurate and what ‘we call’ might be a misnomer.

Derrida in fact concludes this meditation with a convoluted though ultimately damning deferral of these questions:

I will leave these problems aside for the moment, along with the affinity between carnivorous sacrifice, at the basis of our culture and our law, and all the cannibalisms, symbolic or not, that structure intersubjectivity in nursing, love, mourning and, in truth, in all symbolic or linguistic appropriations… [I]f we wish to speak of injustice, of violence or of a lack of respect toward what we still so confusedly call animals – the question is more topical than ever, and so I include in it, in the name of deconstruction, a set of questions on carno-phallogocentrism – we must reconsider in its totality the metaphysico-anthropocentric axiomatic that dominates, in the West, the thought of just and unjust.23

Such a remark undermines any exclusive link between violence and the human, suggesting that violence and injustice are possible regarding the non-human as well, that indeed Western thought and civilization have been built on such violence and injustice. It also suggests that the anthropocentric terms in which these questions are necessarily posed are never outside or beyond performing the violence they would hope to confront.

From entirely different starting points, both Derrida and Benjamin before him arrive at the same set of uneasy ontological possibilities: the non-human may be intrinsically non-violent, the non-violent may be pure violence, and pure violence may be both a human and a non-human attribute. It might be concluded that these sets of terms are ultimately circular and hence non-meaningful. Or, to the contrary, this very circularity might itself point to certain important observations: 1) although the distinctions break down, these concepts are presented as distinct from each other, sometimes radically so; 2) violence is itself not one term but two, mythical violence and divine violence, the latter being closer to non-violence; 3) while violence is a complex term, the non-violent and the non-human are not explored with equal complexity; 4) yet the linking of the non-human both to non-violence and to violence suggests a rich world of potential.

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In conclusion, I wish to explore this non-violent potential as it is figured in the notion Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 of the incorporeal. In his extraordinary study of the incorporeal in Stoic philosophy, Emile Bre´hier outlines the way in which the Stoics perceived a radical division between the body (corps – what I will refer to as the corporeal) and the incorporeal. What is truly radical about this division is that it does not allow for a relation between the two terms, but instead insists that they are not of the same kind and thus not Kaufman 22 comparable. Yet, as Bre´hier points out, the signal shortcoming in the Stoic logic is that it is unable to entirely eliminate the need for relation. Bre´hier emphasizes this in his summary of the Stoic position with respect to Plato and Aristotle:

For Plato and Aristotle, the world contained both the limited and the unlimited, stable mathematics and the indeterminate. It is in their relations that things are explained. In altering both the meaning itself of these elements and their relations, the Stoics sought to isolate them from one another, not in the fashion of Plato and Aristotle by considering them as distinct elements of a whole, but in giving them a nature that prevents the action of one on the other. The finite is the corporeal, limited, determined, acting in its movement and containing its own principles of action. The infinite is the incorporeal, emptiness, that which adds nothing to being and receives nothing, unlimited nothingness remaining in perfect indifference. We have seen how they were nevertheless unable to suppress this relation.24

Bre´hier’s study highlights how the emphasis on non-relation marked a significant break from Plato and Aristotle, yet in spite of this the question of relationality never failed to haunt the Stoics. By the same token, it is the non-relation that haunts those philosophers who write in the wake of Plato and Aristotle, which is of course everyone under consideration here. As I have suggested, the examples from Beauvoir, Sartre, Benjamin and Derrida of non-human objects set off against a human counterexample all secretly foreground the problem of non-relation. Can the non-human, even if presented in contradistinction to the human, even be posed on the same terms? It seems that only a recognition of the non-relational relation between the human and the non-human will allow for a thinking of the continuity between the two.25

Bre´hier’s study is particularly useful for the examples it provides of a non-relational logic embedded in that which seems readable only as a violent corporeal action. The examples that follow are dependent on a notion of what Bre´hier terms an incorporeal expressible (exprimable incorporel) or an incorporeal attribute. The expressible and the attribute express aspects of reality but are not equivalent to reality itself. Bre´hier elaborates this through the example of the scar’s relation to the wound:

In a proposition of this genre: ‘If there is a scar, there was a wound,’ the wound in itself is clearly something in the past, but it is in no way the wound, but rather the fact of having had a wound that is signified; of this present fact, the sign is this other fact of having a scar that is equally present… Thus the relation of sign to signified is between two incorporeal terms, two expressibles, and not at all between two realities. But could it be said that this relation between expressibles supposes a relation between the things (here the wound and the scar). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 In their semiology at least, the Stoics are concerned only with the first relation and never with the second.26

This is not to assert that the wound and the scar are not real, but that they operate on a level that is simultaneously incorporeal. Because they seem so thoroughly parallax 23 corporeal in nature, this other level is difficult if not impossible to perceive. Leaving the sticky question of the relation or non-relation between the two levels aside for the moment, the great insight of the Stoics is to perceive that there are two levels at all.27

Gilles Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense is none other than a manual for learning to perceive incorporeal attributes. The degree of its indebtedness to Bre´hier’s study has never to my knowledge been remarked upon (Bre´hier was, interestingly enough, the director of Merleau-Ponty’s thesis on Plotinus28). In the opening pages of The Logic of Sense, Deleuze cites a lengthy example from Bre´hier which is similar in its import to the example of the scar and the wound. To cite Deleuze citing Bre´hier:

When the scalpel cuts through the flesh, the first body produces upon the second not a new property but a new attribute, that of being cut. The attribute does not designate any real quality […] it is, in fact, neither active nor passive, for passivity would presuppose a corporeal nature which undergoes an action… [The Stoics distinguished] radically two planes of being, something that no one had done before them: on the one hand, real and profound being, force; on the other, the plane of facts, which frolic on the surface of being, and constitute an endless multiplicity of incorporeal beings.29

Deleuze goes on to develop the concept of incorporeal events as surfaces distinct from bodies and does so in a more sustained fashion in this work than in any other. Drawing on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, he carefully outlines a system based on the disjunctive or alogical logic of the Stoics. It is a system that allows – through the concept of the incorporeal event or the surface effect – what might seem to be contradictory or perhaps imperceptible qualities to coexist. To return to the permutations of violence outlined above, the Stoic notion of the incorporeal attribute allows for the opening question to be posed with greater precision: what might it mean to envision not only a divine (and in some sense non-violent) violence as distinct from a mythical violence, but beyond that to perceive even at the center (the ground-zero) of the most vulgar and mythical violence (the act of terrorism), the simultaneous existence of another level, that of incorporeal effects? This in no way diminishes the violence of the act of terrorism. If anything, it makes it more real, precisely because it gives rise, and has given rise, to a whole series of surface effects. It is not my project here to outline what those effects might be – that work remains to be done – but rather to insist that the corporeality of an event not blind us to the eventfulness of its incorporeality.

The non-human objects that populate phenomenological writing help to express a conundrum that has both human and non-human implications. When you cut a

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 jacket or a piece or fruit of human flesh, is it a violent or a non-violent action? Deleuze helps us see that it is always both/and, it is always both at once. This continuity between the violent and the non-violent is itself only made perceptible by a rigorous system of difference (which we have seen in its finest form in Sartre), one that might – provocatively – be termed a dialectics. Deleuze writes: Kaufman 24 The Stoics discovered surface effects […] The infinitely divisible event is always both at once. It is eternally that which has just happened and that which is about to happen, but is never that which is happening (to cut too deeply and not enough). The event, being itself impassive, allows the active and the passive to be interchanged more easily, since it is neither the one nor the other, but rather their common result (to cut – to be cut)… Perhaps the Stoics used the paradox in a completely new manner – both as an instrument for the analysis of language and as a means of synthesizing events. Dialectics is precisely this science of incorporeal events as they are expressed in propositions, and of the connections between events as they are expressed in relations between propositions. Dialectics is, indeed, the art of conjugation.30

Rather than respond in kind to violent acts, it is perhaps more important to think the conjugation and the implication of violent and non-violent events, events that co-exist yet are fundamentally different in kind.

Notes

My thanks to Rocky Gangle, Fredric Jameson, 5 Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, p.185. Sartre Toril Moi and Danny Siegel for providing expresses a similar position just before: ‘If invaluable references. materiality is everywhere and if it is indissolubly 1 See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The linked to the meanings engraved in it by praxis,if Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: a group of men can act as a quasi-mechanical Pantheon Books, 1977). system and a thing can produce its own idea, what 2 Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay (New York: becomes of matter, that is to say, Being totally W. W. Norton and Company, 1954), p.120 without meaning? The answer is simple: it does (translation modified). For a discussion of the not appear anywhere in human experience. At any pivotal role of the jacket episode both in She Came moment of History things are human precisely to to Stay and in Beauvoir’s own life, see Elaine the extent that men are things’ (p.180). 6 Marks, ‘The Old Jacket: Intimations of See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Intertwining Nothingness’ in Simone de Beauvoir: Encounters with – The Chiasm’ in The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Death (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968); Gilles Deleuze and Fe´lix 1973), pp.12–21. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and 3 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: NLB, University of Minnesota Press, 1987); Jean- 1976), p.262. Franc¸ois Lyotard, The Inhuman, trans. Geoffrey 4 Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, p.263. For an Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: analysis of these same issues with a greater Stanford University Press, 1991); Donna Haraway, emphasis on temporality, see my ‘Solid Dialectic ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and in Sartre and Deleuze’, Polygraph, no. 14 (2002), Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’ pp.79–91. For an excellent discussion of dialectics in David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (eds), The and temporality in Sartre, Bergson and Husserl, Cybercultures Reader (New York: Routledge, 2000), see Gerhard Seel, La Dialectique de Sartre (Lausanne: pp.291–324. Editions L’Age d’Homme, 1995), pp. 172–93. See 7 This is suggestively proposed but not extensively also Raymond Aron’s study of the Critique, Histoire developed in Bernard-Henri Le´vy, Le Sie`cle de Sartre

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 et dialectique de la violence (Paris: Gallimard, 1973). (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2000). See the chapter Aron proposes that Sartre’s notion of praxis from ‘L’Existentialisme est un antihumanisme’ where the Critique is a substitute for the For-Itself of Being Le´vy sets the lineage of Leibniz-Spinoza-Merleau- and Nothingness (p.19) and furthermore considers Ponty-Deleuze against that of Descartes-Husserl- Sartre’s concepts of praxis, totalisation, temporalisation Levinas-Sartre. Yet he prefaces this by referring to and dialectic to be interchangeable (p.39). remarks Deleuze once made to him about his parallax 25 indebtedness to Sartre and adds, with a nod to 18 Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’, p.299. This Foucault’s famous statement that someday the citation is prefaced by a strange defense of a quote century will be known as Deleuzian, that ‘the from Kurt Hiller that advocates the prioritizing of century was only Deleuzian because it started by existence itself (naked life) above all: ‘the being Sartrean’ (p.260, my translation). See also nonexistence of man is something more terrible pp.259–68. Similar remarks by Deleuze are than the (admittedly subordinate) not-yet-attained published in Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and condition of the just man’. The terror of non- Barbara Halberjam (New York: Columbia existence expressed here has striking affinities with University Press, 1987): ‘Fortunately there was Beauvoir’s expression of terror at the jacket’s non- Sartre. Sartre was our Outside, he was really the existence. In his reading of this passage, Jacques breath of fresh air from the backyard […] And Derrida emphasizes the call for a future justice Sartre has never stopped being that, not a model, and links this to Judaism: ‘And while noting that a method or an example, but a little fresh air – a these terms ‘‘Dasein’’ and ‘‘life’’ remain very gust of air even when he had just been to the Cafe´ ambiguous, [Benjamin] judges the same Flore – an intellectual who singularly changed the propostition [from Hiller], however ambiguous it situation of the intellectual’ (p.12). may remain, in the opposite way, as full of a 8 Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, pp.181–82. powerful truth if it means that man’s non-being 9 While stone is here translated from caillou, there would be still more terrible than man’s not-yet- is a remarkable frequency of the word pierre, both being just, than the not yet attained condition of as rock and as proper name, in Sartre’s literary the just man, purely and simply. In other words, and philosophical characters and examples. For an what makes for the worth of man, of his Dasein extended study of the philosophical resonances of and his life, is that he contains the potential, the stone, see John Sallis, Stone (Bloomington: Indiana possibility of justice, the yet-to-come […] of justice, University Press, 1994). the yet-to-come of his being-just, of his having-to- 10 For more on the relation between violence, be just. What is sacred in his life is not his life but History, matter and surplus value, see Pierre the justice of his life. Even if beast and plants were Verstraeten, ‘Violence e´thique et violence sacred, they would not be so simply for their life, dialectique’ in Violence et´ ethique: Esquisse d’une critique says Benjamin. This critique of vitalism or da la morale dialectique a` partir du the´aˆtre de Sartre biologism, if it also resembles one by a certain (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), pp.397–413. Heidegger and if it recalls, as I have noted 11 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. elsewhere, a certain Hegel, here proceeds like the Hazel Barnes (London: Routledge, 1989), awakening of a Judaic tradition’. Jacques Derrida, pp.63–64. It is interesting to note that elsewhere ‘Force of Law: The ‘‘Mystical Foundation of Sartre uses the extended example of a paper-cutter Authority’’’ in Drucilla Cornell, Michael Rosenfeld as an object whose essence precedes its existence. and David Gray Carlson (eds), Deconstruction and the This is set off against the more privileged human Possibility of Justice (New York: Routledge, 1992), subject whose existence precedes his or her essence. pp.53–54. See ‘The Humanism of Existentialism’ in Charles 19 Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’, p.289. For an Guignon and Derk Pereboom (eds), Existentialism: analysis of this passage with respect to the non- Basic Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), violent and its relation to language, see Werner pp.268–86. Hamacher, ‘Afformative, Strike: Benjamin’s 12 Richard Dedekind, ‘Continuity and Irrational ‘‘Critique of Violence’’’ in Andrew Benjamin and Numbers’ in Essays on the Theory of Numbers, trans. Peter Osborne (eds), Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Wooster Woodruff Beman (Chicago: The Open Destruction and Experience (Manchester: Clinamen Court Publishing Company, 1909), pp.10–11. Press, 2000), 108–36. Such a questioning of when 13 Alain Badiou, Le Nombre et les nombres (Paris: non-violence is even possible is posed in different Editions du Seuil, 1990), p.46. My translation. ways by Frantz Fanon and Merleau-Ponty. In 14 See Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, trans. ‘Concerning Violence’, Fanon argues that non- T. E. Hulme (New York: AMS Press, 1975). violence is ‘a creation of the colonial situation’. 15 Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’ in See The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Reflections, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Farrington (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963),

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009 Schocken Books, 1978), p.297. p.61. In Humanism and Terror, trans. John O’Neill 16 Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’, p.297. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p.xx, Merleau-Ponty 17 See Giorgio Agamben, ‘Form-of-Life’ in Means discusses Marx’s antagonism to ‘the liberal posture Without End: Notes on Politics, trans. Vincenzo Binetti of nonviolence’. Although a will to non-violence is and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of clearly ideologically marked, a view of violence as Minnesota Press, 2000), pp.3–12. devoid of non-violent attributes is none the less so. Kaufman 26 20 Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, p.49. differences that are now seen as commonplace: 21 Hamacher, ‘Afformative, Strike’, p.118. ‘The Stoics, like the other Ancients, did not have 22 Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, p.18. the notion of the inertia of matter, a fundamental 23 Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, p.19. postulate of the materialism of our era’. See La 24 Emile Bre´hier, La The´orie des incorporels dans The´orie des incorporels, p.6. l’ancien Stoı¨cisme (Paris: Vrin, 1970), p.51. My 28 This is noted in Dermot Moran, Introduction to translation. Phenomenology (London and New York: Routledge, 25 No one has gone further than Maurice Blanchot 2000), p.392. in creating a philosophy and a literature of non- 29 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark relation. See especially The Infinite Conversation, Lester with Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia trans. Sue Hanson (Minneapolis: University of University Press, 1990), p.5. See also the longer Minnesota Press, 1993). passage in Bre´hier from which this is taken on 26 Bre´hier, La The´orie des incorporels, p.32. pp.12–13. I discuss this passage and its connections 27 Just as Bre´hier credits the Stoics with being able to Sartre in more detail in my ‘Solid Dialectic in to perceive a generally imperceptible difference, Sartre and Deleuze’. he also notes that they did not perceive other 30 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, pp.7–8.

Eleanor Kaufman teaches in the English Department at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Delirium of Praise: Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, Klossowksi and co-editor of Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:46 18 November 2009

parallax 27 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 28–38

Time Lost, Instantaneity and The Image

Dorothea E. Olkowski

After all the scrutiny philosophy has given to the study of the intersection of embodiment and the world in the last century, one might think that every aspect of this subject would already have been addressed and that only interpretive differences representing colliding world views obstruct consensus. Phenomenological theories postulate a pre-cognitive, anonymous, lived body while existentialism insists on the fundamental subject-object structure of intentional consciousness. Cognitivists contend that the mysterious realm existing between the brain and/or nervous system and consciousness is primary. Post-structuralism reads the body through linguistic codes, along with psychoanalysis, which also articulates the patriarchal construction of those codes. Presumably anything one wants to say about embodiment could or should be able to be articulated through these theories, each of which attempts to illuminate a different aspect of the relation between embodiment and the world. Even if we wish to explore matters outside the purview of the issues addressed by each of these theories, they define the field of study and serve as the standard and measure of all other approaches. They share certain characteristics, in service to a more general world view, in spite of their apparent differences. Thus we should not be too surprised to discover that each of these positions privileges space and spatial concepts over time, for perhaps this is no more than a reflection of their investment in that more general philosophical world view, one that almost always conceives of time in spatial terms, as homogenous units measured by spatial divisions as we constituted them in perception and conception. This tendency is augmented and amplified by our ongoing fascination with acting in the world and with any contrivances that might allow us to do so with greater efficiency. Given this, the suggestion that we think about embodiment in terms of reflection on our temporal existence might seem to be unimaginable if not unintelligible. What, after all, is duration? What can we make of something so intangible as the heterogeneous flow of qualitative differences, since even our perception does not seem to give us access to the realm of anything outside of the figure on a ground, the object of our interests and action?

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 Externally, we perceive a figure on a ground, but internally, that is temporally, we are in the presence of images and we experience our bodies as the centres of temporal images. This is not to deny at all that a living body is a center of action; it is to add, however, that aside from any reflective or intentional consciousness and in the midst

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 28 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000047972 of its temporal duration, the body is also a sensory-motor image. Although the image that is the body will come to reflect upon images it receives from the material universe according to the actions it can exercise on them, it also receives the action of real, material objects. In receiving this action sometimes the body struggles with it and sometimes it opens up to the motion. This struggle is the feeling of pain, and this openness is the feeling of pleasure; both are pure affectivity, the body’s actual effort upon itself, its real action different in kind from but simultaneous with perception.1 Perception, on the other hand, is simply an image that is reflected and separated from the body by an interval. In that interval, perception calls upon affective memory to supply it with an image that it can put into action. In other words, perception is driven by its interest in acting in the world, but without the interval between perception and action, humans would be purely reflexive beings unable to resist the immediate call of things. The capacity to resist what interests us in the world attests to the reality of affection as the action of the body upon itself. Pleasure or pain literally halts the outward motion and the directedness to the world of our embodied being. They are localized, evidence that the action of external causes can threaten to disintegrate or engulf the body, but evidence also that the body’s surface is felt and not only perceived. Given the motion of an external object, some of the action is absorbed as affection rather than reflected back into the world as perception and action. The affective sensation occurs bodily as a localized sensitivity eliciting pleasure and pain, a felt sensitivity that always exists but usually goes unrecognized when external objects attract our interest and attention, pulling us away from our own sensibility.

When the movements of objects are transmitted to the sensory-motor system of a living body, it absorbs some of the motion and impresses this motion upon itself. This affection is real insofar as it is sensory, the motion of a thing or things in the world brought into contact with the embodied sensibility of other things. Between the received stimulus and the movement enacted in response to the call of the world for our attention, abides the interval in which matter and memory intersect and converge. This moment, the convergence of matter and memory, originates in the world insofar as through their motions, all elements exist together in a world that vibrates with their multiple rhythms, from the lightest elements: hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine and neon; through the rare earth elements: lanthanum, cerium, promethium, europium; to the heaviest: unnilhexium and unnilennium, each with its own multiple rhythms, that is motions, and each receiving multiple motions from all the others.2

All of this must be distinguished from what usually obscures it: perception. Henri Bergson argues that even the most infinitesimal material point has infinitely greater and more complex perceptions than the most acute human being. This must be because affective capacity and sensibility are not the same as perception; they are different in kind. Among humans, many animals and even plants, perceptions Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 presuppose a suppression of all perceptibles except those toward which the being is not indifferent. What is perceived is only what is of interest and use; what is perceived is something an organism can act on. Among lower organisms, interest barely functions at all, so perception is indistinguishable from touch. Activity and passivity are concurrent.3 Among higher organisms, perception is selective, and as the material parallax 29 world is given to the passively affective being as a system of closely linked images surrounding a center of living and material activity, the organism, especially the human being, analyzes the world in terms of the actions it can exercise upon that world so that when external objects are perceived, they are perceived mostly insofar as they are objects of virtual action.4 Affection is purely sensory and conveyed through movement, yet it creates an image. Sound images, visual images, sensual images, all of which are purely qualitative and singular, that is to say, unrepeatable insofar as they arise in the moment of affective sensibility and each is particular to its moment. Perception, on the other hand, uses the image. ‘Everything [...] happens for us as though we reflected back to surfaces the light which emanates from them, the light which had it passed on unopposed, would never have been revealed’. The images which surround us appear to turn toward our body the side, emphasized by the light upon it, which interests our body. They will detach from themselves that which we have arrested on its way, that which we are capable of influencing.5 In this way the singular images of the temporal motions of all the elements in the cosmos are taken up and actualized in our perceptual projects as objects in the world. In this way, through our acts, time extends its qualitative motions into space and the creative flux of the cosmos is transformed into the static but useful worldly projects which fascinate us.

Almost without exception then, worldly interests and projects claim our attention and we are drawn away from our temporal, affective lives and into our active, spatial endeavors. The more active we are, the more we intensify our spatial commitments. The temporal images we select will be those most useful to our projects, but in our haste and self-indulgence, we will draw upon the same images again and again. Bypassing creative reflection we respond to the world more and more hurriedly. Drawing on the same images over and over again allows us to speed up the process until we begin to act like single-celled creatures, responding with lightening speed to the stimuli around us. It is no accident that we are utterly fascinated by technologies that accelerate perception by supplying an instantaneous stimulus and response. Referring to the perceptual images of computer and digital technology, urbanist Paul Virilio argues that ‘every image has a destiny of magnification’, which may be said to enhance the ‘technicity’ of the image insofar as images can be characterized in terms of what I will call their intensivity and interactivity.6 Intensivity and interactivity are terms which are used so often in contemporary discourse, that we barely bother to define them, let alone justify their apparently benign function. Yet when we refer to the intensivity and interactivity of the image, we might well want to take care to begin by defining these terms and justifying their use in this context, in order to try to make sense of the urgency of recognizing the pervasiveness as well as the danger produced by the effects of the image they characterize.

The intensive-interactive image is an interchangeable image magnifying or amplifying the operation in which whatever is here and present in time and space Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 comes to be nullified and overrun by that which is absent or deferred. This nullification or invasion takes place by means of an instantaneous interactivity which is the inescapable effect of technological advances in communications, from computers to missiles. As such, it is also an image over which we have no control, which impresses itself upon us just as the negative of a film impresses itself upon our Olkowski 30 retina in a perceptual process. This makes it all the more important to pay attention to what the image is displacing and disqualifying as well as to the consequences of its instantaneity, insofar as one of the principle repercussions of the intensive- interactive image is the cancellation of the interval between our perception of the world and our response to it.

As an image is magnified by technological means, it is able to incorporate or to be overtaken by what otherwise would occupy an other time and an other space. What is displaced is the image created by la longue dure´e, the ongoing, thus by comparison, slow and continuous duration of existence, a duration which can only be produced in a milieu in which depth of field and depth of time are not so much maintained as they are opened up by the form of substance and form of expression of the perceptual and creative situation.7 That is, the image constituted out of a milieu is never simply a content for which a certain form is chosen or applied. Every image- content is chosen in a certain order, because it is always, already formed by some social or political milieu, even when these milieus operate as nothing but the interpretation of a so-called natural milieu. And the order in which an image-content is given or placed is always related to the manner of expression, the organization or form of expression, which itself is a function of the social or political milieu. The manner in which an image appears, its form of expression and form of content, are then, the effect of the temporal process which allows for creative reflection and which is always open ended, thus able to be altered through further reflection upon the ongoing and continuous duration of existence. To claim that an image has a depth of field is to say there is a form of content, to claim a depth of time is to create a form of expression even though content and expression cannot necessarily be separated. That modes of expression arise in relation to the temporalization that life or a thing is, indicates that without reflection upon our qualitative duration, no new forms of expression will originate from human creative efforts. The implication here, and it is an implication whose conditions and ramifications remain to be thoroughly explored, is that under the influence of our social and political frameworks, some forms of perception and therefore content and expression have gained ascendancy over others. They have gained ascendancy insofar as they have proved useful or necessary to the creation of a certain kind of politics and a certain kind of life. Thus, the question of the order of the image is also and more importantly a question about the nature of life itself as politics and perception come, to a greater and greater degree, to be organized by technicity, an organization which functions so as to eliminate affective, temporal life.

Because these definitions remain rather abstract, let us connect them to some actual situations. Virilio links intensivity to temporal instantaneity, what he also refers to as the populating of time.

To the 300 million annual tourists, to the 100,000 daily passengers of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 airlines, is added the hundreds of millions of cars, of television spectators, along with an uncountable mass of telematic interlocutors, the ‘tele-actors’ of transfer-machines, whence the decline of the great political and legal bodies [...]. Hyper-concentration [...] is indeed rather indicative of a critical mass, a cataclysmic index of an imminent parallax 31 disintegration of the historical city, of the traditional urbanization as well as of the state form.8

Today, most of the old ‘hierarchies’ are disappearing; it appears that the power of the center over the peripheries has lapsed. This is a situation that many do not mourn but instead celebrate as a success story for the post-modern if not the nouveau anarchist view of the world, for it appears to give rise at least to the possibility of a redistribution of wealth and control. However, it does so only by placing power democratically or anarchically in the hands of citizens whose communities are now defined by their attendance at their choice of sporting event, web site, chat room, cable channel or mall.

The creation of an endless periphery city is a product of the electronic environment and the intensive populating of time. It results in ‘interactive confinement, a sort of inertia of human populations’, which produces independent, local subgroups, ‘internal extraterritorial entities’, whose purpose is to justify if not demand the abolition of geopolitical formations and ultimately, of the civic rights and the political citizenship of populations.9 Let us not forget, for example, that one of the educational specialties of choice of one of the individuals who hijacked and flew an airliner into the World Trade Center Towers in September 2001 was urban studies. Who better to participate in the destruction of the urban environment than someone who has specialized in the study of such environments? Although the terrorist strikes were, in principle, aimed at the destruction of the economic center of the American empire, their economic impact may well turn out to be far less significant than their social and political consequences. People around the world reacted initially out of fear by staying away from New York City in particular and the United States in general. Before long, world-wide sympathy was transformed into dislike and distrust in response to the unilateral, cold-war politics of the Bush administration which isolated the U.S. far more than the initial attacks ever could. Many U.S. citizens do not seem to realize that their government’s action have enlarged their separation from the rest of the world. This is why the destruction of urban areas as milieus for social and political life needs little enough assistance from alleged terrorists. Confined to their peripheral interactive communities, many citizens do not even notice that they utterly fail to participate in the rituals and responsibilities of civil society. Most noticeably, there is no language expressing the affective relations that people might have with one another were they attuned to the qualitative duration of the pleasure and pain of their relations. Where urban centers have been revitalized (such as the famous Disneyfication of New York’s Times Square), they are primarily entertainment districts, centers of tourism, corporate headquarters and, in some cases, urban neighborhoods (the loft being the new model of chic urban lifestyle). The modes of expression of the inhabitants and visitors are not indicative of attention to the affective moment of pleasure or pain and the reflective interval between perception and action, the sole interval in which new relations can be created. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 In effect, in spite of the lively environments of many of these urban districts, they and the people who populate them are much less part of an intimate civil society than they are display items for the visitors and periphery dwellers for whom they function as visual, gustatory and perceptual stimuli. They are a strange sort of stimuli, Olkowski 32 one that does not affect sensibilities on the level of affective life or feeling. Instead of opening connections between one person and another or between groups of persons, or between persons and their milieu through the creation of new kinds of concepts, languages and other modes of expression, the new urban center exists in order to populate the moment, filling it with a greater number and density of diversions, enticements and images, thus intensifying it. The disenfranchisement of affective civil life is especially notable when one considers that most of the actual work in these districts is carried out by second and third world immigrants, legal and illegal, who often send most of their earnings home to support their families in poverty-stricken, unstable periphery nations whose agricultural and industrial production are confiscated for export or have collapsed under the so-called competitive and open market treaties demanded by global competitors.10 Meanwhile, like their peripheral brothers and sisters, the residents of metropolitan zones work in businesses dominated by the ‘instantaneous interactive capacities of technologies that privilege henceforth the multinational monopolistic intensivity to the detriment of the extensivity of national capitalism’.11 Although many would celebrate this collapse insofar as it eliminates the differences between first and third world inhabitants by bringing third world workers out of the cold and into a newly created sphere of immanence, since there is no affective community to greet them, little is accomplished by this move. Conversation between and among first and third world populations is seldom needed so seldom develops; they live and work together in silence.

In place of national capitalism, intensivity and interactivity actively constitute extraterritorial subgroups, peripheral lives in peripheral places. One lives there or visits there because everyone else does; no one can distinguish one sub-development from another and that is the point. Existing intensively, interchangeably, each formerly distinct site as well as each individual person forgoes its and their own intimate duration, its and their ongoing interiority, and all are transmuted into a point of space-time which is interchangeable with any other point of space-time, resulting in a situation in which the political and legal status of persons and places is thrown into question. After the attacks on the New York World Trade Center Towers, the status of laws governing the declaration of war, the legal status and rights of immigrants and travelers on the nation’s airlines, freedom from invasive wiretaps and mail investigations, from racial profiling, as well as the entire orientation of so-called opposition political parties in the political field were radically altered. This lead to situations such as that of five ‘Middle Eastern men’ arrested as they drove into New York City hours after the bombings. The men were driving a truck and carried box cutters and at least 4000 dollars in cash. The suspects were blindfolded during interrogations, handcuffed in confinement, forced to take polygraph tests, threatened that they could be charged with violating obscure ‘black- humor statutes’, allowing prosecution for cracking jokes about security matters and prohibited from speaking with an attorney until eleven days after their arrest. The

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 men, who were in the United States illegally, mostly under expired visas, were working for a moving company in New Jersey and turned out to be Israeli Jews who were eventually deported. Even after the acknowledgment that these men were not involved in terrorist activities, a strong bias continued to be asserted against them because they were thought to ‘have been glib in the face of tragedy’ because they parallax 33 were discovered to have been standing on top of their van taking photographs of the collapsing towers.12

In principle, there was nothing to distinguish the figure of these five men from the figure of any other group of men who might be taken for terrorists. Given their Middle Eastern looks, the fact that they were speaking a foreign language, that they were in possession of a large amount of cash, box cutters and photographs of the collapsing towers, they were fundamentally ‘interchangeable’ with any other group of men who might come under suspicion for terrorist activities. In short, without a milieu, that is, without both the natural and the social or political extension created in the ongoing affective temporality of lives and environments, neither lives nor environments have a reality. The decision to view the men suspiciously and to arrest them became automatic, and they languished in jail for the wrong set of crimes because their imprisonment and vilification were the result of the decline in responsibility and intelligent intervention law enforcement enacts when there are no longer any clearly delineated political entities or persons. Thus has arisen the increasing likelihood of ‘momentary law, legislation of the instantaneous, special courts, government by decrees, by ordinances, state of emergency’, all of which indicate the existence of an intensivity that destroys la longue dure´e of laws and the civil state in the face of the threat of terrorism, a threat being met with all the resources of interactive, instantaneous technologies available.13 Such decentralization, such anarchic intensity does not grant communities greater self- determination, instead, it limits and isolates them, perceptually, politically, socially and ecologically by taking over, literally if need be, the ongoing affective relations of members of a community with one another and with the political, social and natural environment. In place of such relations we are left with ‘chronopolitics’, not the civil, political life of a social and natural milieu, but the imposition of information systems which empty out regional life and activity.14

For a long time now, we have been satisfied with this. There is even a new and much celebrated political theory that acclaims the pure capacity of autonomous human beings to establish their own anarchic sites of power.15 In spite of the romance and mythology surrounding American lifestyles, most Americans have never experienced themselves as part of an affectively connected community let alone as part of a ‘multitude’ in the sense of a critical mass that can take action. Most have no experience with either an urban center or a small town. Westward expansion and the lure of the open highway have been far more vital realities, realities permeated by images of speed: speeding trains, automobiles, airplanes and the speedy multiplication of capital. Riches are gained ‘overnight’ by ambitious drones whose principle qualification is that they have the stamina to work long hours on their own and for their own benefit in a society where the individual always comes first, where natural resources are plentiful or cheaply obtained, where labour is cheap because worker benefits are non-existent and where everything is organized for the sake of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 on-time deliveries to markets across the nation and around the globe. Instantaneity means success. What this produces politically are massive populations of isolated interests – marginal ideologies – rather than a civil state. Resistance becomes impossible, indeed meaningless, since for each isolated individual sitting in front of the computer screen, success or failure is independent of workers, independent of Olkowski 34 full employment and independent of the ties to family, friends, community and even the state. Such individuals have no ongoing, affective durational relationship to the rest of the world. Under these conditions the chief purpose and orientation of media is to create ‘meaningful’ narratives using magnified images to convince the population that they do indeed inhabit a milieu or did so in the past, when in fact, this is not at all and probably has seldom been the case.

I began by asking about prevailing theories of the body in relation to the world and noted that they all seem to privilege space over time, conceiving of time in spatial terms, as homogenous and so as measured by spatial divisions as we constitute them in perception and conception. Our fascination with technologies of speed can also then be at least partially explained by the tendency of perception to quickly, and without an interval for reflection upon affective life, make use of habitual familiar images in order to speed up the process by which we act. Since objects of our perception are perceptually already more or less indifferent toward one another, they always and immediately act and react with respect to one another. They do not perceive one another since they are incapable of interested action, but we perceive them and so limit them, because we perceive only what interests us. It is in this sense that perception is the measure of human freedom: the more one’s perception is limited by interest, the less indetermination left for oneself and the more resolved will be one’s world.16 Thus external objects are perceived where they are as objects of virtual action. Perception consists specifically in the power of discernment and choice, yet it impoverishes.17 If any part of the nervous system is damaged, perception is diminished since some objects or parts of the same will be unable to transmit their motion and make their appeal. Equally diminishing are habits; their motions are ready-made responses and not created replies to questions posed by the universe, that is, to movements transmitted from objects.18 No limit on perception transforms human life into the equivalent of the lives of material elements, sand or dirt. Too great a limit on perception, manifested by interests that are too determinate and circumscribed, risks the end of contemplative and creative life for the sake of a perfectly formed world; perfectly formed because infinitely repeated as the same perceptions, expressions, concepts, ideas and words. However, from within the mobility of duration, what is real and concrete, experienced and not perceived is variable, whereas the intensive image and the concepts which characterize it, is a changeless view of a reality that is otherwise in change.19 What the prevailing theories of embodiment and the world either do not recognize as real or do not understand is that fluid and concrete reality cannot be reconstituted out of static analysis. Given the succession of qualitative moments, each of which contains what precedes and announces what follows it, these philosophical approaches continue to resolve duration into separate states: sensations, feelings and ideas or, substance and form, material and representation, writing and drawing. It then studies these separately in order to figure out how they would be once again implicated in one another.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 Yet every so-called psychic ‘state’ contains the whole virtual past as well as the present of the being, so that separation into states is a distortion of concrete being.20 Philosophy begins by isolating the person from the ‘colouring’ duration and affective memory produce so as to leave behind what cannot be expressed in common language. This allows for independent facts, certain states that may be symbolized parallax 35 as ‘ego’ or ‘object’ for example. But a ‘true empiricism’ must, for each and every living being it studies, be generous and create for the being a concept that is appropriate to that being alone.21 We should indeed remain skeptical about the ability of our forms of expression, our languages and concepts to manifest the singularity of this being, insofar as certain forms of expression use images to form concepts that ‘represent’ the common, what is similar, the homogeneous and quantitative, rather than the unique, the singular and qualitative, and so destroy singularity for the sake of the perception of interested, habitual objects. As I argued above, the manner in which an image appears, its form of expression and form of content, can be the effect of the temporal process which allows for creative reflection and which is always open ended, thus able to be altered through further reflection upon the ongoing and continuous duration of existence. New modes of expression arise in relation to the temporalization that life or a thing is, but given the influence of speed on our own perceptual and conceptual habits, our social and political frameworks, some forms of perception and therefore expression have gained ascendancy over others. They have gained ascendancy insofar as they have proved useful or necessary to the creation of a certain kind of politics and a certain kind of life. The question of the order of the image is also and more importantly a question about the nature of life itself as politics and perception come, to a greater and greater degree, to be organized by technicity, an organization which functions so as to eliminate pleasure and pain by abandoning affective, temporal life.

One way or another, we are lead back to the problematics of affectivity. Yet, for those of us only too easily determined by our interests, duration continually appears to be broken up into discrete words from the side of embodiment and independent objects from the side of the world. This is due to the demands placed on intelligence to serve action and to the circumstance that our knowledge, our most abstract and theoretical knowledge, has been too much under the influence of perception – our surface and acquired habits, our actions, our embodiment, the omni-present necessity to choose based on what is most useful. And what has been most useful for human beings who are both fascinated by their own action and driven to continue to act is refracting the pure duration of affective sensibility into the intensive-interactive image, reducing its fluidity to a static, impersonal and public form whose elements are dissociated and juxtaposed and which can be spoken about in the common language of society.22 But sensibility is not usefulness, thus it is not need. Affectivity is unrelated to need, rather, when the movements of objects are transmitted to the sensory-motor system of a living body, that system absorbs some of the motion and impresses this motion upon itself. This affection is real because it is sensory; it conveys motion from beings in the world to the affective system of other moving beings so as to constitute a world in motion, a world that vibrates with their multiple rhythms. Such a world is different in kind from the coded, colourless and lifeless repetition of the same that replaces pleasure and pain with the juxtaposition of thoroughly lifeless states. When these lifeless states are expressed in language, we get the so-called Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 universal story that novelists and poets as well as politicians are praised for and the language that differentiates in terms of identity, analogy and opposition. Given an unrelenting drive toward one’s own interests, thus toward perception, one kind of freedom, that of indetermination grows. But the profound freedom of affective life calls for another kind of thought and another kind of expression, one that does not Olkowski 36 abandon the process of affective life for the safety of intensive and interactive images. This creative life is the life of pleasure and pain; but it is a life that is always threatened by speed, by our fascination with action and by the limitations we ourselves impose on language.

Notes

1 Henri Bergson sketches the outlines of a theory 13 Paul Virilio, Critical Space, p.60. On April 30, of affective sensibility in relation to creative 2002, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the memory; the details are the author’s. See Henri government may not hold people in prison for Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul and grand jury investigations using a law that allows W. S. Palmer (New York: Zone Books, 1988), the detention of material witnesses. Judge Shira pp.56–57; Bergson Oeuvres (Paris: Presses A. Scheindlin ruled that a Jordanian student, Universitaires de France, 1959), pp.204–205. Osama Awadallah, was detained illegally as a 2 David Crystal [ed.], The Cambridge Fact Finder material witness and that therefore his indictment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) for lying about whether or not he knew the name pp.528–529. of one of the suspected airplane hijackers who 3 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, p.36; Bergson allegedly participated in the September 11 terrorist Oeuvres, p.186. attacks in New York City, must be suppressed and 4 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, pp.48–9; the charges thrown out. During his detention Bergson Oeuvres, p.197. Awadallah, a San Diego college student, was kept 5 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, pp.36–7; in solitary confinement, shackled and strip-searched Bergson Oeuvres, p.186. each time he left his cell. Referring to Attorney 6 Paul Virilio, ‘Critical Space’, in James Der General John Ashcroft’s defense of aggressive use Derian [ed.], The Virilio Reader (London: Blackwell of material-witness warrants, the judge wrote, Press, 1998), pp.58–72 (pp.58, 61). Originally ‘Relying on the material witness statute to detain published in French as L’Espace critique (Paris: people who are presumed innocent under our Christian Bourgeois, 1984) pp.155–181. Constitution in order to prevent potential crimes 7 Paul Virilio, Critical Space, pp.59, 60, 66. is an illegitimate use of the statute’. (New York 8 Paul Virilio, Critical Space, p.58. Times, ‘Judge Rules Against U.S. on Material- 9 Paul Virilio, Critical Space, pp.3–4. Witness Law’, May 1, 2002, p. A12). 10 The particular city I have in mind is Denver, 14 Paul Virilio, Critical Space, p.61. Colorado whose lower downtown or ‘lodo’ has 15 I am, of course, referring to Antonio Negri and been transformed from vacant warehouses, resident Michael Hardt’s Empire (Cambridge: Harvard hotels and food kitchens to lofts, galleries, University Press, 2001), which I take to be the restaurants and nightclubs. The latter three are ultimate in cynical assertions of bourgeois power. generally advertised to suburbanites as a sort of That is, it’s easy for Negri and Hardt, who, as adult theme park, one whose minimum wage bourgeois academics, have power (in spite of one of service employees generally arrive from Mexico them having been jailed for supposed anti-state or Latin America. The trade agreement that activities), to assert that power is everywhere and authorizes the rights of corporations over those of that power produces society as well as civil rights states and nations is NAFTA, whose Chapter 11 so that insofar as the creative force of the multitude enforces the rights of multinationals to set up can produce alternative Empires, alternative business wherever they wish regardless of the political organizations of global reach. Logically, environmental and economic cost to the local and this seems to me to be contradictory to demand regional populations. that the powerless assert power they do not have. 11 Paul Virilio, Critical Space, p.59. It is also difficult for me to see how the ‘creative 12 Alison Leigh Cowan, ‘On the Inside Looking force of the multitude’ can be mobilized when the Out, Caught in a Net of Suspicion’, The New York multitude exists purely intensively, when their civil Times (Monday October 8, 2001) p. A15. In my unions have disintegrated into a multitude of sites

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009 own case, I have reason to suspect that my mail at the periphery and they are passive in the face was withheld and inspected a number of times by of restraint. the local post office manager who seemed to think 16 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, pp.48–9; that a forwarding address that I had submitted Bergson Oeuvres, p.197. during the summer might be reason enough to 17 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, p.38; Bergson subject my mail to scrutiny. Oeuvres, pp.187–8. parallax 37 18 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, p.45; Bergson 21 Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics, p.37; Oeuvres, p.194. Bergson Oeuvres, p.1408. 19 Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. 22 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, p.185; Bergson T. E. Hulme (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), Oeuvres, pp.321–22. pp.41–2; Bergson Oeuvres, pp.1412–3. 20 Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics, p.31; Bergson Oeuvres, p.1403.

Dorothea Olkowski is professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Her recent publications include Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation (University of California Press, 1999), the edited volume Resistance, Flight, Creation: Feminist Enactments of French Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 2000) and Rereading Merleau-Ponty: Essays Beyond the Continental-Analytic (Humanity Books, 2000), co-edited with Lawrence Hass. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:48 18 November 2009

Olkowski 38 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 39–47

Sulla’s List: The First Proscription

John Henderson

It was left for the 1990s stage in the Tamil struggle to coin, and demand, ‘deproscription’. In UK usage, at least, this particular innovation has stuck at the level of exotic catachresis. As a noun, ‘proscription’ has in contrast retained the status of inhuman atrocity founded on its classical pedigree, for all that the verb ‘proscribe’ weakens in ordinary common usage to cover whatever ‘prohibition’ and any ‘outlawing’.

Stigma requires lettering, unprecedented depravity elicits marked nominal solecism. New names for outrage lose venom with familiarization and multiplying application: ‘Holocaust’ must stay a sacrosanct exsacration, beyond devaluation. Yet the rollcall of phobic terror seldom creates vocables without a matrix in the existing lexikon: ‘holocaust’ has a sacral past in the anthropology of sacrificial offerings, flagged up by an echt Hellenic etymology. A fiendish engine of torment such as ‘Phalaris’s [brazen] bull’ even (pro-verbially) plays out the tyrant’s delighted perversion of the bellow of the beast slaughtered for the gods in its involuntary simulation by the substitute human victim as he baked alive inside the metallic oven. A cultural Revolution needs its cutting edge, n’est-ce pas, Mme. Guillotine... ‘Proscription’ began its career in ancient Rome, word and thing, as the Republic cracked and then collapsed. It acknowledged no precedents in Greek history or legend; and it knew just two instances, both in the first century BCE, at Rome; which is to say, proscription had no future in the imperial Rome of the Caesars – outside legend.

The First Proscription was the work of Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 82 BCE. The Second Proscription was perpetrated by the Caesarian generals Marcus Antonius, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus in 43 BCE. The latter junta clad their violent coup d’e´tat at Rome with the terminology of a traditionally constituted ad hoc board of ‘Three Men’ to settle some problem in the state’s best interests. We know this second bloodbath as the work of ‘The Second Triumvirate’, although the model we have in mind, ‘The First Triumvirate’, was instead an ‘unofficial’ pact agreed between Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives and Gaius Iulius Caesar in order to secure their political objectives at Rome

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 through the early 50s BCE, and was not presented in antiquity as a board with (pseudo-)official standing. That pact did not mark military seizure of power, and stipulated no massacre, no ‘proscription’. The ‘Second Proscription’, however, avowedly (as well as disavowedly) followed Sulla’s lead.

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000047981 39 We have no narrative account of Sulla’s Proscription which was written earlier than or in ignorance of the Second Proscription. As a ‘First’, it was known to each of our authors as the precursor of ‘The Second’, and last ever, ‘Proscription’. When the tale of ‘The Second’ comes to be told, it departs from a construal of its indebtedness to ‘The First’. What, then, was it that originated with Sulla? (How) Did it earn, find and monopolize its special name?1

1. It was possible to characterize Sulla – ‘Cruelty’ – without picking out ‘proscription’ as anything special; just as if proscriptions were two-a-penny in the hall of Roman infamy. Thus Valerius Maximus, compiler of The Memorable in ancient history, can give us a page on Sulla, ‘for whom no one can find sufficiently worthy praise or blame’, featuring the sequence (9.2.1):

$ 4 legions of the opposition, after surrender, cut down in the ‘Villa Publica’. $ 5000 people of Praeneste, lured out with hope of keeping their lives and jettisoning their weapons, killed and strewn across the fields. $ 4700 slain by decree of cursed proscription, as entered into the state accounts – in case, it must be, the memory of so shining a feat should dissolve. Sulla added rich citizens to the list of proscribed adversaries, bared swords on women, had severed heads brought for his inspection; and with his own hands gouged a victim’s eyes and smashed his limbs; he slew someone for fainting for pity’s sake; disinterred and scattered his enemy’s ashes. All to vindicate his claim to the nickname ‘Lucky’ (‘Felix’).

2. All we have by way of a major Roman historian’s narrative of the Sullan Peril is the brisk summary (‘Periocha’) to book 88 of Livy’s monumental account of Rome, From the Foundation.2 Here Sulla ‘stained his loveliest of victories with cruelty on a scale found in no human’:

$ 8000 surrendered people slaughtered in the ‘Villa Publica’. $ The proscription billboard set up. $ The whole of Italy filled with bloodshed. $ All the people of Praeneste cut down. A senator’s limbs smashed, ears lopped, and eyes gouged.

3. We are entirely dependent on Greek writers from two or three centuries later, with several dynasties of Emperors between them and the collapse of the Late Republic, for ancient attempts to get us any closer into the story of the First Proscription than this. The three accounts of the episode all work closely and expertly with earlier histories written by Romans of Sulla’s day and soon thereafter, including eye-witnesses and not least (for all the obvious pitfalls!) the detailed twenty-two volumes of Memoirs by Sulla himself, but naturally they have their own agenda, and perspectives, their limits and blinkers. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 3.1 First comes the polymath essayist, worthy bullshitter and prolific biographer Plutarch, writing his Life of Sulla about 115 CE, when the soldier Emperor Trajan was driving the Empire to the edge of India, its farthest ever reach. It shows off the vast reach of Plutarch’s expertise across Greek and Roman history, as he dared to Henderson 40 twin his Sulla with the Spartan king Lysander from the ‘pre-Roman’ world of the end of the fifth century BCE. The chief parallelism is not a common trait or flaw of character but the fact of their shared crime of sacking Athens, legendary city of free Hellas. In the Comparison that appraises the diptych of Lives, there is no mention of proscription whatsoever. In fact, it is glaringly obvious that Plutarch got sidetracked from his rumination on personality and formative influences in the Sulla by the happenstance that the subject spent time dislodging the barbarian invader Mithridates’ forces from the city and hinterland of Chaeronea in central Greece – ‘my city’, as he indicates (16.8) while dilating on a successive pair of campaigns around Chaeronea and its neighbour Orchomenos in the same home region: fussing over this occupies chapters 11.3–5, 15.2–21.4, with 22.2–5, 23.2, and 26.4., in a study of just thirty-eight chapters in all. By contrast, Plutarch’s entire reckoning of the Sullan massacres is confined within chapters 30–32:

$ 3000 people from Antemnae, promised their lives if they would damage his enemies in the town, herded into the ‘Circus Flaminius’ and cut down, together with 3000 of these enemies.

This marked the crisis of Sulla’s career, ‘whether this is a shift and change of nature brought about by fortune or rather a revelation of underlying evil in holding power – only quite another research project could determine’. Meantime:

$ Countless unlimited slaughter filled the city, extending to personal vendettas by adherents. $ After discussion in the senate, Sulla proscribed 80 persons, then a day later proscribed 220, and the day after another batch of 220. $ He also penalized those who harboured or hid the proscribed, victimized their sons and grandsons, and extended the proscriptions throughout the whole of Italy. Citizens slain for their riches outnumbered adversaries and personal enemies, as in one striking case. $ At Praeneste, pressed for time for courts martial, 12000 were slaughtered – while Sulla’s host refused his exemption. One fiend had the brother he had murdered proscribed afterwards, then fetched a lopped head along, to return the favour.

Such is Plutarch’s account. To be sure, as we shall see, Plutarch does sketchily script the exchange which issues in proscription, but at no point does he so much as hint that ‘proscription’ originates here and now – that proscription was a new venture in the history of barbarism, a monstrosity sprung on an unprepared world. No one is non-plussed by the unprecedented concept, Plutarch himself writes the term (procra´wv) deadpan, without surprise or remark, and horror stigmatizes the prospective persecution of descendants rather than the drama of proscription itself.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 In fact, the Life had casually dropped a forward reference to ‘one of the proscribed’ already in its opening chapter (1.4).

3.2 Cassius Dio’s vast history of Rome, published in 229 CE when a future secure for imperial succession and the maintenance of the Empire had become already a parallax 41 thing of the past, has unfortunately suffered very severe damage in transmission. For Sulla’s de´nouement, we have two sizeable chunks (‘fragments 109–110’), preserved in excerpts made by Byzantine scholars, from the heavily mutilated books 30–35. The first dwells ponderously on that moment of crisis for Sulla, ‘such that no one would claim what he’d done up to this point and what came thereafter could be down to the same person’:

$ He sent some severed heads to Praeneste, where he killed people who had surrendered, in droves. $ At Rome, he assembled those taken prisoner, at the ‘Villa Publica’ as if about to enrol them in the army, and had others murder them.

The second excerpt takes up from this massacre:

$ The killing spread from Rome out to the country and through the whole of Italy. Many victims were hated enemies of Sulla and his partisans, though pretence and flattery played a role; and slaughtered too were rich people, for envy and for their riches. Women and boys joined the outraged. But Sulla wanted to break all records for variations on the theme of killing. $ Sulla’s invention [of proscription] is described in stark detail – but its special name is withheld; and only appears in an ‘addendum’ of an excerpt which mentions the fetching of severed heads into the Roman Forum, ‘where the same scenes played out as before around the billboards: ‘peri` ta`z procrawa´z’.

3.3 We have the full text of the historian Appian’s account of the Civil Wars of the Late Republic, painstakingly compiled by 161 CE, and building an imperial narrative which would trace how his own homeland of Egypt had come to be subsumed within Roman superpower thanks to the turmoil of these civil conflicts and annexation after the elimination of Antony and Cleopatra and installation of their victor Octavian as Caesar Augustus: these were the birth-pangs of world integration, the origins of the presumedly permanent structure of Appian’s Romanized planet. The Sullan proscription is featured in the sequence of his atrocities (1.93–6):

$ 8000+ mostly Samnite captives mown down; two generals’ severed heads sent to Praeneste, which surrendered: senators executed then, or soon afterwards. The rest must jettison arms, a few who had cooperated were extricated, the rest were separated out into Romans, Samnites, and Praenestians, before the Romans were [...] spared, and the others were [...] mown down, to the last man. $ When Norba was destroyed, its people did away with or incinerated themselves and their town. $ At Rome, Sulla invented proscription (procra´wv is marked out and explained): c. 40 senators +1600 equites [i.e. those non-senators in the highest tax bracket at

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 Rome]; soon thereafter, n more senators. $ Adversaries persecuted throughout Italy, as charges proliferated out to encompass especially the rich. $ Whole cities punished, expropriated out of existence, or taken over lock, stock and barrel. Henderson 42 4. The proscriptions.

My pen halts after the word, knowing the emotions it is sure to arouse. If I earned hatred for nothing else I earned it, paradoxically, through my ruthless execution of justice, the thoroughness with which I stamped out the republic’s enemies in Rome. Here in my retirement I have had time to reflect – as I did not then – on the self- flattering irrationality which governs most human motives. …The truth is simply this: that in Rome and Italy a large number of men – senators, burghers, commoners – were executed, or had their property confiscated, by due process of law. …The notice-boards in the Forum where supplementary lists of the proscribed were posted up became a focal point for rowdy and hysterical demonstrations. I remember watching the crowd’s many faces, whispering names from ear to ear: coarse, frightened, cunning, greedy, consumed with self-pity. Let them learn what Roman justice means, I thought. Let them sweat with terror.3

So Peter Green’s Sulla, wielding his sharp, edgy, Sword of Pleasure, as he dashes down those lengthy Memoirs in the few months left to him after his gobsmacking abdication of the transgressive ‘dictatorship’ he had arrogated as his cartouche of mock- legitimacy. For Sulla would die, of appropriately sickening ‘worms’, before 78 BCE was done. The form of novelistic autoportraiture consigns us to read through the strongly stressed interpretation of Sulla’s innovative programme (sc. his pogrom) toward Green’s own view and toward ours. Mobilization of Sulla’s apologetic motive allows the fiction to re-code the data transmitted by our three Greek informants without denying, dismissing, swallowing or re-writing them to any significant degree. This ‘horse’s mouth’ Sulla sends us back to interrogate his ancient narrators afresh.

5. ‘Sulla was the first to proscribe his enemies to death’.4 Appian and Dio herald the ghastly innovation, as such. Plutarch and Dio whoop up ‘The Change’ in Sulla, to mark the killer moment. Plutarch recounts an aetiology for the proscription, in the form of an exchange across the floor of the senate. Tellingly, he first grants, but then undercuts, authority to his lead story. As the killings cut loose (31. 2–4):

The young senator Gaius Metellus asked Sulla what would be the end of the troubles? Where was he going before they could expect what was happening to stop? ‘We are not begging off from your vengeance those you have determined to eliminate, but we do beg you to relieve from ambiguity those you have decided to preserve.’ To Sulla’s reply, that he didn’t yet know whom he was letting go, he put in with ‘Then clarify whom you mean to punish.’ And Sulla said he would do that. At once Sulla proscribed eighty, sharing this with none of those in power. When they all complained, he left a day, then proscribed two hundred and twenty, and on the third day at least as many again. Delivering a public speech on the subject, he said he was proscribing Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 as many as he happened to call to mind, but those that slipped his memory he would proscribe another time.

But between this bold challenge – even a face-down? – by Metellus and Sulla’s response in action the Life interposes the discomposing note that: ‘Some say it wasn’t parallax 43 Metellus but some Fufidius, one of those who courted Sulla’s good books, who made that final speech’.

So Plutarch’s sketch folds ambivalence into our appraisal of Sullan proscription. Even his version cannot count Sulla securely on the side of the angels, representing state or government or order or sanity, over against ‘the Other’, in any of its archetypal manifestations. If proscription was a limitation exercise pushed onto the victor in order to curtail the massacre before it ran away with the victory, it was also a good guess from a courtier – who flushed out into the open Sulla’s sneaking wish to rub out his enemies with a stroke of the pen, in one last rush of terroristic violence before taking the veil of formal legitimation: soon – ‘tomorrow’ – he would set about spraying the deodorant policy of (self-)exoneration across the killing fields, and streets, of Rome.5 Should proscription read as small beer among the swirl of atrocities in those weeks in 82 BCE? It’s but a part of the picture.6

6. Dio has a different script in mind. In his version, proscription was the product of the ‘longing’ of a depraved mind bent on a competition to be ‘best’ at coming second to none in bloodletting. Ordinariness wasn’t enough for Sulla, he had to find a ‘novelty’ and have it to his name. The whole point was to outshine mundane inhumanity such as indiscriminate mass liquidation of enemies, elimination of the rich, the usual war-time abuses of innocence (110.9–12; 12–13): ‘He set out a certain novelty – a whitened billboard. On it he wrote up the names’.

If this doesn’t sound even slightly frightening so far, then that is the mimetic come- on which Dio is after creating or re-creating: ‘proscription’ will become sinister as it unfurls upon its victims. Out of something ordinary bursts out something out of the ordinary. Something sinister, macabre, bizarre. Dio’s take on it is that it made no difference to what had been going on, in the sense that those whose names were not written up were still not safe because extra names were added, some the names of the still living and others those of the already dead. So, no, it wasn’t in this respect that [proscription] made any difference. Rather, he insists (13): ‘By its terrible strangeness one and all were enraged’.

We have variously pictured the spectacular scene of public reading of these billboards. No-win entrapment catches those who read and those who won’t. A frown or smile could cost a life. Names could be fitted to persons at random, names were foresworn in denial. Some died before knowing they were listed, others knew and hid – or rather dared neither to go into hiding for fear of discovery, nor to stay put and court treachery (13–19; 20): ‘The result was that through expectation of constant expectation of death not just the people written up on the boards, but also everyone else, were suffering just the same’.

7. Appian paints much the same canvas. His Sulla comes from his military reprisals and barbarities to call the Roman People to assembly (1.95): ‘There he talked big Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 on the subject of himself, and brought up other fearful stuff to freak them into shock. [A]fter this harangue, he at once proscribed to death c. 40 senators plus 1600 equites’.

While Appian does not go to town on the terrors that ensued with anything like the gusto of Dio, he clearly agrees that Sulla’s ‘novelty’ was a form of diabolism calculated Henderson 44 to maximize mass fright and, through spooking the city, to mystify his direction of the bloodletting.

8. Our informants thus stress differently the several components of Hinard’s summary slogan: ‘l’image unique de la violence absolue le´galise´e’.7 To return to the juncture when ‘proscription’ was in the making is (for Appian) to witness a Roman magistrate setting a white-painted billboard on public view, as if (says Dio) registering members of the senate or cataloguing duly levied troops. Literally described, the listing of civic names cannot sound inevitably terroristic. On the one hand, severing heads, putting prices on necks, publicly decreeing outlawry, exposing the mutilated persons of fellow Romans in the Forum, and the rest of the panoply of savagery had been gathering recent Roman precedents at ever increasing pace. On the other hand, banal confiscation of the property of defeated foes was ancestral state practice, and the public sale of the belongings of convicted criminals was another Roman custom. For the vocable ‘proscribo’, calqued in Greek as ‘procra´wv’, signified already this ‘public decreeing’ of an authorized auction of goods seized for redistribution in the polity.8 So this trumped-up ‘novelty’ can be boiled back down into its antecedents, overshadowed by the ever-deteriorating and ever-proliferating army and internecine brutalities and assimilated to a routine sale of property. Yet our narratives mean to vindicate the First Proscription’s mythical role as a nadir of specifically Roman evil. Elsewhere I have argued9 that the intrication of this (pseudo-governmental) brand of atrocity with the condition of a social scene of writing and reading, where name decouples from fame and where death is decreed by graphematics, amounts to a nightmare parody of cultural order which contaminates the written medium through which this lexical-conceptual-cultural item is transmitted to, and through, us to this day. To write down (inscribe) just how Latin proscriptio wrote murder by roster in the first place is, I shall now propose for Sulla, to run smack into a tale ultimately beyond the telling.

9. Hot or fresh from the adrenalin-delirium, or glacial satisfaction, of his battlefield HQ beside the city gates, all-powerful Sulla entered the city. What next? Questions insist – but which?

Had Sulla had his project of redesigning the apparatus of retributive vengeance in place all along? Or, if his innovation was improvised out of an inaugural reception debate in the senate which worked between the (counter-)revolutionary generalissimo and the established ranks of political order – were the crucial remarks spat out, or did lashings of flattery have the fieldmarshal’s ear? Be there: off speeds a runner to summon the sign-writer: an unorthodox auction must be rigged up. Fetch boards, that paint must dry. What should go on the billboard – should a rubric, a heading, frame the list of names? Letters how high – was the message complete – would it fit available space – did anyone know? Who could be sure? Had invincible Sulla taken pains to say? Were criers rounded up, too, and, if some someone could put them through their paces, where were the proclamations to be read out, in the city and Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 beyond? How often? How long? On pain of what? Were copies of the boards and the death sentences painted thereon planned for the spread-out civic centres of Rome and the regions of Italy? Or was this an after-thought? Was the army kept in charge of all this activity? Did Sulla appoint a committee to keep the terror under review, and stoked? So many logistics to mastermind. When an assassin should catch a parallax 45 victim, (how) would it be clear how to claim the bloodprice by presenting the decapitated proof ? Who was to sign over the reward, how would the staffing be organized, how was the labour resourced, structured, accredited, accountable? Would there be sanctions against bogus identifications? How large, how long, how energetic, how systematic was this persecution supposed, or going, to be? Were bounty-hunters likely to stay safe? What future directions in running Rome might leave executioner posses exposed in turn to reprisals? Should they matter or were they their own look out? (How) Was there confidentiality?

To focus, for a moment, on the business of reading down the list of names: was it alphabetical, or did it work down through the census classes? Was neatness at a premium – should the list have style – would the dictator’s critical eye appraise the calligraphy? How scrupulous should discrimination aim to be, between those gentilician batches of Roman names – where a dot could kill, a blob could ru(i)n a Cnaeus into a Gaius (Cn.~C.) or smear any Marcius for a Marius. And, at the point of reception, was there a manic Babel of voices simultaneously reading (sc. out loud) down rows of names, each at their own rate of progress? Were sharp eyes needed – how adept were which Romans at skimming down lists of names where one slip or leap of the readerly eyepath could be fatal, how retentive, secure, true, was any memory in a crowd of sweating, lathering, psyched-out citizens? If Dio’s visualization of the molten swirl of discordant readings is (at all) plausible, with surround surveillance from soldiery, spies, and traitors, then was this panopticism planned? Did Sulla know just what he was doing with his listings? Setting up communal Latin reading sessions devoted to intoning the hallowed names of Rome: could he rely on the attachment of the populus Romanus to its age-old sites of convocation and self- imagination? What if no body showed up – what then? Did he trust an instinctive intuition, had it come to him in a flash, would it be just like hustings, pre-election fever, with some pirated feel of the Republic’s mass politics? Or was proscription a one-off excrescence, regretted surgery, a stoically imposed, never-again, cull?

On to the Forum, now: was there sentry-duty to guard those purulent heads? Did they mount a suitable array, and then pack it in, or did they hoard the lot? How many could the show use or manage or stretch to? Should they sport labels before a whole queue of versions of a single victim collapsed the identity parade into confusion? Were sick jokes to be encouraged, part of the black point? And when, say, alterations were (somehow: mysteriously? With sealed affidavit?) made to the listed names, was there an effort to correct copies accordingly? Was note-taking arranged, were accounts kept? All those figures: 4700, 80+220+220, 40+1600+n. Who kept those headcounts, and how?10

This was Rome’s First Proscription. It would turn out there would be just one to come: what of that, and how so? Just how much effort was going to be made to get

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009 this practice across as normality? Or was proscription nakedly a sponsored ghoulishness? Was this terror written into the Roman state? The state of terror?

10. That impossible fossil term ‘proscription’: would the First Deproscription surprise us (at) all? What political work (of suasion, of mystification, of mythopoeia) is played Henderson 46 by any allegation that a particular form or term or technology of Terror amounts to ‘an innovation’?

Notes

1 The fullest account is F. Hinard, Les Proscriptions S. Butler, The Hand of Cicero (London and New de la Rome Re´publicaine (Paris and Rome: E´ cole York: Routledge, 2002), especially pp.4–23. franc¸aise de Rome, 1985). Luciano Canfora offers 2 Velleius Paterculus briefly underscores that important analysis in ‘Proscrizioni e dissesto sociale proscription was Sulla’s invention (2.28.2–3). A nella repubblica Romana’, Klio, no. 62 (1980), neat review of our Greek and Latin Sources in pp.425–437. Still fundamental is E. Badian, ‘Lucius H. A. Holden (ed.), Plutarch’s Life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the deadly reformer’, in A. J. Dunston (ed.), Sulla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Essays on Roman Culture (Toronto: The Todd Memorial 1886), pp. xxxiv-lxxiv. Lectures, 1976), pp.35–74. I have learned from 3 Green, The Sword of Pleasure, pp.250–251. Matthew Taylor, How did Sulla become the Exemplum 4 Appian, Civil Wars (4.1). Cf. Hinard, Les Sulla? (unpublished BA dissertation, University of Proscriptions, p.31. Cambridge, 2002), particularly about the modern 5 Cf. Hinard, Les Proscriptions, p.110. novelistic constructions of Sullan proscription. 6 So especially Badian, ‘Lucius Sulla, the deadly Also see Peter Green, The Sword of Pleasure reformer’. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957). My essay on the 7 Hinard, Les Proscriptions, p.5. Second Proscription ‘Three Men in a Vote: 8 Cf. Hinard, Les Proscriptions, especially pp.21, 32, Proscription (Appian, Civil Wars 4. 1–6)’ appears 38, 40, 45. in Fighting for Rome: Poets & Caesars, History & Civil 9 Henderson, ‘Three Men in a Vote’. War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 10 Nearly all these questions are raised a` propos of 1998), pp.11–36. For a graphic account of the the Second Proscription, particularly in Appian’s Sullan Proscription together with incisive epic account (Civil Wars 4.1–6) [See Henderson, exploration of the post-proscription court cases ‘Three Men in a Vote’]. Many of them are raised which made the emergent Cicero’s name, see by Dio’s version of the First Proscription.

John Henderson is Reader in Classics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Fighting for Rome (1998), Writing Down Rome (1999), Telling Tales on Caesar (2001) and has books forthcoming on Pliny’s and on Seneca’s Letters. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:49 18 November 2009

parallax 47 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 48–57

On the Uses and Abuses of Terror for Life: Terror and the Literary Clinic

Anthony T. Larson

The title of this essay is a play on Nietzsche’s famous essay, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’, in which the philosopher asks what kind of health history might promote for an individual, a people or a culture. The answer he proposes is a ‘true self’ that is both part of history (historical) and beyond it (ahistorical).1 By situating the question of terror under the auspices of Nietzsche and the notion of ‘literary’ health, I should like to take up (indirectly, at least) some of the questions posed by Nietzsche’s own equally famous interpreter, Gilles Deleuze. For like Nietzsche, Deleuze’s own philosophical interrogation revolves around questions of health and, more specifically, how and why, despite our best critical efforts to go beyond moral and philosophical enslavement, we desire those very conditions. From the debut of his work to his last published essay, Deleuze reminds us that one of the areas in which these conditions might best be ‘diagnosed’ and ‘treated’ is in literature itself. Drawing a parallel between Nietzsche’s historical/ ahistorical existence, Deleuze repeatedly insists that literature is what allows the ‘impersonal’ to shine through the personal work of an author. It is this movement from the personal to the impersonal that promotes a new health for the individual, a people and a culture, according to Deleuze.

But what of terror in all of this? Of what ‘use’ could terror be to the ‘health’ of literature and why invoke Nietzsche or Deleuze? This might become clearer if one recalls how, in his study of Sacher-Masoch, Deleuze underlines to what extent the clinical symptoms of sadism and masochism have overwhelmed the literary syndromes in which these psycho-social transformations take place. His point is that institutions, and medicine in particular, have a tendency to confuse the symptoms of a person’s illness with the person him/herself, separating the symptoms of an illness from the syndromes which allowed one to observe the latter in the first place. The personal life (or name) of the patient replaces the ‘impersonal’ world in which his/her illness originally manifested itself. In the case of sado-masochist behavior, psychoanalysis lifts the specific textual practices of Sade and Sacher-Masoch from

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 their critical space of production (literature) and transforms them into their simple medical or clinical manifestation. Worse yet, what were two separate practices are joined into one manifestation that is considered to be exchangeable: sadism is simply defined as the dialectical opposite of masochism and vice-versa.2 In other words, the

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 48 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000047990 specific textual environment in which sadism or masochism is first detected is suppressed by the institution of the clinic so as to be better ‘revealed’ by the latter in the process of the cure. Deleuze’s argument is that the clinical takes precedence over the critical and, in the process, the creative ‘innovation’ of masochism – the extent to which masochism reveals a specific and new literary and medical context – is lost.

A similar modification occurs when one considers the notion of terror in literature. To understand how the ‘clinical’ aspect of terror takes precedence over its ‘critical’ aspect, however, one might first consider two non-literary examples from recent, contemporary events. Newspapers the world over declared, in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, that ‘the world (or sometimes ‘nothing’) would ever be the same again’, implying that the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center presented absolute breaks with a preceding regime of power, representation or discourse. In a related vein, shortly after the American-led bombing campaign in Afghanistan began in October 2001, a refugee camp opened on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan with a sign erected for reporters declaring that the refugees gathered there were ‘victims of the American terrorist campaign’. Terror in this second example represents the imposition of a regime of force or power, in the face of which one is incapable of resisting. These contemporary and non-literary readings of terror (terror as either the sudden irruption of the un-speakable or un-nameable which renders useless all previous systems or regimes of representation or discourse; or as the imposition of an absolutist regime of power or discourse in which all figures of resistance are already eliminated or compromized) are symptomatic of what one might call a much longer and more profound ‘modern’ reading of terror, one which defines terror in a one-sided manner (following the either/or logic of the above examples) and which refuses to admit to what extent these two positions are part of the same expression of terror. In order to be properly understood and used (rather than ‘abused’) terror must be understood to exist in both of these manifestations, as an expression of absolute novelty as well as the imposition of an ordered regime.3 The ‘clinical’ use of terror (terror used almost in the sense of a proper name in order to justify a broad set of underlying and unexpressed assumptions, such as initiating a terrorist attack or imposing a legislative regime aimed at suppressing terror and preserving liberty) must be corrected by a ‘critical’ use of terror as expression. Only when terror is seen as emanating from both of these positions will it be possible to understand and measure the risks of revolutionary change as well as estimate to what extent every regime of power already conceals within its expression the means of its own undoing.

The confusion between terror as a form of expression – as a double movement of novelty and constraint – and terror in the form of a ‘proper name’ is certainly understandable given that the homonymity of terror and la Terreur cannot be avoided in these modern times. Thus it is easy to see how the contemporary example above Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 is a direct descendant of the same sort of rhetorical turn that was deployed in the wake of the French Revolution and the inauguration of the revolutionary Terror. For example, one finds that regime’s most eloquent and sophisticated spokesman, Robespierre, treating those who declared revolutionary laws ‘tyrannical’ as, ‘stupid and perverse sophists who confuse opposites’ and thus pose a terrible danger to the parallax 49 young republic. However, it was this same Robespierre who advanced his own ‘sophisticated’ definition of the Terror as, ‘nothing other than prompt, severe, and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue’.4 In the face of one form of ‘terror’ (those who would risk overturning the revolution) another form replies (the prompt, severe and inflexible moment of terrible virtue). By ignoring the double articulation/ expression of terror, Robespierre sets loose the machine-like folly of the Terror, a ‘confusion of opposites’ which has left its imprint on almost every modern occurrence of terror, as our more contemporary examples illustrate and as almost any discussion concerning terror and terrorism in the wake of September 2001 might also illustrate.

This confusion of opposites has also infiltrated readings of literature. In the days following the terrorist attacks on the United States, caught up in a one-sided reading of terror, more than one savvy reader was quick to point out the declaration made by Don DeLillo’s author-character Bill Gray in Mao II concerning writers and terrorists (‘There’s a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists […] Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness’.5) as proof of literature’s surrender to Terror and the latter’s capacity to produce the absolutely unedited event. But this ‘clinical’ definition of literature and terror repeats the error made by Robespierre since it ignores the literary syndromes in which DeLillo attempted to articulate the relationship between terror and literature. In order to understand these syndromes one might turn to a ‘critical’ correction of this error which appeared shortly after Robespierre and which might serve as inspiration to a larger ‘critically clinical’ study of the use of terror.

In his definition of the poetic arts in the opening pages of Les Contemplations, Victor Hugo declares war on the classical notion of poetry and goes so far as to assimilate his position with that of the revolutionary terrorists:

Oui, de l’ancien re´gime ils ont fait tables rases, Et j’ai battu des mains, buveur de sang des phrases, Quand j’ai vu, par la strophe e´cumante et disant Les choses dans un style e´norme et rugissant, L’Art poe´tique pris au collet dans la rue, Et quand j’ai vu, parmi la foule qui se rue, Pendre, par tous les mots que le bon gouˆt proscrit, La lettre aristocrate a` la lanterne esprit. Oui, je suis ce Danton ! je suis ce Robespierre !6 [Yes, they have done away with the ancien regime, And I clapped hands, drinker of blood from sentences, When I saw, by the verse foaming and saying Things in a style grand and roaring, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 The Poetic Art snared by the collar in the street, And when I saw, inside the swirling crowd, Hanging, by all the words that good taste forbids, The aristocratic letter on the lamppost of imagination. Yes, I am this Danton!Iamthis Robespierre !] Larson 50 As Laurent Jenny underlines, we find in Hugo one of the first modern examples in which the virtues of the poet (‘imagination’, ‘truth’ and ‘poetry’) are assimilated with the ranks of terrorists.7 Yet what is important with this literary declaration of terrorism is not so much the appearance of Danton or Robespierre in Hugo’s text as the tone and the position the writer is taking. That is, before Hugo, French poetry that did not observe the classical rules of caesura or which contained vulgar vocabulary was considered to be part of the comic genre, so that Hugo’s revolutionary verse and vocabulary is necessarily co-opted as soon as it is pronounced by the shadow or remnants of the comic. In other words, the words of Hugo’s verse must be heard in their original tone of irony, an irony that becomes even more telling when one realizes that Hugo is responding (the title of the poem is Re´ponse a` un acte d’accusation) to an imaginary accusation. Thus, it is from within a rhetorical and aesthetic terror (that of irony and the rules of poetry that condemn him to this ‘position’), that Hugo makes his terroristic declaration. As Laurent Jenny has remarked, this doubling movement (which is certainly similar to Robespierre’s double position) is the central figure of the terrorist, ‘There is no Terrorist who does not begin by positioning him/ herself as Counter-Terrorist, seeking to give credit to the argument of self-defense’.8 It is not a surprise, then, to find Hugo opening the poem by declaring himself both the ‘ogre’ and the ‘scapegoat’.9 Yet it is precisely the literary irony (an irony difficult to imagine emanating from Robespierre or contemporary terrorists) created by this doubling movement that allows one to critically re-situate Hugo’s terror within the literary ‘syndromes’ in which it is produced. For in contrast to Robespierre, Hugo, the literary terrorist, is able to co-opt the poetic regime by revealing to what extent such a regime already partakes in terror and to what extent such complicity is necessary if one is to ever hope to accomplish the act of revolutionary (or poetic) rupture.

To hastily assimilate the writer to the terrorist simply because the latter is able to author such a terrible event as to ‘make a raid’ on our consciousness is to ‘mis-use’ terror by extracting the act/event/symptom from what Deleuze would call its ‘zone of encounter’ – its clinical syndrome.10 This literary example reveals then, perhaps even more starkly, the troubling arguments of contemporary terrorists, since by positioning himself/herself exclusively within this movement of ‘prompt, severe and inflexible’ novelty, or as the victim of a ‘tyrannical’ order, the terrorist only succeeds in continually renewing the madness of Terror as a personal name – la Terreur as defined by Robespierre. The literary ‘use’ of terror obviously comes with a great price, since one must assume one’s position as both ‘ogre’ and ‘scapegoat’ in order to revolutionize as well as to legislate, but it should be clear that the price of the ‘abuse’ of terror is even greater. It is only in light of this ‘use’ of terror and its price that DeLillo’s observation concerning writers and terrorists gains its full weight, since it was perhaps always already true, just as the ‘curious knot’ between modernity and terror has always already been true. For these literary examples from the French Revolution and la Terreur help to underline what Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard testily and Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 repeatedly observed concerning critics of contemporary French thought: that the freedom and consensual form of democratic and modern communication/ community defended by such critics are constantly and incessantly caught up in a founding act of terror. One thus finds Lyotard declaring, ‘Terror is not only the historical event that we know it to be. It repeats its gesture of interruption each time parallax 51 that the Republic legislates, each time that a citizen makes a pronouncement. It is freedom that is supposed to pronounce the law for all and for one, but it is never certain that it will not be corrupted through some use to which it is put’.11 According to Lyotard (echoing Deleuze and DeLillo), where the modern, democratic community often seeks to forget such a terrible truth, literature strives to make this ‘knot’ constantly visible, and, it is the task of the critic/writer then to put terror to its proper, critically clinical ‘use’.12

Given the above examples of the ‘clinical’ mis-use of terror in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, it is perhaps only natural that one turn to American literature and recent trends there for readings of literary terror, their use and the implications this might have for political notions of community/communication (to take up Lyotard’s obvious Habermasian targets). However, the recent ‘contextual’ situation that ties the United States to terror and terrorism is not the only reason American literature might serve as our example. There is another, more profound and historical motivation surrounding the choice of contemporary American literature. That is, if the ‘hidden’ terroristic side of literary expression is to be properly understood, in terms of its own expression, one might turn to the assault on language itself and the narrative procedures deployed by almost an entire generation of writers from the early 1950s onward, such as William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, William Gaddis or Robert Coover, who echo to a certain extent, in spite of the differences between their work, the rhetorical constraints posed by Hugo’s declaration of literary terrorism. One might then add to a recent reading by Heinz Ickstadt, who notes how, in Burroughs’s Naked Lunch the central theme of junk is not only that of literal junk but also that of metaphorical junk – of domination and all that prevents the individual from truly being and possessing itself.13 Since language is the most powerful and inescapable instrument of socialization, Burroughs uses language against language in an anarchistic quest for a freedom not only of self but from self.14 But this example of a terroristic assault on the terrible regime of language, as interesting as it is, only truly reveals its stakes when one situates it within the much larger aesthetic tradition of American letters. For one must remember that one of the reasons for the rise of literary practices as varied as those used by Burroughs and others of his generation was a general rejection of an aesthetic inherited from the earliest days of American letters – that of the common or everyday universal. From Emerson’s American Scholar, who made genius and romance sit at the feet of the familiar, low and common, to William Dean Howell’s common-based realism to Thorton Wilder’s Our Town, there extends a long tradition of universal normality and commonness in the American literary canon, and it was this very heritage of the ubiquitous small town, the local-as-universal or democracy as a quasi-cosmic principal that was the real target of 20th century writers. From the perspective of the late 1950s or 60s, the elevation of the routine and ordinary appeared, at best, quaint, and it is from within this shadow of common everydayness that an ‘abnormal’

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 counter-tradition of anarchic self-assertion and radical self-expression can be most clearly viewed and understood. Caught up in the regime of the common, 20th century American fiction struck out in what might almost be qualified as a terroristic attempt to free itself from its aesthetic heritage, since what was sought was an outright reversal and corrosion of an inherited aesthetic paradigm. Larson 52 Given such a total and massive assault on the common, everyday and ‘normal’ world, the return of such an aesthetic in recent American fiction may then come as a surprise. However, the appearance, within the mimetic pole of contemporary American fiction, of works turning around everyday lives in ‘the heart of the heart of the country’ is not simply a ‘return’ to earlier values (aesthetic or political), for it is within this more enigmatic territory of American literature where the literary clinic and a double reading of terror-as-expression serves the purpose defined by Deleuze and Lyotard. Something more profound and ‘critically insidious’ than a simple ‘return’ to American aesthetic values has occurred in recent years that prolongs and completes the position staked out by 20th century writers such as Burroughs, Pynchon or Gaddis. For instead of attacking democratic normality/commonality head-on, recent American fiction renders the common porous and conditional. In this sense, these texts respond to those of their elders by showing how every revolutionary reversal (the prompt, severe and inflexible moment of revolutionary terror) also partakes in the institution (or continuation) of a terrible regime. The 20th century assault on the common and everyday of the American literary tradition cannot result in the latter’s terroristic toppling without the inauguration of a terrorist regime that is just as terrible as that of the common/everyday aesthetic. It is then possible to locate the common in today’s American fiction as it is elevated and celebrated, but this is a celebration of the hidden side of terror that is to be found in every form of common, ‘normal’ consensus, thus giving an equal footing to the double expression of terror as what overthrows an aesthetic regime but also as what constitutes this regime and any regime that would attempt to replace it.

Two recent works which garnered the Pulitzer Prize for literature and which attracted a fair number of ‘common’, ‘everyday’ readers, Richard Ford’s Independence Day, published in 1995, and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, published in 1997, might serve as demonstrations of this. Ford and Roth’s novels take as their subjects the trials of what might be called ‘everyday’, ‘common’ character types. Ford’s novel treats the adventures of Frank Bascombe, a relatively successful ex-sportswriter-turned-real- estate-agent, settling into a period of what appears to be deep normalcy after his divorce, seeking to reconcile with his adolescent son during a long Fourth of July weekend, while Roth’s novel deals with the story of Swede Levov, a New Jersey Jew who has made good, melting so deeply into post-war American society that he becomes the epitome of the American middle-class dream come true. But, again, to say that these novels reveal an outright return to aesthetics of the common or everyday would be wrong, since in these two works it is the uncommon, the extraordinary, the unedited, that explodes behind each page of the common, like the bomb that is at the heart of Roth’s novel, disrupting Ford’s ‘existence period’ and Roth’s pastoral.

In Ford’s novel, any number of moments reveal this strategy, and one of the more

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 amusing and revealing of these occurs near the beginning of the book, as the reader follows the narrator, Frank Bascombe, on a visit to a house he is trying to sell to a middle-aged couple from Vermont who are looking for the American dream after fleeing it in the 1960s. The house, like the dream, quickly proves difficult to find, but what the couple (the Markhams) does encounter is a very common form of parallax 53 uncertainty as they are brought face to face with a choice that determines, in Ford’s words,

[…] what they’ll be worrying about but don’t yet know, what consoling window views they’ll be taking (or not), where they’ll have bitter arguments and make love, where and under what conditions they’ll feel trapped by life or safe from the storm, where those spirited parts of themselves they’ll eventually leave behind […] will be entombed, where they might die or get sick and wish they were dead, where they’ll return after funerals or after they’re divorced.15

Face to face with these thoughts, the Markhams begin to wonder how any decision in their life made sense; whether every important moment in their life was simply mis-read and whether the truly important, life-altering moments passed them by unnoticed. They then turn to Ford’s narrator for help – help in finding the house of their dreams that will put their roiling worries to rest and more general help in making sense out of their lives. But Frank Bascombe, in spite of his own declared ‘simplicity’ and ‘normality’, is going through his own version of such doubts, what he defines as his ‘existence period’. Thus, while the Markham’s blindly page through a copy of Emerson’s Self-Reliance (a telling hint concerning the aesthetic heritage Ford wishes to modify) in Bascombe’s car on the way to a house visit, the narrator runs over the conditions of the ‘existence period’:

A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you’ll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you’ll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don’t. You can’t. Somehow it’s already too late. And maybe it’s even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you’ve feared will happen has already taken place […] And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it.16

Ford makes it clear that the self-assured, measured point-of-view anchored in the everyday normalcy of real-estate agent Bascombe is only an illusion. Bascombe is indeed staring out of one of those many windows he himself describes when selling the assurance, solidity and certainty of a house (indeed, one cannot help but think of the assurance and certainty of a certain realist house, that of Henry James’s American house of fiction17), but the point-of-view it opens up onto is nothing nearly as solid as Joe Markham would like. Markham’s hope is to find reassuring stability in the everyday in which things are recognized for what they are as they come hurtling head-long toward us, and life is not missed. He hopes to buy the house of fiction, which, in Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 Bascombe’s words, ‘creates the illusion that we are in control of anything’.18 However, as the accumulation of events in Bascombe’s Fourth of July weekend illustrates (a planned reconciliation with his adolescent son spins so far out of control that it ends with the sickening crunch of a baseball cracking the boy’s face in an amusement park batting cage) that this reassuring house of fiction is indeed what it appears to be: a Larson 54 fiction. What Ford/Bascombe is aiming for is a view out of the ‘more realist’ window of our time, one which looks constantly upon the commonly uncommon, where the certainty or comfort of seeing/recognizing problems as they approach on the horizon is actually contingent upon one not seeing/recognizing the problem for what it is.19 In the end, Ford’s ‘realistic’ novel is really an attempt to show how one’s purchase of this house of fiction (or, the reader’s/writer’s faith in the common sureness of the everyday) is an illusion. Instead of attacking this fiction with an outright assault on language, as per his mid-century predecessors, Ford makes it clear that the uncommon on which his realism is founded permeates the very surface of things, thus declaring at the end of the novel: ‘We want to feel our community as a fixed, continuous entity […] as being anchored into the rock of permanence; but we know it’s not, that in fact beneath the surface (or rankly all over the surface) it’s anything but. We and it are anchored only to contingency like a bottle on a wave, seeking a quiet eddy’.20 In this manner, Ford prolongs and, to a certain extent, completes the project started by his mid-century predecessors, since the reader is no longer confronted by an outright reversal of one regime of expression (the aesthetic ideal/framework of everyday commonness) for another (the sudden irruption of the uncommon and unforeseeable) but is forced to negotiate the double expression of these regimes, in a teasingly reassuring encounter with Ford’s ‘typically’ American Bascombe.

The porosity of the common/uncommon couple is equally evident in Roth’s 1997 novel in which the uncommon, the extraordinary and the overtly terrifying, explodes in the middle of the narrative in the form of a bomb left by Swede Levov’s rebellious daughter at her home-town post office as part of her anti-war activities in the 1960s, transporting Roth’s protagonist, ‘[O]ut of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral – in the indigenous American berserk’.21 The stakes in Roth’s novel are similar to those in Ford’s, since it is the sudden swing from the everyday normality of Levov’s American pastoral to Fordian contingency which allows Roth’s Levov to build a life of normality in the wake of the explosion. As in Ford’s novel, it is the violence of the uncommon, the unknown and the unforeseen that allows a sort of everyday normality to seep into place. Swede Levov thus worries about the arrival of news of his lost daughter in the following manner:

He could never root out the unexpected thing. The unexpected thing would be waiting there unseen, for the rest of his life ripening, ready to explode, just a millimeter behind everything else. The unexpected thing was the other side of everything else. He had already parted with everything, then remade everything, and now, when everything appeared to be back under his control, he was being incited to part with everything again. And if that should happen, the unexpected thing becoming the only thing […]’.22

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 But, where Ford’s novel manages to maintain an illusion of normality in Bascombe’s repeated declarations of self-reliance in the name of ‘existence period commonality’ (something which allows the reader to more easily attribute the novel to the realist tradition and its American heritage of the common and everyday), Roth works to turn the common and everyday into something more explicitly ‘uncommon’. For it parallax 55 is this comforting illusion of realism that is immediately foregrounded and then attacked in the novel through the intervention of Roth’s narrator, Nathan Zuckerman. As readers of Roth’s fiction know, Nathan Zuckerman bears a remarkable resemblance to Roth himself so that the line between fiction and biography is often blurred when Zuckerman is behind the typewriter.23 Thus, early in the novel, the reader learns that the story of Swede Levov is an invention, another one of those illusions of fiction that Ford reminds us we tell one another to give ourselves a sense of security (according to Zuckerman/Roth, invoking the same tradition as Ford, his is a ‘realistic chronicle’24). And like Swede Levov’s own ‘realist chronicle’, which is blown open by the terrible event of a terrorist’s bomb, Roth punches a hole in this in the larger ‘American pastoral’ of the common or everyday realist narrative by creating doubts about the veracity of the narrative, about who is being described or who is doing the narrating. Just as Ford’s Bascombe then attempts to sell the reader a house of fiction that is actually built on the uncommon, Roth’s narrative sets the unforeseen and uncertain ticking away (‘the unexpected thing waiting there unseen’) in his own take on the realist house of fiction – a house that looks as solid and sure as Swede Levov’s American dream house:

The stone house was not only engagingly ingenious-looking to his eyes – all that irregularity regularized, a jigsaw puzzle fitted patiently together into this square, solid thing to make a beautiful shelter – but it looked indestructible, an impregnable house that could never burn to the ground and that had probably been standing there since the country began.25

Like Hugo before them, Ford and Roth then offer an example of how to negotiate the double passage of literary innovation and tradition by foregrounding the ‘irregularity regularized’ that is the American literary tradition of the common and everyday in/through the appearance of the uncommon, extraordinary or simply terrible. This is precisely the value of literature since it is within the critical light of the literary ‘symptom’ of the American common that this double passage is understood as the proper ‘use’ or expression of terror. ‘Raids’ are indeed being made on the imagination (of the common) in these novels, but these raids take part in that very same imaginative, aesthetic tradition whose place can only be grasped, paradoxically, from the perspective of these raids. This odd sensation of vertigo that is created as one moves from one position (that of revolutionary innovator) to another (that of ‘defender’ or ‘initiator’ of a regime or tradition) is precisely the proper ‘use’ of terror as well as of literature. Terror, when read within the light of the literary clinic, is no longer exclusively one position or the other but the expression of both positions. Terror is not deployed in terms of a proper name (la Terreur) but rather, to echo Deleuze, in terms of an ‘impersonal’ name. The Terror of contemporary terrorists, of Robespierre, of modern democracy (to follow Lyotard’s arguments/targets) mislead us, forcing us

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 to choose between the ‘scapegoat’ and the ‘ogre’, between a ‘world that will never be the same again’ or operations of ‘enduring liberty’, enslaving us in a clinical definition of terror in which the rhetorical acrobatics of a Robespierre are only too well-known. Terror does indeed have its proper uses and proper expression, which are revealed in the literary clinic. When this occurs, the use of terror can most certainly promote a Larson 56 new health since behind individuals, peoples or cultures, the expression of terror always holds ‘the unexpected thing waiting there unseen’.

Notes

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On the Uses and visits, is trying to push Joe Markham toward the Disadvantages of History for Life’, trans. R. J. comforting ‘illusion of fiction’ of a house. Hollingdale in Daniel Breazeale [ed], Untimely Markham, once again, is trying to avoid just that Meditation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University problem on the horizon that Bascombe describes Press, 1997), pp.57–125. as the creed of the existence period. But in seeing/ 2 Gilles Deleuze, Pre´sentation de Sacher-Masoch (Paris: avoiding the problem of purchasing a house, E´ ditions de Minuit, 1967), pp.10–11. Markham misses the wry manner in which 3 For this argument and much of what follows in Bascombe/Ford gives this particular house (of the next two pages, see Laurent Jenny, La Terreur fiction) value, since, just as Bascombe is attempting et les signes, Poe´tiques de rupture (Paris: E´ ditions to reassure Markham, ‘the flame haired woman in Gallimard, 1982), pp.7–28. 213 whisks across the picture-window space, north ff 4 Quoted in Jenny, La Terreur et les signes, p.17 (my to south, totally in the bu , a big protuberant pair translation). Unless otherwise noted, all translations of white breasts leading the way, her arms out from the French are my own. Isadora Duncan style, her good, muscular legs 5 Don DeLillo, Mao II (London : Vintage Books, leaping and striding like a painting on an antique 1992), p.41. urn. ‘Wow, look at that,’ I say. Joe, though, has 6 Victor Hugo, Re´ponse a` un acte d’accusation,inLes shaken his head again over what a brainy guy he ff Contemplations (Paris : E´ ditions Gallimard, 1943), is, chuckled and ambled o […]. [W]hat he’s just p.44. missed is a neighbor’s neighborly way of letting 7 Jenny, La Terreur et les signes, p.18. the prospective buyer know what he’s getting into 8 Jenny, La Terreur et les signes, p.19. out here, and frankly it’s a sight that causes my estimation […] to go up and off the charts. It has 9 Hugo, Re´ponse a` un acte d’accusation,inLes the mystery and the unexpected as its hidden assets Contemplations, p.42. […] and Joe, had he seen it, might also have seen 10 Deleuze, Pre´sentation de Sacher-Masoch, p.11. where his interests lay and known exactly what to 11 Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, ‘Terror on the Run’, do’ (Ford, Independence Day, pp.66–67). In other trans. Philip R. Wood and Graham Harris, in words, if Joe had properly seen and recognized the Jean-Joseph Goux and Philip R. Wood [eds], Terror problem on the horizon as the inevitability of the and Consensus: Vicissitudes of French Thought (Stanford: uncommon and the unforeseen, he would have Stanford University Press, 1998), p.34. 12 understood to what extent the dependability and Lyotard, ‘Terror on the Run’, pp.35–36. reassurance of the common depends on the latter. 13 Heinz Ickstadt, ‘The Creation of Normalcy’, 20 Ford, Independence Day, p.439. ´ Revue Franc¸aise d’Etudes Ame´ricaines ( June 2000), 21 Philip Roth, American Pastoral (New York: pp.6–22. Vintage, 1997), pp.85–86. 14 Ickstadt, ‘The Creation of Normalcy’, pp.14–15. 22 Roth, American Pastoral, p.176. 15 Richard Ford, Independence Day (New York: 23 Zuckerman is the protagonist of five previous Vintage, 1995), p.43. Roth novels, the ‘author’ of a scandalous novel 16 Ford, Independence Day, p.5. Carnovsky, which closely resembles Roth’s own 17 Henry James, Preface to the New York edition Portnoy’s Complaint, and is the fictional critic of of A Portrait of a Lady (New York: W. W. Norton, Roth’s own autobiography, The Facts. 1995), pp.3–15. 24 ‘[…] I pulled away from myself, pulled away 18 Ford, Independence Day, p.52. from the reunion, and I dreamed…I dreamed a 19 As an illustration of this, one might consider the realistic chronicle’, (Roth, American Pastoral, p.89). moment Bascombe, during one of several house 25 Roth, American Pastoral, p.190.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 Anthony Larson is maıˆtre de confe´rences at the Universite´ du Maine, Le Mans, France, where he teaches American literature and literary theory. He has published articles on Gilles Deleuze, American literature and the institution of literature. He is currently working on a project studying the approaches of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze towards literature. parallax 57 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 58–69

But You, Sir, You shall die. That is what it is about.

Claus Carstensen

At least fifty mostly decomposed cadavers covered the floor, wadded in clothing, their belongings strewn about and smashed. Macheted skulls had rolled here and there. The dead looked like pictures of the dead. They did not smell. They did not buzz with flies. They had been killed thirteen months earlier, and they hadn’t been moved. The killers killed all day at Nyarubuye. At night they cut the Achilles tendons of survivors and went oV to feast behind the church, roasting cattle looted from their victims in big fires, and drinking beer. (Bottled beer, banana beer – Rwandans may not drink more beer than other Africans, but they drink prodigious quantities of it around the clock.) And, in the morning, still drunk after whatever sleep they could find beneath the cries of their prey, the killers at Nyarubuye went back and killed again. Day after day, minute to minute, Tutsi by Tutsi: all across Rwanda, they worked like that. The talk about Kibeho had started when Alexandre asked me if I had been to the church at Nyarubuye, to see the memorial there of the unburied dead from the genocide. I hadn’t yet, and although when I did go I didn’t regret it, I gave Alexandre what I thought – and still think – was a good argument against such places. I said that I was resistant to the very idea of leaving bodies like that, forever in their state of violation – on display as monuments to the crime against them, and to the armies that had stopped the killing, as much as to the lives they had lost. Such places contradicted the spirit of the popular Rwandan T-shirt: ‘Genocide. Bury the dead, not the truth.’ – Philip Gourevitch, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families – Stories from Rwanda.1 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009

Unlike other animals, humans bury each other. We remove our cadavers from the face of the earth, because in our minds, the cadavers remind us that we shall die.

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 58 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000048007 They mirror and precede our own individual destruction as a single, but effective creator of difference, which defines life as something before death.

And that, at once, turns the history of religion upside down: There is a life after birth, as the Situationists said, and not one after death. That is what it is about. That is what is implicated in the quote from Lacan, referred to in my headline.

The formation of consciousness, this theory of the mind, takes its point of departure in language and representation and undauntedly produces time as a concept which subjectively is determined by and measures itself in relation to death. In our common consciousness time is measured historically and therefore attempts to free oneself from timeliness are also attempts to end history and abolish death.

All revolutionary situations must be about annulling time in one great now. A form of permanent presence as a freedom from death and representation, and representation here should be understood as the ability to re-present or as a repeated presence –asin an in a damned past repeated presence, to which there is tied a certain work of memory and mourning. This is also why, in this state of revolutionary presence, it does not seem necessary to bury the dead, as for instance in Kampuchea in the 1970s or Rwanda in the 1990s.

But this freedom from death is ecstatic and most of all resembles a frenzy of enthusiasm. In connection to hooliganism, the English use a concept such as mobs out of control, and to some extent, that term covers every revolutionary situation as an event controlled by the affect and organised spontaneously. And, paradoxically enough, with great ambition: ‘Even mobs and riots have a design, and great and sustained destruction requires great ambition’.2

This situation is almost indistinguishable from that of excess or intoxication. And it often lasts only as long as it takes to sleep it off. Afterwards the hang over sets in as consciousness of timeliness and own death – and subsequently, long term control and organisation of power: ‘In discussions of us-against-them scenarios of popular violence, the fashion these days is to speak of mass hatred. But while hatred can be animating, it appeals to weakness. The ‘‘authors’’ of the genocide, as Rwandans call them, understood that in order to move huge numbers of weak people to do wrong, it is necessary to appeal to their desire for strength – and the gray force that really drives people is power. Hatred and power are both, in their different ways, passions. The difference is that hatred is purely negative, while power is essentially positive: you surrender to hatred, but you aspire to power’.3

This is also why certain images and knowledges are forbidden in totalitarian systems, because they represent difference in the form of a past and so reflect something other. As for instance the blowing up of the ancient Buddha Statues in Bamyan in present day Afghanistan. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 That is what it is about: Revolutionary movements and avant-gardes always go through a totalitarian transformation, seeking to transcend time and end history in order to impose a permanent presence, where process, pulsation, past, difference and death are eliminated. parallax 59 Although there is an unstoppable inner dynamic in the use and instrumentalization of knowledge and certain modes of research, this does not change the fact that, for instance, genetic research has almost reached a point where it is capable of cloning humans at the same time as it withholds any real statement in discussions around permanence and presence. For what is cloning other than a revolutionary 5. Internationale, where in the name of freedom and equality time, death, difference and gendered reproduction are sought to be abolished.

It would be appropriate to ask the question: How does subjectivity and consciousness disperse itself in cloned individuals? Whose is the memory? Where does it start and where does it end?

Maybe something like Nauman’s endless video-loop Clown Torture: Dark and Stormy Night with laughter: ‘It was a dark and stormy night. Three men were sitting around a campfire. One of the men said, ‘‘Tell us a story, Jack’’. And Jack said, ‘‘It was a dark and stormy night. Three men were sitting around a campfire. One of the men said, ‘‘‘Tell us a story, Jack’’’. And Jack said, ‘‘‘It was a dark and stormy night ...’’’.

Or maybe something like the member of the band Repeat Repeat who in the beginning of the 80s and probably under the influence of the omnipresent No Future-self stigmatization, assumed the pseudonym Pete Repeat.

Repetition, doubling, reproduction and replication enter as fundamental dynamic elements in the development of consciousness and the ability to re-present, but in many ways they have also become a burden of culture in the race for segregation. Because that is what consciousness and the ability to re-present are about; repetition, creation of difference and segregation.

Reality is neither real nor nominal, but pulsating back and forth between the positions in indefinite condensations and displacements. We never receive the real thing. We are always simultaneously subjects and objects for each other. We are always represented. Surrounded by absence and traces as a result of timely displacements. But we remember and we form imaginations, make representations – and therefore we easily become sentimental at the thought of absence: ‘If you forget I will remember it word by word’.

Strangely enough participants in reality TV shows such as Big Brother always talk about making a difference when asked why they entered. But there is rarely any difference in place, since the principle of reality TV is that it is only supposed to function here and now and is therefore already outdated tomorrow. It lives in and from the now in the same way as the endless summer of love of the hippies or dance culture or the cyber space of science fiction.

Art, then, is a lacuna. It is one of the last social areas that contributes to the critique Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 of a productive order in the form of a prodigal, but cyclist economy that is not subordinated to the functionally directed instrumentalization that governs the rest of the social field where it is too often being called upon to solve socio-political problems with tools of cultural politics, all according to the motto: ‘Realise your inner artist’. Carstensen 60 Art, or maybe in particular the discipline and work ethic with which you set out to engage with art, has to do with existence, will and negation. It is a continuous confirmation of the existence of art as an insistence upon singularity understood as otherness. As will it sets itself up against and forces something into a form, and as a negation it is the investment of will in definition, the work of negating or backing out.

In the article Art in the Age of Democracy in the book Semiotics of Drawing, Boris Groys concerns himself with a special form of social graphic, which is about the lack of legitimacy and political representation in the relation between artistic avant-garde and parliamentary democracy. He points out that the imperative notion of art as that which exceeds is today managed by the museums. The European museum has a built-in expansive logic, which demands that it continuously must expand and include everything. If this logic is paired of with the demands of the artistic avant- garde, what you get is a museological avant-garde, defining the limits of the lack of legitimacy of parliamentary representation, which is a consequence of the complexity of contemporary society. A complexity which the parliament no longer is capable of representing and so leave to be represented by artistic institutions.

It is obvious that the actual functioning of political institutions is not capable of reflecting this diversity and is therefore always suffering from lack of legitimacy. This lack of legitimacy is in modern society counterbalanced in culture, especially in art. In this way art archives the political function of representing all that which is no longer politically represented or has not yet become so – and maybe never will be.4

It is a common assumption that there is an institutional ‘profit’ of the breaking of borders, the affront of taboos and the revolt of the avant-garde. But it is more likely that the institutions themselves demand and initiate these breakings of borders and affronting of taboos, because the democratic universalistic principle of representation subsequently demands that everything which can be represented also will be represented. The logic of the avant-garde is, as a starting point, an institutional logic. It reflects the at any time effective border between political representation and artistic representation.5

However, travels and migrations across borders do not mean that it [the border between political and artistic institutions] disappears – on the contrary. It will even by defined anew again and again, at the same time as being reconsolidated and secured. And only the continuous existence of the border makes possible a further affronting of it. It even makes the affronting strategically necessary. But the affronting of borders is also meant to reconstruct and re-thematize the border, make it visible and possible to experience.6

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 This also means that the classical revolutionary movement and the classical avant- garde, who in their military rhetoric and understanding of themselves orient themselves towards finality, paradoxically enough are transformed and come to orient themselves, instead, towards a sense of process, towards evolutionary dimensions which as such actually work quite well. At the same time, however, they adopt the parallax 61 otherness of art as a condition and make it visible as part of the process and then pass it on.

Therefore a part of this process is also about making visible and preserving traces. At the moment, the information carriers seem to become smaller and smaller and the information they carry increasingly virtual, something that is in principle anticipated by conceptual art’s vision of the dematerialization of the art object.

Seen in this light, the revolution has triumphed itself to death. The permanence of revolution has been replaced by the tyranny of permanent presence, the categorical imperative of which reads: At any price, avoid trace, past and preserving. Everything is reality. We are on here and now. And at the very same moment, already outdated.

… that is, in the rejection of the world. the ‘sacred disgust’, humiliation and ‘troubled heads’ light substance. private people free from what? three islands (archipelago) – and the money maiden ‘work’

1

a tribe called ‘unemployed’ mobs out of control Lesbian Dream Press Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009

Carstensen 62 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 Hospitality

parallax 63 Plone´vez-Porzay, again with a clear blue sky and poplars along the hot roads reading Kaalø’s Jorden taler while the dog in the chambre d’hotes in which we live is pissing off the rear wheels of the parked cars – so don’t say that land is not being traded: I don’t give a damn who says any diVerent… as Eddy Grand shouts across the crowd in Eddy Grant and The Frontline Orchestra: Live at Notting Hill from the derivatives, then – but then who is afraid of frontlines, absence and earth poetry!

1

a tent with ethnic/political minorities at 22e Festival De Cine´ma in Douarnenez which bears the title Yiddishland – Le Monde Yiddish Au Cine´ma: the anarchosyndicalistic Alternative Libertaire Eau Rivie´res De Bretagne Frankiz Evit Tibet Relais E´ trangers Ligue Des Droits De L’Homme the Berbers’ Tamazgha Pour Une Alge´rie Libre Et De´mocratique Breizh A-Enep D’Ar Faskourizh (Ras L’Fronts La Bretagne Contre Le Fascisme) France-Palestine/DZ homecomings, migration and caused doubts You are Welsh, aren’t you? as the red haired girl in the stall for Breton autonomy asked me

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 Somebody told me! Who? I don’t know anybody here! I can’t remember!

Carstensen 64 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 Diarrhea and Democracy

parallax 65 the cunt is calling The cunt is calling, D.F.M. and URINRUIN (three titles from the mid 80s which might not be so impossible after all – the impossible understood as blasphemy destruction and excess or as Bataille’s fallow of a Colle`ge de sociologie against Koje`ves’ unemployed negativity): Blonde on blonde or hand, drawing shadows

1

of course there is a difference between historical and low materialism, between subservience and rabid subjectivity; to live is to loose ground… it is not about abstruse arrogance, abstruse degradations and humiliations; not about an irrational use of logic, but about a rational use of madness don’t want to be represented not joining doing nothing not violating anything not visible at all and despite that, an infinite row of penetrations or social deflorations Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009

Carstensen 66 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 Silent Takeover

parallax 67 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 Morphology/Genealogy

Carstensen 68 ... to see oneself as nothing other than a bunch of cells with a huge potential for aggression!

Genealogy, Other front nom de guerre

Ratten, Niedertracht

Notes

1 Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That 4 Boris Groys, ‘Kunsten i demokratiets tid’, in Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families – Stories Claus Carstensen [ed.] Tegningens semiotik’ From Rwanda (Sydney: Picador, 2000), pp.15–19. (Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Arts, 2 Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That 2000), p.30. Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families – Stories 5 Boris Groys, Kunsten i demokratiets tid (2000), p.32. From Rwanda, p.17. 6 Boris Groys, Kunsten i demokratiets tid (2000), p.37. 3 Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families – Stories From Rwanda, pp.128–129.

Claus Carstensen is a Danish artist, poet and theorist, living and working in Copenhagen. He has published numerous books of poetry, essays and theory of which the most recent ones are: Digte (samling), d.t. (Borgen, 1999), Tegningens semiotik (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, 2000) and 99/00 (Borgen, 2001). He has participated in several international biennales including San Paulo (1994) and Venice (1997). Recent solo-shows include Crossover (Arken – Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj,

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:50 18 November 2009 1997), Ro¨da Rummet (Christopher Cutts Gallery, Toronto, 1999), Piss Notes (Aarhus Museum of Art, Aarhus, 2000, and Christopher Cutts Gallery, Toronto, 2001), Silent Takeover I (Gustaf Gimm, Copenhagen, 2001) and Silent Takeover II (Overgaden Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, 2002). Translated by Pernille Skov parallax 69 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 70–96

Blowing Up the Pose: The Politics of Photography Representation at a Standstill

Meir Wigoder

Right in the Eyes

Two persons, looking at each other in the eye, see not their eyes but their looks. (The reason why we get the color of a person’s eyes wrong?) (Robert Bresson)1

A mirroring scene is formed during a stand-of between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian in Hebron. The soldier and the Palestinian are the same age and of similar appearance: the Israeli is of Sephardic (oriental) origin, while the Palestinian mimics a typically Israeli hand gesture. The photograph captures the zero degree of their vision, like the moment when a prize fighter in the ring hugs his rival in order to pause and neutralize his opponent’s ability to throw a punch. For a fraction of a second, the proximity of the soldier and the Palestinian testifies to an illusion of parity as each has trespassed the other’s personal and national space. The politics of vision must start here from the blind spot they occupy for an instant before they draw back and each tries to control the other’s destiny by gaining a spatial advantage – a distance that is calculated by the range of the bullet or the thrown stone.

What moment are they enacting according to the Western theories of vision that have opted to explain intersubjective relations, often at the expense of considering the political implications of the gaze? How would Mikahil Bakhtin’s model of architectonics be applied here, as the dialogic sphere is erased by two monologic stances of rivals who are unable to listen to one another and stand far too close to have any spatial advantage? How would the tyrannical implications of Jean Paul Sartre’s ‘La Regard’ apply to these looks, which are embedded in the shared ideological phantasy of each desiring the total disappearance of the other from the land they are struggling over? How would Jacques Lacan’s model of vision contribute

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009 to explaining the mirror situation we have here between two rivals who define their position of specularity by competing to be recognized in the world as the victims and not the perpetrators of aggression?

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 70 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000048025 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

Figure 1. A confrontation between a Palestinian and an Israeli solider (credit to: Khaled Zighari). parallax 71 Hebron – Group Photograph

I shall always see and know something that he, from his place outside and over against me, cannot see himself […] this ever-present excess of my seeing, knowing, and possessing in relation to any other human being is founded in the uniqueness and irreplaceability of my place in the world. (Mikhail Bakhtin)2

‘Hey Mister, take our photo!’ Three Palestinian boys arrange themselves in a spirit of camaraderie for a photograph they will never request, just because they want to be seen by the visitor’s eyes. In any other circumstances the painterly marks on the shop’s doors behind them would have functioned as an abstract studio backdrop, meant to separate the posing figures from their social and cultural surroundings. But here, the boys’ static pose contrasts with the testimony of the flowing outlines of the political graffiti whose arabesque shapes echo the picturesque architecture and narrow winding streets of the Casbah. The shut doors have turned into political bulletin boards because the owners are either on mass strike or being forced to stay home by a curfew. Different Palestinian factions compete for these spaces as the graffiti is written over the new layer of coated paint, that the soldiers have forced innocent pedestrians to use to cover earlier graffiti texts, while they stand watching their humiliation.

The photograph was taken exactly as one boy rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder, despite the latter being taller. The photographer was responding here to another uncanny moment that had taken place in a store moments before he emerged into the street. The owner had pointed at a photograph of his brother, who had died from an Israeli bullet during a demonstration. The grain was exploding in the overblown photograph whose memorial function was now indicated by the gilded frame. The portrait had been lifted from a joyous family occasion, a fact that was now gruesomely evident by the chopped off palm of a relative’s hand that could still be seen hugging the deceased’s shoulder. Was the resting hand on the boy’s shoulder, in our photograph, an eerie premonition of his fate in the future? Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 2. Group of Palestinian boys in Hebron (credit to: Meir Wigoder). Palestinian Labourers – Tulkarem

The Other’s look hides his eyes; he seems to go in front of them. ( Jean-Paul Sartre)3

The year is 1994. Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin is selling the Israelis on the idea of a peace settlement with the Palestinians by advocating a complete separation between the two nations. (A strange offer of peace that leaves many Palestinian workers with no livelihood after having worked for 35 years in Israel.) Many workers enter Israel illegally and have become vulnerable to abusive employers as they are no longer protected by labour laws. A group of Palestinian workers wish to protest against being barred entry but are apprehensive of revealing themselves. They are less afraid of the journalist, who will refer to them only by their first initial, than the Israeli photographer who places them together, as in an identity parade, albeit giving them the option of covering their faces.

Oddly, it is precisely the figures who decided not to reveal themselves who determine the photographic frame as they form a diagonal line from the right foreground to the left background. By dint of concealing their faces they turn into present-absentees, reflecting the entire way of life of an occupied disenfranchised nation, whose claims to statehood in their own homeland is still not recognized. Thus, they are not protecting themselves from the photographer’s look (from the person present in the room) but from the agency his camera represents (an implied gaze they have internalized after many years of foreign rule) as they hide in apprehension of retribution from their employers and fear of future recognition by the border guards, should they attempt illegal entry. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 3. A group of Palestinian labourers – Tulkarem (credit to: Miki Kratzman). Palestinian Woman – Intifada

A Palestinian woman volunteers to reveal the wounds inflicted by an Israeli soldier’s gas grenade during the first intifada and immediately faces a dilemma: she is unable to undress before the Israeli male photographer. A compromise is struck. The woman agrees to be photographed by another Palestinian woman, who had introduced her to the Israeli photographer. The photographer gives a crash course in photography and sets the flash and the exposure. He leaves the room. (The next time he sees the photograph will only be after it is developed and he will double credit the photograph in the newspaper.)

The situation produces a dichotomy: while the woman is willing to reveal her bare legs to the newspaper readers she is unwilling to reveal herself in person to the photographer. Her realization of the difference between ‘being photographed’ and ‘becoming a photograph’ is felt in the disparity between the sight of her bare legs and the traditional headdress she is still wearing to cover her head for modesty and religious reasons. Moreover, there is a difference between her act of lifting her dress to show the wound, which presents her body as an object of testimony, and her facial expression, which appears to observe the action of being photographed as if her face was not included in the photograph.

The Palestinian woman is caught in a matrix of cultural and sexual gazes: a woman has temporarily appropriated a male look to photograph her while an Israeli gaze (representing the enemy who wounded her in the first place) is replaced by a Palestinian witness. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

Wigoder 76 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009 Figure 4. Palestinian woman showing her wounds (credit to: Miki Kratzman).

parallax 77 The Freedom Fighter, or the Wanted Terrorist?

Who said: ‘A single look let loose a passion, a murder, a war?’ (Robert Bresson)4

The night before this photograph was taken the Israeli army tried to leave the city of Nablus in stealth under the new terms of the Oslo peace accord in 1995. The local Palestinian population did not want to give the soldiers the pleasure of redeploying unseen, as they burned Israeli flags, threw stones and watched the convoys’ departure in elation. From the false hopes of this new dawn of the Oslo accord surfaces our grass-roots freedom fighter. He has been hiding in the shadows from the Israeli army, who placed him on a wanted list, but now feels falsely secure enough to expose himself to light as he walks brandishing his M-16 rifle among the admiring local crowds. On this day of quasi-liberation, the carnivalesque atmosphere is characterized by the sweet scent of anarchy, made possible by the lull between the evacuation of the occupation forces and the entry of the Palestinian Authority into the city. Suddenly, in Sartrian terms, he realizes the limits of his facticity and the fear of being discovered once he notices that he is the subject of the Israeli photographer’s look. In a split second his looked-at-look changes into a looking-at-look at the photographer, who immediately puts down the camera, by his own admonition, because he too realizes that his press pass is not going to guarantee his safety. All these strong gazes of the crowd: their strength is derived from years of daily practice of casting their eyes down at the sight of an Israeli soldier, who can determine their freedom of movement and sense of pride in a single side glance from behind his sunglasses – a glance that they must imagine and anticipate before they even reach the soldier. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 5. Palestinian fighter with submachine gun (credit to: Miki Kratzman). The Suicide Bomber I

The captor/captive paradigm of vision between the Israeli photographer and the Palestinian subject can be inverted once the latter takes control of the photographic act and of the pose. A young Palestinian has been recruited by the Hammas, the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist movement, for a suicide mission in the heart of Israel’s civilian population. He marks the occasion by staging his own pose in a local photography studio that is traditionally used for family and wedding portraits. This will be the last photograph he has of himself. The actions leading to his death will release the photograph from its anonymity and reach his family. The photograph serves as a contractual document between the suicide-bomber and his operators to ensure that he will not renege on his pledge to go on a mission of no return.

The suicide-bomber selects the scenery. His hand – in a fateful gesture – marks a drastic transition between two worlds: the studio space, traditionally representing the indoor artificial world, now represents reality; while the painterly scenery in the background signifies heaven, which is characterized by the lush green landscape and the river that is so foreign to him. The same hand holding the miniature holy book of the Koran in its palm will assumedly also trigger the bomb to earn him a place in heaven and the title ‘shahid’ – martyr. (The kitsch colours of the studio photograph anticipate the bright colors of the candies that will be distributed among the mourners to celebrate the joyous aspects of his heroic martyrdom.) Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 6. Suicide bomber against landscape backdrop (photographer unknown). Courtesy of Set Productions. A still from the documentary film Shaid by Dan Setton. The Suicide Bomber II

This suicide-bomber was one of five such volunteers who exploded in Israeli buses in 1995, costing the Israeli Labour government the elections. He has taken matters into his own hands by becoming the image-maker. On the one hand the photograph conveys the act of his withdrawal from the world, a few days before he will die. (He stands in profile to the camera with shut eyes and chooses not to look directly at the lens.) But during this solemn moment, standing against the studio scenery showing the Mosque of Omar (the second holiest site for Muslims), he also performs a theatrical act in which he proffers his decapitated head in the knowledge that only it may remain intact after the blast – this is a gesture of sacrifice.

The collage creates curious contrasts: during his act of mimicry (freezing his movement in anticipation of what the camera will do to him) he establishes the difference between his ‘being’ in the world and his ‘semblance’, which is represented by the second degree image of his severed head. Two grammatical tenses provide the ‘anterior future’, which Roland Barthes characterized as the ability of a single photograph to present a person who has died and is going to die.

The photograph also represents two other, different photographic times, which Thierry de Duve had discussed: the time of portrait photography (characterized by a prolongation of time, which gives the impression that the subject exists in an infinite tense with no connection to the past, present or the future) exists here alongside the intimation of the time of snapshot photography (characterized by the ‘now’ of the present, which is represented by the swift abduction of the detail from reality – the fetish and the torn fragment that are epitomized by the severed head in his hand). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 7. Suicide bomber with severed head against a backdrop of the mosque of Omar (photographer unknown). Courtesy of Set Productions. A still from the documentary film Shaid by Dan Setton. The Theater of the Dead

The suicide-bomber’s pose in the studio is now fully dramatized in the form of a spectacle the Hammas organized in Nablus in 1998. Three crucial elements have been magnified to appeal to the crowd: the suicide bomber’s gesture in the studio is echoed by the outstretched hand of the activist who sets fire to the Israeli flag above a burning cardboard model of an Israeli bus. The severed head, of the previous photograph, is now represented by the black mask, which accentuates the difference between the activist’s hidden face and his body. In the background we perceive a three-dimensional model of the same view of the Mosque of Omar, a symbolic representation of the Palestinians’ aspirations for a homeland with Jerusalem as its capital.

In these fundamentalist pageants, relying mainly on kitsch and on the dramatization of battles, kidnapping and the bombing of Israeli targets, the activists use children to play the parts of the Israelis and the Palestinian figures as an act of pedagogy and propaganda. The rallies serve, like Lacan’s ‘fascinum’, to ward of the threat of the evil eye (the Israeli occupier) by presenting a more horrible counter threat that is meant to send a petrifying message to the Israelis that they too are not immune to danger and fear. The scene recalls Barthes’ formulation that photography is ‘a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made- up face beneath which we see the dead’.5 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 8. The burning of a model of an Israeli bus (credit to: Rula Halawani). The Blast

The moment has come. The suicide bomber has found the most efficient place in the bus from which to blow himself up, having only a moment ago participated in the mundane act of paying for the ride. He presses the trigger. For an imperceptible split second, before the force of the blast creates havoc in the space, he is both the subject who has decided to act and also already the object of the act as the pressing of the trigger coalesces the human body and the mechanical bomb, nature and technology. The bomber turns into the agent of darkness, but also of light, as the explosion ignites the martyr’s flame and produces the mandorla that marks him at the centre from which the destructive force flings everything around it randomly into space. During this fraction of a second the force of the blast shatters all the discourses on the gaze and the pose as we have known them to be rehearsed in Western culture: this anarchic moment cancels the Cartesian sense of splitting our being in the world from our sight of it; the Hegelian slave has overruled the master; the effect of Lacan’s terminal moment of arrest has sprung into a powerful blow that eradicates sight. Bakhtin’s ‘excess of vision’ is eliminated by a force that no longer distinguishes between self/other, being-here and looking-there relations, because the agency of this destruction is both the perpetrator and the victim, the bomb and the body. The traces of Merleau-Ponty’s insistence on the ‘lived body’ being immersed in the world and surrounded by it are found by the forensic experts: they now gauge the force of the blast by tracking the radius of the explosion from the very spot the suicide- bomber occupied, the remains of whose body can now be seen among the residue of powder and the charred marks that remain in the skeletal shape of the bus whose entire envelop (its flesh and skin) have been torn off by the blast. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 9. Bus after explosion (credit to: Ziv Koren). The Remains of the Day

A moment after the blast – utter stillness ensues. The discourse of the occupier and occupied, the hegemonic and the disenfranchised, the religious and the secular, fall into an abysmal silence. The initial shock then gives way to hysteria. The sound of the blast has set in motion thousands of automatic gestures already embedded in the theory of urban shock since the 19th century and in theories of trauma of the 20th century. Police vehicles, ambulances, soldiers, photographers and pedestrians rush to the scene and in moments become part of the crowd generated by a single fatal act – one that they subconsciously fear each morning from the moment of waking- up. The terrorist act relies on the televised spectacle. The pressed trigger is the most powerful sound-bite anyone has ever invented, but also the act that has never yet been recorded, as our entire knowledge of the event must rely on witnesses and on the images of the bomb’s aftermath.

Somewhere in all this confusion a police detective hunts for the suicide-bomber’s head, which he too is only interested in as a semblance that will help him in the process of identifying the suspect. He uses a fire extinguisher to stop the ‘evidence’ from burning. The process of identification will lead to a village and to the bomber’s home that will be blown up in retaliation. An entire family will lose the only thing they have in an explosion whose scars are bound to prepare the ground for a new generation of youngsters who will seek to sacrifice their lives in revenge. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

Wigoder 88 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009 Figure 10. Policeman with fire extinguisher and head of Palestinian (credit to: Ziv Koren).

parallax 89 Three Acts of Redemption

The bomber’s body and those of his victims have enmeshed and then scattered everywhere among the commercial shops and the store mannequins, realizing the worst surrealist nightmares (Hans Belmmer’s dolls and Raoul Ubac’s solarizations have risen to life here). The religious Jewish volunteers collect in plastic bags the human body parts scattered along the pavements, the terraces and even on the roofs. The press photographers scurry in the same areas, also bending to collect the fragments of mutilated bodies whose elongated or shortened shapes on the ground, created by the heat of the blast, result in new arrangements, recalling the terms with which Georges Bataille described the relation between the lateral position of the body and the bestial aspects of vision.

The bombing has released unexpected connections between the suicide-bomber, the Jewish religious volunteers and the photojournalists, who are all entwined in a rare redemptive act: the first is willing to sacrifice himself because he believes he will be immediately transported on the celestial highway to a heavenly reward. The second, who is picking up the body parts in plastic bags, believes he is performing a righteous deed because according to the Jewish religion, for the dead to be resurrected when the Messiah comes, the body must be buried intact. The photographer’s aim is far less noble: he merely wants to resurrect the dead for the next morning’s headlines, which will be used by the crowd to adorn the makeshift alters at the bomb site in order to give the anonymous dead a face. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

Wigoder 90 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009 Figure 11. Religious Jew picking up body parts (credit to: Ziv Koren).

parallax 91 The Return of the Head/Dead

The relatives of the victims paste the headlines with the portraits of the dead in their memorial albums. They are not aware that their loved ones had already been killed thrice: once by the posing gesture of the suicide-bomber in the studio; then by the real blast of the bomb in the bus; and finally, and quite unexpectedly, by the photojournalists who are sent to the homes of the relatives to make reproduction photographs of the victims. The photographer’s grim task is to remove their heads from existing photographs where they are standing with friends in group portraits on festive occasions.

With a telephoto or macro lens the cameraman, as surgeon and pathologist, makes an incision into the surface of the photograph. The head is transferred through the barrel of the lens into the casket of the camera’s dark chamber where it will lay to rest on the negative. It will then be transferred again to the printed page, becoming a memorial mug shot, framed in a black frame with gray background, where the face will join those of all the others who have died, as though they were all pasted on a class reunion shot, the like of which Christian Boltanski used to create the impression of his memorial sites.

At this macabre moment, the heads of the victims and the perpetrator of the blast have joined in an irreversible fate, already portended in the suicide-bomber’s pose at the studio. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

Wigoder 92 Figure 12. Series of reproductions of victims’ heads in ‘24 hours’ in the Israeli daily Yediot Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009 Achronot.

parallax 93 The Trigger/Button

This is the image the Benetton campaign missed out on. A rare example of the fatal button attached to the outside of the coat with the metal plate designed to secure the detonator in the coat’s lining. This button represents the reflexive act of blowing oneself up.

All these actions (the pressing of the camera button and the trigger of the bomb) evoke certain associations: for Barthes, the photographer’s organ was not his eye but his finger, ‘what is linked to the trigger of the lens’. Accordingly, photography’s life/death paradigm relies on the camera’s simple click, ‘the one separating the initial pose from the final print’.6 Ernst Ju¨nger’s experiences during the first world war made it clear to him that photography ‘is an expression of our characteristically cruel way of seeing’, precisely because its telescopic instrumentality enabled it to see more than the human eye: the camera eye ‘registers just as well a bullet in midair or the moment in which a man is torn apart by an explosion’.7 The moment of the photograph and the bomb had already been foretold in Walter Benjamin’s definition of the effect camera technology has had on our modern sensibility: ‘A touch of the finger now sufficed to fix an event for an unlimited period of time. The camera gave the moment a posthumous shock’.8 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

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Figure 13. Suicide button on the coat (photographer unknown). Courtesy of Set Productions. A still from the documentary film Shaid by Dan Setton. Notes

1 Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer, trans. 5 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Fontana, Jonathan Griffin (N.Y: Quartet Books, 1975), p.12. 1984), p.31 2 Mikhail Bakhtin, Art and Answerability (Austin: 6 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p.9 and 15. University of Texas, 1990), p.23. 7 Ernst Ju¨nger, ‘On Pain’, in Christopher Phillips 3 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. [ed], Photography in the Modern Era (N.Y: The Hazele Barnes (N.Y: Philosophical Library, 1956), Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1989), p.258. p.208. 4 Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer, 8 Walter Benjamin, ‘Some Motifs in Baudelaire’, p.12. in Charles Baudelaire (London: Verso, 1985), p.132.

Meir Wigoder heads the photography track at the communication department at Sapir College, Shedrot, and is a historian of photography teaching at the department of the History of Art at Tel Aviv University. He is currently engaged in writing about the role shock and traumatic images play in constructing national identity and the way such images are used by Israel in their propaganda war. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:51 18 November 2009

Wigoder 96 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 97–113

The Other Side of Order: Towards a Political Theory of Terror and Dislocation

Oliver Marchart

The absolute form of terror

On 28 of February, 1986, Olof Palme was gunned down on the streets of Stockholm on his way home from a cinema. Until today, the murder of Olof Palme has been wrapped in mystery: his murderers were never caught, no letter claiming responsibility was found, and the motive behind the assassination remained entirely unclear. The police concentrated on following a lead to the Turkish terrorist group PKK which, however, did not result in any definite arrest – Abdullah Ocalan later put the blame on a splinter group lead by his ex-wife – so that theories multiplied as to the identity of the real wirepullers. According to one of those theories, the South African security police, together with Swedish accomplices, were involved (Palme was firmly opposed to Apartheid); other theories implicated weapons- and drug-traffickers around the ‘Iran-Contra’ complex (with which Palme did not want to co-operate) and/or the Gladio network and the Italian right-wing secret lodge P2.

In March 1986, the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger published an article in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter in which he reacted to the assassination of Olof Palme. The article was later re-printed in a volume of collected essays under the title: ‘The emptiness in the centre of terror’. In this short essay, Enzensberger reflects on the Palme-murder as an example of what he calls the ‘absolute form of terror’.1 According to Enzensberger, terrorism usually follows a certain set of rituals and routines: following the assault, a telephone rings in a news agency or a letter claiming responsibility is faxed to a newspaper. Rhetorics remain relatively standardized and we have become accustomed to the phrases and terminology of terrorists. These rituals and phrases have an important side-effect: they exert a calmative influence as they reassure us that our conventional worldviews and models remain intact. By issuing a communique´, a terrorist group guarantees that, however monstrous their act of terror may be, it still carries a name, it still has an identifiable author. Issuing a communique´, taking responsibility, is an act of naming, of signifying something

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 which otherwise would remain nameless and without auctorial meaning.

With the Palme killing, as also with some Italian terrorist attacks of the 1970s, our conventional picture of terrorism is confused, Enzensberger argues. The Palme killing

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000048016 97 is an example of an act of terror which does not explain anything, which declines to give any reason or justification, which does not legitimate itself. It does not aim at any propaganda effect: what it publicizes instead, by remaining silent, is its very own groundlessness (Grundlosigkeit). Enzensberger speaks about an empty attack (ein leeres Attentat). In the case of an empty attack, no language game is available for us which would facilitate our understanding of this form of absolute terror. While terrorism ‘as we know it’ is characterized by a set of rituals both on the side of the terrorists and the side of the media, terror in the absolute or empty sense does without rituals, without goal, and without reason. There will be no demand to be negotiated, no condition to be met, and no motive to be examined.

Fifteen years after the murder of Olof Palme we encounter an event which like no other fits Enzensberger’s model of empty terror. We should remember that part of the uncanny feeling initially surrounding what was soon to be called, by way of calendrical abstraction (and thus depersonalization), the ‘9-11-incident’ resulted from the fact that nobody claimed responsibility. The usual rituals of terrorism broke down not only because of the scale of devastation but because no author could immediately be identified, no communique´ surfaced and nobody publicly justified the act in terms of his or her political stance. Given the unprecedented sudden amount of media attention, it was rather astonishing that no group openly took advantage of this, the biggest propaganda-success any terrorist ever achieved. It was a propaganda coup indeed – but propaganda for what? The event – empty as it was in the first days – had to be named and signified, and since the causers remained silent themselves, an avalanche of commentaries was triggered by which the secular diviners of our time tried to ‘make sense’, to signify.

The point of Enzensberger’s argument is that – because of the event’s lack of signification – what we encounter in the case of an empty attack is not a particular variety of terrorism but, rather, the general form or structure of all acts of terrorism: Could it be, he asks, that terrorism is a structural and endemic phenomenon of society, and not just something on the surface we could easily get rid of ? What if terrorists as much as their victims and beneficiaries only acted as substitutes or puppets of a psychosis more general than the paranoia induced by terrorism itself ? That is to say, what if terrorism – the rituals, the justifications, etc. – were not the irrational and evil cause of that psychosis but, rather, the latter’s subsequent rationalization? For Enzensberger, these rituals do nothing but mask and conceal the emptiness of terror which lies at the ground, in the centre of all terrorism: the fact that, in the final instance, ‘terror is politically empty’,2 that it is a structural phenomenon of society and therefore will never be grasped completely and will always escape our control.

Now, it would be an easy exercise to accuse Enzensberger of making an ahistorical point, of completely ignoring the particular circumstances under which a terrorist Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 attack occurs and, instead, hypostatizing the event into a symptom of the universal psychosis of our modern life – and such a reading might not be completely out of the question. Yet I would propose shifting our attention to a much more productive aspect of Enzensberger’s argument where he touches, in my view, at the very historical and philosophical core of the question of terrorism. The aspect is to be Marchart 98 found in his implicit differentiation between terrorism, with all its conventional rituals, and terror eo ipso, terror for its own sake: terror without ritual (Schrecken ohne Ritual3). By differentiating between terror and terrorism, Enzensberger prefigures the post- foundational difference, as we will see, between a radical or, to put it in Heideggerian fashion, ontological notion of dislocation (i.e. terror) and an ontic notion of disorder (effected by ritualistic acts of terrorism), and thus, conversely, between the political as the foundational moment of institution/destitution of an order and police as the practice of securing that order. He arrives at the distinction between the concepts of terror and terrorism because of the very logic of his own argument as he seeks to push terrorism to the extreme point at which it is emptied of all content and turns into the principle of fear and paranoia. Yet by unclothing terrorism of all its discursive and ritualistic practices he can only advance to what would eventually constitute an absolute and thereby empty act of terrorism if he, at the same time, assumes the very groundlessness of society (what he describes as society’s irredeemable and primordial psychosis): terror lies at the core of society’s structure – but the centre of terror is empty, and, we have to conclude, so is the centre of society.

So, if we are prepared to pursue the implications of Enzensberger’s argument as to the nature of terrorism we will instantly realize that we are drawn into the realm of political philosophy and, in particular, of post-foundational social thought. His way of approaching terror and terrorism raises a set of basic questions which are characteristically politico-theoretical: What is the nature of society and the social? Where does social order come from and what is the function or role of politics in establishing order? Can it ever be finally achieved? If yes, how is this to be done or should we even try doing it? If no, what stands against the accomplishment of order and what is the nature of that obstacle (which might be enacted or show itself in the form of terrorism)? Is the obstacle of a merely accidental nature so that it could be overcome or is it essential in the sense that we will never overcome it? May it then serve, one would ask from a post-foundational perspective, as a kind of ‘negative ground’, or as an indicator of society’s absent ground? It is unfeasible, I would claim, to conceptually or theoretically approach the question of terror without simultaneously entering the minefield of these questions. This is not the same as searching for an universal answer to the question of terror that would cover all kinds of terrorism in all historical periods and local conditions. Obviously it would be ludicrous from a post-foundational stance to search for a positively determinable essence of terror – to be found, for instance, in ‘human nature’ as intrinsically violent. Yet political theory, to the extent that it sees itself as a theoretical and not only empirical enterprise, must not be satisfied with a purely nominalistic description of historical facts either: it cannot give up on the idea of some sort of conceptual abstraction and theoretical unity.

The question is how such post-foundational form of theoretical coherence should be envisaged, and it might be helpful to remember the answer Walter Benjamin gave Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 in the first chapter of his book on the Baroque mourning play where he insisted that philosophy must not fall into the trap of discarding every notion of the universal (das Allgemeine) in favour of the average (das Durchschnittliche). Such a philosophical idea of ‘unity’ or ‘universality’ cannot, however, be established by simply piling up a dead disparity of facts (Ha¨ufung von Fakten) for this would mean to surrender to empiricism parallax 99 and scientism.4 If we take Benjamin’s critique seriously then we have to confront the fact that we will not be able to grasp the phenomenon of terror by piling up a set of historical cases of terrorism. Yet neither can we rely on the metaphysical notion of an eternal essence or substance which could serve as an anchor point of the phenomenon’s unity. Given this dilemma then, according to Benjamin, a unity can only be established by thinking from the point of what he calls the extreme case: Only by perambulating the full circle of antagonistic extremes will we be able to create a meaningful yet anti-essentialist totality described by Benjamin as constellation. What philosophy thus seeks to accomplish is what Benjamin calls the synthetization of the extreme into the constellation of an idea.

With Enzensberger’s notion of absolute terror we have already approached the phenomenon of terrorism from its most extreme point, its limit case. However, what Enzensberger did not and could not do in his short commentary is to locate ‘terror’ within the conceptual constellation of political philosophy in which it figures much more prominently than one would assume at first sight. If we locate it within the antagonistic and tensional field of related ‘constellational’ concepts we will discover that there is not a single notion of terror which would not conjure up a corresponding notion of order and vice versa. So let us start encircling the concept of terror by pushing it to its antagonistic extreme or reverse side: the concept of order.

Order and its obverse side

One way of understanding the history of political philosophy is by conceiving it in terms of an ongoing enquiry into the very nature of order. In the words of N. J. Rengger: ‘From Greek tragedy and philosophy, to Roman conceptions of imperium and auctoritas, medieval notions of trusteeship and the complex interrelations of law, power and order, to the natural lawyers of the Renaissance and early modern period and beyond, it was a constant and highly contested theme in political, philosophical and theological reflection’.5 Of course, the concept of ‘order’ changes its scope and shape continually: yet what seems to be systematically forgotten in political philosophy is the simple fact that one can talk about order only by differentiating it from its opposite: Every theory about the establishment of order must, in one way or another, necessarily invoke the background against which order is to be established. Hence, there can be no theory of order which, at the very same time, is not a theory of dis-order. Interestingly, though, the history of political philosophy – in its canonized version – is usually recounted as a history of different variants of order rather than a continuous enquiry about disorder, let alone terror. Of course, such history of the ‘dark side of order’ cannot be provided within the space available here, yet I would like to at least propose a series of aspects or questions which would have to be taken into account in rewriting the history of political thought along these lines. First, one would have to reflect on the status of disorder in political theories: Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 Is it purely accidental, or is it something much more radical and necessarily persisting? Second, one would have to determine the nature of the relation between order and its obverse: Do they stand in a relation of sublation and reconciliation, do they stand in a relation of reduction of one term to the other, or do they stand in a relation of mutual subversion and contamination? Third, one would have to rethink the notion Marchart 100 of order from the perspective of its obverse side (the assumption, as we will see, of an absolute form of terror might invoke a form of absolute order which in turn influences our conception of how a particular order is constituted). And fourth, we will have to rethink politics and the political on the basis of such inquiry since it is in the register of politics that one has to come to terms both with the institution of order and with its destitution.

So, where should one start the history of the other side of order? If we were to follow N. J. Rengger, then it was with St Augustine that any harmonious and unquestioned notion of order – in the antique sense of harmonious unity between world and cosmos – became impossible because of the fall. So, as the nature of the fall – as ‘negative background’ and constant source of order’s subversion – renders impossible the eventual attainment of such harmonious order, it becomes the business of governmental institutions and law to minimize ‘instability, disorder and conflict’6 rather than erasing it (which would be a hopeless enterprise anyway). Nonetheless, one could argue contra Rengger that even before Augustine, in earlier antiquity, it was the idea of corruption that served as order’s reverse side and as a constant reminder of the fact that – even as we start from the assumption of an overall harmony between cosmic order and human order – no order is eternally secured in and by itself. Corruption then functions in antique and later republican thought as a stand-in for what cannot be secured: it is, in post-foundational terms, one of the names for society’s absent ground. What notions such as fall or corruption then indicate or imply – at least as a warning – is the impossibility of achieving order once and for all without simultaneously coming to terms with the possibility of its absence, that is to say, with the irrevocable remainders of disorder. It is precisely at this moment of philosophical reasoning – when the inversion of order proves to lie at the latter’s very ground – where we have to start retelling the history of political thought and where we also have to locate the question of terror (and to the extent that it serves as a discursive indicator of order’s reverse side, terrorism – understood as the active generalization of disorder – is therefore not only a legitimate subject falling into the competency of political philosophy but, what is more, should lie at the very core of politico-philosophical reasoning today).

The most prominent and influential description of universal terror in political philosophy is, without doubt, Hobbes’s portrayal of the state of nature. What makes this concept significant for a political theory of terror is not so much that he depicts the life of man, under conditions of this hypothetical limit case, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ and as haunted by the ‘continual fear and danger of violent death’.7 Such description alone, while it certainly captures the experience of terror, would remain on the ‘phenomenological’ level.8 If we wish to know the source of this experience we will have to advance to the structural level, and it is here that the Hobbesian version of the state of nature reveals its rigour and radicality in that he draws up a state of generalized disorder characterized by the complete absence of any Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 ordering function. Terror is but another name for the absence of order in the state of nature where every man is enemy to every man. It names the experience of utmost disorder (whose phenomenal aspect in Hobbes is fear) described by Enzensberger as primordial psychosis of society: anybody can be attacked at any point without any deeper reason (beyond selfish greed and brutality as such). Insofar as a violent attack parallax 101 within the state of nature is not ‘overdetermined’ by any deeper meaning (which would allow us, for instance, to predict it), the form of this state resembles the form of what Enzensberger describes as absolute terror.

So far, the Hobbesian theory of a social situation without order or ground assembles all the structural prerequisites of radical anti-foundationalism (not necessarily of post- foundationalism). But how is politics possible in a completely groundless situation, how is order to be instituted out of a state of pure disorder? Hobbes’s answer consists in a leap – clothed in contractarian terms as covenant – from a state of radical disorder to the State of an empty order. As Ernesto Laclau remarked, Hobbes ‘presented the state of nature as the radically opposite of an ordered society, as a situation only defined in negative terms. But, as a result of that description, the order of the ruler has to be accepted not because of any intrinsic virtue that it can have, but just because it is an order, and the only alternative is radical disorder’.9 Under conditions of extreme disorganization of the social fabric, Laclau goes on explaining, ‘people need an order, and the actual content of it becomes a secondary consideration. ‘‘Order’’ as such has no content, because it only exists in the various forms in which it is actually realized’.10 So the same splitting we observed in Enzensberger’s implicit distinction between terror and terrorism now occurs on the side of order between the empty form of order on the one hand and the particular order which happens to fill this form with content on the other. In the words of Slavoj Zˇ izˇek who, like Laclau, clearly perceives this gap between order eo ipso and a particular order: ‘Hobbes was the first explicitly to posit this distinction between the principle of order and any concrete order’.11 Having postulated that gap as gap is definitely one of Hobbes’s great achievements and a prerequisite of any post-foundational political theory. Yet the question of politics only arises at the later point where one starts asking how this gap is to be bridged.

In Hobbes, the gap is bridged at the price of discarding politics altogether for, as Ernesto Laclau observes, the Hobbesian scheme remains coherent only by eliminating power twice. In the state of nature, power is eliminated because all individuals are in the same powerful/powerless position – otherwise more powerful individuals could impose their will on others and there would be no war of all against all but relations of domination (and, thereby, partial pacification). In the commonwealth, on the other hand, power, again is eliminated because it is entirely concentrated in the hands of the sovereign. This brings Laclau to the conclusion: ‘A power which is total or a power which is equally distributed among all members of the community is no power at all’.12 In Hobbes, for that reason, there is no space left for politics as the activity which – via power – establishes a link between the empty place of an absent order (the pure form of order) and that concrete order which enters and fills the empty place: ‘Hobbes implicitly perceives the split between the empty signifier ‘‘order as such’’ and the actual order imposed by the ruler, as he reduces – through the covenant – the first to the second, he cannot think of any kind of dialectical or Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 hegemonic game between the two’.13

The picture painted by Hobbes – an empty form of order based on the absolute form of terror – is one without power or politics since in this model concrete order is established by way of contractarian reduction rather than political institution.By Marchart 102 reintroducing power and politics into the picture we automatically leave this Hobbesian imaginary framework since what we will have to tackle now is partial order, that is, a social field which is partially structured and partially unstructured, and which, in turn, necessitates a strategic approach and renders ineffective any absolutist approach in politics. And still, this gap or difference between order as such and any particular order will not completely disappear – because if it did, it would be possible for a particular order to entirely coincide with the empty form of order, and politics, again, would fade away. Hence, the very possibility of politics is based not only on a radical separation between the empty form of order and a particular order but on both the separation of those spheres and their mutual contamination. In that sense, the ontological level14 of an object is intrinsically intertwined with the ontical level of that object in its concreteness. And yet, both levels, the ontical and the ontological will never overlap entirely (otherwise one would give in to empiricism): the gap we identified in both the case of terror and the case of order persists.15 Politics, hence, can be defined as the activity which articulates a given order to the empty locus of order as such. It serves precisely as the ‘mediator’ between a concrete order and its absent place, the lack of social fullness: ‘In this sense, various political forces can compete in their efforts to present their particular objectives as those which carry out the filling of that lack. To hegemonize something is exactly to carry out this filling function’.16

Security and the order of fear

In the previous section I hope to have demonstrated how Hobbes, by constructing empty order out of absolute terror, effectively depoliticizes political thought. The Hobbesian logic of depoliticization has proven so influential and is so thoroughly inscribed into the politics of Western modernity17 that I would propose to speak about the Hobbesian imaginary as the dominant way of conceiving politics – namely, by excluding the political as the moment of both institution and destitution, grounding and dislocation of social order. For that reason, Slavoj Zˇ izˇek might be correct in assuming that political philosophy historically served, to phrase it in psychoanalytic terms, as a kind of defence formation against the political. Political philosophy was, Zˇ izˇek speculates, ‘an attempt to suspend the destabilizing potential of the political, to disavow and/or regulate it in one way or another’.18 The tradition of modern political philosophy – at least as far as it remains within the Hobbesian imaginary – is based on the exclusion, reduction, overcoming, disavowal or regulation of the obverse side of order, that is, the fact that every order is founded on an abyss and, thus, has to be always politically instituted as a contingent and partial order. However, to the extent that the Hobbesian model constitutes the starting point for modern political theory’s ‘recurrent concern with the concept of order’,19 our political ideas of terror and terrorism – of order’s obverse side – remain firmly rooted in the Hobbesian imaginary as well, so that we should be careful not to fall into the trap and start celebrating order’s obverse as something intrinsically political. To come Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 back to the question of terrorism, though, we have to ask how in the Hobbesian imaginary the exclusion of the political is justified.

So, how does Hobbes manage to bridge the gap between terror and order without seeking recourse to politics? What functions as a legitimating narrative for parallax 103 depoliticization? The answer seems clear: It is the narrative of fear and security that works as source of justification for a non-political passage from absolute terror to empty order. This passage of security is what characterizes the Western project of politics within the Hobbesian imaginary to such an extent that we have to subscribe to Michael Dillon’s radical claim: ‘modern politics is a security project in the widest possible – ontological – sense of the term’.20 If order, since it cannot be grounded once and for all, implies – from a Hobbesian view – the constant necessity of being secured and re-secured then it should not come as a surprise that modern politics as much as it is pervaded by a discourse of order is pervaded by a discourse of security. Consequently, to conceive of politics ‘as a politics of security is not to advance a view held by particular thinkers or even by particular disciplines. It is to draw attention to a necessity […] to which all thinkers of politics in the metaphysical tradition are subject’.21 For Dillon, it is security which serves – and this is what makes it a metaphysical concept – as the principle, ground or arche of the order of the modern State:

Security became the predicate upon which the architectonic political discourses of modernity were constructed; upon which the vernacular architecture of modern political power, exemplified in the State, was based; and from which the institutions and practices of modern (inter)national politics, including modern democratic politics, ulti- mately seek to derive their grounding and foundational legitimacy.22

If concepts like ‘corruption’ or ‘fall’ indicate the groundlessness of society by pointing at the ever-present possibility of the absence of order, then the concept of ‘security’ steps in to fill that absence and to ground society by legitimizing a firm and unshakeable order: the sovereignty of the State and what will eventually evolve into the State’s ‘security force’: i.e. police in the broadest sense of the term. Based on what Dillon calls the defining maxim of modern politics: ‘no security outside the State; no State without security’, the modern disciplinary politics of the police evolved – that is, as one would put it from a Foucauldian perspective, governmental and disciplinary technologies. Yet one has to insist on the fact that – as in the twin-case of order and disorder – ‘there is never security without insecurity and that the one always occurs in whatever form with the other’;23 and in Hobbes’s legit- imating narrative the main phenomenal or discursive stand-in for the structural groundlessness of the social is not ‘corruption’, as in Greek and Roman antiquity, or ‘fall’, as in Christian antiquity, but the modern notion of ‘fear’. A genealogist of security would therefore have to trace security’s negative background or obverse side: fear.

Just as there therefore could be no history of security without a history of the (inter)national politics that seeks to define, pursue and prosecute order under the various names of security, so also any individual Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 political formation would manifest its own particular order of fear. Don’t ask what a people is, the genealogist of security might say, ask how an order of fear forms a people. And, in particular, bearing the imprint of the way determinations of what is political have originated in fear, s/he would emphasise that security is a principal device for Marchart 104 constituting political order and for confining political imagination within the laws of necessity of the specific rationalities thrown-up by their equally manifold discourses of danger.24

From the perspective of the genealogist of security the question would not be how a particular order is instituted politically but, rather, how a particular order of fear is constructed through discourses of security which precisely foreclose the possibility of any political foundation. Of course, the discourses of security are not confined to political theory, they are part of daily politics: we just have to think, for instance, of the French presidential campaign of 2002 – and the same could be said about the Dutch parliamentary elections a few weeks later – in which questions of public security soon came to dominate political debate: an indication of the way in which ‘ordinary’ (a)political discourse remains firmly rooted in the Hobbesian imaginary. Thus, the metaphysics of security is not an exclusively philosophical pastime. Any political discourse is metaphysical to the extent that it searches for a stable ground or final principle upon which order could be founded once and for all.

So far, we have seen how notions such as terror, security and fear enter the constellation of a ‘metaphysical’ idea of order. If we want to shift now the idea of order – and, thus, politics – from foundational to post-foundational grounds we will have to re-define and re-align the conceptual elements of this constellation rather than abandoning it altogether. Such enterprise would imply, as a first step, taking the other side of order seriously: we will have to radicalize the concept of dis-order (understood as mere anomaly of order) to a point where it turns into what Laclau calls dislocation:25 a name for a ‘negative’ ground, an absence of ground which cannot be overcome or reduced to order. We would thereby move from a derivative and secondary concept – disorder as a mere disturbance of what is supposed to be the original, primary and normal case of order – to a primordial concept which nevertheless does not function as a new positive ground but as an indicator of the impossibility of finding the final ground of social order. Starting from the latter assumption – which is the assumption of social post-foundationalism – a truly political act would consist in the always contingent and temporary foundation of what cannot be founded once and for all. As a consequence, a political act would consist in the construction of an always and necessarily contested order (which, as it is contested, will be one order among many) while the technology of the police, on the other hand, consists in patrolling the borders of the order (in which the absolute form of order and the particular order established in social reality – a given sovereign regime – tend to overlap). Accordingly, security has nothing to do with politics – with the risky business of strategically laying society’s contingent grounds – but it has everything to do with police: with securing a supposedly pre-established ground by guarding it against any form of disturbance or disorder.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 The order of the police

It is Giorgio Agamben who has recently taken up the role of the genealogist of security by linking the discourse of sovereignty and security to the phenomenon of contemporary terrorism. In the avalanche of commentaries following the 9-11 parallax 105 incident, his article published in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung stands out against all the ideological commonplaces about a ‘clash of civilizations’ or the like. What Agamben in this short yet rigorous piece explores is not, like Enzensberger, the absolute form of an attack which is completely bare of any justification or legitimation but the generalization of a dispositif in which security and terrorism form a ‘single deadly system, in which they justify and legitimate each other’s actions’.26 While he shares with Enzensberger the idea that terrorism has become a structural feature of our modern societies, Agamben makes a more historical point by suggesting that one should understand by ‘terrorism’ the reverse side of a security dispositif that dates back to the birth of the modern state and, pace Foucault and the governmentality school, was given shape in the second half of the eighteenth century by the Physiocrats who were concerned with the regulation of hunger and production in order to ‘secure’ their consequences, not to abolish them. From Turgot, Quesnay and the Physiocrats on, security evolved from one among several measures of public administration into the basic principle of state activity – the activity of intervening into ongoing social processes in order to direct them.27 Later, this administrative measure of regulation became the basic principle of political legitimation. However, as Agamben remarks, the generalized principle of security bears in itself a risk: ‘A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terroristic’.28 It is at this point that the line between state security and terrorism becomes blurred.

Enzensberger’s argument as to the difference between terror and terrorism in a sense dovetails with Agamben’s account, for the latter retraces, from a more historical perspective, the genealogy of police in its (inverse) relation to politics: The generalization of the thought of security implicated the generalization of the ‘science of police’ – police understood in the governmental sense as agent of social regulation – which, in turn, lead to a growing depoliticization of society, a ‘gradual neutralisation of politics and the progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state’. Herein lies the deeper reason for the blurring of the line between security and terrorism: ‘When politics, the way it was understood by theorists of the ‘‘science of police’’ in the eighteenth century, reduces itself to police, the difference between state and terrorism threatens to disappear’.29 Under conditions of generalized security – and who would deny that we increasingly live under these conditions? – the police takes over the functions of politics. Its main role, as Agamben sustains, consists in the regulation of disorder (‘security wants to regulate disorder’30) and not, one might add, in the always contingent and temporary institution of order – which would be the role of true politics. So, within the security dispositif of the State, order is constructed by way of regulation not institution.

At the end of this historical process, the sovereign turns into a policeman and the policeman becomes the sovereign. This eventual transformation of sovereignty into Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 the form of police was made apparent, before 9-11, in the Gulf war – officially defined as a ‘police operation’.31 Yet what is most discomforting is that it was, as Agamben insists, the extermination of the Jews for the sake of biopolitical regulation that was planned and carried out as a police operation. In this operation the realm of politics and the realm of the police came to overlap entirely: Marchart 106 National Socialist biopolitics – and along with it, a good part of modern politics even outside the Third Reich – cannot be grasped if it is not understood as necessarily implying the disappearance of the difference between the two terms: the police now becomes politics, and the care of life coincides with the fight against the enemy […] Only from this perspective is it possible to grasp the full sense of the extermination of the Jews, in which the police and politics, eugenic motives and ideological motives, the care of health and the fight against the enemy become absolutely indistinguishable.32

The order of the police thus established does not, as Agamben famously argues, simply exclude what we earlier called radical dislocation: rather, it excludes dislocation by including it in form of a space of exclusion: the camp. The camp, if we follow Agamben, opens up as the modern political space par excellence – a space in which the police becomes the sovereign. Consequently, a camp is defined as the delimitation of a space ‘in which the normal order is de facto suspended and in which whether or not atrocities are committed depends not on law but on the civility and ethical sense of the police who temporarily act as sovereign’.33 In other words, what emerges is a space in which the political as the moment of institution of order turns into police as the practice by which the political is suspended. With recourse to Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin, Agamben insists that order is based on the exception, that is to say, on its very own suspension.34 The suspension of order in turn creates a space of its own, a space of exception: a localization without order. The camp is nothing but such ‘dislocating localization’.35 It is tempting to re-translate Agamben’s account into the constellation of political philosophy. How does it modify the traditional thinking of order and its obverse side? Following Agamben, we have to assume that in modernity, with the invention of the modern sovereign State, order’s obverse side is assigned a space of its own precisely because order’s obverse has to be excluded, foreclosed and reduced to order. A definite localization is thereby given to something which in fact is unlocalizable because it is the very principle of dislocation (or what Enzensberger called the absolute form of terror).

It is important to realise the paradoxical and phantasmatic dimension of this operation. For Laclau, dislocation is the very form of time since it undermines the order of space: it cannot be localized within space.36 Agamben, on his part, holds that space is constituted precisely by ‘assigning’ a particular space to dislocation, by localizing what cannot be localized, by erecting order through the fixation and regulation of what disturbs it. But if Agamben is correct – and if, at the same time, we continue insisting on a radical notion of dislocation as irrevocable – then the sovereign order of the police tries to achieve the impossible: The very principle of dislocation cannot be localized by definition and yet the police seeks to localize it in order to realize a state of security. Therefore, the order of the police is entangled in a constitutive paradox and what follows from that paradox is evident: the order of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 the police – constituted on the basis of the reduction of the political – is, in the final instance, doomed to failure. It will never manage to finally localize and arrest dislocation. For this reason I am inclined to draw slightly more optimistic conclusions than Agamben’s. First, from a historical genealogy – a genealogy of sovereignty/ police as outlined by Foucault and Agamben – it does not necessarily follow that the parallax 107 development is total nor does it follow that it is irreversible. And second, if we see dislocation as radical, that is to say, if we leave, or rather deconstruct, the Hobbesian imaginary then we have to insist on the ontological priority of order’s obverse side, which is to say that a complete reduction of dislocation to order is simply unachievable. As a result, the political – as the moment of society’s institution and destitution – will never be completely eradicated by the order of the police.

Terrorism and the construction of dis-order

Against Agamben’s rather pessimistic view we insist on the fact that politics, as the enactment of the institutional/destitutional moment of the political, can only be reduced partially to police, it cannot be eliminated entirely. The political resists as a constant threat to any state of police as well as any police state. So, every regime of security has to cope with a double challenge: for one, it must try to eradicate dislocation by localizing and regulating it; and in addition, it has to reduce politics to police. This implies reducing a political way of instituting order on the basis of ineradicable dislocation to a police way of securing, regulating and managing order on the basis of dislocation’s foreclosure.

This brings us back to the question of terrorism: How is this (police) operation supposed to work and what takes over the role of dislocation? As long as we stay within the Hobbesian imaginary – and it is here where the order of the police has to be situated – our goal lies in the erection of order as such – emptied of any particular content. As we saw earlier, this can only be achieved by the phantasmatic evocation of a state of absolute terror which is nothing but the limit case of all terrorism. So, while any particular order of the police presents itself as the incarnation of order eo ipso, it nevertheless will produce disorder or some semblance of disorder for reasons of self-legitimation. To do so, terrorism, as the source of disorder, has to be presented not as a particular form of action with a concrete agenda but in its absolute form,as absolute evil – because only then can order be emptied and dislocation be radically foreclosed. Before 9-11 there was no better place and time to observe this operation than in Italy in the 1970s – as society was struck by anonymous and obscure attacks. At that time, Gianfranco Sanguinetti perceptively described the way in which the State sought to make the whole population believe

that it has at least an enemy in common with this State, and from which this State defends it on condition that it is no longer called into question by anyone. The population, which is generally hostile to terrorism, and not without any reason, must then agree that, at least this,itneeds the State, to which it must thus delegate the widest powers so that it might confront with vigour the arduous task of the common

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 defence against an obscure, mysterious, perfidious, merciless, and, in a word, chimeric, enemy. In view of a terrorism always presented as absolute evil, evil in-itself and for-itself, all the other evils, fade into the background, and are even to be forgotten; since the fight against terrorism coincides with the common interest, it already is the general good, Marchart 108 and the State, which magnanimously conducts it, is good in-itself and for-itself.37

The insights Sanguinetti gains from his experience with the Italian scene of the 1970s read like an analysis of official U.S. discourse after the events of September 11. Yet they can easily be applied to many more instances as they describe the very logic of the Hobbesian imaginary: a chimeric enemy is presented as the source of absolute terror which, in turn, legitimizes the erection of an empty order. The latter – by virtue of being an order rather than absolute terror – can be presented as the general good: the fiction of absolute terror allows a given order to present itself as order ‘in-itself and for-itself’, as the direct and singular expression of the common interest. By so doing, it becomes possible for this order not only to ‘fight terrorism’ but to exclude any alternative order or particular opposition. Politics, understood as the struggle between competing particular versions of order, is put to a halt. Order (in the singular) is now formed on the basis of fear as a regime of security to be patrolled by ‘security forces’: an order of the police.

As long as the order of the State remains within the ambit of the Hobbesian imaginary it will have a stake in a certain degree of disorder which can, if necessary, be presented as absolute. We should consequently abandon the idea that acts of terrorism are necessarily dislocatory. It is apparent that in many instances acts of terrorism, with or without purpose, lead to the stabilization of order rather than its dislocation. More often than not terrorist attacks function within the logic of order, helping the latter to crack down on any opposition or alternative. For instance, in Italy the terrorist attacks of the 70s allowed the State and the political establishment to pass laws allowing to incarcerate members of the non-parliamentary opposition for ‘thought crimes’. The case of Italy is pertinent in that it exemplifies most clearly what Agamben called the blurring of the line between terrorism and the State. Given what we know today it is safe to argue that the Italian secret services did not really prevent disorder but constructed and thereby regulated it. Thereby, the Italian state, as Sanguinetti remarks, resorted to either a direct form of terrorism ‘directed against the population – as happened, for instance, with the massacre of the Piazza Fontana, that of the Italicus and with that of Brescia’, or to an indirect form of terrorism apparently direct against the State itself, ‘as happened, for instance, in the Moro affair’.38

The construction and regulation of disorder for the sake of order belongs to the silent duties of the police (that force which by definition is supposed to secure order – even if this means to spread disorder), respectively of its hidden branch, the secret police. (Agamben goes as far as arguing that, given the fusion of politics and police, the secret services have become the model of political organisation and action.39) Herein the ‘objective truth’ of conspiracy theories – bizarre as they might be in other respects – can be found: actions of police and actions of most forms of terrorism are often times difficult to differentiate because of a structural similarity: in both cases Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 order as such is secured via the constant threat of the dissolution of the social bond. Hence, we have to acknowledge that whenever terrorism acts in a way which actually stabilizes order by legitimizing empty order – and in most cases it does – it acts in the register of the police. The order of security and the order of fear become indistinguishable. Terrorism then does not function as an agent of dislocation in the parallax 109 strict sense but as one of disorder for it is enacted on the basis of order and from within the system.

To claim that police/terrorism is enacted from ‘within the system’ is more than an anti-systemic figure of speech; it allows us to once more differentiate between the ontical and the ontological level, between disorder and dislocation. Real dislocation – i.e., dislocation as Real – comes from outside the system. According to Laclau, dislocation is the ‘disruption of a structure by forces operating outside it’.40 Dislocation, as we saw, does not have a location of its own within the spatial order; it is spatially unrepresentable and can only occur as an event in the radical sense: ‘only the dislocation of the structure, only a maladjustment which is spatially unrepresentable, is an event’.41 While disorder, on the other hand, can be constructed and regulated from within a given spatial structure, it is impossible to regulate the temporal event of dislocation for ‘if the event was not essentially exterior to the structure, it could be inscribed as an internal moment of the latter’.42 In that case it would not dislocate anything since it would be an integral part of the workings of that structure. So, disorder presupposes and acts on the basis of an already existing notion of order while dislocation can neither be constructed nor regulated on that basis because it lies beyond the reach of order.43 To put it in Lacanian terms: it is impossible to symbolically construct the Real, simply because it is the Real which disturbs, and thereby renders unachievable, any ultimately successful symbolic construction of reality in the first place. This is, by the way, what versions of social constructionism which do not take into account the radical instance of a final limit to all constructibility tend to overlook: while ‘everything’ is the result of a process of construction there is ‘one thing’, though, which escapes every construction: the very limit of constructibility.44

So, a dislocated structure cannot get hold of the source of its own dislocation which comes from the structure’s outside. In contrast to such radical and unmasterable dislocation, disorder remains within the logic of the structure, which is why it can be manipulated and adapted to the ‘rules of the game’ in order to stabilize the status quo rather than disturbing it. It is this differentiation which could eventually show us a way out of the Hobbesian imaginary: If every order is grounded on an unmasterable abyss then how we envisage politics – the activity of linking a particular order to the empty form of order – will depend on the way we relate to this abyss. If we ignore or disavow it, then nothing will keep us from imagining a rational, calculable or ‘technological’ way to make coincide a particular order with its empty form. What follows from here – and what makes police a metaphysical attempt at disavowing the abyss – is the idea of universal calculability. The modern form of police seeks to render calculable the political into the procedures of governmentality: ‘For without calculation how could security be secured? And calculation requires calculability. Whatever is must thereby be rendered calculable’.45 It is through calculation that the governmental technology of securing order becomes exactly that, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 a technology.

Politics, on the other hand, based as it is on the institutional/destitutional moment of the political and of dislocation, does not fall into the register of the calculable. As it accepts the radical nature of the abyss we named dislocation – i.e. the Marchart 110 groundlessness of society – politics does not try to link a particular order to the empty form of order by way of calculation but proceeds by way of strategy. For as soon as one accepts that it is impossible to ‘calculate’ dislocation and contingency, the best one can do is what Machiavelli recommended doing with fortuna, his own version of dislocation: trying to ‘play’ with it strategically. Playing with contingency in the Machiavellian sense means accepting the limits of one’s own strategic investment and so it amounts to something entirely different from calculatively regulating (dis-)order. A strategic approach to dislocation can form the basis for political action insofar as the strategist keeps in mind the ever-present possibility of interruption, change and surprise as well as the impossibility of ever reaching a situation in which ‘the accounts will be settled’ and strategy can be replaced by calculation. Police as well as terrorism do belong to the phantasmatic order of calculability, not to the order of strategy. And yet, every regime of security runs the risk of losing control as soon as ‘the political returns’: when disorder turns into dislocation, when it escapes mastery or ‘manipulation’ and develops a life of its own – when, for instance, a given order is struck by what Gramsci called an ‘organic crisis’. This is the moment of the political when the Hobbesian imaginary disintegrates and, through the gaps and fissures of order, the ghost of Machiavelli re-enters the stage.

Notes

1 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Die Leere im phenomenological description of how people act Zentrum des Terrors’, in Mittelmaß und Wahn under structural conditions of generalized disorder, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), p.249. rather than seeing the latter as the potential 2 Enzensberger, ‘Die Leere im Zentrum des outcome of some immutable features of human Terrors’, p.249. nature. Then, anthropology would be a result of 3 Enzensberger, ‘Die Leere im Zentrum des structural features (the logic of order and Terrors’, p.248 dislocation) rather than structural features being 4 Walter Benjamin, ‘Ursprung des deutschen the result of human nature. Turning the argument Trauerspiels’, in Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann around in such fashion would be a way of Schweppenha¨user (eds.), Gesammelte Schriften vol. I/1 reinforcing the anti-essentialist and constructivist (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), p.219. elements in Hobbes. 9 5 N. J. Rengger, International Relations, Political Theory Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London/New and the Problem of Order (London/New York: York: Verso, 1996), p.45. 10 Routledge, 2000), p.1. Laclau, Emancipation(s), p.44. 11 Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, ‘Carl Schmitt in the Age of Post- 6 Rengger, International Relations, p.5. Politics’, in Chantal Mouffe (ed.), The Challenge of 7 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakshott Carl Schmitt (London/New York: Verso, 1999), p.19. (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1962), p.143. 12 Laclau, Emancipation(s), p.45. 8 And it is at this level, too, that we have to locate 13 Laclau, Emancipation(s), p.45. Hobbes’s pessimistic anthropology – an 14 By ‘ontological level’ we understand the quasi- anthropology of fear and selfish mistrust – in which transcendental conditions of possibility/ human beings, if left alone with themselves, are impossibility of an object like ‘order’. intrinsically greedy and violent. In discerning 15 That is to say that the day will never come on between that phenomenological level and the much which order is secured once and for all, or, from more radical structural level of the argument I the Aristotelian perspective, on which, alas, we will would like to point out that it would be productive have found the good order. What works here as a

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 to turn the doxa of political theory upside-down stumbling block and prevents us from reaching and see Hobbes’s pessimistic view of human nature this goal is nothing but the ontological difference as a secondary argument and not, as is usually as unsurpassable gap: no concrete, particular order done, as the very foundation of his political will ever manage to fully occupy the place of order philosophy. Seen from that perspective the claim eo ipso (which would turn the latter into the place would be that we should take his pessimism as a of full presence). parallax 111 16 Laclau, Emancipation(s), p.44. general rule. But what properly characterizes the 17 A Hobbesian conception of political order unites exception is that what is excluded in it is not, for most modern positions even as their interpretation this reason, simply without relation to the rule. On might differ. For Hobbes’s heirs, Stewart Clegg the contrary, the rule maintains itself in relation holds, ‘it is self evident that there is order and that to the exception in the form of suspension. The rule power produces it, however much disagreement applies to the exception in no longer applying, in withdrawing there is on either the nature of that power or the from it’. Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities: Collected authenticity of that order in terms of its expression Essays in Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford of people’s real interests’. Stewart R. Clegg, University Press, 1999), pp.161–2. Frameworks of Power (London/Newbury Park/Delhi: 35 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p.175. Sage, 1989), pp.34–5. 26 See Laclau, New Reflections. 18 Zˇ izˇek, ‘Carl Schmitt in the Age of Post- 37 Gianfranco Sanguinetti, On Terrorism and the State: Politics’, p.29. The Theory and Practice of Terrorism Divulged for the 19 Clegg, Frameworks of Power, p.34. First Time (London: Aldgate Press, 1982), pp.58–9. 20 Michael Dillon, Politics of Security: Towards a 38 Sanguinetti, On Terrorism and the State, p.57. Political Philosophy of Continental Thought 39 See Agamben, Mezzi senza fine. (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), p.14. 40 Laclau, New Reflections, p.50. 21 Dillon, Politics of Security, p.12. 41 Laclau, New Reflections, p.42. 22 Dillon, Politics of Security, p.13. 42 Laclau, New Reflections, p.44. 23 Dillon, Politics of Security, p.19. 43 The term ‘construction of disorder’ deserves 24 Dillon, Politics of Security, p.16. some clarification. Obviously, it is not my intention 25 Defined by Laclau in the following way: ‘every to claim that every widespread feeling of insecurity identity is dislocated insofar as it depends on an or chaos – in times of, say, natural catastrophes – outside which both denies that identity and is the outcome of a conscious or intentional provides its condition of possibility at the same constructive effort on the side of the power bloc. time’. Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution Yet even in those situations in which the dislocation of Our Time (London/New York: Verso, 1990), p.39. of a community’s identity is not an effect of a 26 Giorgio Agamben, ‘Heimliche Komplizen. U¨ ber constructive effort (as in the case of a natural Sicherheit und Terror’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine catastrophe, an epidemic or an unforeseen Zeitung 219 (September 20, 2001), p.45. economic crisis), it nevertheless has to be signified 27 Agamben remarks in his essay that Hobbes in one or the other way: and this is when the already mentions security as the opposite of fear moment of construction sets in. Let’s take the even though the former was only elaborated and example of a disastrous flood. A flood, in most turned into a science of the police in the eighteenth century. One could say, therefore, that security, as cases, is not the direct result of a human conspiracy, the principle of state politics, entered the yet the way in which it is signified and thereby philosophical constellation of the idea of order constructed – scientifically, religiously, politically, with Hobbes and only later developed into a etc. – can vary significantly. 44 science of the police in the governmental sense. Similarly, Yannis Stavrakakis, in his discussion Both types of discourse, however, remain situated of Lacan’s relation vis-a`-vis constructivism, argues within the Hobbesian imaginary in that they either that a constructionism which does not take into reduce or regulate disorder for the sake of order account an element of ‘unconstructibility’ – the as such. real – runs into the trap of what it seeks to avoid 28 Agamben, ‘Heimliche Komplizen’, p.45. in the first place, essentialism: ‘In fact, when 29 Agamben, ‘Heimliche Komplizen’, p.45. constructionists are led to believe that the universe 30 Agamben, ‘Heimliche Komplizen’, p.45. of social construction includes the totality of the 31 See Giorgio Agamben, Mezzi senza fine – Note real, that there is nothing outside social sulla politica (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri editore, construction, a certain essentialism starts 1996). contaminating the constructionist argument, since 32 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and construction acquires the structural position of the Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, essence of our world, an essence the social

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 1998), p.147. constructionist claims to know […] Thus the 33 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p.174. anti-essentialist, anti-objectivist character 34 As Agamben explains with respect to Schmitt’s of constructionism is dynamitised’. Yannis notion of a state of exception: ‘What is an Stavrakakis, Lacan & the Political (London/New exception? The exception is a kind of exclusion. It York: Routledge, 1999), pp.65–6. is an individual case that is excluded from the 45 Dillon, Politics of Security, p.21. Marchart 112 Oliver Marchart, D.Phil., lectures at the Department of Media Studies, University of Basel. He has published books and articles in the field of cultural and political theory. He also worked as an advisor to the Democracy Unrealized-platform of Documenta11 and conceptualized the Documenta11-Education Project. With Simon Critchley he is the editor of A Critical Laclau Reader (Routledge, forthcoming). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009

parallax 113 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 114–124

Gilles Deleuze: Writing in Terror

John Marks

The Intolerable

Issues of guilt and shame are crucial components of the work of Gilles Deleuze, since the concept of desire is set against the moralising and individualising tendencies of the psychoanalytic and Judeo-Christian traditions.1 However, writing as one of the generation of French intellectuals who lived through the Second World War as children or adolescents, and whose adulthood was marked by the revelation of the Soviet Gulag, as well as the Algerian War, Deleuze’s work is also marked – often implicitly – by the issue of terror. He acknowledges, for example, that the most important post-war writers, thinkers and artists have shown that ‘thought has something to do with Auschwitz, with Hiroshima’.2 He is careful to point out that this is the very opposite of a resigned and pessimistic ‘cult of death’. In the artists that Deleuze admires, he can always hear, however violent or intense their work, the ‘song of life’. The terror which marked the twentieth century has imposed upon art the need to be ‘visionary’, to take us beyond recognition and into contact with what Deleuze calls the ‘intolerable’.

The historical shift from pre- to post-war cinema that Deleuze analyses in his books on cinema represents, amongst other things, an exploration of the role of art in response to terror. The ‘sensory-motor’ situations of pre-war cinema may well be violent, but the fact that they entail a system of actions and reactions means they develop a pragmatic visual function which will ‘tolerate’ or ‘put up with’ virtually anything.3 With the shift from an ‘organic’ to a ‘crystalline’ regime of narration the perceptual horizon of film changes. The imaginary and the real, the physical and the mental, the subjective and the objective and, perhaps most importantly for any consideration of terror, the everyday and the extreme become indeterminable. It is as if the widespread experience of terror has definitively opened up a fracture in the image of truth and harmonious totality that underpins the ‘organic’ regime of cinema. This shift from the sensory-motor regime of the ‘movement-image’ to a ‘time-image’ is motivated, Deleuze claims, by the experience of the Second World War and by the proliferation of situations in the post-war period to which we do not know how 4 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 to react. In short, Deleuze argues that, particularly with the breakdown of the organic regime, film becomes capable more than ever of removing our normal perceptual filters, our retinal habits, so that we can no longer recognize, whilst at the same time tolerating and turning away from terror. In general terms, Deleuze

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 114 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000048034 refuses to write ‘in terror’, preferring to write ‘before’ terror, a distinction which will be elucidated in the course of this essay.

Shame

‘Shame’ is a key theme in Deleuze’s work, but a shame which is active and affirmative, rather than reactive and inward-looking. In simple terms, feeling shame at a personal level is of little interest to Deleuze, but there is an indefinite, impersonal form of shame. For example, he refers on more than one occasion to Primo Levi’s treatment of the issue of shame in the light of his experience of Auschwitz.5 Levi talks of his sense of shame at belonging to mankind after having survived. This does not mean, Deleuze emphasizes, that we, as humans, are all somehow guilty, that we are all, in some way, victims and executioners: on the contrary, there can be no confusing these two categories. The feeling of shame that Levi explores is, rather, of a complex and composite nature. It has something to do with a certain guilt at having compromized in order to survive, but it also springs out of recognition that humankind is capable of perpetrating terror. Shame also becomes a pressing collective issue in the wake of Nazism. Each of us is sullied by Nazism, since we can no longer look at ourselves without a certain weariness or mistrust. As Blanchot shows, we are no longer Greeks, and friendship is no longer the same.6 The task of art, faced with this composite of shame, is to liberate the impersonal force of life from its continual imprisonment.

In short, ‘shame’ is one of the most important motifs in art and philosophy, but it is not only in extreme situations that we experience shame:

We also experience it in insignificant conditions, before the meanness and vulgarity of existence that haunts democracies, before the propagation of these modes of existence and of thought-for-the- market, and before the values, ideals, and opinions of our time. The ignominy of the possibilities of life that we are offered appears from within. We do not feel ourselves outside of our time but continue to undergo shameful compromises with it. This feeling of shame is one of philosophy’s most powerful motifs. We are not responsible for the victims but responsible before them.7

The fact that we are not responsible for but before is crucial. To be responsible for implies reactive feelings of guilt, whereas being responsible before implies an active commitment to inventing and making connections. Shame in this sense is an aVect, an impersonal, composite construction that cannot be located, psychoanalytically, in a single individual. Feeling shame before stupidity, including one’s own stupidity, enables us to start thinking. In this way, the omnipresent theme of shame in Deleuze’s work is inseparable from Heidegger’s belief that we are ‘not yet’ thinking: the fact Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 that we are capable of thinking does not mean that thinking is not a rare activity.

Deleuze explores a composite affect of shame, along with its associated percepts, in one of his most elusive essays, ‘The Shame and the Glory: T. E. Lawrence’.8 The essential aspect for Lawrence is the shame which relates to the body, the ‘molecular parallax 115 sludge’ that adheres to the mind, and the shame of the impossibility of identifying with the cause of his Arab comrades. What Deleuze admires is the purity and intensity of this shame, the fact that it enables Lawrence to carry out ‘a cold and concerted destruction of the ego’.9 In this way, Lawrence is driven to project into the world around him an image of himself so intense that it has a life of its own. The crucial point for Deleuze is that Lawrence does not in any way act out of personal ‘mythomania’. It is rather the case that he projects his shame with such ruthless intensity that it becomes pure and impersonal. Terror functions similarly in Deleuze’s work, in that he explores terror as an ensemble of aVects and percepts which might enable us to start thinking.10

Perception

Just how then, does Deleuze refuse to write ‘in terror’? It would clearly be inadequate to claim in some way that his resistance to the ‘terror’ of the signifier would suffice to define a politics. The argument of this essay is rather that, if there is a politics to be extracted from Deleuze’s work that, amongst other things, resists terror, it is rooted in issues of perception. Deleuze avoids prescribing and predicting political action, preferring instead to concentrate on the need to transform our perceptions of the world. This means that, even more so than a contemporary like Foucault, he maintains a passionate and optimistic attachment to the political significance of art. He puts it most clearly, perhaps, in response to an interviewer who talks about the gap between ‘civic life’ and philosophy: cinema, the interviewer suggests, might represent one way in which the gap might be bridged.11 Deleuze’s response is that any genuinely creative activity has a political significance, precisely because such activities trace new pathways in the brain, rather than allowing the ‘most basic conditioned reflexes’ to prevail. Like Robbe-Grillet, Deleuze is committed to art as a mode of exploration that does not presuppose the independence of the object and a pre-existing significance in the world. The task of the artist is not to recognise the world, but to explore it as it is.12 This commitment to what one might call a politics of perception is a constant in Deleuze’s work. In ‘Letter to a Harsh Critic’, for example, he replies to Michel Cressole’s criticism that he has ‘just tagged along behind’ the experiments and experiences of ‘drug-users, alcoholics, masochists, lunatics’ by saying that he has made ‘inner journeys’ that he expresses indirectly in what he writes.13 The role of art and philosophy is to take us on such journeys, which impact directly on the cerebral and nervous system in order to change our perceptions. It is a question, Deleuze says, of people doing something in their own ‘little corner’ and hoping that encounters, alignments and connections might emerge from these activities.

Immanence and the Virtual Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 Given the importance of perception in Deleuze’s work, it is necessary to consider the ‘metaphysics’ that this implies, since this metaphysics is the basis of the visionary politics that he proposes. As Melinda Cooper shows, thought for Deleuze involves the construction of a virtual universe of images, rather than the contemplation Marks 116 of a world, which pre-exists thought.14 The virtual image is genetic rather than representative, and takes on the independent existence of a photograph or a postcard. Drawing on Deleuze’s books on cinema, Cooper shows that thought and perception are matters of speed and slowness. There are three orders of speed: at the highest level there is the infinite speed of the virtual image, which is unthinkable in human terms; then there is the speed of the actual image which is imperceptible in human terms; finally, there is the slowness of representation, which can be perceived in human terms.15 The (crazy) possibility of constructing works of art which attain these imperceptible or unthinkable speeds is the cornerstone of Deleuze’s aesthetics, and his most sustained exploration of this possibility is contained in his books on cinema. Cinema has the potential to go beyond normal perception and to approach this ‘intensity’, the ‘genetic’ element of all perception. That is to say, cinema can go beyond the representational limitations of human perception and move into the realm of the virtual.

Almost from its inception, the technology of cinema provides the possibility of a spiritual automaton, a ‘thought machine’ which can provide thought with movement, but which also expresses the ‘image’ or cartography of thought of a particular era. If we imagine, a ‘universal flow of thought’, the interior monologue of everyone who thinks constituted as a collective free indirect discourse, then the philosopher is someone who appropriates something from this flow, an activity which the filmmaker can carry out by means of images. The first great dream of cinema then, of a director like Eisenstein for example, is to provide a ‘shock’ to thought, to make us start thinking, and in the cinema of the movement-image this is frequently conceived of as a mass art of new thought. The fact that cinema achieves ‘self-movement’ or ‘automatic’ movement gives rise to the conviction that it can act directly on the nervous and cerebral system, producing a shock to thought, a new flow of thought, as it were.16 That is to say, a powerfully impersonal, indefinite, pre-individual mode of thinking: a very particular combination of politics and aesthetics. However, Deleuze acknowledges that this dream is usurped by the crude fascist configuration of the automaton, whereby the masses are subjected as a ‘psychological automaton’. This is the combination of aesthetics and politics with which we are more familiar. The mass-art which seeks to stimulate a new, thinking mass-subject, degenerates into state propaganda and manipulation: the spiritual automaton becomes fascist man.17

However, despite this degeneration into propaganda and the violence of the represented, the notion of cinema as a shock to thought remains. Artaud, for example, talks of bringing cinema into contact with the ‘innermost reality of the brain’, a ‘dissociative force’ which fragments the thinking subject and allows thought to think itself. Artaud’s conception of the shock is, of course, different from Eisenstein’s, in that it involves a recognition of the ‘powerlessness’ of thought:

It might be said that Artaud turns round Eisenstein’s argument: if it is true that thought depends on a shock which gives birth to it (the nerve, the brain matter), it can only think one thing, the fact that we are Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 not yet thinking, the powerlessness to think the whole and to think oneself, thought which is always fossilized, dislocated, collapsed.18

This particular experience of thought is, Deleuze claims, an essential component of modern cinema in which the image has ceased to be sensory-motor: that is to say, parallax 117 a cinema in which the characters, and the viewers, have become ‘seers’ rather than actors. This form of cinema might be considered as exploring the virtual possibilities of thought and perception.

Belief

Under such conditions, the essential problem becomes one of belief in the world. It is as if the terror and destruction of periods of fascism and war leave traces which mitigate against belief:

The modern fact is that we no longer believe in this world. We do not believe in the events which happen to us, love, death, as if they only half concerned us. It is not we who make cinema; it is the world which looks to us like a bad film.19

It is no coincidence, he claims, that there has frequently been a Catholic element in great cinema. This concept of belief is, like several of Deleuze’s concepts, at once straightforward but also complex and composite. What then, does it mean to ‘believe’ in the world? It is, in many ways, a question of intensity, of a cerebral pessimism, which is also an optimism of the nervous system, as Deleuze puts it in his book on Francis Bacon.20 Deleuze seeks to contradict the received wisdom that artists such as Bacon or Kaf ka are in some way expressing a deep terror of life in their art. Bacon’s work may be imbued with all sorts of violence, just as Kaf ka’s work is haunted by the spectres of the ‘diabolical’ powers of the future (Nazism, Stalinism and American capitalism), but they both manage to paint the ‘scream’ and not the ‘horror’, as Deleuze puts it in the case of Bacon. The forces that cause the scream, Deleuze says, should not be confused with the visible spectacle before which one screams. The scream captures invisible forces, which cannot be represented, because they lie beyond pain and feeling: they are, Deleuze claims enigmatically, the ‘forces of the future’, virtual forces. In deciding to paint the scream Bacon is like a wrestler confronting the ‘powers of the invisible’, establishing a combat which was not previously possible. In this way, Bacon evinces an extraordinary vitality. He allows life to scream at death, by confronting terror, and entering into combat with it, rather than representing it. Bacon engages in what Deleuze considers to be a form of ‘combat’ with the forces of violence and terror. In Essays Critical and Clinical Deleuze distinguishes between combat and war.21 War is an impoverished form of combat, a combat-against rather than a combat-between. Combat is a way of combining forces into a new becoming. In order to illustrate the difference Deleuze refers to what he considers to be a constant theme in one of his favoured authors, D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence shows how men and women may act as enemies, but that this is an impoverished ‘domestic’ combat. Instead when a man and a woman act as ‘flows’

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 or ‘forces’, their mutual struggle constitutes a very different sort of combat.

The distinction between war and combat is worth pursuing with regard to Deleuze’s connection with Michel Foucault. Despite the fact that their mutual admiration was genuine, crucial differences meant that their projects could never be compatible, and Marks 118 these differences throw into relief the particularity of Deleuze’s approach. If Deleuze is a thinker of combat, then Foucault is a thinker of war, a fact that Deleuze himself recognises. For Foucault, the ‘distant roar of battle’ is never too remote from his analysis of the production of truth, at least up until his final work. In some ways Foucault remained mesmerized by violence and terror, and Deleuze discreetly suggests that this was the case in an interview given after Foucault’s death. By the time of the first volume The History of Sexuality22 Foucault had, Deleuze suggests, reached an impasse: ‘He was, you might say, mesmerised by and trapped in something he hated.’23 In what was originally a set of notes transmitted to Foucault by a third party, in which Deleuze sets out his thoughts on The History of Sexuality, Deleuze suggests that it might be the concepts of ‘desire’ and ‘pleasure’ that actually constitute their main point of disagreement.24 Desire for Deleuze, and he emphasizes the different use that he and Foucault make of D. H. Lawrence, is not about a return to nature, but rather a commitment to ‘life’. In short, Deleuze subtly suggests that Foucault writes ‘in terror’ in some way.

A Politics of Perception and ‘Exhaustion’

At first sight, Deleuze’s description of the new crystalline regime of post-war film seems pessimistic: the new spiritual automaton is like a ‘seer’, who sees better and further than s/he can think. However, Deleuze considers this powerlessness to be only a part of thought, and we can make use of it to believe in life:

Which, then, is the subtle way out? To believe, not in a different world, but in a link between man and the world, in love or life, to believe in this as in the impossible, the unthinkable, which none the less cannot but be thought: ‘‘something possible, otherwise I will suffocate’’.25

In a recent essay Franc¸ois Zourabichvili has provided useful insights into the particular nature of Deleuze’s ‘perceptual’ politics of optimism that arises from the apparent passivity of the seer.26 He argues that this is a politics of ‘involuntarism’, which eschews the notions of either transformation or conservation that respectively motivate the left and the right. The conventional optimism of the left calls for us not to resign ourselves to the current situation, as there are possibilities, actual alternatives that can be extrapolated from this situation, which might bring about a transformation. The right, on the other hand, is happy to tell us that there are no alternatives to the current situation, no possibilities to be explored. Deleuze, however, claims that the possible is not an actual alternative, a project to be realized, but rather something that must be created. It is not a question of realizing a project, but of opening up the realm of the possible. Paradoxically, it is only when the possible has been exhausted [e´puise´] that the possible can be created. Here, Zourabichvili finds

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 a political ‘harmonics’ in Deleuze’s essay ‘The Exhausted’ on Beckett.27 This aesthetics and politics of the ‘exhausted’ is at the heart of Deleuze’s approach to post-war cinema. The characters that populate the films of Rossellini, Antonioni, Visconti, De Sica and Ozu, are not, usually, involved in transformative action. They may even seem to be ‘exhausted’ in the conventional sense of the term, as is the parallax 119 young maid in a sequence from De Sica’s Umberto D, with which Deleuze opens his analysis in The Time-Image:

[…] the young maid going into the kitchen in the morning, making a series of mechanical, weary gestures, cleaning a bit, driving the ants away from a water fountain, picking up the coffee grinder, stretching out her foot to close the door with her toe. And her eyes meet her pregnant woman’s belly, and it is as though all the misery in the world were going to be born.28

Even though they are weary and helpless – Deleuze refers also to Rossellini’s ‘great quartet’ of post-war films – their relation to the world is one of passionate intensity. They are, in their own way, seers or visionaries, who are struck by the ‘intolerable’ that is contained in everyday life, and are faced with the ‘unthinkable’ in thought. It is as if thought is paralysed:

For it is not in the name of a better or truer world that thought captures the intolerable in this world, but, on the contrary, it is because this world is intolerable that it can no longer think a world or think itself.29

The perception of the intolerable is, as Zourabichvili shows, a crucial theme in Deleuze’s work. The visionary is like a ‘Russian Idiot’ (Deleuze refers here to Dostoyevsky), an ‘exhausted’ figure who cannot respond to the present situation because s/he is in the thrall of a more urgent question.30 The ‘seer’ exhausts the cliche´-ed, conventional modes of perception, in order to perceive something so intolerable that it is, temporarily at least, overwhelming. Post-war cinema finds it necessary to create a new kind of character who fulfils this visionary role, and who inhabits the event in a new way:

A new type of character for a new cinema. It is because what happens to them does not belong to them and only half concerns them, because they know how to extract from the event the part that cannot be reduced to what happens: that part of inexhaustible possibility that constitutes the unbearable, the intolerable, the visionary’s part.31

In this way, certain strands of post-war cinema create Deleuze’s ‘pure optical and sound situations’, which provide access, for the spectators and the characters, to something which is intolerable or unbearable. It is however, not a matter of brutality or exaggerated violence, or of scenes of terror although, as Deleuze says, there may be corpses and blood.32 It is rather a question of removing the filters, which normally organize our perception, which mean that we perceive ‘cliche´s’. We no longer perceive simply what interests us and what we are accustomed to see, and we no Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 longer organize our perceptions according to conventional distinctions between, for example, the extreme and the everyday:

Neither everyday nor limit-situations are marked by anything rare or extraordinary. It is just a volcanic island of poor fishermen. It is just Marks 120 a factory, a school…We mix with all that, even death, even accidents, in our normal life or on holidays. We see, and we more or less experience, a powerful organization of poverty and oppression. And we are precisely not without sensory-motor schemata for recognizing such things, for putting up with and approving of them and for behaving ourselves subsequently, taking into account our situation, our capabilities and our tastes.33

It may sometimes be necessary to restore the lost parts of the image, and at other times to rarefy the image by suppressing the things that make us think we are seeing everything.34 This visionary perception, which reveals the ‘intolerable’, and in this way reveals the reality of conditions of existence, is the perceptual element that Deleuze associates most closely with 1968. Picking up on Kant’s concept of ‘enthusiasm’ in relation to the French Revolution and Enlightenment, Deleuze argues that it is precisely this visionary element which constitutes the untimely becoming of a revolution. For Deleuze, May 68 is an ‘irruption’ of a becoming in its pure state. The way in which revolutions turn out historically and people’s ‘revolutionary becoming’ should not be confused: ‘Men’s only hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the only way of casting off their shame or responding to what is intolerable.’35

Resistance

Deleuze frequently talks of ‘resistance’ in relation to the intolerable, and resistance is a key theme in Deleuze’s work. To ‘resist’, in Deleuze’s terms, is to refuse to have one’s possibilities for life and creativity curtailed, to create something new: it is to go beyond the ‘piety’, as he puts it, of recollection. It is also the refusal to be judged, and forced back on one’s own identity and individuality, rather than being allowed to make contact with the forces which compose an individual. In a short piece recently translated into English he talks of resistance in terms of what it means to ‘have an idea’ in cinema.36 Essentially, aesthetic creation explores new spatiotemporal dimensions, and in the case of cinema this entails the construction of blocks of movement/duration.37 Deleuze proposes as an example the films of Straub and Huillet, in which a voiceover is heard whilst we see something else on screen. This, for Deleuze, is a cinematographic ‘idea’, whereby cinema resonates with a ‘qualitative physics of elements’.38 The voice speaks of the bodies that lie beneath the ground, and in this way bears witness to terror. Cinema, like other forms of art, makes visible and manipulates forces in order to create what Deleuze calls ‘shapes’, ‘reliefs’ and ‘projections’.39 This creation of shapes, having an idea, is not of the order of communication or representation, and it has nothing to do with the transmission of ‘information’: it ‘resists’ communication. Communication is the propagation of information, and in being informed, one is told what to think, since information is a grouping of ‘order-words’. Information and communication are nothing less than Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 a means of control; they encourage only a pseudo-belief in the world. It is not that we are asked to believe, but rather to act as if we believed.40 It is possible to oppose ‘counterinformation’ to the order-words of communication and information, but such counterinformation is only effective when it becomes an act of ‘resistance’. For Deleuze, although each act of resistance is not a work of art, there is a fundamental parallax 121 affinity between the work of art and the act of resistance.41 The crucial point is that the act of resistance – whether in the form of human struggle or the work of art – resists death: it remains open, dynamic and active rather than reactive. It is in this way that Deleuze’s commitment to an aesthetics of immanence can be read politically, in the sense that he constructs a relation between human struggle and the work of art:

It is the strictest and for me the most mysterious relation. Precisely what Paul Klee wanted to say when he said: ‘‘You know, the people are missing.’’ The people are missing while at the same time they are not missing. The people are missing: that means that this fundamental affinity between a work of art and a people who do not yet exist is not, and never will be, clear. There is no work of art that does not appeal to a people who do not yet exist.42

The ‘Weakness’ of Memory: Representation and Recognition

In this way, we can see how Deleuze grapples, throughout his work, with the issue of representation. This issue becomes all the more pressing in the wake of, for example, the terror of the Holocaust. How does one ‘represent’ this terror without in some way diminishing its horror, without placing it in some sort of narrative, which might imply closure or even redemption? This is, of course, an issue that has preoccupied any number of artists and thinkers since the war. Claude Lanzmann, for example, has sought to find a way to deal with the Holocaust which might avoid the pitfalls of reconstruction or interpretation, and which might overcome the ‘weakness’ of memory. In seeking to disrupt the distance between the past and the present, Lanzmann, particularly in Shoah, constructs precisely the new sort of space-time that Deleuze talks of in his books on cinema. Simone de Beauvoir, in her preface to the script of Lanzmann’s film, is struck by the fact that Shoah has an effect which is qualitatively different from that which is produced by reading the accounts of the ghettos and concentration camps which appeared after the war.43 The effect of these accounts is undoubtedly shocking, but Lanzmann succeeds, she feels, in making the Holocaust live in ‘our heads’. The remarkable economy of resources – places, voices and faces – that Lanzmann employs enables him to undermine the distance between past and present which is part of what Deleuze thinks of as the weakness of memory. Lanzmann’s measured but persistent questioning, the empty and frequently peaceful landscapes, the distress of the survivors and some of the witnesses, along with the casual indifference of other witnesses, undermine what Deleuze calls the ‘false piety’ of recollection.44 The effect of the film is rather to entangle the past and the present so that time is no longer organized according to fixed points. Lanzmann achieves something that Deleuze particularly admires in Alain Resnais, which is to say the construction of a memory as ‘memory of the world’.45 As D. N. Rodowick argues, Lanzmann uses the disjunction between image and voice, past and present, and Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 perception and memory to construct a historical testimony which resists and survives.46

Resnais’ Night and Fog, a documentary on Auschwitz from 1955, also challenges a memorializing, representational approach to the Holocaust. For Deleuze, the film Marks 122 can be thought of as ‘the sum of all the ways of escaping from the flashback, and the false piety of the recollection-image’.47 It creates a ‘memory’ which is, paradoxically, all the more vivid for not passing through the recollection image: that is to say, it creates a ‘pure’ or virtual recollection. Most of the film is taken up with carefully edited black-and-white material – documents, photographs and newsreels – but it returns periodically to a shot which tracks through the derelict remains of Auschwitz in the present, on a sunlit day. These tracking shots are quite deliberately filmed in bright colour precisely since Resnais wanted to avoid the ‘filmic romanticism’ of a film all in black-and-white. Rather than constructing a recollection of the past, Resnais wanted to show sunlight in the present. Again, the disjunction between past and present, and between voice and image, allows Resnais to avoid the representation of the ‘uninterrupted terror’ of Auschwitz in favour of an exploration of what Deleuze calls the ‘sheets’ of the past. The terror of Auschwitz cannot be represented according to the limitations of conventional ‘chronological’ history. Instead, by superimposing different layers of time, and by exploring the ‘mental functions’ of the camp – the diabolical rationale of its organization and integration within a wider landscape and society – Resnais reconstructs the camp in the form of a cartography.

Conclusion

Deleuze’s work is, in the terms employed by Jean Cayrol, ‘Lazarean’.48 That is not to suggest that Deleuze’s work is written in the ‘shadow’ of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and the Gulag. It is rather the case that philosophy and art evince a particular relation to death and terror in the course of the twentieth century. It is Bichat who, according to Deleuze, proposes the first modern conception of death, making it coextensive with life,49 a line that we are constantly confronting:

The character in Resnais’ cinema is Lazarean precisely because he returns from death, from the land of the dead; he has passed through death and is born from death, whose sensory-motor disturbances he retains. Even if he was not personally in Auschwitz, even if he was not personally in Hiroshima…He passed through a clinical death, he was born from an apparent death, he returns from the dead, Auschwitz or Hiroshima, Guernica or the Algerian war.50

In order to ‘return from the dead’ in this way, it is necessary to find means of expression which go beyond representation and resemblance. If the memory and narration of terror remains locked within the realm of the personal it will not be possible to construct the work of art as a work of resistance. Attempts to create revolutionary or democratic art ‘represents’ a people that have failed, and too much writing and thinking on terror is involved in a process of recollection and memorialization. Instead, it is a matter of creating a maximum number of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 connections, of tracing new pathways in the brain; of a cerebral pessimism combined with a nervous optimism. In this way, Deleuze, although he acknowledges that terror has undermined the Greek philosophical ideal of ‘friendship’, refuses to write in terror. Instead, he finds in some art and thought, and particularly in cinema, the possibility of writing before terror. parallax 123 Notes

1 See in particular Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and 22 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (London: Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (Harmondsworth: Athlone Press, 1983). Penguin, 1978). 2 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. 23 Negotiations, p.109. Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta (London: 24 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Desire and Pleasure’, in Arnold Athlone, 1989), p.209. I. Davidson, [ed], Foucault and his Interlocutors 3 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.19. (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago 4 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.xi. Press, 1997), p.190. 5 See ‘Control and Becoming’ in Gilles Deleuze, 25 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.170. Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: 26 Franc¸ois Zourabichvili, ‘Deleuze et le possible Columbia University Press, 1995), pp.172–3 (de l’involontarisme en politique)’, in Eric Alliez, and L’Abe´ce´daire de Gilles Deleuze, ‘R comme [ed], Gilles Deleuze: une vie philosophique (Le Plessis- ´ re´sistance’, with Claire Parnet, (Vide´oEditions, Robinson: Institut Synthe´labo, 1998), pp.335–57. Montparnasse, 1997). 27 See Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Exhausted’, in Essays 6 Gilles Deleuze & Fe´lix Guattari, What is Critical and Clinical, pp.152–74. Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell & Hugh 28 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.1–2. Tomlinson (London: Verso, 1994), p.107. 29 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.169–70. 7 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 30 Zourabichvili, ‘Deleuze et le possible (de pp.107–8. l’involontarisme en politique)’, p.350. 8 Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Shame and the Glory: T. E. 31 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.19–20. Essays Critical and Clinical Lawrence’, in , trans. 32 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.18. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco 33 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.20. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 34 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.21. pp.115–125. 35 Deleuze, Negotiations, p.171. 9 Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, p.117. 36 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Having an Idea in Cinema’, in 10 See Deleuze and Guattari, ‘Percept, Affect and Eleanor Kaufmann and Kevin Jon Heller, [eds], Concept’, in What is Philosophy?, pp.163–99. Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, 11 Deleuze, Negotiations, pp.60–1. Philosophy and Culture (London & Minneapolis: 12 See Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel: Essays University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp.14–19. on Fiction, trans. Richard Howard (Evanston, 37 Deleuze ‘Having an Idea in Cinema’, p.15. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1989), p.19. 38 13 Deleuze, Negotiations, p.11. Deleuze ‘Having an Idea in Cinema’, p.16. 39 14 Melinda Cooper, ‘Vitesses de l’image, puissances Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.147. 40 de la pense´e: la philosophie e´picurienne revue par Deleuze, ‘Having an Idea in Cinema’, p.17. 41 Deleuze et Guattari’, French Studies, vol. LVI, no. 1, Deleuze, ‘Having an Idea in Cinema’, pp.18–19. 42 (2002), pp.45–60. Deleuze, ‘Having an Idea in Cinema’, p.19. 43 15 Cooper, ‘Vitesses de l’image, puissances de la Simone de Beauvoir, ‘La me´moire de l’horreur’, ´ pense´e: la philosophie e´picurienne revue par preface to Claude Lanzmann, Shoah (Paris: Editions Deleuze et Guattari’, p.46. Fayard, 1985), pp.7–10. 44 16 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.156–7. Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.122. 45 17 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.164. Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.121–2. 18 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.167. 46 See D.N. Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine 19 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p.171. (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 20 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: Logique de la Sensation 1997), pp.145–8. (Paris: E´ ditions du Seuil, 2002). 47 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.122. 21 See Gilles Deleuze, ‘To Have Done with 48 See Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.207–8. Judgement’, in Essays Critical and Clinical, 49 Deleuze, Negotiations, p.111. pp.126–35. 50 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp.207–8.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 John Marks is Reader in French Studies at The Nottingham Trent University. His publications include Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity (Pluto 1998), and the co-edited volume Deleuze and Literature (EUP, 2000) He is currently working on a study of debates on science and technology in contemporary France.

Marks 124 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 1, 125–127

Book Reviews

Keith Ansell Pearson inhibits its adventure, not only in Ansell Pearson’s scrupulous reading, but also in Bergson and Philosophy and the Adventure of the Deleuze. The main point of inhibition lies in the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life way in which the concept of the virtual is (London and New York, Routledge, 2002) distinguished from that of possibility. Replacing possibility with virtuality is Bergson (and Deleuze’s) With Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual Keith most signficant departure from Kant, but it is one Ansell Pearson extends his exploration of the that fatally underestimates the gravity of the philosophy of life begun in Viroid Life (1997) and Kantian categories of modality. This is evident in Germinal Life (1999) to the challenge posed to the way that the virtual seems almost inevitably to philosophy by the concept of the virtual. Like its summon up its complement of the actual – predecessors, this book is characterized by the provoking the suspicion that the pairing virtual/ author’s characteristic sensitivity to the history of actual remains somehow implicated in the philosophy and the urgent need to forge a new predicament of modal pairing, echoing the alliance between philosophy and science. On this disjunction of the possible and the real. occasion the focus of Ansell Pearson’s inquiry is Henri Bergson, but a Bergson liberated from the There are moments in Ansell Pearson’s readings misinterpretations that almost consigned him to where the thinking of a non-modal virtual emerges, philosophical oblivion as an ‘irrational intuitionist’. a virtual without need of the collateral of actuality. Ansell Pearson makes an entirely convincing case But it is at these moments that the concept of the for regarding him as the author of the last century’s virtual dissolves into a broader concept of the most significant and underestimated confrontation actual. It is at such points, as in the discussions of between philosophy and science. entropy, that Ansell-Pearson reveals the extent to which, in spite of themselves, Bergson and Deleuze The declared ‘specific and limited task’ of Philosophy remain implicated in a Newtonian/Kantian pre- and the Adventure of the Virtual – ‘to contribute to the occupation with the concept of force. With the correction of Bergson’s erasure from our image of admission of the concept of force – ubiquitous in post-Kantian philosophy, and to contribute to our Deleuze – arrive also the unwelcome because all comprehension of Deleuze’s unique conception and too familiar problems of the relation of quantity vision of philosophy’ – of course implies a far larger philosophical ambition. Ansell Pearson sketches a and dynamic quality of force as well as its modal new constellation comprising Kant, Bergson and and relational properties, in short the entire Deleuze against the backdrop of the concept of the Newtonian infrastructure of the critical philosophy. virtual and the rethinking of the history of The concept of force brings with it the notions of philosophy that it entails. At the same time, the circuits and economies of force, the play of action limits of the virtual are themselves extended by the and reaction, as well as a pre-occupation with author’s insistence that it be understood temporally, matter, albeit kinetic matter. thus freeing it from the spatial pre-occupations of the visual. The excitement of this adventure reaches The most exciting moments of Ansell-Pearson’s its highest pitch in the final chapter where, in some adventure occur when the thought of force is of Ansell Pearson’s most inspired writing to date, succeeded by a thinking of energy. At these the virtual surpasses itself in an ecstasy of time. On moments – evoked at the limits of the writings of the way to this conclusion the author elaborates Kant, Bergson and Deleuze – there emerges a new some fine readings of Bergson while staging a thought of time, and, in Bergson’s words from number of thought-provoking encounters between Creative Evolution, the possibility of overcoming even death. With the thought of energy – derived as is Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 philosophy and non-philosophy. the concept of actuality from Aristotelian energeia – Yet there is a sense in which the concept of all the modal disjunctions fall away and the the virtual remains freighted with the history of problems of circuits of force, matter and the nature philosophy from which it emerged, a history which of light assume a new complexion. Such moments

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000048043 125 in Ansell Pearson’s text provoke the thought that summarise the volume: Chapter one performs a perhaps the adventure of the virtual consists critique of Husserl and, following Derrida, a precisely in this concept losing itself in that of deconstruction of the whole phenomenological actuality or energy, leaving behind it the epoch of project (the privileging of presence). In this first force and all the problems that attend its material chapter we are also made aware of the limits of this propagation and distribution. procedure – thinking the general text (the general field of force and signification) does not – and can Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual is an never – give us access to matter itself. Chapter two extremely thought provoking book which points then goes on to demonstrate how Derrida’s beyond the limits delineated by the constellation of diV`erance, in subsuming Hegel’s dialectic (i.e. in Kant, Bergson and Deleuze. It opens vistas of future going beyond contradiction), reconfigures work not only for its author but for all who philosophy itself as the thinking of the general text work within the happily disintegrating fields of (we might call this, following Deleuze, the thinking continental philosophy, cultural theory and the of difference as an original complexity). It also philosophy of science. clearly demonstrates the denaturalizing and destabilising power of deconstruction (its power as Howard Caygill, institutional critique) – and how this in itself brings Goldsmiths College, University of about a concomitant call for justice and democracy. London Chapter three in turn demonstrates that difference can further operate as a critique of the not so implicit hylomorphism of Aristotle and his thesis on John Protevi the generation of life. This is linked to larger issues Political Physics of the ‘production of hierarchical and authoritarian bodies politic along the line of gender, race and (London: Athlone, 2001). class’ (p.91). Indeed, throughout Protevi does not restrict his readings to the realms of philosophy but John Protevi’s Political Physics at first appears as if is keen to demonstrate the relevance and import of it might be two books – two projects spliced his deconstructive project to the wider realm of the together: a series of deconstructive readings of key western philosophical texts and then perhaps body politic. At this point, half-way through the something different: the exploration – and the book, the project takes a slight shift in emphasis – mapping out – of a non-hylomorphic system of almost as if inserting itself into a new milieu (the philosophy. In fact the book’s strength, and in a assemblage is tipped...) and we are given what for sense its weakness too, is that it is really just one me is perhaps the most interesting and compelling project – at times called deconstruction, at others chapter of the first half – a thinking through of the critique of hylomorphism – both of which AIDS in terms of restricted and general economy. involve close and careful readings of the Space prevents a full treatment of Protevi’s aforementioned texts. In this project it is masterly argument – but what can be said is that this chapter and convincing, demonstrating the implicit moves from close reading to the actual pragmatic logocentrism/hylomorphism which structures the ‘application’ of Derrida’s work (and of his notion western metaphysical tradition. Although Protevi is of a general field of force and signification). It also obviously a fan of both Derrida and Deleuze he is moves beyond critique to present something more ffi also clear on the differences between their projects a rmative – a ‘multi-factorial’ framework for – the one involved in signifying regimes (what thinking AIDS in terms of the ‘systemic interchange Deleuze names the ‘alloplastic’ strata) the other of forces’. So ends the explicitly Derridean section involved in a more materialist project (what we of the volume. might call thinking matter). For Protevi, rightly I believe, Derrida’s project limits itself precisely on The second ‘Deleuzian’ section begins with a this point – it cannot think matter beyond situating powerful critique of Plato’s hylomorphism – it as the unthinkable limit to text. As such these two especially revealing in the latter’s emphasis on ‘self- giants of contemporary thought are to a certain rule’ (the ‘control’ of the body/matter via outside extent incommensurable – at least in their larger forces). This techne is, of course, contrasted with project (we might characterize Derrida as a reader nomad science which specifically attends to the self- of philosophy par excellence whereas Deleuze, organising properties of matter (it tracks the although a reader too, is also a prodigious inventor singularities, the thresholds of transformation, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009 of concepts). When it comes to detail however – ‘within’ matter as it were). Protevi also gestures here for example the specific critique of hylomorphism to the notion of an emergent – and intelligent – in specific texts – then the Derridean reading property to the ‘inert’ matter of the somatic body. machine can be put in the service of the ‘larger’ Of course this is really the central issue of Protevi’s Deleuzeoguattarian project of thinking immanence. project – that matter has its own emergent self- This is precisely how Protevi proceeds. To briefly organising properties. In this respect Protevi’s Book reviews 126 critique of hylomorphism might be seen as a of the dominata to the dominated) might have critique of transcendence – of ‘top down’ thinking worked as a counterbalance to the critique of – wherever it operates to capture and control. Plato’s hylomorphism in chapter 5 (I also think Importantly, these points of transcendence which Foucault might have operated as a corrective here appear to determine matter are themselves in an affirmative thinking through of technologies products of matter (immanence produces of the self ). Likewise I think Spinoza – and transcendence) – deconstruction/ideological crit- Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza (the fathoming of ique is then precisely the right tool here for causes and common notions) – might have inverting the camera obscura of the transcendental problematized Protevi’s rather one sided critique of illusion. Chapter six presents a critique of eidectic vision in chapter 6. For me, there is Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle – and in particular certainly an ethical and political importance, in the privileging of the architect over the artisan ‘seeing’ a ‘larger’ picture as it were (is this evidence (again an implicit hylomorphism). This is portrayed of my residual hylomorphism I wonder...). A third as part of a larger project of evacuating animality ally might have been Bergson, who, perhaps more and the body (Heidegger’s ‘spiritualisation’). We than any other philosopher has most fully also get here a fascinating ideological critique of developed a notion of the ‘intelligent’ body (the Heidegger – a demonstration that the philosopher’s ‘embodied mind’ as Protevi calls it). Bergson would dictate that we privilege the philosophical project have been useful too as a non-hylomorphic thinker (‘grasping being’) over and above ‘worldly matters’ of evolution and species generation to work against is precisely premised on a notion of leisure (‘bought’ Aristotle in chapter 3. What each of these three at the expense of other’s time). In a kind of Marxian have in common – besides of course Deleuze’s interest in them as philosophers of immanence – is manoeuvre, philosophy, and ethics in particular, that they do not merely read other texts but in fact are then positioned as always already premised on invent new concepts – new possibilities/modalities a notion of politics (and in fact economics). This of being/becoming in the world. There is certainly brings us to the final chapter in which we have a a similar project in Protevi’s book – especially in thinking through of the critique of hylomorphism the tantalising gestures towards complexity theory in relation to politics. Protevi demonstrates that and to a ‘new’ marriage between philosophy and Kant himself was aware of the self ordering science – but this is not the project of the present potential of matter – in this case read as the masses volume, which operates more as a clearing of the – but shied away from exploring this immanent ground – in preparation for another project to come potential. In this respect we might say that Hardt (the call is made in the afterword). One is then left and Negri’s Empire is Kant’s nightmare (or, from a with the feeling that a sustained critique has been ff di erent perspective, Kant’s blind spot): the made – and an exciting manifesto set out – but that activation of the plane of immanence understood no real affirmative alternatives – or ‘case studies’ – as the revolutionary potential of the multitude. have been offered. It might well be the case that Finally in the afterword we get the linking of this is not the role – and nor can it be – of academic Protevi’s project of political physics with the texts; that new forms of thought, new kinds Deleuzeoguattarian project of anti-fascist living. We of subjectivity are produced ‘in the world’ just also get – and I think this is crucial–awordof as the new kinds of alliance between science and caution about the simple championing of non- philosophy are produced precisely in the hylomorphism over hylomorphism. Protevi points ‘laboratory’ – that is, through experimentation with out – as Hardt and Negri have before him – that other, and different kinds of materials. If it is the such a celebration can merely feed the mechanisms case that academic texts can only ever perform the of capital (capitalism being a self-organising system ground clearing exercise then Protevi’s book is par excellence). However, I think these final comments certainly one that is important and timely and one are too important to be left to an afterword. The in which we get a clear idea of what to move away thinking through of the relationship between the from if not precisely what to move towards. hylomorphic and the non-hylomorphic needs very careful consideration – particularly in relation to Simon O’Sullivan, the strata that form us as beings. In this respect I Goldsmiths College, feel that Deleuze’s reading of Leibniz (the relation University of London Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:52 18 November 2009

parallax 127 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 1–2

Introducing Mourning Revolution

A short text by Alexander Kluge begins as follows: ‘All epochal events occur first as tragedies and recur as a farce, yet they return afterwards, says Sigrid, as a normal incident. Just my husband does not return, he has shot himself. She found her assessment, whilst she was talking, ‘‘unbalanced’’. One does not speak ‘‘appraisingly’’ nor ‘‘condescendingly’’ about the revolution and a determined dead’.1

The above quote depicts the problematic this issue of parallax attempts to engage. Mourning Revolution is a strange couple. Whatever form one wants to choose to link the terms, there remains an uneasiness, at least a complication. The one does not go well with the other, perhaps they formulate but a provocation. Of course, there has been an interest in mourning and revolution: most recently Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx provoked strong engagements and fruitful responses from left theorists, but one could go back to discussions of the theme in Walter Benjamin’s writing and amongst other protagonists of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

The aim this issue of parallax has tried to achieve is a theorization of the fate of revolution. The call for papers that went out to the contributors invited them to engage with (the debates surrounding) the loss of a revolutionary imaginary in recent writing of the Left. Rather than furthering the cause of collective grief about the loss of past revolutionary convictions, mourning here could point towards an active working-through of revolutionary failures, of a moment of pause that interrupts the continuum of managerialism and the policies belonging to it and could open a new perspective on the future. Hence, the call for papers also asked the contributors to investigate the conditions of possibility of revolutionary practice and its necessity in the Left’s political thinking. This does not simply urge a consideration of the future probability of realizing revolution and the chances of the organization of current emancipatory movements but rather strives towards an engagement with the politico- theoretical nature and function of the concept of revolution beyond reoccupation, moralism and an ethics of redemption and harmony. Against a current trend of declaring the end of revolution and its de-politicized investigation in professional academic disciplines, this issue aims towards a re-activation of the question of social and political transformation and attempts to put the problematic of radical change back on the intellectual agenda. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:53 18 November 2009 REENTS: If one investigates revolutions (the Great French Revolution, the Cuban revolution, the October Revolution, the Nazi revolution, if that was a revolution, the Vietnamese resistance, the

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000064946 1 storming of the supply authority in Halberstadt 1945, the subjective every-day revolutions) one encounters 186 different grammatical conditions which, in part, are difficult to grasp. SIGRID: One can use paraphrases? REENTS: Now, there is no revolutions without concurrent counter-revolution which has an effect upon them and from which the revolution adopts conditions. SIGRID: That has the grammatical form of collision.2

Perhaps many texts collected in this issue of parallax collide with each other in their formulations of mourning revolution. They make use of a variety of theoretical traditions, focus on diverse aspects of the theme and come to different conclusions. Yet they share a commitment to theoretical analysis and do not shy away from confronting what appears to have become a common-sense conviction in much Left writing: the dictum of the end of revolution and the prohibition on thinking about a ‘way out’ of liberal-capitalist hegemony that comes along with it.

We would like to thank the authors, translators and peer reviewers for their contributions. Particular thanks go to Marcel Swiboda and Peter Hallward for their help with putting this issue together. Kurt Hirtler, Ola Stahl and Ika Willis

Notes

1 Alexander Kluge, ‘Grammatik der Revolution’, 2 Kluge, ‘Grammatik der Revolution’, p.186. in Basisgeschichten. Chronik der Gefu¨hle, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), p.184. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:53 18 November 2009

Hirtler et al. 2 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 3–16

Women’s Studies Unbound: Revolution, Mourning, Politics

Wendy Brown

We are convened in Belfast to ask what women’s studies is, what feminism might be, ‘beyond sex and gender’.1 This beyond is a strange place, if it is indeed a place, where it is proposed that the subject and object of the field might be left behind even as the field persists. It is a place where the ‘what’ and the ‘we’ of feminist scholarly work is so undecided or so disseminated that it can no longer bound such work, where the identity that bore women’s studies into being has dissolved without dissolving the field itself. Or is it not a place but a time, this ‘beyond’ of sex and gender? Are we proposing to be after sex and gender, no longer bound by them or perhaps no longer believing in them, and yet, in the peculiar offering that only temporality makes, bringing along what we are after even as we locate it behind us?

If feminist scholarship came into being through the analytic circumscription of sex and gender, being feminist scholars beyond or after sex and gender is not the same as dispensing with them but rather, perhaps, is more like being after The Fall, after their fall. Fallen yes, but like all toppled sovereigns and overthrown founders they do not thereby cease to govern. (‘The dead are mighty rulers’, Freud reminds us, prophesying among other things his own continued hovering over our work.2)Sowe are compelled, now that we know the impossibility of circumscribing gender without participating in its construction and regulation, and now that we know the indissociability of sex and gender from race, caste, class, nation and culture, to think feminism and women’s studies in this condition of afterness, in this temporal condition of ‘knowing better’ about our naive yet founding past, and thus also to grieve what we now know we never should have loved … a tortured and guilty grieving to be sure. What is the cost of such grieving, not just to ourselves, but to this field that lives on after the death of its subject and object? And if we are not grieving, if we are only delighted to be ‘beyond sex and gender’ what then is the quality of this afterness, what parasitic relationship to a past that it does not love do these practices maintain?

But wait! A place and a time ‘beyond sex and gender’ – wasn’t this the revolutionary feminist dream? Wasn’t feminism born of the utopian aspiration to make a world in

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 which sex and gender would become history as significant markers of human difference, as vehicles of inequality and injury, as keys to life possibility, as ways of distinguishing worth, potential, humanity from its other? How and when did sex and gender become essential objects of feminism rather than that which we aimed to

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Wendy Brown http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000064955 3 overthrow? No, the question has to be put differently now: what kind of feminism aims to conserve rather than reduce, eliminate, or at the very least diffuse sex and gender? If women’s studies has difficulty imagining itself beyond sex and gender, this would seem to confess its contemporary investment in their persistent social, political, psychic or economic importance, thus locating a non-revolutionary sensibility and aim at the core of women’s studies. Women’s studies invested thus comes after the loss of revolutionary feminism; it figures itself as a non-utopian enterprise with more than a minor attachment to the unhappy present.

In this light, I want to turn the question of the future of women’s studies a bit, to ask not whether feminism and feminist scholarship can live without sex or gender, but how it lives, and will continue to live, without a revolutionary horizon. Not how we may thrive in the aftermath of the dissemination of our analytical objects, but what we are in the wake of a dream in which those objects were consigned to history? What does it mean for feminist scholars to be working in a time after revolution, after the loss of belief in the possibility and the viability of a radical overthrow of existing social relations? What kind of lost object is this? Revolution belongs to modernity and whatever our respective orientations toward the value of modern vs. postmodern thought, there is little question that the time of modernity is no longer securely ours, that key elements of modernity are waning, that if we are not ‘beyond’ modernity we are most certainly ‘post’ modernity. The post, of course, is a complex transitional and conjunctural moment, one in which we continue to live ‘with’ what we are also ‘after’. This living with is uneasy work: ghosts and ungrieved losses clutter a present and future that are anything but sure footed. ‘We suffer,’ Marx reminds us, ‘not only from the living, but from the dead. [Indeed], le mort saisit le vif!’3

i. Mourning Revolution

What do we mourn when we imagine we are mourning revolution today? Something has died but we argue over what the body is (there will turn out not to be a body). A unified Left? Reason? Social totality? Marxism? Belief in the Good, the True, and the Beautiful? Hope? Grand narratives? Utopia? The promise of the twentieth century? Love of the world? Modernity? Humanity? Is radical transformation itself no longer imaginable or is it the fantasy of human control over human destiny that has vanished? Or are we stymied at conjuring postcapitalist, postpatriarchal, postcolonial social, economic and political forms that could emancipate and satisfy all and each? Is it a postrevolutionary vision that eludes us today?

Since grief inevitably recalls prior and contiguous losses, perhaps settling on a single object is not so important: whatever we are mourning most immediately might be the scene for discovering all that has gone unmourned for a feminist Left in our time. But such discovery is not easily won: The condition of mourning is a stumbling Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 and stuttering one, a condition of disturbed ground, of inarticulateness, of disorientation in and about time. A mourning being must learn to walk again, on ground once made level by the now lost object, a process that makes palpable how contingent firm and level ground always is. Indeed, in mourning, one discovers horizons, banisters, firmaments and foundations of life so taken for granted that they Brown 4 were mostly unknown until they were shaken. A mourning being also learns a new temporality, one in which past meets future without moving through a present (in which the present all but vanishes) yet also one in which the future is unmoored from parts of the past, thus puncturing conceits of linearity with a different way of living time. In mourning, too, the solidity of the subject falters: even as one may be ‘consumed by grief’ and so retreat from the world, grief also diminishes the subject undergoing it, undermining illusions of autonomy and self-constitution, revealing hitherto unknown dependencies and the limits of agency, mocking the will’s desire to project itself backward and forward in time.

Revolution, the world turned upside down, through which modernity entered history, which modernity would perfect and by which modernity would be perfected, appears today both anachronistic and unprecedentedly dangerous. Anachronistic because political, economic and social powers are dispersed, thus the reins of society cannot be grasped, perhaps do not even exist. Unprecedentedly dangerous because the technologies available to counter-revolutionary forces and to states in particular are deadly beyond compare – these include not only the weapons of physical warfare but technologies of organization, infiltration, intelligence, interrogation. Dangerous too because all visions of The Good now appear to consort with fundamentalism. (It is telling that the only time revolution was meaningfully invoked in the last quarter century was to describe the transformation of Iran following the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini.) If regimes of truth are inevitably totalitarian, what remains of emancipatory claims about the best way to order and govern human beings? How even to endeavour to transform the present, whatever totalitarian elements it might harbour, without tapping this danger? Perversely, this sensitivity to fundamentalism would seem to consign us to the present, not because it is freer or in other ways better than the alternatives, but because pursuit of concrete alternatives inevitably implicates us in the deliberate imposition of a truth, as opposed to negotiating or passively living under one. The post-Enlightenment feminist Left is politically neutered, and neutralized, by this formula: if there is always a governing political truth, at least let us not be the fundamentalists; if every regime is an Occupation, at least let us not be the occupying force. Thus have we lost the capacity to imagine ourselves in power, self-consigned instead to the rancorous margins in which we are at best a permanent heckle to power.

For Hannah Arendt, modernity yields the radically new modality of political change, revolution, from the convergence of three principles constitutive of the age: (a) the rise of ‘the social question’ which above all denaturalized mass poverty as inherent in the human condition, (b) the centring of freedom as a human need or right, (c) a historical consciousness that embraced the possibility of novelty and the conviction that the course of history could suddenly begin anew. It is when ‘the idea of freedom and the experience of a new beginning … coincide’, Arendt argues, that revolution in the modern sense is possible and takes the specific form of the rise of the oppressed Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 to displace their oppressors and the regime that privileged them.4 There is another singular feature of modernity that makes revolution its spirit, namely the progressivism that suffused modern philosophies, histories and political dreams, the historiography that operated at the level of moral and political conviction that human existence on all fronts – freedom, prosperity, equality, civility – was steadily parallax 5 improving. It is via this progressivism that the other meaning of revolution, a naturalistic phenomenon that cannot be stopped – as in the earth revolving around the sun – conjoins with the agentic features of popular uprising for bread or freedom to capture the inevitability of such uprisings and even the inevitability of their eventual triumph.5 In the age of freedom, equality and new beginnings, revolution emerges as the term for a continuous and inexorable push for the realization of these values against the old regimes that denied them both legitimacy and actuality. Left revolutionaries of the twentieth century placed themselves in this tradition – the press of the poor and the outcast for a freedom and equality that was their unquestionable modern entitlement, the unstoppable force of democratization, the realization of ‘true human emancipation’, indeed, the realization of modernity’s promise around the globe.6

It is this conviction about the inevitable triumph of the people over the illegitimate powers of wealth and rule that exploit, dominate or disenfranchise whose loss washes over us today. What has been drained from the present is not only faith in the capacity of revolution to dethrone corrupt or illegitimate power, but the standing of this capacity as a beacon of the spirit of the age. Gone is the belief in radically breaking with history; equally eviscerated is the notion of inexorable progress toward freedom and the related notion that an innate human desire for freedom is the engine of history. Shattered too is the conviction that the future belongs to the downtrodden, that power is ever anything but illegitimate, that equality, freedom and well-being for the many are inevitable, let alone possible.

The promise of Revolution delivered by the Enlightenment was premised upon presumptions about the emancipatory nature of reason and the capacity of human beings to make their own history. It was a promise that, unfettered by tradition and legal subjection, reason would carry its human subjects to truth, freedom and equality. This is also the conceit of social contract theory from Hobbes to Rousseau to Rawls: under the reign of reason, human beings could consciously and deliberately fashion their world, vanquishing gods, kings and other super-human forces as makers of history and polities. Reason, knowledge, truth and freedom against power – this was the formula that poststructuralist insight discredited in relocating power to the inside of those ostensibly emancipatory forces. But even before this insight took hold, twentieth century events had largely devastated the Enlightenment promise: the two World Wars; the Shoah; the Nakbah; the merciless pillaging of the Third World by the First; socialist revolution turned brittle, brutal, then grey; decolonization turned to bloody authoritarianism and corruption; the calculated geopolitical instrumentalization of the Third World by Cold War powers; the materialization of a form of global capitalism unprecedented in its reach and capacities for deracinating human lives; and a final decade featuring a rise in violent ethnonationalisms literally unimaginable to Kantian universalists half a century earlier.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 As the promise of the twentieth century darkened, its shadow lengthened over the already foundering hopes of the Enlightenment and modernity – hopes for a steady improvement of the human condition, hopes rooted in the progress of liberty and the inevitable spread of equality, hopes tethered to the revolutionary spirit but in its calmer register.7 A promise and hopes that seem to have died before their time, Brown 6 except Gillian Rose recalls that for something to have died prematurely involves imagining a time when death would be nothing, possible only when life is nothing, when death comes to what already does not matter.8 This very nothingness, Rose argues, was already contained within modernity (Weber reads Tolstoy as revealing how progressivism, especially in knowledge, empties life of meaning and knowledge of its Truth value) and is deepened, according to Rose, by ‘postmodern’ formulations in which history is not charted by progress, inherent purpose, a drive toward an end, anything at all.9 Yet if modernity was always only a promise, then fruition is not its telos; rather modernity’s achievement was this promise. When the promise dies, it does not take our earthly goods and activities but our sense of futurity, and the future is the place where almost all meaning is harboured for modern progressivist consciousness. The nihilism so often attributed to ‘the postmodern’ is not a draining of meaning from the present – where meaning can thrive even and sometimes especially in the wake of God and Truth – but a draining of the future from present meaning, a loss of redemption in Benjamin’s sense. Mourning revolution is thus mourning a particular kind of futurity, a specifically modernist kind of rightful expectation, a temporality we do not yet know how to live without.

In mourning revolution, we are not mourning dead bodies, but rather, the insufficiently dead body of the past and even, the insufficient sacrifice of the present to the future. This failure, this insufficiency, in turn breeds a different sacrifice: the promise of rebirth that arises with revolution’s unique imagined capacity to break with the past. In mourning this perverse insufficiency of killing, then, we mourn the promise that collective human will can come between past and future and that a humane future will rise out of a vanquished inhuman past.

The death of a promise is like no other because a promise is incorporeal; there is no body to claim, to bid farewell, to bury (which is why the Left argues incessantly over what the body is). In mourning a dead promise, a promise that no longer is one, we mourn ‘the disappeared’; this is a perpetual and ungratified mourning that reaches in vain for closure. The very object that we mourn – the opening of a different future, the ideal illuminating that future – has vanished. So we cannot even see or say what we mourn, gather at the site of its disappearance, weep over its remains, hold its lively embodiment in our memory as we must if the mourning is to come to an end. This is a mourning that inevitably becomes melancholia – as the loved and lost promise becomes nameless and unfathomable in a present that cancels and even mocks it, its disappearance is secured by this loss of a name and so also is our inconsolability. Melancholia too because if we experience the promise as not simply dead but betrayed, we are divided against our love for it. Love betrayed but not given up is love that literally does not know where to house itself.

ii. Socialist and Feminist Revolutions Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 The contemporary Euro-Atlantic Left is in mourning not just for the idea of revolution as a political modality, but for two particular revolutionary dreams that died in the last quarter of the twentieth century. One, very roughly, could be called socialist. The other, equally roughly, could be called feminist and sexual. Intertwined parallax 7 in complex and differing ways for different segments of the New Left, both carried the utopian promise by which our world view was framed as well as our orientation toward critical theory. It is not easy to disentangle the collapse of a revolutionary modality at a generic level from the collapse of these particular projects of transformation; our mourning is confusing and confused here. Are we grieving a particular radical vision or radical vision as such? Or is it revolutionary cultural- political life that we are at once embarrassed by and pining for?

The New Left attachment to socialist revolution – which was never merely about economic justice, rather, its promised fruit included a panoply of betterments in human and nature-human relations – is difficult to loosen, notwithstanding the concrete failures of state socialism. Without replacing a profit-driven economic system by one rooted in common ownership and ordered by thoughtfulness about the complex needs of humans and their habitat, it is difficult to conceive not simply the relief of economic desperation on the part of the many but the building and sustaining of social forms that could cultivate modest generosity, security, equality, peaceability, mental and physical health and responsible relations with nature. But that replacement is remote to the point of vanishing today.

What happened to the dream of socialist revolution is tediously familiar. State socialism is economically unviable in a capitalist world order – inefficient, uncompetitive, impoverished. Nor does it emancipate: work is no less alienating, no more under the control of the worker, no more organized for immediate human needs, no more engaging of human creativity, no less dreary, than under any other regime. But if not state socialism, which was never the revolutionary dream anyway, then what? World socialism? Organized by what scandalously centralized global powers? Self-governing interdependent villages? In what version of history? The loss here then is not just a revolutionary agent or impulse, nor is it just the odds for revolutionary success. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to conceive of an emancipatory, ecological and economically capacious socialism that could follow upon the current development of what Marx referred to as ‘productive forces’, that is compatible with contemporary political, economic or social organizations of space and populations, and that is incorruptible by what we now know to be the many and dangerous ways of power.

Feminist revolution – which was never merely about sexual equality but, rather, carried the promise of remaking gender and sexuality that itself entailed a radical reconfiguration of kinship, sexuality, desire, psyche and the relation of private to public – went awry somewhat differently. Given the loss of the socialist possibility, there were limits to its realizability but reckoning with limits is not the same as reckoning with absolute loss, and the feminist ambition to eliminate gender as a site of subordination could technically be met within a capitalist life form, that is, there is nothing in sexed bodies or even in gender subordination that capitalism cannot Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 live without. The stakes in the old arguments about whether feminist revolution required a socialist one were largely contoured by a male left dubious about whether feminism was ultimately radical or bourgeois, whether gender subordination was a primary or derivative contradiction in the social order, whether it was truly material in the present or mainly attitudinal, the ‘muck of ages’ not yet washed away. This Brown 8 configuring diverted attention from the most crucial connection between new left and revolutionary feminist aims. It is clear enough that women and men can be rendered interchangeable cogs in a contemporary and future capitalist machinery, where physical strength is rarely at issue, where continuity on the job matters little, where reproductive work has been almost completely commodified and reproduction itself is nearly separable from sexed bodies and is in any event separable from a sexual division of labour. Notwithstanding the protracted Marxist-feminist analyses of the indispensability of unpaid housework to the production of surplus value, the home as a necessary if stricken haven in a heartless world, and the need for a malleable surplus army of labour (all of which were straining to prove both the materiality of gender subordination and its necessity to capitalism), it is evident enough today that the equal participation and remuneration of women in the economic and civic order can be achieved, if unevenly and with difficulty.

Capitalism neither loves nor hates social differences. Rather, it exploits them in the short run and erodes them in the long run. In Marx’s poetics, capitalism ‘batters down Chinese Walls’, levelling and homogenizing every aspect of cultural and traditional differentiation that it subjects to ‘its naked cash nexus’.10 Capitalism commodifies and reifies sexual difference even as it steadily erodes the ground of this difference in biology, the sexual division of labour, and the productive and reproductive functions of the family. Capitalism does not require gender subordination or even gender any more than it requires racial subordination or race; it has tendencies that augment as well as tendencies that attenuate such subordination; social movements and public policies can abet one or another tendency or both simultaneously. So the critical question for feminist revolution does not concern the inherent relationship of capitalism to gender subordination at the level of political economy. Rather, the critical question is whether what potentially issues from subordination, namely a radical critique of systemic injustices and suffering and a radical vision of alternatives, can be sustained in a capitalist social order over time and take shape as viable and organized opposition. What fuels or depletes a lived consciousness of the inhumanity, irrationality or simply unsatisfying nature of current arrangements and the impulse to make a different order of things? What sustains a willingness to risk becoming different kinds of beings, a desire to alter the architecture of the social world from the perspective of being disenfranchised in it, a conviction that the goods of the current order are worth less than the making ofadifferent order? It is this capacity to develop and sustain a critique and a vision of the alternatives that contemporary capitalism undermines so effectively with its monopoly on the Real and the imaginable, with the penetration of its values into every crevice of social and subjective existence, and with its capacity to discursively erase if not concretely eliminate alternative perspectives and practices. Without another conscious vantage point from which to perceive, criticize and counter the existing order of things, a vantage point Herbert Marcuse argued largely vanished in post-War capitalism, it is almost impossible to sustain a radical vision as realistic or as livable.11 And it is almost impossible to fight for something not on the liberal Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 and capitalist agenda, a fight largely incompatible with seeking freedom from that agenda.

In the Euro-Atlantic world, there was one decade in the last half century in which this other dimension was carved out in the form of political subcultures. The political parallax 9 upheavals and formations of the Sixties included the production of a cultural-political and epistemological outside that allowed utopian visions to stake more than utopian claims, to be sustained by and partially lived out in the subcultures themselves. In Eastern Europe, this decade came later and had a different political valence, one fuelled by the ambition to topple state communism and one whose utopian vision was limned by the imagined (and overdrawn) freedom of ‘the West’.12 In both cases, though, what was so heady about these cultural-political formations, what made their risks and deprivations utterly worthwhile to the participants, was not merely the anticipation of a beautiful new world to come nor merely the effect of a popular political potency rarely felt in late modernity – it is not clear that either Sixties radicals in the West or Eighties dissidents and intellectuals in the East felt such potency much of the time. Rather, in both cases, a radical protest of the status quo was lived out in a highly charged subculture that was as libidinally compelling as a group experience can be, a revolutionary erotics that paradoxically bound its participants precisely by inciting challenges to all conventional bonds – those containing intellectual work within the academy, those restricting love and sex to the family, and above all, those separating Eros, politics, ideas and everyday existence from one another. When poetry becomes political, when politics becomes erotic, when thinking is de-commodified and comes to feel as essential to life as food and shelter, not only do ordinary fields of activity become libidinally charged, but this desublimated condition itself betokens (however illusorily) an emancipated world to come. This revolutionary awakening of the mind and the senses carries (however falsely) a promise of living beyond repression, alienation, compartmentalization, indeed beyond settled forms or institutions tout court.Itisdifficult to avoid nostalgia for the irreverent and transgressive spirit coursing through these subcultures … brief, out-of-history times when all social practices – from marriage to literature to architecture – are open to rethinking and refashioning. Boundary smashing Eros saturates the social form … which is also why it cannot last.

However problematically, this formation of political life and possibility carried at its heart attachment to both political and individual transformation, a deep conviction about the possibility of making humans differently, and pleasure in both the powers of critique and of collective action. Revolutionary feminism promised that we could become new women and men, that we could literally take in hand the conditions that produce gender and then produce it differently, that not simply laws and other institutions could be purged of gender bias but that humans themselves could be produced beyond gender as history has known it. Nor was this revolutionary feminist impulse circumscribed only by feminism’s second wave and its convergence with the New Left. Rather, it can be traced from Wollstonecraft to feminists of the French and Russian Revolution to novelists, poets and theorists of the revolutionary moment of the second wave in North America and Europe. This was feminism that imagined humanity one day free of gender as a social production, just as the ideal of communism figured humanity not simply emancipated from class but free of domination by necessity. Androgyny was one version of this feminist vision but there Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 were other formulations that worked with the possibility of difference delinked from subordination.

As philosophically and politically naive as this belief appears in retrospect, we are still compelled to ask: what is feminism without it, without the conviction that the Brown 10 deep conditions of gender subordination – and not only the laws that encode it or the norms that regulate it – can be identified and transformed? What suspicion about the naturalness of gender subordination persists when feminism addresses only the wrongs done to women and not the socially produced capacity for women to be wronged,to be victims? What inevitable entanglement with a politics of ressentiment tinges feminism if the problem is always one of how women are treated by power, if the fix always entails taming power (obtaining protection through law or regulation), if we cannot figure a world in which we imagine governing ourselves and imagine release from the identity that has been the site of our injury? Feminism without revolution means giving up on seizing the conditions through which gender is made, and it is the illusion of such a seizure – the illusion that the conditions are distinct, objectifiable and could be taken in hand – that we have necessarily abandoned. If we learned from de Beauvoir that women are made not born, it was first Marxist, then psychoanalytic and then Foucauldian feminism that illuminated not only how extensive and elaborate but finally how beyond human grasp this making is, the degree to which it is bound up not just with attitude, law and custom, not just with a sexual division of labour, not just with racial, caste and class stratifications, not even just with the psychic economies of families and their deposits in gendered subjectivities, but also with myriad social norms buried in discursively organized practices ranging from motherhood to microchip assembly to the military. If revolution was undermined by the collapse of Enlightenment formulations of social totality, reason, truth, freedom, progress and history, it was also undone by a confrontation with the subterranean byways and nesting places of power, and with power’s intangible, dispersed, unconsolidated and non-unified operations. Yet feminism without revolution, conjoined with theories of intricate social construction, comes close to producing a critique of male dominance with almost no exit. Only fools call this situation the ‘triumph of biology’ though clearly the fools have the monopoly on the press these days13.

But what precisely killed the revolutionary spirit of second wave feminism? This question is inseparable, of course, from what dispersed or destroyed the more general radical spirit of that epoch, a story too complex to rehearse here. There are specifics for feminism, though, worth considering. First, even as revolutionary feminism itself gave birth to lesbian separatism and various feminist nationalisms based in race and ethnicity, in crucial ways these offspring had a more conservative Weltanschauung than their progenitors – tending toward the consolidation rather than the disruption of identity, often inward turning in their politics, less consistently critical of capitalism and liberalism, more inclined toward interest-bound reformism than with propounding a comprehensive vision for society. It goes without saying that these movements importantly expanded the operative substantive definitions of woman and feminism. To identify politically conservative tendencies in these movements does not vitiate this achievement; rather it refuses to index the radicalism of a political programme according to this achievement. Certainly it is possible to expand the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 subject of feminism while narrowing feminism’s political vision.

Second, within the academy, there were serious consequences of the contingent historical fact that sexuality studies emerged as revolutionary feminism waned. For all of its intellectual and political fecundity, sexuality studies often hit a slightly parallax 11 reactionary note on the question of transforming male dominant regimes of gender. This was not simply ignorance or misogyny on the part of an initially male-dominated academic industry, although these were present and took their toll, but rather a consequence of the erotics carried in existing gender arrangements. Here, Catharine MacKinnon must be credited with grasping something important and deadly about sexual life in male dominant regimes: the eroticization of gender subordination constitutes the major (not the only) erotic economy of such regimes. So, when the focus is on the politics of sexuality rather than the politics of sexism, that which aims to eliminate gender subordination by undermining the grounds and performance of gender difference can appear at the same time to be opposing sexual pleasure. Thus does revolutionary feminism come to be figured as anti-sexual, and thus does a certain reification of gender difference (regardless of how it is distributed across biologically sexed bodies) appear as a means of reappropriating the erotics that feminism would otherwise seem to degrade or aim to eliminate.

Third, feminism emerging from the Third World and the former Soviet Bloc was routinely represented in the West as uninterested in or even hostile to critiques of femininity or compulsory heterosexuality, and consequently, as uninterested in critiques of the family, marriage, gendered subjectivity, etc. When combined with many Third World feminists’ suspicion of male ‘revolutionaries’ and the overt hostility of many Chinese, Russian and East European feminists to Marxist regimes and to the infelicitous communist state regulation of gender and the family, feminism in the Second and Third Worlds came to be figured as an indictment of a decadent radicalism of First World feminism.

Taken together, these three sources of rejection of revolutionary Euro-Atlantic feminism tarred it as self-indulgent, white, unconnected to the real needs of most of the world’s women, and/or as opposed to pleasure and anti-sexual. But the forces disintegrating revolutionary feminism did not only come from without. Within Western feminist theory, poststructuralist insights were the final blow to the project of transforming, emancipating or eliminating gender in a revolutionary mode. This may seem counter-intuitive when such insight is often considered responsible for theorizing gender as a resignifiable and at least modestly flexible fiction, and makes such rich use of the Nietzschean-Foucauldian understanding that regimes of domination inadvertently produce subversive subjects and forms of agency opposed to such regimes. The point is not that poststructuralism undermines the project of transforming gender but that it illuminates the impossibility of seizing the conditions making gender as well as the impossibility of escaping gender. Indeed, in its very challenge to the line drawn in the revolutionary paradigm between ‘conditions’ and ‘effects’ it undermined the possibility of objectifying those conditions and of conceiving agents who could stand outside them to transform them. Moreover, poststructuralist feminism’s appreciation of the psychic coordinates and repetitions constitutive of gender locate much of its production in social norms and deep Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 processes of identifications and repudiations only intermittently knowable to its subjects, even less often graspable, and thus unsuited to a paradigm of transformation premised upon seizing and eliminating the conditions producing and reproducing gender. Certain gender conventions or norms might be resisted, subverted or resignified but resistance and resignification are not equivalent to a transformation Brown 12 of the conditions of gendered erotics, conditions that are no longer posited as outside of its subjects, and hence are not ours to mastermind but at best only to resist or negotiate.

Thus, gender is regarded (and lived) by contemporary young scholars and activists raised on poststructuralism as something that can be bent, proliferated, troubled, resignified, morphed, theatricalized, parodied, deployed, resisted, imitated, regulated … but not emancipated. Gender is very nearly infinitely plastic and divisible, but as a domain of subjection with no outside, it cannot be liberated in the classical sense and the powers constituting and regulating it cannot be seized and inverted or abolished. In one crucial respect, then, gendered regimes can be seen to share a predicament with global capitalism: each is available to almost any innovation and possibility except freedom, equality and collective human control. Each is beyond the reach of revolution.

iii. Beyond Revolution

Historically outmoded, exhausted as an ambition, ruptured as political ontology, discredited by contemporary political epistemology – revolution is unquestionably finished. Why, though, would we mourn it? Quite simply, this death seems to carry with it our dreams for a better world. Notwithstanding much brave left talk about ‘localism’, ‘coalition politics’, ‘postidentity politics’ and ‘resistance’, without revolution, it is hard to see how our political labours – intellectual or otherwise – enable the transformation of the current order into a more just, free and egalitarian one. Our critique of the present is not matched by prospects for transformation – there are neither credible alternatives nor credible roads to them. A severe critique that does not articulate with anticipation of a different future … an illness with no cure … how to proceed when this has become our condition? What, under these circumstances, are the alternatives to despair, melancholy or resignation?

Most common today is the impulse to retrench the critique to fit the apparent horizon of possibility. ‘Don’t criticize what you cannot change’ or ‘don’t dwell on the problem if you don’t have a solution’ are the unspoken maxims of the age. Accordingly, a substantive critique of capitalism (and not just its putatively recent ‘globalized’ form), critiques of marriage and the family, critiques of mass mediated culture, indeed critique itself, have all largely fallen off a left intellectual and political agenda. But such retrenchment only compounds left despair insofar as reconciliation to the contours and content of the present abandons the unique political orientation of the left itself, one that calls into question existing social arrangements to argue for more just and humane ones. So, what possibilities are there for living and working, without bitterness or disavowal, in this difficult theoretical and political place, this place of critique that exceeds realizability, of indicting more than we can redress or replace? Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 What as yet unpracticed political sensibility is required to dwell here?

A second widespread inclination is to blame our stymied condition on ‘Them’ (the neoCons, the Right, the Feminist Backlashers, various political or corporate Masters of the Universe) or on some loathed part of ‘Us’ (sectarian identity politics, parallax 13 poststructuralism). This move forecloses attention to what has brought us to this pass and also limits discernment of troubling political formulations and formations borne from it, e.g. rejection of critique, state-centred reformism that veers into intensified regulation, or left feminist politics reduced to relatively impotent protest and complaint. Moreover, the impulse to blame and complain tends to displace any impulse to develop strategies for the assumption of power; it necessarily entrenches rather than repairs from the condition it bemoans. Its very crankiness is a recognizable symptom of mourning.

If the modality of political transformation in modernity was revolution, what lies beyond it? What is the ‘beyond’ of this loss and how does the loss itself open the field of this beyond? What are the possible postrevolutionary modalities of radical political and social transformation in our time? Revolution was always finest in its opening of possibility, in the sensibility and practices of political risk, imagination, upheaval, questioning and vision this opening incited. By contrast, the lowest point in revolution was usually its furious will to power distilled into fundamentalism – Bolshevik authoritarianism, the Cultural Revolution, Napoleon and/or the Terror, in its own way even the Constitutional Convention of the United States. The ‘non- political’ revolutions – scientific, industrial, informational – also inverted their emancipatory impulse as they achieved hegemony or took institutional root; as each regime contains critique, delimits what is thinkable, sayable and doable, erects its truth as deities. Every revolution’s Thermidor arrives with ferocious certainty about what should follow the openings produced by upheaval, about how the promise will be realized, about the indifference of the means to the end; this surety precisely reverses the spirit of upturning and opening, of keening toward an uncertain future that makes revolutionary intellectual and political agitation so heady and fecund, so full of imagination and possibility. How, then, to cultivate the fecundity of revolutionary opening without the revolutionary push toward the knowable and the controllable? How to cultivate this remainder of revolution in the form of a utopian imaginary stripped of its promise to redeem the past and be realized in the future? Above all, how to suspend this utopian impulse in a different temporality such that it could fuel rather than haunt or taunt left political life in our time? Our task would seem to be that of prying apart an exuberant critical utopian impulse from immediate institutional and historical solutions so that the impulse can survive stumbling, disorientation, disappointment and even failure and so that the impulse remains incitational of thought and possibility rather than turning fundamentalist. The task, then, would be to recuperate a utopian imaginary in the absence of a revolutionary mechanism for its realization such that this imaginary could have a political use, that is, participate in the making of social transformation and not only constitute an escape from the felt impossibility of such transformation. Such a recuperation locates a radical politics apart from left fundamentalism on the one side, and apart from the refusal to reckon with deep social and economic powers entailed in liberal political

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 pluralism on the other. This is the political ground between postrevolutionary despair or paralysis and resignation to liberal reformism itself no longer convincing in its narrative of incrementalism. A radical democratic critique and utopian imaginary that has no certainty about its prospects or even about the means and vehicles of its realization, that does not know what its imagined personae will be capable of – this Brown 14 would seem to be the left political sensibility that could give our mourning a productive postrevolutionary form.

iv. Feminism and Women’s Studies Beyond Sex and Gender

Women’s studies ‘beyond sex and gender’ does not seem to me a right naming of our problem. Rather, the very perception of it as a problem is a symptom of a condition in which women’s studies has not simply lost its revolutionary impulse but turned against this impulse, against its desire to have done with these objects. It is a symptom of a condition in which feminism’s investment in its own career advancement has replaced the political impulse to overthrow itself, to lose its boundaries both by becoming part of a larger order of transformative politics and by being washed away in such politics. So what if we folded women’s studies ‘beyond sex and gender’ into recuperating the project of emancipating sex and gender, thereby breathing a renewed emancipatory spirit into women’s studies? This requires shaking off nostalgia for the Big Bang theory of social change, a nostalgia which generates either hopelessness or conservatism, often amounting to the same thing in the form of resignation. But, perhaps even more importantly, this requires a certain dwelling in that state of mourning in which a seemingly unendurable loss is also the opening of possibility to live and think differently. For this, we have to understand not only what has been lost, but also who we now are as thinking, political beings who were both formed by and lost a certain critical promise. In mourning a dead promise, we also have the gift of being able to parse the promise, distinguishing what we want to carry with us as a life force from what, at best, is hard knowledge or painful de-idealization.

On the one hand, only by stumbling, only by feeling what one depended on before and with what one can now replace that dependency does a mourning being begin to discern possibility in loss, in being free of an object which seemed like life itself. If we are without revolutionary possibility today, we are also free of revolution as the paradigm of transformation: what new political formations might be born from this moment? On the other hand, avowing our loss allows us to cultivate the memory – and with Benjamin, ignite that memory – of the utopian imaginary of the revolutionary paradigm and so make that imaginary part of our knowledge for working in the present, not just a lament about the unrevolutionary present. What if feminism ‘beyond sex and gender’ could become a site for recuperating utopian aims without the mechanism of revolution? What if it could become the site for developing postrevolutionary modalities of political thought and practice? What if we let our objects fly?

Notes

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 1 This paper was the keynote lecture for the United Hartouni, Gail Hershatter, Helene Moglen and Kingdom Women’s Studies Network Conference, Joan W. Scott. ‘Beyond Sex and Gender: The Future of Women’s 2 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo Studies?’ September 19–21, 2002, in Belfast, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938), p.60. Northern Ireland. For their critical readings and 3 ‘The dead seize the living!’, Karl Marx, ‘Preface suggestions, I am grateful to Judith Butler, Valerie to the First German Edition’ in F. Engels [ed], parallax 15 Capital, Volume 1, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling differently, revolutionary feminism carried the (New York: International Publishers, 1967), p.9. conviction that masculinist values in every venue 4 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Viking could be uprooted and replaced. These included Press, 1965), pp.29, 34. values that overtly governed and produced gender 5 Arendt, On Revolution, pp.50–51. but also those comprising the historical anatomy 6 Karl Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in Robert of war, diplomacy, business, sexuality, the liberal Tucker [ed], The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition state, the family, public and private, and more. (New York: Norton, 1978). Revolutionary feminism’s aim to transform the 7 ‘What from [the French Revolution onward] nature of public and economic life, and not simply has been irrevocable, and what the agents and to obtain an equal place for women in it, is spectators of revolution immediately recognized as routinely occluded in the endless spate of writing such, was that the public realm – reserved, as far that ties feminism’s current lack of cache to its as memory could reach, to those who were free, failure to address the difficulty of balancing work namely carefree of all the worries that are and family. (Most recent in the genre is an essay connected with life’s necessity, with bodily needs – by Kay S. Hymowitz in which she attributes not ff should o er its space and its light to this immense just the decline but the death of feminism to its majority who are not free because they are driven failure to reckon with ‘biology and ordinary by daily needs […]. The notion of an irresistible bourgeois longings’. ‘The End of Herstory’, City, movement, which the nineteenth century soon was Vol. 12, Numberk 3, Summer 2002.) But feminism to conceptualize into the idea of historical necessity, in a revolutionary mode never intended to address echoes from beginning to end through the pages this difficulty; rather, it sought to transform the of the French Revolution’. Hannah Arendt, On order that made balancing work and family Revolution, p.48. women’s problem in the first place and impossible 8 Gillian Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge in the second. It did not ask how to solve this University Press, 1966), pp.125–9. problem within existing parameters but rather, 9 Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law, p.130. asked what arrangements of work, love and kinship ff 10 Karl Marx, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, would o er a more richly humane satisfaction of a in Robert Tucker [ed] Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd variety of human desires and needs. The fact that edition (New York: Norton, 1978), p.477. this utopian impulse is now routinely (mis)cast 11 Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: as feminists’ eschewal of fixed psychic and Beacon Press, 1964). biological coordinates testifies to how thoroughly 12 Miglena Nikolchina, ‘The Seminar: Mode incomprehensible, indeed, unthinkable, a d’emploi. Impure Space in the Light of Late revolutionary political spirit and worldview is today, Totalitarianism’ diVerences: a journal of cultural feminist how thoroughly both have vanished from the studies, Volume 13, Number 1, (Spring 2002). popular imagination, and at the same time how 13 In addition to the belief that we could become relentlessly reified and naturalized existing social new women and men, that gender could be made arrangements have become.

Wendy Brown teaches political theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent books include States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, 1995); Politics Out of History (Princeton, 2001), and Left Legalism/Left Critique, co-edited with Janet Halley (Duke University Press, 2002). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009

Brown 16 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 17–20

Mourning a Metaphor: The Revolution is Over

Martin Jay

‘Revolution’, it should be recalled, began its extraordinary career as a metaphor borrowed from astronomy, which had only recently revised its understanding of what in the heavens really revolved around what.1 In medieval Latin, revolutio signified a return or rolling back, often implying a cyclical revolving in time. This was its meaning, for example, in Copernicus’s famous treatise of 1543 De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Although its earliest political uses have been detected in mid-14th century Italy, the term did not come into its own in the lexicon of politics until the upheavals of l7th-century England, when ‘reformation’, losing its power as a way to characterize the tumultuous events of the day, settled into its now conventional role as a term of art for religious changes alone. By the l650s, pamphleteers like Marchamont Nedham were using ‘revolution’ to define and defend the Cromwellian regime, while royalists like James Howell were identifying it with calamity. By l688, even moderate and bloodless regime changes could be called revolutions, and indeed glorious ones at that.

Although other terms, such as ‘rebellion’, ‘sedition’, ‘revolt’ and ‘overturning’, vied for prominence, ‘revolution’ apparently won out for two reasons. First, many of the most prominent activists of the day understood their goal as the restoration of an earlier benign order that had been usurped by an innovating tyrant, who sought to undo the achievements of previous generations. Insofar as celestial revolutions of the planets around the sun involved a circular or elliptical return to a previous place of origin, the political usage of the term fit perfectly with the fiction that nothing radically new was being attempted, just a return to a lost, lamented past. Thus, the seemingly modern notion of revolutionary change grew out of a very pre-modern notion of restoring a cosmopolitical harmony that seemed temporarily out of tune.

Second, the grandeur of celestial rotations, their occurring on a level of cosmic magnitude, lent an awesome power to the events understood as revolutionary. Like the wheel of fortune turning inexorably on its axis, revolutionary change could be understood as happening beyond the power of men to affect its course, however much they may work to speed up its pace or slow it down. Overwhelmed by events

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 whose violence and unpredictability seemed impossible to comprehend, men found in the metaphor of revolution a useful way to express their feelings of relative insignificance in the face of powers beyond their control. Indeed, some of the pathos of the putative connection between astral events and their human counterparts,

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000064964 17 which lingered in astrological thinking, may have reinforced the sense of destiny underlying the adoption of the metaphor. Later, when it became fashionable in certain quarters to speak of ‘permanent revolution’, the celestial roots of the metaphor covertly lent it a fated inexorability, which suggested anyone standing in the way was a King Canute trying to hold the waves back (itself a metaphor that, after all, is based on the irresistible moon-driven motion of terrestrial waters). It also made it possible to think of ‘revolution’ not only as a sudden and violent event, a rupture in normal historical happening, but also as a prolonged and sustained process that might easily outlast the lifespan of any individual actor in it.

As is typically the case with metaphors that become embedded rather than explicit, ‘revolution’s’ more literal associations soon lost their prominence as political activism grew more future-oriented and came to rely on human initiative rather than celestial fate. By the late l8th century, a utopian tomorrow rather than lamented yesterday was assumed to be the intended issue of revolution. With a linear notion of history associated with a strong notion of progress in the Enlightenment went a sense of revolution as the crossing of an epochal threshold, which could not be reversed.

Something of the metaphor’s origins occasionally, to be sure, remained lurking beneath the surface. The goal of revolutions could still be interpreted at times in restorative terms – think of William Morris’s medievalist New from Nowhere – and their inexorability could be championed by those who believed in the ‘objective’ course of history and the automatic intensification of dialectical contradictions. But slowly, the metaphoric origins of the term began to fade, as they so often do with concepts which come to be taken as direct expressions of classes of real objects or processes in the world. Nietzsche’s oft-quoted definition of concepts as ‘metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous powers, coins which have lost their pictures and now matter as metal, no longer as coins’2 certainly came to describe this numinous term. From l776 in America and l789 in France, through l917 in Russia and l949 in China, all the way perhaps until l979 in Iran, major political upheavals could be called revolutions with little or no attention paid to the astronomical origins of the term. A flood of ink was spilled by scholars attempting to anatomize and dissect the typical workings of different revolutions as if they were all variants of an objective phenomenon in the real world that could be understood in comparative terms.3

In fact, so solid did its meaning seem that ‘revolution’ itself became easily metaphorized to refer to events or processes outside of the political realm, a transfer that began perhaps as early as the coinage of ‘scientific revolution’, which seems to have begun with Fontenelle in the l720s, and ‘industrial revolution’, which can be traced to French writers in the l820s and became popular with Arnold Toynbee’s study with that title of 1884.4 Soon after, any seemingly radical or decisive change in culture as well as in economics, in fashion as well as in technology, indeed in anything that needed to be hyped as really new, could easily be called a ‘revolution’, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 and often was (and still is).

But in the last decade or so, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid feeling that the era of revolutions in their seemingly non-metaphorical political sense has drawn to a close. l989 and the collapse of the Soviet Empire betokened a rapid erosion of Jay 18 belief in it as a mechanism of redemptive politics. Although it has still been possible defiantly to assert, as does the editor of a recent anthology called Theorizing Revolution, that ‘revolutions are going to be with us to the end of history’,5 it is hard not to acknowledge a widespread deflation of enthusiasm for what they might ultimately do for human emancipation. And with that deflation has come a growing deliteralization of the term. For as Hans Blumenberg once pointed out in his discussion of the comparable decline of theological dogmatics, ‘Demythicization is in large measure nothing more than remetaphorization: the punctual kerygma [preaching the Gospel] radiates out over a circle of linguistic forms that no longer need to be taken literally’.6 The same might be happening with ‘revolution’. It is as if Nietzsche’s coins once again show their inscribed faces rather than being taken for the intrinsically valuable metal out of which they are fashioned.

With the tropic device more explicitly bared, it has become harder to believe that ‘revolution’ is an adequate way to characterize the irreversible ruptures in history that have occurred in the past and those that may still await us in the future. It has been easier instead to acknowledge the ironic insight, at least as old as de Tocqueville’s Ancien Regime and the French Revolution, that strong continuities inevitably accompany and often serve to undermine the radical intentions of revolutionaries. It has become harder to ignore that even Marx had realized the importance of the tropological underpinnings of revolutions, as he did in his bitter ruminations on the failures of the l848 revolutions in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. The first time as tragedy, the second as farce meant, after all, that revolution could involve an unheimlich – or perhaps more correctly, parodic – repetition, that even the most dialectical imagination could not fully recuperate.7 Although he continued to hope for a more decisive rupture the next time the ‘old mole’ surfaced, his disappointment at the outcome this time around allowed him to muse on the rhetorical underpinnings of revolution itself.

Even in our own day remetaphorization has for some been a painful process, producing a kind of mourning for a lost object, the supposedly real historical event that the metaphor, turned into a concept, had come to signify. It is as if without the promise of redemptive change, political activism has become a grey and uninspiring enterprise, involving unheroic compromises, hollow victories and meager results. This is not the place to rehearse arguments I’ve made before about the costs of holding on to an impossible political dream after we have awakened from dreaming it.8 Suffice here to say that realizing the metaphoric roots of ‘revolution’ need not dissuade us from seeking real, perhaps even ambitiously drastic, solutions to exigent problems. In fact, if Blumenberg’s metaphorology is right, there can never be an end to the process of metaphorization, however much we may seek to find a terminal point in a fixed concept or absolute metaphor. That is, we need metaphors – making sense of the unfamiliar by comparing it with the familiar – in all of our attempts to grapple with a world that is forever beyond our desire to render it transparently Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 clear. But we also need to acknowledge that they are no more than that, especially when they no longer do the work they once did. At times, as in the case at hand, we come to realize that we have forgotten that lesson and mistaken a trope for the real thing. But perhaps in that very realization lies a more adequate basis for political involvement, which is no longer beholden to maximalist fantasies of redemption and parallax 19 epochal transformation, fantasies whose defeat leaves us feeling impotent and lost. It may therefore be better to wander forever in the desert of metaphorical displacement than set up our camp in an oasis that proves only to be a mirage. Pardon the metaphor.

Notes

1 See the discussion in Melvin J. Lasky, Utopia and l958), p. xii, mentions the French writers of the Revolution (Chicago, l976), chapters 5 and 6. l820’s. See also Arnold Toynbee, The Industrial Although a rambling, often sloppily argued Revolution (Boston, l962). He was the uncle of the ideological tract, this book provides a wealth of famous metahistorian Arnold J. Toynbee. material about the metaphoric origins of the term 5 John Foran, ‘Introduction’, in Theorizing Revolutions on which I draw in what follows. (London, l997), p.1. He adduces the examples of 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On Truth and Lie in an the West Bank and Gaza, Algeria, Chiapas and Extra-Moral Sense’, in The Portable Nietzsche Reader, Peru, none of which has yet lead to anything [ed.] Walter Kaufmann (New York, l968), p.47. comparable to the great upheavals in the classical 3 For one useful account and critique of such age of revolutions. attempts, see Rod Aya, Rethinking Revolutions and 6 Hans Blumenberg, ‘Prospect for a Theory of Collective Violence: Studies on Concept, Theory and Method Nonconceptuality’, in Shipwreck with Spectator: (Amsterdam, l990). Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence, trans. Steven 4 On the coinage and dissemination of the idea of Rendell (Cambridge, MA., l997), p.94. a ‘scientific revolution’, see I. Bernard Cohen, 7 For an analysis of this aspect of Marx’s work, see ‘The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept Jeffrey Mehlman, Revolution and Repetition: Marx/ of Scientific Revolution’, in Journal of the History of Hugo/Balzac (Berkeley, l977). Ideas, XXXVII, 2 (April–June, l976). Raymond 8 See the title essay in my Fin-de-sie`cle Socialism and Williams, Culture and Society: 1780–1950 (New York, Other Essays (New York, l989).

Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are The Dialectical Imagination (University of California Press, l973 and l996), Marxism and Totality (Polity Press, l984), Adorno (Fontana Press, l984), Permanent Exiles (Columbia University Press, l985), Fin-de-siecle Socialism (Routledge, l989), Force Fields (Routledge, l993), Downcast Eyes (University of California Press, l993) and Cultural Semantics (Athlone Press, l998). Routledge will publish Refractions of Violence in 2003. He is currently finishing a book on the discourse of Experience in European and American thought. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009

Jay 20 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 21–26

The Future of a Defeat1

Julia Kristeva Interviewed by Arnaud Spire

Arnaud Spire. Most of the people who have expressed their views in these columns have shown that the desire for revolution is still ready to rise from its ashes. The word ‘counter-revolution’, on the other hand, has virtually disappeared from everyday language. Even the contemporary counter-revolution is described as a conservative revolution! What do you think?

Julia Kristeva. Ever since the eighteenth century, the notion of revolution has been wrongly defined as meaning destroying earlier political systems and social controls in order to promote their renewal. ‘More justice’, ‘more room for the excluded and the underprivileged’: this was the project of the French Revolution and the other revolutions – bourgeois and proletarian – that punctuated the nineteenth century. Even though it retained the cutting edge of the new, or even renaissance, ‘revolution’, defined in this sense, thus acquired a restrictive meaning and, what is more, it led to the Terror and, more seriously, to the totalitarianism that was born of the proletarian revolution. The first thing we have to do is to expand the impact of this logic of revolt by removing it from the strictly political sphere. Earlier periods spoke of the revolution of the sun and the planets, in the sense of the movement of the heavenly spheres or bodies. That meaning runs through the history of science. It implies the idea of a return to something earlier, a change of temporality, of discovery and revelation. That is the meaning of the Sanskrit root ‘vel’, which we also find in the French word ‘volume’: reading and comprehension are underpinned by the movement of turning pages, of moving from one sheet to another, of going from past to future. Similarly, anamnesis – like ‘involuntary memory’ in Proust’s ALa Recherche du temps perdu, or as we experience it on the psychoanalyst’s couch – is a revolution. It allows the subject to find new resources in his or her sensorial experiences or past traumas, and therefore to draw up a new psychic map by outlining possible life changes. The modern age is over, and we now live in a ‘planetary age’ characterized by a number of technological components: old industries continue to develop, but they are developing hand in hand with new technologies, thanks to the expansion of the media, and the globalization of both transport and the professions; in a word, the whole of humanity is being ‘globalized’. This new system of controls

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 is changing the social bond and modifying the meaning of the human. Representations are becoming uniform. Dallas is watched all over the world. We are witnessing an extinction of psychic space. I call this threat that hangs over our psyches ‘a new malady of the soul’. Men and women have difficulty in representing their

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000064973 21 conflicts. They bandage them up with images, which are the new opium of the people and which provide a temporary relief. But this facile evacuation of ill-being [mal-eˆtre] leaves room for irruptions that are not revolutions but symptoms, like psychosomatic illnesses: ulcers, cancers, eczemas, and so on. Acts of violence such as terrorism, vandalism, torching cars in the suburbs … are also expressions of this ill-being. So are drugs: the conflict is drowned out in the experience of an oceanic pleasure that disconnects individuals both from themselves and from others. This threat of the extinction of psychic space for human beings is characteristic of the planetary age. So is depression. Before we reach the stage of serious clinical depression, which we treat with neuroleptics or ECT, we find more benign forms: a widespread neurotic tendency towards depression that can take the form of actual depression. It consists in losing interest in social life, in turning in on oneself and blaming ‘business’, in disregarding the social bond as a whole and, finally, in finding – in manic fashion – the scapegoat who is responsible for all society’s ills. I would also include in this picture of the symptomatology of the planetary age the role played by images, in so far as they are a substitute for psychic representations. We can see this in the famous Loft Story [the French equivalent to Big Brother], which many people deny watching but which does fulfil a psychic need. It owes its phenomenal success to the fact that it reveals the existence of a population that finds it impossible to share its lived experiences and conflicts with any partner, given the collapse of family and societal ties. The screen certainly offers an extremely crude psychic substitute, but it does give its audience the feeling of being validated in their inner selves, of existing. Before we accuse participants in Loft Story of having sold themselves to the commercial media we ought to be asking ourselves what we can offer them to remedy this lack of representation, recognition and authentication. In this context, the question of ‘desire for revolution’ raised by Lignes expresses a real lack. I see it as a reaction to what I have described, in my own language, as a destruction of psychic space, an extinction of singular and creative individual representations, and the absence of any social and political project. Is Revolution THE answer to that absence? I don’t think so. Personally, I think that the word masks an absence of memory and lacks any therapeutic dimension. I think that the social bond should be a bond that takes into account of individual unhappiness and gambles on the ability able to stay with everyone throughout their individual suffering and possibilities. Are we capable of adopting what we now call a ‘neighbourhood politics’ [‘politique de proximite´’], or in other words individualized care, without any of the hysterical outbursts implied by the words ‘revolution’ and ‘counter-revolution’ alike? Can the modernization of social life still find expression in a revolutionary manifesto which, rather than optimizing reforms, might pave the way for a French Berlusconi? That seems to me to be a very dangerous path. On the contrary, we have to propose options that take into account the modifications of the situation and the new blind alleys, rather than indulging in demagogic talk of brighter futures. Besides, the counter-revolution has not just disappeared. It can take refuge in a counter-revolution that does not speak its name – which is why it is so malignant and so harmful – and that is content to manage economic necessity in neo-liberal Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 and technocratic ways, whilst ignoring the psychic and historical need to reduce inequalities, the need for solidarity and social justice. Personally, I would like to see the rehabilitation of the word ‘revolt’, in the sense of both a re-evaluation of the past and an openness to the future based upon a modification of individuals and a renewal of the social bond. Spire 22 AS.InLa Re´volte intime, you were already describing revolt as both jouissance and dispersal: ‘What is more, this conflict gives rise to a jouissance that does not imply a narcissistic or egotistical caprice on the part of the spoiled man of the consumer society or the society of the spectacle.’ You make it clear that the ‘modern age’ – which you date from the French Revolution – valorized the negative aspect of this retrospective return. What you do mean?

JK. Colette, who is one of my ‘feminine geniuses’, took a great interest in the ‘opening’ of plants and beings. This is a temporal dimension that we lack and which we should graft on to the term ‘revolution’, using the time of rebirth and renewal against ‘revolution’s’ time of death, vengeance and ressentiment. For me, that was the temporality of the May 68 movement, which a certain press is now trying to demonize, as though that movement were nothing more than the work of ‘paedophiles’ who had abolished all limits in the education of children, who liberated themselves in outrageous manner from the morality of the day, and who now control ministerial cabinets and the media. The only goal of this media manipulation is to close the door on the psychic need to protest, which was vital not only for our generation, which was defined by the tragedies of colonialism, but also for French society, whose contemporary renewal was inspired by the shock of 68 and which, even today, still finds it difficult to liberate itself from various practices of power – be it presidential or, more generally, administrative – that still have strong medieval and religious overtones. The upheaval of May 68 stimulated both the beginnings of modern France’s social dialogue and its openness to Europe and the world. The Americans – who do not like being demonized – have marketed the term ‘conservative revolution’. And yet no one sees them as revolutionaries. Talk of the ‘conservative revolution’ simply means that there is a groundswell of ressentiment, but when we use that expression we completely forget that the word ‘revolution’ also means the revelation of new solidarities. Left-wing movements lack a culture of ‘staying with’, of laborious thought and social renewal, which should be thought of not as the culture of neo-liberalism and management, but as the culture of care and modernization. Can’t we find ways to modify globalization that do not worship the rule of the market, but which take account of individuals, their creativity and which help us to seek new ways of living together. The ball is in our court, but we don’t know how to play the game. Even though considerable progress has been made, it seems to me that the French are still not ready to accept the new idea of ‘European sovereignty’. The road we have to take does not lead to the romantic idea of revolution, but to respect for revolt, protest, renewal and a change of temporality, provided that we carefully see that need through to its optimal realization here and now. Hence the importance, in this situation, of women, who are supposed to experience desires that are difficult to express and understand: ‘What do women want?’ There is never an answer to that question: they simultaneously feel the need to help the other and to find ways of living together. Recognition of the psychic need for revolt alone will obviously not provide a political solution: there is still a long Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 way to go. Stressing the providential implications of the term ‘revolution’ can give rise to new illusions and lead us into new blind alleys. Who can predict the future of a defeat? It is important not to confuse psychic need and aesthetic creativity with political realism. We are moving towards democracies in which delegation will develop continuously. There will of course be a need for a social class that devotes parallax 23 itself to management, and for political ‘specialists’, but perhaps there will be less and less need for them; this is what we now call ‘neighbourhood politics’: the running of universities, local councils, the city, the city of Paris and its arrondissements will mobilize more and more citizens. This is a form of revolution, but as you can see, there is nothing flamboyant about it, and it presupposes that everyone pays careful attention to others. It presupposes a reform of the bond, and a practice of politics as devotion, care or attentiveness. This implies taking risks, but they are less spectacular than those of the past; they are minute, day to day risks, and they mean that everyone must always be ready to accept responsibilities. It seems impossible. But what if the society of the spectacle were, even without realizing it, bringing about its own abolition? One of the society of the spectacle’s antinomies is beginning to crystallize in people’s concern with self-expression. Given the specularization of private space, we have to understand the desire to retreat into private life, with all the pain, secrecy and impossibility that implies.

AS. Don’t you think that you are in a sense gambling on the minimal? I quite understand that a desire for revolution is characteristic of what we feel in a period of conservative regression, to the extent that it seems difficult to focus one’s desire on what one already has in abundance. You do not desire your nose, because in the middle of your face … Does desiring revolution constitute the subject in a historical period that is short on revolution and which encourages romanticism? It’s a bit like those pictures of Che on t-shirts.

JK. Do the people who wear them have any idea of the memory Che expressed in the historical situation of his day? His image now functions as a designer logo, but at the same time it does mean that there is some discontent. But what discontent? Che Guevara’s face has been turned into money. Calculation continues to gain ground on thought, and it is annexing everything that stands in its way, including the memory of a revolutionary. Besides, the idea of revolution, as defined by the labour movement after the bourgeois revolutions, is an idea that derives from Christian eschatology and which promises, at little expense, a brighter future. The only difference is that Christianity imagined a hell as well as a heaven. The revolution never thought about its hell; it merely promised heaven … Are revolutionaries still willing to risk going to the hell they never thought of ? What you call betting on the minimal expresses my concern with treating ill-being, and that is not a metaphysical problem but a social and political reality that demands a realistic solution. No trendy t-shirts, and no demagogic slogans. But all sorts of movements of revolt and protest, so as to ensure that social democracy, which is always tempted to merge into neo- liberalism, does not lapse into simply managing the new world order.

AS. You realize that you are proposing the destruction of a heritage?

JK. When a historical reality that raised so many hopes, and which did realize some Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 of them, is a failure – as is the case with the communist revolution – is it possible to disentangle the living logic that inspired it from the blind alley into which it led? I detect in all revolutions an echo of the Oedipal revolt the child attempts to stage against the paternal law in order to free its own autonomy. In that perspective, Freud saw in revolt the act that founded civilization, as he assumes that it was precisely Spire 24 the brothers’ revolt against the ‘tyranny’ of the primal father that turned barbarism into a social pact which respected an ‘authority’. In contrast, the institution of revolutionary violence as a political practice, the destruction of the thought of economic rationality and even the social bond, which is potentially both renewable and liberating, now seem to be inseparable from revolutionary ideology. The planetary age is a post-revolutionary age: it invites us to imagine a social pact that will lead neither to a rejection of the logic of the market nor to the calculation and management of profits, but which can preserve intact the possibility of rebirth and renewal, of personal and collective surprise. The point is to upset globalization with the expression of our revolts whilst avoiding a romantic extremism which, in the modern context, shuts the door on reform and justifies, a contrario, a managerial conservatism that most people see as the final bulwark against the disorder of archaic revolutionaries. Rather than falling into that trap and failing once again, can the far left contribute to the modernization of the planetary age in the sense in which the French revolution understood modernization in its day: making modernity more humane, more respectful of the poverty and creativity of all? This is much more difficult than revolutionary flights of fancy, but it could mean a social and political philosophy in the form of ‘neighbourhood therapy’. Hannah Arendt dreamed of a politics based upon aesthetic judgement. I would say that the planetary age demands of us a politics based upon therapeutic patience. If it is to remain true to the heritage of solidarity you mention, the far left’s vocation might well be to ‘repair’ the damage done by revolution and globalization. Melanie Klein deduced from her patients that all thought, all bonds and all creation is a result of the reparation made for violence and destructiveness. So, is reparation the only solution?

AS. Having chosen three writers – Aragon, Sartre and Barthes – as concrete illustrations of your concept of inner revolt, you began to write a trilogy of ‘the feminine genius’: Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein and Colette. But don’t all three women rebel against any collective expression of their revolt? They therefore do not have to ask themselves what the object of their desire might be if they were not in revolt … .

JK. I do not know if I am able to answer your question in overall terms. I am currently writing the conclusion to Le Ge´nie feminin. It is true that there are some convergences between the three women, despite the proliferating and divergent specifics that inspire them. All three are, for example, extremely attached to ‘the bond’: the bond with the object, the bond of love, the bond with the child and the social bond. Writing after the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt strove to save the social bond, and she proposes a practice of philosophy that is inseparable from political life, understood as a contract, based upon judgement, promise and pardon, between individual and renascent beings. She rejects the egocentric and poetic isolation of the melancholic philosopher and insists on narrative, a collective memory constructed by free individuals within the bonds established by the polis. Melanie Klein thought Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009 that even the new-born child is not narcissistic, but lives only through the bond with the mother. When it loses that object, it replaces or repairs it through discourse. And that is how the child enters the specifically human dimension of thought freedom, and even creative solitude. Colette, who constantly experimented with love, even though she also said that she was trapped by her experiments, writes this astonishing parallax 25 phrase: ‘One of the great banalities of existence – love – withdraws from our memory: when we emerge from that, we notice that everything else is gay, varied and exists in the plural.’ She means that, beyond the eroticism of the couple, there lies her infinite greed for being, and for literature. All three ladies are proposing a new temporality, and it is not that of ressentiment but that of opening, and this time is the maternal time of birth as a loss of passion: there are times in the life of a woman at which extreme eroticism is transformed into a distant caring that allows the other – the child – to exist as an autonomous being, to speak and to accede to its own life. The removal of passion from passion is a magnificent moment, which they succeed in transforming into the bliss of thinking and writing. For Melanie Klein, it takes the form of a therapy for thought. For Hannah Arendt, it is the freedom to breathe within the social pact itself. For Colette, it is the wonderment inspired by the cosmic renewal of the sexual bond in the French language. In all three cases, the accent is on life rather than destructiveness. Can these three feminine figures help us always to remember that humanity’s great problems will be resolved only when we understand the singularity of every life? Can politics hear what they are saying? Translated by David Macey

Note

1 This paper was first published in French in L’Humanite´ (2nd July 2001).

Julia Kristeva is Professor at the Universite´ de Paris VII, and a practicing psychoanalyst. She has written numerous critical essays and several novels. Her most recent publications include Le Ge´nie feminin, tome 3 : Colette (Fayard), Intimate Revolt (Columbia University Press) and the interview Micropolitique (Editions de l’Aube).

Arnaud Spire is a philosopher and a regular contributor to L’Humanite´ where he was a member of the chief editorial staff (1985 – 1998). He is the author of many books including La pense´e-Prigogine (Descle´e de Brouwer) and Marx, cet inconnu (Descle´e de Brouwer).

David Macey is a translator and the author of Frantz Fanon: A Life (2000) and The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory (2000). The latest of his numerous translations from French is Abdelmalek Sayad: The suVerings of the immigrant (forthcoming for Polity Press). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:54 18 November 2009

Spire 26 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 27–41

Seeing the Revolution, Seeing the Subject

Rado Riha

Is there something to be gained by asking questions about mourning revolution? It would perhaps be more interesting to take a closer look at the duplicity involved in the subject proposed by parallax’s editors for our reflection. For my part, I feel unable to pronounce the two terms – mourning revolution – if I may say so, in the same breath. Indeed, the text that follows is an attempt at getting beyond today’s complacent or nostalgic pronouncements about the end of all emancipatory politics and revolutionary projects whatsoever. My opening remark concerns itself therefore with the very formulation of the proposed subject. I shall content myself with stressing what has not, perhaps, been sufficiently brought out, namely that in the present conjuncture of ‘globalization’, characterized by the alliance of capitalism and liberal democracy, i.e. in a conjuncture that knows no outside nor limit, the revolution conceived of as an immanent interruption is more appropriate than any other issue for theorizing about politics. And if there is no question more topical today, in theorizing about politics, than the question of the revolution, this is precisely because the space has become global. This does not simply signify an increase in scope, but the emergence on the surface of that which is in play in the depths – the disruptive power of violence – so that the question of the revolution is none other than the question of how politics is possible today. Not just any politics of course, but politics which remains incompatible with both positive politics, i.e., the institutionalized politics of the state in the broadest sense, and the negative politics of the ‘civil society’ which establishes the limits for the state politics in either a ‘civilized’ dialogue or a violent confrontation with the former, thus defining the realm of that which, for the state politics, should be possible at all.1 Here also, we should not be too hasty in either situating a politics centred around the revolution in some indefinite domain beyond the positive and the negative politics, or in identifying it with a ‘radical critique of everything that exists’, a critique which, by refusing to recognise the reality of the state institutions and therefore all communication with it, by refusing to dirty its hands with empirical politics, is forced to adopt the position of the beautiful soul.

I must now pose the question of the exact status of the politics articulated in the revolution. I shall advance the following thesis: at issue here is a politics that fully

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 recognises the fact that, in the current conjuncture of liberal capitalism, positive and negative politics occupy the whole of the political field. At the same time nevertheless it adamantly rejects the idea that the two dominant modes of politics now constitute the entirety of politics. This fissure in the field of politics in which emancipatory

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000064982 27 politics can find its only place results from the very logic of the not-all: due to the structural lack of an ultimate ‘transcendent’ instance, all attempt to totalize the political co-existence of men into a whole is condemned to failure.

Hence, the condition of the possibility of a revolutionary politics is precisely the recognition of the not-all of politics. Proceeding from this fundamental assumption it follows that a politics can only be designated as a revolutionary politics or a radical democratic politics, in so far as it is conceived of as an act, a break with a given situation aiming at the invention of a new way of being. The act that is at issue here is not to be confused with a creatio ex nihilo, nevertheless it implies a way of handling the nothing, a sort of savoir-faire with that absence of the ultimate condition, to which this politics is committed.

My second remark concerns the mourning. It is probably not much of an exaggeration to say that revolution is today almost literally unthinkable according to the prevailing codes – both political and philosophical – of left-wing Western writing. Faced with the collapse of ‘actual socialisms’ at the end of the 20th century, a century whose beginning was marked by a revolutionary hope, as well as with a knot of questions, expectations, and anxieties, the revolution as a political and theoretical issue for the international left today can only appear refracted through the prism of the bitter experience of these failed, betrayed revolutions. Does it mean that our turn-of-the-century disenchantment must content itself with mourning the loss of socialist visions? What can justifiably ground the claim by the political thought of the left, which certainly had no illusions as to the revolutionary character of actually existing socialism, that the collapse of state socialism in the former Soviet Union and in its satellites in Eastern Europe signalled the collapse of all revolutionary projects? Western radical theorists were certainly right in pointing out that the final outcome of the so-called East-European revolutions amounted to nothing more than the restoration of parliamentary democracy and capitalism. By being unable to detect anything in the collapse of communism that might contribute to theorizing emancipatory politics today, contemporary political thought has embraced a kind of generalized scepticism with regard to revolution. But, that being the case, isn’t it rather peculiar that the left-wing theorists whose revolutionary conviction remained unperturbed by the existence of actual socialism – precisely the political regime that has been considered by those very theorists to be the materialization of the failed and betrayed revolutions – pronounce only after the collapse of the Communist bloc that no revolutionary perspective will ever be seen in the future?

It seems as if thinking about the revolution was dead and buried the moment there was suddenly nothing in the field of politics to be seen to which this thought could refer. It seems as if, in the imaginary of the Left’s thought, the revolution remained definitely linked to some representable referent – in clear opposition to a fundamental revolutionary experience which is the experience of a lack of ultimate referent, an experience of action in the absence of guarantee and at the risk of disastrous error, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 an experience of the production of absence, in short, of the emergence of something which remains figureless, unpresentable, unnameable.

The collapse of existing socialism could nevertheless be seen as an event that constitutes the background for an enigmatic remark by Lacan about the task and Riha 28 destiny of psychoanalysis in globalized capitalism. According to Lacan, who clearly identifies psychoanalysis itself as the solution, the ‘way out of capitalist discourse […] will not constitute progress, if it is only for some’.2 It is paradoxical that an eminent psychoanalyst for whom there is no group psychoanalysis, except on the basis of a projection of an individualistic model, insists that the way out of capitalism instead of being reserved for the initiated few, should, on the contrary, be destined to all. To follow this line of argument, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to designate the Communist bloc as an elitist club in which only ‘some’ were admitted, those namely who succeeded in finding a way out of capitalism? And conversely, did its collapse not suddenly provide an opportunity to find a way out as a political act that is immediately universalizable?3 Deprived of an established place, such a way out would be open and ‘offered to all’ in so far as any singular project of the way out must necessarily remain aspecific or indifferent, and for precisely that reason radically egalitarian.

Wouldn’t it be necessary – in view of a spontaneous ideology of Left thought, according to which the revolution is considered to be something that can be seen, even though it may present itself in the form of a betrayed hope, a dissimulated, almost erased trace – to seriously pose this simple question: How can a revolution be seen at all? That is to say, seen precisely as revolution, i.e. as the moment of a radical interruption which, for those involved, evokes the abyss of absence, facing them with the radically contingent character of their political act, an act that transforms the realm of the possible and the visible by articulating it to that which, for this realm, seems to be impossible, unpresentable, invisible? Here an observation by Guy Debord quoted by Catherine Malabou in her inspiring reflection on the revolution can be of help. According to Debord, the dominant style ‘of the epoch is still regulated by the evident, yet concealed necessity of the revolution’4. What is revolutionary about this claim, according to Malabou, and I cannot but agree with her, is the articulation of the revolution through the evident and the concealed, the visible and the unknown. But, to repeat once more, how is it possible not only to make the unrepresentable enter into representation, the absence enter into the presence, and also, moreover, to see this? Before trying to find a satisfactory answer to this question, I propose to return to the issue of the possibility of the revolution in the current conjuncture of globalization. One can hardly dismiss the idea of future revolutions. Despite what seems to be the unlimited domination of liberal-democratic capitalism or precisely because of this domination, revolutions will certainly occur in the future. Revolutions in the sense of unpredictable, violent overthrows of a given social order or political regime, revolutions in all their diversity that we have already had the chance to encounter: ‘national’, ‘anti-bureaucratic’, ‘gender’, ‘religious’, ‘conservative’, etc. revolutions of still unknown forms, all these revolutions are not only possible but inevitable as well.

Theorizing the possibility of revolutions is not even a question on the likelihood of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 the future occurrences of revolt and insurrection. It is more than that and something else entirely. It is a question of whether in all these revolutions to come there will be anything of the revolution. This question, of course, is not new. Perhaps the experience of different forms of past revolutions actualize, for us, a question that decidedly belongs to the past, namely that addressed by Robespierre in his discourse parallax 29 of the 4th of November 1792 to the Gironde: ‘Citizens, would you want a revolution without a revolution?’.5 It is not difficult to decipher, in this question, especially as we know who has posed it, the hardly veiled threat of the revolutionary terror. But the true import of this question lies, in my opinion, elsewhere. Without going into the complex background of this question, i.e. by remaining on its surface, so to speak, by reading it literally, we might be directed to some interesting observations.

First, the revolution or, rather, its destiny is obviously linked to desire, that of the revolutionaries themselves. It would be a mistake, however, to understand this desire only as a subjective aspect of the revolution, as an expression of expectations and hopes, fears and emotions, in short, as a dimension of the revolutionary imaginary. On the contrary, the desire that is at issue here is immediately linked to the revolution, indeed, it is inseparable from it. And precisely as a constituent of the revolution, the desire for the revolution is therefore, secondly, ‘objective’, something that is, so to speak, the ‘thing itself’: it is a desire in as much as it is permeated with the revolution. Thirdly, a revolutionary – Robespierre, in this respect leaves no doubt about it – is the one who desires a revolution with the revolution. This means that a true revolutionary desire is a desire that desires itself. And finally, fourthly, what is at stake in the revolutionary desire is not only the question of what kind of revolution one wants. Rather, the revolution is really at stake when the question is posed as to how one desires. Does one desire what one wants? The revolutionary aspect of the desire hence lies in the fact that a mere desire for the revolution does not suffice for the revolution, one must, in addition, desire this desire. A revolution is thus always a revolution of the desire itself.

Robespierre’s ironic remark about the ‘revolution without a revolution’ lead us to the conclusion that for revolutionary politics to be conceivable at all, it is necessary to introduce the category of desire. By admitting desire as an immanent political category, a first step is made towards answering the question of how the revolution can be seen as such, i.e. as revolution. The revolution can be seen, I would argue, in so far as, in seeing, we desire to see, that is to say, we participate in what is seen by our desire to see. Desire to see – what? Nothing other than the desire itself. Robespierre’s exclamation could, for the present purpose, be formulated as follows: Citizens, do you wish to see revolution without the desire to see?

Before I try to illustrate this point – how it is possible to see the nothing as something – through an example drawn from painting, an additional remark is needed. The desire in question is a desire in the sense in which this term has been established in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Desire, in this view, does not belong to the register, if I may say so, of the human, to anthropology in the broadest sense, to which belong all – from reason to interests, needs and wishes – that man as a cultivated natural being needs in order to maintain himself and his species. Yet desire is that operator which renders this ‘anthropological’ dimension human by including it in the process Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 of subjectivation. There is, then, something profoundly anti-humanist about desire.

It is precisely this ‘inhumanity’ of desire which makes it possible for Lacan to assimilate desire and moral law, stating that ‘the moral law which, looked at more closely, is simply desire in its pure state, that very desire that culminates in the Riha 30 sacrifice, strictly speaking, of everything that is the object of love in one’s human tenderness’.6 Just as the moral law suspends all the ‘pathological’ mobiles of willing, desire – which is always desire for something else – in its metonymical sliding from one object to another, annihilates all of them, as none of them can satisfy it. But the fact that desire, ultimately, is desire of nothing in particular, signals that all objects of desire are related metonymically to that which animates desire and which desire tries to avoid: the cause of desire. What sets desire in motion is, no doubt, the nothing, but the embodied nothing, the nothing as something, which I propose to call the real of desire. Initially, desire is organized as a defence against that which desire itself produces as its cause. The psychoanalytical experience teaches us that in the end it is only when someone decides to try a different access to his/her desire, i.e. when he/she wants what he/she desires, that the desire’s flight from what it itself produces, its cause, comes to a halt. The access of desire to its real can best be described, although in a simplified way, as follows: as speaking beings we are always already the subjects of desire. But to be in accordance with one’s desire, or, to propose another formula, to subjectify oneself, is only possible by wanting what one desires. The act of subjectivation, which is nothing other than the act of wanting one’s desire, thus already implies a sort of rendering present of the real of desire, i.e. of showing that which was not and could never be present, of making visible that which is not and could never be seen. Claiming with Robespierre that the revolution is only possible by revolution, through desire that desires the revolution, opens up a new field for theorizing politics, namely that in which politics is conceived of as an act of political subjectivation. The introduction of the category of desire is thus a precondition for theorizing the possibility of politics today, a politics which is neither positive nor negative, but which is, as phrased by H. Arendt, the politics of ‘a capacity for beginning’, the politics of the interruption of a given situation, by operating in the nothingness or, more precisely, by producing the absence. In short, the condition for us to be able to think of politics as one of those domains of human activity where the human being can be subjectified.

II

In order to explain in more detail the desire to see, I’ll take the painting by Kasimir Malevich, Black square on White square (1915)7, as an example. Ge´rard Wajcman, in his excellent book, L’objet du sie`cle,8 illustrates the object of the century for us, with among other objects, a painting, which seems to me exemplary in a function that so curiously attracted so much reflection at the time. What Wajcman has shown in a quite admirable way is not only in what sense Black square on White square can be a pretender for the title of the object of the century,9 but also how it enables us to answer the question of the subject appropriate to such an object. It is here that I propose to show an affinity which in my view exists between the subject that emerges literally from the painting with the subject appropriate to an event such as the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 revolution. Crudely put, Malevich’s painting opens our eyes so that they may see the revolutionary subjectivity.

Two steps are needed in order to see the subject emerging from the ‘Black square’. The first one can be logically derived, the second, on the contrary, demands our parallax 31 participation as seers. I shall set out from what might be called the spontaneous reaction of a spectator facing Black square on White square, in particular, if this painting were presented to them as the object of the century. He or she would almost certainly express his or her disappointment by exclaiming, for instance: ‘So this is supposed to be the chosen object of the century? Oh well, there is not much to see, is there?! In fact, there is nothing to see!’ Yet this spontaneous reaction exposes, in the most crude way, what the true issue of the painting is. The gist of Wajcman’s argument is centred precisely around this apparently common claim: ‘There is nothing to see’. For Malevich, according to Wajcman, it is a question of making a picture of nothing, a picture of the absence of the object, of producing an object that would presentify the very absence of the object.10

For this painting tells us: there is nothing to see. ‘There is nothing to see’ is therefore to be understood literally as ‘all one can see is the nothing’.11 But this, precisely, is Wajcman’s point: One sees the nothing that is something. Black square on White square is an incarnated, materialized nothing. Thus instead of saying that there is nothing painted in the picture, it would be more appropriate to say that what is painted is precisely the nothing itself. Yet, the absence is not the main topic of the picture. The black square is not a symbol of the absence. Black square on White square is rather a picture in which the very absence is painted and, thus, rendered present. One can wonder, of course, how can the nothing be seen as something? The painting, argues Wajcman, teaches us to think with our eyes. But what are we supposed to be seeing when we think with our eyes? To answer this question Wajcman takes its title as a guiding thread. By looking at the picture and by reading its title, Black square on White square, we know that what we see is a white background from which emerges a black square. This reading brings the structure of the painting down to its elementary oppositions: foreground – background, square – background, above – below. This series of oppositions, however, is in itself ruled by the signifying logic, alternation of the signifier and its lack, i.e. the place of its inscription.

As is well known, the differential character of the signifier entails not only that a signifier relates always to another signifier, that a minimal signifying unity consists of two signifiers, but also that a signifier, even before it enters into a relation with another signifier, already refers to itself, more precisely, to its proper absence, it refers to the empty place of its inscription. Yet the relation between the signifier and the place of its inscription is an impossible relation. Although there is no signifier without the place of its inscription – for a signifier to exist, a place is needed to be inscribed in it – it is impossible for the two of them to be present at the same time12. Once the signifier emerges, the place of its inscription disappears. The fundamental axiom of the signifying logic can therefore be formulated as follows: One is always, materialistically, divided into Two. But the Two in which the One is divided is always already a subjectified Two in so far as the lack as a constitutive part of the signifier is, according to Lacan, the place of the subject itself. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 Malevich’s painting, in this respect, could be considered to demonstrate this axiom. For at stake in it is precisely a presentation of the ‘two-ness’ of the One. To paraphrase Alain Badiou, it could also be said that Malevich’s painting is literally the Scene of the Two,13 it is made to render the appearance of the Two possible. The painting Riha 32 therefore enables us to simultaneously see the signifier and the place of its inscription, the empty place of its absence, that is to say, it enables us to contemplate simultaneously the two ‘normally’ exclusive elements whose presence is ruled by the alternation of the absolute ‘either/or’.

The painting by Malevich hence teaches us how to maintain ourselves at the plane of immanence and, at the same time, how to see in it that which transcends it from within, as it were. The moment we see a black stain in Malevich’s painting, a transformation takes place: suddenly we are able to see through the black square, behind the picture, as it were. We see that what has been painted on the surface has a background, a depth, although, what meets the eye is nothing but a mere surface. The painting makes it possible for us to see, at one and the same time, the mark and the surface on which the mark is inscribed. But this is only possible by using, if I may say so, a trick: by presenting the surface itself as depth. The surface in this picture is transformed before our very eyes into the depth, yet the depth, that which is behind, is seen, in effect, in the foreground, on the surface, in the black square. Although we see through the mark black-square, in the depth, behind it, there is, strictly speaking, nothing.14 More precisely, behind the black-square mark, there is nothing but the nothing – behind the mark there is the absence of its inscription.

The mark of genius precisely consists of giving body to the nothing: this nothing is seen on the surface of the picture – as a black square. By seeing the depth, we see nothing that is not already there: there, that is, in the foreground, on the surface, in the black square. Materialistically, how can the nothing that is ‘behind’ the surface be seen? How can one see the transcendence that is at the heart of the immanence itself ? Only by seeing/realizing that behind the surface there is nothing – but the surface itself. In this precise sense it can be said that, by seeing a black square on a white square, we see the nothing as something.

The logic of the signifier thus leads us to see in the black square the painting of the nothing itself. At the same time, this picture is an obvious way, no doubt an exceptional one, and due to some moment of reflection on the part of the painter, of showing us that, as seers, we are literally called into the picture. It reflects our own nothingness in the figure of the black square, this materialization of the nothing. By postulating that behind the signifier – i.e. the empty place of its inscription – there is already a place for the subject, the logic of the signifier helps us to see the subject in the guise of a black square. The painting by Malevich can thus be called: Black square on White square or The subject is being seen.

The ‘thinking with our eyes’, evoked by Wajcman, thus proceeds in the three steps of logical time distinguished by Lacan. The initial spontaneous exclamation: ‘Black square – there is nothing to see’ is the moment of seeing. Faced with Malevich’s painting the seer is confused, in doubt as to what he/she is supposed to be seeing Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 in it. The second step is the time for understanding: by contemplating the picture the seer realises that the fact that ‘there is nothing to see’ is precisely the whole point, hence he/she might say: ‘Black square: materialization of the nothing’. The third and final step, the moment of conclusion, is when the seer realises that in order to see the painting he/she must include, as it where, himself/herself in the picture, parallax 33 hence: ‘Black square – the subject is being seen’. By contemplating Malevich’s painting, I see the birth of the subject, the subject in statu nascendi. More precisely, what I see in the black square is nothing other than myself, the seer as subject.

There, where the object of the century had been, suddenly emerges the subject. The subject emerges in the place of the painted nothing, the absence rendered present. We are, thus, dealing with a subject whose being is entirely located in a point that is but a materialization of the nothing. The subject of the century, the subject in accordance with a revolutionary politics, is a subject whose being-there, whose Da- sein, is implied in some opaque, senseless stain, in a bit of sense without meaning, such as, in our case, the stain of the black square in the painting.

This answer to the question as to how the subject, in accordance with the object of the century, is to be conceived of, is still unsatisfactory. Not, of course because the answer, the ‘subject is a sort of black square’ would be incomprehensible or even deprived of sense. By following Hegel it could be argued that the claim, the ‘subject is a black square’ makes sense in so far as the senseless stain of the black square renders the constitutive incompatibility between the subject and all its possible forms of appearance present, and it is only in this sense that it could be said that the black square is the very being of the subject. Rather, what is problematic about the given answer lies elsewhere. Namely in the fact that the figure of the subject such as has been theorized so far, is a result of a pure logical deduction. The claim ‘The subject is a black square’ is a necessary logical conclusion imposed by the signifying opposition that organises the structure of the picture.

The logical deduction of the subject is problematic because, at this level, the instance of the subject is inseparable from the mark and/or the empty place of its inscription. As a consequence, the subject and the black square form an indistinguishable One, in a word, the subject is the black square. At the level of logical deduction it can certainly be maintained that the subject is the black square to the extent that the black square, as I pointed out earlier, represents the structural incommensurability between the subject and any of its positive determinations, the incommensurability that is the very ‘substance’ of the subject. But this still does not imply that the subject is seen in the picture.

It is one thing to logically deduce the figure of the subject in the painting by Malevich. It is something quite different to see, as seer, in Malevich’s painting, the subject as the black square. My subjectified gaze is a gaze that makes me see in the black square myself, the seer – not as seer, but as subject. This second step brings us back to desire, more precisely, to the desire to see. The answer to this question is structurally analogous to that of the question of the revolution: in the painting by Malevich, the subject is seen in the black square under the condition that I, the seer, desires to see. What is meant by this answer is not simply that one sees the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 subject in this picture simply because one wants to see it, i.e. by projecting in the black square one’s expectations and wishes. The desire to see has nothing to do with the seer’s imaginary. This someone, anyone, that the seer is, not only stares at the painting, but answers to the question implied in it: ‘You want to see?’ with his/her desire to see. While there are some of whom it is said in the Bible, that they have Riha 34 ‘eyes that they might not see’, the seer who desires to see, on the contrary, has eyes that might see. He/She is not content to simply stare and see what the situation gives to see. Rather, he/she desires to see that which the situation structurally ‘conceals’. He/She desires that which represents the impossibility for the situation itself and which points in this way to its radical contingency.

The operator that reveals behind apparent necessity, a contingency, is nothing other than desire. The desire to see, in its elementary form, manifests itself as a desire to see something there where, at first sight, there is nothing to be seen. But this is precisely a fundamental characteristic of revolutionary politics: it is a politics that sees the possibility of a radical change in a given situation there where the situation renders it impossible to see anything, more precisely, to see nothing but the possibilities given by the situation itself. In this sense it could be said that the desire to see is immanently revolutionary. The revolution with the revolution, to paraphrase Robespierre, is thus the capacity to see the revolution.

The seer’s desire to see is not to be confused with a purely logical structural moment either. Desire is already implied by the signifying logic of Malevich’s picture: the black stain before our eyes, in its very perceptive appearance, signals that every mark, to borrow Wajcman’s expression, by the very fact of appearing in the field of vision conceals what is behind it,15 and that by means of this concealment, ‘causes’, provokes, the seer’s gaze, his/her: ‘I want to see’. Every mark, on this account, includes, potentially at least, a desire to see. But for a black square to ‘cause’ the desire to see, an additional condition is needed: there must be someone, to repeat once more, who desires to see. Someone who, strictly speaking, desires desire. The desire to see is a reflexive, redoubled desire: it is a desire to see that desires to see desire itself.

The desire to see is nothing other than a seer that enters into the picture. But the seer can enter into the picture only by means of an act, a decision, to see the subject as the black square. It is due to this act of decision that the subject can only appear in the picture. The seer, I will argue, sees in the black square himself/herself, not as seer, but as subject, that is to say, he/she sees himself/herself under the guise of the desire to see such as it is materialized in the black stain, a desire to see that is the ultimate presupposition of all seeing: as seer he/she disappears, as it were, in the black square, in order to be activated as the desire to see. Phrased differently, by seeing myself, the seer, as subject, I become someone who is established as the subject of desire only by desiring my desire.

The second step is thus a necessary condition under which it is only possible to see the subject in Malevich’s picture, this step which permits the seer to enter into the picture is therefore the process of subjectivation. We are dealing here with a process in which an empirical seer enters into the composition of the subject, into the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 composition of that which transcends him/her from within. Instead of saying that the subject is constituted in the process of subjectivation, I maintain that the subject is the subjectivation.16 The first step has brought us to the conclusion that the subject is, logically taken, inseparable from the stain of the black square, that all of its being, its Dasein, is in that stain. But, precisely for that reason, the subject as subject cannot parallax 35 be seen. The conclusion of the second step, ‘The subject is subjectivation’, on the other hand, indicates that the subject that is subjectivation is at the same time the subject that is seen. It is precisely the process of subjectivation which makes it possible for us to see the subject: there is subject only in so far as it can be seen.

The process of subjectivation consists, in effect, in nothing other than the establishment of a minimal distance, a separation between the subject and the point of the real in which the subject’s being is located. This distance by means of which the seer sees the subject as the black square in Malevich’s picture, may well be minimal, null, but it remains as a necessary condition for the visibility and existence of the subject. The minimal distance is attained through the spectator’s desire to see, i.e. through his/her act that suspends the black square as a senseless stain and which, at the same time, constantly affirms it as subject. The subject can be seen in Malevich’s picture only by succeeding in universalizing its inherent claim according to which there where you see nothing but a black senseless stain, there is your place as subject.

III

To resume: only in so far as the seer contemplates Malevich’s painting according to the desire to see, can the subject be seen. This subject is inseparable from the process of subjectivation as it is only by means of this process that a seer becomes a component of the subject. The figure of the subject that is seen in the picture is, at the same time, as I have argued, the figure of revolutionary subjectivity. The seeing of the subject in Malevich’s painting is an act structurally analogous to that of the decision that constitutes revolutionary subjectivity: the desire for the revolution is in itself insufficient for a revolutionary politics of emancipation to be possible at all, what is needed in addition, is the relentless desire of everyone involved to see. By this act, politics is established as a domain of political subjectivation17.

The subject constituted in the process of subjectivation, and it is around that issue that the last part of my essay is centred, can be conceived in terms of a knot linking together subjectivation, the universal and the singular. The notorious slogan of Mao ‘One always has a reason to revolt’ is a maxim of political practice particularly suitable to illustrate the functioning of this knot.18 As such it can also be considered as an exemplary case of the ‘revolution with a revolution’, appropriate for the current conjuncture. In our contemporary world, we have been witness to a widespread process of proliferation and fragmentation of social and political identities struggling to establish their, to borrow Ernesto Laclau’s term, particularity19. This process is profoundly ambiguous in as much as it implies both emancipatory potentials and potentials of extremely destructive violence.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 Rather than going into the complex problem of this ambiguity, I prefer to draw attention to another question, namely: Is it possible, in the field of politics, to universalize a particular act of revolt, resistance to all those social, political and cultural institutions and mechanisms that individuals as well as collectives experience as oppression? That is to say, to truly universalize it instead of simply seeing in it a Riha 36 universal individual and/or collective right established and guaranteed by a given legal system? To universalize a particular act of revolt which, in its very irreducible particularity, can never be integrated in the system, but which, as such, would, by aiming at redressing particular injustices, nevertheless function as an unconditional universal right of the world in which we live? In what sense can such an act be considered as a point of universalizable singularity? This maxim is certainly not to be understood in the sense that everybody can revolt against anything that, at a given moment, obstructs his/her identity from establishing and maintaining itself. And it is even less to be conceived of as aiming at justifying all forms, even the most barbarous, of revolt. For what is at stake in this maxim is the right to its very unconditionality, the revolt as a manifestation of the Unconditional. The maxim ‘One always has a reason to revolt’ would in this case mean: everybody has an indisputable right to resist all that which makes this world appear to him/her as a world of oppression, at anytime. This, however, is only possible because the ultimate ‘mobile’ or reason for his/her revolt is, in the last instance, nothing other than the revolt itself. Therefore it clearly follows that what determines and legitimizes a revolt is neither a particular demand around which it is organized nor the circumstances of the revolt, although these circumstances can certainly be taken as an occasion for the revolt, thus giving it its specific content. What is at stake in this maxim is not a concrete content say, a revolt against this or that form of discrimination and oppression, a struggle for establishing and maintaining such and such an identity. At stake in the unconditionality of the revolt as postulated by this maxim is the form of the revolt, that which could be called, along with Kant, the universal legislating form of political practice. Conditionally it could also be called the categorical imperative of the politics of emancipation, because it does not satisfy the conditions of purity, the suspension of all empirical content, that characterizes Kantian moral law. Still, one is tempted to attribute a weak form of categorical imperative of emancipatory politics to the maxim ‘One always has a reason to revolt’. For a struggle against all the circumstances in which man finds himself humiliated, enslaved, abandoned and despised, is legitimate, or, which amounts to the same, implies a universal dimension, if and only if it is always already grounded in the unconditionality of the revolt itself. To universalize a particular revolt, i.e., to make the particular identities into political subjects would only be possible on the condition that those engaged in it not only put forward their claims but aim, at the same time, at realizing the revolt as an end in itself, as, to borrow Kant’s expression, a ‘purposiveness without a purpose’.

But how is it possible to postulate the unconditionality, i.e., that which singularized the revolt as such, as a moment of universality in politics, especially as the revolt as a political act disclaims both the ratio essendi of politics, that is to say, the social bond, and its ratio cognoscendi, i.e., the democratic nation-state as the dominant form of the political universality? This question is all the more justified as we have been witness today to the manifestation of the unconditionality of the revolt and of the ‘purposiveness without a purpose’, in its barbarous guise, namely as the emergence Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 of so-called non-functional, excessive violence or, rather, in the form of a pure purposeless cruelty.20

On the basis of what has been elaborated so far I will risk the following provisional answer. The figure of the subject implied by the maxim ‘One always has a reason parallax 37 to revolt’ as a practical imperative of a politics of emancipation, the subject whose entire Dasein consists in the ‘purposiveness without a purpose’ of an unconditional revolt, is that which is stripped of all predicates and which is nothing more than, as in Malevich’s painting, a senseless black stain in which all particular purposes and ends of activity are suspended. The substance of the subject of emancipatory politics resides entirely in the interruption of a given order, in the production of the absence, in that which, for a given situation, is the point of its impossibility, point of the real. The subject is thus essentially the desire for the revolutionary politics of emancipation, yet behind this desire that animates the subject of emancipatory politics, as it were, is the ‘passion for the real’21. With the following crucial proviso: a true passion for the real is not the desire for the revolution itself but rather a desire to see the revolution. The desire to see is the passion for the real in actu. It is only due to this passion that the subject can come into existence, i.e. can appear in the field of the visible, in the situation.

The desire to see is not to be confused with contemplation. Rather, such a desire is immediately an effectuation, a concrete activity, it can only be present as that which is ‘immediately practicable here and now’22. It is precisely at this level that there come into play all those concrete contents of the claims put forward in the emancipatory struggles and movements, by the particular identities, aiming to change the circumstances experienced as circumstances in which man is reduced to a victimized, humiliated, worthless being. What is crucial here is that the claims of particular identities can only be realized in so far as they are experienced as demands of these particular identities and, at the same time, as constitutive of the process of subjectivation by means of which the particular identities enter into the composition of the subject. For one of the key functions of the process of subjectivation is to discern the indiscernible: to establish a minimal distance between the subject – the revolutionary desire – and its real, that black stain of the purposeless act of revolt in which all of the subject’s being consists. This minimal distance thus makes it possible for the real of desire to appear and for the subject to become visible as subject.

The practice of the particular identities therefore involves a double gesture: on the one hand, the affirmation of a ‘purposiveness without a purpose’ of the revolt, on the other, the subtraction from a given situation which is necessarily implied by the ‘purposiveness without a purpose’. This in no way prevents the practice from effectuating itself by means of concrete claims and projects on the political struggle within a given situation. Crucial here, of course, is the simultaneity of the act of revolt and its forms of appearance. It is solely due to concrete demands and the ends for which it fights that a particular identity or an empirical subjectivity, be it individual or collective, can attain its specificity. That which subjectifies a particular identity, but which, paradoxically, endows it with the character of a true particular identity, that is to say, an always open, precarious identity due to its inherent division

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 and multiplicity,23 must be looked for in the way in which such an identity renders its own existence dependant upon the point of the real, upon the specific modality of the effectuation of the emancipatory struggles, namely as an act of a pure interruption, as a fidelity to the ‘purposiveness without a purpose’ of the revolt, upon the social dis-sociation and the radical renunciation of the Other. This identity is Riha 38 thus constructed as a component of the subject, of that namely which is stripped of all properties, of all positive substance. Two conditions are needed for this.

Firstly, the demands and the projects by which the particular identities manifest their particularity are in themselves always concrete demands and concrete projects, a concrete answer to a given situation, a concrete attempt at its change. They are thus always already over-determined by the logic of the situation. These claims and projects of particular identities, despite their content, inevitably related to a given situation, can also realize themselves as a fidelity to the real, as a fidelity to the radical contingency of the social. For this to happen it is necessary that those demands and projects are experienced as something which is not grounded in the possibilities prescribed by the situation, but in the capacity of the particular identities themselves to present their claims as a truth for all, or, to put it differently, as a place for all the particular identities willing to assume, in addition to what they are, to give body to something radically other.

Secondly, for a particular identity to attain this, it is necessary that none of its struggles, none of its claims, are presented as a ‘final solution’. On the contrary, it is necessary that it is capable of giving to its particular claim new contents, of linking it to other claims, of applying it to other domains. The passion for the real that animates all politics of emancipation is the passion for the surface: it manifests itself as the capacity of a particular identity to preserve – from one situation to another, from one concrete claim to another – the real, brought about through the interruption of a given situation. The passion for the real is the passion for the surface in the sense that the politics of emancipation in breaking with the situation ceaselessly tries to reach behind the surface, not, of course, with a view to finally getting rid of this blinding veil of the surface to make it possible for the real to show itself. On the contrary, that a politics of emancipation subtract itself from the imaginary surface and reach ‘behind’ it, to the real itself, is only possible on the condition that the militants of this politics know that behind the surface there is nothing – but the surface itself. The real can thus insist on its place, i.e. behind the imaginary surface, so long as the revolutionary politics in its reaching behind the surface, encounters but another, new surface.

One can now see why the revolution is so difficult to see. Not only because the seeing of the revolution involves the spectator’s own desire, but also because in seeing the revolution, an abyss of social dis-sociation is opened up. Against the background of this abyss, our own particular identity appears as a predicateless Sameness that insists, throughout the ceaseless changing of our particularity, as that namely which remains at one and the same time unsayable, invisible, unrepresentable, but also as an inconceivable Sameness which the politics of emancipation demands that we try to show, to present, in such a way as to be visible for all. Visible as a place of the social

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 dis-sociation, a place in which only a collective without identity can situate itself, a collective that is but a permanent wager that the horror of the groundlessness can be transformed into a project of the Good – not, of course, of the good wishing to make the world better, but a good as the coming into existence of an always fragmentary truth, but a truth that is valid for no-one if it is not valid for all. parallax 39 Notes

1 Since, for the instrumental logic of the politico- 7 The original title of the painting is ‘Black square’. administrative system, in principle, ‘everything The title ‘Black square on white square’, under is possible’. which the painting is known to us today 2 Jacques Lacan, Television (New York: W.W. corresponds to the description given by Malevich Norton & Company, 1990), p.16. For a more himself. detailed inquiry into psychoanalysis as a way out 8 Ge´rard Wajcman, L’objet du sie`cle, (Paris: Verdier, of capitalism for all, see Jelica Sumic, ‘La politique 1998). et la psychanalyse: du pas-tout au pour tous’, in 9 Although Wajcman himself proposes two Universel, singulier, sujet, Jelica Sumic (ed.), (Paris: candidates for this title, Malevich’s ‘Black square’ Kime, 2000). and Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made ‘Wheel’ (1913), 3 This is not the place to go into all the more or I propose to consider only one of them, namely less complex problems posed by the so-called East- the ‘Black square on white square’. European revolutions. Let it suffice to recall the 10 See Ge´rard Wajcman, ‘L’art, la psychanalyse, le practising of politics by a part, at least, of the siecle’ in Lacan, l’e´crit, l’image, (Paris : Flammarion, social and political movements in Eastern Europe 2000), p.44. by the end of the 80s, that fought the actually 11 ‘Rien-a`-voir, c’est le Carre´ noir’, Ge´rard existing socialism not on the basis of the regulative Wajcman, L’objet du sie`cle, p.96. idea of the restoration of ‘parliamentary capitalism’ 12 Cf. Jacques-Alain Miller, ‘Matrice’, (Paris: and the nation-state, but rather, starting with the Ornicar 4, 1975). assumption that we are dealing here with a regime 13 Alain Badiou, ‘La sce`ne du Deux’, (Paris: that needs to be radically, theoretically and Flammarion, 1999), p.178. It could also be said practically problematized. In other words, their that the Scene of the Two is the One that is in guiding-thread was what could be called Marx’s itself the Two. categorical imperative according to which it is 14 Wajcman himself suggests two possible answers necessary to destroy the circumstances in which to the question: ‘What is behind it?’, an idealistic man finds himself humiliated, enslaved, answer according to which: ‘Behind it, there is abandoned, despised. Hence, the way out of Something’ and a materialist one according to socialism was understood, not as an entrance into which: ‘Behind it, there is the Nothing’. capitalism but, on the contrary, as a (partial) 15 ‘The eye’, or, rather, the subject, ‘enters into victory in the political process of emancipation. It the system by means of that which it cannot see, could also be said: the collapse of Communism is what remains concealed to him’, Wajcman, L’objet conceived as a condition of possibility for a ‘way du sie`cle, p.109. out of capitalism’. It is curious that Franc¸ois Furet, 16 See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul. La fondation de author of the notorious revisionist book, Le passe´ l’universalilsme, (Paris : Colle`ge International de d’une illusion. Essai sur l’ide´e communiste au XXe sie`cle Philosophie, PUF, 1997), p.115. We use this term, (Laffont – Calmann Le´vy, 1995) and a radical left however, with a slightly different meaning. thinker, such as A. Badiou (see in particular his 17 For an insightful inquiry into democracy as a book D’un de´sastre obscur. Droit, Etat, Politique (Edition form of the subjectivation of politics see Jacques de l’aube, 1991).), converge in their judgement on Rancie`re, Politique et Philosophie (Paris: Galile´e, the collapse of socialism since both of them insist 1995). that, in the East, nothing really happened. This 18 Guy Lardreau develops an especially useful very convergence should, in my view, be considered point regarding Mao’s maxim in his book La ve´racite´ as a symptom of an insurmountable aporia that (Paris: Verdier, 1993), p.248. the revolution still presents for Western left- 19 See Ernesto Laclau, ’Universalism, Particularism wing theorists. and the Question of Identity’ in Emancipation(s) 4 Catherine Malabou, ‘Atteinte…sans le savoir’, in: (London: Verso, 1996), p.20. De´sir de re´volution, (Paris: Lignes 4, 2001), pp.124–129; 20 For theorizing the issue of cruelty in politics (my emphasis). today see E´ tienne Balibar, ‘Violence,: idealite´ et 5 Robespierre’s question is quoted by E´ tienne cruaute´’, in La crainte des masses, (Paris: Galile´e,

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 Balibar. See E´ tienne Balibar, ‘Sed intelligere’, in 1997), pp.397–418. De´sir de re´volution, (Paris: Lignes 4, 2001), pp.11–15. 21 This expression is used by Alain Badiou to In what follows, I develop a different interpretation characterise the Leninist revolutionary politics at of this question than Balibar. the beginning of the 20th century. See his paper 6 Jacques Lacan, Se´minaire XI, (Paris: Seuil, 1974), ’Un se divise en deux’ given at the international p.247. conference in Essen (2000). Riha 40 22 Alain Badiou, ‘Un se divise en deux’. horizon of the universal, see Ernesto Laclau’s essay 23 For the concept of an inherently fractured ‘Universalism, Particularism and the Question particular identity in its constitutive relation to the of Identity’.

Rado Riha is senior research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Centre for Scientific Research at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. He teaches philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and epistemology at the postgraduate faculty, Institutum studiorum humanitatis in Ljubljana. In 2000 and 2001, together with Jelica Sumic, he conducted a seminar Le ’pour tous’ face au reel at the Colle`ge international de philosophie in Paris. Recent publications include: ‘‘Philosophie comme noeud de l’universel, du singulier et du sujet’’, in: Jelica Sumic, (ed.,) Universel, singulier, sujet (2000), ‘Plurale Subjekte als konkrete Endlichkeiten oder Wie Laclau mit Kant gelesen werden kann’, in: Das Undarstellbare der Politik. Zur Hegemonietheorie Ernesto Laclaus (Vienna: Turia & Kant 1998), ‘‘Das Politische der Emanzipation’’, in: Rado Riha ed., Politik der Wahrheit (Vienna: Turia & Kant, 1997). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009

parallax 41 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 42–55

Revolution and Freedom

Alex Demirovic´

I. The End of Revolution

One of the determining themes in the socio-critical debate of the past years has focused upon what criticism is, how criticism is motivated and what it is based upon. One of the results that one can surely record is that criticism should not come from outside; the immanent type of criticism prevails.1Criticism from outside, transcendental criticism is considered prophetic, usurping, indifferent to the social processes which are criticized. The older Critical Theory is thought to be representative of such a tradition of criticism which is ultimately reproached for being totalitarian, which in this respect appears to continue Marx’s error: a criticism detached from its object, talking about the latter as a wholeness, thus – unlike the persons immediately concerned – suggesting that it is not to be subjected to this wholeness, capable of eluding their yardsticks and notions as well as having them at its disposal. Adorno suggests such an attitude of criticism when he criticizes immanent criticism as naive because it believes that immersing the spirit in the object to be criticized grants truth by virtue of the logic of the object and that this criticism immediately equates itself with an escape from imprisonment. Required, so he says in reply to this, is the subjective knowledge of the false whole which comes from outside.2

Simultaneously, however, Adorno considers criticism from outside as obsolete. Amongst such critique he classes the causal explanation of cultural artefacts from economic processes. It is part of Adorno’s understanding of dialectics that he is not content with this: ‘A free man would only be one who need not bow to any alternatives, and under existing circumstances there is a touch of freedom in refusing to accept the alternatives’.3 Subjective knowledge is required but it must go through the object; transcendent criticism must not forget the notional work, because otherwise – as the experience of the development of materialist-critical theory has shown – it turns into prescribed labelling, into a dismissive ukase from above: thinking that only takes a point of view knows of each phenomenon where it belongs, but of none what it is. Such thought is delusive and detached from the experience of the object: ‘The dialectical critic of culture must both participate in culture and not

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 participate’.4

Dialectical criticism is concrete negation, it unfolds at its object. Still, the question arises as to which features of a society negation turns against and how strongly it

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 42 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000064991 develops its critical force, that is, how far it goes in its dynamic. The answer to this question decides the extent and intensity of the change that is connected to criticism. This also raises the question of where subjective knowledge comes from.

In terms of a merely immanent criticism such a question does not arise as it suggests that the subject lies outside. Critical standards should develop from the shared way people living together see themselves. The social critic takes on the role of a local judge who appeals to the critical criteria of the community he lives in; it is this community he relies on when he objects, protests or vetoes: ‘This critic is one of us’.5 If one assumes that in Adorno’s criticism from outside unsolvable foundational problems must be confronted, then in the case of local criticism these are supposed to be already solved because the critic can rely on the criteria and yardsticks the community he lives in has gained in its historical confrontations as a horizon shared by all.

In principle this idea implies that immanent criticism can only have a local reach, is valid only for those who share a form of life which as such, in its integrity, is not called into question. Humans share a vocabulary and a common history which they produce together in, and from, their conflicts. Still, one may object, nothing is clarified by this. Why should we reconcile ourselves with our history and grant it the character of an undisputed golden ground – does it not precisely belong to domination that those who dominate see it as part of their success that the defeated and subjugated retrospectively submit and do not judge anymore; do they not press for an insulting and hurtful reconciliation where those who draw attention to this fact are looked upon as boring and as troublemakers? Why should a wholeness not be able to think itself and call itself into question – the efforts of dialectics have gone a long way to make thinkable precisely this. There remain questions as to how far a history of confrontations reaches back, as to how binding this is thought to be, which conflicts it refers to, which meanings the vocabulary comprises, how large the local circumference is and who belongs to it. In socio-spatial terms local criticism can reach a universal extent. Do not fundamental criticism and revolutionary meanings as well belong to this ‘local’ understanding and, furthermore, humans and social contexts in which these meanings are handed down? Immanent and local criticism can be far-reaching and comprehensive if one refers to the ideas, notions and convictions which formed since the 16th century and established the modern political vocabulary. This, obviously, is a dangerous point. Richard Rorty has sensed this and emphatically – and directed against Critical Theory – dismissed such a far- reaching recourse. Critical Theory, he argues, took the Enlightenment of the 18th century in its historical form as the point of reference for the judgement of any further development. The self-destruction of Enlightenment, which even dodges its own notions of rationality, generality and truth through rational analysis, led Horkheimer and Adorno to arrive at the conclusion that liberalism has lost its philosophical basis and that liberal society is morally bankrupt. The hypothesis, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 however, that the terms with which a development was historically set going can describe this development, is not plausible. According to Rorty, such terms are already obsolete in this historical moment: the ‘terms used by the founders of a new form of cultural life’ were largely borrowed from the vocabulary of the culture one hoped to replace.6 Rorty does not very accurately reconstruct the idea of Horkheimer parallax 43 and Adorno, because he does not take into account that they saw Enlightenment as a social praxis of the bourgeoisie7 which, by means of economic development and scientific-technical progress, promised, and still promises, prosperity, freedom and emancipation to the people. Even with regard to his own position Rorty is not very rigorous here. In order to free himself from the obligation to a specific yardstick, that of the Enlightenment and of revolution, he becomes inconsistent, for in principle he disapproves of talking about reality in terms of correctness because of systematical reasons – accordingly he should not reproach critical social theory, in the name of correct description, for the choice of its vocabulary. This is hardly liberal and plural. And moreover, against Rorty’s reflection one must record that topical language games – including the political liberalism he holds in estimation – fall back upon this very tradition: Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Kant. A huge part of current political philosophy engages with these theories. This vocabulary of the 17th and 18th century continues to form the horizon where the political and its co-ordinates are defined. This vocabulary is used in ever new contexts, losing or enriching meanings. If the capitalist bourgeoisie up to this day organically elaborates the way it sees its own praxis in this vocabulary then this fact permits to ask archeologically for its permutations, that is, what meanings and practices it is connected to socially and politically. This holds for the revolution as well.

We live, Hannah Arendt states in On Revolution,8 in a revolutionary age; revolutions do not occur incidentally – they are part of the signature of the age. If this consideration holds true then theoretically it is plausible to grasp the vocabulary of revolution as a language game by a local critic – as a central moment of the way bourgeois society sees itself – and to ask the question of how this way has changed. It is then not merely a problem of the history of ideas in political philosophy, but rather touches fundamentally on the processes of development and internal self- transformations of bourgeois society itself. Thus we live under the portent of revolution, revolution underlies our social and political action. In terms of the philosophy of history revolution has depicted a whole historical period of bourgeois society. But possibly this phase is over. Perhaps a new period of history and of the bourgeois social formation begins. A feature of this new time, though, would be that it stepped out of the shadow of revolution.

In the leading OECD states there are no large organized social and political forces that want a revolution. Theoretically this model of political action has met enormous reservation from the Left.9 This too can be said for the societies of the South. The events of 1989, which some regard as soft revolutions, were formally not unequivocal for, as Arendt had forecast, they above all brought to an end a war, the Cold War, in which the side of capitalism won – without the other side, except for a few attempts, ever seriously living up to Marx’s understanding of socialism or communism; an understanding that is not the uniform submission to a rigid regime of labour, controlled by corrupt elites, under the title of equality, but rather the control of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 production by the producers and the joint decision on all social concerns. The protest movements in Eastern Europe broke with the imago of the October Revolution – the latter had nothing to offer to the people and protesters. The emancipatory efforts of the 60s, as well, stepped out of the horizon of this once culturally and politically potent event which had gained its international historical significance above all Demirovic´ 44 because it created the space for political praxis and disregarded the political logic of the European workers movement that up until then had waited for the capitalist natural laws to lead society single-handedly to socialism. The Russian Revolution was considered a revolution against the logic of Capital.

But events have overtaken ideology. Events have exploded the critical schemas whereby Russian history was meant to develop according to the canons of historical materialism. The Bolshevics have renounced Karl Marx and they have shown, with the backing of real actions, actual achievements, that the canons of historical materialism are not as iron-clad as it might be thought, as it has been thought.10

However, the Russian Revolution – and the anti-imperial and anti-colonial liberations from China, Cuba and Algeria to Angola following its model – has become itself a kind of symbolic force following a set pattern. Re´gis Debray illustrates this in his novel L’Inde´sirable.11 Frank, the protagonist, leaving Europe in order to fight with a Latin American city guerilla, imagines Lenin’s wintry activities, the close co-operation of an elite of Bolshevics who in detail and skilfully plan a conspiracy and uprising and discuss the future of the country in secret meetings – as distinct from the condition of the sub-tropical summer which Frank finds to be a conspiracy against his revolutionary energies, which demoralizes him, because in the mental twilight conditioned by the sultriness he constantly craves a shower, a clean shirt and a cold beer. It was the everyday experiences with the symbolic force of revolution and one’s own place in it – the experiences of authoritarian and cynical manners in the political organisations of the Left, the reduction of the complexity of the social whole to but a few aspects of it, the degree of overexcited politicization and unpredictable violence, in addition the experiences of state repression, the role of the secret services, the virulent campaigns of the media – which eventually led radicals in the 70s and 80s to distance themselves from the October Revolution as a model of political action (and who made up for what many workers perhaps in a less conscious form had performed decades ago: keeping a distance from dubious political leadership and self-appointed generals that indulged in their phantasms and planned their battles unscrupulously against the individual). This distancing turned out to be anxiously free of affect by matter-of-factly placing revolution back into history: ‘Neither triumphal march nor dirge, we simply say: ‘‘We loved it so much, the revolution!’’ ’12 As the October Revolution itself was understood according to the model of the completion of the revolutionary cycle which had begun with the French Revolution – the realization of bourgeois Enlightenment, of the proclaimed norms of freedom, equality and solidarity – the critique of what happened to actors in the revolution could then be radicalized and generalized to fundamental doubts also about the model of the French Revolution as the one model of revolution. Andrzej Wajda thematized this in his film Danton, in the theory of history this was done by the now conservative Franc¸ois Furet with his provocative statement: ‘The French Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 Revolution has ended’.13

Let us suppose the entire historical cycle has ended with the military-revolutionary overcoming of the inheritance of the October Revolution. Today, revolutions for the purpose of national liberation, for the enforcement of democracy and human rights parallax 45 are no longer necessary in principle because the ends, which should have been pushed through by revolutionary means, have been attained. In contrast to the 18th century the domination of the aristocracy and monarchy is crushed, the influence of the Churches restrained and finally the bourgeoisie too has been forced, in continuous and barbarously violent conflicts, to accept universal suffrage and parliamentary democracy as the normal form of its domination. Human rights are internationally a widely accepted standard which can be appealed to even when contravened. Colonialism and racism are considered despicable, the right to national self- determination is formally widely acknowledged and, in the OECD countries, equal rights for the sexes is not merely formally recognized but also realized in many respects. If this is so, then the period of revolution is completed and civil society enters a new phase. Here much more than simply the crisis of Fordism is concerned, i.e. the determining regulative form of the relations of capital for the past fifty years that now changes into Post-Fordism. The new phase is not anymore determined by the necessity to turn against the still pre-bourgeois traditionalism which must be disposed of in a radical gesture. Bourgeois society can know and grasp itself as a self-generating and constantly changing organism. It can take as its aim its self- optimization itself, become more logical and correspond to itself, so to speak; it is not faced anymore with the necessity to always found itself anew against a pre- modernity. This self-comprehension of a bourgeois society that has realized itself is elaborated by many contemporary sociological theories, for instance Niklas Luhmann’s systems-theoretical conception of an autopoietic reproduction of the functionally differentiated society, or Ulrich Beck’s concept of reflexive modernity in which modernity solely has to do with the permanent modernization of its own institutions. Long ago Marx expected precisely this to happen, namely that bourgeois society turns its revolutionary energies inwards, so to speak, and constantly stirs itself up anew and exposes itself to the compulsion for change. It must do this, it is the result of its own naturally proceeding laws, the compulsion towards accumulation which outstrips scientific insights, renders technical findings obsolete and devalues and destroys social wealth – all this in order to increase productivity, eliminate competitors and ultimately preserve and augment the rate of profit. Thus bourgeois society somersaults in its dynamic and urges everyone on, ever more hurriedly, to not miss an opportunity, always be in front, find something new that others do not yet know. The potential to muse, to pause, to bring experiences and knowledge to maturity becomes smaller.14 The direction, the rhythm, the manner of social development does not result from the common decisions and actions of individuals, rather they are driven by competition in which they have to adjust and in which they must frequently avail themselves of actions directed against others if they do not want to be placed at a disadvantage themselves. This is the opposite of freedom. Even the protagonists of the liberal market who defend all this in the name of freedom know that. They tremble with anxiety that their uncertain economic activity could fail. This leads to their war-cry: everyone should live in insecurity, the state should protect no one. In a social-Darwinist manner they make themselves believe Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 they were the cleverest and could well stand their ground in competition were it not for others to be privileged by the state. Yet they quickly get the profit settled and the state shall render it possible through property guarantee, security and legal protection, if necessary through subsidies and duty and, if it cannot be helped otherwise, through corruption, political pressure or illegal practices. The effects of Demirovic´ 46 the destruction of jobs, the exploitation of companies, the depreciation of capital by sacrificing small shareholders do not have any personal consequences for them. Insecurity is distributed as systematically unequal and from top to bottom.15 Bourgeois society is this frantic and restless search for the new, is this permanent upheaval.

Democracy goes with that well. It is the political form which institutionalizes revolution – as sociological theory has shown for a hundred years.16 In the play between majority and minority, government and opposition, in the struggle to be represented, revolution becomes a function of this self-transformatory dynamic. It demolishes horizons and, being optimistic about progress, reaches far into the future – and in this way becomes a pioneer for the subsequent processes of subjugation of humans and nature. In the end it reproduces on a higher level what it fundamentally wants to change and contributes to the modernization of the latter – and thereby to the destruction of living conditions and the elimination of resources. This paradoxical experience induces theorists of the Left to sceptically question the will to radical transformation itself.17 There is too much change and dynamic already and the socio- critical forces, the Left, the socialist currents and social movements in their attempt to further this change and give it a direction towards freedom so often have turned out to be a means for capitalist self-transformation. As actors they frequently were merely driven by the oppressors, what they did was used and outstripped by more powerful tendencies. Thus there is a critical and self-critical distance to revolution – not at all defeatist and factually legitimate – as a historically passed on model of political action because it has not kept the emancipatory meaning bound up with it. Still there remains the question of emancipation and the logic of change.

In the following I would like to show that in critical social theory for quite a while there have been efforts to develop – if you will – a post-revolutionary model of emancipation. I want to demonstrate this by presenting some thoughts of Adorno. Altogether it is a matter of suggestions which should be elaborated further through analyses of Marx’s ideas on social revolution, Gramsci’s conception of hegemony and the concept of metonymy in Althusser and Poulantzas. Adorno’s thoughts first of all strike me as relevant for contemporary history because he belongs to a generation of Marxist intellectuals who saw the uprising of the socialist movement of soldiers’ and workers’ councils after the First World War (which created the experience of the possibility of practical change) as well as being affected by the ‘conservative revolution’ of National Socialism and the changing of sides of many workers, and who could observe the ‘Jacobin’ development of the Russian revolution to the Stalinist terror regime. Adorno’s work, however, was not simply determined by disappointment and resignation, as it is argued so often, but rather by the still tentative attempt to think a form of emancipation that in future would prevent the processes of self-destruction which, as if by nature, occur when trying to realize freedom.18 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 II. Freedom and Necessity

At about the same time of Adorno’s efforts to replace the notion of revolution, in the beginning of the 60s, Hannah Arendt attempted to make it fruitful again. In a parallax 47 few brief remarks I want to consider Arendt as a means by which Adorno’s ideas perhaps can be brought into relief. Arendt conceived in her book On Revolution an intellectual strategy which then was also followed by Habermas, Laclau and the theorists of civil society.19 It is a matter of grasping democracy as institutionalized revolution. For Arendt revolution means that human beings are capable of a beginning. They are free. Freedom for Arendt means to be free of any causal connection. With revolution the public space of freedom becomes institutionalized in which the citizens have discussions publicly and seek recognition of all others. The republic and the constitution make freedom last. That is the point of Arendt’s consideration. For revolution ought not to be a one-off process, it is a permanent revolution carried out anew by generation after generation. The new revolutions, however, should not turn against freedom, public space and the constitution as this would remove the once attained freedom. Rather the republic should be founded anew by the next generation, freedom should be augmented and extended. A concrete example of this Arendt finds in the amendments to the American constitution.

Society, its inherent laws, the social, need and poverty – all these are the other of this politically understood and institutionalized freedom. This is simultaneously Arendt’s strongest and weakest argument. It is strong, because she does not simply comprehend emancipation as ‘liberation from …’. The notion of freedom, which she obtains through the model of Attic isonomy, means the public happiness of conversation, of public deliberation. It is a positive notion of freedom and stimulating in so far as social criticism often confines itself to the subaltern view of victims and merely criticizes misery and coercion. After all free life does not ensue simply from the elimination of need, poverty and coercion. That is the experience which motivates the Left in the advanced capitalist societies since the 60s. However, the processes of pauperization produced anew by neoliberalism have also set back the socio-critical discussion of this point because it now must concentrate more strongly on unemployment and the defence of the achievements of the welfare state.

Yet Arendt’s notion of freedom is weak too, because it is utopian and illusory. Freedom means action exclusively in the realm of the political. According to her, freedom begins where the worry about life stops to force human beings to behave in this way or another.20 Adorno surely would share this view. He would not accept three aspects of this consideration, though. Arendt suggests in her formulation that only in the realm of the political the worry about life loses its validity – freedom is there. That amounts to a fatal neglect of hardship. Freedom, in Adorno’s view, does not yet exist in a positive form. Positive freedoms for Arendt are grouped around the freedom of public speech. There remains the question though, as to whether this freedom of thought and speech – highly appreciated by Adorno – does not remain at a relatively low level of freedom as long as the speech of the individuals is not connected to the effective participation in all social decisions. Neither would Adorno agree with Arendt’s thesis that the necessity of material life does not matter for the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 reason that what is at stake in politics is not life but the world which outlasts us.21 This is fatally reminiscent of a philosophy of history which would like to separate the course of society from the unique fate of individuals. And Adorno could well share the idea of Arendt that is critical of liberalism, namely that humans can only be free in respect of each other; but not the assertion Arendt presents as a syllogism Demirovic´ 48 from this social understanding of freedom: that human beings can be free only in the realm of the political and action.22 Politics, Horkheimer once stated in an obligatory way for Critical Theory, is the totality of ways and means for the maintenance of domination of nature and humans, the domination by a small number of people who were given the full benefit of a specific culture through the organisation of society whilst the masses were forced to continuous renunciation of their drives.23 This conception has Critical Theory and Adorno to construct a narrative diametrically opposed to Hannah Arendt. The freedom constituted by the public space of the political is the freedom of a small, privileged group. This freedom is based on the self-deceit of the dominant who disavow labour, domination and repression. Thus the space of the political is constitutively – that is, in all its notions and actions – characterized by unfreedom which is inflicted on others. Time and again politics will only be able to constitute itself as a public space of freedom if many remain outside. Therefore the real, the practical freedom of all cannot join with the political. The critique of politics is not developed in Adorno’s theory – and that is a gross shortcoming – but he is surely serious in a theoretically demanding sense when he suggests to Horkheimer that he take on a lecture on the topic of politics at the Institute for Social Research and in this regard, as to the contents, thinks of a specific thesis: ‘In such a lecture one could simply develop the dialectical relation that, on the one hand, politics is fac¸ade, ideology and that society is the dominant reality but that, on the other hand, any transforming social praxis has the form of politics: politics of the abolition of politics’.24 Adorno on principle advocates an overcoming of politics. In a less radical way Arendt also took the view that freedom must include the liberation from politics. She restricts this socially to those who do not have the ambition to participate in public discussions or to strive for public recognition: ‘The joys of public happiness and the responsibilities for public business would then become the share of those few from all walks of life who have a taste for public freedom and cannot be ‘‘happy’’ without it’.25 The quotation reveals that Arendt’s thinking is much less strongly Aristotelian than is sometimes assumed. Utterly liberal, public acting here is not rendered as the virtue of the citizens and hence a behavioural affront, even if she would certainly consider people unfree who keep a distance from politics. Nevertheless her concession slightly misses the problem of the relation between the political and freedom. For these few who are publicly free make decisions for all, even for those who want to be free from politics. That this sphere of the political exists will inevitably lead to the monopolization of the formation of public will and power on the one side, to political distance and lethargy on the other. In contrast to this Adorno resolutely holds on to the idea that an ‘association of free individual human beings’ – humanity who realizes the principle of being human which has its social place in each individual – under participation of all individuals decides upon itself and its further development.26 ‘Where traditional philosophy, acting in a spirit of repression, used to confound freedom and responsibility, responsibility would now turn into every individual’s fearless, active participation in a whole that would no longer institutionalize the parts played, but would allow them to have consequences in reality’.27 Freedom would not be restricted Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 anymore to the political space, discourse would have effects everywhere in the social space.

In Arendt the political understanding of freedom is opposed to modern social theory, for the latter dissolves political events and political acting into the process of society parallax 49 which appears to be determined by unavailable laws.28 Precisely this denotes what she also reproaches the French revolutionaries for, namely that they, when they wanted to solve the social question by political means, gave themselves over to the laws, the necessities of societies and dissolved the space of freedom from within so to speak. For with wealth this space of freedom was devaluated. With this point, too, Adorno could provisionally concur. In fact, like Arendt, he views the interest for freedom as increasingly waning – he does not charge the individuals with that, though, but the social relations which as second nature expose the individuals to the unprotected realm of social laws of nature. In his view society is a form in which, similar to natural law, the inherent laws of the market – and, after all, of politics too – dominate, laws which need to be overcome.

Prognosis as such implies manipulation; human spontaneity is abolished. A theory which sees men and their actions as the decisive factor, which no longer thinks in terms of political ‘power relations’ but rather would put an end to the play of such forces, makes no prophecies. Spengler says that it is necessary to calculate the unknown in history as far as possible. But it is precisely the unknown in mankind that cannot be calculated.29

Similar to Arendt, Adorno has an anti-authoritarian understanding of action. Praxis in the emphatic sense of a realization of freedom should enforce no objective laws of society, follow no order and no superior rationality and not be the result of socio- psychological affects.30 In distinction to Arendt, however, he disputes that freedom already positively exists – and those who fancy themselves enjoying it, precisely deprive themselves of it, because they just do not, and cannot, share this enjoyment with all. As a universalistic dimension of praxis freedom hence cannot be merely restricted to the area of the political where only a few, who have a taste for it, would enjoy it. Correspondingly politics cannot be the pivot of critique; that could only be a free society which, as free, would be no society anymore but self-determining humanity.

Adorno narrates a different history of bourgeois society than Arendt. As far as the theme of revolution occurs explicitly at all, he follows the lines of Marxist theory.31 The French Revolution ratifies politically only what has socially taken place with the assertion of modern capitalism as means of production. The commodity-form penetrates the living conditions of human beings and produces society as a context of coercion which is dominated by the laws of a second nature. Revolution has enforced the modern emancipatory categories of freedom and equality. Simultaneously it has been thwarted by the self-deceit of the bourgeoisie. True, the latter maintains a state of formal equality. The commodity-form of all relations is supposed to fabricate this, for the exchange always takes place as an exchange between equal values. In this exchange, however, inequality is systematically Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 incorporated, for those who must sell their labour are always cheated of part of the product they produced, precisely because all commodities, labour as well, are produced according to the principle of the socially necessary working time embodied in themselves. This manner of practised equality forms the basis of emancipation’s becoming inner-worldly and possible for all in bourgeois society – thus it no longer Demirovic´ 50 needs to be formulated as the worry for an other-worldly, individual salvation. Yet, just as much as it is maintained, this manner of equality simultaneously rests no less on systematically necessary inequality. Adorno’s remark on Schiller indicates perhaps how Adorno viewed the men of revolution overall: ‘Weakness posing as strength betrayed the thought of the allegedly rising bourgeoisie to ideology, even when the class was thundering against tyranny. In the innermost recesses of humanism, as its very soul, there rages a frantic prisoner who, as a Fascist, turns the world into a prison’.32 Therefore Adorno does not take the view that it would suffice to revive an original spirit of early bourgeois society in order to attain reconciliation at the end. Neither does Adorno narrate a history of decline, although it has often been claimed that he does. Rather he points to the internal dialectic of bourgeois society. From the very beginning it bears the mark of the dynamic of its failure. Bourgeois society precisely is the form of this very contradiction: tendency to emancipation and tendency to totalization of a society in which everything should be the same. For the social conjuncture tends towards being determined only by commodity relations and the equivalent. This conjuncture wants to contain itself as totality and as such tends to exclude everything that does not prove right in this identity of exchange equations. This containment fails, though, it always remains a project of totalization only. To the concept of totality belongs the one of antagonism: ‘Not only does the whole demand its own modification in order not to perish, but by virtue of its antagonistic essence it is also impossible for it to extort that complete identity with human beings that is relished in negative utopias’.33 Adorno takes the view that the bourgeoisie of the 19th century eventually did not want to realize its own ideals of freedom and justice anymore, because otherwise its order would have dissolved. Only if the bourgeoisie pursues totalization, but simultaneously does not bring it to an end of self-closure, can it give continuity to itself and its own way of life. Oddly enough Adorno does not unfold this thought into an understanding of the political. He does not develop a notion thereof that it is precisely this dialectics of totalization of equality and non-identity which finds its form of motion in democratic politics. Democracy becomes institutionalized revolution, that is, the form in which that antagonism renews itself again and again and where emancipation, according to bourgeois norms, is internally limited and fails. Adorno turns against this revolution and its logic, he considers necessary a progress which renders superfluous progress itself: ‘Everything within the whole progresses: only the whole itself to this day does not progress’.34 Yet at this point society as a context of coercion, as totality, would dissolve as well: ‘Only with the decomposition of the principle of totality that establishes limits, even if that principle were merely the commandment to resemble totality, would there be humanity and not its deceptive image’.35 Adorno, however, proposes something different to what was conventional in the history of Marxism or even in the history of Western Marxism to which, after all, he belongs. It was commonly held (along the lines of the French model of revolution), by the means of political revolution, to produce the conditions under which changes of the social structure, improvement of the life situation and political participation would become possible at all. For this Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 radical cut one had to wait, on the way to the goal the end could even justify the means. Then, after the revolution, a sovereignty of rational purposes would be substituted for the blind play of means.36 History here is thought as a process of necessity that leads to a first and constitutive act of freedom from which onwards everything has changed. Against such a philosophy of history – with its unmistakably parallax 51 authoritarian emphasis – Adorno turns. He considers the opposition between ends and means to be itself bourgeois and unfree and invokes Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history: time must be arrested, for that it goes on like this, that is the catastrophe. He argues for a praxis which ‘could explode the infamous continuum’.37 According to Adorno the social conditions of welfare have been fulfilled for a long time. If historically there had once been a rational basis for a dominating class that organized the productive apparatus and therefore took on tasks in the entire society, then this long since ceased to be the case. Productivity increased to such an extent that the coercion into labour and the disposal over this labour did not need to exist anymore. Yet, instead of giving up the particularistic interest to dominate, the bourgeoisie held on to its privileged position and used the social wealth for the maintenance of its domination alone. Unlike Hannah Arendt, Adorno expects little from politics on this point. If in her view the political is the sphere of joint action – an area separated from everyday living-together – then Adorno obviously takes the view that joint action should take place in the praxis of human living-together in its entirety. Yet, under the conditions of a repressive totality the co-operative character of living-together is not experienced any longer in praxis but rather in thought, in the notions of rationality and experiences. This manner of co-operation Marx signified as productive force, social joint action magnifies. Adorno took the view that social productive forces had developed to such an extent that the realm of freedom was possible in an extensive, not merely restricted political sense.

In the Marxist tradition this diagnosis was connected to the expectation that time was ripe for revolution and socialism. Adorno, however, on the grounds of the racist crimes of National Socialism which culminated in Auschwitz and on the grounds of the developments in the Soviet Union, drew different conclusions. The alternative of Rosa Luxemburg, socialism or barbarity, was not up for decision anymore, barbarity had happened. The bourgeois heritage, and hence the tradition of revolution, could not be continued – it is part of the infamous continuum.38 The conception of the early Marx to transform philosophy through critique into a changing praxis failed. The subject of revolutionary praxis as defined by Marx was completely integrated and refused even the idea of emancipation: ‘The masses no longer distrust the intellectuals because they betray the revolution but because they could want it, and thus they manifest how much they are in need of the intellectuals’.39 Adorno defends the intellectual and thought because they represent the possibility of emancipation and freedom in such a constellation, and even permit to develop a conception of a historically entirely novel constellation: ‘Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed’.40 Praxis, then, had failed. Now, Adorno is often understood as being resigned. That is out of the question. His considerations point towards the attempt to develop a conception of emancipatory praxis that would proceed from the historical experiences of the National Socialist barbarity and the Stalinist dictatorship on the one hand, of a persisting, though welfarist and bureaucratically modified capitalism and democracy Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 on the other. This praxis is one of concrete negation, only in this, is freedom to be grasped.41 The incision into the reproducing whole should not happen as a one off, but should rather be a process of always concrete change: ‘Both concepts of progress [meaning progress in the domination of nature in the sense of incremental techno- scientific improvements and true progress in the sense of an emancipation of the Demirovic´ 52 whole] communicate with each other not only in averting the ultimate disaster, but rather in every actual form of easing the persistent suffering’.42 Analogously I would like to refer to a passage of Adorno’s where he comments on corrections of texts; no improvement is to be too small: ‘Of a hundred alterations each may seem trifling or pedantic by itself; together they can raise the text to a new level’.43 In a seminar he once stressed to the students that, should parents on the grounds of psychoanalytic enlightenment not beat and torment their children anymore, the immediate parental power position would be broken and this would imply a humanization of society.44

It is a characteristic of the logic of concrete negation that it does not move from improvement to improvement without a notion. That would amount to a self- curtailment of rationality. Concrete negation does aim at the elimination of a concrete wrong or misery; as concrete negation, though, it can only do this appropriately if it aims respectively at concrete causes as well, so that the misery will not happen again. The causal nexus itself needs to be concretely negated. The boundary where concrete negation respectively pauses is not fixed for good, shifts according to reference and can extend from superficial to far-reaching conjunctures: ‘Of course the social substratum eventually is the concrete situation: what needs to be changed is the real life of individual human beings. Yet such a change here and now is not necessarily one of the life of human beings immediately, because their lives are not immediate but determined by these entire societal moments’.45 This sounds utterly like Hegel. Yet Adorno does not at all mean that interventions proceed teleologically from mediation to mediation until consciousness fully attains the whole; totality after all should not be established but sublated. That also determines the mode of the praxis of change. The predominance of the total [der Totale] can only be hit on in the experience of the individual and in the interpretation of this experience of the individual – for Adorno it is about the fact that fundamental economic dictates, like the dictate of accumulation, themselves take on a semiological value and by that a meaning which determines action.46 Seen this way the total is always less than the whole. Concrete negation, dependent upon these interpretations, does not proceed teleologically from individual suffering to the nexus tying up everything and ultimately to a last cause. Nevertheless, if this force of concrete negation is not broken by conformism, the concrete particular improvements eventually lead to a transformation of the whole – not automatically so to speak, however, in the sense of a reformism that itself does not know anymore what it reforms; yet neither revolutionary in the sense of the singular transgression of the boundary between the realm of necessity and the beyond of an infinite freedom (be it utopian or chiliastic- political) – but in the sense of concrete changes of the living conditions. These changes, which have as their basis, and concretely negate the obtained standard of welfare and democracy, lead to complex interventions. They too can affect the whole. Yet that is itself just a moment of this process of concrete negation. The intervention in the whole – and it will be neither the first nor the last, but one of the decisive changes – falls to the emancipatory praxis in the succession of the concrete changes Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 respectively, just like a further change of a concrete living situation. It is, in the interpretation of the individuals, the totality experienced by them which they now sublate [auf heben] and overcome as a moment of the whole. Thinking this to an end, Adorno eventually draws the conclusion that even freedom will be overcome, for it is always bound to its opposite, repression.47 As concrete negation, freedom will parallax 53 ultimately not be necessary anymore, it will be replaced by an organization of society ‘which would be one in which the plural could exist together safely and peacefully’.48 Translated by Kurt Hirtler

Notes

1 Cf. Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism Anderson, ‘Modernity and Revolution’, New Left (Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, Review, no. 144 (1984), pp.96–113. 1987). For a critical discussion refer to Alex 17 Cf. Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution Demirovic´, ‘Intellektuelle und kritische of Our Time (London and New York: Verso, 1990); Gesellschaftstheorie’, Prokla, no. 92 (1993), Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right. The Future pp.491–511. of Radical Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 1994); Leo 2 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Cultural Criticism and Panitch, ‘Globalisation and the State’, Socialist Society’, in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Register (1994), pp.60–93. Weber (London: Neville Spearman, 1967), p.33. 18 Cf. Alex Demirovic´, ‘Die Erfahrung des 3 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. Totalitarismus und die Realpolitik der Vernunft. B. Ashton (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Aspekte der Aktualita¨t der Kritischen Theorie’, 1973), p.226 Zeitschrift fu¨r Kritische Theorie, no. 11 (2000), 4 Adorno, ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, p.33. pp.93–102. 19 5 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, p.49. Ju¨rgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms. 6 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), trans. William Rehg (Oxford: Polity, 1996). Also p.56. Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. 20 7 [In the following the terms bu¨rgerlich and Bu¨rgertum Cf. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future. Six have been rendered as bourgeois and bourgeoisie Exercises in Political Thought (London: Faber and respectively. I would like to point out that the Faber, 1961), pp.143–171. 21 Between Past and Future German terms bear some association to civil (as in Cf. Arendt, , p.156. 22 Cf. Arendt, Between Past and Future, p.151. civil society etc.) and civility, especially in the context 23 Cf. Max Horkheimer, ‘Anfa¨nge der bu¨rgerlichen of the reception of Arendt’s work. K.H.] Geschichtsphilosophie’, in Gesammelte Schriften, 8 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Harmondsworth: vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1987), pp.183 Penguin, 1990). and 201. 9 Cf. Alain Lipietz, Trois Crises. Metamorphoses du 24 Letter from Adorno to Horkheimer, 25.10.1957. Capitalisme et Mouvement Ouvrier (Paris: Cepremap In Max Horkheimer, Briefechsel, in Gesammelte 8528, 1985). Schriften, vol. 18 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 10 Antonio Gramsci, ‘The Revolution against 1996). Capital’, in Pre-Prison Writings, trans. Virginia Cox 25 Arendt, On Revolution, p.279. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 26 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Diskussionsbeitrag zu p.39f. ‘‘Spa¨tkapitalismus oder Industriegesellschaft’’, in 11 Re´gis Debray, L’Inde´sirable (Paris: Seuil, 1975). Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8 (Frankfurt am Main: 12 Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Wir haben sie so geliebt, die Suhrkamp, 1972), p.586. Also see Adorno, Negative Revolution (Frankfurt am Main: Athena¨um, 1998), Dialectics, pp.257 and 284. p.10. 27 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p.264. 13 Cf. Franc¸ois Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, 28 Cf. Arendt, Between Past and Future, p.150. trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge 29 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Spengler after the University Press, 1981). Decline’, in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry 14 Cf. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character. Weber (London: Neville Spearman, 1967), p.66. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism 30 Cf. Alex Demirovic´, ‘Bodenlose Politik – Dialoge (New York and London: Norton, 1999). u¨ber Theorie und Praxis’, in Wolfgang Kraushaar

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 15 Cf. Zygmunt Bauman, In Search of Politics (ed.), Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung. (Oxford: Polity, 1999), pp.16–31. Von der Flaschenpost zum Molotowcocktail, 1946 16 Cf. George Herbert Mead, ‘Natural Rights and bis 1995, vol. 3 (Hamburg: Rogner & Bernhard, the Theory of the Political Institution’, in Selected 1998), pp.71–98. Writings, ed. Andrew Reck (Indianapolis [IN]; 31 Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Zur Lehre von der Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), pp.150–170). Also, Perry Geschichte und von der Freiheit’, in Nachgelassene Demirovic´ 54 Schriften, vol. 4/13 (Frankfurt am Main: 42 Adorno, ‘Progress’, p.154. Suhrkamp, 2001), pp.45f. 43 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p.85. 32 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia. Reflections 44 Cf. Alex Demirovic´, Der nonkonformistische from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Intellektuelle. Die Entwicklung der Kritischen New Left Books, 1974), p.89. Theorie zur Frankfurter Schule (Frankfurt am 33 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Progress’, in Critical Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), p.457. Comparable Models. Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry remarks are to be found in Theodor W. Adorno, Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, ‘Education after Auschwitz’, trans. Edwina Lawler, 1998), p.156. in Helmut Schreier and Matthias Heyl (eds), Never Again! The Holocaust’s Challenge for Educators 34 Adorno, ‘Progress’, p.149. (Hamburg: Kra¨mer, 1997), p.15f. Here Adorno 35 Adorno, ‘Progress’, p.146. turns against juvenile initiation rites and the 36 Cf. Adorno, ‘Anhang’ to Minima Moralia,in education to male toughness. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4 (Frankfurt am Main: 45 Adorno, ‘Diskussionsbeitrag’, p.580. Suhrkamp, 1980), p.297. 46 Cf. Alex Demirovic´, ‘Die Materialita¨t des Sinns. 37 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Aldous Huxley and Zur politischen O¨ konomie des Zeichens bei Marx’, Utopia’, in Prisms, trans. Samual and Shierry in Michael Heinrich and Dirk Messner (eds), Weber (London: Neville Spearman, 1967), p.117. Globalisierung und Perspektiven linker Politik 38 Adorno, ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, p.34. (Mu¨nster: Westfa¨lisches Dampf boot, 1998), 39 Adorno, ‘Anhang’ to Minima Moralia, p.300. pp.37–53. 40 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p.3. 47 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, pp.274f and 283. 41 Cf. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p.231. 48 Adorno, ‘Diskussionsbeitrag’, p.587.

Alex Demirovic´ is an independent lecturer in political science and political sociology at the University of Frankfurt. Recent publications include Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle (1999), the edited Komplexita¨t und Emanzipation. Kritische Theorie und die Herausforderung der Systemtheorie Niklas Luhmanns (2001) and the co-edited Konjunkturen des Rassismus (2002). Forthcoming in 2003 is Gesellschaftliche Arbeitsteilung und Demokratie.

Kurt Hirtler studies towards a PhD at the Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. He is an editor of parallax. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009

parallax 55 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 56–71

Re-Activating the Democratic Revolution: The Politics of Transformation Beyond Reoccupation and Conformism1

Yannis Stavrakakis

On Negativity

The challenges transformative politics and political theory are facing today are obviously of considerable complexity and I hope I will not oversimplify things by saying that one of their most important dimensions is the following: how does one respond to the increasing centrality – and awareness – of negativity in human experience? Negativity, of course, is not new; nor is it a challenge only for the Left. It is hard to deny that personal trauma, social crisis and political rupture are constant characteristics of human experience and everybody has to face them, one way or the other, sooner or later. However, in the context of this paper, I intend to focus on negativity in the ontological sense (in the singular) – as that which, by dislocating our sedimented positivities, ‘shows the limits of the constitution of objectivity’2 – and not on negativities in the ontic sense (in the plural). If negativity refers to the horizon of impossibility and unrepresentability that punctuates the life of linguistic creatures, this does not mean, however, that it should be understood as a mere destructive force. By inscribing a lack in our dislocated positivities it fuels the desire for new social and political constructions. In Diana Coole’s terms, negativity is also affirmative: ‘a creative-destructive force that engenders as well as ruins positive forms. In this sense negativity does tend to operate as (a surrogate for) ontology, although it is far too mobile, too negative, to serve as a foundation for what follows’.3 Negativity then also indicates the dimension of ‘becoming, a productivity that engenders and ruins every distinct form as a creative destructive restlessness’.4 It is neither an object nor its negation: it is the condition of possibility/impossibility of the constitution of objects.5

In pre-modern societies religious imagination was the predominant discursive horizon for the inscription and administration of negativity. There is no doubt, however, that modernity has signalled a shift in our symbolic and imaginary administration of negativity and contingency. On the one hand, it has highlighted its constitutive

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 nature: a world without God is a world visibly lacking the promise and the guarantee of a final resolution of negativity. On the other hand, unable to assume full responsibility for such a radical recognition, such a disruptive awareness, modernity has ‘reoccupied’ the ground of a pre-modern ethics of harmony, often substituting

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 56 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000065008 God with reason.6 What are the political implications of these developments? Undoubtedly, ‘negativity is already political inasmuch as it signals the vulnerability and contingency of every phenomenon that appears to be fully positive and replete’.7 Furthermore, experiencing negativity – qua the moment of the political – brings forth a play of symbolization which invariably takes the form of political (hegemonic) struggles. In fact, the play between the political (dislocation and hegemonic re-articulation) and the social (the field of sedimented reality) can be characterized as a play of continuous interpenetration and contamination between negativity and positivity.8 In particular, it seems that political modernity has oscillated between (at least) three responses vis-a`-vis negativity: I will refer to them as the utopian, the democratic and the post-democratic response.9

The Utopian Reoccupation

The first response, one reoccupying the ground of pre-modern metaphysics, is best exemplified by some mutations of modern political utopianism. I use utopia here in the strong sense of the word, as a discourse that offers final political solutions from the point of view of a ‘subject supposed to know’, whose opaqueness and authority is never questioned per se.10 Fascism and Stalinism are two obvious examples. What is dominant here, is a fear to encounter negativity without recourse to the certainty of attaining another order, a utopian society, a harmonious future eliminating negativity once and for all. If today we are implicated in a process of ‘mourning revolution’, it is because the fantasmatic horizon of such a utopian mentality has failed to realise its maximalist promise. To clarify this a bit further, the problem with revolution is not that it refers to ‘the overdetermination of a set of struggles in a point of political rupture, from which there follow a variety of effects spread across the whole of the fabric of society’, but that ‘it implied the foundational character of the revolutionary act, the institution of a point of concentration of power from which society could be ‘‘rationally’’ reorganized’;11 indeed reorganised in a totally novel way eliminating negativity. In other words, the problem is its attachment to utopian imagination. In that sense, there is nothing wrong in mourning revolution as the radical act that would transform society into a utopian terrain of fullness and abundance immune from the incursions of the negative. However painful, mourning has been described by Freud as a regular reaction ‘to the loss of some abstraction […] such as one’s country, liberty, an ideal, and so on’. It is also the case that, ‘although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude of life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition […] We rely on its being overcome after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful’.12 Especially in this case mourning becomes an act of assuming responsibility for the political implications of a modernity aware of negativity, aware both of its (modernity’s) political potential as well as its limitations.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 In fact, whenever a conscious attempt was made to realise utopia, to institute human reality according to a plan promising to resolve social contradiction and dissimulate political antagonism, the results were catastrophic. To use a well-known Lacanian phrase, what was foreclosed in the symbolic appeared in the real; the real of terror and extermination. Realising the promise of full positivity seems to open the road parallax 57 to a proliferation of negativity. The result is ‘the triple knotted effect, of ecstasy, the sacred and terror’ that Alain Badiou has called disaster.13

There are at least two ways to ground such a view on modern utopianism.14 One can articulate a historical argument according to which political attempts to realize modern utopian fantasies (notably the ideal of an Arian Nazi order and that of a proletarian revolution leading to a future Communist society) have only reproduced a pattern typical of pre-modern eschatological discourses such as revolutionary millenarianism. The way all these discourses deal with negativity is more or less the following: Utopian fantasies promise to eliminate forever negativity in whatever socio- political form it takes. In order to achieve this impossible goal, utopian discourses localize the cause of negativity in one particular social group or political actor. Thus, the essential by-product of the utopian operation is invariably the stigmatization and even the elimination of the social group presented as incarnating negativity (qua Evil). This historical argument can be supported by a psychoanalytic argument, regarding the function of fantasy in politics. From the point of view of a Lacanian ontology, fantasy becomes the explosive union of two contradictory forces. It involves the dream of a state without disturbances and dislocations, a state in which we are supposed to get back the enjoyment ( jouissance) sacrificed upon entering the symbolic order, while at the same time relies on the production of a ‘scapegoat’ to be stigmatized as the one who is to blame for our lack, the Evil force that stole our precious jouissance. In order to sound credible in its promise to eliminate negativity it has to attribute to it a localized, ‘controllable’ cause (be it the Jews, the kulaks, etc).15

The Democratic Revolution

If this is the case, then surely one of the most urgent political tasks of our age is to traverse the fantasy of utopia and reinvent transformative politics in a post- fantasmatic direction. As Zˇ izˇek has put it, today the question of la traverse´e du fantasme – one of the aims of analytic treatment in Lacanian psychoanalysis – becomes ‘perhaps the foremost political question’.16 But what does it mean to move in such a post-fantasmatic direction? Fortunately, it might not entail reinventing the wheel, it might not require a shift of Herculean proportions. One can encounter elements of such a political project in what is usually called the democratic invention or the democratic revolution. This brings us to the second response to negativity present in political modernity, the one closest to assuming – either consciously or unconsciously – the responsibility for its constitutive and irreducible character.17

No final resolutions are promised here, no political Auf hebung; antagonism is and remains constitutive. ‘Democratic revolution’ – an expression coming from de Tocqueville18 but radically refashioned by Lefort and others – marks a discontinuity from the heteronomous legitimacy of the pre-modern ancien re´gime into a new form Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 of the political institution of the social, a society becoming aware of its own historicity. ‘The modern democratic revolution is best recognized in this mutation: there is no power linked to a body’. The place of power now appears as ‘an empty place’ which can be occupied only temporarily: ‘There is no law that can be fixed, whose articles cannot be contested, whose foundations are not susceptible to being called into Stavrakakis 58 question. Lastly, there is no representation of a centre and of the contours of society: unity cannot now efface social division’. Democracy, according to Lefort, institutionalizes ‘the experience of an ungraspable, uncontrollable society’, in which even the identity of the sovereign people ‘will constantly be open to question’.19 This is clearly the boldest attempt to institute a political order on the lack of ultimate foundations typical of a modernity worthy of its name.

This is not to say that all modern political forms claiming the name ‘democracy’ obey such a principle of organization. One can clearly have an essentialist (pre- democratic) or a post-democratic conceptualization of democracy, which remains blind to negativity. We all know that there is no dictator that has not tried to manipulate, at least once, the vocabulary of democracy. And no citizen of a Western liberal democracy would perhaps instantly identify his own political experience with our picture of the guiding principles of the democratic revolution. This is not surprising. It is due to the fact that our current experience is marked by a third way of responding to negativity characteristic of political modernity, the response of consumerist post-democracy typical of the current articulation between the capitalist order and versions of liberalism.

Consumerist Post-Democracy

Now, what exactly are the characteristics of a consumerist post-democracy? How does it deal with negativity? If revolutionary and utopian imagination promise the final elimination of negativity and the full encounter with our lost/impossible jouissance here and now, consumerist post-democracy follows a more nuanced strategy – the strategy of a jouissance a` venir to paraphrase Derrida’s de´mocratie a` venir. Here it is important to examine both components of this hybrid articulation: first post- democracy and then consumerism.

Post-democracy is founded on an attempt to exclude the political awareness of lack and negativity from the political domain, leading to a political order which retains the token institutions of liberal democracy but neutralizes the centrality of political antagonism – hence the expression ‘post-democracy’. Jacques Ranciere has been one of the political theorists who coined this term.20 A whole chapter is devoted to consensus democracy or ‘post-democracy’ in Ranciere’s La Me´sentente.21 According to his schema post-democracy denotes ‘the paradox that, in the name of democracy, emphasizes the consensual practice of effacing the forms of democratic action’. What, furthermore, underlies post-democracy is an identification of democratic form with the ‘necessities’ of globalized capital: ‘From an allegedly defunct Marxism, the supposedly reigning liberalism borrows the theme of objective necessity, identified with the constraints and caprices of the world market. Marx’s once scandalous thesis

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 that governments are simple business agents for international capital is today an obvious fact on which ‘‘liberals’’ and ‘‘socialists’’ [openly] agree’.22 This brings us directly into the heart of the second component of consumerist post-democracy, capitalist consumerism, insofar as ‘the declared success of democracy is then accompanied by a reduction of democracy to a certain state of social relationships’.23 parallax 59 The point not to be missed here is that, although negativity and antagonism are neutralized within the post-democratic political imaginary, lack and negativity are inscribed within the social circuit of the dominant individualist, consumerist culture regulating social relationships. Inscribed, however, in a particular way. Negativity and the constitutive lack it creates are related to the lack of particular products; to a lack, in other words, that can be alleviated through consumption. Alleviated yes, but not satisfied. However, this non-satisfaction is actually essential in perpetuating desire, and thus sustaining the consumerist circuit of late capitalism. In that sense, consumerism – in opposition to traditional utopianism – is not founded on the elimination of lack and negativity at all cost, but, on the contrary, on the cultivation of a particular play between lack and excess and the domestication of its fantasmatic parameters. A quasi-utopian horizon of fullness and enjoyment remains operative but, crucially, it becomes subordinate to the metonymic passage from product to product, from purchase to purchase, from fantasy to fantasy. The essential by-product of this particular administration of desire is the reproduction of market capitalism. As Lacan has put it, fantasy is not there to fulfil our desire but to constitute it as such. The elimination of lack and negativity is thus to be avoided; it is enough to limit it within an expanding fantasy frame. While in revolutionary utopia jouissance ultimately dominates desire, in the quasi-utopian universe of consumerist post- democracy, desire is given priority over jouissance. This is the implicit logic that utopian modernity missed but capitalist consumerism has elevated into its hegemonic rationale.24

Three further points are crucial here. First, the passage into a post-democratic terrain results in part, from the gradual colonization of democratic politics by the consumerist logic of advertising discourse. In a post-democratic regime, while elections continue to exist and can change governments, public electoral debate becomes ‘a tightly controlled spectacle, managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the techniques of persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those teams’.25 Second, this colonization is what turns the market, at least in the form it takes in late capitalism (which is not the only possible form), from an ally to an adversary of democracy. As long as the utopian revolutionary option was still considered alive, the other two options of responding to negativity we have discussed, (the spirit of the democratic revolution and so-called ‘free market’ liberalism) were more or less seen as distinct but allied in their fight against the spectre of revolutionary utopia and its excesses. As soon as this spectre collapsed the alliance was dissolved. Capitalist consumerism started colonizing democratic institutions in an unprecedented rhythm and – crucially – at a global scale, producing the hybrid of consumerist post- democracy. If modern ‘existing’ democracies have always involved the paradoxical articulation of individual liberty and pluralism, on the one hand, and popular sovereignty and equality on the second, as well as a continuous yet productive struggle between these two dimensions – what Mouffe calls the democratic paradox26 – then these recent developments threaten to re-signify democracy in a way that would make it Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 synonymous with a post-democratic ‘free market’ liberalism or liberal capitalism. Third, by adopting a quasi-utopian dynamic which domesticates rather than attempting to eliminate negativity and lack, consumerist post-democracy manages to avoid the extreme disasters caused by utopian reoccupations. Hence what Zˇ izˇek calls – without any irony – the great achievements of liberal capitalism: ‘probably, never in Stavrakakis 60 human history have so many people enjoyed such a degree of freedom and material standard of living as in today’s developed Western countries’.27 Indeed, even if one can argue that ‘capitalism harms human beings’, this is carried out ‘through neglect rather than through terror. Compared to the personal will of a dictator, the structural violence of market ‘‘forces’’ appears benign’.28 This picture is, of course, revealed as partial and limited, especially if one takes into account the various forms of ‘collateral damage’ produced by consumerist post-democracy. As Alain Badiou has pointed out, ‘Terror is [still] wielded against what is and should not be: the impoverished planet, the distant rebel, the non-Western and the immigrant nomad driven by radical abandonment towards affluent metropolises’.29 Nevertheless, it constitutes a (partial) reality with hegemonic appeal, a horizon sustained by the hegemony of an administration of desire with seemingly unlimited resources.

Mourning or Melancholia?

The question now, is how is one to respond to the increasing hegemony of post- democracy, which after the demise of the utopian political imaginary is now eroding the achievements and the promise of the democratic revolution? A political theory determined to avoid the dangers entailed in the nostalgic politics of reoccupation, seems to have only one option: to insist on the radicalization of democracy on a global scale against de-politicization and the domestication of negativity and antagonism within the framework of the consumerist play between lack and excess. The fact that capitalist consumerism has colonized democratic institutions should not make us disavow the radical potential of the democratic revolution within political modernity. In fact, it should only serve to reinforce the conviction that the democratic revolution remains the most advanced political invention vis-a`-vis the recognition of the constitutive character of negativity and its translation into an organising principle for any politics of transformation. If it did not have this potential then there would be no need for the promotion of the post-democratic agenda on behalf of all those that benefit from the reproduction and globalization of the present capitalist order. It is also true that most forms of democracy – liberal democracy included – still contain a kernel of that potential – often repressed and marginalized and certainly in need of radical revitalization and re-activation. Such a re-activation constitutes one of the most urgent tasks of contemporary political theory.

Where can one locate theoretical projects of this sort?30 Although she goes on to point out their limitations and to discuss alternative formulations (including the Derridian de´mocratie a` venir), Diana Coole still reaches the astonishing conclusion that ‘the most radical contemporary discourses here, and the ones that are most sensitive to a certain negativity, are those focusing on deliberative or discursive democracy and associated with Habermas’.31 It is difficult to see how one could justify such a formulation. In Coole’s case, this formulation can only be sustained by avoiding any reference to projects such as Lefort’s re-activation of the democratic revolution, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy and William Connolly’s agonistic pluralism.32 However, it is projects like these that today require our full attention.

As an example, let me briefly examine radical democracy.33 What is important here is that radical democracy (as a project re-activating and extending the scope of the parallax 61 democratic revolution), besides involving a set of concrete proposals,34 involves a particular form of political ethos. This is a point that many have not been able to discern.35 Seen as a distinct form of politics, radical democracy takes an anti- essentialist ontology of lack and negativity as its condition of possibility.36 It is not only that one has to acknowledge that ‘at the base of any struggle lies […] the experience of dislocation and antagonism’; it is not only that the radical absence of foundation now becomes the basis for a critique of any form of oppression.37 It is also that accepting the impossibility of any ultimate reconciliation and coming to terms with the irreducibility of antagonism becomes the ethical nodal point of a new political order worthy of the democratic tradition. Worthy because it registers and extends the same democratic principles, the same non-reductive stance vis-a`-vis negativity. The way radical democracy deals with negativity is by acknowledging its constitutive character and by assuming responsibility for its open, antagonistic administration, resisting at the same time, the fantasy of its permanent resolution or its reduction into an advertising spectacle. In Lacanian terms, we can assert that radical democracy’s deepening of the democratic revolution involves adopting an ethical position beyond the fantasy of harmony. It is here that the Lacanian ethics of psychoanalysis can lend support to a radical democratic project.38

This is not to say, however, that this is an easy task. On the contrary, it is something that is becoming increasingly difficult. In Jason Glynos’ words: ‘How does one even begin to bring about this radical democratic ethos? What are the main obstacles to this? Is it sufficient to rely upon intellectualist-cognitivist strategies of persuasion?’39 These are open questions that require urgent attention. It is clear, in any case, that, at least from a psychoanalytic point of view, persuasion is not enough to shake ethical and political identifications. What underlies such identifications is a particular relation to enjoyment ( jouissance) structured in fantasy. Thus, a passionate endorsement of radical democracy would require the cultivation and hegemony of a different type of ethical relation to negativity and enjoyment, an ethos beyond the politics of fantasy (in either of its forms: utopian reoccupation and quasi-utopian post-democracy).

It seems, however, that the complexities of such a task have led many on the left to opt for a nostalgic return to the old – defeated and dangerous – politics of reoccupation. In fact, a substantial part of the left has never managed to distance itself sufficiently from a particular version of political imagination, utopian revolutionary imagination. To put it in Freudian terms, for some the process of mourning has not even started; or rather, it has been interrupted and the object of mourning has been displaced to ‘democracy’ itself. Today, it is more fashionable to mourn democracy than utopian imagination. Even for someone like Zˇ izˇek, democracy is ‘more and more a false issue, a notion so discredited by its predominant use that, perhaps, one should take the risk of abandoning it to the enemy’.40 But if democracy has been discredited by its post-democratic use, is the situation any better with Left utopianism, with the dream of a revolutionary radical re-foundation of the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 social? Are not the risks involved in the politics of reoccupation substantially higher than those involved in the radicalization of democracy? Are not the supposed benefits of an illusory and ambiguous nature? It seems that the politics of nostalgia presuppose a very selective memory. In the case of Zˇ izˇek, as Laclau has observed, ‘despite his professed Marxism, [Zˇ izˇek] pays no attention whatsoever to the intellectual history Stavrakakis 62 of Marxism, in which several of the categories he uses have been refined, displaced, or – to encapsulate it in one term – deconstructed’.41

On the other hand, many of those resisting the politics of reoccupation have also opted to disavow the promise of the democratic revolution, this time in a post-democratic direction (I am mainly referring to projects such as the Third Way). It is worth remembering here, the difference between mourning and melancholia as developed by Freud. The two seem indistinguishable in all but one of their characteristics: melancholia entails a generalised depreciation of oneself, a depreciation that engulfs the melancholic’s whole history.42 In political terms, such a depreciation can only lead to a generalized rejection of the political tradition of the modern Left in which – paradoxically – both its utopian guise and its democratic version are sacrificed in favour of a post-democratic political imaginary.43 In that sense, both the return to the politics of reoccupation and the recasting of some kind of centre-left strategy in a post-democratic direction, presuppose the disavowal of the radical potential of the democratic revolution. Such an unholy convergence must be of some significance; it certainly reveals a lot. However, mourning utopia is not equivalent to mourning radical politics, while mourning revolution should not be extended to mourning the democratic revolution.

What is most troubling in this conjuncture, is that a substantial part of the left still willing to consider the prospect of a transformation of the existing order, seems unable to register the distinction between democracy – and the radical promise of the democratic revolution – and post-democracy. Fuelled by the resentment caused by the hegemony of globalized capital, it longs for a supposedly real, positive politics even if such a politics has been proved unable to deal in a consistent way with the intricacies of modernity and negativity. What is most astonishing is that such a course seems to be appealing to theorists that have been instrumental in introducing a Lacanian ‘negative ontology’ into the social sciences and philosophy, theorists that have also served as nodal references in this text. The two cases which are most instructive in this respect are surely those of Slavoj Zˇ izˇek and Alain Badiou.

Zˇizˇek, Badiou and Radical Democracy

Both Zˇ izˇek and Badiou have been associated with the increasing influence of Lacan in contemporary political theory and philosophy. It is Badiou who has pointed out that Lacan’s ‘undertaking is an event and a condition for the renaissance of philosophy’.44 He even went so far as to claim that ‘a philosophy is possible today, only if it is compatible with Lacan’.45 As for Zˇ izˇek, his whole oeuvre – impressive both in terms of volume and dynamism – can be seen as an attempt to demonstrate the importance of Lacanian theory for the analysis of ideology, cultural critique, and much more besides. In their recent work, however, they both seem to prioritize a Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 ‘positive’ politics for the Left, outside the framework of the democratic revolution. It is surely necessary to examine their respective arguments in order to see whether their interventions can indeed be construed as a critique of a radical democratic ethics. Do they really target radical democracy and the democratic revolution? Is such a critique based on a consistent understanding of the radical democratic parallax 63 argument; is it in other words justified? Can they enlist Lacan in support of their argument? These are some of the questions we will try to clarify in the remaining part of this paper. In doing so we will limit our attention to, more or less, two important publications: Badiou’s Ethics,46 and Zˇ izˇek’s recent exchange with Butler and Laclau in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality.47 We will start with Zˇ izˇek, who seems to question the very basis of radical democracy, and then turn to Badiou’s treatment of Ethics to the extent that it intervenes in the whole discussion around the development of a radical democratic ethos.

Politics …

Obviously, the multifaceted work of Zˇ izˇek is not the place to look for a traditionally defined theoretical consistency – in fact, part of the fascination with Zˇ izˇek’s work lies in his disregard, or rather his calculated transgression, of such academic conventions. Nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore a substantial shift marking his work over the last few years. I am referring to his abandonment of the politics of democracy in favour of a politics in which anti-capitalism is clearly prioritized; his recent projects – for example his critique of the notion of totalitarianism and his resurrection of Lenin – are indicative in this respect. This shift, however, becomes abundantly clear in his exchange with Butler and Laclau. Consider, for example, the concluding remarks of his final intervention included in the exchange: ‘either [radical democracy] means palliative damage control measures within the global capitalist framework, or it means absolutely nothing’.48 Here, Zˇ izˇek attacks radical democracy on the grounds that ‘it does not in fact repoliticize capitalism, because the very notion and form of the ‘‘political’’ within which it operates is grounded in the ‘‘depoliticization’’ of the economy’.49 His position is that ‘the justified rejection of the fullness of post-revolutionary Society does not justify the conclusion that we have to renounce any project of a global social transformation’.50 Laclau’s response is predictable but justified: ‘I agree entirely that this short circuit is illegitimate; the only thing I want to add to that is that it is only Zˇ izˇek who is jumping into it’.51 Indeed, why should one deny the transformative potential of radical democracy? How can Zˇ izˇek support his claim that the political potential of radical democracy is limited in such a severe and debilitating way?

Zˇ izˇek’s argument is that, although at the conceptual level, the re-politicization promised by radical democracy’s stress on antagonism sounds quite radical, in practice hegemonic struggle is never played out at an ontological level, at the level of an ontology of negativity. For him the Political is split and thus seems to ‘be operative only in so far as it ‘‘represses’’ its radically contingent nature, in so far as it undergoes a minimum of ‘‘naturalization’’ […] we are never dealing with the Political ‘‘at the level of its notion’’, with political agents who fully endorse their contingency’.52 In other words, radical democrats cannot assume full responsibility for negativity; they have to rely on a certain positivization. The price they pay for that is the naturalization of Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 capitalist relations. Such a view, however, can only be based on a significant omission, something pointed out by Laclau:

Concerning Zˇ izˇek’s assertion of the need for a minimum of naturalization and the impossibility of representing impossibility as Stavrakakis 64 such, my response is qualified […] For in the endless play of substitutions that Zˇ izˇek is describing one possibility is omitted: that, instead of the impossibility leading to a series of substitutions which attempt to supersede it, it leads to a symbolization of impossibility as such as a positive value […] The possibility of this weakened type of naturalization is important for democratic politics, which involves the institutionalization of its own openness and, in that sense, the injunction to identify with its ultimate impossibility.53

In other words, Zˇ izˇek seems to deny the very possibility of institutionalizing lack and division, of articulating a positive political order encircling – but not neutralizing – negativity and impossibility. What is most astonishing here is that such a denial does not seem to be consistent with Zˇ izˇek’s Lacanian framework insofar as Lacan has conceived psychoanalysis as a paradoxical enterprise leading to the identification with the symptom and the traversing of fantasy. Furthermore, Lacan has devoted considerable energy to symbolically inscribing the lack in the Other in a non- totalizable, non-fantasmatic way. The empty place at the centre of (radicalized) democracy constitutes an attempt to discern – and encourage – the political equivalent of such a position within our political experience of modernity.54 At this point then Laclau appears more Lacanian than Zˇ izˇek insofar as a radical democratic argument can be seen as attempting to draw the political implications of a central Lacanian ethical attitude. Furthermore, this significant omission leads Zˇ izˇek’s politics into a certain ambiguity. Although, as we have seen, he rejects the utopian promise of a post-revolutionary Society, he appears to end up supporting a form of utopian politics: ‘demandons l’impossible’ is the title of the closing section of his last intervention in the book. For him, today ‘it is more important than ever to hold th[e] utopian place of the global alternative open’.55

From the point of view of a Lacan-inspired radical democratic argument, the democratic politics of impossibility – a politics acknowledging the ontological status of negativity and promoting a post-fantasmatic form of political institution of the social – is still a viable option answering in the most consistent way the challenges of late capitalist modernity. These challenges create both opportunities and obstacles for a transformative politics of this kind. Opportunities in the sense that, if ‘there is politics because there is subversion and dislocation of the social’,56 then ‘the possibility of a radical democracy is directly linked to the level and extension of structural dislocations operating in contemporary capitalism’.57 And very few people would question the increasing proliferation of dislocations in late capitalism. On this point both Laclau and Zˇ izˇek are in agreement: ‘today’s capitalism, in its very triumph, is breeding new ‘‘contradictions’’ which are potentially even more explosive than those of standard industrial capitalism’.58 Late capitalist society is haunted ‘by the prospect of confronting the Thing in its different guises – no longer predominantly the nuclear catastrophe, but the multitude of other catastrophes that loom in the horizon’.59 In Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 fact, I would argue that it is possible to extend this argument by pointing to the importance of the emergence of what theorists such as Ulrich Beck have described as the emergence of risk society. Obviously there are many problems with Beck’s schema, but, on the other hand, we have to accept – and both Zˇ izˇek and Laclau have so far failed to do that – that the proliferation of risks (from BSE to genetically parallax 65 modified crops and beyond) which disrupt the smooth functioning of late capitalist post-democracy, constitutes an opportunity to channel a multitude of forces (most of them emanating from civil society) into a re-politicizing struggle capable of re-invigorating our democratic ethos. Nevertheless, such a prospect is far from guaranteed. The main obstacle here is that the uncertainty fuelled by risks and dislocations can also be administered in the opposite direction, one informed by a politics of reoccupation, or co-opted by ad hoc post-democratic concessions. This is why the promotion of a post-fantasmatic ethics is today of the utmost political importance.

… and Ethics

This brings us to the whole discussion around the ethical turn in contemporary political philosophy. Even if one concludes that radical democracy can be a viable and fruitful project for a politics of transformation, what about the prioritization of ethics within recent radical democratic discourse? For example, at a fairly superficial level, it seems as if Zˇ izˇek questions the importance of ethics in this field, and thus would also seem to question the deployment of the radical democratic attitude at the ethical level. Consider, for example, his outright condemnation of the ethical turn in political philosophy: ‘The ‘‘return to ethics’’ in today’s political philosophy shamefully exploits the horrors of Gulag or Holocaust as the ultimate bogey for blackmailing us into renouncing all serious radical engagement’.60 Surely, however, this cannot be a rejection of ethics in toto. Even if only because Zˇ izˇek himself has devoted a considerable part of his work elaborating the ethics of psychoanalysis in the Lacanian tradition.61 It follows then that it must be a particular form of ethical discourse that constitutes his target. The same is true of Alain Badiou’s argument, to which we will now turn.

Badiou’s target is a particular type of ethics, of ethical ideology, which uses a discourse of ‘human rights’ and ‘humanitarianism’ in order to silence alternative thought and politics and legitimize the capitalist order. This is an ethics premised on the principle that ‘good is what intervenes visibly against an Evil that is identifiable a priori’.62 What Badiou points to here, is what appears as a strange inversion; here the Good is derived from the Evil and not the other way round.63 The result of such an inversion is significant for the theory and politics of transformation:

If the ethical ‘‘consensus’’ is founded on the recognition of Evil, it follows that every effort to unite people around a positive idea of the Good, let alone identify Man with projects of this kind, becomes in fact the real source of evil itself. Such is the accusation so often repeated over the last fifteen years: every revolutionary project stigmatized as ‘‘utopian’’ turns, we are told, into totalitarian nightmare. Every will to inscribe an idea of justice or equality turns Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 bad. Every collective will to the Good creates Evil […] In reality, the price paid by ethics is a stodgy conservatism.64

This ethic, which is revealed as nothing but a mindless catechism, a miserable moralism,65 is an ethics that can have no relation to a transformative political agenda. Stavrakakis 66 This ethics is presented in Badiou’s argument as a distortion of a real ethic of truths, which attempts to restore the logical priority of Good over Evil. Badiou’s ethic of truths is an ethics related to the idea of the event, a category central for his whole philosophical and political apparatus. To put it briefly, the event here refers to a real break which destabilizes a given discursive articulation, a pre-existing order. Ethics, in Badiou’s sense, implies a particular type of relation to this destabilizing event, a relation of fidelity: ‘An eventful fidelity is a real break (both thought and practiced) in the specific order within which the event took place […] I shall call ‘‘truth’’ (a truth) the real process of a fidelity to an event’.66 Subject, within this schema, is the bearer of such a fidelity, the one who bears a process of truth and, in fact, is constituted and emerges, as a subject, out of this process.67

Undoubtedly, Badiou’s work introduces a refreshing and challenging tone in contemporary philosophy. However, it is not immune from a certain criticism. From the point of view of a Lacan-inspired radical democratic argument, one could point to the following points of contention:

1. Indeed many of the theoretico-political interventions associated with the so-called ‘ethical turn’ boil down to the ideological moralism that Badiou so eloquently condemns. So much has been also pointed out by the theorists of radical democracy. Chantal Mouffe, for example, has noted the dangers entailed in the moralization of political antagonism.68 As she has recently pointed out, ‘democracy can only be endangered when politics is played out in the moral register’.69 One gets the impression, however, that Badiou draws a very easy distinction between ethics proper and moralism. For example, in order to provide some empirical justification for his condemnation of the discourse of ‘human rights’ in toto he seems to take for granted the ideological manipulation underlying recent attempts to set up an International Criminal Justice system. Consider the following quote: ‘The International Tribunal is clearly prepared to arrest and try, in the name of ‘‘human rights’’, anyone, anywhere, who attempts to contest the New World Order of which NATO (i.e. the United States) is the armed guard’.70 Surely the fact that today both the US and China bitterly resist the creation of an International Criminal Court should lead to a more nuanced position on these issues.71

2. Obviously I would be the last one to disagree with Badiou’s insistence on the importance of Lacan for the development of a non-moralistic, political ethics. I entirely agree with his point that ‘ethics must be taken in the sense presumed by Lacan’,72 and I rejoice at his pointing out that ‘the ethic of the truth […] [i]s an ethic of the Real’ alaLacan.73 My problem here is that I have a difficulty in making Badiou’s prioritization of the Good compatible with the Lacanian Ethics of psychoanalysis, which are clearly an Ethics very suspicious of the Good. Badiou’s central thesis is that ‘if Evil exists, we must conceive it from the starting point of the Good’,74 but how can this be made compatible with Lacan’s assertion that ‘the good Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 as such – something that has been the eternal object of the philosopher’s quest in the sphere of ethics’ is radically denied by Freud,75 and that, from an analytic point of view, not only does the analyst not have this Good that is asked of him, but ‘he also knows that there isn’t any?’76 The difference here concerns, in the final analysis, the relation between positivity and negativity. Badiou does not seem to realise that parallax 67 any Good, even the Good of the fidelity to an event, is always irreducibly linked to an ontological negativity.77

3. Badiou, of course, is not completely unaware of the dangers posed by a positive ethics of the Good. The ways in which he attempts to guard against these dangers are multiple, but two feature as the most important. First, as we have just seen, he premises his own ethics on the notion of the event, which brings with it connotations of negativity (break, rupture, etc.). In fact he even goes on to acknowledge, in a very Lacanian way, the unnameable kernel of every truth-process. Secondly, he develops a typology of Evil, in which Evil is partly revealed as an excessive positivization of the Good, of the power of truth(s): ‘Every absolutization of the power of a truth organizes an Evil’, it entails ‘a disaster of the truth induced by the absolutization of its power’.78 One such manifestation of Evil involves wanting, ‘at all costs and under condition of a truth, to force the naming of the unnameable. Such exactly is the principle of disaster’.79 In that sense, behind the strict distinction Good/Evil lies a delicate balancing act of determining the correct degree of positivization. Too much positivization (absolutization) transforms Good to Evil. But if evil is an ‘unruly effect of the power of truth’,80 don’t we have to acknowledge that the possibility of evil is inscribed in the very process of proclaiming our fidelity to a positive Good? In other words, it is hard to see how ‘[t]he genuine militant, whose pursuit of truth is uncertain at every stage, […] who manages to avoid converting belief into a religion’,81 can succeed in this effort if the process of fidelity is conceived as driven ‘by an intense faith on the part of the subject’.82 Badiou’s ethics can be described as a heroic attempt to reconstitute an enthusiastic positive ethics of the Good purified of the disastrous excesses of the ever-present risk of its absolutization; an attempt, however, compromised by his own heroic and excessive, even quasi-religious,83 rhetoric – Simon Critchley has referred to a certain ‘heroism of the decision’ in Badiou’s work, a heroism linked to ‘the seduction of a great politics’.84 Compromised also by the ultimate inability of Badiou’s formalist/relativist ethics of the Good to offer any sufficient criteria for distinguishing true from false events. Not that anyone else can offer such a priori criteria; however, this constitutive inability – a marker of the continuous interpenetration between Good and Evil, or rather between positivity and negativity – is perhaps the best justification for abandoning a positive ethics of the Good as a matrix for radical politics.

This is not to say, however, that Badiou’s work is of no use for a radical democratic project situated beyond a political ethics of the positive Good.85 For example the following question posed by Badiou strikes me as extremely important: ‘There is always one question in the ethic of truths: how will I, as some-one, continue to exceed my own being? How will I link the things I know, in a consistent fashion, via the effects of being seized by the not-known?’86 From the point of view of a radical democratic ethics it is not enough to encourage fidelity to an event (in practice, any event), but to cultivate an openness towards event-ness. Such an openness, premised Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 on a Lacanian negative ontology and alert to the ever-present play of negativity and disaster, will be more adequately equipped to allow and encourage the pursuit of a better future within a political framework founded on the awareness of the dangers of absolutization. In that sense, fidelity to an event can flourish and avoid absolutization only within the framework of another fidelity, fidelity to the openness Stavrakakis 68 of the political space and to the awareness of the constitutive impossibility of a final suture of the social; within the framework of a commitment to the continuous political re-inscription of the irreducible lack in the Other. This fidelity is not a one-off,a rare occurrence, it is not tied to a great politics of nostalgia, but implies a permanent democratic revolution in our political ethos, a sceptical passion that will have to be re-inscribed in every political act: it cannot be reduced to a fidelity to particular acts, not even those associated with the democratic revolution, but extends its scope to an acknowledgment of the post-fantasmatic political potential opened by them in the direction of a continuous radicalization of democracy. Badiou is right that today ‘democracy’ is one of the central organisers of consensus.87 And this is clearly the consensus of post-democracy. It is obviously necessary to question and interrogate this anti-political normalization of democracy. The only consistent way of doing that, the only way of making democracy relevant again,88 without reoccupying the dangerous ground of utopian absolutizations, is by re-activating the radical potential of the democratic revolution, by acknowledging event-ness and negativity as the conditions of possibility/impossibility of all transformative political action: ‘It is a matter of showing how the space of the possible is larger than the one we are assigned – that something else is possible, but not that everything is possible’.89

Notes

1 I would like to thank Jason Glynos and Kurt 11 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony Hirtler for their valuable comments on earlier and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), p.177. drafts of this paper. 12 Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ in 2 Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of The Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 11, On Metapsychology our Time (London: Verso, 1990), p.26. (London: Penguin, 1991), p.252. 3 Diana Coole, Negativity and Politics (London: 13 Alain Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy (Albany: Routledge, 2000), p.6. SUNY, 1999), p.133. 4 Coole, Negativity and Poltics, p.230. 14 I am relying here on arguments put forward 5 Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of our and elaborated in detail in ch. 4 of Stavrakakis, Time, p.36. Lacan and the Political. 6 The concept of reoccupation is used here in the 15 For an analysis along these lines, see Slavoj sense introduced by Hans Blumenberg. See Hans Zˇ izˇek, ‘I Hear You With My Eyes’, in Slavoj Zˇ izˇek Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age and Renata Salecl [eds], Gaze and Voice as Love (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1983). Objects (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 7 Coole, Negativity and Politics, p.231. p.116. 8 For a more detailed elaboration see Yannis 16 Zˇ izˇek, ‘I Hear You With My Eyes’, p.118. Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political (London: 17 The ordering of the three responses presented Routledge, 1999), ch. 3. I am relying here on the here is logical and not chronological. distinction between the social and the political as 18 On the limits of de Tocqueville’s approach and developed by Laclau in New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, p.35. the way it can be fruitfully utilized, see Claude 9 I do not claim, of course, that this is the only Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Cambridge: possible way of conceiving the nuances of political Polity, 1988), pp.14–15. 19 modernity. Indeed, it would be possible to Claude Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society complexify this broad typology in a variety of (Cambridge:Polity, 1986), pp.303–4. On the directions. importance of the democratic revolution also see

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 10 In that sense, it is definitely not all projects of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and radical social transformation which fall within this Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), pp.152–9. category, but only those that do not acknowledge 20 Jacques Ranciere, On the Shores of Politics (London: their historical conditions of possibility and fail to Verso, 1995), p.177. inscribe within their discursive fabric the ultimate 21 Jacques Ranciere, Dis-agreement (Minneapolis: impossibility of eliminating negativity. University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp.95–121. parallax 69 22 Ranciere, Dis-agreement, p.113. 41 Ernesto Laclau, ‘Structure, History and the 23 Ranciere, Dis-agreement, pp.97–8. Political’, Butler et al, Contingency, Hegemony, 24 For a Lacanian analysis of advertising discourse Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, p.204. and consumerism, see Yannis Stavrakakis, ‘On the 42 Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia, p.254. For Critique of Advertising Discrourse: A Lacanian a Zˇ izˇekian take on mourning and melancholia’, View’, Third Text, no. 51, (2000). see Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, Did Somebody say Totalitarianism? 25 Colin Crouch, Coping with Post-democracy (London: (London: Verso, 2001), ch. 4. Fabian Society, 2000), p.2. 43 To clarify things a bit more, as Laclau and 26 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London: Mouffe have noted, ‘no doubt it is a good thing Verso, 2000). that the Left has finally come to terms with the 27 Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, ‘Holding the Place’, Judith Butler, importance of pluralism and of liberal-democratic Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, Contingency, institutions, but the problem is that this has been Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the accompanied by the mistaken belief that it meant Left (London: Verso, 2000), p.322. abandoning any attempt at transforming the 28 Susan Buck-Morris, Dreamworld and Catastrophe present hegemonic order’. In that sense, the (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000), p.188. problem with ‘actually existing’ democracies is not 29 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.132. Also see their constitutive values such as equality and Zˇ izˇek in Butler et al, Contingency, Hegemony, liberty, the parameters of a democratic paradox Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, p.322 that has to be assumed as such, but ‘the system of for a list of similar side-effects. power which redefines and limits the operation of 30 As for political projects promoting similar goals, these values’ Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the diverse anti-globalisation movement provides ‘Preface to the Second Edition’, Hegemony and many examples. Socialist Strategy, 2nd edition, (London: Verso), p.xv. 31 Coole, Negativity and Politics, p.232. 44 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.83. 32 Surprisingly, the reader will not find even a 45 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.84. single reference to either of these four names in 46 Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding Coole’s book. of Evil (London: Verso, 2001). 33 For a general discussion of the politics of radical 47 Butler et al, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: democracy, see David Trend, Radical Democracy Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, 2000. (New York: Routledge, 1996). In the context of 48 Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, ‘Holding the Place’, in Butler et al, this paper we will concentrate on Laclau and Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Mouffe’s radical democratic project (with a Dialogues on the Left, p.321. Lacanian twist). 49 Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, ‘Class Struggle or Postmodernism? 34 See Jason Glynos, ‘Radical Democracy: Yes please!’ in Butler et al, Contingency, Hegemony, Democratic Theory from an Anti-essentialist Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, p.98. Perspective’ Essex Papers in Politics and Government, 50 Zˇ izˇek, ‘Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes Sub-series in Ideology and Discourse Analysis, no. 17, please!’, p.101. (2001), pp.4–5. 51 Laclan, ‘Structure, History and the Political’, 35 Including Slavoj Zˇ izˇek who seems unable to p.197. understand that besides a series of heterogeneous 52 Zi¯zˇek, ‘Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes phenomena and struggles, radical democracy please!’, p.100. entails a singular organisation of the political order. 53 Ernesto Laclau ‘Structure, History and the Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, ‘Da Capo Senza Fine’, Butler et al, Political’, p.199. Contigency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary 54 This connection is elaborated in detail in Dialogues on the Left, p.225. Stavrakakis, Lacan and The Political, ch. 5. 36 Glynos, ‘Radical Democracy: Democratic 55 Zizˇek, ‘Holding the Place’, p.325. Theory from an Anti-essentialist Perspective’, p.6. 56 Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of our 37 Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, Time, p.61. p.169 and Glynos, ‘Radical Democracy: 57 Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of our Democratic Theory from an Anti-essentialist Time, p.45. Perspective’, pp.5–6. 58 Zˇ izˇek, ‘Holding the Place’, p.322. 38 See, in this respect, Stavrakakis, Lacan and the 59 Zˇ izˇek, On Belief, p.31.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 Political, ch. 5. Also see Chantal Mouffe, The 60 Zˇ izˇek, On Belief, p.127. A similar position is put Democratic Paradox, pp.129–140. forward by Ranciere. According to Ranciere, 39 Glynos, ‘Radical Democracy: Democratic Ethics functions today as the final form in which Theory from an Anti-essentialist Perspective’, p.14 the elimination of politics is attempted. Also see, 40 Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, On Belief (London: Routedge, in this respect, his critique of humanitarianism in 2001), p.123. Ranciere, Dis-aggreement, p.135. Stavrakakis 70 61 For examples from his recent work, Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, 76 Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p.300. Did Somebody say Totalitarianism?, ch. 4. Also consider 77 See, in this respect, Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, ‘Psychoanalysis his praise for Alenka Zupancic’s recent book Ethics in Post-Marxism: The Case of Alain Badiou’, The of the Real: Kant, Lacan (London: Verso, 2000) in his South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 97, no. 2, (1998), p.258. foreword to the book, pp.vii–xiii. 78 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of 62 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.8. Evil, p.85. 63 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.9. 79 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of 64 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, pp.13–4. Evil, p.86. 65 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.iv. 80 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of 66 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.42. Evil, p.61. 67 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.43. 81 Jason Barker, Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction 68 See, for example, Chantal Mouffe, ‘Democracy, (London: Pluto Press, 2002), p.139. Radical and Plural’, CSD Bulletin, vol. 9, no.1, 82 Barker, Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction, p.84. (Winter 2001–2), p.13. 83 Notice, for example, his references to 69 Chantal Mouffe, ‘The End of Politics and the immortality in Ethics and his general interest in Challenge of Right-Wing Populism’, unpublished Saint Paul. paper, p.11. 84 Simon Critchley, ‘Demanding Approval: On the 70 Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p.iv. Ethics of Alain Badiou’, Radical Philosophy, no.100, 71 For a more detailed discussion of this point see (2000), pp.24, 27. Peter Dews, ‘Uncategorical Imperatives: Adorno, 85 We also take for granted the analytical value of Badiou and the Ethical Turn’, Radical Philosophy, Badiou’s schema, as it highlights the affective no. 111 (2002), p.36. dimension entailed in any identification act. 72 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of 86 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, p.28. Evil, p.50. 73 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of 87 Alain Badiou, ‘The Concept of Democracy’, Evil, p.52. Lacanian Ink, no. 16, (2000), p.30. 74 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of 88 Badiou, ‘The Concept of Democracy’, p.35. Evil, p.60. 89 Alain Badiou & Peter Hallward, ‘Politics and 75 Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou’, (London: Routledge, 1993), p.96. Angelaki, vol. 3, no. 3, (1998), p.121.

Yannis Stavrakakis is Humanities research fellow at the School of Politics, University of Nottingham. He is the author of Lacan and the Political (London: Routledge, 1999) and co-editor of Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) and Lacan and Science (London: Karnac Books, 2002). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009

parallax 71 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 72–80

Seven Variations on the Century1

Alain Badiou

Today we are forced to endure the dominance of an artificial individualism. In France, in 1995, millions of people demonstrated, rallied by the one slogan: ‘together!’ – what Paul Celan, in his poem Anabasis, named the ‘tent-word’. In Seattle and Prague, the rights of collectivities have been declared against the transnational institutions of global finance. In response to all of this, propaganda offers us the ‘self- evident’ rights of the individual caught up in the competitive search for happiness and success. Even in the literary world, the production of biographies and autobiographies is saturating the market. Nothing is considered as worthy of interest except what the Chinese, who adore lists, would call ‘the three relations’: the relation to money, the relation to economic and social success, and the relation to sex. The rest is nothing but archaic abstraction, and very likely totalitarian. What is modern is the generalisation, as Ego-ideals, of the three relations. Behold! … not what in fact is, but what, with a sort of vengeful obstinacy, they are attempting to impose upon us as what must be.

At the very least, we can foster the awareness that this propaganda, far from pertaining, as it claims to, to the nature of the things and subjects democratically inscribed within the media, constitutes instead an act of forcing, achieved through the extraordinarily brutal inversion of everything that the century had managed to desire and invent. The current of thought which effectively marks the epoch that is coming to a close – whatever its often violently opposing variants may be – maintains that every authentic subjectivation is collective, that every vigorous intellectuality implies the construction of a ‘we’. This is because, for this current, a subject is necessarily measured by its historicity. In other words, it is a subject who resonates, in its composition, with the power of an event. This is one of the forms of what I call ‘the passion for the real’: the certainty that, issuing from an event, the subjective will can realise unheard of possibilities within the world; that, far from being a powerless fiction, the will intimately affects the real.

On the contrary, today’s propaganda wants to impose upon us the conviction that willing, under the domination of a crushing reality principle whose distillate is the

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 economy, must prove itself extraordinarily circumspect if it is not to expose the world to grave disasters. Violence must not be done to the nature of things. At base, the spontaneous philosophy of modernising propaganda is Aristotelian: let the nature of things manifest its proper ends. We must not do, but let be. Just think of the gap

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 72 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000065017 between this stance and the conscience of those who used to sing, beneath red flags: ‘the world is going to change from below’.

If you think that the world can and must change absolutely, that there is neither a nature of things to be respected nor pre-formed subjects to be maintained, you thereby admit that the individual can be sacrificed. This means that, by itself, the individual is not endowed with any intrinsic nature that would merit us striving for its preservation. It is with reference to this theme of the unnaturalness of the human subject – more, of the inexistence of man, and thus the vacuity of human rights – that today I would like to propose some variations.

First Variation: Philosophical. In varying guises, philosophers, between the Thirties and the Sixties, worked with the idea that the real of an individual – the constitution of an individual as a subject – is entirely modifiable. Obviously, this constituted a sort of philosophical accompaniment to the theme of the new man. For example, one of Sartre’s first texts, The Transcendence of the Ego, develops the intuition of an open and constitutive consciousness, whose concrete manifestations as ‘me’ or as ‘ego’, and therefore as an identifiable individual, are nothing but external ephemera. The immanent being of consciousness is not grasped through the transcendence, or the identifiable objectivity, of the Ego. Later, Sartre would draw the rigorous ontological consequences of this intuition by posing that the being of consciousness is nothingness, which means absolute freedom, thus rendering any idea of a subjective nature impossible. In psychoanalysis, and singularly in the way it was recast by Lacan, the Ego is an imaginary instance, and the subject as such can no longer be either a nature or a being, because it is (and this is what is meant by ‘unconscious’) ec-centric with respect to its own determination. Lacan names this point of eccentricity ‘the Other’, so that every subject is something like an Alteration of self. This is what Rimbaud had anticipated: ‘I is an other’. Here, it is once again impossible to think the individual as an objective nature.

To the extent that the century has contributed innovations to the theory of the subject, it has conceived the subject as a separation from self, as an interior transcendence. In my own doctrine, the subject is dependent on an event and only comes to be constituted as a capacity for truth. Since its ‘matter’ is a truth procedure, or generic procedure, the subject cannot be naturalised in any way. Adopting Sartre’s vocabulary, we will say that the subject has no essence (this is the meaning of the well-known formula ‘existence precedes essence’). Adopting Lacan’s vocabulary, we will say that a subject is only identified at the point of lack, as a void or lack-of-being.

If the subject is constituted as a lack-of-being, the question of its real remains open, since this real is neither an essence nor a nature. It is then possible to maintain that a subject ‘is’ not, but rather advenes, under certain determinate conditions, where instead Lacan would simply say: ‘it is lacking’. Nietzsche’s imperative, ‘become who you are’, finds a worthy echo here. If one is to become a subject, it is because one Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 isn’t one yet. The ‘who’ that you are, as subject, is nothing but the decision to become this subject.

You can see here the emergence of a link between the thesis that a subject is of the order, not of what is, but of what happens – of the order of the event – and the idea parallax 73 that the individual can be sacrificed to a historical cause that exceeds it. Since the being of the subject is the lack-of-being, it is only by dissolving itself into a project which exceeds it that an individual can hope to attain some subjective real. Whence the fact that the ‘we’, constructed in and by this project, is the only thing that is truly real, the only thing that is subjectively real for the individual who supports it. The individual, in truth, is nothing. The subject is constituted as the new man, emerging at the point of a lack to self. The individual is thus in its very essence the nothing that must be dissolved into a we-subject.

The affirmative reverse of this sacrificial evidence of the individual is that the ‘we’ that a truth constructs – the stakes as well as the support of which are to be found in the new man – is itself immortal. It is immortal by virtue of the fact that it exists, not according to a perishable nature, but according to an eternal occurrence, as eternal as Mallarme´’s dice-throw.

Second Variation: Ideological. How did the century re-organise the three great signifiers of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity? The dominant thesis today, under the mandatory name of democracy, is that the only thing that counts is liberty. A liberty, moreover, so affected by the contempt the other two terms are held in (equality is utopian and anti-natural, fraternity leads to the despotism of the ‘we’) that it becomes purely regulative or juridical: the liberty for all to do the same things, under the same rules.

This idea of liberty was incessantly reviled during the short 20th century, the one that goes from 1917 to 1980. It bore the name of formal liberty, and it was opposed with real liberty – note the pertinence of the adjective. Formal liberty means this: a liberty that is neither articulated through a global, egalitarian project, nor practised subjectively as fraternity.

Throughout the century, equality was the strategic aim: politically, under the name of communism; scientifically, under the name of the axiomatic; artistically, under the imperative of the fusion of art and life; sexually, as ‘mad love’. Liberty, as the unlimited power of the negative, was presupposed, but not thematised. As for fraternity, it was the real itself pure and simple, the sole subjective guarantee of the novelty of experiences, since equality remained programmatic and liberty instrumental.

I insist: fraternity is the real manifestation of the new world, and thus of the new man. What is experimented – in the Party, in action, in the subversive artistic group, in the egalitarian couple – is the real violence of fraternity. And what is the content of this fraternity, if not the acceptance that the infinite ‘we’ prevails over the finitude of the individual? This is what is named by the word ‘comrade’, which today, for all intents and purposes, has fallen into disuse. My comrade is one who, like myself, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 is only a subject by belonging to a process of truth that authorises him or her to say ‘we’.

This is why I hold fast to the conviction that this is not in the slightest a question of utopia or illusion. The set-up for the emergence of the subject is, quite simply, Badiou 74 complete. In Lacan’s terms, equality is the imaginary (since it cannot come about as an objective figure, even though it is the ultimate reason for everything), liberty is the symbolic (since it is the presupposed instrument, the fecund negative), and fraternity is the real (or what is sometimes encountered, here and now).

Third Variation: Critical. The risk incurred in always articulating the constitution of the subject onto a collective, and thus universalizable, transcendence, is that of transferring onto the collective the natural or at least objective properties that the proponents of laissez-faire assume to be the prerogative of the human individual. The century hardly spared itself this deviation. The fascisms did not fail to replace the subjective universality of the truth procedures (political invention, artistic creation, etc.) that they detested with the definition of great collectives of reference: the nation, the race, the West. We can call ‘Stalinism’ the substitution, pronounced on the basis of the Soviet State’s position of power, of entities of this sort (Working Class, Party, Socialist Camp …) for the real political processes of which Lenin had been the foremost thinker, and which Mao in turn attempted to identify.

Let us note in passing, so as not to be in tune with the vulgar equation of nazism and supposed communism (what in effect was the Stalinist State) under the name of totalitarianism, that these two political set-ups remain entirely opposed to one another, even in what concerns the genesis of their entities of reference. For it is precisely against the political processes of emancipation linked to the word ‘proletarian’ – processes they correctly perceive to be unbound, unassignable, cosmopolitan, and anti-State – that, in a perfectly explicit manner, the various fascisms preach submission to national and/or racial totalities of reference and to their putative representatives. The Stalinist state is instead the reification of these real political processes, a reification that comes from the impossibility, encountered by Leninism, of integrating into its conceptual system the question of how the power of the State is to be exercised. Whilst the State has always been the alpha and omega of the fascist vision of the political – as a State based on the supposed existence of great closed collectives – it has never been, in the history of Leninism, and later of Maoism, anything but the obstacle posed by the brutal finitude of the operations of power to the infinite mobility of politics.

The absolute opposition of these political doctrines within the century can be given a more philosophical expression. Fascism’s attempt to oppose, to the infinite of emancipation, the bloody obstacle of a predicable finitude, the denumerable properties of a supposed substance (the Aryan, the Jew, the German …). Communism’s experiment with the antinomy (indicated by Marx, with his customary genius) between the finitude of the State and the infinite immanent to any truth, including above all political truth. The mythical entities of reference accompany the victory of fascisms, and signal the inevitable defeat of communisms.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 And yet it is true that, whether they are idealised and turned from the outset into the subjective support of a politics of conquest, or considered as nothing but the pompous names of political stagnation, there is indeed a remarkable production of imaginary macroscopic entities and hyperbolic names. These large entities do not constitute the we-subject discussed above. They do not have their origin in an parallax 75 occurrence or an event; they are inert collectives. They are seen by their devotees as necessary conditions of subjectivation, as the objective matter that the we-subject either reflects or enacts in practice. I propose to name these entities the passive body of subjectivation.

Why, even in the experience of State control, should one not rest content with the real ‘we’, the ‘we’ that envelops the ‘I’ in the effective becoming of an invention of thought? Why is it that the determination of an acting singularity so often has had to represent itself as the consciousness or experience of objective entities, of mythical hypostases? Why endow action with a passive body? We shall have occasion to see that this formidable objectivation intervenes in the problem of the naming of processes, in the theory of names. For now, we can ask ourselves if the great macroscopic totalities are not summoned, when they belong to communism, as names (proletarian politics, bourgeois art, socialist camp, imperialist camp, State of the workers and peasants …) whose only value is to provide the cheap universalisation of a process, at the very moment when this process falls into sterility or is fixed in the State form. The name is what allows a singularity to be asserted beyond itself. The century’s treatment of names is also a prisoner of the Two, of the non-dialectical synthesis. On the one hand, it is important to love the acting singularities alone (this is fraternity); on the other hand, these singularities must be historicized, even during those moments when invention is lacking – those moments when, as the French revolutionary Saint-Just once said, ‘the revolution is frozen’. The universality of these moments must be rendered evident by names that easily convey identifiable objectivities.

In the end, the problem is the following: why do we need, in this century, great (objective) collectives in order to name? Why do the political processes of emancipation always take the name of supposedly objective social entities, such as the proletariat, the people or the nation?

I believe it can be shown that this question is related to the tribute that the century paid to science, and therefore that it is related to what survives of the scientism of the 19th century in the midst of the voluntarism of the 20th. Objectivity is in fact a crucial scientific norm. The legitimacy of adequate names for the we-subject was sought within the more or less certain sciences, such as historical materialism. Even nazism is a racial mythology which presents itself as scientific. To attain its ends of submission and extermination, it thought it could rely on the racialist anthropological jargon that had accompanied the imperial expansion of Europe ever since the 18th century. That this jargon was a tissue of laboured and criminal fictions is as plain as day. The science of race is purely imaginary. It will be noted that an imaginary Marxist science also existed, even if it did not itself determine the revolutionary subjectivities of the century. This Marxism, devoid of a correlate in the real, claimed to be a scientifically legitimate fraternity pure and simple, and here lay its strength. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 Fourth Variation: Temporal. The century proposed its own vision of historical time. It had a very broad genealogical vision of political confrontations, following Marx who wrote that the entire history of men was one of class struggle. Academic historians, on their part, worked on long durations, holding the scale of a human Badiou 76 life to be a negligible quantity with respect to the flux of significations. It is clear that this history was by no means a ‘humanist’ one.

It is very striking to see that today we are practically bereft of any thinking of time. For just about everyone, the day after tomorrow is abstract and the day before yesterday is incomprehensible. We have entered an atemporal, instantaneous period; this shows the extent to which, far from being the shared experience of individuals, time is a construction, and even, we could argue, a political construction. For a moment, let us reconsider, as an example, the five-year plans which structured the industrial development of the Stalinist USSR. If the plan could come to be extolled even in works of art, such as Eisenstein’s film The General Line, it is because, over and above its economic significance (a dubious one, as we know), planning designates the determination to submit growth to the political will of men. The five years of the plan are much more than a mere number, they are a temporal material in which, day after day, the collective will comes to inscribe itself. This is clearly an allegory, in and by time, of the power of the ‘we’. The entire century, in varying ways, saw itself as a constructivist century – a vision that implies the staging of a voluntary construction of time.

There was once the immemorial time of the peasantry, an immobile or cyclic time, a time of labour and of sacrifice, barely offset by the rhythm of the seasons. Today, we undergo the marriage of frenzy and total rest. On the one hand, propaganda tells us that everything changes by the minute, that we have no time, that we must modernise at top speed, that we’re going to ‘miss the train’ (the train of the Internet and the new economy, the train of the cellular phone for everyone, the train of countless stockbrokers, the train of stock-options, the train of pension funds – I could go on …). On the other hand, this racket cannot conceal a kind of passive immobility or indifference, the stubborn perpetuation of what there is. This time is thus one upon which the will, be it collective or individual, has no hold. It is an inaccessible mixture of agitation and sterility, the paradox of a stagnant febrility.

Even if – as often happens in the heat of invention – it was handled with clumsiness and dogmatism, the century’s powerful idea of time must continue to inspire us, at the very least against the modernising temporality that annuls any subjectivation whatsoever. The idea is that if we wish to attain to the real of time we must construct it, and that in the end this construction depends entirely on the care that we take in becoming agents of the procedures of truth. Let us praise the century for having borne the epic proposal of an integral construction of time.

Fifth Variation: Formal. What were the century’s dominant forms of collective materiality? One can propose, I believe, that this century was the century of the demonstration. What is a demonstration? It is the name of a collective body that

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 uses public space (the street, the square) to display its power. The demonstration is the collective subject, the we-subject, endowed with a body. A demonstration is a visible fraternity. The assembling of bodies into a single moving material form has the function of saying: ‘We are here, and they (the powerful, the others, those who are not part of the ‘‘we’’) should be afraid and take our existence into consideration.’ parallax 77 Throughout the century, the demonstration can only be understood against the subjective horizon of a ‘we’ that could change everything. It legitimates, within the sphere of the visible, the line from the Internationale: ‘We are nothing, let us be everything’. The demonstration sketches out the totality aspired to by a collection of nothings, a collection of isolated individuals.

The century was the century of demonstrations, and for a long time these demonstrations were haunted by the figure of insurrection that is politics. Insurrection is the final celebration of the body that the ‘we’ bestows upon itself, the final action of fraternity. Yes, the century’s conception of the feast, being subject to the paradigm of demonstration and insurrection, required that this feast must always come to brutally interrupt the ordinary regime of things. Today, the feast – harmless and consensual – is typically what diverts us away from every political concern. We see government experts with furrowed brows report that the people want strong signs of festivity. We see serious newspapers compare the celebrations that accompanied France’s victory at the World Cup to the demonstrations that followed the liberation of Paris in 1945. Why not compare it to the taking of the Bastille, or the Long March? Today, the feast names something like a counter-demonstration.

The philosopher must here recall that ‘manifestation’ is a key Hegelian word, a word belonging to dialectics which designates the ‘coming out of itself’ of any reality whatsoever. One of Hegel’s fundamental theses is that it is the essence of being to manifest itself. The essence of essence is appearance. On this point the century, otherwise so profoundly anti-dialectical, was very dialectical indeed. For any fraternity, and so for a we-subject in the process of being constituted, to demonstrate is to manifest oneself. The being of the ‘we’ is displayed, but also exhausted, in the demonstration. There is a great dialectic confidence in this form of manifestation. This is because the ‘we’ is, in the end, nothing but the set of its demonstrations. In this sense, the real of the ‘we’, which is the real itself, is accessible to each and every one in and by the demonstration. To the question: ‘what is there that is real?’, the century responds: demonstrating. That which does not demonstrate is not.

Sixth Variation: Critical (once again). One of the great weaknesses of the century’s thought, or at least one of its zones of uncertainty, is that it entertained a conception of legitimacy based on representation. In politics, for example, it largely supported and practised one of Lenin’s later maxims, a maxim presented by its author as the ABC of Marxism, but which nevertheless remains doubtful: ‘The masses are divided into classes, the classes are represented by parties, and the parties are directed by leaders. Parties and leaders draw their legitimacy from an operation of representation’.

If this conception of legitimacy is tested by the passion of the real it encounters the

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 following obstacle: the real is not represented, it is presented. In its different inventions (the revolutionary political party, the manifesto of an artistic school, the integral didactics of a science, etc.) the century never ceased to come up against the non- correspondence between the real and the represented. The real may be encountered, manifested, or constructed, but it is not represented. Here lies the stumbling block: Badiou 78 if all legitimacy is representative, legitimacy is but a fiction with respect to the real that it lays claim to.

A demonstration or an insurrection, and, more broadly, a political sequence, or even an artistic creation seized in the violence of its gesture, are in no way representable. Fraternity is not representable. As I have already suggested, the unjustified summoning of large, inert, macroscopic, and therefore supposedly ‘objective’ sets (class-in-itself, race, nation…), interferes with subjectivation by means of its presumed representative legitimacy. This is because only inertia can be represented. We thus pass from the real model of the event and the demonstration to the ideal model of science.

Representation and fictional legitimation on the basis of inert totalities come to fill in the gaps of what is really presented, which is always discontinuous. Philosophically, the ground of the problem is that the real is discontinuous. As Lacan says, by way of an image: ‘what exists are grains of the real’. In my own vocabulary: there are only multiple procedures of truth, multiple creative sequences, and nothing to arrange a continuity between them. Fraternity itself is a discontinuous passion. Only moments of fraternity truly exist. The protocols of representative legitimation attempt to render continuous what is not, to give disparate sequences a unique name, such as the great proletarian leader or the great founder of artistic modernity, names that in fact are taken from fictional objectivities. Without doubt, the epic tale that the century revelled in has its dark side. It also demands false heroes.

Seventh Variation: Anti-dialectical. I have insisted elsewhere on the singularity of the theory of the Two, which motivates the intellectual life of the century in all of its domains. This is an anti-dialectical Two, without synthesis. Now, in every demonstration of fraternity there is an essential Two: that of the ‘we’ and of the what-is-not-us. The century forces the confrontation between two manners of conceiving the what-is-not-us. Either we see the what-is-not-us as a polymorphous formlessness, a disordered reality; or else we see it as another ‘we’, an external, and therefore antagonistic, subject. The conflict between these two conceptions is fundamental; it sets out the dialectics of the anti-dialectical. If in effect the ‘we’ relates externally to the formless, its task is that of formalising it. Fraternity becomes the subjective moment of the in-formation of its formless exterior. According to this model of antagonism, one will say things like: ‘the apathetic must be rallied to the Party’; ‘the left must unite with the centre to isolate the right’; ‘the artistic avant- garde must find forms of address that everyone can perceive’. This shows that the century sees itself as a formalist century, in the sense that any we-subject is a production of forms. In the end, this means that access to the real is made through form, as was argued by the Lenin of What is to be done? (the party is the form of the political real), the Russian formalists after the Revolution, and the mathematicians

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009 of the Bourbaki school, or, as we have shown elsewhere, Brecht and Pirandello. If, on the contrary, the what-is-not-us is necessarily always already formalised as antagonistic subjectivity, the first task of any fraternity is combat, the object of which is the destruction of the other. One will then say that ‘whoever is not with the Party is against it’; that ‘the left must terrorise the centre to defeat the right’; or, that ‘an parallax 79 artistic avant-garde must seek out dissidence and isolation, so as not to be alienated within the society of the spectacle’.

At the heart of the century, for reasons that pertain to the anti-dialectics of any primordial duality, the properly dialectical contradiction between formalisation and destruction plays itself out. It is this contradiction that Mao gave shape to, in an altogether innovative text – On the Just Resolution of Contradictions at the Heart of the People – by distinguishing the antagonistic contradictions, which are in fact without synthesis or anti-dialectical, from the contradictions within the people, which bear on how to treat the antagonistic contradictions, and in the end concern the choice between formalisation and destruction. Mao’s essential directive is never to treat the contradictions within the people in an antagonistic manner, but rather to resolve the conflict between formalisation and destruction by means of formalisation.

This is perhaps one of the most profound lessons, but also one of the most difficult, that the century has bequeathed to us. Translated by Alberto Toscano

Note

1 This essay was originally delivered on January twentieth century. It will be published in 2003 as 12, 2000 as a lecture at the Colle`ge International part of Alain Badiou’s The Century/Le Sie`cle,ina de Philosophie, as part of a three-year cycle of bilingual edition by an E´ ditions du Seuil, with lectures on the philosophical singularity of the intervention by Alberto Toscano.

Alain Badiou is Professor of Philosophy at the E´ cole Normale Superie´ure (Rue d’Ulm) in Paris. He is also Conference Director at the Colle`ge International de Philosophie. He is the author of many books, including novels, plays and political writings. His books of philosophy, politics and criticism include: L’Etre et l’e´ve´nement (Seuil, 1988), Manifesto for Philosophy (SUNY, 1999), Deleuze: The Clamour of Being (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), and Ethics (Verso, 2001).

Alberto Toscano received a doctoral dissertation at the University of Warwick, where he was an editor of Pli. He is the translator and interlocutor of Alain Badiou’s The Century (forthcoming), as well as the translator of Badiou’s Handbook of Inaesthetics (Stanford, 2003). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:55 18 November 2009

Badiou 80 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 81–95

Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution: The End of Mourning1

Benjamin Arditi

The mourning after

What is it that we mourn when we mourn revolution, especially since the term itself has fallen into disrepute in the age of liberal-democratic consensus? At first sight, we mourn very little. Ever since the fall of Communism, and perhaps just as significantly, starting with the polemic around the ‘end of history’ predicated as a consequence of that fall, its use in political discourse seems irremediably passe´, an enunciation closer to the language of historians than to the doings of serious activists and progressive thinkers. So, who mourns? Certainly not the advocates of the free market, for they have every reason to celebrate. Those who once believed in revolution have now moved on. Having made their peace with the loss, they accept the closure of the idea of radical change and conceive politics along the path of pragmatism. If they still invoke revolution, or its manifold ghosts, they do so ironically in order not to sound risible or pathetic.

Others, however, continue to mourn. They do so as one mourns a dead lover or a departed friend, with grief, at times with nostalgia, but always with the feeling of loss – a loss of direction ensuing from the collapse of a project or horizon for action, in this case the horizon of a more just society with a greater sense of solidarity, also called socialism for the sake of brevity. My sympathies go to this group of mourners, although theirs is often a troubling mourning. It presupposes that what is lost is irretrievable, which is quite true, but also that it escapes the law of iterability, which is where it becomes more problematic. The reason for this is that then no political mourning could ever be adequate to its object, or it would have to be endless in its effort to match, no matter how poorly, the unending grief caused by the loss. But this is not so much mourning as it is melancholia, the failure to let go of the lost object. Melancholia or endless mourning for the demise of a revolutionary telos that once guided the socialist tradition places the advocates of such a project in a terrible predicament. Like Jaroslav, the character in Kundera’s The Joke, they are condemned to live lives marked by the awareness that destiny is often completed before death.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 However, in addition to the ironic and celebratory tone, the pragmatic acceptance of defeat by default and the loss of a political compass, there might be other ways of examining the political valence of revolution for contemporary political practice. Deleuze put it quite aptly in his sketches of some of the traits of our new,

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000065026 81 post-disciplinary capitalist society. This society, he says, is structured around flows and metastable moulds rather than the rigid and discontinuous enclosures of the nineteenth century disciplinary society studied by Foucault – the factory, the prison and so on. He warns us that while the forms of struggle derived from the experience of resistance in and to enclosures have probably become obsolete, ‘there is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons’.2

The first step in this search for new weapons is to admit that at some point bereavement for the loss of revolution has to end, unless, of course, mourning turns into melancholia. Hirtler makes a strong case against confusing these notions.3 So does Freud, who speaks of both as painful experiences, except that mourning involves the loss of an object and melancholia points to a pathological loss concerning the ego.4 The end of mourning is a matter of time; it is aided by the test of reality, which in showing that the loved object no longer exists, proceeds to withdraw the libido from it (244). When the work of mourning is completed, he says, ‘the ego becomes free and uninhibited again’ (245). Kuebler-Ross describes this ending as the fifth and final stage of mourning, the acceptance of the loss and the discovery of the fresh hope that comes along with it.5 The end of mourning for revolution – assuming there could ever be such a thing as an ending without a remainder – would signal a turning point, something analogous to Nietzsche’s depiction of the experience of nihilism as a transitional moment that follows the death of God and precedes the birth of the overman and the transvaluation of all values. For Nietzsche, at least as Blanchot sees it, nihilism calls for its own overcoming, so it is actually the principle of a new beginning.6 In this reading, the end of mourning would be more of an opening than a last page, or rather, a chance for reopening the case for revolution.

The question this raises is why we need to reclaim it at all, as the term seems to be ill fitted for thinking political mobilisation in pluralistic societies. One only needs to look at its etymology, which, oddly enough, is related to astronomy in two ways. Revolution refers to the movement of celestial bodies, usually in an orbit, which presupposes a return to the starting point, but it also maintains a connotative link with ‘disaster’, a word that indicates, quite literally, a de-starring (dis-+aster/astrum or star), the unfavourable aspect of a planet or a star. This in turn suggests by implication the idea of disarrangement in or of the cosmos, the idea of a cosmos in disarray. Political discourse has retained the latter meaning to designate times of radical change or projects that aim to disarrange and rearrange existing political settings in a fundamental way. To be more precise, the term refers to the overthrow of the existing government or the change of a political regime through the mobilisation of those who are subjected to it.7 We can narrow this further and say that it is usually, although not necessarily, accompanied by a call to arms and the shedding of blood. Of course, one could also be less specific and see revolution as an indicator of novelty and change – a revolutionary invention, an industrial revolution, even cultural or scientific ones. This notwithstanding, the prevalent use Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 of the term designates exceptionally intense moments of change; its meaning is caught up in the loop of insurrection and overthrow. But if this is all there is to it, its utility is limited to foundational moments when the fate of the whole is at stake. The end of mourning would then merely replicate the classical use of the term instead of providing us with an opening to retrieve it for politics more generally. Arditi 82 The idea is not to exclude this meaning but to supplement it with other possibilities that can be generated by the concept. To begin with, let us agree that any inquiry about the conceptual status of revolution is tied to a reflection on the political. Regardless of how we conceive the political, be it as the encounter of two heterogeneous logics, that of the hierarchical distribution of names and functions proper of the order of ‘police’ and that of politics as a disruption of a given relation between parts (Rancie`re), as the act of instituting or unifying society despite and across its divisions (Lefort), as a reactivation of the sedimented forms of objectivity of the social (Laclau), or as the enactment of friend-enemy oppositions (Schmitt), revolution remains one of its structural possibilities.8 So far we have seen it as a limit case of disruption, reactivation or friend-enemy groupings, as a signpost of a radical reinstitution of the whole. However, if one can also say that it refers to changes that aim to extricate people from subjection, or to transform prevailing relations of power, legal codes, customs and rituals, then we would still be speaking of disruption, reactivation and friend-enemy oppositions, but not necessarily in terms of an absolute re-foundation of the type associated with the Jacobin imaginary. This would disengage revolution from a strong notion of totality and place it under the general heading of emancipation, as in the case of a sexual or a democratic revolution. One could then enquire about the political valence of a will to revolution without stopping at the gates of insurrection.

One possible lead in this direction is to look into what deconstructionists call the ‘traits held in reserve’ by the term. Iconic moments like the assault of La Bastille or the storming of the Winter Palace are powerful illustrations of historical turning points, but they are also somewhat misleading in that they link the idea of revolution to a takeover of state power that seeks to modify society in a single whopping rupture. Gramsci famously disagreed with this view, for a class does not ‘seize’ the state but becomes-state as it engages in wars of position in the pursuit of hegemony. Of course, he pegs the very possibility of hegemony to one of the ‘fundamental classes’ of a mode of production, a claim that bears the imprint of class-reductionism. There is also a strong notion of totality at work in his analysis, for he does not manage to extricate himself from the classical belief in the possibility of a complete reinstitution of the existing order or from an attachment to the metaphysical view of revolution as a change without remainder. Yet if one focuses on hegemony as the becoming- state of a political force, then for Gramsci challenging the nomos of the cosmos – the activity of disarrangement and rearrangement characteristic of the political and of its revolutionary possibility – is not reducible to a single point in time because it has been occurring long before the last savant is dismissed. In other words, the effects this challenge produces here and now are already signalling the occurrence of revolution.

This gives us an angle to think the performative dimension at work beyond the gleam of insurrection. Revolution takes place without always ‘arriving’ in the strict sense Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 of the word because those who speak, act, imagine or are simply sympathetic to the coming of a radical change at the same time bring forth a change as they speak, act, imagine and go along with it. What is it that entices people to invoke and repeat it? Kant discusses this in his reflection on whether humanity is in constant progress. To argue his case, he proceeds to isolate an event that has the value of a sign capable parallax 83 of functioning as a cause of that progress.9 This event, he says, must be at once rememorative, demonstrative and prognostic ‘of a tendency within the human race as a whole’. As the essay was written in 1789, it is no surprise that the event he has in mind is revolution. This seems to be a strange choice to account for a moral disposition of humanity, especially since Kant admits that revolution may be ‘so filled with misery and atrocities that no right-thinking man would ever decide to make the same experiment again at such a price’ (182). Yet its significance as a sign does not rest on the fact of the revolutionary upheaval as such, for the success or failure of the actual process of disarrangement of the cosmos is not the decisive issue. What matters for him is ‘the attitude of the onlookers as it reveals itself in public while the drama of great political changes is taking place’. What does this public attitude consist of ? That people ‘openly express universal yet disinterested sympathy for one set of protagonists against their adversaries’ (182). This expression of interest does not amount to direct participation, but it is not risk-free either. Whoever shows sympathy for a political contender in public must be prepared to accept the consequences that may follow from taking a stand. Foucault captures the significance of this way of seeing things when he says that Kant is less concerned with the drama of the revolutionary process – its battles, leaders and combatants – than with what happens in the heads of those who have not participated directly but have nonetheless been swept along by it. He is interested in the enthusiasm it elicits among the people.10 Enthusiasm for revolution or will to revolution is a sign of progress in that it reveals the specific moral disposition at work in humanity, at least the one Kant is looking for, namely, a recurrent effort of people to decide freely on their own civil or political constitution and to avoid offensive war. In other words, for Kant revolution is the sign of a disposition to govern ourselves freely – which we can link to the idea of emancipation more generally – and to pursue peace, even though ‘the precise time at which it will occur must remain indefinite and dependent upon chance’.11

There are two things worth noticing here. One is that nowhere does he speak of a single rupture or of radical reinstitution of the whole. The moral inclination to progress manifests itself in the will to revolution, in the enduring enthusiasm for change it elicits among people. The other is that while the time of arrival of revolution ‘must remain indefinite’, this possibility of deferral does not undermine the moral disposition to progress it brings forth. Improvement presupposes a certain anticipation of something to come, an opening to the future that is already at work despite the absence of any guarantee of its fulfilment. Drawing from this, I will suggest that the politics of revolution unfolds in the spacing between two poles. One is the promise, or the opening to something to come that elicits enthusiasm and entices people to demand the impossible. In the socialist imaginary, this refers to the pursuit of a more just and egalitarian society. The promise, however, is something that is already happening here and now. Enthusiasm brings into play the messianic power of the promise in the sense that the ‘now time’ of revolution (Benjamin’s Jetztzeit) is a mystical present that is being acted upon in anticipation of an event, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 very much in the way that the Jews believed that ‘every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter’.12 If we bracket out possible reservations about Messiahs, and suspend judgement about Benjamin’s flirtation with the fullness of the revolutionary ‘now time’, then we can think of the anticipation at work in revolution not as prefiguring the future (and therefore not simply as a delayed Arditi 84 presence) but as structuring the ‘now time’ as the time of our becoming-other. Deleuze refers to this as the diagnostic, which ‘is not to predict but to be attentive to the unknown which knocks at the door’.13 This attentiveness to the unknown, as a chance of our becoming-other, designates an opening to something to come that is already starting to happen.

The second pole refers to the representations that function as finite figures of revolution. These set limits to boundless possibility and place the merely possible within the domain of the promise. There is no contradiction in speaking of figures of possibility, for these do not stand for an ineluctable destiny or a full-fledged presence that closes off the opening made possible by the revolutionary promise. One can be a ‘progressist’ without necessarily resorting to a telos of progress, for the latter can be conceived of in terms of a project instead of as eschatology. Mutatis mutandis, bringing the figure into play can be seen as a provisional image of thought – as a ‘weak’ horizon for action – of that which comes knocking at our door instead of a presence to come that would prefigure the event and therefore devaluate its ‘eventness’. In the example used above, the figure refers to the representations of justice and equality or projects of revolution that have emerged in the socialist tradition. At any rate, the promise and the figure require one another. Some might perceive here the distinction between the ontological and the ontic, a reiteration of the ontological difference. I am not very comfortable with this and prefer to say that the revolutionary becoming-other – and perhaps a politics of emancipation more generally – happens in the spacing or play between the promise that entices us to demand the impossible and the continually deconstructible figures of possibility aiming to flesh out the promise. This, of course, entails a twofold task of discussing the promise and outlining what could constitute a figure of that promise.

Revolutionary realism as enthusiasm for the impossible

Let us look at the promise through Derrida’s reflection about the radical heterogeneity between law and justice.14 He claims that we cannot reach justice by merely following or applying a law, for then the singularity of the individual case would be subsumed under the generality of the law. Yet if one disregards the law altogether, instead of justice we risk slipping into pure arbitrariness, which at times seems to be where Schmitt’s decisionism is headed. In between law and justice lies an irreducible space for negotiation to improve the law or at least to have the least bad law, for he believes in a non-teleological notion of progress – he is indeed a ‘progressist’,15 a term that in English would come close to that of ‘progressive’ without always coinciding with that of ‘Leftist’. Derrida speaks of the heterogeneity between law and justice and refuses to think of their relation in terms of opposition. Their unity is perceived when he introduces the decision, or rather, the aporia of

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 undecidability, which he links with the promise or opening to something to come (the a`-venir) in order to outline something like an ethics of the a`-venir. His reasoning is as follows. A responsible decision must exceed the law or the order of the calculable by facing the aporia of undecidability, which is the experience of the impossible, the moment when the decision between just and unjust cannot be guaranteed by a rule parallax 85 and yet cannot disregard the rule either.16 ‘The only possible decision’, he says, ‘is the impossible decision, the decision that is stronger than me, higher than me and coming from the Other’, for if it is simply possible, and therefore purely calculable, it would be no decision but a mere algorithm whereby the code decides for us.17 Ethics arises precisely in the moment of facing this aporia as the experience of the impossible instead of using it as an alibi to surrender responsibility; it consists in accepting the challenge of finding a road where there is none at hand, of deciding in the absence of a navigational map. Without such challenge there would be little or no room for an event, for something other to come. ‘The event only happens under the aegis of the impossible. When an event, efficiency or anything is deemed possible, it means that we have already mastered, anticipated, pre-understood and reduced the eventhood of the event’.18 Justice, or democracy, or hospitality, or even revolution itself, will always be justice, democracy, hospitality and revolution to come, although not in the sense of a pure ideal but as an opening to the possibility of the impossible.

Derrida’s reflection on the promise almost seems tailor-made for thinking the imagery of events usually inventoried under the heading of ‘May 1968’, particularly the iconic inscription ‘be realistic, ask for the impossible’. The statement appears to be just another surreal injunction, very much in synch with the irreverent spirit of the times, or at least with one of the spirits that roamed that age. This is quite possible, but one could also argue that asking for the impossible subverts the accepted wisdom that politics is the art of the possible. A good deal of what passes for politics certainly does fall under the heading of the possible, but the very idea that ‘the art of the possible’ could somehow exhaust the field of politics is self-defeating, as this would place it within a hair’s breadth of morphing into administration. Therefore, instead of positioning the 68’ers outside politics, or compelling them to adopt an anti-political stand, asking for the impossible is intended both as a provocation and as an accurate description of revolution as a politics of emancipation. The phrase provokes us with its playfulness, but also functions as a cipher meant to convey the mobilising potential of a messianic promise. The promise of the impossible infuses people with the realism of attempting something beyond the ordinary and invites them to be part of a future that is already being acted upon here and now. It is the mystical kernel of a revolutionary political engagement.

The reason for this – if there can be a reason to account for the mystical – is that the demand for the impossible puts into perspective the peculiar realism at work in the promise, one in which the impossible stands for an actual opening up of possibilities. First because of the mobilising potential involved in this enthusiasm for the impossible. Varikas looks into this by joining Benjamin’s ‘now-time’ with the promise of something to come: 1968, she says, can be described as a seizing of the occasion and as an opening up of possibilities characteristic of utopia.19 For her, the injunction of asking for the impossible reveals the stratagems of utopia as a Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 promise, as well as the critical distance separating what is from what should be and what could be. This is certainly an unorthodox rendering of utopia; it departs from its conventional portrayal as a non-place, or as the ideal form of a pure presence waiting to arrive, or as what Zˇ izˇek would call a universal without a symptom.20 Instead, the utopian demand for the impossible is attuned to Derrida’s depiction of Arditi 86 the a`-venir or opening to a future to come, a future conceived less as a Kantian regulating ideal than as a ‘punctured horizon’ for action.21 This portrayal of the horizon dispels the suspicion of aligning a ‘progressist’ stand with a telos of progress. Second, because this opening insinuates a community, evanescent or not, and makes it possible to name a certain ‘us’, like the ‘nous’ that gathers its voice in the interviews conducted by Cohn-Bendit in Nous l’avons tant aime´e la revolution.22 Blanchot perceives the illocutionary force of this nous quite clearly. The point of May 1968, he says, was not so much to seize power but ‘to let a possibility manifest itself, the possibility – beyond any utilitarian gain – of being-together’.23 We could read this being-together as partaking in the imaginary community of those who want to change the world, one that presumably exceeds the cost-benefit calculations of purely pragmatic reasoning. Asking for the impossible is asking for a non-existent community to come (to life).

The reference to the critical distance between what is and what could be already insinuates the interplay between the promise and the figures of possibility. Before getting into this, we should say something more about how the unusual realism of the 68’ers connects with the Kantian argument about the moral disposition for progress at work in humanity, one that manifests itself in enthusiasm for the revolution. Consider an example. Despite the images of heroic resistance to oppression in the democratic struggles that took place in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s, only small pockets of the population participated in the protests and mobilisations. Something similar happened in the opposition to one-party regimes in Eastern Europe and in the defence of the Russian parliament during the attempted coup of 1991. Most people simply stayed at home, either paralysed by fear or appeased by the advantages derived from acquiescing with the status quo. This disheartened but failed to deter the noisy minority that actually took to the streets to demand radical changes – the right to unionize, freedom of expression, human rights, the establishment of a democratic political regime or more generally the enactment of what Kant calls the disposition to govern ourselves freely. From the purely pragmatic perspective of those accustomed to balance gains and losses, these were exorbitant demands, far beyond what the rulers seemed willing to concede, and what the opposition could realistically impose. Yet, for the protesters, the realism of pursuing a seemingly impossible goal was the only possible realism available. It prompted ordinary folk to do extraordinary things in exceptional times. People like this might succeed or fail in their attempt to change a given state of affairs, but this is not the decisive point, for the task of the promise is to elicit enthusiasm, not to guarantee the success of the enterprise. Their very presence in the public stage has a significance that transcends the end-results. As one author observed, in authoritarian or dictatorial regimes the opposition fulfils the role of active hope for the rest of society.24 ‘Active hope’, however, is not a call for a generalised carpe diem among the ‘onlookers’; it is a message for those who do not play a direct role in the drama unfolding in the streets but are nonetheless touched by it. The promise of something to come aims to elicit enthusiasm for democratic and other demands, to Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 generate sympathy for those demands among the spectators and therefore to involve them in the imaginary community of those who want to change the world.

This type of realism is not restricted to exceptional moments. The allure of the promise also works in the ‘normal’ contexts of, say, advanced capitalist countries parallax 87 with established democratic regimes. There, as Bowman put it, ‘demanding the impossible is demanding democracy, accountability, transparency, justice, or prosperity in the face of the commonsense truth that they already exist and therefore need not be demanded’.25 The impossible, as he sees it, stands for challenging the blinkers of commonsense. It is not restricted to modern, secular societies either, and its path can be at odds with emancipatory politics. The possibility of an underside is included in the very structure of the promise, as can be seen in projects that are antithetical to the enhancement of pluralism and toleration. Debray perceived this danger when he observed the appeal of fundamentalism as a response to globalisation, particularly when the latter is perceived as a threat for traditional identities. In some cases, he says, the experience of dislocation shows that ‘religion turns out after all not to be the opium of the people, but the vitamin of the weak. How is it possible to divert the poorest of the poor from taking recourse to this vitamin if democratic states have no mystique other than material improvement? […] Today, the greatest ally of obscurantism is the spiritually empty economism of our prosperous liberal societies’.26 This suggests that religion functions as the active hope or enthusiasm for something to come. It functions as a promise that entices people to aim for exorbitant goals. Fundamentalism would then appear to coincide with a revolutionary promise in its very aim to reinstate a pre-modern, theocratic order that has little or no tolerance for dissidence. However, like in any fundamentalism, theological or otherwise, it is a promise that is caught up in the idea of a presence to come, either in the sense of a reconciled society or of a universal without a symptom. It signals a closure and not an opening for emancipation.

A preliminary conclusion is that if we can learn anything from the injunction to be realistic by asking for the impossible, it is that nothing can ever really happen without the expectation generated by the promise of the impossible. This sounds like an excessive gesture, one that in leaving aside the possible presents us with an image of politics as an activity that always takes place at the limit. This is not what we are aiming at, for then everyday politics – what is usually described as the art of the possible – would have to be discarded and the field of revolutionary politics would shrink accordingly. We are of course dealing with emancipatory politics, and more specifically, with revolution as a process of rearrangement of the cosmos. Roots are at stake whenever the word ‘radical’ comes into play. One must excavate to see how deep to go, what to disrupt and how to re-institute it, although as mentioned, this need not be read against the Jacobin backdrop of total re-foundation. The reference to the impossible aims to highlight that if our horizon is that of the possible alone, there might be little to expect apart from more of the same, which is already something, but perhaps not enough to elicit the enthusiasm for change or the moral inclination to progress mentioned by Kant. One may even ask if ethics or responsibility is possible if one takes into account, only and exclusively, the actual distribution of forces in a conjuncture or the political jurisprudence resulting from an inventory of accumulated experiences. An ethical response presupposes the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 encounter with the unexpected, with the willingness to come up with what Derrida calls a fresh judgement or responsible decision in response to a situation not contemplated by the codes of conduct or navigational maps at hand. Can there be any surprise if cost-benefit calculation is the sole trigger of our actions and the Rubicon that judges their validity? Can there be any innovation if one is not willing Arditi 88 to run the risks involved in the pursuit of the seemingly impossible? In other words, can one exorcize the ghost of revolution on the altar of pragmatism and still expect to interrupt what Rancie`re calls the order of ‘police’ or, in brief, to ‘make history’?

This is the remarkable thing about revolution. It elicits enthusiasm even among those who do not participate directly in the revolutionary drama. It also functions as the engine of a politics of emancipation that includes but transcends both insurrection and the reinstitution of the whole. The civil rights movement in the US is an archetypical example. One only needs to look at ‘I Have a Dream’, the speech delivered in 1963 by Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The rhetorical structure of his speech puts into play the promise as a performative, condensing the demand for racial equality and civil and political rights for blacks with a call to action that captured the imagination of a generation. The exorbitant demand for equality put racial emancipation in the order of the day and aimed to disrupt and rearrange the prevailing racial nomos. It was a realistic bet despite (or maybe because of ) its exorbitance; as the revolutionary promise was echoed in the ghettos and the campuses as much as in the Mississippi Delta, it became a rememorative, demonstrative and prognostic sign of a tendency to embrace racial emancipation. To put it in Derridian language, revolution stands for a promise that in demanding the impossible becomes the very opening of possibility as such. This enthusiasm for the promise of a future to come is the trait held in reserve by the term; it is what is at stake every time revolution repeats itself. The capacity to generate enthusiasm marks the actuality of revolution; it is what is worth repeating despite and against the political complacency of liberal democratic consensus and its third way variants.

Iterating revolution

Yet this is not the end of the story of the revolution, for if the promise is the structure of possibility, the act of naming is the filler that actualizes the possible. Naming the figure of possibility is the second pole of revolution mentioned earlier. Political innovation arises in the spacing formed between the pure possibility of an absolute promise and the actual figures of that promise. Luther King’s speech certainly unfolds within this gap by posing the dream and its figure. The generative force of revolution appears in the negotiation of the gap between one and the other, very much like the aporia that any writer is forced to confront time and again. A verse in one of Nicanor Parra’s minimalist poems – ‘the poet’s job is/to improve on the blank page/I don’t think that’s possible’ – depicts this aporia very well despite its disarming simplicity. Leaving aside the case when the blank page becomes a threat and not a challenge, the etching of the first trace of the very first word cancels out the infinite possibilities offered by the blank page, but if one is not prepared to confront the risk of placing that first trace, no literary creation can ever occur. Similarly, we see here the aporia that will Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 haunt the idea of revolution: the act of naming the becoming-other immediately limits the openness of the future by the very fact that invests it with a specific figure, but without this finitude, no transformative action will ever take place. That is why, punctured or not, the type of horizon mentioned by Derrida is still a horizon; it is a figure that announces and places limits to pure possibility. The promise of revolution parallax 89 functions as a structure of possibility that repeats itself endlessly through figures of revolution.

Therefore, it is time to turn our attention to the instantiations of the promise in political practice, which relates to the question of whether there is any room left for a socialist project posed at the beginning of this intervention. I believe there is, but not as we knew it, and certainly not without reconstructing it. Zˇ izˇek, with his usual penchant for provocation, has hinted something along these lines in his comments about the actuality of Leninism. He praises Lenin’s ‘ruthless will to discard all prejudices’ because it might be ‘a useful antidote to all the aseptic, frustrating, politically correct pacifism’.27 Many of us share his exasperation with the moralising PC tone of identity politics, although the unqualified call for a ruthless will can be more disturbing, either a rhetorical excess or a worrisome terrorist remark. His Leninism also has another component. Zˇ izˇek reminds us that after the deadlock of 1914, when World War I began and the Second International collapsed in an outbreak of patriotism, ‘Lenin had to think how to reinvent a radical, revolutionary politics’. Now, he says, we are in a similar situation.

One can hardly disagree with him on this point. Any reopening of the case for revolution would require the acceptance that the lost object – a revolutionary project of socialism that once had the capacity to inspire people – cannot simply be resurrected tout court. The question is how we begin to reinvent the project. For this, we need to appeal to repetition or the law of iterability. Heraclitus provides an allegory to introduce it when he says that one cannot step into the same river twice. The usual reading of his remark is that the world is in constant flux. Yet, if one shifts the emphasis to the actual spacing between the first and the subsequent occasions of stepping into a river, what Heraclitus is suggesting is that the very act of repeating will invariably incorporate something new, a difference that turns the repetition into some form of re-institution.

At first sight, nothing seems further from Marx than repetition, or for that matter, of a past that inhabits the present like a ghost. Derrida suggests that Marx is fond of spectres, but only to chase them away. When Marx invokes the spectre of communism, he ‘announces and calls for a presence to come’.28 In general, presence is Marx’s game. The succession of modes of production, for example, is dominated by the belief in the feasibility of a historical tabula rasa or succession without remainder. A similar belief is expressed in The Eighteenth Brumaire, where Marx states that the revolution of the nineteenth century ‘cannot draw its poetry from the past’ and must therefore ‘let the dead bury their dead’.29 This call for an absolute beginning – the new entails a radical break with the past – is imbued with the spirit of the Jacobins – or at least of the French revolution, as Paramio says.30 But the Jacobin moment is part of the past, and therefore should not inform the type of revolution he has in mind. The fact that a ghost from 1789 is lodged in his way of thinking Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 revolution means that he is not always consistent when he demands that the dead bury their dead. The paradox here is that the past lives on in the present, although not always in the same way that it once occurred. The opening lines of The Eighteenth Brumaire illustrate this when Marx invokes the idea of repetition to ridicule Louis Bonaparte for being little more than a caricature of his illustrious uncle. For Hegel, Arditi 90 Marx says, ‘all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice […] the first time as tragedy, the second as farce’. While it seems that the textual reference does not exist,31 the remark serves to establish an explicit hierarchy between the two Bonapartes, at least if one is willing to accept that tragedy is preferable to farce, which might not always be the case. It also tells us something about temporality and sameness, and hence about repetition. Marx does not speak of the re-presentation of a simple presence that every so often replicates itself, but of a somewhat paradoxical return of the ‘same’ that cannot be reduced to pure sameness. The ‘as such’ is never such. The reason for this is that the original in question (the tragic time of Napoleon Bonaparte) has incorporated difference in the very process of its reappearance as the farcical times of Louis Bonaparte. The claim that history repeats itself therefore suggests that the original is always already exposed to an occurrence that will alter its initial sense as it redeploys itself. From drama to farce, the temporality of repetition is that of an Escher-like portrayal of a coil, a cycle that never closes back onto itself.32

This perception of repetition or iterability as an impure identity that subsists in its alteration is a bridge that brings Marx into contact with contemporary philosophers of repetition like Deleuze and Derrida. It also opens up a way of recovering the promise as the political trait held in reserve by revolution. As mentioned, repetition involves a certain recovery that does not leave the original unchanged. To recover is to reclaim something that is lost, gone, stolen or dead, but as one can never know the condition in which the returning object will be, the possibility of alteration is built into every act of recovery. Historians even modify the past – they re-institute it – as they incorporate new findings or retrieve it through a reinterpretation of existing sources. Likewise, every historical repetition, from 1789 to 1917, or from Old to New Left, modifies that which it repeats. If there is no alteration, instead of repetition there is only the monotony of a self-replicating code. Every repetition alters that which it recovers in order to remain faithful to the irreplaceable singularity of whatever one aims to reclaim. To be faithful is to be inventive, for repetition is the production of a new singularity, or if one prefers, is the coming of an event. Therefore, if the end of mourning involves the repetition-retrieval of revolution, then this ending is actually an opening for re-instituting revolution once again. Another way of formulating this idea is to say that the law of iterability at work in revolution presupposes that the original context of appearance does not exhaust or fully contain the appearance.33 Like history, ‘revolution’ repeats itself in different contexts, and in doing so, differs from itself continually.

Inevitably, this makes revolution an equivocal term. Its meaning is by no means a settled question, ever, as it might come in many guises. There is the revolution as an entelechy of militants and intellectuals; the revolution of revolutionaries as a messianic call for radical change with plenty of messiahs to lead the way; the revolution as the cultural paradigm of a generation; or the revolution as a turning Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 point that reverts into a betrayal of the masses that fought for it. The repetition of revolution is therefore inseparable from a polemic about its meaning. Rancie`re refers to this as a disagreement, which is not the case when one interlocutor says ‘white’ and the other ‘black’, but when both say ‘white’, yet each understands something different by whiteness.34 Since the first question is to elucidate what one is talking parallax 91 about (what do you mean by ‘whiteness’, or ‘revolution’?), a disagreement is less a confrontation between two established positions than an engagement between parties that do not antedate their confrontation, an engagement that constructs the object of argumentation and the field of argumentation itself. So, like the Tracy Chapman song used in the title of this intervention, any talk of revolution is first a talk about revolution, a polemic about what it means to talk of revolution. Neither is there any clarity about what it means to inherit the name of revolution or to stake a claim on that inheritance. In Derrida’s essay, ‘Marx & Sons’, the title itself plays on the issue of establishing a proper lineage or placing a legitimate claim on an intellectual inheritance. To assume an inheritance means to reaffirm and to transform it radically, for it is ‘never given, it is always a task’.35 This is another way of stating our earlier claim that one can only remain faithful to the singularity of revolution by transforming it as it is retrieved. So, the law of iterability at work in revolution – that which subsists while altered, or persists as it is re-instituted – is inseparable from polemic and invites us to take a stand in an inquiry into what is it that is being repeated by the term and how we expect to reclaim it politically today.

Postcards of a socialist imaginary

Taking for granted that every retrieval (or rejection) is polemical by nature, we could accept the challenge and say that a contemporary repetition would distance itself from the Jacobin model of revolution conceived as a one-off foundational event that clears the slate so completely as to inaugurate an absolute beginning. It also excludes the similarly Jacobin belief in emancipation as a final push to rid humanity of all forms of oppression, something that is taken up by Marx in The Jewish Question when he vindicates human as opposed to purely political modes of emancipation. We can accept neither a pure break without remainder nor teleologies that could entice us to invoke an end of history or to postulate the possibility of a reconciled society. Our iteration should leave aside other options too. For example, the Leninist-inspired view of revolution as a dictatorship modelled around a party that monopolizes society’s collective decision-making power and a revolution based on the demands of the working class as the representative of universal aspirations, which subsumes gender, sexual and racial demands under the mantle of a class-centred emancipation. Pluralism, desire and difference have now taken root in the socialist imaginary and no repetition of revolution could do without them. There are, however, repetitions that still inspire us as they maintain a capacity to generate enthusiasm. For example, the iterability of revolution prompted by the Enlightenment or, better still, by the revolutionaries of 1789, gave birth to two key figures of our political lexicon. One is the citizen, who Balibar describes as a ‘cosmopolitical’ figure that designates the subject as that which resists its own subjection, and the other is the subject of rights, or more generally, what Arendt describes as ‘the right to have rights’.36

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 Articulated into various projects, the citizen and the subject of rights have exhibited an enduring capacity to conjure movements of emancipation and to shape the political jurisprudence and imaginary of the last two hundred years or so. However, earlier on we said that it is possible to take on Zˇ izˇek’s call for a renewed Leninism, in the sense of recasting the socialist project. This is a pending assignment, and we Arditi 92 can wrap the discussion by mentioning a thing or two on this subject. Without any pretension of being exhaustive, I will etch a series of postcards about the recuperation of an image of thought of a socialist imaginary. In this recuperation, revolution – as the promise of something to come and as a becoming other of revolution – is being iterated as the possibility of three simultaneous developments that must be read under the heading of enthusiasm for a progressive political imaginary.

One is the disengagement of democratic politics from the more conventional, nineteenth-century equivalence between democracy and elections, which involves a re-examination of its current liberal coding. Bobbio once remarked that today democracy refers less to ‘who votes’ than ‘on what issues one can vote’.37 In doing so, he raised the old question concerning the excess of democracy over electoral representation and the question of wider participation of citizens in the public sphere. Mutatis mutandis, one can focus on the idea of participation in order to assess the expansion of democratic politics. As I will suggest below, participation in supranational arenas and in the second tier of politics in civil society can be democratic and post-liberal. This is because activists want to have a say in political decisions within the national state, scrutinize the policies of major global players like multilateral organisations or business conglomerates, and hold them accountable for their decisions, but more often by instituting mechanisms to control and regulate their field of action than by subjecting them to electoral scrutiny.

A second development has to do with the weakest links in the legacy of the French Revolution, equality, and especially solidarity, which were taken up by the socialist tradition but fell into disrepute in the 1980s with the growing hegemony of neoliberalism. These are now reappearing in the political agenda, but without always following a Marxist political script. By and large, the identity of national and cross- border coalitions and protest movements is not posed in terms of working-class resistance, their logic of collective action is not framed solely in terms of class warfare, and their effort to counteract the unequal exchange between North and South does not aim to suppress free-trade or private enterprise. The spectre of socialism, or of the imaginary fostered by the socialist tradition, is re-entering the public scene both at home and in the shape of a new, loosely assembled internationalism that seeks to counteract the weight of its conservative counterpart in order to address questions of equality and solidarity at a global scale. The new internationalists seek to address questions of social justice, the statute of frontiers in relation to immigrants coming from the periphery of advanced capitalism, child slavery, AIDS and so on. Derrida describes it as one that involves all those who suffer and are not insensitive to the impact of these urgent problems, yet has no boss or central coordination, which makes it particularly appropriate to deal with the viral form of contemporary capitalism.38

The third and final postcard of such a project consists of a post-liberal archipelago Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 as an image of thought for politics. This is, of course, antithetical to the end of history thesis. The assumption is that from the sovereign state of the absolutist era to the liberal sphere of partisan politics and from there to civil society and supranational domains, the migratory arc of politics has manifested itself through a continual colonization of new territories. None of these migrations cancelled the parallax 93 political status of the state or of partisan institutions; they simply expanded politics beyond territorial representation. Just like social movements, advocacy groups and NGOs in the 70s and 80s opened up a second tier of politics in civil society, supranational domains are carving up new supplementary spaces of political exchange. Both the second tier and the supranational spaces coexist alongside the more classical, primary circuit of electoral politics we inherited from the liberal democratic tradition. Together, these three domains for collective action announce a Copernican de-centring of the political field, the formation of a scenario that can be described as a post-liberal archipelago of political arenas.

Notes

1 Various colleagues scrutinized earlier versions of 10 Michel Foucault, ‘Kant on Enlightenment and this paper. I am especially grateful for the critical Revolution’ (1984), in [eds.] Mike Gane and Terry comments and observations made by Willem Johnson, Foucault’s New Domains (London and New Assies, Juan Martı´nSa´nchez, Francisco Panizza, York: Routledge, 1993), pp.15–17. Nora Rabotnikof and Jose´ Carlos Rodrı´guez, as 11 Immanuel Kant, A Renewed Attempt, p.185. well as the anonymous reviewers from parallax.I 12 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of apologize to Tracy Chapman for ripping off the History’, in [ed.] Hannah Arendt, Illuminations title of her song and using it as part of the title of (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p.264. this paper. 13 Gilles Deleuze, ‘What is a Dispositif ?’, in Michel 2 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on the Societies of Foucault Philosopher, trans. Timothy J. Armstrong Control’, in October 59 (1992), p.4. (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p.165. 14 3 Kurt Hirtler, ‘Fidelity to Revolution’, paper Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The ‘‘Mystical presented at the 52nd Annual Conference of the Foundation of Authority’’’, in [eds.] Drucilla Political Studies Association of the UK, Aberdeen, Cornell et. al., Deconstruction and the Possibility of 5–7 April 2002. Justice (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp.3–67. 15 4 Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ Jacques Derrida, ‘A Discussion with [1915], in The Standard Edition of the Complete Jacques Derrida’, in Theory & Event 5 (1), Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/ v005/5.1derrida.html (2001). (1914–1916), [ed.] James Strachey (London: The 16 Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, p.16. Hogarth Press, 1957), p.247. 17 Jacques Derrida, ‘A Discussion with Jacques 5 Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross, On Death and Derrida’; see also ‘Force of Law’, p.14. Dying (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970), 18 Jacques Derrida, ‘Politics and Friendship: An pp.122–126. Interview with Jacques Derrida’, in [eds.] E. Ann 6 Maurice Blanchot, ‘The Limits of Experience: Klein and Michael Sprinker, The Althusserian Legacy Nihilism’, in [ed.] David Allison, The New Nietzsche (London: Verso, 1993), p.227. (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985), p.112. 19 Eleni Varikas, ‘The Utopian Surplus’, in Thesis 7 Ludolfo Paramio, ‘La revolucio´n como problema Eleven 68 (2002), pp.102–103, 104; see also Luisa teo´rico’, in Revista del Centro de Estudios Constitucionales Passerini, ‘ ‘‘Utopia’’ and Desire’, in Thesis Eleven 7 (1990), pp.151–175. 68 (2002), pp.11–30. 8 Jacques Rancie`re, Disagreement: Politics and 20 Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, The Sublime Object of Ideology Philosophy (Minnesota: The University of Minnesota (London: Verso, 1989), p.23. Press, 1998); Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political 21 Jacques Derrida, ‘Nietzsche and the Machine’, Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); Ernesto interview with Richard Beardsworth, in Journal of Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time Nietzsche Studies 7 (1994), p.50. (London: Verso, 1990); Carl Schmitt, The Concept 22 Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Nous l’avons tant aime´ela of the Political [1932], trans. George Schwab revolution (Paris: Barrault, 1986).

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 23 Maurice Blanchot, The Unavowable Community 9 Immanuel Kant, ‘A Renewed Attempt to Answer (New York: Station Hill, 1988), p.30. the Question: ‘‘Is the Human Race Continually 24 Manuel Antonio Garreto´n, ‘Problemas y Improving?’’ ’ (1789), in [ed.] Hans Reiss, Kant: Perspectivas de la Oposicio´n en Chile, 1973–1981’, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University in Escenarios e Itinerarios para la Transicio´n (Santiago Press, 1991), p.181. de Chile: Instituto para el Nuevo Chile, 1987), p.39. Arditi 94 25 Paul Bowman, ‘Mourning Revaluation’, paper 32 Benjamin Arditi, ‘Tracing the Political’, in presented at the 52nd Annual Conference of the Angelaki 1 (3) (1995), pp.23–25. Political Studies Association of the UK, Aberdeen, 33 Jacques Derrida, ‘Signature Event Context’ 5–7 April 2002. (1971), in Limited Inc. (Evanston, Illinois: 26 Regis Debray, ‘God and the Political Planet’, in Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp.9–10. New Perspectives Quarterly 4 (2) (1994), p.15. 34 Rancie`re, Disagreement, p. x.; also Benjamin Arditi 27 ˇ Slavoj Zizˇek, ‘ ‘‘I am a fighting atheist’’: and Jeremy Valentine, Polemicization: The Contingency ˇ Interview with Slavoj Zizˇek’ (by Doug Henwood), of the Commonplace (Edinburgh and New York: in Bad Subjects 59 (2002), p.50. Edinburgh University Press and NYU Press, 1999), 28 Jacques Derrida, ‘Marx & Sons’, in [ed.] Michael pp.121, 138–139. Ghostly Demarcations Sprinker, (London: Verso, 35 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (London and 1999), p.218. New York: Routledge, 1994), p.54. 29 Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire’, in Karl 36 Etienne Balibar, ‘Subjection and Subjectivation’, Marx and Friedrich Engels Selected Works (London: in [ed.] Joan Copjec, Supposing the Subject (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968), p.98. Verso, 1994), pp.1–15; Hannah Arendt, The Origins 30 Paramio, La revolucio´n como problema teo´rico, p.152. 31 Terrell Carver, ‘Imagery/Writing, Imagination/ of Totalitarianism (New York: Harvester, 1973). 37 Politics: Reading Marx through the Eighteenth Norberto Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship. The Brumaire’, in [eds.] Mark Cowling and James Nature and Limits of State Power (Cambridge: Polity Martin, Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’. (Post) Modern Press, 1989), pp.156–156. Interpretations (London: Pluto Press, 2002), p.120. 38 Derrida, Specters of Marx, pp.80–86; also Jacques The point is also taken up by Vincent Geoghegan, Derrida, ‘Intellectual Courage: An Interview’, ‘ ‘‘Let the Dead Bury their Dead’’: Marx, Derrida Culture Machine, http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/ and Bloch’, in Contemporary Political Theory 1 (1) Cmach/Backissues/j002/Articles/art_derr.htm (2002), p.15. (2000).

Benjamin Arditi is a political theorist teaching at UNAM in Mexico City. He is the joint author of Polemicization: The Contingency of the Commonplace (EUP, 1999) and the author of forthcoming papers on populism and representation, post-liberal politics, globalization and public funding of social organisations. He co-edits Taking on the Political, a book series on Continental political thought published by Edinburgh University Press and New York University Press. Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009

parallax 95 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 96–108

Success in Failure, or How Hypercapitalism Relies on People’s Feeling of Inadequacy

Renata Salecl

Today we often hear that we live in the new age of anxiety, and at first it appears that this is related to the proliferation of possible catastrophes like terrorist attacks, the collapse of the financial market, strange illnesses like mad cow disease, ecological changes, possibilities of new wars and new developments in science. However, it is arrogant to say that our civilization actually experiences more anxieties than our predecessors. They too had to deal with wars and other conflicts, poverty, and many more illnesses that radically shortened people’s lives. If, therefore, anxieties with regard to possible catastrophes might not be so different today than in the past, the anxieties that very much pertain to contemporary society are linked to the new feelings of insecurity on which contemporary capitalism capitalizes itself. These anxieties are not only tied to the uncertainties that have always been the vehicle of the capitalist labour market, but are also dependent on the changes that have happened in the subject’s self-perception, which has been affected by the transformations of the social symbolic order.

Consumerist society seems to be thriving on a particular feeling of inadequacy that people experience today. To grasp the power of this feeling one only needs to look at any women’s magazine or even a simple Style section of a daily newspaper. What do we find in such publications? In addition to advertising for the latest fashion, cosmetics and reports on celebrities, the main part of the magazine is advice. Since we live in times of survival, in one randomly picked magazine one thus finds texts like: ‘The single girl’s guide to survival’; a mother’s secret diary on how to survive childbirth (since ‘Having babies does terrible damage, especially to the fashionably fortyish mother’), advice on how to survive being in or out of a relationship, advice on diet and exercise, etc. Of course, advice radically changes over time, so that, as one health advice column claims, until recently ‘we have become neurotic about getting enough sleep, but the new research now suggests that the less we have, the longer we’ll live’.1

In sum, such magazines offer a cocktail of advice and prohibitions that finally tastes

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 like guilt. If the nineties ideology followed the commands ‘Just do it!’ and ‘Be yourself !’ today it seems that the new motto that the media promotes is: ‘No matter what you do, you will do it wrong, but it is better that you follow our advice and try again’. The ‘Just do it!’ ideology relied on the idea that the subject is ‘free’ in

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd parallax http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals 96 DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000065035 the meaning of being a non-believer in authorities and someone who can be fully in charge of changing his or her identity as he or she pleases, while today it looks as if we are living in times when people have woken up and acknowledged their limitations in such pursuits. However, it is not that we have finally realized that we are not self- creators who can reject old authorities (like religion or the state) and make out of ourselves a work of art which is not limited by any cultural or even biological restraints; it is rather that the very ideology of ‘Just do it!’ instead of offering unlimited optimism opened the doors for a particular anxiety. This anxiety is linked to the very idea that today we have freedom to create an image in which we will appear likeable to ourselves. However, people today more than ever experience all kinds of traumas related to their body image and are suffering from anorexia, bulimia, excessive exercising, obsession with plastic surgery, and shopping addiction. What is so horrifying in the very possibility of making out of oneself a work of art, i.e. to be free in creating our lives the way we supposedly want to?

Anxiety between desire and jouissance

Freud’s speculations on anxiety were that in adulthood, the subject’s anxiety is linked to guilt, which is why anxiety has an important connection with the superego. Lacan also stressed this connection and pointed out that superego functions as the voice that commands the subject to enjoy while at the same time mockingly reminds the subject that he or she will fail in this pursuit of enjoyment. While it is easy to conclude that anxiety relates to this feeling of guilt linked to the superego’s command, one should nonetheless make a reversal here: what produces anxiety, paradoxically, is not the possibility of failure but rather the possibility of success. Here we need to remember two well-known Lacanian points about anxiety. First, that anxiety is not incited by the lack of the object but rather by the lack of the lack, i.e. an emergence of an object at the place of lack. And second, that anxiety is a median between desire and jouissance.

Desire is always linked to dissatisfaction (to the lack of the object), while jouissance brings the subject close to the object in often most painful ways. When we say that desire is linked to lack, we should not make a too quick conclusion that there is never a proper object that can satisfy desire and that success in failure is a particular strategy of the desiring subject who always complains that whatever he or she attained is not ‘it’. The paradoxical feature of desire is that it is not some kind of an insatiable mouth that goes from one object to another and is never satisfied: desire itself is put in motion only when the subject encounters the object of desire, i.e. the Lacanian object a, which is another name for the lack itself. However the lack does not start lacking when we come to an object of desire but rather when desire is replaced with jouissance – which is when we come close to an object that is not any more the elusive object of desire but rather the object that incites a particular enjoyment that is often Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 coupled with pain and thus horrifying for the subject.

In love relationships this might happen when a hysteric who has been longing and desiring a particular partner finally has a successful sexual encounter with this partner. At that moment it might happen that a woman will be totally horrified by parallax 97 the experience and might immediately abandon the partner. However, the woman’s problem will not be simply that she wants to keep her desire unsatisfied (i.e. wants to keep longing for the inaccessible object), her horror might be linked to coming too close to the object of jouissance. In this context, Lacan makes a comment that orgasm is a state of anxiety that the subject usually tolerates quite well; however, it can also be a point that the subject very much tries to avoid.

How, therefore, is anxiety linked to failure? And why does the subject often desperately try to prevent success? Anxiety is often perceived as a state of dissatisfaction, an excitation that the subject feels when he or she is not content with his or her life, but in light of the psychoanalytic theory, this might not be the case, since anxiety is primarily an affect that warns us of the painful encounter with jouissance. Thus if one takes success not as a blissful state of harmony but as coming close to jouissance, anxiety can be perceived as a protective shield from jouissance which also allows desire to keep being alive.

How does today’s capitalist ideology play on this anxiety? Of course, one can easily observe that the whole marketing campaign on which capitalism relies constantly plays with the logic of desire and introduces the feeling that no matter which material goods we attain this is not ‘it’. However, if we complicate this understanding of the logic of desire with the logic of jouissance, the way capitalism plays with anxiety gets new meaning.

When Kierkegaard analyzed anxiety, he took it as something that is linked to possibility in existence. Here anxiety became in a particular way linked to freedom, or as Kierkegaard says, it is linked to freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility. The subject who is free is therefore anxious precisely because of the indeterminacy, i.e. ‘the possibility of possibility’ that freedom entails. That is why Kierkegaard concludes that anxiety is in the end anxiety before myself, which means that I am the sole arbiter and what I do is entirely up to me. Anxiety is thus linked to the possibility of being able. However, as such, anxiety often appears as a feeling aroused by looking down into a yawning abyss.

These speculations of Kierkegaard’s on anxiety might appear far away from the analysis of today’s capitalism; however, one can show that the popular debate about anxiety in regard to too much choice that supposedly pertains to consumerist culture very much follows the logic Kierkegaard was already talking about.

How is this so-called abundance of choice operative today? The last twenty years were dominated by the ideology that people would be happier and better off if they were constantly shopping for the best deals. On the one hand we thus got a huge emergence of new products, manufacturers and providers to choose from, but on the other hand, the idea of choice also became an end in itself. Some social scientists Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 started to talk about the ‘tyranny of freedom’ in today’s world, since consumers are forced to make choices even on things they never envisioned they could have any power over (and did not even want to have). An example here is the choice of the electricity provider. This choice has incited quite an anxiety on the side of the consumers, since as a New York Times article explained: ‘the anxiety over energy is Salecl 98 exposing something even deeper in human wiring’.2 It is not only that people do not want to constantly be perceived as autonomous, rational consumers: ‘when it comes to electricity, a mysterious and dangerous thing that is also the foundation of modern living, Americans are just a little afraid to be alone’.3 People are supposedly anxious for two reasons: first, it seems that no one is in charge in society anymore, and, second, the freedom of choice actually does not give more power to the consumers, but to corporations. A person shopping around on the Internet for the best price of a product, for example, gives corporations a chance to collect valuable data about consumer’s desires and spending habits. What provokes anxiety for people therefore seems to be both that no one is in control, and that someone (the corporations) is in charge in a hidden way.

When people speak about anxiety today, they also invoke the idea that they are now asked to make choices in regard to their sexuality, marriage, childbearing that used not to be regarded as choices in the past. But the more choices there are, the more it can seem possible to achieve an ideal result in every case. This seems to be the case not only for people who are continually changing their long-distance telephone service in the hope that they will find the best deal, but also for those that are searching for their love partner. That is why some claim that love is especially anxiety provoking today.

While on the one hand the subject is perceived to be a self-creator, i.e. a subject who can make out of him or herself what he or she pleases and who no longer relies on old authorities like family, religion and state, on the other hand the subject has lost the ‘security’ that the struggle with old authorities brought about. When we speak about the new age of insecurity we should thus not simply focus on the external dangers like wars and ecological catastrophes, but especially on the shift that has happened in the subject’s perception of him or herself and his or her place in the social symbolic network.

While these new anxieties that subjects have in regard to their body image and their role in society at large are very much linked to the way capitalism functions today, this same ideology is paradoxically offering ‘solutions’ on how the subject should deal with his or her anxiety. It even seems that anxiety is the very motor of the marketing politics that dominates today’s consumerist society.

Anxiety and the new imaginary

Psychoanalysis and marketing share the same knowledge that desire is always linked to prohibition. Freud was quite cynical about this fact and pointed out that where cultural prohibitions did not exist people invented them in order to keep desire alive. And Lacan was quick to follow, stating that the subject would never want to have a Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 sublime Thing unless the symbolic law were to prohibit access to it. With regard to consumer goods it is well known that we desire and cherish them more if they are expensive and hard to get. (I will never forget the enjoyment in the eyes of the Serbian student whom I met in Belgrade who told me how he obsessively cleans his one pair of Nike sneakers since he hopes to have them for a number of years.) parallax 99 The new philosophy of the brand makers is that they do not try to prevent their logos being stolen and copied in the third world. If a Turkish manufacturer, for example, makes copies of Nike sneakers, Nike will not try to prosecute him for copyright violation. Since Nike is primarily concerned with the dissemination of their logo, they take the fact that someone copied their product as just an advertising campaign. Another well known strategy in creating ‘addiction’ to consumer goods is that Nike and similar brands like to throw their excess products into the poorest neighbourhoods, like the Bronx in New York City, and thus keep the young consumers attracted to their goods.4

If desire is linked to prohibition, does the fact that some companies nowadays give away products for free kill the desire? Paradoxically this does not happen since today hyper-capitalism does not simply rely on selling goods, but on the creation of a certain imaginary which people identify with. In this context, the aforementioned feeling of inadequacy plays a strong role in the way marketing operates today. However, the problem is not that media offers to people some images of success and beauty with which they want to identify, and since they cannot come close to this ideal, they feel inadequate. For some time now the fashion industry, for example, has been convincing consumers that they should not follow fashion advice and try to make themselves into someone else, but should rather find what is unique in them and with the help of fashion just accentuate it. However, what provokes anxiety for the subject is not the failure that he or she cannot be someone else, but rather that he or she cannot be him or herself.

How is this anxiety channelled in today’s consumerism? Numerous studies have recently analyzed the change in capitalist production where instead of material manufacturing the most important thing has become the selling of the image. In this new culture of hyper-capitalism, it is crucial that suppliers and users have replaced buyers and sellers; markets are managing ways for networks and ownership is being replaced by access. Since the production costs of goods are today minimal and the market is so saturated with goods, economy depends less on individual market exchange of goods and more on establishing long-term commercial relationships.

For the companies, the most important thing is to establish such a relation with the customer that one becomes a supplier for a lifetime. The manufacturers thus invest most of their energy in developing trusting relations with their customers and try to figure out what the future desires of the customers might be without the customers knowing that they might actually want or need these things. The example here might be a manufacturer of baby diapers who provides home delivery of their product and soon after the parents get the first delivery of the diapers, they start buying all other baby goods from this provider. When the baby grows up, the provider will then offer goods for toddlers, adolescents etc. (OK, one can imagine that the manufacturer will at some point also offer free psychoanalytic advice on how to raise children). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 On top of establishing a trusting relationship, manufacturers more than anything try today to sell an image or, better, a lifestyle. Let us take the example of so-called ‘designer coffees’ sold at Starbucks or Coffee Republic. In these places what is sold is not simply coffee, but a particular type of experience: nicely designed places, which Salecl 100 offer a cosy, homely atmosphere with a politically correct intellectual touch. One thus gets ecologically informed messages on how the coffee has been produced and even the explanation on how by buying this (expensive) coffee one helps the poor people in Columbia. On the one hand, the consumers of such expensive coffee are offered a symbolic space in which they appear likeable to themselves, but, on the other hand, they get the protection from the outside world – especially the poor people.5

Today’s hyper-capitalist society is making a long-term shift from industrial production to cultural production, in which cultural experiences are more important than goods and services. Jeremy Rif kin points out in his book The Age of Access that we are entering a so-called world of ‘experience’ economy in which each person’s own life becomes a commercial market:

Global travel and tourism, theme cities and parks, destination entertainment centres, wellness, fashion and cuisine, professional sports and games, gambling, music, film, television, the virtual world of cyberspace, and electronically mediated entertainment of every kind are fast becoming the centre of a new hyper-capitalism that trades in access to cultural experience.6

In this context, businesses guess about a ‘lifetime value’ of their customers, when they try to assess how much a subject is worth at every moment of his or her life. And economists speak about the change that has happened from the commodification of space and material into the commodification of human time and duration. The prediction is that in the future almost everything will be a paid-for experience in which traditional reciprocal obligations and expectations – mediated by feelings of faith, empathy, and solidarity – will be replaced by contractual relations in the form of paid memberships, subscriptions, admission charges, retainers, and fees. The guess is that in the new era, people will purchase their very existence in small commercial segments, since their lives will be modelled on the movies so that ‘each consumer’s life experience will be commodified and transformed into an unending series of theatrical moments, dramatic events, and personal transformations’.7

Rif kin summarizes these new trends by pointing out that:

In the new network economy what is really being bought and sold are ideas and images. The physical embodiment of these ideas and images becomes increasingly secondary to the economic process. If the industrial marketplace was characterized by the exchange of things, the network economy is characterized by access to concepts, carried inside physical forms.8 Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 An example here again can be Nike, the company that truly sells only image. Nike has no factories, machines or equipment, only an extensive network of suppliers, so-called production partners. Nike is only a research and design studio with a sophisticated marketing formula and distribution system parallax 101 Another important point is that if in industrial society what mattered was the quantity of goods, in post-industrial society this is replaced by quality of life. That is why we do not any more buy goods, but access to them in time, through, for example, leasing and franchising. It looks as if capitalism is losing its material origins and is becoming a temporal affair which is linked to the fact that customers do not so much need things, but just their function. In this context, the customer becomes a client and partner who needs attention, expertise and, most importantly, experience. (It is interesting how psychoanalysis is also replacing the name patient with client. And one wonders if some clients are doing analysis as some kind of a new experience they want to buy.)

Still another crucial element in our new society is the new take on community. Companies are thus desperate in creating communities for their clients. In many company’s manuals one can thus read about the four stages of how one deals with clients: first comes so-called ‘awareness bonding’, which makes the consumer aware of the new product or service; second is ‘identity bonding’ when the consumer starts in a particular way to identify with the brand; third is the ‘relationship bonding’ when the consumer establishes a particular attachment to the brand, and fourth is ‘community bonding’ when the brand maker keeps consumers satisfied by organizing specific events and gatherings, or at least by sending birthday cards to the clients.

A particular marketing strategy that some brands of casual clothing use plays on an illusion of equality, which helps to mask class divides in today’s world. Poor people shop in shops like Gap in order to appear middle class and the rich in order not to show off with their clothes. Such brands also seem to erase gender difference in clothing, which changes the old divides in how men and women tend to choose their clothing. (As Darian Leader points out, women usually search for what no one else has, while men want to buy clothes that everyone else is wearing.)9

In sum, we are witnessing a transformation in the nature of commerce from the selling of things to the selling of images and creation of communities. The idea behind this change is that people more than anything want to appear likable to others and themselves and also very much want to ‘belong’. Now that old types of communities (families, cultural groups) are in steady decline, people by becoming subscribers, members, and clients acquire access to a new type of community. However, behind this attempt to create new communities is the perception that the totality of people’s lived experience needs to be transformed into commercial fare. It looks as if human life itself becomes the ultimate commercial product. And some warn that when every aspect of our being becomes a paid-for activity then the commercial sphere becomes the final arbiter of our personal and collective existence

If we introduce here the Lacanian concept of the Big Other, we can say that this search for the community can be understood as a search for a new Big Other and Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 that the companies are precisely playing on this need on the part of the subject to have a perception of a coherent social symbolic order. But what is anxiety provoking in this new play with images and new takes on community? Anxiety can be perceived as a signal in the Ego, i.e. as a phenomenon that appears on the limit of the imaginary field that the Ego comprises. Freud took Ego as a projection of the surface, as a Salecl 102 temporary perception that the subject has that he or she is coherent and has an identity. Anxiety often appears when the Ego is threatened in its perception of coherence, i.e. when the subject comes close, for example, to some horror object of jouissance. This might happen as uncanny phenomena when in the mirror one suddenly encounters one’s double or when one has the feeling that it is not the subject that gazes at the image in the mirror, but that that image actually gazes at the subject. Such moments are often perceived as depersonalizations. Lacan’s point is that the subject feels depersonalized because something in the mirror becomes anxiety provoking and then cannot be proposed to be recognized by the Other, i.e. by the symbolic order. This moment of anxiety might incite the subject to express aggression towards the specular image or towards him or herself. Here again we see that what provokes anxiety is not lack, but rather the presence of an object at the place where there should have been lack, like the emergence of the double in the mirror.

What is the basis of this horror? First we need to note that subject’s engagement with the Other can be traumatic for three different reasons: the subject might have problems with the Other’s demand, desire or jouissance. While the question of the Other’s desire often comes formulated in the question: ‘Who am I for the Other?’, and the trauma of the Other’s jouissance becomes perceived as the theft of our own jouissance, the problem that the subject has in regard to the Other’s demand engages another logic. The subject often wants to get a demand from the Other and the horror emerges precisely when this demand is lacking. This happens, for example, in a psychoanalytic situation, where the analysand is perturbed by the lack of the demand coming from the analyst. The problem with society of ‘too much choice’ is that there seems to be less and less demand. We might have a perception that we are now free from the constraints in creating an image in which we want to see ourselves and thus come close to a jouissance that we feel will bring us satisfaction; however, we necessarily fail in this attempt. Jouissance is something very much alien to ourselves (i.e. we do not ‘choose’ it in a rational way), which is why it is often when we try to be ourselves that we encounter something that is most traumatic and horrifying.

The anxiety of poverty

The problem with the theories which claim that we live today in a form of cultural capitalism is that they seem to neglect the fact that material production nonetheless still goes on, but it is often hidden in the countries of the Third world. People in developed countries might have the perception that they are nowadays living in a virtual world of cultural capitalism, while most of their everyday products are made in China or by the invisible immigrant workers in the sweatshops in New York. Sometimes, however, the workers actually become visible and are included into the Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 imaginary presented by the new type of capitalism as some kind of decorative art objects, which gives proof of authenticity. This for example happens in expensive restaurants which usually have opened kitchens so that their low paid workers are exposed to the public. We might take this decor as a proof that cooking is really happening in the restaurant, which counters conspiracy theories that, for example, parallax 103 evolved around Chinese restaurants in Paris: the idea there was that cooking is done in giant underground kitchens and when we order a meal in a small, supposedly authentic restaurant, their chef just warms up the pre-packed meal or runs to the underground kitchen to fetch it. However, one can also read this need to expose workers as decorative art objects as a particular way of dealing with class anxieties today.

Recently, there have been a number of books published in which middle-class writers decide to live for a period of time as poor workers and then in their books depict the lives of the lower classes. Such books, of course, primarily try to prove how the liberal approach which tries to replace welfare with ‘workfare’ cannot work, since people who earn minimal wages cannot make ends meet no matter how many hours they work per day. However, behind this attempts to show the impossibility of survival on minimal wage, one also finds an attempt to picture the lives of poor in a way that calms the fears of the middle classes.

If a decade ago, the lower classes were primarily afraid for their jobs (or were permanently unemployed), now the same kind of insecurity touches the middle class. Ben Cheever in his memoir of a writer who becomes a low paid salesman remembers a training course in the electronics store in which the teacher asked the future salesmen: ‘What do people fear more than death?’ ‘Public speaking’, was Cheever’s answer.10 This was definitely wrong, since the teacher reminded him that the greatest fear felt by American voters is that they will lose their job. And with the growing uncertainty about pension funds, people have also lost the belief in the possible security that will come in old age.

One way to tackle this insecurity is to observe the life of the poor in order to be able to make a conclusion: ‘This is not me! I am far better off than they are’. Fran Abrams, the author of Below the Breadline, thus starts her book with the calming reassurance:

Let me tell you about the nearly poor. They are, to misquote F. Scott Fitzgerald, different from you and me. They are soft where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that unless you were born poor, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are less than we are. Even when they enter far into our world, they still think they are less than we are. They are different.11

But are they really so different or do the middle classes want to believe that they are in order to retain their own sense of being protected from the horror of the lower classes’ lifestyle? Adams herself concludes that many of the poor actually want to

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 swim in the middle of the stream, to live the same lives, maintain the same standards, as their better-paid neighbours. Sadly, many of them found themselves pushed off towards the mudflats of society, unable indefinitely to continue to stay afloat […] If they chose not to make a fuss, to shut their mouths tightly and just plough on, they usually Salecl 104 had their reasons. Reasons born out of lifetimes of experience which told them that rocking the boat could only lead to capsize.12

While all these books about the poor state clearly that they do not want to incite a revolution, they also insist that their research wanted to show the dignity of the lives of the poor. They wanted to make visible not only their poverty, but the way they cope with it and how they continue to express determination, sheer grit and ‘almost unbelievable optimism and joie de vivre’.13 But is not dignified here synonymous with silenced? Do middle classes really want to hear how the poor live; i.e. do they actually let the poor speak? Ben Cheever openly admits that he is not really talking about the other poor people he encountered on his voyage to the world of the poor by saying:

This book’s greatest failure is that it’s turned out such a personal story. I am the character I talk about most. So it seems as if I’m the only character who matters. Please know that this is not what I think. I am selling Ben Cheever. Not because he’s the best product. I’m selling Ben Cheever because he’s all I’ve got. It wouldn’t have been fair – or legally advisable – to reveal everybody else’s life as if it were my own. Instead I’ve had to reveal my own life as if it were everybody else’s.14

In the final analysis, these books about the lives of the poor reflect the move from the ideology ‘Be yourself’ to the propagation of its failure. The writers thus write primarily about themselves and express their feelings about poverty from the distant point of view of an observer who is only taking a tourist trip to the land of the poor. However, their message is also that work necessarily brings failure to the poor.

Against contingency

What, therefore, is the logic of this search for the secret about how people really live? At first it looks that today’s virtual world demands a search for some kind of a real and that people are searching for what is behind the imaginary simulacra that dominate our perception of the world. However, this search for the real actually produces more virtuality. Let us look at the so-called reality shows on TV. The first explanation might be that people who are tired of the virtual want to see how real life looks like and that the TV market has simply been playing on this desire by producing reality shows like Big Brother, Survivor and so on. However, on these shows it is not that we receive some kind of raw everyday reality exposed to the public. The people featured in these shows very much play their part. While they do not try to adapt to some prescribed role, they actually play themselves: they create a certain image, a persona that they perceive will be of interest to the public.

Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 What happens when one virtuality is supplemented by another? A paradoxical answer might be that precisely this supplementation gives rise to anxiety. Let us go back to Lacan’s famous saying that ‘anxiety is not a signal of a lack, but the absence of the support of lack’. Lacan exemplifies this by pointing out how what provokes anxiety for the child is not the absence of the mother, but rather her being constantly at his parallax 105 back. In this context, what is horrifying is not the loss of the object, but the presence of the fact that objects are not lacking. If we go back to the example of ‘reality TV’, we can say that while the overpresence of the camera tried to capture the failures, contingency and spontaneity of everyday life, it did nothing but create another spectacle. ‘Reality TV’ tried to reveal the secret of daily life interactions, but in reality had actually covered this secret up. One might say that the secret of everyday life is its very boredom, its non-eventfulness, as well as the unpredictability and contingency of the events. While ‘reality TV’ tried to come close to this secret it did nothing but eradicate it. Instead of boredom, we got the participants’ excessive trying to be interesting and thus engaging in strenuous exercises, self-help talk, a culture of fake tribal customs etc.

So, in this supplementation of one virtuality with another one, which presents itself as something real, what provokes anxiety is not that the idea of Big Brother (the controlling agency from Orwell’s novel) has become materialized, but rather that the lack is lacking – i.e. that there is no place for inconsistency, non-wholeness. Thus, when in our virtual world we search for secret behind the virtuality by filming reality, we are doing nothing but negate the very inconsistency that pertains to reality – i.e. we are trying to get rid of precisely the lack that marks the social. Contingency might appear as horrifying, but at the end, what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it.15

The way anxiety is presented in the popular media gives the impression that anxiety is the ultimate obstacle to the subject’s well being. Anxiety is perceived as something that prevents the subject achieving full satisfaction in his or her life and that should thus be minimized as much as possible or even totally annihilated. In contrast to this perception, Freud understood anxiety as some kind of state of preparedness that helps the subject to deal with traumatic situations. He describes an example of a train crash and points out that after such traumatic event some survivors experience nightmares that play out an anxiety preparedness that did not exist before the event. Anxiety therefore does not simply have a paralyzing effect or the subject, but as a state of preparedness might help to alleviate trauma in case of catastrophic event.

How does today’s culture try to get rid of anxiety? On the one hand, the ideology of ‘Just do it!’ in our advice culture incited a production of ‘How to do it’ manuals, which, in the case of anxiety, give all kinds of techniques on how one can supposedly better cope with it.16 But on the other hand, there has been a proliferation of the drugs that are supposed to cure anxiety. In the last years, the media have especially focused on overcoming the so-called ‘social anxiety’ that the subject experiences in the public space. Manufactures of anti-anxiety drug Paxil have, for example, launched a big media campaign on how social anxiety is what prevents people from succeeding at their work and in their personal lives. The TV and newspaper ads for Paxil showed two images of a man sitting at a table, surrounded by people. On the first image, Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 the man is in a straitjacket, over him is an interrogation light and the people around him have grim, threatening faces. But the second image shows this same scene in a different light – the people are looking friendly, there is no interrogation light, and the man is just calmly sitting at the table. Over the first image, one reads: ‘This is how it seems’, and over the second: ‘This is how it is’. The text above the images Salecl 106 explains that numerous people today suffer from social anxiety disorder, which prevents them to succeed in life, but now it is easy to overcome this disorder with the help of Paxil. (In small letters there are, of course, listed numerous side effects of the drug; however, the message at the end is that even if some side effects occur, they are well worth the risk, since social anxiety is by far the worst impediment.) The message of this advertising is that the subject’s perception of reality is radically changed because of anxiety, and that under the influence of anxiety the subject creates a fantasy, which turns the reality into something dangerous for the subject.

This perception that the subject under the influence of anxiety radically distorts reality and perceives it as more threatening than it actually is was radically shattered with the attack on September 11. At the time of this attack, it seems that the common perception of reality and fantasy got twisted in many ways. As a result of this twisting, the manufacturers of anti-anxiety drugs decided to adopt a new strategy of advertising. Paxil thus launched a new TV advertisement made by a well-known documentary filmmaker Barbara Koppel, in which real people, users of Paxil, talk about their struggle with generalized anxiety disorder and how the drug helped them. Now, the ad no longer makes the impression that the subject who suffers from anxiety has distorted senses of reality. On the contrary, his perception of reality is real; however, this reality looks grim and depressing, while after he takes Paxil his perception of the same reality is cheerful and happy. The message of this advertising campaign is that the problem is not that the subject constructs reality that is not true (i.e. our reality is really depressive, hard, scary), but with the help of Paxil one can experience this harsh reality with the new eyes – the grim black and white picture suddenly gets colour, the annoying buzz from the streets turns into soothing music and the subject who has been distressed suddenly becomes calm and relaxed.

This perception that life is grim, but one can nonetheless find enjoyment in it, is also part of the new Coca-Vola advertisement entitled ‘Life tastes good!’ which in a particular way celebrates success in failure. In the TV clip we see a grandson visiting his grandfather who asks him how his studies are going. The young guy responds that he is taking a year off. Then the grandfather enquires about the last girlfriend and the grandson admits that he already has a new one. Grandson then asks how the grandmother is doing and the grandfather informs him that she has moved in with their friend from the bridge club. At this point both men salute themselves with Coca-Cola and we are reminded that life tastes good.

This advertisement very much depicts the reality of today’s family life where stability of relationships is a thing of the past. Things have changed for the young and the old. But now the advertising depicts what used to be perceived as failure (not studying at school, break-ups of relationships) just as change and continues to remind us that life is good anyhow. Contemporary consumer ideology is constantly convincing us that the subject is just a work of art, that ‘being’ has given way to ‘becoming’, and Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 that the new self is just an unfolding story continually being updated and re-edited. Similarly corporations today struggle for continuity and thus want to create an image about them that will pass into the future. Both individuals and corporations thus very much want to achieve some kind of immortality. For Freud, anxiety in the final analysis always touches the horror of death. In this context, the anxiety of too much parallax 107 choice and the ‘tyranny of freedom’ have to do with the fact that amidst all the choices we are supposedly free to make today, we have no freedom from death. However, here we need to remember famous Kierkegaard’s saying that more horrible than death is actually the possibility of immortality.

Notes

1 The Sunday Times, Style magazine, 15 September psychoanalysis we know that no matter which 2002. guidelines we try to follow we cannot predict what 2 See The New York Times, 27 August 2000. kind of effect our parenting will have on our 3 The New York Times, 27 August 2000. children, since we can never control the way our 4 Naomi Klein, No Logo (London: Flamingo, 2001). unconscious slips out in our planned behaviour. In 5 Recently, there has been a boom of such coffee today’s advice-ridden society, where we no longer places in Japan. The consumers there explain that have the old relationships with authorities, we also in the past after work-hours they used to frequent do not have the old type of advice on how to raise bars and tea houses in order to avoid going home, children that grandparents used to pass on to their but now they go to Starbuck because it feels more children. Frank Furedi’s book Paranoid Parenting like home. Of course, this fake home is a calm (Chicago: Chicago Review, 2002), makes a lucid oasis without screaming children and nagging observation that today’s parents seeking advice no spouse. longer get answers on how to deal with a troubled 6 Jeremy Rif kin, The Age of Access (New York: J.P. child. When they look into books or on the Web, Tarcher), p.7. they usually just get advice on where to get more 7 Rif kin, The Age of Access, p.29. advice – links to more books, more Web pages, 8 Rif kin, The Age of Access, p.30. 9 more therapists etc. See Darian Leader, Why Do Women Write More 16 Letters Than They Send?: A Meditation on the Loneliness The most absurd example here is recent of the Sexes (New York: Basic Books, 1997). discussions on how to simplify our lives. In the 10 Ben Cheever, Selling Ben Cheever, (New York: States a growing number of people decided to quit Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001), p.99. the race for more money and consumer products 11 Fran Abrams, Below the Breadline: Living on the and start living a frugal, simple and quieter life. Minimum Wage (London: Profile Books, 2002), p.1. But in order to simplify one’s life, one first needs 12 Abrams, Below the Breadline, p.7. to buy numerous guidebooks, which teach you 13 Abrams, Below the Breadline, p.5. how to do it. There is thus a growing industry 14 Cheever, Selling Ben Cheever, pp.xviii–xix. which teaches consumers how not to be consumers 15 On another level, one finds the refusal to deal and, of course, makes lots of profit out of this new with contingency in today’s child-rearing. From life-trends.

Renata Salecl is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. Her recent publications include (Per)versions of Love and Hate (Verso, 1998), Sexuation (Duke, 2000) and On Anxiety (forthcoming, Routledge, 2003). Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009

Salecl 108 parallax, 2003, vol. 9, no. 2, 109–113

Book Reviews

Jacques Derrida Inc. Now however he opens Austin’s original distinction between performative and constative Without Alibi language to a much wider application, beginning edited, translated and with an introduction with an analysis of its relation to the act of lying by Peggy Kamuf and then, more importantly, truth-telling. By (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002) directly relating his particular interpretation of performativity in language with such a basic I am not sure what it is that we are all waiting for philosophical theme as truth, Derrida adds a new Jacques Derrida to write. Derrida’s stature as an dimension to the whole project of deconstruction. eminent contemporary thinker is unquestionable. He cannot be accused of deliberate avoidance His writing finds an eager audience within a wide when by examining phenomena such as perjury, variety of academic disciplines and indeed by the confessing and university lecturing he establishes larger intellectual community in general. If any that they are all based on the tacit understanding philosopher could be considered bankable, then that the nature of truth is contained in the surely Derrida qualifies having begun and sustained performative act of truth-telling and not in a movement, deconstruction, that has achieved constative content. ‘This intention, which defines such a deep level of cultural penetration. Derrida veracity and lying in the order of saying or the act can continue to produce texts that exercise of saying, remains independent of the truth or deconstruction as a method, applying it to a falsity of the content, of what is said’. The seemingly limitless array of topics, which is philosophical importance of this candid discussion appropriate given its status as a successor to of truth cannot be underestimated because it phenomenology, and yet also maintaining its reveals so much about the nature of the inherently enigmatic status, keeping it just beyond deconstruction as practice of doing philosophy easy comprehension and safely out of the reach of and not a static set of theories or propositions. imitators. As a result, after more than 30 years of Unfortunately, and this is the negative aspect of deconstruction Derrida remains, at least in Without Alibi, there is a fair amount of extraneous philosophy, its chief practitioner. The other half of material surrounding this basic theory. While this mini-industry is formed by the variety of sections of the book may be of interest to specialists publishers who seem to be more than willing to of literary theorist Paul de Man, French author package any set of essays, lectures or interviews that Henri Thomas or those interested in the current they can. Inevitably the quality of these texts must state of American psychoanalysis, the chief vary. While there is always a new topic to be significance of this book is scattered and requires a deconstructed, and this will have an interested good deal of gathering. specialist audience, many readers will be looking for the general significance of the work, for a turn in the deconstructive project. Is there a shift to rival The book’s format as a collection of five separate the new affirmative phase marked by Spurs and Glas lectures, each conceived independently, does not or the ethical and political turn notable in Spectres lend itself to cohesion. The first text, ‘History of ff of Marx and Politics of Friendship? Aside from the new the Lie: Prolegomena’ o ers a phenomenological subject matter to be deconstructed, this is what we analysis of the act of lying, its relation to dominant seem to be looking for in new work by Derrida. ideologies, and, as an example of the first The question remains: Does his most recent book two in combination, Jacques Chirac’s recent Without Alibi have this significance? acknowledgement of the culpability of the French State during the Occupation of WWII. Derrida The answer is, with a decidedly Derridean notes that it could be determined either that until ambivalence, both yes and no. Without Alibi does this confession the government of France was in Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 have a new focus on the performative aspect of effect lying to itself all along by not admitting its deconstruction. This is a subject that perhaps own complicity or alternatively that it is only the Derrida has been wary to return to since the act of Chirac’s confession that retroactively renders acrimonious debates with Searle captured in Limited previous dissociations between the French State and

parallax ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals parallax DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000065044 109 the occupying power into lies. Derrida does not that demonstrates that only subjects who are too attempt to prove either one proposition or the convinced of their own infallibility are capable of other, rather he is interested in the apparent this extreme measure. In this way, the USA can be manifestation of historical lying once the truth has seen as overly convinced of its own constitutional been admitted in the present. This performative act legitimacy, or ‘indivisible sovereignty’ as Derrida of truth-telling in the present has a retroactive effect puts it, and therefore capable of a punishment that on ideology or discourse, in this case rendering it other nations are too self-doubting to commit. On into lies. He states clearly that this history of lying the other hand, the long process of forming the is ‘structurally heterogeneous to knowledge’ and European Union, with all its inherent questioning therefore it is not going to be proved or disproved and hesitancy, acts as a prophylactic for European by empirical fact. As a performative act entwined nations against this dangerous form of certainty. with a conception of the truth, the confession Derrida’s continuing support for an integrated reveals the contingency of the empirical facts and Europe, or at least a Europe always in the process knowledge itself. of integrating, is apparent.

‘Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2)’ continues on ‘The University Without Condition’ also mentions this theme with a long discussion of Paul De Man’s the discipline of cultural studies in the context of analysis of St. Augustine and Rousseau, both other research fields in the Humanities. It will come authors of famous confessions. Derrida asks as some relief to those who work in this area that how authentic confessions can be when they Derrida is in favour of it as long as it remains are produced almost automatically out of an focused on inter-disciplinarity. The mandate of Abrahamic tradition that demands the truth to be many cultural studies departments, to act as a constantly exposed. With this demand culturally productive nexus for a variety of other areas, finds entrenched, the act of truth-telling becomes less its reflection in Derrida’s statement of purpose for virtuous and more suspiciously a product of the Humanities: ‘This deconstructive task of the an ideological apparatus that Derrida dubs, in Humanities will not let itself be contained within a slightly Foucauldian mode, a ‘confessional the traditional limits of the departments that today machine’. ‘‘Le Parjure’’, Perhaps: Storytelling and belong, by their very status, to the Humanities’. If Lying’ examines lying in the context of court this deconstructive task takes hold as Derrida wishes testimony and the law where it becomes perjury it to, then cultural studies will find itself very well [ parjure]. Here again, the unconditional demand to positioned indeed. Moreover, professors of cultural tell the truth before the law is placed in doubt if studies, already in the paradoxical position of the legal structure is seen as a juridical apparatus belonging to a department which often attempts to that is made to extract the truth. While a witness’s dissolve disciplinary boundaries, will find the testimony may or may not comply with empirical overall paradox of being a university professor facts, this is a constative determination and not familiar, at once obligated to research the truth as the performative act of truth-telling that requires knowledge and yet also unconditionally to profess the witness to go beyond knowledge in a the truth in a performative act that the institutional Kierkegaardian manner that might resemble aspect of the university probably will find madness. unacceptable.

The two final essays, ‘The University Without All the familiar aspects of Derrida’s recent work are Condition’ and ‘Psychoanalysis Searches the States present in Without Alibi: the minute philological of Its Soul’, are the most important political pieces analysis, the impossible paradoxes, and a driving in the book and an accurate gauge of Derrida’s call for responsibility despite these complexities position on a variety of contemporary issues. He and ambiguities. The title of the book refers to argues that the term globalization disguises the true the proper ethical position one should take extent of the expansion of a primarily Hellenic and when confronted with the abysses and aporias Christian world-view behind a geographical of deconstruction, no escape routes or secret term like globe. He offers the term mondialisation backdoors. There is only the passive acceptance [worldwide-ization] instead in order to capture that entails complete obligation, taken without alibi the Heideggarian sense of a pervasive world or or excuses. Given this overall purpose, it seems ‘worlding’ that necessarily modifies its inhabitants. inappropriate to fault the book for being too Mondialisation is therefore unavoidable but the challengingly verbose. Instead it should be judged Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 character of that world remains flexible and a favourably for combining ethical and political matter of great responsibility. On another political substance with a declaration of the philosophical topic, Derrida argues against the American use of purpose of deconstruction. the death penalty on the basis of it being a cruel punishment. He is careful not to define cruelty too Kit Barton, exactly and instead subjects it to a deconstruction University of Essex Book reviews 110 The jackets, then, whose design is ‘random’, Jacket design: random already begin to pose the questions around the reading of events that are dealt with at length and Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of with, perhaps, more complexity inside the books. Terrorism; Paul Virilio, Ground Zero; The image that is zoomed in on gradually loses Slavoj Zˇizˇek, Welcome to the Desert its signifying elements – on Ground Zero we see of the Real three or four full-length human figures, apparently walking or running away from the collapsing (London and New York: Verso, 2002) tower behind them; on The Spirit of Terrorism the cut-paper faces (three black marks for eyes & mouth In his essay ‘Requiem for the Twin Towers’ on a blue background, the minimum elements Baudrillard meditates on the twin-ness of the for the signification of a human face) of two of World Trade Center towers destroyed last year, the figures are still within the frame of the picture; writing: on Welcome to the Desert of the Real the blue/black design is so abstracted that without reference to Their destruction itself respected the the other two books in the series it might not be symmetry of the towers: a double attack, possible to interpret it as part of the ravaged separated by a few minutes’ interval, with a skyline/towers. sense of suspense between the two impacts. After the first, one could still believe it was an How, then, do these covers prepare us to think of accident. Only the second impact confirmed abstraction? (As the progressive minimization of the the terrorist attack.1 elements needed to recognize the human face as human? Or as the disappearance of the human The problematics of iteration, singularity and the from the frame?) Of thought? And of the event delineated in this passage; the relation relationship between these three books, and between ‘image’ and ‘the real’ – even the question between them and the events they engage with, of whether such a distinction, and its related think, abstract from, zoom in on? The covers are binaries (‘cause’ and ‘effect’, ‘signifier’ and not photographs plain and simple – they make no ‘signified’, ‘style’ and ‘substance’) can be held to such necessarily disingenuous claim to immediacy, hold – the appropriate format and content of a to transparency of representation – but it is not response to the attack on the World Trade Center disguised that they are based on photographs; these last September; in short, the lines and fronts of books, then, will not be irresponsible, they will questioning immediately opened by the attacks, in which ‘the Manhattan skyline became the front of neither claim to speak the reality of the events nor the new war’2 – these are all, of course, operating disclaim relation to such a reality: they will put into even before we open this set of three impeccably question all the elements and presuppositions that designed books by impeccably chosen theorists make up such a choice of stances. Further, are we from Verso. to understand that the relation of each cover to each book is a signifying one – can we assume that The books’ noticeable divergence from standard Ground Zero will be implicated with or on the scale paperback format in shape – they are tall, narrow of the human figure in a manner that Welcome to the 3 and thin – draws attention to their desirability as Desert of the Real will not be? – or are they only to physical objects, rather than allowing them to be understood as signifying in relation to each pretend to transparency, to the neutral function of other, by virtue of their place within the closed information transmission (perhaps because much system of the set? of their content has been previously web-published and/or circulated on e-mail, so that the books’ The set-ness of these three books makes them both existence must be justified in terms of their material more self-contained – in the finitude of the set, the specificity rather than the information they limit set to the number of volumes that can transmit). Each cover features a partly-abstracted be counted as being in this series4 – and less (‘torn-paper’) version of a photograph of the site of authoritative, more open, than a single volume the attacks, in shades of grey, blue, and mustard- would have been. A single single-volume yellow. The same photograph has been used for all monograph would have suggested an authoritative three books, but each cover zooms in on a smaller pronouncement on how the events were to be Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 area of it, the largest area being used for Ground understood: a single-volume edited collection Zero, the smallest for Welcome to the Desert of the Real would have suggested that, whilst no single reading (the direction of the zoom may thus be following could be sufficient, a gathering of a finite number the alphabetical sequence of titles, despite the small, of readings is sufficient either in itself or in its discreetly sans-serif declaration on the inside back pointing towards the (possibly infinite) variety of cover: Jacket design: random). potential readings. The choice of a three-volume parallax 111 set, whilst – we can surmise – conditioned by It is, though, probably Baudrillard – although he such capitalist considerations as the availability of begins by talking about the collapse of the towers textual material suitable for publication under the as ‘suicide’ and hence echoing Virilio’s suggestion Verso brand, extends the variety of readings that ‘the frontiers now run inside European cities’ beyond the covers of a single edited collection, – who offers the most pertinent reading of the whilst also insisting on the relation of different ‘they did it’, the most articulated understanding readings to one another, their gatherability and of antagonism in this new globalism – an commonality. understanding that insists on antagonism without either falling into the reflexivity of Virilio’s ‘bin That is to say that the interrelated jacket designs Laden’s planes are boomerangs’9 or colluding in a of these three books open another set of questions ‘war on Terrorism’ in which, as Zˇ izˇek puts it, in relation to the attacks of September 11 2001: ‘ ‘‘terror’’ is gradually elevated into the hidden questions around the ability, or power, to recognize universal equivalent of all social evils’. Baudrillard, what belongs to a system and what is its outside. instead, understands the ‘non-equivalence’ of the Zˇ izˇek’s book, firstly, focuses on the phantasmatic deaths of the World Trade Center victims in terms elements of the attacks – that is, the ways in which, of the way in which insofar as they represent the irruption of the the terrorists have ceased to commit suicide Lacanian Real, they precisely belong to the West for no return … They have succeeded in and to the USA in particular: the lines are drawn, turning their own deaths into an absolute he claims, not ‘between’ fundamentalisms but within weapon against a system that operates on the Islam and within global capitalism. basis of the exclusion of death, a system whose ideal is an ideal of zero deaths.10 the two sides are not really opposed … they belong to the same field. In short … the choice The ‘war against terrorism’, by contrast to this between Bush and Bin Laden is not our choice; ‘absolute weapon’, is they are both ‘Them’ against Us. The fact that global capitalism is a totality means that it is A non-event, an event that does not really take the dialectical unity of itself and of its other, place. And that indeed is its raison d’eˆtre:to of the forces which resist it on ‘fundamentalist’ substitute for a real and formidable, unique ideological grounds.5 and unforeseeable event, a repetitive, rehashed pseudo-event.11

Baudrillard succinctly delineates the implication of In responding to the real and formidable event of ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ in this way: September 11 2001, the challenge is, then, to find a way to do so that does not substitute a pseudo- they did it, but we wished for it. If this is not event, a repetition, a non-event. It is, perhaps, in taken into account, the event loses any an attempt to avert this possibility, this fall into symbolic dimension. It becomes a pure predictable iteration and rehashing, that Verso have accident, a purely arbitrary act, the murderous inscribed this set of books with the apotropaic phantasmagoria of a few fanatics, and all that claim: Jacket design: random. would then remain would be to eliminate them. Now, we know very well that this is not 6 how it is. Notes

All three writers engage subtly and challengingly 1 Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism, p.46. with the profound difficulty of the critical demand 2 Virilio, Ground Zero, p.82. 3 to understand this shuttling between the ‘they did Possibly. Certainly Virilio’s book appears to presuppose it’ and the ‘we wished for it’. Zˇ izek’s book is perhaps a notion of a scale appropriate to the human body ˇ opposed to the techno-scientific dematerialization of art, particularly helpful in understanding the ‘we wished warfare and communications in an attempt to come to for it’, from his reading of the terrifying predictability terms with the reconfiguration of space and virtuality of the American response (‘Is not the ‘‘war on effected – or perhaps only represented – by the World ˇ terrorism’’ the abominable conclusion, the ‘‘dotting Trade Center attacks. Zizˇek, on the other hand, takes, perhaps, a more reflexive approach to the events: although of the i’’, of a long, gradual process of American he seems to echo Virilio in contextualizing the events in ideological, political and economic colonization of terms of ‘virtuality’, writing of ‘reality itself deprived of its Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009 Europe?’7), to the process of definition of a more substance’ (p.11), he concludes that ‘we begin to radical ‘outside’ he sees beneath the ‘war on experience ‘‘real reality’’ itself as a virtual entity’, so that Terrorism’: ‘what is emerging in the guise of the the human-scale ‘proximity’ which Virilio insists on keeping in sight is not for Zˇ izˇek a viable site of resistance. Terrorist on whom war is declared’, he writes, 4 Although I did reread the Verso blurb several times to ‘is precisely the figure of the political Enemy, check whether this set of books was to be the first of a set foreclosed from the political space proper’.8 of sets. Book reviews 112 5 Zˇ izˇek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, p.51. 11 Baudrillard, Spirit, p.34: here he echoes Zˇ izˇek’s question 6 Baudrillard, Spirit, p.5. ‘What if the true aim of the war is ourselves, our own 7 Zˇ izˇek, Welcome, p.143. ideological mobilization against the threat of the Act?’ 8 Zˇ izˇek, Welcome, p.93. (Zˇ izˇek, Welcome, p.154.) 9 Virilio, Ground Zero, p.78. 10 Baudrillard, Spirit, p.6. Ika Willis Downloaded By: [Lund University Libraries] At: 15:56 18 November 2009

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