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POLYGRAPH

NUMBER 15/16

AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF CULTURE & POLITICS

IMMANENCE, TRANSCENDENCE, AND UTOPIA


Issue Editors: Marta Hernandez Salvan and Juan Carlos Rodriguez

'f
.
.
.IJ
.

Jean-Luc Nancy

IMM/TRANS

Arturo Leyte

LEAVING IMMANENCE

Alberto Moreiras

I NFRAPOLITICS AND IMMATERIAL


REFLECTION

Kenneth Surin

POST-POLITICAL CITIZENSHIP

Slavoj Ziiek

THE BECOMING-OEDIPAL
OF GILLES DELEUZE

Alain Badiou

THE FLUX AND THE PARTY

Bruno Bosteels

LOGICS OF ANTAGONISM

Mladen Dolar

KAFKA'S VOICES

Alenka ZupanCic

INVESTIGATIONS OF THE LACA NIAN FIELD

Robert Spencer

TRADITION AND TRANSCENDENCE

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

IMMANENCE AND (ITS) INTERRUPTION

POLYGRAPH

NUMBER 15/16 (2004)

CONTENTS

J)-' S ')
f70Ib/f
-j !

AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF CULTURE It POLITICS

IMMANENCE, TRANSCENDENCE, AND UTOPIA


Introduction: Neither Immanence nor Transcendence

Issue Editors: Marta Hernandez Salvan and Juan Carlos Rodriguez

Marta Hernandez Salvan


Imm/Trans

11

Jean-Luc Nancy
-

Editorial collective

Laura Balladur
Janelle Blankenship
Rodger Frey
Simon Krysl
Alex Ruch
Abby Salerno
Matthew Wilkens
Advisory board

Rey Chow, Brown University


Manthia Diawara, New York University
Jane Gaines, Duke University
Lawrence Grossberg, UNC-Chapel Hill
Michael Hardt, Duke University
Fredric Jameson, Duke University
Wahneema Lubiano, Duke University
Andrew Ross, New York University
General sponsors

Duke University

Program in Literature
The Center for International Studies
Marxism and Society Group
Graduate and Professional Student
Council

UNC-Chapel Hill

University Program in Cultural Studies

Acknowledgements

The follOWing departments and programs


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supported the publication of Polygraph
15/16: English, Film and Video, Latin
American Studies, Romance Studies, and
Women's Studies.

Information

Polygraph is published annually. Send all

Leaving Immanence: Art from Death

correspondence to

Arturo Leyte

Polygraph
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E-mail: polygraph@duke.edu

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection

Post-Political Citizenship

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze

59

Slavoj Zizek
The Flux and the Party: In the Margins of Anti-Oedipus

Distribution and Ubiquity Distribution.


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75

Alain Badiou
Logics of Antagonism:
ty"
ar
P
e
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d
an
x
u
Fl
e
h
"T
's
u
io
ad
B
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In the Margins of A

On the cover

All images reproduced by permission of


the artist.

47

Kenneth Surin

Polygraph is distributed through DeBoer

Spine: Elizam Escobar, Odiseo Paranoico


(detail), c. 1986. Acrylic, collage, and
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33

Alberto Moreiras

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13

93

Bruno Bosteels

Kafka's Voices

109

Mladen Dolar
Investigations of th\ Lacanian Field:
Some Remarks on Comedy and Love

131

Alenka Zupancic
Tradition and Transcendence:
Postmodernity's Entanglement in Immanence

Robert Spencer

1 47

Immanence and (Its) Interruption:


Critical Reconstellations

Juan Carlos Rodriguez


Contributors

169

Introduction:
Neither Immanence nor Transcendence

193

Marta Hernandez Salvan

What is the primordial question of any possible political phi


losophy today? This volume intends to open up the debate
among some of the various philosophical tendencies that de
rived from the different post- Marxisms of the seventies, and
many other strands of thought that arose more directly from
within poststructuralism and their endeavor to think through
the crisis of the epistemological and political subject, as Ken
neth Surin would have it. 1 Our present conjuncture is the
result of the global dominance of neoliberalism and flexible
accumulation, especially after the disappearance of the social
ist regimes, and the end of a bipolar geopolitical order. One
could thus claim that we now live in a post-ideological era
dominated by an order of global flexible accumulation. Tak
ing into account this conjuncture, it is perhaps not unfathom
able to think that our post-ideological era has contributed to
the disintegration of the political subject and to the withering
of most of its former social practices of emancipation. The
intention behind this volume is to create a dialogue between
two philosophical traditions in their current evolution and
their attempt at theorizing the present political conjuncture.
Namely, the ontological Idealist tradition that begins with
Kant and the Spino zan immanentist ontology.2 Let me briefly
summarize the theoretical questions raised by each one of
these traditions, because it is key to understand that the po
litical discourses that stem from each one of the two tradi
tions have a fundamental theoretical split whose origin can
be found in their ontological premises.
I. Freedom and Necessity

The Kantian Idealist tradition posits a fundamental ontologi


cal duality between being and reason, and between freedom
and necessity. Natural laws are beyond human reason, where
as the moral law depends on individual choice. This is why
every being is at the same time free and bound. The principle

..

Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

Marta Hernandez Salvan

Introduction

of difference is based upon this paradox between the freedom of moral law and the
neces t: imposed by natural laws. The philosophical quandary posed by the im
. .
possIbIlIty of bnngmg together freedom and necessity in synthetic reason becomes
a key i sue for the Idealist tradition that comes after Kant. In this sense, Hegelian
.
dIalectics are an attempt to integrate the necessary laws of reason and freedom in
the name of th Absolute Sp rit. The concept of absolute spirit in fact manages to
encomass the Idea of n ecesslty and freedom at once, by positing an entity which is
.
not subjected to a supenor power outside of it. What this means is that the absolute
spirit is like ant s transcen etal subject, a being whose reason is not contingent
upon the arbltranness of a dlVlne power. It is an entity whose existence is indepen
dent of any o her cause . Y t, at t e same time the Absolute Spirit is determined by
natural laws msofar as .It IS subjected to the laws of time and space. This means,
fo example, that it can be subjected to a notion of time defined as a progression
(bIrth/death) or as a teleology. This is precisely why for Arturo Leyte and Jean -Luc
Nancy only the event of death can interrupt the dialectical determination of the
work of art. For Schelling, as we know, the absolute was represented by art. For
Leyte and Nancy the work of art produces a space of absolute identification between
the observer and the work of art that can only be interrupted temporarily by the
evnt of death. In Glas, Jacques Derrida's book on Hegel, Derrida makes use of the
stam a a etphor to escribe the fact that the determinant limit of a concept is
almost mfimte m Hegel. In the same work, Derrida suggests that there is a parallel
,
between Hegel s Aujhebung and the Lacanian notion of castration, and that both of
them have a paradoxical nature. Castration is a process that leads to a subjection to
the law of the father, the symbolic law; yet at the same time, it is also a process of
subjectification.
How to recover the spatial and temporal dimension of difference between free
dom nd determination? How to think about difference? How to think about sin
gulanty? How to capture the spatio-temporal dimension of interruption of the ab
solute? These are some of the fundamental questions that we have inherited from
the Kantian Idealist tradition. Most importantly, these are some of the essential
qustions guiding the articulation of our contemporary political theories. Derrida
.
mamtals that Hegel's logic cannot be deconstructed conceptually, because that
would lmply be a conceptual displacement of the dialectical logic from an outside.
Such dIsplacement could only take place from a transcendental power outside the
structure. Yet, neither Derrida nor Deleuze would ever accept the existence of a
ranscendental power otsi e the structure. The dialectical logic can thus only be
lterrupted by an excluslOn mherent in the formation of the structure. Such exclu
SlOn can only exist as an excess:

II n'st as sur q'o intervienne conceptuellement dans sa logique. Pour


Ie falre 11 fadralt deplacer conceptuellement l' articulation conceptuelle
:
chez lUl mamfeste-entre Aufhebung, castration, verite, loi, etc. II faut faire
apparaitr des forces de resistance it la negativite speculative, et que ces for
,
ces de reSIstance
ne constituent pas it leur tour des negativites relevables ou
relevantes.
En somme un reste qui ne soit pas sans etre un neant: un reste qui ne

soit.4
For Derrida there is no possibility to interrupt the logic of the absolute or of the
law from a conceptual point of view, for that would also be a conceptual refram
ing of the notion of the law. The very difficult task that is left to us, is a demand to
find the possibility to resist negative speculation with a non subsumable negativ
ity. I believe that this is, for example, the task at hand in Alberto Moreiras's essay,
"Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection:' Departing from the imperial sovereignty
of the Spanish Inquisition as an example of a biopolitical procedure to ensure that
people cooperate in their own domination, Moreiras's essay questions the possibili
ties for the suspension of a biopolitical narration of history in relation to the pos
sibilities of immaterial labor. In order to articulate his response, Moreiras takes issue
with Mauricio Lazzarato's notion of immaterial labor. Lazzarato thinks that there
are two ways to look at the relationship between immaterial labor and production.
Immaterial labor can be caught within the capital relation and therefore reproduce
the structures of domination. On the other hand, immaterial labor may create a new
relationship between production and consumption and promote values that could
never be normalized by the apparatus of command within the system of production.
Both responses are nihilistic in nature, which is also to say that they are messianic.
Moreiras takes Lazzarato's proposition seriously in seeking to understand whether
immaterial labor marks or fails to mark the final subsumption of living time into
labor power.
He then argues that there are two fundamental uses of history. For him, the
biopolitical use of history is the sovereign use of history, the one that allows us to
understand that if history is always a biopolitical history, then there is no outside to
the biopolitical relation to history. The second use of history is what Moreiras calls a
useless use, the infrapolitical use of history. "This use without use-says Moreiras
has to do with un-working the determinations of the first use. If the characteristic
procedure of the first use of history is the capture of life by the political, the capture
of life by the sovereign relation, the characteristic procedure of the second use is
the interruption of the principle of sovereignty, the unworking of the biopolitical,
the deproduction of the use of history:' Is the uncanny power of Nancy's medusa as
poignantly terrifying as the useless use of history? It is precisely this brief and sud
den emergence of the Lacanian Real what opens up the possibility of interruption of
the historical structure. As we know, the Lacanian Real is the inherent exclusion of
the symbolic structure, the excess of the structure. The Real is, in Bruno Bosteels's
words, the point of the impossible that vertebrates the symbolic. Yet, the Real can
never be taken as a radical exteriority, it is always an intrinsic exteriority. The same
goes for the radical-democratic orientation, which is based on the essential lack of
the social bond. Such lack is always an inherently intrinsic exteriority of the power
structure, rather than a transcendental exterior force. Radical democracy is based on
the necessary and impossible fullness of society. Therefore there is a lack, something
which is present and absent at the same time. The primary presence of such a lack
articulates itself through empty signifiers, and the hegemonic operation consists in
a discursive articulation of those signifiers to wider discursive totalities. We can thus
conclude that none of these logical operations are ever based on the existence of a
..

Introduction

transcendental force determining the structure from a radical outside.


II. An Absolute without Negation

This volume also intends to take issue with the Spinozist-Deleuzian notion of poli
tics as a field of pure immanence. In their contemporary version these politics are
embodied by the two complementary logics of Empire and the Multitude as they are
outlined in the two respective homonymous books co-authored by Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri. In their critiques of Empire, most scholars have focused on the
limitations of the power of resistance of the multitude. In this volume for example,
Bosteels alludes to the theoretical challenges of articulating the multitude, and he
points out that one should try to relate it to some of its historical equivalents such
as the mass or the people. Bosteels argues that the concept of the multitude belongs
to a long genealogy that is defined as what according to Badiou is "a canonical state
ment, which holds that the masses make history, posits in the masses precisely this
vanishing irruption of which political philosophy only tells the always belated, and
always torn storY:' 5 The problem with the notion of the multitude as it appears to be
grounded in Paolo Virno's account-Bosteels argues-is that having forsaken with
the subject altogether it seems almost impossible to envision how such a politics
could theorize about a political actor. I would add further that the problem rather
lies in the dangerous liaison between the notion of the multitude and the mass,
which is by the way the ghost that returns in Badiou's acrimonious article "The Flux
and the Party:' As we know, the goal of the multitude is like the goal of any other
mass that fights for its emancipation to form a community of sorts. What differenti
ates the multitude from its predecessors is that it has no telos. One could argue that
the multitude is a radically new concept insofar as it distances itself from the Chris
tian images of so many other emancipatory discourses in which the goal is to tran
scend the corruptions of the world by arriving at a pristine paradise. The multitude
is rather a political space organized within the ontology of Empire: "The name that
we want to use to refer to the multitude in its political autonomy and its productive
activity-Hardt and Negri tell us-is the Latin term posse-power as a verb, as activ
ity. . . . [Plosse is the machine that weaves together knowledge and being in an ex
pansive, constitutive process:'6 In this sense, it is true that the multitude is a notion
that bears no relation with the Leninist idea of the vanguard, nor with any anarchic
notion of mass. It bears similarities nevertheless to Deleuze and Guattari's notion of
the multiple singular potentialities insofar as they are generated in the virtual field,
which is the field of production. More important, however, is to note that from the
ontological point of view, Empire and the Multitude form a singular substance.
What is a singular substance? This notion is genealogically linked to Deleuze
and especially to Spinoza. The substance for Deleuze is distinct and not different,
because the notion of difference entails a numerical distinction. Numbers set limits
and therefore they are defined by an external cause. The numerical distinction in
Deleuze is not real, it is only a formal distinction because the substance can only
have an internal cause. This actually emphasizes, according to Hardt, the fact that
Deleuzian difference is not relational. Against Descartes and following Spinoza,
Deleuze wants to eliminate any negative aspect of the real distinction. Negativity

Marta Hernandez Salvan

is inherent in the relational character of difference for Descartes, whereas for De


leuze and also for Negri and Hardt "distinction would be a better term for defining
the singularity of being" precisely because the notion of distinction as they under
stand it does not have a relational character? The singularity of being is key to un
derstanding the ontology of the multitude. "How can we conceive of the absolute
without negation?" asks Hardt.8 According to Hardt, only the Spinozan principle
of the singularity of being is conducive to an understanding of an absolute without
negation. As we argued above, singularity is not defined by an external cause, and
therefore it does not have any limitations that may define it by negation. A lack of a
negative determination does not make singularity indeterminate, because accord
ing to Deleuze, singularity is determined by an internal cause. "The singular-says
Hardt-is remarkable because it is different in itself'9 "It would be false, then-he
adds-to set up an opposition between singular being and determinate being. Sin
gularity is and is not determination. In other words, Spinoza's beng, the unique sub
.
stance, is determinate in the sense that it is qualified, that it is dIfferent. However, It
is not determinate in the sense of being limited:'l0 What follows from this is that the
principle of immanence has to exclude negativity because negativity is that which
limits being, that which makes it tend towards transcendence.
Hardt explains at length how Deleuze's substance is singular and internally de
termined, or remarkable and absolute. According to Hardt the fact that Deleuze ad
dresses determination is what allows his theory to be nondialectical. He also shows
how immanence denies any form of eminence or hierarchy in being due to the
principle of the univocity of the attributes, which requir s tht beig be expressed
equally in all of its forms. Hardt argues that what Deleuzes explanatIOn makes clear
is that Spinoza's ontology, a combination of immanence and expression, is not sus
ceptible to the Hegelian critique of the dispersion and the "progressive loss" of be
ing. Therefore both empire and the multitude are an all-inclusive substance where
no subjectivity stands outside. Since we can only imagine the multitude as an abso
lute, however, it is not clear how we may differentiate it from the mass. In this sense,
I would tend to agree with Badiou's analysis of Deleuze's ontology.l1 Badiou argues
that Deleuze is rather a philosopher of the metaphysics of the One, and not a phi
losopher of the multiple. To reach the one, is what Badiou calls the democracy of de
sire: "Une seule et meme voix pour tous Ie multiple aux milles voix, un seul et meme
Ocean pour toutes les gouttes, une seule clameur de l'Etre pour tous les etants:'12 If
we only hear the unique and absolute sound of one voice, how could we account for
the singularity of the voice or for the lack of it? If there is only one voice, is there
only one desire? Whose desire is it? How can we tell the progressive desire from the
non progressive one? In this sense, it is important to remember Surin's essay, a d
. of the ThIrd
especially his final conclusion, in which he criticizes the pragmatIsm
Way and argues for the need to trace a non-negotiable line between the left and the
right. If this is true, it seems that the multitude is a dangerous concept. Although,
if we were to push this issue a little bit further, one could also argue that given our
present conjuncture it might be necessary to redefine what do we understand by the
left. That is precisely what Slavoj Zizek accomplishes in his essay on Deleuze.
Zizek's article is a very nuanced critique of Deleuze, in which he praises the first
..

Marta Hernandez Salvan

Introduction

Deleuze of the Logic of Sense and criticizes his intellectual alliance with Felix Guat
tari. Zizek argues that Deleuze's ontological system relies on two divergent logics,
the logic of Becoming and the logic of Being. The logic of sense and the immate
rial becoming as sense-event poses a radical gap between generative processes and
their immaterial sense-effect. Sense-event is thus a sterile space, where nothing is
produced. On the other hand, Deleuze posits the logic of becoming as production
of Beings. Zizek makes a Lacanian reading of Deleuze against the grain, in which
he draws a parallelism between Lacan's objet petit a and Deleuze's quasi-cause. The
notion of quasi-cause is what prevents a regression into reductionism by arguing
that in every determination there is an excess. Zizek's intent is to privilege Deleuze's
logic of sense and thus to show that such logic is embedded in a materialist geneal
ogy, rather than an idealist one. In this task Zizek shows how Deleuze's quasi-cause
goes through the same inherent process of contradiction as Hegelian actualization.
Through his Lacanian reading of Deleuze, Zizek shows how the quasi-cause plays
the role of the phallic signifier and how Deleuze's last project stems from an ide
alist argumentation because it argues that a virtual intensity generates a material
reality. Through a coup de force Zizek then shows that the category of the sense
event has its own autonomy, and that this is what proves Deleuze's real compromise
with materialism. He thus proves that Deleuze and Guattari's leftist organization of
molecular groups stems from an idealist subjectivism, whereas the sterility of the
sense-event is indeed the real site for a political struggle: "What if the domain of
politics is inherently 'sterile; the domain of pseudo-causes, a theatre of shadows, but
nonetheless crucial in transforming reality?"'3 Doesn't the sterile domain of pseudo
causes function in the same logical manner as Moreiras's infrapolitical use of history
or Nancy's work of art? The dull, dingy, and uncertain obstacle that terrifies the
philosopher is certainly present in most of the theoretical accounts to be found in
this issue. This is certainly terrifying, especially if our contemporary political theory
cannot grapple with the uncertainty of such terror. This is especially pressing now,
more than ever, in the wake of this past U.S. presidential election. It is now, I believe,
that we are left with the difficult and urgent task of defining what the left is today,
for us, for all of us.

Kenneth Surin, "Post-Political Citizenship;' in this issue.

Both Kenneth Surin and Arturo Leyte give very good accounts of the genealogies of these
two philosophical traditions in this issue.

Jacques Derrida, Glas (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1974), 20.

Ibid., 53.

Bruno Bosteels, "Logics of Antagonism: In the Margins of Alain Badiou's 'The Flux and
the Parti" in this issue.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001),
407.

Michael Hardt, An Apprenticeship in Philosophy: Gilles Deleuze (Minneapolis: University


of Minnesota Press, 1993), 60.

Ibid., 62.

Ibid., 63

10 Ibid., 67
11 Alain Badiou, Deleuze: La Clameur de l'are (Paris: Hachette, 1997).
12 Ibid., 20.

Deleuze;' in this issue.


les
Gil
of
pal
edi
-O
ing
om
Bec
e
"Th
ek,
Ziz
voj
Sla
13

Imm/Trans
Jean-Lue Naney

I tried to write for you a very short essay on your theme, "im
manence and transcendence:' I give up because the topic is
necessarily elusive. If indeed immanence designates being
subsisting in itself [en soi], this being defines in and of itself
an exterior against which it subsists autonomously. Sub-sist
ing [sub-sister] implies being situated beneath some other
thing. A substance is substance of . . . that of which it is a sub
stance, and, as the case arises, of its accidents. A subject sub
jeetum is subject of . . . its acts, its states of consciousness,
etc., unless it has become in a sense forgotten, "subject" to the
authority that rules over it. As subsistence, immanence opens
onto an inevitable exterior.
On the contrary, transcendence designates not the sub
ject but the act, the movement that crosses the limits of sub
sistence. But we have just seen that substance opens itself
beyond its limits, risking its own subsistence: if it no longer
opened, it would dissolve rather than remain poised on its
acts and attributes.
But the transcendental act happens nowhere, because
outside substance only the order of the act exists, hence some
thing of transcendence itself, or the order of the attribute, it
self accidental and inconsistent. Transcending can be nothing
but a tautology: transcendence transcends, and leads to noth
ing. (One sees then that immanence immanates [immane],
nothing more.)
If transcendence leads to transcendence, it is immanent to
itself. If immanence subsists as henchman without either acts
or overtures, it dissolves in itself. On either side, a radical and
absolute implosion of the thing or notion exists. Transcen
dence immanatizes itself [s'immanentise] , like a bad infinite
running behind its ghost, immanence undoes itself, like a rot
ting corpse.
Ghost and rot are the last two and unending figures of
transcendence and immanence. Neither one exists. Existing,
existence, ignores ghosts and rot, two ways to represent death
as a state. But death is not a state. Death is not: as such it can
-

Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

12

ImmlTrans

emerge, as indeed it does emerge.


Death, mere death removes any speculation on "immanence" and "transcen
dence:' In death, substance or act disappear. Simultaneously, however, death forms
the only passage of subsistence outside itself. Subsistence rids itself of the envelope
that maintains it subsisting (thus subsistence rids itself of that under which it sub
sisted) and develops into ek-sistence, or into "sistence" outside itself. Into insistence,
so to speak. Either within or through death (for death is but a slim barrier) the
"sisting" insists far from any sub-sistence or con-sistence. "Transcendence" now be
comes "immanence;' turned inside out like the finger of a glove.
I could say as much for what we call the "work of art:' How do we recognize such
a work? Only by the following: That faced with it, we do not stay faced, but we meet,
we strike, we are struck, we lose our envelope just as this thing, the work, loses its
own-its forms, its mannerisms [ manieres]. We develop within it as it does within
us. We enter and exit. We are always in this in-between [entre-deux] of it and us.
Rather quickly we understand there is about as much an "it" as there is an "us" (or
"me"). There is-There is only reality that neither immanates nor transcends: that's
the obstacle-the good-obstacle or the bad-obstacle, but the chock, the chocking
obstacle against what is neither within nor without, but an erected barrier: death,
birth, love, spoken word [parole] . There we strike, we are struck. We do not remain
in ourselves, we do not leave ourselves. Just in between: we get a bump, a bruise,
a blood clot. Being gets out of there swollen, tumescent, distended. Neither fluid
such as water immanent to water, nor leaping such as a dolphin transcending waves.
Rather dull, dingy and uncertain like a Medusa between two waters. Admittedly,
that Medusa terrifies the philosopher
.

Translated by Laura Balladur. The original French text is available on the Polygraph Web site at
http;llwww.duke.edulweblpolygraph.

Leaving Immanence: Art from Death


Arturo Leyte

When, in concluding his Critique ofPractical Reason and sum


ming up his vision of reality, Kant expresses admiration for
only two things-"the starry sky above me and the moral law
within me"l-surely he is drafting the final such conceptual
image in a terminal line of thought. Indeed, just a few years
later the image will come to define an exhausted territory to
which Kant will never return.2 Today we might recognize the
territory as that of "difference": the difference between, vari
ously, "nature" and "spirit"; "necessity" and "liberty"; "nature"
and "history" or, why not, the difference between the ancient
metaphysical binaries of being and thinking. But if this is the
case, Kant's elegant statement turns out to be at the same time
a requiem for difference. In fact, his philosophy overall may
be interpreted as the last concerted attempt to reconstruct a
constitutive difference within human reason, locating the le
gality of the physical uni,:,erse above this reason; moral legal
ity within it.
Yet if something like Kant's cumulative philosophy can be
understood in this endeavor, it is because in it Kant already
both perceives and attempts to avert a danger: philosophy's
transformation into "critique" coincides with this move. Cri
tique is then marshaled against totalizing reason precisely be
cause the former presumes an irreconcilable duality between
"practical reason" and "theoretical reason;' in turn further
divided into sensibility and understanding: that is, critique
presupposes that philosophy itself can be seen as the result
of a fundamental duality between the empirical and the tran
scendental, which is to say between the ontic and the onto
logical. Yet, crucially, a cominon territory is lacking for the
conjunction of these two: difference remains difference, and
no ancillary third sector is ceded space between the two. This
does not mean that there cannot be unity within the differ
ence marking, for example, practical and theoretical reason
or understanding and sensibility, but merely that this unity
Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

14

Leaving Immanence

cannot be known-cannot, indeed, be a subject for philosophy. As Kant writes


about the constitution of knowledge in the introduction to his first Critique, the
two branches-sensibility and understanding-have a "common root:' "unknown"
to us.3 This "unknown" character is owed not to human limitation, but is, rather, a
facet of the very constitution of reason as finite reason. The unity of reason remains
beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
This is not the place to rehearse how the idealist interpretation of Kant, against
himself, did away with difference as constitutive of critical philosophy. Suffice it to
say that from Idealism onward the field will be dominated by attempts to encounter
precisely the very unity so impossible for Kant-that between the starry sky (Na
ture) and moral law (Spirit). Indeed, such unity will come to define philosophy. The
idealism of Schelling and Hegel begins by calling this sought-after unity "the abso
lute:' rendering philosophy simply the research into the constitution and exhibition
of this absolute. Both theoretical and practical strategies are involved, to a certain
extent, in this pursuit, in very different ways: for underpinning the theoretical in
vestigation of the absolute will be the problem of its real apparition in the world,
such that the absolute, far from being merely an idea-as the term "Idealism" might
suggest -is in fact the problem of its own exhibition or realization, which in the last
instance is neither purely theoretical nor purely practical.
In or around 1800 (that is, just a few years after Kant had marveled at his starry
sky and moral law) a still young Schelling proposed an initial name for this much
debated and troubling territory where unity-where the absolute-was speculated
to reside. This name, which from the very beginning aspired to designate very real
grounds, was Art.4 If Descartes, at the dawn of modernity, found God to be the
only link between the res extensa (nature, the starry sky) and the res cogitans (law);
if, much earlier, the discipline uniting the physico-natural and the ethico-human
had been Logic, here, in a rupture of modern tradition, the role of God and Logic
was taken up, however provisionally, by Art. This was possible because the artwork
marries the unconscious activity of nature and the conscious activity of the spirit,
producing a unity that is the work itself. The artwork thus unites the two spheres
while retaining an independence from its constitutive parts, an independence that
is, moreover, objective-objective in the sense that it is physical, material, visible.
The work of art is thus not only the union of the natural and the spiritual, but also of
the material and the formal, the real and the ideal. In short, art becomes the absolute
under a different name, insofar as it unites the productivity of nature with the activ
ity of the spirit. Art is, then, production.
If all this is true from an Idealist standpoint, a single problem presents itself:
the absolute realized as art is at once very real and unknowable, for there can be no
concept of it. The absolute becomes the work of art and material synthesis of the
universal and the singular, and yet it cannot be known. The history of Idealism will
be the history of just this conquest of the absolute, beyond Kantian difference. This
conquest-or the path to the absolute, as Hegel will explicate it5-will itself also be
the absolute, the medium within which all possibilities are brought into play. And if
this absolute is identified with a unity located, at the turn of the nineteenth century,
in art, but also with a totality to be procured,6 it seems plausible to imagine that this

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conquest of the absolute-itself nothing other than conquest-might be realized by


politics as well as by art. Conquest of the absolute-which amounts to a demand
that the absolute be realized-is effected by permeating not just intermediary space
(the "between" bridging the starry sky and moral law), but all space, with a single
aim of assuring that the absolute prevail as that which it is, ab-solutum, detached
[des-ligado] from everything, devoid of relation with anything.
This occupation of space simultaneously constitutes the liquidation of difference:
the starry sky and the moral law are forced to fit within the same unity. The unity
is the horizontal line of time, where there is neither above (starry sky) nor below
(moral law within), but rather "history" moving from nature (itself the transit from
the inorganic to the organic) to spirit (transit from mythical forms of consciousness
to self-consciousness.) In other words: history or transit or unity coinciding with
what is; with being, never again to be understood as a substance pitted against a
thought. Substance and thought rather meet, however violently at times, in this line
or history outside of which nothing can be, nor can be produced. Substance and
thought, or ideas and things, come to be understood only as elements or materials,
at times discrete, at times indistinguishable from this absolute. This is the absolute
that may be termed "subject": that is, that which subtends, identified simultaneously
as unity (again, between starry sky and moral law, between nature and spirit) and as
totality (all the singular cases, all differences, are elements of the everything).
To propose a subject at the margins or indeed outside of this absolute (again,
subject) is, then, a deceptive move obfuscating the transformative possibilities at
tributed that subject. The difficult truth of the matter is that this "horizontal" ab
solute, which eliminated the "verticality" within which was still recognizable the
above of the sky and the below of the human, could be called history, even "human
history:' For in this axial switch, time has been reduced to the same infinite line of
history. Time here is the time of the line and of the conquest of this line, until even
this distinction becomes irrelevant. In this blurring oflines (indiferencia], and from
the moment any segment of the line is made equal to and interchangeable with
any other, even the very infinitude of the line may be suspended without altering a
thing. Any given segment can come to represent the everything, just as one thing
becomes absolutely interchangeable with another because it represents the value of
the totality. Thus the very notion of the "other" may dissipate; and without an other,
how is one to speak of the self [el uno?]
The singular, then, is to be only "one instance" of the absolute, such that the
singular can only continue representing and reiterating the absolute through the
construction of series, a serial reproduction that needs to take account of [de cuenta
de] this inexhaustible absolute. But the absolute turns out to be the result, not the
theme of such serial reproductions; better, the absolute is the serial reproduction of
instances. So what value can the singular have? What singular is contained in the
work of art? And what singular results from a political action? Can one, indeed,
speak of singularity?
If art and politics, via different paths and perspectives, come to instantiate the
absolute (even more so, perhaps, than contemporary science, which rather lives in
this immediate identification with reality), then the two must contain a tendency

16

Leaving Immanence

to instantiate the absolute such that all becomes art and politics: thus one witnesses
a simple urge to convert all artistic activity or political action into yet one more
move of transformation, as well as a more elemental conflation of art and politics as
soon as the territory of difference (the "between") is characterized by an inability to
distinguish between starry sky and moral law. Political acts, including military ac
tion and war in general, can consequently also be considered supreme works of art,
because both are realizations, performances.
If such equivocations were evident in the aftermath of so fearsome an event as
9/11, perhaps overlooked was the fact that the inability to differentiate testified to a
simultaneous indifferentiation between the real and the ideal, an indifferentiation
which Idealism held up, let us not forget, as the very realization of the absolute.
Hence the current difficulty in determining what constitutes a work of art, and, sim
ilarly, what constitutes a true political action or decision, with everything oflate be
come a potential art object or intervention or political gesture. The extension of the
legal into all aspects of life, including those most private, is only one confirmation
of the latter: surely for a long time now absolute seriality has meant that even sexual
relations between individuals have the potential to be juridically catalogued (hence,
adjudicated) or to be considered a work of art, however bad, and to be exploited as
such, albeit only as pornography. Indeed, it is not pornography's industrial, mercan
tile expansion within the (still?) private sphere, but rather its interiorization which
constitutes its triumph, a triumph that is nothing more than a signal, at times bright,
at other times dim, of the absolute: that is, of the subject, of that which is; that which
desires to impose itself objectively.
Given all this, should we be surprised by the multiplication and leveling of ar
tistic genres? Indeed, the ever-greater blurring of painting and photography or of
photography and architecture, as well as the almost total lack of distinction between
"things" (which can no longer be considered simply as real) and what constitutes le
gitimate materials for sculptures, in turn often realized as "performances" or instal
lations, is merely proof of this bleeding of everything into everything else. Proof too
of that ultimate confusion (read identification) between art and politics summed up
in the creation of a sculptural masterpiece from the wreckage of a downed airline (a
political act?) in which three hundred persons perished?
Besides, of course, the palpable good fortune of not having become the fiery
stuff of the event, the spectator's purchase on the crash consists only in televised im
ages and remains in a museum. But to what end such a piece? To reflect on terror?
Is not the very distinction terror/reflection already evidence of a fundamental error
in not comprehending that no thought remains outside terror's sphere-which is,
again, nothing but the line or absolute that recursively demands serial action, be it
as artistic production or political action? If, indeed, the only exception is owed to a
capricious kismet that selects some people to be spectators of art (e.g., the remains
of the crash) and others, victims (whose photographic remains alone are salvage
able), perhaps the logical conclusion is already anticipated in the act (artistic or
political?) of making the body and its transformations the supreme work of art.
So, anyway, seems to be the case of the work of Italian -Yugoslavian performance
artist Marina Abromovic, who proclaims her own body to be the best and only

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available material.s In this perhaps scandalous, perhaps honest attempt to link the
materials of art with the body of the artist, and the observer of the artwork with the
work itself, is revealed a recognition of inescapable destiny, as well as the intuition,
perhaps, that the final move remains the definitive assimilation of the death-event
as material for art (as it already may be for spectacle) and, to be sure, for politics.
This does not mean that photographic or material memento mari, like those from
the Lockerbie crash, would in some quasi-archaic sense exemplify art's ultimate ex
pression, but rather that in death itself resides this artistic reality, whenever death,
both actually transpired or recounted, ceases to be something private and becomes
a political, or at least a statistical, phenomenon (as if there were a difference).
Earlier, the reality of death had perhaps defined the "between" of the Kantian
starry sky and moral law, for this differentiation was nothing more than the expres
sion of finitude, comprehended through death. Yet it is also the case that at the
core of the Kantian project stirred a longing to reproduce nature's infinitude and
regularity in the specter of "the moral law in me:' particularly as these qualities were
brought into relief against the perceived fragility and vulnerability of human action.
And it is Idealism, as we have seen, that will claim to construct that human infini
tude which we now identify with repetitive artistic activity and infinitely repeated
political actions that may well be, on the whole, little more than mere administra
tion.
The fact that Idealism finds in art, albeit via contorted paths, a synthesis of the
absolute and a substitute for logic9 should not imply a consequent demonization
of art. The question merely arises of how it happened that art came to play such a
role. A quick answer is that art was at least partially so enabled because it assumed
responsibility for the recuperation of that enormous "empirical reign" to which
Hegel alludedlO in 1801; because it was able to conquer and elevate to the status of
pure thing an empirical reality that had previously appeared only as the shadow of
the concept. Yet this absolute elevation would paradoxically end up liquidating the
thing, now become "merely" a work of art-that is to say, merely a copy, pace Plato's
hoary legacy. That copies would come to so constitute reality as to appear to be its
true elements is an outcome of the same process by which every thing, its use value
irrelevant when not reviled, has become the stuff of exchange.
Still, it was not possible to banish fully from the core of artistic or political activ
ity a revolutionary element aspiring to transform reality, without the simultaneous
recognition that such a transformation was already at work outside of all conscious
action. Once the line is recognized as the subject (i.e., the absolute), the details of
who it is that possesses knowledge [canace1, who decides or who creates becomes
derivative, turning the revolutionary element emanating from art or politics into
the most active operator of the absolute, structured by its destiny: an immanent,
unlimited time that excludes nothing. Could not one well understand the revolu
tionary transformation at work in late nineteenth century painting, particularly that
produced by Cezanne and the Impressionists onward (inheritors of a Romantic and
post-Romantic tradition dating to the work of Gericault), from this fatal perspec
tive?" How indeed should these artists be understood, if not through Monet's obses
sive series in which he reproduced, for example, the Cathedral at Rauen or Waterlil-

18

Arturo Leyte

Leaving Immanence

ies? What impossibility is concealed in the refusal to paint "in one fell swoop;' as it

were, the reality hidden in the cathedral or in the aquatic plants?


If Velazquez or Rembrandt had chosen such themes, they would have somehow
superimposed upon the reality of multiple perspectives a single, perhaps absolutely
synthetic one.l2 But the Impressionists were without a single subject for painting,
because in the intervening time all had become potential matter for art, which is to
say there were no more "exemplary" themes. A pastoral scene, a cathedral, a dance,
a street, any figure (card player, florist, bourgeois, prostitute, invalid) was equal fod
der for art, because any thing now arose from and returned to the same immanent
reality, which we might name, however grandiloquently, "time:'
What the Impressionists painted was thus no longer a single thing, but an im
age produced "in" time, impossible to reproduce without reproducing all its mo
ments. Hidden in the grandiose transformation presumed by such painting was also
a profound slavishness to the temporal reality the painting attempted to reproduce,
as if to escape from such temporality were metaphysically impossible. And, to a
certain extent, it was: because "metaphysically;' that is, beyond the reality presented
us, is nothing. Everything remains on this side of a division for which "this side" no
longer signifies one among many, but rather the "everything" Hegel identified with
truth.'3
Did such painting actually constitute a triumph over classical art? If so, did the
triumph consist in anything beyond responding to a new era? Of course, if it was
a triumph, it was one indebted to an idealist philosophy, paradoxically buried, os
tensibly "overcome" in the inversion of metaphysics undertaken by such apparently
diverse figures as Compte and Marx, but whose result-the concept of absolute
time-constitutes the original horizon from which emerges all political action and
creative acts. Indeed, it is the burying of the difference between starry sky and moral
law that yields the new time, now "absolutely" human; now, we might say, "imma
nently" human, with respect to which one can and indeed must situate (a situating
which in this context signifies production) "everything:' But this everything has,
in turn, to be reduced from multiplicity and dispersion to the unity of immanence
through the recognition of a common nature of all things, comprising: their com
mon dependence on infinite time; their character as single moments within con
tinual succession; their constitution as mere images fixed fleetingly amidst perma
nent flux; and, finally, a recognition that every thing is produced only as part of an
immanent ex/change of being( s) [cambio immanente del ser].'4 In short, something
very similar to Marx's crucial observation in Capital that the true nature of things is
not properly being but exchange value.
In any case, the debate rages on within the arts, mainly because art aspires to
encounter singularity and not merely interchangeable moments, or better, because
art aspires to encounter "the moment:' Hidden in the obsessive creativity of Monet's
repeated painting of the cathedral at Rouen and his reduction of the thing to dis
crete moments throughout the day (morning, noon, evening) lies the danger of the
simultaneous dissolution of singularity. Why, for example, choose only those par
ticular moments (morning, noon and evening are, in the end, merely extra-tempo
ral categories for fixing time) and not all the omitted moments between morning

19

and noon, and noon and evening? Hence the paradox that, if taken to its logical
extreme, the Impressionist project (as illustrated to a certain extent in the Waterlil
ies) produces the dissolution/multiplication via absolute fragmentation of the same
reality the Impressionists intended to reproduce. Masked behind the obsession to
paint reality, then, lies the obsession to reproduce the infinite capacity of the gaze
that observes this reality; lies, indeed, the obsession to realize [darse cuenta de] ab
solutely a regarding consciousness, unaware that in so doing consciousness itself, far
from being grasped, succumbs to never-ending flux.
Does art then truly rescue singularity? Or does it not rather confirm that the
singular is merely an intranscendental moment, an excuse to reproduce the only
reality that is, an infinite one that immanently reproduces itself without asking
permission of anyone? Such questions hold within them art's liberatory potential,
but also its potential enslavement to a reality no longer in possession of either a
"beyond" or even of a characteristic theme to which to appeal for justification and
legitimacy. Onto this uncertain terrain, unclear of whether reality can be known
or transformed, or whether instead one simply reproduces a path towards a bad
infinity within which singularity disappears, opens the twentieth century, whose
true inauguration is difficult to date. In any case, the battles of the nascent twen
tieth century derive from the Idealist project to realize the absolute; to achieve the
indifferentiation between starry sky and moral law, between the natural and the
human. Thus the century may have begun with the Impressionist endeavor, which,
in struggling for a definitive singular image, finishes by unwittingly consuming the
temporal absolute. Alternatively, one might pinpoint the century's beginnings in the
exhaustive and anonymous labor of a Van Gogh who between 1888 and 1889 obses
sively painted more than one hundred and fifty paintings, one of which in particular
has been singled out.
II

When, in 1899, Vincent Van Gogh painted his Starry Night,'5 surely he did not know
how far he was from the aged Kant who had calmly marveled at his own "starry
night" a hundred years before. But anyone who glimpses the painting today at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York-that same city in which, for a few moments
in 2001, history, politics, and art came together in a flash of violence and terror
may perceive that Van Gogh's sky, rather than representing some Kantian Above,
through a strange effect almost constitutes the foreground of the painting, making
it difficult to distinguish an above and a below. The "below" in the painting indeed
almost serves as an excuse to point out that the sky is not located above but rather
to the fore, occupying our field of vision. No longer a celestial firmament, the sky is
merely a figure differentiated from the earth by palette, not perspective, a distinc
tion aimed to expose all difference as earthly.
Starry Night does not return us to the serene, distant, Kantian sky, much less to
ancient representations of a divine firmament. With its horizontal representation of
sky and earth it seems rather to remind us that we are always already within the line
of time. But the intense, concentrated, even optimistic rendering of sky and earth
demarcates a decisive difference between the two spheres that also seems intended

20

Leaving Immanence

to remind us that not everything is the same. Indeed, even the painting's impossible
sky, next to a more conventional rendering of land, suggests that "sky;' albeit no
longer the Kantian one, warrants distinction, even if everything now remains very
much of this earth. It is not a suprasensible but a sensible sky, a sign that even in the
sole world remaining to us, difference does exist and all is not absolute. Van Gogh's
painting may perhaps also be interpreted as an unintentional invitation to exit the
absolute, to leave the "being inside" that immanence signifies. It could, then, be a
coming outside [un salir de dentro), not to go on to some "other" place, which in
any case does not exist, but rather as a path of permanent leavetaking. In this sense,
Starry Night may define a resistance. But of what does this resistance consist?
In the same year that Van Gogh painted his Starry Night in Provence, a philoso
pher was born in Germany who was to borrow from Van Gogh's ''A Pair of Boots"
in an attempt to rescue a singular event "outside of" and "beyond" the absolute flux
to which, nonetheless, Van Gogh himself was often attentive-namely, Martin Hei
degger.'6 Heidegger's work, inflected by Van Gogh's, ever remains an articulation of
a resistance that permits one to see things in another light. We should recognize this
"other light;' in the face of the dark shadow of immanent absolute time, as the light
of the starry night, and, therefore, as the light of death.
If, from the perspective of the infinite, death can only be considered as a spuri
ous moment or element, non-transcendental, accidental and disposable; if, from
such a perspective, death is merely a defect that contradicts the light and transpar
ency of the absolute, insistently demanding that everything appear, then Van Gogh's
painting may also come, via different means, to recall this light of death, announc
ing that life and death and all is at stake at least in a small difference in color: that if
there is something singular, it will not be individual substance, but rather a lattice of
sky and earth, and of artist (doubling as the figure of man more generally) and the
gods who have disappeared.'7 The singularity of the painting eliminates any meta
physical beyond because it parades this metaphysics before it, so that one may also
see that there is nothing more and that, if a God is to be conjured at all, it will be
through the struggle between the light of the sky and the darkness of the earth, so
doing away with the tyrannical insistence underpinning science and industry that
every thing appear.
Only thus can art continue being art, distant from this insistent demand for ap
pearance, for art as a reducible thing; singularity in service of the universal. But is
the vague notion of some kind of singular outside of the universal indeed possible?
That is, is any "singular" possible outside of the relationship singular-universal, if
the universal itself can only be identified with the immanent absolute? If it is, such
a singularity would have to have another name and above all another character. Yet
again the same problem surfaces: if we are in the absolute-of which our partial,
immediate and localized gaze is proof, we ourselves representing mere "instances"
of this totality-how is it even possible to pose the question of an "other" that would
not be at once another instance of the absolute? For to formulate, project or rec
ognize an other, whether as an artwork or as a political act, might not be anything
more than an inadvertent confirmation of the power of the absolute.
It is quite possible that in a work of art like Starry Night a battle is being played

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21

out over whether such resistance can be successfully engaged or whether, on the
contrary, the artwork merely indexes one more "instance" of the totality; whether
through art the gaze may again recognize a thing in the wake of its reduction to a
mere instance of the absolute, or whether this is no longer possible. But how, exactly,
might a given artwork (painting, sculpture or architecture) better reveal a thing's
own finitude? Only through an ability to reveal its "nothingness" [su nada): not
"emptiness;' but what was described above as "the light of death;' or what might also
now be termed "the time of death;' as opposed to that of the absolute.
When Hegel declared the future (and so, in a way, the death) of art in his 182829 University of Berlin Lectures on Aesthetics, in which he deemed art to be "past;',8
he must have been aware of the advent of the reign of the absolute, within which the
artwork would no longer appear as the sole, singular representation of the real. In
other words, Hegel was conscious of the end of a metaphysics that had differentiated
the sensible and the empirical portions of a concept (recall the still metaphysical
Kantian separation of nature's sky and human law), for in the new metaphysical
absolute the sensible is only a momentary expression [un momento) of this concept
and has, therefore, only a subaltern and derivative characteristic. The death of art,
it follows, is but one more example of the death of metaphysics, here understood as
the disappearance of difference. But this means that if art hopes to mobilize itself
against this disappearance of singularity, it has to produce a requisition for differ
ence within itself. Yet this difference can no longer be the classical one of metaphys
ics (namely, the difference between the sensible and the intelligible, between the
thing and the idea), for in the wake of Idealism idea and thing have been melded
into a new figure, containing both empirical and conceptual elements and bound up
with the notion of infinite time. Indeed, in immanence, such shopworn metaphysi
cal differences disappear.
But what would a demand for difference look like when we are already within
the time of the absolute? Hegel himself offers a clue, for even as he proclaimed art's
eclipse he amended the meaning and reach of his judgment: faced with the death of
art, he proposed death for art [la muerte para el arte) , or death in support of art [en
favor del arte) , rephrased in the article's title as "art from death:' Hegel's amended
formulation takes death to be a necessary condition of the very emergence of the
singular "other" that, in turn, the artwork might reveal. This does not mean that
death constitutes a theme within the artwork; rather, the formulation grants death
which is not a concept, but not even really a fact or an act-its constitutive role in
the emergence and consummation of the work of art itself. The mortal attributes of
the artwork in the face of its immortalizing reduction to museum material would be
only a weak expression, only one further consequence, of this principle.
All this means that while it is not necessary that death appear in any one of its
multiple representations in order to play so constitutive a role, it does define the
status of the work, in the same way that death, for Hegel, truly defines the state of
being. Still very far from his 1828 proclamation, yet the Hegel of the 1807 Phenom
enology of Spirit seems, oddly, to lurk distantly behind the sense of death alluded
to here: already in the Phenomenology he insists on the rupture and "unreality" of
death ("the most dreadful")'9 as constitutive of the life of the spirit in the face of the

22

Leaving Immanence

apparently absolute power of knowledge. Certainly not in the traditionally Idealist


sense in which a figure must die in order for a self-opaque, in-itself absolute to be
consumed; nor in the sense of some kind of permanent dialectical death that would
function as a mechanism of reality. But Hegel did seem to endorse the notion of a
decisive [de-cide} state of death, which is to say a "finite" state.
We might understand this idea as the idea that death's revelation in a work of
art demonstrates this negative, unreal component by exposing the work's intrinsic
finitude more than any immanent process through which it might be supposed that
death "must appear"-for if death must appear, than it is no longer death. The ac
cession of an infinite time has, in deeming death a kind of necessary defect, made
it into a statistically predictable obligation, simultaneously eroding its character as
something constitutive. Yet a recognition of finitude will have necessarily to reckon
with the insistence on death, which, in Hegelian terms, is decisive for the constitu
tion of spirit.
We do not have to agree fully with Hegel's understanding of spirit to make use of
his characterization of death in articulating a philosophy and art based on a search
for finitude beyond the dialectical relation finite-infinite (knowing full well we can
not get outside the infinite horizon in which we always already find ourselves.) A
philosophy of finitude must by definition contest the infinity of the vulgar notion of
time as an uninterrupted continuum in which all occurs; yet this contestation must
also be aware that neither art nor philosophy, however much they may wish to, can
escape it. Finitude should, then, be understood provisionally as "interruption" -in
terruption of the immanent process. But if by the interruption of immanence
which itself constitutes a totality by permanently aspiring to the definitive union of
all singular instances, to the universal happening of all elements-is understood the
appearance of "transcendence;' transcendence must mean something very different
than merely the opposite of immanence.
Again we find ourselves moving between tyrannical opposites (finite/infinite,
transcendence-immanence/singular-universal) that impede, if not make impos
sible, our vision of a finitude, transcendence and singularity "outside of" or "on the
margin of" that line in which infinity, immanence and the universal prevail. Tran
scendence here does not then mean a "step towards the transcendent;' but rather
"finitude" and "difference:' This finitude cannot but be that indicated by death, a fin
itude that hurls us outward (including outside of the absolute). Because one cannot
exit immanence ("indwelling, inherent; abiding in"), the all that is. One cannot exit
through the door of death-which comes to mean, indeed, that there is no death,
but only disappearance or redistribution. So death conceived in transcendence has
to be a "definitive" death and not simply a reorganization of a positivity. It has to be,
that is, unreality, negativity and fissure in the Hegelian sense, yet no longer in the
service of an immanent totality. If one indeed may even speak of an "all;'20 it is in the
sense in which death defines all existence, conferring upon it a unity: there is noth
ing more total than the totality realized when death occurs, an occurrence which is
the definitive sign that there is existence, and not merely a succession of moments.
From these conclusions follows a familiar series of connections between the re
ality of existence and of death, as if the two were inseparable. While we are accus-

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23

tomed by metaphysics to gather from the idea of "an infinite being" [un ser infinito}
that something survives us beyond death, in fact, when being [el ser} remains linked
to existence, such survival ceases to have meaning: not because in some trivial sense
we cannot imagine that time continues incessantly, but because such an image
proves nothing-or perhaps better, it shows up nothingness to be emptiness. Rather
than engage this way of conceiving nothingness (as emptiness), an alternative ap
proach would put the "work" back into work of art instead of considering it one
more instantiation of infinite time. What would such an approach consist of? Might
Van Gogh tell us?
In Starry Night only the opposition between the paradoxically illuminated night
skies and a darkened earth appears. Nothingness is neither the one nor the other,
but rather the struggle between the two, a struggle which precisely does not appear,
just as the affirmation of existence is sustained by a permanent tendency-or pos
sibility-to desist. This possibility, for the Heidegger who observed the paintings of
Van Gogh, is nothingness [Ia nada}. Nothingness, but not emptiness, which is the
name the infinite reserves for declaring that outside of it effectively remains noth
ing. Here then, in the phenomenological conception of existence, finitude means
"transcendence": not searching for a "transcendent" beyond that would save us from
finitude by the grace of the infinite, but rather transcendence as that movement
which traverses, and thus unites, an origin and an end, a "from" whence a thing
moves "towards" its arrival point. It describes the union of an origin and a desti
nation, or perhaps it describes the "all"-an all of existence, which can only come
delimited by death. Death is this nothingness that forever accompanies the "all" of
existence and which is opposed to what it is not: infinite totality. So we are speaking
here of two senses of totality: the "all" which delimits death, and the totality of being
that, in modernity, appears as a succession of all figures, all referring to the same
thing, among which are included consciousness, modes of production or states of
nature.
It should also be clear that only out of the first kind of totality could emerge an
event able to resist immediate incorporation into the absolute. In truth, this event is
existence, but what resistance can it put up when to exist has come to mean merely
to transpire in time? Perhaps the artwork-and more concretely, Starry Night-re
veals that we can understand "time" as something different than uninterrupted oc
currence, but not as that moment "captured" in any painting either. We can instead
realize that the moment contains within it the battle of time: time as battle [com
bate.}
Starry Night may convey the finitude of time, or time as event as opposed to time

as the mere succession of moments. Unlike others from the period, the painting
does not depend on another version of itself representing the same reality minutes,
hours or days later. Likely this is because the painting assumes that "reality itself" is
a false metaphysical category even the most meticulous reproduction of series could
not salvage. So representation is not necessary for finitude and the death inherent to
it, just as time does not need representation. There is "death" precisely because there
is no continuity, real or artistic, in that the painting reflects the struggle between
day and night (and so represents a "moulting;' a change, but not serialization) and

24

Leaving Immanence

Arturo Leyte

between light, protagonist of the sky, and shadow, here the property of the earth.
In the painting, as in Heidegger's phenomenology, death is not to be under
stood as an event that will come and that can be registered. Similarly, time cannot
be represented or conceptualized, for neither is it a fact or an action [un hecho] .
Therefore any concept of being or time that concerns immanence remains absolutely
suspended between parentheses. So too must be any utopic definition of the future
(of the human project), realizable or not. If utopia is represented as a more or less
happy destination or end, it is because an uninterrupted line has been assumed in
which "it" (utopia, happiness, the supreme) can, or must, occur. But in that case a
content has already been given to possibility, and time has, as it were, been forced
to accommodate this possibility: the future has been forced. In such a scenario time
ceases to be itself and becomes whatever the subject wants and decides must occur
(although even this subject is more like a phantasm of a subject: he who wants to
locate inside himself the process of what is; unlimited continuity.) Occurrence then
ceases to be "being:' becoming instead an effect of whoever decides.
If one takes this "he" to be the subject, necessarily invested with content, it be
comes clear that utopia depends essentially upon "him:' perhaps because by subject
we continue to understand a kind of consciousness (a mixture of thought and will)
that reproduces the image of a Christian creator God whose understanding encom
passes the course of the world. Such utopic thought does not shed, then, its divine
nature, however human the utopia itself may be, in the same way that the reality
of immanence remains an inferior (earthly, sensual, secularized) version of divin
ity-only now it is not the suprasensible but the sensible pole of metaphysics that
governs and directs. Indeed, to complicate things further, the metaphysical division
between sensible and suprasensible is redoubled: if things, effects, finished products
are primary, the suprasensible-metaphysical is the principle of productivity situated
behind it all, the immanence according to which all occurs. At issue is the old Spi
nozan distinction between a productivity (natura naturens) and a product (natura
naturata), but elevated to a general understanding of totality, a totality outside of
which nothing fits because outside of which is nothing-not even death, which ac
cordingly turns out to be only the transformation of one product (e.g., the human
being) into another (e.g., a corpse.)
This transformation has nothing to do with the alternations of night and day
or death and life. In the end, behind these changes lies no organizing metaphysical
principle such as immanence, for there is no organizing principle beyond infinitude,
itself not a principle but the sphere of difference: the difference between that which
appears and that which underlies appearance. Heidegger variously names this sub
tending something sense, temporality, and nothingness, names that refer to truth,
understood as the struggle between the darkness of earth and the lightness of the
sky. Yet these names-sense, temporality, and nothingness-are not principles in an
organizing metaphysics or of a supreme cause; nor, indeed, are they principles at all,
but merely names for finitude and its nature. For temporality signifies "ex-stasis:'
that is, a permanent "being outside" (outside of immanence; dwelling outside the
uninterrupted line of time, for example); time is not a process or substance within
which things occur. Yet it is also a permanent sign that one cannot be in the present,
21

25

for the same reason that one cannot be in the future or in the past, because funda
mentally "to be in" [estar en],22 with respect to time, is an impossible operation (just
as, to be sure, it is impossible to "be in" the unconscious or "in" consciousness, no
matter how much consciousness may seem an irreproachable, Cartesian given.)
On the contrary, one must precisely understand another mode of being [estar]
that is perhaps Being [ser] : namely, being as not-being, or ex-stasis, because only in
this way can one attend to an original nature of time, that same nature that has re
mained underlying and occluded in the vulgar conception of infinite time, at whose
end we are to find an earthly paradise, be it divine or human. As its constitution is
temporal, "finitude" means being outside this continual present, instead allowing in
the movement from future to past the emergence of a present that consists of reiter
ated not -being. One might point out paradoxically that if the most potent versions
of utopias retain an element of the unrealizable (or at best of the not yet realized),
they are no different than finitude, which constantly escapes us. Because finitude,
perhaps, as that which is most foreign to immanence, turns out to be the unattain
able itself.
It is so in various ways: to begin with, finitude is conceived from an understanding
of immanent time, a time only God (or the utopic human paradise in its political
or aesthetic form) can interrupt. But finitude is above all unattainable because of its
very constitution-because it is not a something, but rather a permanent not-be
ing-anything, a permanent being-outside-of, indeed, it is unreality, negativity, dif
ference. Not the difference among a multiplicity of things, but rather the difference
between the insistence that things appear and prevail, and the temporal constitu
tion of these things, which is this nothingness, this permanent desistance which ac
companies even the most splendid moment of an objective thing. The nothingness
negates any notion of objectivity, but by the same operation has already decentered
any subjectivity in advance.
Objectivity and subjectivity would in this way come to be only figures and
products of immanence itself, products that could even achieve totality-but only
because they no longer retain any relation with finitude, or because they run up
against this other sense, delimited by death, 'of an "all" that does not aspire to totality
but is found in the constant struggle against it. The triumph-if we wish to use such
terminology-of this totality of being would constitute, paradoxically, the triumph
of metaphysics, particularly according to that version which pits an infinite princi
pal (immanence) against its ultimate products.
So if "utopia" means anything, it must be a "privileged" finite product; a "state"
as it were (a period or segment of the absolute) that through its own apotheosis
would also come to coincide with that which formed it: that is, with the principle of
immanence. Thus would be attained a supreme state, or the supreme triumph of a
political figure, or even the apotheosis of multiplicity, in its multiple and multiplied
truth, outside any kind of unity. But all this would continue to be a multiplicity of
all moments: infinite presentation, or its equivalent in metaphysical terms, complete
coincidence of multiplicity and unity. For when total multiplicity is conquered, a
however-superfluous unity appears, accompanied by absolutely achieved reconcili
ation-albeit a reconciliation that produces permanent fissures, wounds and cru-

26

Leaving Immanence

elty, which could well be taken as simple derangements necessary for the greater
alignment.
III

Two senses of the "all" may be gleaned from the argument thus forth: one in which
"all" is understood to be the absolute totality of time, tied to an immanence borne
of the liquidation of Kantian metaphysical difference, and another in which "all" is
bound up with an insistence on death as the "all" of existence, eventually legible as
constitutive of the artwork. The latter holds only so long as art continues to posit an
arena in which finitude's possibility is entertained, and so long as it does not give
itself over to the reproduction of the infinite. This will not be easy, since every pos
sibility, including that of a call for finitude, emerges from the limitless continuum,
from the all-one or the absolute.
Behind any of these alternatives lies a different sense of truth that may or may
not be disclosed in art; to find out to what degree it is one might turn to the con
temporary art world and ask whether the reproduction of all possible moments and
perspectives of a thing presents its truth any more adequately than does an exclusive
and finite representation of the same. A finite representation, in its refusal to make
"all" appear and in its recognition of the inability to represent the very nothingness
that makes possible the artwork's emergence, permits something incomparable and
irreducible to occur. Certain modern art experienced this contradiction in extreme
forms: it is possible, for instance, that the Cubist attempt to represent reality masked
a yearning for finitude that would come, nevertheless, to fatally reiterate infinity.
That is, although the attempt to disarticulate figure in order to present all its per
spectives within a single glance might appear a finite (non-serialized) rendering,
one also detects a "Cubist" suspension of time in this move; an attempt to dominate
time. But can, then, this suspension be interpreted as finitude?
Picasso himself, having achieved a certain totality of discrete yet connected fig
ures in Guernica, recognized that his series of Meninas was the only possible re
sponse to Velasquez's painting of the same name, which had managed to convey in
a single image the complex, conclusive demarcation of finitude. It would be precipi
tous ' however, to suggest that Velasquez, in distinction from Picasso, was a painter
of finitude. The matter is more complicated, because Velasquez, like the great classi
cal artists, surely only hoped to represent in a finite way . . . infinitude, whose repre
sentation might be called "beauty:' Today, when the only infinitude worth examin
ing is that of an infinite time (and not of an imagined or created exterior reality),
beauty-assuming that the term still has any meaning-signifies something un
known. Irritation at this unknown provokes an attempt to master it. How? Perhaps
by ensuring that "all"-all things, including the ugly-be beautiful.
If the field of "design" -less internationalist than totalizing in its spread-was
the first to strive for this ugly-duckling conversion by recuperating objects from
daily life to expose them in their perfect cleanliness, if not beauty (witness the use
of steel and polished materials), what has succeeded it may well be an attempt to
make all (every thing; everything) into image. Image consequently predominates
over things, in accordance with an immanence interested more in the images of

Arturo Leyte

27

substances than in the protean substances themselves, which for their part have lost
any inherent resistance to such a transformation.
Surely the reduction of reality to film is the great interiorized image of one sense
of Being in which the director ought to figure as the supreme god. But since in the
meantime God has died, the true director becomes, instead, the camera (industry),
in whose service, to be sure, one finds screenwriters, technicians and actors. Given
these parameters, the disappearance of the great cinema of auteurs, already a relic
of the old twentieth century,23 comes as no surprise. Nor is it enough to say that
cinema today is merely industry and business, because this very affirmation oc
cludes the meaning of "industry" itself, whose best approximation can be found in
the German concept of Ge-stell,24 serving in the cinematographic example to point
precisely towards the camera (ultimately, a machine), which can virtually film ev
erything without discrimination. The example rehearses the old metaphysics within
which the all-seeing human eye is blind to itself; if one understands, moreover, that
this eye was at one point the ego cogito, at another point the ego vola, and at still
another the very machinery of scientific, political or artistic transformation, one
may also understand that infinite time is precisely that which produced a certain
metaphysics based on the liquidation of irreducible difference.
The new metaphysics, which is the seamless combination of a camera that never
ceases to register reality and a reality that can only be registered as image, is purely
positive and recognizes "nothing" [no reconoce 'nada'] outside it. Even art exists
within this conceptual horizon, although perhaps if finitude (no longer identifiable
as the mere realization of a given image) were recognized, and succeeded in banish
ing the very image of the work, art might eventually return something of the thing
beyond its mere image. This is not a call to squeeze one's eyes shut against image,
but to see in a way dislodged by the infinite (and mimetically divine) eye that ac
companied a metaphysical (even when allegedly post-metaphysical) way of seeing.
But can one so easily eliminate infinite time? Like it or not, it is the dominant hori
zon, and finitude may only consist in recognizing as much.25 At the risk of seeming
melodramatic, one might say, as Sartre did about freedom, that we are sentenced not
so much to death as to an infinity that does not let us to die, and which constitutes
the horizon and point of departure even for finitude.
This infinitude may be manifested variously, to be sure; we have here considered
two instances: the political infinitude of the market (everything, to be a thing, must
traverse it) and art's infinitude (everything, to be acknowledged, must lay claim to
a rendered, designed [diseiiado] figure.) Of course, the two perspectives do not co
incide precisely: the market enjoys a success that art (as design) cannot match. But
this does not mean that art ceases harboring such aspirations, designing the ugly
and horrifying, not to say bad, in an attendant reclaiming of ugliness. The ugly can
rival the beautiful only by insisting on its presentation and reproduction in an ac
ceptable form. Quickly the two poles become homologous and, finally, interchange
able: the beautiful and the ugly are forced to coexist because in the end there is
no difference [no hay diferencias.] The banalization of the bad, representations of
disfiguration and repetitious scenes of death and pain (mainly sickness and physical
or psychological torture) are not in fact the products of an attempt to make negativ-

28

Leaving Immanence

ity appear, but products of a definitive attempt to conjure the absolute, the infinite.
This demand for the infinite, which depends on an egalitarian acknowledgement of
difference-an acknowledgement that validity resides in multiplicity (which does
not imply unity, except in the way that this unity is the pure affirmation of multiplic
ity)-is obliged to elude or even to liquidate the possibility of death (death is always
"possibility").
Certain contemporary art has, ironically, served as some of the best means by
which to carry out such a project. When even Cubism is too metaphysical, given
that it never stopped seeking essences (the geometrical figure that would expose the
"thing itself" beyond its appearances), the solution must come from infinitely multi
plying these appearances to the point ofleaving the spectator/observer/subject sus
pended and annulled in the same reiteration of appearances (surfaces). The ultimate
goal of advertising then may lie not so much in the spectator's persuasion by image
as in the mutual confusion of spectator and image [se identifiquen J , achieved either
by a spilling outwards of consciousness or a flooding of the interior with images. In
both cases an interior/exterior duality is posited that manages to survive precisely
with the goal of being overcome. The image ends up constituting the definitive and
undifferentiated zone of encounter between he who sees and that which is seen,
such that it does not make sense to speak of this "between:' In a period in which
the great modern oppositions are dissolved (truth/falsity in scientific paradigms,
good/bad within moral paradigms, and beauty/ugliness in the arts) at least one sec
tor of art has comes to coincide with advertising, confirming this tendency towards
the definitive liquidation of the paradigm interior/exterior and its replacement by
the demand that all be exterior.
But even this idea of exteriorization, allegedly manifested in transparent democ
racy as against the prior opacity of the mandarin's or aristocrat's chambers, masks
its danger: that everything be exteriorized may also imply that all comes under con
trol and surveillance, eliminating the possibility of even thinking subversion [de
la subversion pensadaJ . Because "to think" is still, today, an interior activity. The
demand for exteriority occurs then via a liquidation of thought (here by "thought"
I understand the possibility of an "other" project alternative to the constitutive and
established order) and, once more, of death, which is neither interior or exterior, but
rather a limit. It is, in effect, a demand that death also appear objectually in order
that it be subjected to control. So it is not surprising that those who govern prefer to
pit terrorism against thought, for terrorism always ends up reducing everything to
objects, often to remains (corpses or wreckage)-in any case to observable, evalu
able things. And if something can be evaluated it is more easily controlled. Terror
ism, in this sense, is not at all revolutionary; instead it confirms the very immanence
of the system. And for this reason will surely not be eradicated.
It is no coincidence that political terror surfaces during roughly the same period
in which philosophy insists on the absolute. Actually existing politics naturally must
address this terror, and they do so by multiplying it as an artistic, even attractive,
image. Much has been written about the fascination that terrifying images incite, yet
it is worth pointing out that our morbid curiosity is borne not from an acceptance
of death but because only through familiarity with death can we excuse ourselves

Arturo Leyte

29

from its reality. Can Warhol's series on the electric chair be understood in any other
way? Or his series on traffic accidents?26 Do not, perhaps, the two series constitute a
preemptive act of sympathetic magic, reminiscent of the ritual sacrifices of ancient
religions staged to convince that death is but a transitory stage? And in the end, are
the two series indeed much different than those Warhol did of Campbell soup cans,
Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, or Mao Tse Tung? Do not all respond to the
same principle: namely, that everything appear in a multiplied form so as to exhaust
its existence?
Warhol's undertaking is the inverse of Picasso's Cubist rifling amongst the en
trails of image. The empty geometric structures of the Cubist figure are rendered in
repeated surfaces, as if such iteration announced that that is all that is, that there
is no internal structure. Picasso may have more or less consciously continued to
search for a truth, while Warhol knew that no such truth was possible, or was only
possible as the infinite or serialized reiteration of the same thing, since finally there
is no such thing. If there is a thanatic impulse in Warhol's series of electric chairs it
is no less present in the series of Campbell soup cans.27 But is it really a thanatic im
pulse, or is it better an attempt to disarm death by inviting it to the party? The series
of traffic accidents and electric chairs register death's inert but objectual appearance:
death turned into a packaged object; turned into image. An image of this nature
finds itself in the service of the absolute (and of tranquility), but not of finitude: it
reveals nothing final, it reveals not nothingness but rather an event not at all out
of the ordinary, just as a sexual act or a dose of heroin need not be extraordinary,
but merely repetitious, so deactivating any intrinsic nothingness, power and echo
of death. Warhol, unlike Monet, did not have to time his work to capture the light
at different hours of the day, since in the intervening seventy-five years all the day's
hours had been equalized, just as the difference between life (Campbell's Soup) and
death (Electric Chair) had come to be the same, equal; in any case, equally useless.
Death disappears when it is reduced to an electric chair or even to a corpse, and an
object instituted in its place.
But death, Heidegger tells us, is not a thing, not even a thing to be discovered in
the end. On the contrary, its reality as existential and not substantial accompanies
finite life like nothingness or temporlity, defining it. The idea that death is not a
thing to be measured by statistics but a finitude, as defined by Heidegger, can be
come a sign of revolutionary possibility. But is death possible? And, consequently,
is politics possible? Politics is fundamentally only possible within a horizon of fini
tude. Beyond this there is merely administration, with which the political has often
been confused: if the concentration (extermination) camp was possible, it was so
because already politics had been confused with Administration. And Administra
tion, when realized, means the administration of death as much as of any other
function. Behind it resides the conviction that there is to be a final, inert reconcili
ation that has overcome all negativity whatsoever. If death constitutes the supreme
expression of this negativity, the reduction of death enables the goal of a full ad
ministrative coincidence of all possibilities: the reign of an affirmative multiplicity
which hides nothing, and in which all has been exposed, all has been (or is hoped
to be) rendered transparent.

30

Arturo Leyte

Leaving Immanence

Yet pain, opaque, always remains at the end of the day, in the solitude of one's
room, at least for those who have not tried to overcome it through a visit to the doc
tor or analyst. Pain has been swept under the rug of remedy, and hidden by attempts
to do away with mourning. But the abandoned starry sky of Kant, which "no longer
lights any solitary wanderer's path;'28 has not, in the meantime, been substituted for
by a happy or safe earth. On the contrary, the baleful solitude of the new world fills
the sails of so much positivity.

11

13 Hegel. See notes 5 and 6 above.


14 The Spanish "cambio" can mean both change and exchange.
15

Translated by Rachel Price.

Georg Lukacs already perceived as much when he opened his Theory of the Novel with the
sentence "happy are those ages when the starry sky is the map of all possible paths-ages
whose paths are illuminated by the light of the stars:' Georg Lukacs, The Theory of the
Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 29.

"By way of introduction or anticipation, we need only say that there are two stems of
human knowledge, namely sensibility and understanding, which perhaps spring from a
common, but to us unknown, root:' Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, trans. Nor
man Kemp Smith (New York: St Martin's Press, 1965), 61 (a15 b29).

This crystallization is developed by Schelling above all in the final chapter of his 1800
System of Transcendental Idealism, whose title reads: "Art as an Organ and Document of
Philosophy:'

"Because of this necessity, the way to Science is itself already Science, and hence, in virtue
of its content, is the Science of the experience of consciousness" G. W F. Hegel, Phenom
enology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 56. This
idea dominates the introduction more generally.

"The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating
itself through its development:' Hegel, op. cit., 11.

The 1988 crash of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died.

"I had to make the limits of the body the fundamental theme in my work" ["dass die
Grenzen des Korpers das Grundthema meiner Arbeit bilden musste"]; see http://www.
wdr.de/tv/nachtkultur/dokumentation120010117/abramovic.html.) The quotation is re
produced in the work of Felix Duque, "El terrorismo nuestro de cada dia:' ["Our Daily
Terrorism"] in the Spanish magazine SILENO 13 (Madrid, 2002): 109.

See Arturo Leyte, "El arte como organo y documento de la filosofia" ["Art as Organ and
Document of Philosophy"] , La Ortiga 33/35 (Santander, 2002), and "Arte y Sistema" ["Art
and System"] forthcoming (from a talk given in Belo Horizonte, Brazil).
'
10 "Beyond the objective determinations effected by the categories remains a gigantic em
pirical reign, that of sensibility and perception, an absolute aposteriority for which is
signaled no apriority . . ." G. W F. Hegel, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's
Systems ofPhilosophy, from the Spanish, Diferencia entre el sistema de filosofia de Fichte y
el de Schelling (Madrid: Alianza Universidad, 1989), 4. (Also in Madrid: Tecnos, 1990, 5.)

Jan Hulsker, The New Complete Van Gogh (Amsterdam and New York: J. M. Meulenhoff/
John Benjamins, 1996), 401.

16 As is well-known, this is one of the motives Heidegger recreates in "The Origin of the
Work of Art" (in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter [New York: Harper
Colophon Books, 1975] , 15-87).

The complete phrase reads, "Two things fill the mind with an ever new and increasing
admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry sky above
me and the moral law within me." Although many English translations leave out the "me:'
it seems important to include the emphasis present in the German.-Trans.

Arturo Leyte, "Razon ilustrada y arte" ["Enlightenment Reason and Art"] SILENO 13
'
(2002).

12 Although perhaps Rembrandt or Velazquez would have understood "perspective" as


something very different than what it would later come to mean.

31

17 One will recognize in this description the interpretation that Heidegger puts forth in his
essay "The Thing:' In Heidegger's thesis, the thing is interpreted as "frameness" or a cross
between mortals and immortals, earth and sky. See also Arturo Leyte, "Figuras Construc
tivas del Paisaje" ["Constructive Figures in Landscape"] SILENO 11: 17'
18 This citation is reproduced by Heidegger in his "Origin of the Work of Art:' where he
writes: "In all these relationships art is and remains for us, on the side of its highest voca
tion, something past" (80).
19 "Death, if that is what we want to call this non-actuality, is of all the things the most
dreadful, and to hold fast what is dead requires the greatest strength. Lacking strength,
Beauty hates the Understanding for asking of her what it cannot do. But the life of the
Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but
rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter
dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its
eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then,
having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is
this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying
with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being:' (Hegel, Phenomenol
ogy, 19)
20 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, chapter 1 of the second section. The reference to this
sense of "all" refers to that chapter of the work in which Heidegger develops his interpre
tation of death.
21 For the problematic of temporality presupposed here, see Martin Heidegger, Being and
Time, particularly paragraph 65, "Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care:'

22 Spanish has two verbs for being, ser and estar; estar is used for temporary, conditional
and locational attributes, ser being reserved for more enduring or essential characteris
tics.-Trans.
23 Fredric Jameson considers the films of the great auteurs to be mainly signs of the decline
or extinction of the modernist movement: "abstract expressionism, existentialism in phi10sophy the final forms of representation in the novel, the films of the great auteurs, or
'
the modernist school of poetry . . . all are now seen as the final, extraordinary flowering
of a high-modernist impulse which is spent and exhausted with them:' Fredric Jameson,
Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic ofLate Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press,
1991), 1.
24 The German term "Ge-stell" was frequently used by Heidegger in many of his writings. It
appears decisively however in two in particular: "The Question Concerning Technology"

32

Leaving Immanence
and "The Principle of Identity:'

25

This, at least, is suggested in Spanish philosopher Felipe Marzoa's thesis, elaborated in his
book Heidegger y su tiempo [Heidegger and His Time 1 (Madrid: Aka!, 1999).

26 Andy Warhol, Death and Disasters, The Menil Collection (Houston: Houston Fine Arts
Press, 1988).
27

Fredric Jameson has lucidly perceived that the thematization of death in these series no
longer occurs on the level of content. But he doesn't finally articulate that if this thanatic
impulse corresponds to the "deathly black-and-white substratum of the photographic
negative which subtends them" (9), what is revealed is perhaps not death but its absence
and the impossibility of its apparition in a reality that reduces exclusively to external sur
faces. In the last instance, the photographic negative is also a positive presence to which
all is reduced: color is dissipated in the negative, but to reveal the positive of the surface.

28 Lukacs again reminds us that "Kant's starry firmament now shines only in the dark night
of pure cognition, it no longer lights the any solitary wanderer's path (for to be a man in
the new world is to be solitary)" (36).

Infra politics and Immaterial Reflection


Alberto Moreiras

Mauricio Lazzarato defines immaterial labor as "the labor that


produces the informational and cultural content of the com
moditY:" Immaterial labor, not understood as labor proper
in older modes of production, is today the task of a "mass
intellectuality" whose presence defines "the role and function
of intellectuals and their activities within societY:'2 Academic
intellectual labor, whose sense it is to determine the uses of
history for every one of the existing disciplines or fields of
knowledge, and thus to help " [define and fix] cultural and ar
tistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and, more
strategically, public opinion;'3 must be understood within a
contemporary division of labor which is itself established by
the prevailing mode of production.
If it is true that, as Lazzarato says, on the one hand, "the
concept of immaterial labor presupposes and results in an en
largement of productive cooperation that even includes the
production and reproduction of communication, and hence
of its most important contents: subjectivity;' 4 and if it is simul
taneously true, on the other hand, that "what modern man
agement techniques are looking for is for 'the worker's soul to
become part of the factory;" and thus "the worker's personal
ity and subjectivity have to be made susceptible to organiza
tion and command;'s then we are facing a strong biopolitical
cathexis on the very conditions of intellectual labor in the
present. We must wonder whether any attempt to elaborate
a new disciplinary subjectivity-that is, whether any attempt
at revising the conditions of disciplinary knowledge-is not
always already overdetermined by the subjection to organiza
tion and command which is a consequence of the regulatory
techniques of university management. Lazzarato seems to
offer two responses: one optimistic, and the other pessimis
tic. According to the pessimistic response, given the fact that
what is peculiar to immaterial labor is not the production of
commodities to be "destroyed in the act of consumption" but
Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

34

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection

rather of commodities that can "enlarge, transform, and create the 'ideological' and
cultural environment of the consumer;' then immaterial labor produces "a social
relationship" that reveals "something that material production had 'hidden; namely,
that labor produces not only commodities, but first and foremost it produces the
capital relation:'6 Within this determination any possibility of intellectual labor,
since intellectual labor is today by definition bound by the conditions of production
that define mass intellectuality, cannot go beyond promoting the social relation
ship as reproduction of the capital relation: every new production of subjectivity
would be condemned to be nothing but the acquiescing response to the system of
production's principles of organization and command.
But Lazzarato also offers an optimistic response, having to do with the pos
sibility of linking the production of subjectivity to a new praxis of meaning. For
Lazzarato there is a possibility of genuine innovation in the fact that every act of
immaterial production proposes "a new relationship between production and con
sumption:'7 Such a relationship can only be appropriated and normalized by the
system of production, but it can never be pre-determined by it. "The creative and
innovative elements are tightly linked to the values that only the forms of life pro
duce:'s Lazzarato suggests that the struggle against work can promote values that
would not be recoverable by the apparatus of organization and command within the
system of production. These values could then develop the "social cycle of immate
rial production"9 in ways that would outflank the capital relation itself.
According to the old historian Henry Charles Lea, the Spanish Inquisition was
"a power within the State superior to the State itself'lO That power is biopolitical
power, understood as the power of capture and subjection oflife to political control,
that is, the power of political animation of life, the subjection of life to the sover
eignty principle. The power to subject life to sovereignty is in every case the power
within the state superior to the state itself-an excess or supplement to the state
without which there would be no state.'l Whence that excess?
A properly materialist answer would consist of saying that, to the extent that
the power within the state is state power, even when it exceeds itself, any power
within the state superior to the state itself would come from another state, following
a genealogical structure. A certain confluence between the work of Michel Foucault
and that of Martin Heidegger might allow us to arrest the regression ad infinitum
implied in that answer. Thus we could posit the ultimate origin of the genealogical
structure in the Roman world, and particularly, and perhaps surprisingly, in the
hegemonic structure of imperial domination in Rome.
In his class lectures from the 1942-43 winter semester, in his seminar on Par
menides, Heidegger says: "We think the political as Romans, i.e., imperialli'12 Hei
degger's diagnosis, although thoroughly connected with the situation at the time (i.e.,
with the turning point in World War II represented by the German defeat at Stalin
grad) and with a thoroughly ideological vision of German destiny, is not meant only
for Nazi Germany.'3 On the contrary, it encompasses the totality of the history of
the West, regarding which Heidegger had thought that the Nazi movement offered
the possibility of a renewal. If to think the political is to think it as Romans, imperi
ally, and if that comes to be, according to a Nietzschean genealogy, the "history of

Alberto Moreiras

35

an error;'l4 then we must find a non-Roman determination of the political: perhaps


counterimperial, or non-imperial. The possibility of thinking a non-Roman, non
imperial determination of the political goes through an understanding of the nature
of that power within the state superior to the state itself that Lea associates with the
Spanish Inquisition. This is not an arbitrary hypothesis: Heidegger himself says it,
in passing, almost unintentionally. But I will dwell on it briefly.
This issue is not so remote from Lazzarato's interest in finding out whether it is
possible to suspend the very mechanisms of organization and command through
an attempt at a non-predetermined mode of intellectual production-unpredeter
mined by history, and insurgent against determined history. Heidegger's own notion
of "originary thinking;' as developed in Parmenides, seeks an interruption of deter
mined history, which he associates with the dominance of the Roman West.'5 All of
it would have to do with a decisive event. Heidegger does not hesitate to call it "the
genuine event ofhistorY;',6 in the sense that there is no other, more important single
event, but also in the sense that it constitutes history as we know it: the event of his
tory. The event is the Latinization of the Greek notion of truth. "What is decisive is
that the Latinization occurs as a transformation of the essence of truth and Being
within the essence of the Greco-Roman domain of history. This transformation is
distinctive in that it remains concealed but nevertheless determines everything in
advance:" 7 It is only a few pages later, in direct connection with this transformation
of the essence of truth, that Heidegger mentions the Spanish Inquisition-only once
in his Parmenides seminar, and perhaps in the totality of his work:
Such change is ever the most dangerous, but also the most enduring, form
of domination. Since then, the Occident has known of pseudos only in the
form of falsum. For us, the opposite of the truth is the false. But the Romans
did not only lay the foundation of the priority of the false as the standard
meaning of the essence of untruth in the Occident. In addition, the con
solidation of this priority of the false over pseudos and the stabilizing of
this consolidation is a Roman accomplishment. The operating force in this
accomplishment is no longer the imperium of the state but the imperium of
the Church, the sacerdotium. The "imperial" here emerges in the form of the
curial of the curia of the Roman pope. His domination is likewise grounded
in command. The character of c;ommand here resides in the essence of eccle
siastical dogma. Therefore this dogma takes into account equally the "true"
of the "orthodox believers" as well as the "false" of the "heretics" and the
"unfaithful:' The Spanish Inquisition is a form of the Roman curial imperi
um. By way of Roman civilization, both the imperial! civil and the imperial!
ecclesiastical, the Greek pseudos became for us in the Occident the "false:'
Correspondingly, the true assumed the character of the not-false. The es
sential realm of the imperial fallere determines the not-false as well as the
falsum. The not-false, said in Roman fashion, is the verum.'8
To speak critically of the Spanish Inquisition during the Winter Semester of 1942-43
in Freiburg is not particularly banal, above all when such a reference to the Inquisi
tion, which was the direct antecedent of the National Socialist administrative ap-

36

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection

paratus for the "final solution" concerning the elimination of an enemy social body,
the "Jews;' presents the Inquisition as a symptom of the great error in the history of
the West: literally, thefalsi-fication of the essence of truth, which is also thefalsi-fica
tion of the political. Heidegger is attempting to think of a counter-falsification of the
political following a non-imperial and counter-Roman path.
If it is true, then, that the Roman imperial, as a power within the state superior
to the state itself, is the falsi-fication of truth, that is, the understanding of truth on
the basis of the notion of the false, and if it is true that such falsi-fication is essen
tially related to the capture and subjection of life to political control; if it is true that
falsi-fication is in this realm the essence of biopolitics as a strategy of domination,
then it is necessary first to understand falsi-fication better, and therefore its relation
with the hegemonic structure of imperial domination. I will sum up Heidegger's
analysis.
Falsum comes from fallere, "to bring about a downfall;' "to cut" or "to hack" in
the sense of bringing to a fall. Heidegger asks: "What is the basis for the priority of
fallere in the Latin formation of the counter-essence of truth?" And he responds: "It
lies in this, that the basic comportment of the Romans towards beings in general
is governed by the rule of the imperium. Imperium says im-parare, to establish, to
make arrangements: prae-cipere, to occupy something in advance, and by this oc
cupation to hold command over it, and so to have the occupied as territori" 9 In the
juxtaposition of imperare and hacking or felling we understand both the essence of
the political as the power to command and the falsi -fication of truth (that is, once
again, the understanding of truth as the mere negation of the false, the brought to a
fall, what has been felled) as the very principle of hegemonic power.
Heidegger does not use the word "hegemony;' but one can hear nothing else
in his definition of imperial power. Because what is false is what has been felled,
brought to a fall, what is false has been eliminated from the principle of territori
alization. It is, in a paradoxical sense, not subjected to command-no longer sub
jected to command. Eliminated from the reach of command, it is also eliminated
from life. In life, subjected to the imperial circumscription, one can only have the
not-false, and it is this non-falseness that will be administered according to hege
mony's principle of organization and command. "To be superior is part and parcel
of domination. And to be superior is only possible through constantly remaining in
the higher position by way of a constant surmounting of others. Here we have the
genuine actus of imperial action . . . . The great and most inner core of the essence
of essential domination consists in this, that the dominated are not kept down, nor
simply despised, but, rather, that they themselves are permitted, within the territory
of the command, to offer their services for the continuation of the domination:'20
Roman hegemony, the imperial principle of the political under which we still think
the political, is, for Heidegger, the apparatus for the territorialization of command
according to which what is not susceptible of hacking, of felling, of being brought
to a fall, of simple elimination from life can still collaborate in its own domination:
this is the biopolitical passion, the principle of subjection of life to sovereign cap
ture, the animation of life under criteria of subjection to command in the name of
the essential falsi-fication of the true, which is precisely the power within the state

Alberto Moreiras

37

superior to the state itself.


As to Foucault, I am concerned with his project to establish a "history of truth;'
or rather a history of the "politics of truth;' whose Heideggerian trace is not always
sufficiently noted.21 In the five-lecture series delivered at the Pontifical Catholic Uni
versity of Rio de Janeiro in May 1973, which was published under the title "Truth
and Juridical Norm;' Foucault, talking about fields of knowledge, refers to the types
of inquiry that " [b1 eginning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries . . . sought to
establish truth on the basis of a certain number of carefully collected items of tes
timony in fields such as geography, astronomy, and the study of climates:'22 In par
ticular, Foucault says, it is on the basis of these inquisitorial procedures that "there
appeared a technique of voyage-as a political, power-exercising venture and a cu
riosity-driven, knowledge-acquiring venture-that ultimately led to the discovery
of America:'23 The relation to Heidegger makes itself obvious here. For Foucault
the Inquisition, developed in the Middle Ages through administrative procedures
directly inspired in the Carolingian revival of imperial Roman structures and in po
litico-spiritual procedures already existing in the Church, in the Roman curia, is not
only the principle ofbiopolitical action proper but also a grave historical event: "The
inquiry that arose in the Middle Ages would acquire extraordinary dimensions. Its
destiny would be practically coextensive with the particular destiny of so-called
'European' or 'Western' culture"24 The juridical forms that were derived from the
inquisitorial model became "absolutely essential for the history of Europe and for
the history of the whole world, inasmuch as Europe violently imposed its dominion
on the entire surface of the earth:'25
Inquisitorial practices were imperial in the Heideggerian sense also inasmuch as
they operated a complete inversion regarding the other juridical tradition that was
active at the heart of medieval Europe: the Germanic tradition, which followed the
principle of the test, and which constitutes the foundation of feudal law. For Fou
cault, "in feudal law, disputes between two individuals were settled by the system
of the test. When an individual came forward with a claim, a contestation, accus
ing another of having killed or robbed, the dispute between the two would be re
solved through a series of tests accepted by both individuals and by which both were
bound. This system was a way of proving not the truth, but the strength, the weight,
the importance of the one who spoke";26 "a procedure of inquiry, a search for the
truth, never intervened in this type of system:'27 Through the inquisitorial system
the representative of power would abandon the feudal system of tests and proceed
to adjudicate justice, not just in terms of criminal acts but also for every dispute
related to property, rent, taxes, and economic administration, on the basis of the
absolute subjection of the involved parties to a rule of sovereignty. Hence, Foucault
says, political power in this system becomes "the essential personage:'28
"On arriving at an appointed place, the bishop would first initiate the inquisitio
generalis . . by questioning all those who should know-the notable, the elders, the
most learned, the most virtuous-about what had happened in his absence, espe
cially if there had been transgressions, crimes, and so on. If this inquiry met with an
affirmative response, the bishop would pass to a second stage, the inquisitio specialis,
the special inquisition, which consisted in trying to find out who had done what,
.

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection

in determining who was really the author and what was the nature of the act";29
"this model-spiritual and administrative, religious and political-this method for
managing, overseeing, and controlling souls was found in the Church: the inquiry
understood as a gaze focused as much on possessions and riches as on hearts, acts,
and intentions. It was this model that was taken up and adapted in judicial proce
,
dure [by royal authority] : 30 This juridical form constitutes a decisive intervention
in political history and in the history of the political at the level of what Foucault
will term toward the end of his lecture series "infrapower:' Infrapower, a power in
the state superior to the state itself, names "not . . . the state apparatus, or . . . the class
in power, but . . . the whole set of little powers, of little institutions situated at the
lowest leve!:'31
The inquisition as biopolitical procedure initiates the vast process of the subjec
tion oflife to imperial command that would become characteristic of modernity. At
stake is to ensure that individuals cooperate in their own domination, following the
structure of hegemonic command: "bare life;' to use Giorgio Agamben's expression
in Homo Sacer, that is, the life that can be killed without murder or sacrifice, is false
life in the Heideggerian sense, and it is ambivalently excluded from the biopolitical
operation.32 Everything else dwells in non-falseness, that is, subjected to administra
tive imperial command. It dwells in self-subjection as the mode of service to a rea
son that becomes co-extensive with political calculation. As Heidegger puts it, "the
imperial springs forth from the essence of truth as correctness in the sense of the
directive self-adjusting guarantee of the security of domination. The 'taking as true'
of ratio, of rear, becomes a far-reaching and anticipatory security. Ratio becomes
counting, calculating, calculus. Ratio is a self-adjustment to what is correct:'33
Foucault's infrapower is the political apparatus composed of the institutions
whose mission is to "take charge of the whole temporal dimension of individuals'
lives:'34 Genealogically conditioned by the Heideggerian history of "imperial falsi
fication;' within late capitalism, infrapower rules over "the conversion ofliving time
into labor power and labor power into productive force:'35 Infrapower institutions
are, "in a schematic and global sense, . . . institutions of sequestration."36 To reduce
or destroy the reach of the sequestering institutions and their hegemonic command
is to attack infrapower, that is, to move toward a non-imperial practice of the po
litical, an infrapolitics, one could call them, in the sense that they place themselves
or find their appropriate site not at the level of hegemonic struggle but beneath it,
below their (imperial) ground.
"

Given the undecidability between Lazzarato's two positions, namely, either that it
is possible to produce social values that are not pre-determined by the system of
production or that it is not possible to overcome the biopolitical conditions accord
ing to which every production of subjectivity is always already normalized by the
system, any reflection on the uses of history is contained within a nihilistic perspec
tive. In the Heideggerian interpretation, nihilism is not one: it always comes as two,
the first one being imperfect nihilism, and the second accomplished nihilism. For
Heidegger, in his interpretation of Nietzsche's Nachlass, there can be no imperfect or

Alberto Moreiras

39

"proper" nihilism except from the perspective of "fulfilled" or accomplished nihil


ism.37 At the same time, however, there can be no accomplished nihilism unless we
posit an imperfect form of it. In an essay titled "The Messiah and the Sovereign: The
Problem of Law in Walter Benjamin;' Agamben deploys the Heideggerian motif on
the basis of an intriguing exchange between Benjamin and Gershom Scholem on
Kafka. For Agamben the difference between the two nihilisms has to do very pre
cisely with a dilucidation of "the hidden structure of historical time itself'38
Agamben introduces an additional complication when, following both Benja
min and Scholem, he mentions that nihilism and messianism are or come to the
same thing:
If we accept the equivalence between messianism and nihilism of which
both Benjamin and Scholem were firmly convinced, . . . then we will have
to distinguish two forms of messianism or nihilism: a first form (which we
may call imperfect nihilism) that nullifies the law but maintains the Nothing
in a perpetual and infinitely deferred state of validity, and a second form, a
perfect nihilism that does not even let validity survive beyond its meaning
but instead, as Benjamin writes of Kafka, "succeeds in finding redemption in
the overturning of the Nothing:'39
The difference between both perspectives on nihilism, between the two nihilisms or
the two messianisms, is small: a matter of a "small adjustment;'4o a slight displace
ment. Understanding the hidden structure of historical time would have to do with
being able to operate that small adjustment, which would mean: the small adjust
ment launches us into a form of accomplished nihilism/messianism. This is, in our
context, to take a decisive position concerning the status of "the power within the
state superior to the state itself;' that is, of infrapower, and hence also concerning the
very conditions of immaterial labor.
Does immaterial labor in our times, in other words, mark the final subsumption
ofliving time into labor power? There are two fundamental uses of history that might
adequately reference Lazzaratds two positions, or even the difference between the
two faces or two deployments of nihilism or messianism. According to the first use,
the most obvious one, the most dominant, the sovereign use, the use that allows us
to understand, for instance, the Inquisition under the figure of sovereignty, or sover
eignty under the figure of the state, history is always biopolitical history, and hence
always immersion and capture by the sovereign relation. We could call this first use
"relational surrender;' to adapt Eric Santner's expression.41 In relational surrender,
the subject of immaterial reflection surrenders into relational life, surrenders into
sovereignty. This is both a form of imperfect nihilism/messianism, and also a form
of Lazzarato's first hypothesis, and it understands and deploys an understanding of
history as the temporalization of the capture of life by the political.
But there is a second use, a literally useless use that might not quite match Laz
zarato's second hypothesis. The latter's progressivism is excessively caught up in the
notion of the production of new values, that is, in a notion of productive subjectiv
ity that is structurally unable to overflow the system of production precisely be
cause all it can do is to establish a relation with it. Productive subjectivity, defined in

40

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection

Lazzarato on the basis of "forms of life:' is always already biopolitical, and perhaps
more so than ever at the moment it attempts to change the dominant conditions of
biopolitics. This use without use has to do with un-working the determinations of
the first use. If the characteristic procedure of the first use of history is the capture
of life by the political, the capture of life by the sovereign relation, the characteris
tic procedure of the second use is the interruption of the principle of sovereignty,
the unworking of the biopolitical, the de-production of the use of history. This is
still a messianic nihilism or a nihilistic messianism. This "overturning" of the first
use, the "redemption" that Benjamin promises as precisely a redemption regarding
the infinite biopoliticization of life, is still a use, even if a useless use, and it is still
therefore under the gaze of the political-but in a very especial form, that is, in an
infrapolitical form.42
Agamben solves the Benjamin/Scholem exchange into a diagnosis of the history
of the present that is a prelude to the embrace of accomplished nihilism as a refusal
of the structures of institutional sequestering:
Today, everywhere, in Europe as in Asia, in industrialized countries as in
those of the "Third World:' we live in the ban of a tradition that is perma
nently in a state of exception. And all power, whether democratic or to
talitarian, traditional or revolutionary, has entered into a legitimation crisis
in which the state of exception, which was the hidden foundation of the
system, has fully come to light. If the paradox of sovereignty once had the
form of the proposition "There is nothing outside the law:' it takes on a per
fectly symmetrical form in our time, when the exception has become the
rule: "There is nothing inside the law"; everything-every law-is outside
law. The entire planet has now become the exception that law must contain
in its ban. Today we live in this messianic paradox, and every aspect of our
existence bears its marks.43
Agamben has in mind Benjamin's eighth thesis on the philosophy of history: "The
tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of exception' in which we live is
the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history that corresponds to this fact. Then
we will have the production of a real state of exception before us as a task:'44 In the
Eighth Thesis Benjamin in turn refers to Carl Schmitt's Political Theology, which
defines sovereignty as the power to decide on the state of exception.45 From Lea's
sentence on the Inquisition, the Inquisition appears as a sovereign body insofar as
it is a power within the state superior to the state itself-the sovereign body has the
power to suspend the law from within the site of the law, hence it lives simultane
ously within and outside law. Like the Messiah: also He reveals the hidden structure
of the law, and suspends the law indefinitely or infinitely. The Inquisition is the ni
hilistic-messianic truth of our time, allegory or literality of a state of exception more
legal than the law, that is, a sovereign relation that absolutely requires relational
surrender. For Agamben, "we can compare the situation of our time to that of a pet
rified or paralyzed messianism that, like all messianism, nullifies the law, but then
maintains it as the Nothing of Revelation in a perpetual and interminable state of
exception, 'the state of exception in which we live."'46

Alberto Moreiras

41

But Benjamin says that when we reach a concept of history that understands and
accounts for the paradox of sovereignty (simultaneously hiding and revealing the
exception in the law), what Jacques Derrida quoting Montaigne calls "the mystical
foundation of authority;'47 then we will be able to produce "a real state of exception:'
Again, two states: the state of exception "in which we live;' that corresponds to the
biopolitical use of history, and that other useless and enigmatic "state of real excep
tion:' on which any possible redemption depends. Between both the need for an
infrapolitical "small adjustment:' only possible after reaching a concept of history
that gives us its subterranean or hidden foundation.
Agamben quotes Scholem's letter to Benjamin where Scholem comments on
Benjamin's essay on Kafka. "Scholem defines the relation to the law described in
Kafka's novels as 'the Nothing of Revelation; intending this expression to name 'a
stage in which revelation does not signify, yet still affirms itself by the fact that it is
in force. Where the wealth of significance is gone and what appears, reduced, so to
speak, to the zero point of its own content, still does not disappear (and Revelation
is something that appears), there the Nothing appears:"48 Validity without significa
tion: the zero point of the sense of the law, but thus also appearance of the law in its
messianic and sovereign force. The Inquisition is also validity without signification:
imperfect nihilism.
Eric Santner comments on this passage at length in On the Psycho theology of
Everyday Life. If there are two uses of history, and if the first use is a petrified use
through which the validity without signification of the law weighs in as imperfect
nihilism, weighs in like the Inquisition does in the history of Spain and of the West;
if the second use is infrapolitical and it moves in the direction of a new and "real"
state of exception, an accomplished nihilism that unworks history by dwelling in
the excess that is not just the condition of possibility of the sovereign relation but
also the condition of possibility of its destabilization, Santner seeks the second. The
first is for him "relational surrender:' He calls the second "unbinding the fantasy:'
using Lacanian categories that have been foregrounded in the work of Slavoj Zizek.
To traverse the fantasy is to undo the relational fantasy that captures us for and into
subjective surrender.
Santner calls "exodus" the redemptive possibility of undoing the relational fan
tasy that keeps "life captured by the question of its legitimacY:'49 In dialogue with
Agamben's interpretation of Scholem's phrase "validity without signification:' Sant
ner thinks that "the dilemma of the Kafkan subject-exposure to a surplus of va
lidity over meaning-points . . . to the fundamental place of fantasy in human life.
Fantasy organizes or 'binds' this surplus into a schema, a distinctive 'torsion' or spin
that colors/distorts the shape of our universe, how the world is disclosed to US:'50
Exodus is then "the possibility of recovering, of 'unbinding: the disruptive core of
fantasy and converting it into 'more life: the hope and possibility of new possibili
ties:'51 In other words, it is the possibility of an openness to "the surplus of the real
within reality:'52 an openness to the awareness of infrapower within power. Exodus
is infrapolitical consciousness, which means: it is only from within sequestration
by the infrapower apparatus, as it determines the individual site of experience of
the sovereign relation in every case, that it becomes possible to dislodge from it.

42

Alberto Moreiras

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection

Perhaps we are not too far from Lazzarato's second hypothesis.


For Santner, "the very dynamic that attaches us to an ideological formation is
. . , the site where the possibility of genuinely new possibilities can emerge:'53 Sant
ner repeats an old postulate of Marxism, according to which only capitalism can
produce the weapons for its own overcoming. He does not mention the Derridean
"hauntological" reading of Marx, but he nevertheless appeals to it in order to estab
lish that, for both Franz Rosenzweig (the thinker that, along with Freud, is the main
object of interpretation in Santner's book) and Marx, "relations of exchange-and
that means all socio-symbolic systems through which what is individual acquires
a general and generic value/identity-always leave a remainder, an insistent and
troubling surplus for which no equivalent value can be posited. And for both think
ers, this troubling surplus that for the most part functions as the driving force of the
symbolic system can become the locus of a break with it, a site where the possibility
of unplugging from the dominance of the sovereign/general equivalent can open:'54
But in Santner, and in Benjamin, and in Marx according to Derrida, that redemptive
and revelatory possibility is a messianic possibility. The interruption of fantasy, the
unbinding of the traumatic nucleus that sustains us as distorted and captured life in
subjection to infrapower, is messianic intervention. Fantasy, the traumatic nucleus,
Benjamin says in a passage quoted by both Santner and Agamben, will vanish "with
the coming of the Messiah, of whom a great rabbi once said that he did not wish to
change the world by force, but would only make a slight adjustment in it:'55
The passage from imperfect to accomplished nihilism is a matter of infrapoliti
cal orientation towards the small adjustment. The text of deconstruction insists on
this small adjustment as fundamental to its own strategy. The difference between
any messianism and the messianic is in Derrida the minimal difference that insti
tutes the messianic as the very possibility, which then becomes the necessity, of a po
litical orientation for deconstruction, and over and over again the minimal basis for
decision. In deconstruction's idiom, granted that the very conditions of possibility
for justice are also the conditions of its impossibility, granted that "the impossibility
of justice for all is the possibility of any justice at all;'56 and the impossibility of hos
pitality the only opening for hospitality, of friendship for friendship, and so forth, an
orientation to the infrapolitical opening is an orientation towards the conditionless
condition that rules over the fact that the aporetic structure obtains. Aporia, that is,
nihilism obtains. The difference between an imperfect and an accomplished experi
ence of aporia is the difference between understanding aporia as an end of thinking
or understanding it as an opening for reflective thinking, which is also an opening
for infrapolitical practice there where the suppression of aporia (for instance, in all
imperfect messianisms) reinforces the inordinate or exorbitant violence of biopo
litical, imperial hegemony.
How, then, does the messianic relation, as orientation towards the small adjust
ment, affect the decidability of Lazzarato's two hypotheses on politico-intellectual
practice, on immaterial reflection? The messianic relation is only the promise that
accomplished messianism, the passage from imperfect to accomplished messian
ism, can bring about a small adjustment. It is only a promise. The perfect Nothing
of the promise is the other face of the Nothing of revelation that constitutes the

43

imperfect nihilism of Kafka's parable according to Benjamin. Can the mass intel
lectuality of the present move toward the unworking of imperfect nihilism? Can
it move toward an infrapolitical or non-imperial understanding of the political?
Heidegger says: "We think the political as Romans, i.e., imperially:' Inquisitorial
infrapower, the power within the state stronger than the state itself, the power of
the fantasy that binds the traumatic nucleus of domination with our own invest
ment in self-domination (the marrano problem par excellence)-those are sites for
the Benjaminian overturning, and accordingly the sites where an infrapolitics can
develop that would already think politics against imperial politics, in a non -Roman
way, against the falsi -fication of world. Through falsi- fication worlding is no longer
the terror or the joy of unconcealment but rather relational surrender. In relational
surrender the political relation is nothing but a relation of power. Foucault says that
one of the tests or ordeals of the old Germanic tribal order was the ordeal by water,
"which consisted in tying a person's right hand to his left foot and throwing him
into the water. If he didn't drown he would lose the case, because the water didn't
accept him as it should; and ifhe drowned he had won the case, seeing that the wa
ter had not rejected him:'57 But there must be a way to win this ordeal beyond the
chiasmatic alternative: if you lose the case, you lose your life. If you win the case,
you lose your life. Why have it at all? Infrapolitics is nothing but the (search for a)
non-inquisitorial exodus from such a conjuncture.

I wish to thank Marta Hernandez and Juan Carlos Rodriguezfor their comments on the original
Spanish version of this essay, which have guided many of the revisions.

al Politics,
Maurizio Lazzarato, "Im material Labor;' in Radical Tho ught in Italy: A Potenti
ss, 199 6),
ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt (Mi nneapolis: University of Minnesota Pre
133

Ibid., 133, 134

Ibid., 133.

Ibid., 140.

Ibid., 134

Ibid., 138.

Ibid., 146.

Ibid.

Ibid., 147

lan,
Mil
Mc
k:
Yor
w
(Ne
ies
enc
end
Dep
nish
Spa
the
in
tion
uisi
Inq
The
,
Lea
rles
10 Henry Cha
19 22 ), 35 7.
, 190 6-0 7) is still
lan
Mil
Mc
k:
Yor
w
(Ne
s.
vol
4
in,
Spa
in
tion
uisi
Inq
the
f
o
tory
His
A
's
11 Lea
been made out
an extremely valuable reference on the Inquisition, but its scholarship has
Escandrell
me
tolo
Bar
and
a
uev
lan
Vil
ez
Per
n
qui
Joa
See
ch.
ear
res
g
nin
rve
inte
by
dated
drid: Biblioteca
Bonet, eds., Historia de la Inquisici6n en Espana y Am erica, 3 vols. (Ma
contem
d
dar
stan
the
for
3)
199
s,
iale
tor
uisi
Inq
os
udi
Est
de
o
ntr
/Ce
nos
stia
Cri
s
de Autore
Foucault, The
porary reference work. In terms of biopower and biopolitics, see Michel
York: Vmtage,
w
(Ne
rley
Hu
ert
Rob
s.
tran
n,
ctio
odu
Intr
An
1
e
um
Vol
ity.
ual
f
o
Sex
.
History

44

Alberto Moreiras

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection


1990), 135-41, and Society Must Be Defended. Lectures at the College de France 1975-76, ed.
Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003),
253-63, among other texts in his later work. Giorgio Agamben takes up those Foucaultian
concepts in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

12 Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, trans. Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Blooming
ton: Indiana University Press, 1992), 43.
13 For the connection between Heidegger's Parmenides and the Battle of Stalingrad see Ag
nes Heller, "Parmenides and the Battle of Stalingrad:' Graduate Faculty Philosophy Jour
naI 19.2/20.1 (1997): "The winter semester ended in January or February. The Soviet army
had closed the circle around the German army in Stalingrad at Christmas 1942. Germany
had lost the war. Few knew this; Heidegger was one of those who did. This is easy to
decipher from the text of the Parmenides lectures" (248). Heidegger's overwhelming pre
occupation with Germany is turned into a preoccupation with modernity as such in the
establishment of an equivalency between Germany and the West, particularly after the
failure of the National Socialist regime-for Heidegger already clear in the mid-1930s. For
the politico-philosophical context, see Frank H. W. Edler's "Heidegger's Interpretation of
the German 'Revolution:" Research in Phenomenology 23 (1993): 153-71, and "Philosophy,
Language, and Politics: Heidegger's Attempt to Steal the Language of the Revolution in
1933-34:' Social Research 57.1 (1990): 197-239. See also Theodore Kisiel, "Situating Rhe
torical Politics in Heidegger's Protopractical (1923-1925: The French Occupy the Ruhr:'
Existentia 9 (1999): 11-30, for the political background to Heidegger's commitment to
reactionary practice. But the crucial book on Heidegger's notion of a second Revolu
tion within Nazism in favor of an originary philosophy of autochthony and rootedness
and Heidegger's subsequent, post-Germany's defeat developments is Charles Bambach's
Heidegger's Roots. Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks (Ithaca: Cornell Univer
sity Press, 2003). See also Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi
Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) and Johannes Fritsche, Historical
Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger's "Being and Time" (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999). For an excellent use of Heidegger's Parmenides regarding geopo
litical thinking today, see William S. Spanos, America's Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 53-63 passim.

14 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Lon


don: Penguin, 1990), 5l.
15 For originary or primordial thinking see Parmenides, 6-10. See also Heller, op. cit., 249
passim. And, generally, Bambach, op. cit.

16 Heidegger, Parmenides, 42.

45

and Power' Revisited:' 30-54.

22 Foucault, "Truth:' 49
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 34
25 Ibid., 40 .
26 Ibid., 37.
27 Ibid., 36.
28 Ibid., 45
29 Ibid., 46.
30 Ibid., 47.
31 Ibid., 86-87.

ut
ho
l
wit
kil
to
d
tte
mi
per
is
it
ich
wh
in
ere
sph
the
is
ere
sph
ign
32 For Agamben "the sovere
life that
is,
t
ha
-t
life
red
sac
d
an
,
ice
rif
a
sac
ng
ati
ebr
cel
ut
tho
wi
d
an
committing homicide
sphere:' Homo
s
thi
in
ed
tur
cap
en
be
has
t
tha
life
the
is
dice
rif
sac
t
no
t
may be killed bu

Sacer, 83.
33 Heidegger, Parmenides, 50.
34 Foucault, "Truth:' 80.
35 Ibid., 84.
36 Ibid.
37 See volume 4 of Heidegger's Nietzsche, 4 vols., trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1991) for his major dilucidation of Nietzsche's concept of nihilism. On
the difference between nihilisms see, for instance: "Nietzsche's metaphysics is nihilism
proper . . . Nietzsche's metaphysics is not an overcoming of nihilism. It is the ultimate
entanglement in nihilism . . . . By means of the entanglement of nihilism in itself, nihilism
first becomes thoroughly complete in what it is. Such utterly completed, perfect nihilism
is the fulfillment of nihilism proper" (203)

38 GiorgiO Agamben, "The Messiah and the Sovereign: The Problem of Law in Walter Benja
min:' in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stan
ford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 168.
39 Ibid., 171.
40 Ibid., 174

iversity of Chicago
Un
o:
ag
hic
(C
e,
Lif
y
da
ery
Ev
of
gy
olo
the
cho
Psy
the
On
4 1 Eric L. Santner,
Press, 2001), 90.

18 Ibid., 46.

d from
we
rro
(bo
se
sen
nt
ere
diff
y
htl
slig
a
in
"
ing
ork
nw
"u
of
n
42 Agamben refers to the notio
61.
,
cer
Sa
mo
Ho
in
t)
ho
nc
Bla
ice
ur
Ma
d
an
y
nc
Na
uc
n-L
Jea

19 Ibid., 44.

43 Agamben, "Messiah;' 170.

20 Ibid., 45.

44 Quoted ibid., 160.


45 See Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans.
George Schwab (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 1-15. Agamben had already referred to
Schmitt's state of exception in Homo Sacer (8-19; 26-42), but he develops its implications
in Stato di eccezione. Homo Sacer 2.1 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003).

17 Ibid.

21 Michel Foucault, "Truth and Juridical Forms:' in Power: Essential Works ofFoucault 19541984, vol. 3, ed. and trans. James D. Faubion, series ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: New
Press, 2000), 13. On the relations between Heideggerian thinking and Foucault, see Alan
Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, eds., Foucault and Heidegger: Critical Encounters (Min
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), in particular Milchman/Rosenberg, "To
ward a Foucault/Heidegger Auseinandersetzung;' 1-29, and Hubert L. Dreyfus, "'Being

46 Agamben, "Messiah;' 17] .

46

Infrapolitics and Immaterial Reflection

47 Jacques Derrida, Acts ofReligion , ed. Gil Anidjar (New


York: Routledge, 20 01 ), 22 9.
48 Agamben, "Messiah;' 16 9.

Post-Political Citizenship

49 Santner, op. cit., 30 . Santner does not mention the


wo

rk of Paolo Virno' although h'IS use


of th word "exodus'" IS necessarily indebted to Vi
rno's "Virtuosity and Revolution. The
PohtlCal Theory of Exo dus;' in Paolo Virno and
Michael Hardt, eds., Radical Thought in
.
.
Italy.. A Potential PoiztlCS (Mmneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press 19 96 ) , 18 9 210.
S antne rs
' and V"lrnos
'
' uses 0f the term are for the most part hetero
geneous.
50 Santner, op. cit., 39.
.

Kenneth Surin

5 1 Ibid., 40.
52 Ib id ., 74.
53 Ibid., 8l.
54 Ibid., 96 -97.
55 Quoted in Santner, 12 2 and Agamben, 174.
56 I am indebted to Martin Hagglun d for this form
ul

57 Foucault, "Truth;' 38 .

ation in a personal communication.

There is a conventional wisdom in the history of philosophy


regarding the more or less intrinsic connection between the
metaphysical-epistemological project that seeks an absolute
ground for thought or reason, and the philosophico-political
project of finding a ground in reason for the modus operandi
of a moral and political subject. According to the lineaments
of this well-seasoned narrative, the essential congruence be
tween the rational subject of thought and the complemen
tary subject of morality and politics was posited by Plato and
Aristotle, and this unity between the two kinds of subject
then found its suitably differentiated way into the thought
of Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and Hegel
(among many others). The core of this narrative is expressed
by the somewhat Kantian proposition, characteristic of the
Enlightenment in general, that reason provides the vital and
indispensable criterion by which all judgments concerning
belief, morality, politics, and art are to be appraised; so that
reason is the faculty that defines and regulates the thinking
being's activity, while this activity is in turn the essential means
for reason's deployment in any thinking about the world, for
the thinking being's capacity to describe and explain the world
in ways that accord fundamentally with reason's precepts, and
this precisely because reason is the irreducibly prior and en
abling condition of any use of this capacity. Reason, in oth
er words, constitutes the thinking being, and the activity of
this being in turn enables reason to unfold dynamically (to
provide a somewhat Hegelian gloss on this initially Kantian
proposition). In the topography of this unfolding of reason,
both thought and politics find their foundation.
The philosophical tradition provides another way of de
lineating this connection between the subject of thought and
the political subject, one that also derives its focal point from
Kant. Using the distinction between a subjectum (i.e., the thing
that serves as the bearer of something, be it consciousness or
some other property of the individual) and a subjectus (i.e.,
the thing that is subjected to something else), the tradition
Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

48

Post-Political Citizenship

has included among its repertoire of concepts a figure of thought taken from medi
eval philosophy that hinges on the relation between the subjectum and the subjectus.
Etienne Balibar, in his fascinating but problematic essay "Citizen Subject;' uses this
distinction to urge that we not identify Descartes' thinking thing (res cogitans) with
the transcendental subject of thought that very quickly became a decisive feature
of modern epistemology. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Balibar,
because the human being is for Descartes the unity of a soul and a body, and this
unity, which marks the essence of the human being, cannot be represented in terms
of the subjectum (presumably because the subjectum, qua intellectual simple nature,
can exist logically without requiring the presupposition of a unity between soul and
body).l As the unity of a soul and a body, the human individual is not a mere intel
lectual simple nature, a subjectum, but is, rather, a subject in another quite different
sense. In this other different sense, the human individual is a subject transitively
related to an other, a "something else;' and for Descartes this "something else" is
precisely the divine sovereignty. In other words, for Descartes the human individual
is really a sbjetus, and never the subjectum of modern epistemology (which in any
case owes Its dIscovery to Locke and not to Descartes). For Balibar, therefore, it is
important to remember that Descartes, who in many ways is really a late scholastic
philosopher, was profoundly engaged with a range of issues that had been central
for medieval philosophy, in this particular case the question of the relation oflesser
beings to the supreme being, a question which both Descartes and the medieval
philosophers broached, albeit in differing ways, under the rubric of the divine sov
ereignty.
The Cartesian subject is thus a subjectus, one who submits, and this in at least
t:"o ways tat were Significant for both Descartes and medieval political theology:
(1) th subject submits to the Sovereign who is the Lord God; and (ii) the subject
also YIelds to the earthly authority of the prince who is God's representative on earth.
As Descartes put it in his letter to Mersenne (April 15, 1630): "Do not hesitate I tell
you, to avow and proclaim everywhere, that it is God who has established the laws
of nature, as a King establishes laws in his Kingdom:'2 From this passage, and from
his other writings, it is clear that the notion of sovereignty was at once political and
heological for Descartes, as it had been for the earlier scholastic philosophers. This
IS not the place for a detailed discussion of Balibar's argument, which in addition to
being a little sketchy is also not entirely new-Leibniz, Arnauld, and Malebranche
had long ago viewed Descartes, roughly their contemporary, as a follower in the
f?otstes of Augustine who found philosophy's raison d'etre in the soul's contempla
.
tIon of ItS relatlOn to God, and who therefore took the dependence of lesser beings
on the supreme eminence as philosophy's primary concern.3 But if John Locke is
deemed by Balibar to be the inventor of the modern concept of the self, who then is
he real auho of the fully-fledged concept of the transcendental subject, if Balibar
.
IS nght to mSlst that it is not Descartes? The true culprit here, says Balibar, is not
Descartes, but Kant, who needed the concept of the transcendental subject to ac
count for the "synthetic unity" that provides the necessary conditions for objective
.
expenence.
Kant chose to foist onto Descartes something that was really his own
"discovery;' and with Heidegger as his more than willing subsequent accomplice

Kenneth Surin

49

in this dubious undertaking, the outcome of this grievous misattribution has been
momentous for our understanding (or lack thereof) of the course taken by the his
tory of philosophy.4 Kant however was about more than just the "discovery" of the
transcendental subject. The Kantian subject had also to prescribe duties for itself in
the name of the categorical imperative, and in so doing carve out a realm of freedom
in nature that would enable this subject to free itself from a "self-inflicted tutelage"
that arises when we can't make judgments without the supervision of an other, and
this of course includes the tutelage of the King. The condition for realizing any such
ideal on the part of the enlightened subject is the ability to submit to nothing but
the rule of reason in making judgments, and so to be free from the power of the des
pot when making one's judgments entails a critical repositioning of the place from
which sovereignty is exercised: no more is this place the body of the King, since for
Kant this "tutelage" is stoppable only if the subject is able to owe its allegiance to a
republican polity constituted by the rule of reason and nothing but the rule of rea
son. Whatever criticism Balibar levels at Kant for the (supposed) historical mistake
he made with regard to Descartes, the philosopher from East Prussia nonetheless
emerges as a very considerable figure in Balibar's account. For Kant also created
the concept of a certain kind of practical subject, one who operates in the realm of
freedom, and this practical subject, whose telos is the ultimate abolition of any kind
of "self-inflicted tutelage;' had to destroy the "subject" of the King (i.e., the subjectus
of Descartes and medieval political theology) in order to become a "self-legislating"
rational being. Kant therefore simultaneously created the transcendental subject
(i.e., the subjectum of modern epistemology) and discredited philosophically the
subjectus of the previous philosophical and political dispensation.
The real philosophical adversary of Kant is of course Hobbes. Hobbes stated the
crux of the principle of sovereignty when he asserted that if the sovereign is the ori
gin oflaw, then no law can bind the sovereign, and thus the State. The only basis for
the functioning of the State is the decree of the sovereign, and force is effectively the
determinant of the relation that the sovereign has to his subjects, or to other sover
eigns. The sovereign does not derive his authority from the State, since the State only
exists by virtue of the insuperable authority that emanates from the sovereign. The
sovereign is necessarily the animating principle underlying all authority, and hence
a subject's refusal of the authority of the sovereign is the subject's refusal of its own
authority, and thus of itself. As Hobbes puts it, the sovereign is "the Publique Soule,
giving Life and Motion to the Commonwealth:'5 The subject's authority, provided it
is not usurped or feigned, can only be the authority of the sovereign, and a subject's
disowning of the sovereign's authority is thus necessarily a nullification of the very
ground of the subject's own authority.6 The unavoidable concomitant of this posi
tion on the character of sovereignty is that the State can have only one sovereign,
who therefore represents all the people (so that his acts are willy-nilly their acts as
well), and all associations within the commonwealth are based on the principle of
the State and the sovereign who gives the State its raison d'etre.7 Against Hobbes'
absolutizing of the Sovereign, Kant asserts that "the people too have inalienable
rights against the head of state . . . . For to assume that the head of state can neither
make mistakes nor be ignorant of anything would be to imply that he receives divine

50

Post-Political Citizenship

inspiration and is more than a human being:'B


The concomitant of Kant's philosophical evisceration of the "subject" of the King
was thus the political emergence of the republican citizen, who from 1789 onwards
would supplant the subjectlsubjectus of the previous epoch. In the process, Des
cartes' philosophical world of subjects who submit to the laws of God and King was
dislodged by Kant's world of "self-legislating" rational subjects who engage in this
legislation precisely by adverting to the notions of right and duty. This new subject
is the embodiment of right and of the operation of practical reason (right being
for Kant the outcome that can be guaranteed only by the proper use of practical
reason), and furthermore the subject is considered a citizen to the extent he/she
embodies the general will, in which case the only laws worthy of the name are those
framed to reflect "the united will of the whole nation:'9 Sovereignty is thus glossed
by Kant through a recasting of the Rousseauan social contract. Laws are rationally
promulgated only when they exemplify the general will, and this exemplification
of the general will is possible only if there is a perfectly just civil constitution. The
outcome, as the philosophy textbooks tell us, was a crucial separation of the earthly
from the heavenly city. However, if Kant is the inaugurator of the Citizen Subject,
then for Balibar Michel Foucault is the great theorist of the transition from the world
of kingly nd divine sovereignty to the world of rights and duties determined by the
Stae a Its apparatuses, and Balibar concludes his essay with the following obser
.
vatIon: :As to whether thiS figure [the Citizen Subjectl like a face of sand at the edge
of the sea, is about to be effaced with the next great sea change, that is another ques
tion:' Perhaps it is nothing more than Foucault's own utopia, a necessary support for
tha utopia's facticity.lO I would like now to address the Foucauldian question left by
Bahbar for future consideration, and pose the question of the current destination or
fate of the Citizen Subject. To do this we have to look again at Kant.
The reason that constitutes the subject is perforce a Transcendental Reason.
The Katian inflection here is not accidental, because the reason that grounds the
.
sub ect IS ot a reason that can be specified within the terms of the activity of the
s b)ect: thiS reason is the basis of this subject's very possibility qua subject, and by
virtue of that, reason is necessarily exterior to the subject. Reason in this kind of em
ployment is thus the activity of a single and universal quintessence whose object is
.
reason Itself, so that reason has necessarily to seek its ground within itself, as Hegel
noted.ll Reason, by virtue of its self-grounding, is perforce the writing of the Abso
lute.12 The subject's ground, which has to reside in Reason itself, is therefore entirely
and properly metaphysical, and any crisis of Transcendental Reason unavoidably
becomes a philosophical crisis of the subject. Kant himself was the first to realize
this, though it was left to his philosophical successors in the movement known as
early Romanticism (Friihromantik), to make the acknowledgment of this crisis of
Transcendental Reason into a starting-point for philosophical reflection.
With Nietzsche however the hitherto radical figure of the transcendental subject
is propelled into a crisis, and with this crisis the fundamental convergence between
the etaphyil-epistemological subject and the philosophico-political subject is
dellled plausblhty. We ll know from the basic textbooks in the history ofphilosophy
that reason, msofar as It operates on both the understanding and the will, is placed

Kenneth Surin

51

by Nietzsche entirely within the ambit of the Wille zur Macht, so that power/ desire
b ecomes the enabling basis of any epistemological or moral and political subject,
thereby irretrievably undermining or dislocating both kinds of subject. As a result
of the intervention represented by Nietzsche, truth, goodness, and beauty, that is,
the guiding transcendental notions for the constitution of this epistemological and
moral and political subject, are henceforth to be regarded merely as the functions
and ciphers of this supervening will to power. The same conventional wisdom also
assures us that Marx and Freud likewise "undid" the two kinds of subject and thus
undermined even further any basis for their essential congruence. The constellation
formed by Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud (and their successors) shows both the tran
scendental subject and the ethico-political subject of action to be mere conceptual
functions, lacking any substantial being (Kant of course having already argued in
the Critique of Pure Reason that the subject of thought is not a substance).
This hackneyed narrative about the collective impact of the great masters of
suspicion is fine as it goes; what is far more interesting, however, is the story of what
had to come after Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, of what it is that was going to be done
with the ruins of the epistemological and moral and political subject who ostensibly
had reigned from Plato to Hegel before receiving its quietus in the latter part of the
nineteenth century. It is interesting that Balibar, who is perhaps almost as resolute
a Marxist as anyone could be in these supposedly post-Marxist days, appears not to
take on board Marx's critique of bourgeois democracy in "Citizen Subject;' but in
stead regards Foucault as the thinker who more than any other registered the crisis
of this Subject. Be that as it may, it is hard to deny that the transcendental subject
of modern epistemology suffered calamitously at the hands of Nietzsche (and Hei
degger after Nietzsche), and that political and philosophical developments in the
twentieth century cast the Citizen Subject adrift in a rickety life-boat headed in the
direction of the reefs mapped by Foucault.
But can the course of this stricken life-boat be altered, and the functions and
modes of expression typically associated with the Citizen Subject be reconstituted
in some more productive way, so that this Subject, or its successor (but who would
that putative successor be?), would be able to meet the political and philosophical
demands generated by the presently emerging conjuncture? Here one senses a cer
tain ambivalence at the end of Balibar's essay, a wish that Foucault was perhaps not
going to be right when it came to a final reckoning of the fate of the Citizen Subject,
and that new and better times will somehow come to await a radically transformed
Citizen Subject. But what could the shape and character of this new life for the Citi
zen Subject be? Balibar has an emphatic proposal: the Citizen Subject will live only
by becoming a revolutionary actor.
I want to take Balibar's proposal as the starting-point for the conclusion of this
paper. Whatever Foucault may have said about the supersession of the post-classical
episteme, and the death of Man-Citizen that accompanied this supersession (I take
Foucault's Man-Citizen to be coextensive with Balibar's Citizen Subject), it is obvi
ous here that the subsequent mutation of classical liberalism into a globalizing neo
liberalism and the disappearance of socialism to form the basis of a new conjunc
ture-a conjuncture which some have called the "post-political" politics of the time

52

Post-Political Citizenship

after 1968-represents an added inconvenience for the already punishing trajectory


taken by this Citizen Subject or Man-Citizen. The culmination of this trajectory in
the "post-political" politics of the last few decades seems at one and the same time
to reduce the weight of the critique represented by Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud (the
subject's apparent superfluity in this "post-political" dispensation undermines the
very need for its critique; with the effacement of the object of critique, critique also
finds itself fading into nothingness), while at the same time making more urgent
the question of the ontological status of the subject of this "post-political" politics
(is it still some kind of vestigially effective subject, a barely breathing remnant of the
Man-Citizen of Foucault's modern episteme or Balibar's Citizen Subject of the time
after 1789?); and if so, what powers (if any) reside in this brute remnant, or are we
left today with nothing for the metaphysical constitution of the possibility of poli
tics but the sheer acknowledgement of the power of the body, the power of bare life
(as proposed by the thinkers of the "inoperative" community and the community
to come), or the appeal to some kind of undeconstructable justice coming from
the outside of any totality (as proposed by Derrida and his epigoni), etc.? We don't
have to hear too much along these lines in order to recognize that the practices and
orders of thought associated with the "societies of control" delineated by Deleuze,
and those of the domain of the biopolitical identified by Foucault and others each
derives their saliency from this "post-political" conjuncture. Also important here is
the attempt by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to outline a form of constitutionalism
that is not indebted to the metaphysics of classical (and for Spivak, Western) politi
cal sovereignty.
What kind of political subject, if any, can continue to exist in the conjuncture of
a "post-political" politics, and has this subject to possess an intrinsic connection to
the political sovereignty that grounded the classical Citizen Subject?
The invention of something different to put in place of the system of representa
tions that has governed thinking about ethnicity, race, clan, nation, sovereignty, and
patrimony-these representations being the linchpins of an episteme or mentalite
that has prevailed since 1789 or 1492 (these markers are emblematic of course)-will
have of course to be a vast, collective undertaking, perhaps extending over several
generations. The suggestion here is not so much that these notions have necessarily
to be dispensed with; but that they be rethought and placed in the service of a dif
ferent vision of the future, a different salvation even. Here I agree with Tom Nairn
that it is difficult to conceive of the swift and outright elimination of the "nation" of
modern nationalism. The forces and the desire named "nationalism" can probably
be transformed over the longer haul into the vehicle of the "civic nationalism" that
Nairn and others have advocated, but its demise in the shorter term seems rather
improbable. To state the obvious: the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about
a United States hegemony and replaced the antagonism between capitalism and
bureaucratic socialism with a whole series of struggles between competing brands
of capitalism, and here the outcome is uncertain, as indicated by the current and
ongoing recession, or "jobless recovery" as it is now being called. Moreover, there
seems to be a more active role in the international system for regional as well as
local states, and these are accompanied by new mechanisms of cultural identifica-

Kenneth Surin

53

tion that are tied to regions or sub-regions rather than nation-states (such as the
various "separatisms" associated with the Basques, Catalonians, Ulster Protestants,
Chechens, Kurds, Corsicans, Sri Lankan Tamils, Kashmiris, Eritreans).13 What we
are likely to see here is the coexistence of the transnational with the interlocal, with
the nation-state having an altered but still significant function as the mechanism
that coordinates the flows between the transnational and the interlocal. Concep
tions of sovereignty and citizenship have of course been changing with these trends.
Important here is the shift from government to governance and meta-governance,
as large-scale official state apparatuses are dismantled or deemphasized, and govern
ing becomes more and more a matter of organizing flows between multiple agen
cies and networks of power and information (governance), and of providing the
"axioms" to integrate and coordinate all these systems and movements (i.e., meta
governance).'4 In such a world notions of citizenship and nationality have become
more flexible and compartmentalized, and so we have lotteries for American green
cards, Caribbean countries putting citizenship up for sale, and so on.
What concepts are going to be needed for this rethinking of a different politics,
a different political future? The list of these concepts is going to be pretty long, but
it would include something like a transindividualization of desire of the kind that
Warren Montag has associated with Spinoza. And then there is the monumentally
intractable matter of sovereignty. Here it is important to note that acknowledging
the seeming indispensability of the nation -state in the current political dispensation
is simply not symmetrical with the demand that we ("we" being philosophers of
the political) conceptualize outside the order of the State. For we can conceptualize
outside the order of the State whilst still acknowledging the current indispensability
of the nation-state; just as we can acknowledge the current political indispensability
of the nation -state without heeding the imperative that we conceptualize outside the
order of the State or sovereignty.
In talking about this conceptualization, a promising starting-point is Rousseau's
proposition that a certain miraculation or occultation occurs when sovereignty is
exercised, namely, that individuals surrender to the sovereign a certain fundamental
plenitude of being possessed by them in the state of nature, in return for which they
emerge as public citizens. Marx had his own version of this occultation or "miracle:'
As he pointed out, capital has perforce to reconstitute social subjects and market
. participants (and non-participants), who by virtue of this reconstitution become the
agents and bearers of its "substance" as they come to be constrained by capital and its
allied organizations, even as they exercise varying degrees of command on capital's
behalf. It is therefore a historically defined manifestation of constituent power that
defines capitalism and its agents. This manifestation of constituent power serves
as the model of realization for capital-it is the nexus, at once social and politi
cal, which invests everything with (a productive) desire before a capitalist regime
of accumulation can come to possess its enabling conditions. Capital's constituent
power is the power of a basic disempowerment, an undermining of living labor,
and it is this debilitation of living labor that enables capitalism to come into being
and to reconstitute itself.15 It is axiomatic here that the project of liberation must
therefore shape itself as a countervailing strength (in the manner akin to Spinoza's

54

Post-Political Citizenship

potentia) that severs any propensities for liberation from the grip of this original
disempowerment that incapacitates living labor in order to make capitalist accumu
lation possible. Capitalism, and this is the powerful insight announced by Deleuze
and Guattari, only arises because the power that would prevent it from emerging,
the power of what amounts to an "ur-liberation" antecedent to any "actual" libera
tion, has already been neutralized by the prior violent installation of the forms of
social cooperation that will in turn allow capital to emerge as a full-blown economic
assemblage. These forms of social cooperation are precisely those responsible for
the emergence of the public citizen, the Citizen Subject, so that there is a royal road
which leads from Rousseau to Foucault. This in turn poses the critical question of
the organization of constituent power which enables the possibility of this liberation
to be stated. How are we begin to think the thought that subtends this occultation in
which the Citizen Subject emerges? Of course the state and sovereignty are enabling
conditions for this emergence, but if there is anything to be learnt from the papers
given yesterday, it is that it is not enough to conceptualize the exteriority that lies
beyond the State.,6 Constituent power resides in this exteriority, taking the form of
the enemy/friend dyad of Schmitt's which is the enabling condition of the political,
or the multitudo in Spinoza, which, as Warren Montag and Jon Beasley-Murray
pointed out in the question-and-answer session yesterday, is really antecedent to
this or that manifestation of state power or sovereignty. So it is not sufficient to con
ceptualize the exteriority or surplus that lies beyond the state; the conceptualization
of this pure exteriority or surplus has itself to be conceptualized in a higher order
reflection. Before the State, before power and politics, there is this enabling surplus
or pure exteriority. But before this enabling surplus or exteriority there is . . . ?
Using very broad brush strokes, we can state this meta-theoretical thesis in
terms of the history of philosophy. If Kant and Hegel, the State-thinkers par excel
lence, enable us to conceptualize the lineaments of the State's form and character
istic dispositions, then this conference has indicated that the exemplary thinkers of
the State's exteriority are Machiavelli, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Schmitt. The thinking
of this exteriority or excess, associated so far with Machiavelli, Spinoza, Nietzsche,
and Schmitt, however demands in turn its own conceptualization. But this concep
tualization will necessarily be of something that is non-denumerable and indeed
non-spatiotemporal, since it does not consist of countable elements or ordered rela
tions. Friends and enemies can be counted, but what makes their becoming possible
at the conceptual level is not countable, however. The place of this thinking cannot
therefore be systematized nor can it take the forms of testable hypotheses or em
pirical predictions. And yet it is a place that already exists, as indeed it has to, since
friends and enemies and the political already exist. A becoming friend or a becom
ing enemy must have its own conditions of possibility, moments of possibility which
are eternal while simultaneously enfolding space and time, and in so doing provid
ing the becoming friend or becoming enemy with their point of accession into the
spatiotemporal domain, or more precisely, the domain of the actually political. The
metaphysical or theological traditions have a term for this becoming-possible of
becoming, namely, the Aeon or Kairos, an indefinite and therefore unmasterable
time that makes possible the unfolding of events. An unmasterable time, but also

Kenneth Surin
samething

55

that without itself being spatial enfolds a place, the place of the becom.
.J11g of this event or that event. Interestingly enough, It was the rned'laeva1 theoioglan
'
.
D uns Scotus who first defined this concept, the concept 0f a h aecceltas or h aeccel'ty,
from potent!'al'Ity to
to designate the possibility of an event's becoming as it moves
.
act. Scotus rightly perceived that the movement from potentIal'Ity to ct canot b a
single event or indeed several linked events, since it is s.iply impoSSIble to Identfy
the very point at which potentiality ceases to be potentlahty and anages to rellZe
itself in act, to complete or exhaust itself in act. The only alternative, therefore, IS to
view the connection between potentiality and act as an infinite series of oscillations
between potentiality and act, and to then say that the event is constituted as the
outcome of these unceasing oscillations.
The event-whether it is being-friend, or being-enemy, or being-tyrant, or being-corrupt, and so on-emerges not from a perm nent or stable co dition, bt
.
.
rather from a mixed conceptual regime that embodIes dIfference, vanatlOn, devI
ation, and inflection. To see how such an unavoidably mixed conceptual regime
would work, it has to be acknowledged from the outset that there is no unitary
conceptual operation which subtends a being-friend or being-enemy or being-cor
rupt or whatever. These are images of thought, and as such they a:e the product of
.
quite specific conceptual or theoretical operations. Sometimes an lIIag of thought
is formed by a process of augmentation, as when the image-concept IS hke a broken
porcelain vase which is missing a few pieces that have to be recovered in order to re
store it to its original shape; and sometimes an image-concept needs to have some
thing subtracted from it, especially when it misleads us into thinking ta it contains
.
everything that can be seen or which needs to be seen. The dlffere tlatmg la or of
concept-image creation therefore necessarily underlies the theoretlCal operatlon of
delineating the space from which the figures of the political emerges. Bu: the lar
of concept-creation, philosophy in other words, is itself always irreduclly P ?htl
.
cal, and depending on the character of this conceptual labor it can contam Wlthm
itself its own "revolutionary becoming" (if one may use a phrase from Deleuze and
Guattari).
What then can we say, in conclusion, about post-political citizenship (this paper's original subject)? Very briefly, in a time when citizenship ca? incresingly be
bought and sold, and when the forms of sovereignty are becmmg valable, nd
the state itself is best conceptualized as an assemblage of projects, no mterestmg
problems-I was tempted to say no interesting philosophical oblems-ae posed
.
by these modulations of the post-political. But the post-pohtlcal IS preClsely the
.
form of the political today, and so more important, much more Importat, than
the task of defining and describing post-political citizenship is the one whIch asks
of the body politic how if at all it is going to take politics beyond the lin e?ts of
this post-political. Relevant here is the following passage from SlavoJ. Zlzeks The
Ticklish Subject:

The best formula that expresses the paradox of post-politics is perhaps Tony
Blair's characterization of New Labour as the "Radical Centre": in the old
days of "ideological" political division, the qualification "radical" was re
.
served for either the extreme Left or for the extreme RIght.
The Centre was,

50

Post-Political Citizenship

by definition, moderate: measured by the old standards, the term "Radical


Centre" is the same nonsense as "radical moderation:' What makes New
Labour (or Bill Clinton's politics in the USA) "radical" is its radical aban
donment on the "old ideological divides;' usually formulated in the guise
of a paraphrase of Deng Xiaoping's motto from the 1960s: "It doesn't matter
if a cat is red or white; what matters is that it actually catches mice:" in the
same vein, advocates of New Labour like to emphasize that we should take
good ideas without any prejudice and apply them, whatever their (ideologi
cal) origins. And what are these "good ideas"? The answer is, of course, ideas
that work. It is here that we encounter the gap that separates a political act
proper from the "administration of social matters" which remains within the
framework of the existing sociopolitical relations: the political act (interven
tion) proper is not simply something that works well within the framework
of the existing relations, but something that changes the very framework
that determines how things work. To say that good ideas are "ideas that
work" means that one accepts in advance the (global capitalist) constellation
that determines what works (if, for example, one spends too much money
on education or healthcare, that "doesn't work;' since it infringes too much
on the conditions of capitalist profitability). One can also put it in terms of
the well-known definition of politics as the "art of the possible": authentic
politics is, rather, the exact opposite, that is, the art of the impossible-it
changes the very parameters of what is considered "possible" in the existing
constellation.'7
In other words: the first task (and there will be countless others of course) of the citi
zen who is launched on a trajectory beyond the post-political is to find the resources
of power and hope that would enable us to insist that there is a non-negotiable line,
or maybe it is a chasm, between the political left and right, and that such notions as
"the radical center" are vapid fictions. Philosophical labor is no substitute for this
practical-political labor of the citizen, but it is its necessary complement. This is a
prolepsis to the task of breaking the hold of the now pervasive Law and its support
ing institutions and frameworks
.

57

Kenneth Surin

Etienne Balibar, "Citizen Subject;' in Who Comes After the Subject?, ed. Eduardo Cadava,
Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (London: Routledge, 1991), 33-57. In another work,
Balibar goes on to argue that it is Locke and not Descartes who invents the modern con
cept of the self as that which the "you" or the ''1'' possesses. Balibar, Identite et difference
(Paris: Seuil, 1998).
Rene Descartes, Philosophical Essays and Correspondence, ed. Roger Ariew (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2000), 28. Also in Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: J. Vrin, 1987), vol. 1, 145. Balibar
refers to this letter on page 36 of "Citizen Subject:'
The importance of the Augustinian tradition for Descartes is stressed in Stephen Menn,
"The Intellectual Setting;' in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy,
ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
33-86; see especially 69. See also Nicholas Tolley, "The Reception of Descartes' Philoso-

phy:' The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1992), 393-423.
4

According to Balibar, the notion of the transcendental subject arose from Kant's modi
fication of the Cartesian cogito, with the Lockean self beginning a second trad"llOn that
circumvents Kant before ending up with William James and Bergson. See Bahbar, " Je/
moi/soi;' Vocabulaire europeen des philosophies (Paris: Seuil, 2001).

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 230. First published 1651.

Ibid., 122.

Ibid., 155-56.

ImmanueI Kant, "On the Relationship of Theory to Practice in Political Right (Against
Hobbes ):' in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambn'dge: C ambridge University Press, 1991), 84.
Immanuel Kant, "On the Common Saying: 'This May Be True in Theory but It Does Not
Apply in Practice:" in Political Writings, op. cit., 71.

10 Balibar, op. cit., 55. Balibar says a great deal more about the Cartesian and me ieval-theo
logical subjectus than can be indicated here, rightly pointing ut that a notIon that had
evolved over seventeen centuries from Roman times to the penod of the urop an bso
lute monarchies is not easily encompassed in a single definition. He also nghtly llldlCates
that the supposed novum of the Citizen Subject has to be regarded with some SkeptIC1S ,
.
.
since under the aegis of bourgeois democracy thIS subject was always gOlllg to retalll
some traces of the old subjectus.

11

'0

e Difference
For Hegel's (early) view on the operation of "speculative" reason, see his
between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy, trans. Horton S. Hams and Walter
Cerf (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977), 88. For excellent commentary o
this aspect of Hegel's relation to Kant, see Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A BIOgraphy (Cambndge.
Cambridge University Press, 2000), 160ff.

12 The essential correlation between Reason and the Absolute e tails that every oper ti n
.
of consciousness, practical as much as theoretical, is necessanly one whlch falls Wltlll
.
the remit of the Absolute. The subject of thought then has to be the subject of morahty
and politics and vice versa-a connection previously established y Kant when he moved
.
.
from the First to the Second Critique, that is, from the subject s understandlllg to the
subject's willing and acting.

13 Bob Jessop, "Capitalism and its future: remarks on regulation, government and gover
nance:' Review of International Political Economy 4 (1997), 561-81.
14 Ibid., 574-75.

15 The great recent theorist of this exercise of constituent power is of urse Antonio egri
.
Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, trans. MaurlZla Boscagh (Mlllne
.
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). Originally pubhshed as II potere costltuente,
saggio sulle alternative del moderno (Carnago Varese: Sugar Co., 1992).

16 A version of this paper was presented at the conference "Thinking Politically" held at
Duke University, October 24-26, 2003.-Ed.
17 Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso,
1999), 198-99.

The Becoming-Oedipal
of Gilles Deleuze
Slavoj Zizek

In his "transcendental empiricism;' Deleuze gives to Kant's


transcendental dimension a unique twist: the proper tran
scendental space is the virtual space of the multiple singular
potentialities, of "pure" impersonal singular gestures, affects,
and perceptions that are not yet the gestures-affects-percep
tions of a pre-existing, stable, and self-identical subject. This
is why, for example, Deleuze celebrates the art of cinema: it
"liberates" gaze, images, movements, and, ultimately, time it
self from their attribution to a given subject-when we watch
a movie, we see the flow of images from the perspective of the
"mechanical" camera, a perspective which does not belong to
any subject; through the art of montage, movement is also
abstracted/liberated from its attribution to a given subject or
object-it is an impersonal movement which is only second
arily, afterwards, attributed to some positive entities.
Here, however, the first crack in Deleuze's edifice appears:
in a move which is far from self-evident, Deleuze links this
conceptual space to the traditional opposition between pro
duction and representation. The virtual field is (re)interpreted
as that of generative, productive forces, opposed to the space
of representations. Here we get all the standard topics of the
molecular multiple sites of productivity constrained by the
molar totalizing organizations, and so on and so forth. Under
the heading of the opposition between becoming and being,
Deleuze thus seems to identify these two logics, although they
are fundamentally incompatible (one is tempted to attribute
the "bad" influence which pushed him towards the second
logic to Felix Guattari). The proper site of production is not
the virtual space as such, but, rather, the very passage from
it to constituted reality, the collapse of the multitude and its
oscillations into one reality-production is fundamentally a
limitation of the open space of virtualities, the determination/
negation of the virtual multitude (this is how Deleuze reads
Spinoza's omni determinatio est negatio against Hegel) .

Polygraph 15116 (2004)

60

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles De/euze

The ine of Deleuze proper is that of the great early monographs (the key ones
.
bemg Difference and Repetition and The Logic ofSense) as well as some of the shorter
introductory writings (like Proust and Signs and the Introduction to Sacher-Masoch1).
In his lae work, it is the two cinema books which mark the return to the topics of
The LogIc of Sense. This series is to be distinguished from the books Deleuze and
Guattari co-wrote, and one can only regret that the Anglo-Saxon reception of De
leuze (and, also, the political impact of Deleuze) is predominantly that of a "Guat
tarized" Deleuze. It is crucial to note that not a single one of Deleuze's own texts is
in any way directly political; Deleuze "in himself" is a highly elitist author, indiffer
ent towards politics. The only serious philosophical question is thus: what inher
ent imp asse caused Deleuze to turn towards Guattari? Is Anti-Oedipus, arguably
,
Deleuzes worst book, not the result of escaping the full confrontation of a deadlock
via a simplified "flat" solution, homologous to Schelling escaping the deadlock of his
Weltalter project vi his shift to the duality of "positive" and "negative" philosophy,
or Habermas escapmg the deadlock of the "dialectic of Enlightenment" via his shift
to the duality of instrumental and communicational reason? Our task is to confront
again this deadlock. Was, therefore, Deleuze not pushed towards Guattari because
ua tari presented n alibi, an easy escape from the deadlock of his previous posi
.
es Delezes conceptual edIfice not rely on two logics, on two conceptual
tIon .
?
OppOSItions, whIch coexist in his work? This insight seems so obvious, stating it
seems so close to what the French call a lapalissade, that one is surprised how it has
not yet been generally perceived:
1. On the one hand, the logic of sense, of the immaterial becoming as the
sense-eent, as the effect of bodily-material processes-causes, the logic of
the radlCal gap between generative process and its immaterial sense-ef
fect: "multiplicities, being incorporeal effects of material causes, are im
passible or causally sterile entities. The time of a pure becoming, always
already passed and eternally yet to come, forms the temporal dimension
of this impassibility or sterility of multiplicities:'2 And is cinema not the
limate case of the sterile flow of surface becoming? The cinema image
IS mherently sterile and impassive, the pure effect of corporeal causes,
although nonetheless acquiring its pseudo-autonomy.
2. On the other hand, the logic of becoming as production of Beings: "the
emerge ce of metric or extensive properties should be treated as a single
.
.
process m whIch a contmuous virtual spacetime progressively differenti
ates itself into actual discontinuous spatio-temporal structures."3
ay, in his analyses of films and literature, Deleuze emphasizes the de-substantial
lzat.on of affects: in a work of art, an affect (boredom, for instance) is no longer
attnbutable to actual persons, but becomes a free-floating event. How, then, does
this impersonal intensity of an affect-event relate to bodies or persons? Here we
ncouner the same ambiguity: either this immaterial affect is generated by interact
mg bodIes as a sterile surface of pure Becoming, or it is part of the virtual intensities
ou of which bodies emerge through actualization (the passage from Becoming to
Bem). So, on the one hand, Manuel DeLanda, in his excellent compte-rendu of De
leuzes ontology, affirms the logic of the "disappearance of process under product:'

Slavoj Zizek

61

the logic which relies on a long (also Hegelian-Marxist!) tradition of "reification":


"This theme of the disgUising of process under product is key to Deleuze's philoso
phy since his philosophical method is, at leat in part, designed to overcome the o
,
.
jective illusion fostered by this concealment. 4 A , t e proper level of produclOn IS
.
also unambiguously designated as that of vlrtualItles: m and beneath the constituted
reality, "the extensive and qualitative properties of the final product:'5 one should
discover the traces of the intensive process of virtualities-Being and Becoming re
late as Actual and Virtual. How, then, are we to combine this unambiguous affirma
tion of the Virtual as the site of production which generates constituted reality, with
the no less unambiguous statement that "the virtual is produced out of the actual"?

Multiplicities should not be conceived as possessing the capacity to actively


interact with one another through these series. Deleuze thinks about them
as endowed with only a mere capacity to be affected, since they are, in his
words, "impassive entities-impassive results:' The neutrality or sterility of
multiplicities may be explained in the following way. Although their diver
gent universality makes them independent of any particular mechanism
(the same multiplicity may be actualized by several causal mechanisms) they
do depend on the empirical fact that some causal mechanism or another
actually exists . . . . [Tlhey are not transcendent but immanent entities. ' "
Deleuze views multiplicities as incorporeal effects of corporeal causes, that
is, as historical results of actual causes possessing no causal powers of their
own. On the other hand, as he writes, "to the extent that they differ in nature
from these causes, they enter, with one another, into relations of quasi-cau
sality. Together they enter into a relation with a quasi-cause which is itself
incorporeal and assures them a very special independence:' . . . Unlike actual
capacities, which are always capacities to affect and be affected, virtual af
fects are sharply divided into a pure capacity to be affected (displayed by
impassible multiplicities) and a pure capacity to affect. 6
The concept of quasi-cause is that which prevents a regression into simple reduc
tionism: it designates the pure agency of transcendental causality. Let us take De
leuze's own example from his Cinema 2: The Time-Image: the emergence of cin
ematic neorealism. One can, of course, explain neorealism by a set of historical
circumstances (the trauma of World War II, etc.). However, there is an excess in the
emergence of the New: neorealism is an Event which cannot simply be reduced to
its material/historical causes, and the "quasi-cause" is the cause of this excess, the
cause of that which makes an Event (an emergence of the New) irreducible to its
historical circumstances. One can also say that the quasi-cause is the second-level,
the meta-cause of the very excess of the effect over its (corporeal) causes. This is
how one should understand what Deleuze says about being affected: insofar as the
incorporeal Event is a pure affect (an impassive-neutral-sterile result), and i sofar
as something New (a new Event, an Event of/as the New) can only emerge If the
chain of its corporeal causes is not complete, one should postulate, over and above
the network of corporeal causes, a pure, transcendental capacity to affect. This, also,
is why Lacan appreciated so much The Logic of Sense: is the Deleuzian quasi-cause

62

Slavoj Ziiek

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze

not. the exact equivalent of Lacan's objet petit a, this pure, immaterial, spectral entity
whIch serves as the object-cause of desire?
One should be very precise here in order not to miss the point: Deleuze is not af
firming a simple psycho-physical dualism in the sense of someone like John Searle
he is not offering two different "descriptions" of the same event. It is not that th
same process (say, a spech activity) can be described in a strictly naturalistic way,
:s a neroa, and bodIly process embedded in its actual causality, or, as it were,
from withm, at the level of meaning, where the causality ("I answer your question
because I understand it") is pseudo-causality. In such an approach, the material
corporeal causality remains complete, while the basic premise of Deleuze's ontol
ogy is precisly that corporeal causality is not complete: in the emergence of the
.
New, somethmg occurs WhICh cannot be properly described at the level of corporeal
causes and effects. Quasi-cause is not the illusory theatre of shadows, like a child
wh? thinks e is magically making a toy run, unaware of the mechanic causality
whICh effectIvel does th wok-on the contrary, the quasi-cause fills in the gap of
corporeal causaitty. In thIS stnct sense, and insofar as the Event is the Sense-Event
.
.
quaSI-cause IS non-sense as inherent to Sense: if a speech could have been reduced
to its sense, then it would fall into reality-the relationship between Sense and its
designated reality would have been simply that of objects in the world. Nonsense is
that wich aintains the autonomy of the level of sense, of its surface flow of pure
becommg, WIth regard to the designated reality ("referent"). And does this not bring
us back to the unfortunate "phallic signifier" as the "pure" signifier without signi
fied? Is the Lacanian phallus not precisely the point of non -sense sustaining the flow
of sense?
Thi brigs to the topi f "Deleuze and psychoanalysis": what Deleuze pres
ents as ?edIp.u IS. a rather ndICulous simplification, if not an outright falsification,
of Lacans pOSItIon. In the last decades of Lacan's teaching, topics and subtitles like
"au-dela de I'Oedipe;' "I'Oedipe, un reve de Freud;' etc., abound; not only this, but
Lacan even preents the very figure of Oedip s at Colonus as a post-Oedipal fig
.
ure, as a figure beyond the OedIpus complex. What, then, if one conceives of the
acanian "obverse of the Oedipus" as a kind of Deleuzian "dark precursor" mediat
mg between the two series, the "official" Oedipal narrative of normalization on the
one side, and the pre-subjective field of intensities and desiring machines : on the
othe sid:? What if it is this tht Deleuze desperately tries to avoid, this "vanishing
medIator betwe.en he two. senes? What one should do is thus to repeat, apropos of
I?eleze,s reductIOlllst readmg of (the Freudian) Oedipus (his other uncanny excep
tIOn, . m term of a .botched, simplistic interpretation), the same gesture as the one
that Imposes Itself m relation to Hegel.
In today's theory, especially in Cultural Studies, reference to Oedipus is often
reduced to the extreme of a ridiculous straw-man: the flat scenario of the drama
of the child's entry into normative heterosexuality. In order to fulfill this rhetori
cal function, the Oedipus complex has to be ascribed a multitude of inconsistent
functions. Let .me quote the fo!owing typical passage (which will tactfully be al
lowed to rmam anonymous) : In the Oedipal scenario, the young boy desires to
conquer hIS mother sexually in order to separate himself from her and begin to
'

63

al
xu
s
se
hi
r,
he
s
fat
hi
oy
str
de
t
us
m
he
d,
ee
cc
su
to
m
rOw as an adult. In order for hi
e
th
te
ra
pa
se
to
is
n
tio
nc
fu
g"
tin
tra
as
"c
e
os
wh
r
he
fat
e
th
t
ompetitor:' So, it is no

ne
ta
ul
sim
gs
in
th
t
en
ist
ns
co
in
e
re
th
do
to
s
ha
y
bo
e
th
boy from his mother. In fact,
t
ha
.
W
er
th
fa
s
hi
oy
str
de
d
an
r,
he
m
fro
lf
se
m
hi
ously: conquer his mother, separate
:
ty
ic

pl
im
an
eli
eg
H
rl
pe
ro
its
in
e
siv
er
bv
su
ng

hi
et
m

Jerry Aline Flieger did7 is so


ng
en
ov
sc
dI
e)
,
(r
ry
to
rn
te
n
la
uZ
ele
D
to
in
ck
ba
us
she reinscribed-retranslated Oedip
e
em
pr
su
e
th
n,
io
at
liz
ria
ito
rr
te
de
of
t
en
ag
ic
ad
m
no
a
;'
in it an "abstract machine
of
it
lim
e
th
r
fo
s
nd
sta
ho
w
f"
ol
w
ne
"lo
e
th
ll
ca
case of what Deleuze and Guattari
:
ely
tiv
ec
eff
d,
.
An
de
tsi
ou
its
ds
ar
w
to
t"
gh
i
fl
of
ne
"li
a
the pack of wolves, opening
s
hi
ed
w
llo
fo
)
rm
te
e
th
of
es
ns
se
th
bo
(in
dly
in
does Oedipus-this stranger who bl
y
wa
s,
by
ve
ol
w
an
m
hu
of
ck
pa
e
th
of
it
lim
e
m
tre
ex
trajectory-not stand for the
r,
(o
e
on
al
g
in
ish
n
fi
e,
nc
rie
pe
ex
an
m
hu
of
it
of realizing, acting out, the utter lim
ad
de
g
in
liv
a
,
ad
m
no
ss
ele
m
ho
a
y,
all
er
lit
,
as
n)
ow
s
rather, with a pack of exiles of hi
n
ia
uz
ele
D
e
th
s,
lu
al
ph
of
t
ep
nc
co
e
th
on
re
among humans? One should focus he

un
"Th
n:
io
tit
pe
Re
d
an
e
nc
fere
if
D
in
d
ce
du
tro
in
r;'
so
term for which is "dark precur
le,
sib
vi
in
an
by
ed
ed
ec
pr
e
ar
ey
th
t
bu
,
es
iti
ns
te
in
nt
re
ffe
di
derbolts explode between
in
th
pa
r
ei
th
es
in
rm
te
de
ch
hi
,
w
e)
br
m
so
r
eu
rs
cu
re
imperceptible dark precursor (p
,
e
th
is
r
so
ur
ec
pr
rk
da
e
th
,
ch
su
s
A
g
d:
te
ia
gl
advance, but in reverse, as though inta
signifier of a meta- difference:
r
so
ur
ec
pr
e
th
,
es
nc
re
ffe
di
of
s
rie
se
o
tw
s,
Given two heterogeneous serie
by
.
r,
ne
an
m
is
th
In
es
nc
re
ffe
di
e
es
th
of
r
to
ia
nt
re
plays the part of the diffe
r:
he
ot
an
e
on
to
n
tio
la
re
te
ia
ed
m
im
to
in
em
virtue of its own power, it puts th
,
ds
or
w
r
he
ot
in
"
nt
re
ffe
di
tly
en
er
iff
"d
e
th
or
e
it is the in -itself of differenc
to
nt
re
ffe
di
s
te
la
re
ch
hi
w
nt
re
ffe
di
lfse
e
th
difference in the second degree,
s
vi
es
m
co
be
d
an
le
sib
vi
in
is
es
ac
tr
it
th
pa
e
th
e
different by itself. Becaus
e
th
by
d
re
ve
co
d
an
er
ov
d
ele
av
tr
is
it
at
th
ible only in reverse, to the extent
at
th
an
th
r
he
ot
e
ac
pl
no
s
ha
it
,
m
ste
sy
e
th
in
ith
phenomenon it induces w
is
it
s:
ck
la
it
ch
hi
w
at
th
an
th
r
he
ot
y
tit
en
from which it is "missing;' no id
its
s
ck
la
it
as
e"
ac
pl
its
in
ng
ki
ac
"l
is
ch
hi
w
e
on
e
precisely the object x, th
own identity.9
In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze develops this concept through a direct reference to
the Lacanian notion of "pure signifier": there has to be a short -circuit between the
.two series, that of the signifier and that of the signified, in order for the effect-of
sense to take place. This short-circuit is what Lacan calls the "quilting point;' the
direct inscription of the signifier into the order of the signified in the guise of an
"empty" signifier without signified. This signifier represents the (signifying) cause
within the order of its effects, thus subverting the (mis)perceived "natural" order
within which the signifier appears as the effect/expression of the signified.
And, effectively, the relationship of Deleuze to the field generally designated as
that of "structuralism" is much more ambiguous than it may appear. Not only is the
key notion of "dark precursor" in The Logic of Sense directly developed in Lacanian
structuralist terms; at the same time, Deleuze wrote "A quoi reconnait-on Ie structu
ralisme?" a brief, concise, and sympathetic account which, precisely, presents struc
turalism not as the thought of fixed transcendent Structures regulating the flux of

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze

experiences, but as deploying a consistent theory of the ro


le of nonsense as the gen
erator of the flux of sense.lO Furthermore, Deleuze here
explicitly refers to (and de
velops in detail) the Lacanian identification of this signi
fier as phallus." How, then,
are we to read his later obvious "hardening" of the stan
ce towards "structuralism?"
Why is the very Lacanian reference of the "dark precur
sor" reduced to the status of
a "drk p:,ecursor" in the later Deleuze's thought, turn
ed into a kind of "vanishing
medIator whose traces are to be erased in the finished
result?
Perhaps it is all too hasty to dismiss Deleuze's endors
ement of "structuralism"
as a feature belonging to an epoch when he was not
yet fully aware of all the con
sequences of his basic position (thus, the "hardeni
ng" would be conceived of as
a necessary radicalization). What if this hardenin
g is, on the contrary, a sign of
"regression;' of a false "line of flight;' a false way ou
t of a certain deadlock which
resolves it by sacrificing its complexity? This, perh
aps, is why Deleuze experienced
his collaboration with Guattari as such a "relief"
: the fluidity of his texts co-writ
ten with Guattari, the sense that now, finally, thin
gs run smoothly, is effectively a
fake relief-it signals that the burden of thinking w
as successfully avoided. The true
enigma is hence: why does Deleuze succumb to th
is strange urge to "demonize"
structuralism, disavowing his own roots in it (o n
account of which one can effec
tively claim that Deleuze's attack on "structuralis
m" is enacted on behalf of what
he got from structuralism, that it is strictly inhere
nt to structuralism )? Again, why
must h e deny this link?
Is the Fruian Oedipus complex (especially in
terms of its Lacanian interpre
.tIve appropnatIOn)
not the exact opposite of the reduction of the mul
titude of social
intensities onto the mother-father-and-me matrix:
the matrix of the exploSive open
ing up of the subject onto the social space?
Undergoing "symbolic castration" is a
way for the subject to be thrown out of the family
network, propelled into a wider
social network Oedip us the operator of deterrito
rialization. However, what about
the fct that, nonetheless, Oedipus "focuses" the
initial "polymorphous perversity"
of dnvs nto the mother-father-and-me coordina
tes? More precisely, is "symbolic
castratIOn not also the name for a process by
means of which the child-subject
enters the order of sense proper, of the abstractio
n of sense, gaining the capacity to
abstract a quality from its embeddedness in a bo
dily Whole, to conceive of it as a
p ecing no longer attributed to a certain substance-as Deleuze wou
ld have put it,
red n o longer stands for the predicate of the red
thing, but for the pure flow of be
coming-red? So, far from tying us down to our bo
dily reality, "symbolic castration"
sustains our very ability to "transcend" this reality
and enter the space of immaterial
Becoming. Does the autonomous smile which su
rvives on its own when the cat's
bo dy disappears in Alice in Wonderland also not
stand for an organ "castrated;' cut
off from the body? What if, then, phallus itself, as
the signifier of castration, stands
for such an organ without a body?
Is this not a further argument for the claim th
at Deleuze's quasi- cause is his
name for the Lacanian "phallic signifier?" Recal
l how, according to Deleuze, the
quasi-cause "extracts Singularities from the presen
t, and from individuals and per
sons which occupy this present;'12 and, in the sam
e movement, provides them with
their relative autonomy with regard to the intens
ive processes as their real causes,
-

Slavoj Zitek

65

and
sterile
effects
with
their
morphogenetic
impassive
power-is
these
ing
oW
d
en
.
" fier IS
'
,
"
b
not
exactly
that
sym
IC
castratIon
w
l'
movement
of
0
"
(
h
ose
slgm
double
thiS
.
.
.
.
" 1e, orpod
ff
,
f
the
impasslve-stenle
Event
IS
cut
0
,
extracte
ro
ItS
Vlfl
First,

s)?
h allu
P aI , causal base (if "castration" means anything at all, it means thiS). Then, thIS flow
re
.
is
constituted
as
an
autonom
us
fi
e
ld
of
ItS
own, te autonmy 0f the
Event

o f Sen se.
,lI1COrp oreal symbolic order with regard to ItS corporeal embodIments. Symbolic
castration;' as the elementary operation of the quasi-cause, is thus a profoundly
.
' "If we
since
it
answers
the
basic
need
of
concept,
any
matena
I'1St analYSls:
erialist
mat
are to get rid of essentialist and typological thought we need some process through
which virtual multiplicities are derived from the actual world and some process
through which the results of this derivation may be given enough coherence and
autonomy.
The problem, of course, is the following one: the minimal actualization is hre
onceived as the actualization of the virtual, after its extraction from the precedmg
ctual. Is, then, every actual the result of the actualization of the preceding virtual
(so that the same goes for the actual out of whic the actualized virual was ex
.
tracted), or is there an actual which precedes the virtual, smce
every Virtual has to
be extracted from some actual? Perhaps the way out of this predicament-is the
virtual extracted from the actual as its impassive-sterile effect, or is it the productive
process which generates the actual?-is the ultimate, absolute idetity of the two
operations, an identity hinted at by Deleuze himself when e descnbed the opera
. l) and,
tion of the "pseudo-cause" as that of virtualization (extractIOn of the vlrtu
simultaneously, minimal actualization (the pseudo-cause confers on the Virtual a
. what
minimum of ontological consistency). What if, as we know from Schellmg,
makes from the field of potentialities an actual reality is not the addition of some
raw reality (of matter), but, rather, the addition of pure ideali (of loos)? Kant
himself was already aware of this paradox: the confused field of ImpressIOns turns
into reality when supplemented by the transcendental Idea. What this fundamn
.
tal lesson of transcendental idealism means is that virtualization and actualization
are two sides of the same coin: actuality constitutes itself when a virtual (symbolic)
supplement is added to the pre-ontological real. n othe words, te very extractin of
,
the virtual from the real ("symbolic castration ) constItutes reality- actual reality IS
"13

the real filtered through the virtual.

,
,ItS task
. The function of the quasi -cause is therefore inherently contradICtory:
is, at one and the same time, to perform a push towards actualization (endowing
multiplicities with a minimum of actuality) and to counte: actualizaion by way of
extracting virtual events from the corporeal processes whICh are ther causes. One
should conceive of these two aspects as identical: the properly Hegelian paradox at
work here is that the only way for a virtual state to actualize itself is to be supe
mented by another virtual feature. (Again, recall Kant: how is a confused multiplic
ity of subjective sensations transformed into "obj ctive" reality? It happn hen te
,
subjective function of transcendental synthesis IS added to thiS multII JClty.) IS
is the "phallic" dimension at its most elementary: the excess of the virtual which
sustains actualization. And, this reference to the phallic signifier also enables us
to answer one of the standard reproaches to the Lacanian notions of phallus and

66

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze

castration: the idea that they involve a kind of ahistorical short -circuit, that is to say,
the complaint that they directly link the limitation serving as a condition of human
existence as such to a particular threat (that of castration) which relies on a specific
patriarchal gender constellation. The next move is, then, usually the one of trying
to get rid of the notion of castration-this "ridiculous" Freudian claim-by way
of claiming that the threat of castration is, at its best, just a local expression of the
global limitation of the human condition, which is that of human finitude, experi
enced in a whole series of constraints (the existence of other people who limit our
freedom, our mortality, and, also, the necessity to "choose one's sex"). Such a move
from castration to an anxiety grounded in the very finitude of the human condition
is, of course, the standard existential-philosophical move of "saving" Freud by way
of getting rid of the embarrassing topic of castration and penis envy ("who can take
this seriously today?"). Psychoanalysis is thus redeemed, magically transformed
into a respectable academic discipline that deals with how suffering human subjects
cope with the anxieties of finitude. The (in)famous advice given to Freud by Jung
when their boat approached the coast of the U.S. in 1912 (that Freud should leave
out or at least limit the accent on sexuality, in order to render psychoanalysis more
acceptable to the American medical establishment) is resuscitated here.
Why is it not sufficient to emphasize how "castration" is just a particular instance
of the general limitation of the human condition? Or, to put it in a slightly differ
ent way, how should one cut off the link between the universal symbolic structure
and the particular corporeal economy? The old reproach against Lacan is that he
conflates two levels, the allegedly neutral-universal-formal symbolic structure and
the particular-gendered-bodily references; say, he emphasizes that the phallus is not
the penis as an organ, but a signifier, even a "pure" signifier-so, why then call this
"pure" signifier "phallus?" As it was clear to Deleuze (and not only to Lacan), the
notion of castration answers a very specific question: how does the universal sym
bolic process detach itself from its corporeal roots? How does it emerge in its relative
autonomy? "Castration" designates the violent bodily cut which enables us to enter
the domain of the incorporeal. And, the same goes for the topic of finitude: "castra
tion" is not simply one of the local cases of the experience of finitude- this concept
tries to answer a more fundamental "arche-transcendental" question, namely, how
do we, humans, experience ourselves as marked byfinitude in thefirst place? This fact
is not self-evident: Heidegger was right to emphasize that only humans exist in the
mode of "being-towards-death." Of course, animals are also somehow "aware" of
their limitation, of their limited power, etc.-the hare does try to escape the fox. And
yet, this is not the same as human finitude, which emerges against the background
of the small child's narcissistic attitude of illusory omnipotence (of course, we do in
deed say that, in order to become mature, we have to accept our limitations) . What
lurks behind this narcissistic attitude is, however, the Freudian death drive, a kind
of "undead" stubbornness denounced already by Kant as a violent excess absent in
animals-which is why, for Kant, only humans need education through discipline.
The symbolic Law does not tame and regulate nature, but, precisely, applies itself to
an unnatural excess. Or, to approach the same complex from another direction: at
its most radical, the helplessness of the small child about which Freud speaks is not

Slavoj Zizek

hysical helplessness, the inability o provide for one's need , bt a hlplessness in


h e face of the enigma of the Other s desire., the. elpless fascmatlO lth the ecess
of the Other's enjoyment, and the ensuing mabIhty to account for It m the avaIlable
terms of meaning.
When Roman Jakobson wrote on phonemes and the bodily grounding of lanfree
the
and
res
gestu
died
een
embo
betw
gap
al
cruci
the
on
ed
focus
he
,
ge
gua
.
.
.
11
n
s "astratlOn."
ca
Laca
what
gap
IS
S
-thI
emes
phon
of
ork
netw
olic
symb
ing
float
Jakobson's crucial point is that it is only the signifier, not meaning, WhIC can do
this job of deterritorialization: meaning tends to revert to our concrete hfe-world
embeddedness (the premodern anthropomorphic mirroring of interior and exte
rior is the attitude of meaning par excellence .) So, the phallus, far from signaling the
rootedness of the symbolic in our bodily experience (its territorializatio n), is the
"pure signifier" and, as such, the very agent of de-territoriliztion. ere, Jakbson
introduces the key dialectical notion of secondary groundmg m bodIly expenence:
yes, our language shows overall traces of this embodiment (the word "locomotive"
resembles the profile of an old steam locomotive; the word "front" is formed in the
front of our oral cavity, and the word "back" in the back of it-and so on and so
forth). However, all of these are reterritorializations against the background of the
fundamental cut which is the condition of meaning.'4 This is why the anthropomor
phic model of mirroring between language and the human body, the reference to
the body as a fundamental frame of reference for our understanding, is to e aba
doned-language is "inhuman:' (The process thus has three phases: (1) pnmordial
territorialization as the "assemblage of bodies" -an organism marks its surround
ings, its exchanges with it, in a texture of affective inscriptions, tattoos, etc.; (2) de
territorialization-passage to the immaterial, virtual production of sense-marks
are freed from their origins (enunciator, reference); (3) reterritorialization-when
language turns into a medium of communication, pinned down to its subject of
enunciation whose thoughts it expresses, to the reality it designates.)
So, what is symbolic castration, with the phallus as its signifier? One should
begin by conceiving of the phallus as a signifi r-which means ,;;hat? Frm}he tra
ditional rituals of investiture, we know the objects that not only symbohze power,
but put the subject who acquires them into the position of effectivey exercisig
power-if a king holds in his hands the scepter and wears the crown, hIS words WIll
be taken as the words of a king. Such insignia are external, not part of my nature: I
don them; I wear them in order to exert power. As such, they "castrate" me: they in
troduce a gap between what I immediately am and the function that I exercise (i.e.,
I am never fully at the level of my function). This is what the infamous "symbolic
castration" means: not "castration as symbolic, as just symbolically enacted" (in the
sense in which we say that, when I am deprived of something, I am "symbolically
castrated"), but the castration which occurs by the very fact of me being caught in
the symbolic order, assuming a symbolic mandate. Castration is the very gap b
tween what I immediately am and the symbolic mandate which confers on me thIs
"authority. " In this precise sense, far from being the opposite of power, it i synony
mous with power; it is that which confers power on me. And, one has to thmk of the
phallus not as the organ which immediately expresses the vital force of my being,

68

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze

my virility, etc., but, precisely, as such an insignia, as a mask which I put on in the
same way a king or judge puts on his insignia-phallus is an "organ without a body"
which I put on, which gets attached to my body, without ever becoming its "organic
part;' namely, forever sticking out as its incoherent, excessive supplement.15 And,
consequently, does the mysterious reappearance of the notion of "wound" in late
Deleuze not function as a kind of "return of the (Lacanian) repressed"? "A wound is
incarnated or actualized in a state of things or of life; but it is itself a pure virtuality
on the plane of immanence that leads us into a life. My wound existed before me:
not a transcendence of the wound as higher actuality, but its immanence as a virtu
ality always within a milieu (plane or field):'16 "My wound existed before me" -i.e.,
the very "event" of my existence is grounded in symbolic castration. One should
therefore problematize the very basic duality of Deleuze's thought, that of Becom
ing versus Being, which appears in different versions (the Nomadic versus the State,
the molecular versus the molar, the schizo versus the paranoiac, etc.). This duality
is ultimately overdetermined as "the Good versus the Bad": the aim of Deleuze is to
liberate the immanent force of Becoming from its self-enslavement to the order of
Being. Perhaps the first step in this problematizing is to confront this duality with
the duality of Being and Event, emphasizing their ultimate incompatibility: Event
cannot be simply identified with the virtual field of Becoming which generates the
order of Being-quite the contrary, in The Logic of Sense, Event is emphatically as
serted as "sterile;' capable only of pseudo-causality. So, what if, at the level of Being,
we have the irreducible multitude of interacting particularities, and it is the Event
which acts as the elementary form of totalization/unification?
Deleuze's remobilization of the old humanist-idealist topic of regressing from
the "reified" result to its process of production is telltale here. Is Deleuze's oscilla
tion between the two models (becoming as the impassive effect; becoming as the
generative process) not homologous to the oscillation, in the Marxist tradition, be
tween the two models of "reification?" First, there is the model according to which
reification/fetishization misperceives properties belonging to an object insofar as
this object is part of a socio-symbolic link, as its immediate "natural" properties (as
if products are "in themselves" commodities); then, there is the more radical young
Lukacs (et al.) notion according to which "objective" reality as such is something "rei
fled," a fetishized outcome of some concealed subjective process ofproduction. So, in
exact parallel to Deleuze, at the first level, we should not confuse an object's social
properties with its immediate natural properties (in the case of a commodity, its
exchange-value with its material properties that satisfy our needs). In the same way,
we should not perceive (or reduce) an immaterial virtual affect linked to a bodily
cause to one of the body's material properties. Then, at the second level, we should
conceive objective reality itself as the result of the social productive process-in
the same way that, for Deleuze, actual being is the result of the virtual process of
becoming.
Is this opposition of the virtual as the site of productive Becoming and the vir
tual as the site of the sterile Sense-Event not, at the same time, the opposition of the
"body without organs" (BwO) and "organs without body" (OwB)? Is, on the one
hand, the productive flux of pure Becoming not the BwO, the body not yet struc-

Slavoj Ziiek

69

tured or determined as functional organs? And, on the other hand, is the OwB not
from its embeddedness in a body, like the
the VI'rtuality of the pure affect extracted
.
,
.
that
persists
alone,
even
when
the
in
Wonderland
Cheshire cat s body
Alice
in
lile
sl1
longer present?: "'All right; said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
e inning with the end of the taili and eding with the grin, ,:"hich remi ed some
thought
. e after the rest of it had gone. Well! I ve often seen a cat WIthout a gnn,
tIm
.
' I ever saw m my Ie
ue.1 m
Alice ; , but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thmg
This notion of an extracted OwB reemerges forcefully in Cinema 2: The Time-Image,
in the guise of the gaze itself as such an autonomous organ no longer attached to a
body.17 These two logics (Event as the power wich generates .re.ality; Event as te
sterile, pure effect of bodily interactions) also mvolve two prlVlleged psychologi
cal stances: the generative Event of Becoming relies on the productive force of the
"schizo;' this explosion of the unified subject in the impersonal multitude of desir
ing intensities, intensities that are subsequently constrained by the Oeipal matrix;
the Event as sterile, immaterial effect relies on the figure of the masochIst who finds
satisfaction in the tedious, repetitive game of staged rituals whose function is to
postpone forever the sexual passage a l'acte. Can one effectively imagin a s.tronger
contrast than that of the schizo throwing himself without any reservatIOn mto the
flux of multiple passions, and of the masochist clinging to the theater of shadows in
which his meticulously staged performances repeat again and again the same sterile
gesture?
.
.
The philosophical background of this tension in Deleuze provIdes a CruCial key
here. When, in The Logic of Sense, Deleuze deploys the two geneses, transcendental
and real, does he not thereby follow in the steps of Fichte and Schelling? Fichte:s
starting point is that one can practice philosophy in two basic ways, idelist and Sp
nozan: one either starts from objective reality and tries to develop from It the genesIs
of free subjectivity, or one starts from the pure spontaneity of the asolute SU.b! ect
.
and tries to develop the entirety of reality as the result of the Subjects self-posItmg.
The early Schelling of the System of Transcendental Idealism goes a step furthe: by
claiming that, in this alternative, we are not dealing with a choice: te t,,:o optIOns
are complementary, not exclusive. Absolute idealism, its claim of the IdentIty of Sub
ject and Object (Spirit and Nature), can be demonstrated in two was: one either
develops Nature out of Spirit (transcendental idealism, a la Kant and FIChte), or one
develops the gradual emergence of Spirit out of the immanent movement of Nature
(Schelling's own Naturphilosophie). However, what about the crucial new dvance
achieved by Schelling in his Weltalter fragments, where he introduces a thIrd term
into this alternative, namely, that of the genesis of Spirit (logos) not out of nature
as such-as a constituted realm of natural reality-but out of the nature offin God
himself as that which is "in God himself not yet God;' the abyss of the pre-ontologi
cal Real in God, the blind rotary movement of "irrational" passions? As Schelling
makes clear, this realm is not yet ontological, but, in a sense, more "spiritual" than
natural reality: a shadowy realm of obscene ghosts which return again and again as
"living dead" because they failed to actualize themselves in full realit!.18 To risk an
anachronistic parallel, is this genesis, the pre-history of what went on m God befre
he fully became God (the divine logos), not effectively close to the quantum physICS

70

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze

notion of the state of virtual quantum oscillation preceding constituted reality?


And, effectively, what about the results of quantum physics? What if matter is
just a reified wave oscillation? What if, instead of conceiving waves as oscillations
between elements, elements are just knots, contact points, between different waves
and their oscillations? Does this not give some kind of scientific credibility to De
leuze's "idealist" project of generating bodily reality from virtual intensities? There is
a way to conceptualize the emergence of Something out of Nothing in a materialist
way: when we succeed in conceiving this emergence not as a mysterious excess, but
as a release-a loss-of energy. Does the so-called "Higgs field" in contemporary
physics not point precisely in this direction? Generally, when we take something
away from a given system, we lower its energy. However, the hypothesis is that there
is some substance, a "something;' that we cannot take away from a given system
without raising that system's energy: when the "Higgs field" appears in an empty
space, its energy is lowered further.'9 Does the biological insight that living systems
are perhaps best characterized as systems that dynamically avoid attractors (i.e., that
the processes of life are being maintained at or near phase transitions) not point in
the same direction, which is towards the Freudian death drive in its radical opposi
tion to any notion of the tendency of all life towards nirvana? Death drive means
precisely that the most radical tendency of a living organism is to maintain a state
of tension, to avoid final "relaxation" in obtaining a state of full homeostasis. "Death
drive" as "beyond the pleasure principle" is this very insistence of an organism on
endlessly repeating the state of tension.
One should thus get rid of the fear that, once we ascertain that reality is the in
finitely divisible, substanceless void within a void, "matter will disappear:' What the
digital informational revolution, the biogenetic revolution, and the quantum revo
lution in physics all share is that they mark the reemergence of what, for want of a
better term, one is tempted to call a post-metaphysical idealism. It is as if Chesterton's
insight into how the materialist struggle for the full assertion of reality, against its
subordination to any "higher" metaphysical order, culminates in the loss of reality
itself: what began as the assertion of material reality ended up as the realm of pure
formulas of quantum physics. Is, however, this really a form of idealism? Since the
radical materialist stance asserts that there is no World, that the World in its Whole
is Nothing, materialism has nothing to do with the presence of damp, dense mat
ter-its proper figures are, rather, constellations in which matter seems to "disap
pear;' like the pure oscillations of the superstrings or quantum-vibrations. On the
contrary, if we see in raw, inert matter more than an imaginary screen, we always
secretly endorse some kind of spiritualism, as in Tarkovsky's Solaris, in which the
dense plastic matter of the planet directly embodies Mind. This "spectral material
ism" has three different forms: in the informational revolution, matter is reduced to
the medium of purely digitalized information; in biogenetics, the biological body is
reduced to the medium of the reproduction of the genetic code; in quantum phys
ics, reality itself, the density of matter, is reduced to the collapse of the virtuality of
wave oscillations (or, in the general theory of relativity, matter is reduced to an effect
of space's curvature). Here we encounter another crucial aspect of the opposition
idealism/materialism: materialism is not the assertion of inert material density in

Slavoj Zitek

71

its h umid heaviness-such a "materialism" can always serve as a support for gnostic
spiritualist obscurantism. In contrast to it, a true materialism joyously assumes the
"disappearance of matter;' the fact that there is only void.
With biogenetics, the Nietzschean program of the emphatic and ecstatic asser
tion of the body is thus over. Far from serving as the ultimate reference, the body
los es its mysterious impenetrable density and turns into something technologically
manageable, something we can generate and transform through intervening into its
genetic formula-in short, something the "truth" of which is tis abstra t g eic
formula. And, it is crucial to conceive the two apparently opposite " reductions diS
cernible in today's science (the "materialist" reduction of our experience to neuronal
processes in neurosciences, and the virtualization of reality itself in quantum phys
ics) as two sides of the same coin, as two reductions to the same third level. The old
Popperian idea of the "Third World" is here brought to its extreme: what we get at
the end is neither the "objective" materiality nor the "subjective" experience, but the
reduction of both to the scientific Real of mathematized "immaterial" processes.
The issue of materialism versus idealism thus gets more complex. If we accept
the claim of quantum physics that the reality we experience as constituted emerg
es out of a preceding field of virtual intensities which are, in a way, "immaterial"
(quantum oscillations), then embodied reality is the result of the "actualization" of
pure event-like virtualities. What if, then, there is a double movement here?: first,
positive reality itself is constituted through the actualization of the virtual field of
"immaterial" potentialities; then, in a second move, the emergence of thought and
sense signals the moment when the constituted reality, as it were, reconnects with
its virtual genesis. Was Schelling not already pursuing something similar when he
claimed that, in the explosion of consciousness, of human thought, the primordial
abyss ofpure potentiality explodes, acquires existence, in the middle of created posi
tive reality-man is the unique creature which is directly (re)connected with the
primordial abyss out of which all things emerged ?20 Perhaps Roger Penrose is right:
1
2
there is a link between quantum oscillations and human thought.
So, what if we conceive of Deleuze's opposition of the intermixing of material
bodies and the immaterial effect of sense along the lines of the Marxist opposition
of infrastructure and superstructure? Is not the flow of Becoming superstructure
par excellence-the sterile theater of shadows ontologically cut off from the site of
material production, and precisely as such the only possible space of the Event? In
his ironic comments on the French Revolution, Marx opposes the revolutionary
enthusiasm to the sobering effect of the "morning after": the actual result of the sub
lime revolutionary explosion, of the Event of freedom, equality, and brotherhood,
is the miserable utilitarian/egotistic universe of market calculations. (And, inciden
tally, is not this gap even wider in the case of the October Revolution?) However,
one should not simplify Marx: his point is not the rather commonsensical insight
into how the vulgar reality of commerce is the "truth" of the theater of revolutionary
enthusiasm, "what all the fuss really was about:' In the revolutionary explosion as
an Event, another utopian dimension shines through, the dimension of universal
emancipation which, precisely, is the excess betrayed by the market reality which
takes over "the day after" -as such, this excess is not simply abolished, dismissed as

72

Slavoj Zizek

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze

irrelevant, but, as it were, transposed into the virtual state, continuing to haunt the

emancipatory imaginary as a dream waiting to be realized. The excess of revolution


ary enthusiasm over its own "actual social base" or substance is thus literally that
of an attribute-effect over its own substantial cause, a ghost-like Event waiting for
its proper embodiment. It was none other than G. K. Chesterton who, apropos of
his critique of aristocracy, provided the most succinct Leftist egalitarian rebuttal of
those who, under the guise of respect for traditions, endorse existing injustice and
inequalities: "Aristocracy is not an institution: aristocracy is a sin; generally a very
venial one:'22
Here, we can discern in what precise sense Deleuze wants to be a materialist
one is almost tempted to put it in classic Stalinist terms: in opposition to the me
chanical materialism which simply reduces the flow of sense to its material causes,
dialectical materialism is able to think this flow in its relative autonomy. That is to
say, the whole point of Deleuze is that, although sense is an impassive sterile effect
of material causes, it does have an autonomy and efficiency of its own. Yes, the flow
of sense is a theater of shadows, but this does not mean that we should neglect it and
focus on "real struggle" -in a way, this very theater of shadows is the crucial site of
the struggle; everything is ultimately decided here.
William Hasker perspicuously drew attention to the strange fact that critics of
reductionism are very reluctant to admit that the arguments against radical reduc
tionism are false: "Why are so many non-eliminativists strongly resistant to the idea
that eliminativism has been conclusively refuted?"23 Their resistance betrays a fear
of the prospect that, if their position fails, they will need reductionism as the last
resort. So, although they consider eliminativism false, they nonetheless strangely
hold onto it as a kind of reserve ("fall-back") position, thereby betraying a secret
disbelief in their own non-reductionist materialist account of consciousness-this
being a nice example of a disavowed theoretical position, of the fetishist split in
theory. (Is their position not homologous to that of enlightened rational theologians
who nonetheless secretly want to keep open the more "fundamentalist" theological
position they constantly criticize? And, do we not encounter a similar split attitude
in those Leftists who condemn the suicide-bomber attacks on the Israelis, but not
wholeheartedly, with an inner reservation-as if, if "democratic" politics fails, one
should nonetheless leave the door open for the "terrorist" option?) Here, one should
return to Badiou and Deleuze, since they really and thoroughly reject reductionism:
the assertion of the "autonomy" of the level of Sense-Event is for them not a com
promise with idealism, but a necessary thesis of a true materialism.
And, what is crucial is that this tension between the two ontologies in Deleuze
clearly translates into two different political logics and practices. The ontology of
productive Becoming clearly leads to the Leftist topic of the self-organization of the
multitude of molecular groups which resist and undermine the molar, totalizing
systems of power-the old notion of the spontaneous, non-hierarchical, living mul
titude opposing the oppressive, reified System, the exemplary case of Leftist radical
ism linked to philosophical idealist subjectivism. The problem is that this is the only
model of the politicization of Deleuze's thought available: the other ontology, that
of the sterility of the Sense-Event, appears "apolitical:' However, what if this other

73

uze
ch
Dele
whi
,
of
own
its
of
tice
prac
and
c
logi
tical
poli
a
lves
invo
also
ogy
ontol
1915 when, in
in
in
Len
like
eed
proc
,
then
not,
we
uld
Sho
e?
war
una
was
elf
hims
el-not to his di
Heg
to
rned
retu
,
he
tice
prac
nary
lutio
revo
w
ane
nd
grou
to
der
or
e
ther
,
e
way
sam
in
the
if,
at
Wh
ic?
Log
his
,
to
arily
prim
but,
,
ings
writ
tical
poli
y
rectl
n
ctio
dire
in
this
st
r
hint
fi
The
?
here
ed
over
disc
be
to
tics
poli
n
uzia
Dele
r
othe
an
is
l
orea
le
corp
coup
the
een
betw
llel
para
oned
enti
dy-m
alrea
the
by
ided
prov
be
may
re/s u
uctu
astr
infr
ple
cou
t
rxis
Ma
old
the
and
g
min
of
beco
flow
ial
ater
imm
ses/
cau
of
lity
dua
le
ucib
irred
the
both
unt
acco
into
take
ld
wou
tics
a
poli
such
re:
uctu
perstr
"obj ective" material/socio-economic processes taking place in reality as well as the
ain
dom
the
if
at
Wh
er.
prop
c
logi
tical
poli
the
of
nts,
Eve
nary
lutio
revo
of
sion
xplo
e
of politics is inherently "sterile;' the domain of pseudo-causes, a theatre of shadows,
but nonetheless crucial in transforming reality?

Translated into English as Masochism: An Interpretation of Coldness and Cruelty by Jean


McNeil (New York: G. Braziller, 1971).-Ed.

Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (New York: Continuum,
2002) , 107-8.

Ibid., 102.

Ibid., 73-

Ibid., 74.

Ibid., 75.

7
8

See Jerry Aline Flieger, "Overdetermined Oedipus;' in A Deleuzian Century?, ed. Ian Bu
chanan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999 ).
Gilles Deleuze, Difef rence and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 ),
119

Ibid., 119-20.

10 Gilles Deleuze, "A quoi reconnait-on Ie structuralisme?;' in Franois Chatelet, ed., Histoire
de la philosophie, tome 8: Le XXeme siecle (Paris: Hachette, 1972), 299-335 (written in
1967); English translation, "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?;' published as an ap
pendix to Charles J. Stivale, The Two-Fold Thought of Deleuze and Guattari (New York:
The Guilford Press, 1998), 258-82. And one is tempted to claim that Deleuze's turn against
Hegel is, in a homologous way, a turn against his own origins-recall one of Deleuze's ear
ly texts, his deeply sympathetic review of Hyppolite's reading of Hegel's Logic, reprinted in
Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 191-95.

11

See Deleuze, "Structuralism;' 277-78. For a more detailed account of the link between
"dark precursor" and phallus, see Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 227-30.

12 The Logic of Sense, 166.


13 DeLanda, op. cit., 115
14 See Roman Jakobson, On Language (Cambridge: Belknap, 1995).
15 From the strict Lacanian perspective, objet petit a and the phallic signifier are, of course,
not identical-but the elaboration of this distinction would take us too far here.
16 Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life (New York: Zone Books, 2001), 31-32.
For this reference to the notion of wound in Deleuze, as well as for many other precious

74

The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze


suggestions, I am deeply indebted to the perspicuous commentary to my text
by Marta
Hernandez Salvan and Juan Carlos Rodriguez.

The Flux and the Party:


In the Margins of Anti-Oedipus

17 One of the metaphors for the way mind relates to body, that of a magnetic field,
seems to
point in the same direction: "as a magnet generates its magneticfield, so the bra
in generates
its field of consciousness:'(William Hasker, The Emergent Self [ Ithaca: Cornell
University
Press, 199 9], 190 .) The field thus has a logic and consistency of its own,
although it can

Alain Badiou

persist only as long as its corporeal ground is here. Does this mean
that mind cannot
survive the body's disintegration? Even here, another analogy from physics
leaves the gate
partially open: when Roger Penrose claims that, after a body collapses
into a black hole,
one can conceive the black hole as a kind of self-sustaining gravitation
al field-so even
within physics, one considers the possibility that a field generated
by a material object
could persist in the object's absence. (See Hasker, 232 .)
18 See F. W. J. Schelling, The Ages of the World (Albany: SUNY Press, 200

0).

19 For a more detailed reference to the "Higgs field:' see Chapter 3 of Slavoj
Ziiek, The Pup
pet and the Dwarf (Cambridge: MI T Press, 200 3). For a popular scientific
explanation, see
Gordon Kane, Supersymmetry (Cambridge: Helix Books, 200 1).
20 See Schelling, op. cit.
21 See Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
22 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 127.
23 Hasker, op. cit., 24.

So tempting to give a warm round of applause. Yes, yes! Read


on: "It is a question of knowing how a revolutionary potential
is realized, in its very relationship with the exploited masses
or the 'weakest links' of a given system. Do these masses or
these links act in their own place, within the order of causes
and ends that promote a new socius, or are they on the con
trary the place and the agent of a sudden and unexpected
irruption?'" Could Deleuze and Guattari be dialecticians?
The revolutionary dialectic as theory of discontinuities and
of scissions, as logic of catastrophes-that's it, after all: the
order of causes assigns no place where a rupture could take
hold. No quantitative cumulation incorporates a new quality,
or counts the latter's limit among its number of terms, even
though quality is, necessarily, produced as the limit.
True, the revolutionary crisis is an irruption oflarge mass
es into history.2 The revolution is "a sharp turn in the lives of
vast popular masses:'3 Deleuze-Guattari echo this here, with
a touch of pedantry and vain Latinisms that stick to the soles
of these nomads weighed under their baggage ("promoting a
new socius;' you call that cute?).
Any Marxist-Leninist -Maoist learns in school (cadre
school,4 of course) that the Parisian workers, the soviet peo
ple, the Hunan farmers, and the young workers of Sud-Avia
tion in May ' 685 one day rose in revolt; and he knows better
than anyone that whoever pretends having read, in his men
tal horoscope, the good news in its precise sequence, merely
wants to justify by this lie, after the fact, his personal defeat in
the heat of the moment.
Marxists-Leninists precisely base their particular energy
and unvarying persistence on two facts:
"Where there is oppression, there is revolt:' But it
is the revolt that, at its own hour, passes judgment
on the fate of the oppression, not the other way
around.

Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

76

The Flux and the Party

"One has reason to revolt against reactionaries:' The popular and prole
tarian revolt is the reason of the bourgeois oppression, it is what gives
reason, it is our reason.6
True class revolt, in essence, surprises. It is a war by surprise, the generic brutality
of scission. How could the established rule of the old (including the revolutionary
old) put up with a deduction of what tends to break it asunder? How many people
have we not seen enraptured by the fact that "no one could have foreseen May '68"!
I even suspect that the ascent of the anti-Oedipus and all the fabrications about the
pure mysteries of Desire take off from this question. The question is, strictly speak
ing, stupid. Can one imagine a "foreseen" May '68? And by whom? Who does not
see that the unforeseeable constitutes the essential historical power of May '68? To
baptize this unforeseeable "irruption of desire" is about as soporific as opium.
This baptism, however, is not innocent. It stages the entrance of the irrational.
Unforeseeable, desiring, irrational: follow your drift [derive], my son, and you will
make the Revolution.
It' been quite a while now since Marxist-Leninists ceased to identify the ratio
nal WIth the analytically predictable. The dialectic, the primacy of practice, means
first and foremost affirming the historical objectivity of ruptures. Masses make His
tory, not Concepts. No one can ever really know precisely how, and in which work
shop, a revolutionary (anti-union) strike began. Why Tuesday and not Thursday?
The masses' gesture closes one period and opens another. What was dividing itself
reversed its terms, the working class viewpoint takes over. A local, dialectical ra
tionality opens for itself a new space of practice. The revolt condenses one rational
tme . ad deploys the scission of another. The revolutionary process of organiza
tion IS Itself reworked, recast, penetrated and split by the primacy of practice: "The
composition of the leading [dirigeant] group . . . should not and cannot remain en
tirely unchanged throughout the initial, middle, and final stages of a great struggle:'
(Mao).7
The material objective base of everything (the revolutionary class practice) is
never quite exhausted in that to which it gives rise. Revolutionary history renounces
Hegelian circularity, imposes periodization, the uninterrupted by stages: one se
quence's rationality cannot absorb the practical rupture from which the sequence
deploys itself as such. The rupture can be thought in its dialectical generality. His
torically, it is only practiced. Concept, strategy and tactic, organization, all have the
solidity of a sequence; but behind them lies the historical new, that which founds
the sequence and which the concept within the sequence necessarily leaves outside
itself as its remainder. Masses make history-practice comes first in respect to the
ory. There is, therefore, a leftover of "pure" practice, the historical rupture as such,
which historical materialism and theory will not be able, integrally, either to deduce
or to organize any longer, because their deductions and their organizing principles
presuppose it as fact.
What remains, however, is neither the cause nor the hidden essence.8 It is not
at all unknowable: it is an infinite historical source, at least throughout a histori
cal period governed by the same principal contradiction (bourgeoisie/proletariat).9
The "remainder" is that which, in the periodizing scansion (Commune, October,

Alain Badiou

77

Cultural Revolution . . . 10) , deploys such force of rupture that the long work of rup
tures to come is needed to clarify the historical contribution of the masses, which is
what sustains and what carries forward theory and organization, in an infinite ap
proximation that is itself always split (battle of the two roads ) .11 Who doesn't see that
practice, by the Shanghai workers in 1967, of the "workers' commune" slogan returns
to the practical, historical, inexhaustibility of the Paris Commune? And at the same
time, the positive development of this slogan, in the new form of the three-in-one
revolutionary committee, carries this return forward.l2
From Paris 1871 to Shanghai 1967, revolt is the furnace [fond] , the great produc
tion of class. From a just idea dismembered to a continental rupture, everything is
there. The furnace of the class break, revolt, is without hearth and home [sans feu
ni lieu] .

The good fortune of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary has never been his
ability to predict and assign the revolt, but rather the irreparable suddenness of its
storm.'3 Whatever weapons the Marxist-Leninist has assembled for the people-of
organization, doctrine, prevision, patience, compactness of the proletariat-he will
be judged according to his capacity to have them all taken away without warning
by those who, suddenly rising up, are indeed destined to have them, but as a rule
for later.
The revolt surprises Marxists-Leninists and their organization too. It must sur
prise, by a new kind of surprise. For the Marxists-Leninists must stand precisely
where the surprise will slam right into them. The revolutionary, who profession
ally prepares himself for the mass rising, for the revolt's irruption, obviously can
never be ready enough. Only for him does the historical "not ready" have a rigorous
meaning, since what is ahead is for him alone, class struggle professional, what he
ceaselessly prepares for. But he is not ready: were he ready, how could he have left
the revolutionary potential of the proletariat, the sole asset of this preparation, in
reserve? The Marxist-Leninist, who analyzes, predicts, directs, who alone knows the
revolutionary potential at each moment, is precisely the one to ask the question of
the revolt's hour.
What is at stake, for the Marxist-Leninist organization, is not to change the "it
was for later" of its prevision, an approximating reserve of tactical composure, into
the repressive "it's too early" of the Right. Here, its identity is played out all at once.
Marx before the Commune: the Parisian proletarian uprising is bound to fail,
but I stand unconditionally by its side; its real movement instructs and reworks
through and through the theory of my (correct [juste]) prevision: the historical fail
ure, the proletarian uprising, works and displaces my prevision. It criticizes my pre
vision, even though it is correct, because it is correct.'4
Mao and the peasant revolt of 1925-1927: the peasant revolt-very good. Fun
damental. Our tactical application of the primacy of the proletariat, as urban in
surrection, must explode into pieces. The peasants in revolt teach us that it is not
the demand of the countryside, but the proletarian uprising that is premature. The
masses' violent rupture carries this rationality to come: the encirclement of cities by
the countryside.'5
The Marxist-Leninist leader [dirigeant] is the one who sunders and splits him-

78

The Flux and the Party

self, between the objective form of the rational revolutionary preparation and the
unconditional and unconditionally immediate reason of the masses' revolutionary
revolt, that which Lenin called the actual moment. May my enlightened preparation
break apart and be verified by the fire of irrefutable historical unpreparation: such is
the essence of Marxist -Leninist direction, the direction of the party!
There is no other direction but of the new. The old is managed, it is admin
istered, it is not directed.16 The revolutionary direction scrutinizes the conflicted
state of things,17 the class struggle, the clues accumulated during the proletariat's
revolution in process. From there the leadership [direction] systematizes a guiding
prevision that is both strategic and tactical. Let us take an example: since 1970, the
revolt of the 0.S.18 puts to work a dispersed program of class against capitalist hier
archy. Condensing this program as soon as possible, formulating combatant slogans
that have its originary class power, we put ourselves forward, granted. But such an
advance is but the point where a new assault wave is received and accumulates. Who
clings to it too tightly, forever stays behind: with the Renault of '73 when it is about
the Renault Of '75.19
The same goes for analytical prevision: there is a capitalist crisis today, there
will be an anti-capitalist revolt. This is Marxism. So, let's get ready: propaganda,
worker schools, popular committees on anti-capitalist direct action. But where and
on what will the masses make their violent judgment bear? This must be studied
quite closely, enumerating the practical hypotheses, half-living in the work of the
masses. Then and only then will the unexpected breach, armed with this previous
work on itself, taking along the skeletal frame of a sketched organization, carrying
its directing virtuality [virtualite dirigeante], draining and reworking the Marxist
Leninists' strategy, tear down the oppressive web as far as it can.
A correct Uuste] line is the open road to the most powerful striking force of the
proletarian irruption. The party is an instrument of knowledge and of war in an
ever-widening space of maneuver and irruption. A correct line, a vanguard organi
zation, an iron discipline, an organic relation [liaison] to the popular masses, a con
stant exercise of Marxist-Leninist analysis,20 reclaimed and unraveled and reworked
to the most minute detail, carried forward to the shadow of the trace of the new; the
bark of class struggle pressed down to its imperceptible acid; everything interpel
lated by directives: all of this-the party-is needed for the revolutionary revolt to
strike completely, past the meshes [of the situation], into the historical unicity of the
new. The directive activity of the party must be tireless, perfect, exhaustive; as the
unexpected revolt and the unicity of the revolutionary hour will demand of it that
it be split again, beyond anything it could and in fact did foresee, and, inevitably
constrained by the new of the class that casts it forward. At which point proletarian
thought filters through and gathers anew, itself establishes its kingdom, before de
stroying it again: "There is no construction without destruction" (Mao).21 To which
we add: without construction, there is no destruction - before destroying it there
where nothing can be deducted or managed any more.
Marxism-Leninism and the idea of the class party go further than the anti-dia
lectical moralism of the theoreticians of desire. Moralism, yes, and of the dullest
kind. Look at the two-column chart with which these jingly subversives would like

Alain Badiou

79

u s to conclude:
"The two poles are defined, the one by the enslavement of production and
the desiring-machines to the gregarious aggregates that they constitute on a
large scale under a given form of power or selective sovereignty, the other by
the inverse subordination and the overthrow of power; the one by these mo
lar structured aggregates that crush singularities, select them, and regularize
those that they retain in codes or axiomatics, the other by the molecular
multiplicities of singularities that on the contrary treat the large aggregates
as so many useful materials for their own elaborations; the one by the lines of
integration and territorialization that arrest the flows, constrict them, turn
them back, break them again according to the limits interior to the system,
in such a way as to produce the images that come to fill the field of imma
nence peculiar to this system or this aggregate, the other by lines of escape
that follow the decoded and deterritorialized flows, inventing their own
non-figurative breaks or schizzes that produce new flows, always breaching
the coded wall or the territorialized limit that separates them from desiring
production; and, to summarize all the preceding determinations, the one is
defined by subjugated groups, the other by subject-groups:'22
And this would be called "beyond Good and Evil" perhaps? All this cultural racket,
all this subversive arm-pumping, only to slip us, at the end, that Freedom is Good
and Necessity Evil?
Freedom, and by the way, what Freedom? "Subject-group:' Freedom as Subject.
Deleuze and Guattari don't hide this much: return to Kant, here's what they came up
with to exorcise the Hegelian ghost.
For quite a while, I wondered what was this "desire" of theirs, stuck as I was
between the sexual connotations and all the machinic, industrial brass they covered
it up for that materialist feel. Well, it's the Freedom of Kantian critique, no more,
no less. It's the unconditional: a subjective impulse that invisibly escapes the whole
sensible order of ends, the whole rational fabric of causes. It's pure, unbound, ge
neric energy, energy as such. That which is law unto itself, or absence of law. The
old freedom of autonomy, hastily repainted in the colors of what the youth in revolt
legitimately demands: some spit on the bourgeois family.
The rule of the Good, with Deleuze, is the categorical imperative upright again,
by means of an amusing substitution of the particular for the universal: always act
so that the maxim of your actions be rigorously particular. Deleuze would like to be
to Kant what Marx is to Hegel, Deleuze flips Kant upside down: the categorical im
perative, but a desiring one; the unconditional, but materialist; the autonomy of the
subject, but like a fluid flux. Sadly, turn Kant, and you will find Hume, which is the
same thing-and Deleuze's first academic crushes. Critical idealism has no obverse
and no reverse, that's even its very definition. This is the Mobius strip of philosophy.
On the toboggan of Desire, the head bobs down and up again, until it doesn't know
one side from the other, object from subject, any more. All in all, that this be the
Good or that, Evil is just a reversible matter of mood, with not much consequence:
always act so that the maxim of your action does not, strictly, concern anybody.23

80

The Flux and the Party

Marxism-Leninism thinks of otherwise forceful "schizzes;' ones that secure


themselves otherwise to the material of history. The unity of opposites, the impos
sibility to grasp the One except as the movement of its own scission; the step-by
step struggle against all figures of reconciliation (two fuse into one: the essence of
revisionism in philosophy); the refusal of all static dualisms, such as the moralism of
desire, a structuralism full of shame. Yes, this is quite different from the catechism of
the System and the Flux, the Despot and the Nomad, the Paranoiac, and the Schizo,
all that, under the colorless banner of a freedom, invisibly leaks out [coule] its sterile
other side.
It is so different that a major historical object, like a class party, completely
evades the "schizo" grip precisely since it concentrates dialectical divisions to the
extreme. The "schizos" imagine they are done with the concept of representation.
The party "represents" the working class: it is Theater, image, territorial subjection.
Obviously it must end with the Great Despot.
Bourgeois party, indeed, revised party: one facet, separately undecipherable,
of the party as one in two. This theater is a necessary threat from the inside, as the
party is itself split. Short of that, it is a cadaver. "If there were no contradictions in
the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party's life would come
to an end" (Mao).24
More than any other historical object, the party is one in two: the unity of the
pOlitical p:oject of the proletariat, of its state-project, the project of its dictatorship.
. thIS sense, yes: apparatus, hierarchy, discipline, renunciation. And so much
And In
the better. But at once, also, the historical flip side: the essential aspiration of the
masses, whose organ, whose iron hand is the party, to the non-State, to commu
nism. Which is what gives the party, as direction, all of its strategic content.
The party directs the withering of what it must direct (the State, the separation
of politics). The party's only proletarian reality is the turbulent history of its own
self-dissolution. "Concern yourself with the affairs of the State!;' says Mao to the
vast masses.25 And this is the party's word, as communist party, precisely. The State
is the serious matter, the central matter. The petit-bourgeois leftist wallows into the
mass movement and parades there with delight. But when matters turn to power,
t the Sate, when matters turn to dictatorship (because all state-power [etatique] is
dlCtatonal), see how he gets all furious, clamoring loudly of the Right to Desire. He
is even relieved: the shameful electoral rallying of all the "leftists" to the Mitterand
Marchais clique proves this, shows their appetite for bourgeois parliamentary poli
tics, this dictatorship that squashes the people, but in the end lets all the intellectuals
babble as they wish. In the end, the "leftist" political daydream is a mass movement
that proceeds straight on until it is joyfully proclaimed that the State has quietly
faded away. And since confusion belongs, invariably, to the thought of the vacillat
ing classes, it will come as no surprise that this speaks both the true and the false.
The false, for the most part: the State is the only political question. The revolu
tion is a radically new relation of the masses to the State. The State is construction. A
rupture without construction is the concrete definition of failure, and most often in
the form of a massacre: the Paris Commune, the Canton Commune, the anarchists
of Catalonia . . . .

Alain Badiou

81

The true, nonetheless: it is true that the mass movement engages in a necessary
dialectic with the State. Between the two there is no continuity, but rather unity of
opposites. If the State is a proletarian State, the contradiction can be of the non
antagonistic type.26 If it is a State of exploiters, the contradiction is antagonistic at
heart. But in either case a contradiction exists, and a severe one, in that the masses
cannot concern themselves with the affairs of the State other than by pushing the
State, brutally or organically, towards its own dilution; by pushing the great dichoto
mies of the State, city and country, agriculture and industry, manual and intellectual
labor, the military and the civilians, nation x and nation y, to pure and simple dis
appearance.27 The masses take hold of the State with the communist design [visee]
[set on] its withering away. Any other way and we can be sure that it is the State that
takes hold of the masses: bourgeois State, party infected by the bourgeoisie.
Actually, each great revolt of the working and popular masses sets them invari
ably against the State. Each revolt takes position against one power and in the name
of another, of one thought as a step toward the dilution of the state. Each extensive
revolt, across its specific contents (the school, the country, factory hierarchy), is an
anti-state proposition.
This is what puts the party through torture, while the masses' anti-state proposi
tion has no other chance, no other way out than to see its summons succeed, the
summons it addresses to the party or to that which takes the party's place. It is
here that the party (which, as apparatus, as a real historical object, nourishes its
own permanent prevision toward power, toward the State), summoned to fall into
temporary blindness by another political thought, the one that brings out the anti
state challenge [sommation] of the masses, must overcome its own fear. Here it will
always .be eager to say "it is too early:' And there is barely the time to fall over into
what has already opened up, as another sequence of political thought.
Look at "The Crisis has Matured;' this literally inspired, work of Lenin.28 The
passage from "it is too early" to "it is almost too late" solders in one block these
pages where Lenin puts his resignation from the Central Committee on the scales.
Brutally bound together, we have:
1. The unforeseeable constraint exerted by the popular uprising, accelerat
ing practically in days.
2. The rational prevision of the party, itself in turn split into:
.
a. the wait-and-see approach [attentisme] of the Central Committee
majority (it is too early)
b. the Leninist anticipation (only immediate insurrection brings the
prevision of the party on par with the violent practice of the masses;
the masses in revolt broke with the State: they summon us to direct,
to practice our proper kind of rupture-the order of insurrection
or become nothing. If we reject the insurrection, from one day to the
next we, the great Bolshevik party, become leftover riffraff).
Lenin says: there is a peasant uprising. "It is incredible, but it is a fact:'29 This objec
tive "incredible" does not surprise us, Bolsheviks, who analyze the class struggle.
Kerensky's government protects capitalists and landowners, it oppresses the peasant
masses that hoped to be liberated. But the only revolutionary question is this: will

82

The Flux and the Party

our broad theoretical prevision (our lack of astonishment) let itself be transformed,
revolutionized, by the truly incredible reality of the peasant uprising? How will the
party carry forward its correct prevision under the unforeseeable historical con
straint of the irruption of popular forces? How will it formulate, in the direction
of the vast masses, that which hits it in the face, this divided, sundered, immediate
realization of what was given in the organized calm of Marxist knowledge? To this
question, Lenin replies: immediate insurrection, whose signal, whose time, whose
urgency, are in truth fully fixed by the movement of the masses, by concrete his
tory. Meanwhile, so as not to infringe upon their necessary system of causes, ends
and deadlines, the majority in the Central Committee persist in their perpetual "it
is too early:' sheltering thus their Marxist prevision from the storm. And Lenin,
intuitively at the very heart of the popular rising, beside himself with rage, liter
ally slashes through the party, bombards it with all that history demands: " [TJhere
is a tendency, or an opinion, in our Central Committee and among the leaders of
our Party which favors waiting for the Congress of Soviets, and is opposed to tak
ing power immediately, is opposed to an immediate insurrection. That tendency, or
opinion, must be overcome.
Otherwise, the Bolsheviks will cover themselves with eternal shame and destroy
themselves as a party.
For to miss such a moment and to "wait" for the Congress of Soviets would be
utter idiocy, or sheer treachery. "30
The source of all the party's strength, against "sheer treachery" and self-destruc
tion, lies in this: it is the party to whom history addresses its summons, the party
that must remain steadfast as the movement escalates, the party whom the revolt
questions as regards direction. You who have foreseen all and were thus at the heels
of the irruption, what good is it to us now that you're close by? Will you remain
close, or will you let yourself be left behind by this for which you said you were ac
countable?
Lenin is, here, the question cast from within by the revolutionary practice of the
masses (the unforeseen, rupture) to the party's vocation to direct (prevision, proj
ect). This is the party as one in two, the working class itself as one in two: its appara
tus on one side, its anti-state focus on the State on the other. From one to the other,
the vertigo in the movement of history comes from the scission between a settled
tactical rationality and a rupture that demands more than political rationality; that
demands plunging into what the masses opened. Insurrection, Lenin will say, is an
art. Not a science, an artY
The party always directs the proletarian transition. The party is the dialectic. Its
proper effect is the creative scission of the masses and the State as a directed process,
as dictatorship of the proletariat.
The party is a being of the thresholds [lisieresJ . It holds out amidst the tearing
apart [ecartelementJ of the foreseeable theoretical, and the unforeseeable practical,
of the project and the revolt, of the State and the non-State. "Fusion of Marxism
Leninism and the working-class movement:' the classics would say.32 "Fusion" is a
metaphor, it too must be divided. The party is the process of dialectical division of
Marxism-Leninism and the proletarian movement. It is their torn encounter [ren-

Alain Badiou

con tre ecarteleeJ, always to be remade. Between Marxism-Leninism and the prole

tarian movement, there is no coincidence (neither spontaneism, nor theoreticism),


nor is there simultaneity: theory is in advance, but the movement of the revolution
ary revolt is in advance of this advance. Marx did say "dictatorship of the proletariat"
before the Paris Commune. But the Commune, which enacts this slogan, is no less
a decisive advance on the question of this dictatorship.
Yes, between Marxism-Leninism and the workers' movement there is unity, but
it is a unity of opposites. The Marxist-Leninist party is the existence of this opposi
tion [contrarieteJ. The party is that blind spot from which the proletariat grasps its
own class practice, sorts it out, purifies it, concentrates it and prepares another stage
of its war, a stage realized, however, by the masses, not by the party, so that what the
party apprehends is always both in front of it (the project) and behind it (the revolt),
but never exactly on the same plane. The party is the ever transposable [deplaableJ
organization of the proletarian present, as the split unity of the prevision and the
assessment.
That is what Mao means to say: "The masses are the real heroes, while we our
selves are often childish and ignorant.33 "The mastery of Marxism-Leninism is the
essence of communist direction. It is the solidity of science. But it is also childish
and ignorant, if it believes history can be done by delegation, by representation, if it
believes it can sidestep the heroic wisdom of the masses, the wisdom given in their
irruption, in their practice, without appeal.
And Stalin: he emphasizes that the party certainly does direct, but at the same
time it is part of the working class, its detachment. 34 Detachment is something quite
different from representation, it is the opposite: the proletarian party is the opposite
of an image. The party is what cuts, what detaches. It is a body of the class at its cut:
a threshold [lisiere J .
The party has an essential historical instability. This is why it is constantly threat
ened from within by bourgeois forces of restoration, which take hold on the separ
ateness [separeJ of the party. The party, which concentrates the directive force of the
proletariat, is also its latent weakness, its worst threat. Repress the revolt in the name
of the prevision; smother the new in the name of legitimacy; crush the living pres
ent, give in to the shadows, abandon the mobile threshold; put up the State against
the vigorous communism of the masses: the bourgeoisie does not cease to work on
the party's essential instability.
What makes Stalin and Mao great proletarian leaders, aside from their differ
ences, which are enormous, is, among other things, the conviction that the prole
tarian project is ever to be reconquered, ever unstable and corroding from within;
the conviction that all inertia tends towards restoration; that there is no place for
mechanical adjustment. Lenin, Stalin, Mao critique ever more profoundly the reac
tionary mechanism, the pacifism, the treachery of wait-and-see in the form of re
formism and revisionism. The party, according to which the proletariat adjusts itself
to its own class practice in terms of the project, in terms of state-construction, must
be adjusted in turn: since the party is where the greatest burdens accumulate as well.
Against this threat, nothing but a counter-threat will do. From here on, Stalin and
Mao part completely, but this divergence lies within the history of the proletariat,

84

85

Alain Badiou

The Flux and the Party

within the dialectical movement of Marxism- Leninism.


Stalin saw only one possible counter-threat: terror, everywhere. Be tirelessly
wary, above all of the party (practically exterminated in the thirties) then of the
masses as well, at the slightest suspicion of softness or resistance, during the mag
nificent industrial upheaval.
Mao set out from the same idea: the transition submits this dialectical object,
the party, to a severe test. And it is a long transition: "A very long period of time is
needed to decide 'who will win' in the struggle between socialism and capitalism:'35
But the answer turns Stalin's upside down. The answer is this: have tireless confi
dence, above all in the masses (confidence in the masses is the central element of
the counter-threat), then in the party too, and especially in the torn correlation of
the two: proletarian cultural revolution, which is at the same time an assault of the
masses, their anti-state focus on the State, against the reactionary stabilizers of the
party, and the reconstitution, regeneration, revolutionization of the party itself as
instability, as threshold, as dialectical inductor of communism.36
To these astounding dialectics of history, to these unstable objects, these pro
letarian risings of unheard-of violence and richness, what do the little professors
oppose, from their ambush full of desire?
What do they oppose, here as well, to the toil ofprevision and of revolt immersed
at the deepest in the workers' divisions, which constitutes the unparalleled affirma
tive power of Maoist militants? What can they capitalize on against these thoughts,
real in themselves, ever recast and traversed through and through by proletarian
interpellations? Is there anything of value [equal to1 the project of letting the idea of
the party be torn from one's hands by the masses, that which, in France, is not yet
established, not yet decided upon, but still to be proposed and remade? What kind
of "desire" will ever equal the one deployed throughout the profound entanglements
and countercurrents of our history, the one Marxist-Leninists formulate: to hand
back to the working class the question of its communist party of the new type?37
What is the final word of these hateful adversaries of all organized revolutionary
politics? Read: to complete "this process that is always and already complete as it
proceeds:'38 In effect, to seep out like pus.
In the end, such maxims are innocent. Look at them, these old Kantians who
pretend they're playing at scattering the trinkets of Culture. Look at them: the time
is nigh, and they're already covered in dust.

Translated by Laura Balladur and Simon Krysl. Originally published as "Le flux et Ie parti:
dans les marges de L'Anti-Oedipe," in Alain Badiou and Sylvain Lazarus, eds., La Situation
actuelle sur Ie front philosophique, Cahiers Yenan no. 4 (Paris: Maspero, 1976): 24-41. Hav
ing introduced the early '70S philosophical conjecture in France, the collection brings together
interventions against Deleuze ("Deleuze en plein"), Lacan and Lacanians ("Sous Lacan"), and
Dominique Lecourt for the Althusserians ("La compagnie d'Althusser"). Badiou's essay is the
first in the Deleuze intervention. The translators wish to thank Bruno Bosteels, Roland Fergu
son, Eva Poskocilova, Ingo Schaefer, and Alberto Toscano, whose help made the translation and
the notes possible.

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[
e"
nc
ta
sis
re
is
1. "Where there is oppression, there
ive: some
us
el
IS
se
ra
p
e
t
of
in
ig
or
e
th
e,
nc
fankimg) . For all its future resona
ed
us
ao
M
l.
al
at
gs
tm
n
w
s
ao
M
in
be
t
no
Chinese sources suggest its source may
to e
d
ue
m
nt
co
It
):
65
19
9,
y
ua
an
(J
ow
Sn

the phrase in his interview with Edgar


- the Jomt
es
a
pl
ll
of
to
m
ed
rc
fo
as
w
d
an
n

cur during the Cultural Revolutio


h of
ut
So
,
"
le
rv
te
m
e
Th
.
na
hi
C
to
t
si
vi
72
,:
Communique from Richard N ixon's 19
e West
th
m
s
er
ap
sp
w
ne
l
ra
ve
se
in
ed
ar
pe
ap
the Mountains to North of the Seas:'
ouse, 19 71 ),
H
m
do
an
R
:
.
rk
Yo
ew
(N
n
tio
lu
vo
Re
. repnnted l'n Snow, Th e Long
an d IS
. t C ommu
m
Jo
e
th
r
Fo
4
20
ge
pa
on
s
ar
19 1- 22 3 The quotation in question appe
B ll t
e
at
St
t
of
en
t
a
ep
D
d
an
S
4):
72
19
3,
nique, ee Peking Review 9 (March
reat Umo
G
e
Th
s
ao
M
e
se
e,
nc
re
fe
re
r
ie
rl
ea
(March 20 , 19 72): 3S -3 8. For an
slat
an
tr
),
19
19
4,
t
us
ug
-A
21
y
ul
(J
4
2n)
lu
the Popular Masses" (Xiangjiang ping
R S, 19 78 ),
JP
:
on
gt
m
rl
(A
1
l.
vo
9,
94
-1
17
19
,
ng
.
in Collected Works of Mao Ts e- Tu
e C I
Th

87
):
72
1
ch
ar
-M
ry
ua
an
(J
49
ly
er
and in Stuart R. Schram, China Quart
gdahan e.
on
zh
m
/m
om
.c
fa
ng
go
w.
w
w
://
tp
ht
at
nese original is available online
htm.
against
lt
v
re
to
ed
ifi
st
ju
t
is
"I
or
"
es
ri
na
tio
?
2.
"One has reason to revolt against reac
III hi S 19 39
se
ra
ph
e
th
ed
lll
cO
ao
M
.
11]
u
,an yo
. nan' es" [Du l' fia"ndo' ngpa i, zaof
reactlO

!l

:;
:
_

r;:

The Flux and the Party


"Stalin is our Commander" speech, made in Yenan to celebrate Stalin's 60th birth
day: "There are innumerable principles of Marxism, but in the last analysis they
can all be summed up in one sentence: 'To rebel is justified.' For thousands of
years everyone said: 'Oppression is justified, exploitation is justified, rebellion is
not justified.' From the time when Marxism appeared on the scene, this old judg
ment was turned upside down, and this is a great contribution." (Renmin ribao,
September 20, 1949, translated in Stuart R. Schram, The Political Thought ofMao
Tse-Tung, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1969), 427-428.) The thought is attributed
to Marx, its elaboration into doctrine and into reality to Stalin. In 1966, the phrase
appeared on two big character posters in Beijing (Peking Review 37 [September 9,
1966 ] : 19-21). The extended version used here comes from Mao's reply. ("A Letter
to the Red Guards ofTsinghua University Middle School;' [August 1, 1966], trans
lated in Stuart Schram, ed. and intro., John Chinnery and Tieyun, trans., Chair
man Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956-1971 [New York: Pantheon,

1974], 260-261.)
See Badiou's analysis of les trois sens du mot "raison" [three senses of "reason"] in Theorie
de la contradiction: "The phrase says all according to the dialectic: a simple that divides it
self. What concentrates this division, what supports it, while apparently occulting it, is the
word 'reason': there is reason, the revolt has reason, a new reason stands up against the re
actionaries. Through the word 'reason; the phrase says three things, and the articulation
of the three makes up the whole" (21). The revolt is reason, practice is primary to theory.
.
Marxism formulates the reason of the revolt, beyond its particular causes: the cumulative
wisdom of the masses through history, the antagonism that underlies the obstinacy of
the revolt. But the revolt "has reason" also in the practical sense: the proletariat will win.
The revolt will "bring to reason" [rend raison], settle accounts with the explOiters for all
opp ession. The phrase bespeaks, then, the split fusion of the objective and the subjective,
of Wisdom and perspective: the "fusion of Marxism and the real workers' movement" ar
ticulates the two. The knowledge (Marxism) summed in this very phrase is the reason of
the revolt, the for-itself of the proletariat, where the revolt returns to reinforce itself. That
the revolt has reason against reactionaries is, finally, the core of the sentence, the "internal
condition of truth": not, as it may appear, a selective limit imposed upon it as an after
thought. Revolt has reason in contradiction and scission, in criticism and self-criticism,
ever against those who keep things the same.-Tr.

7
8

Mao Zedong, "Some Questions Concerning Methods ofLeadership" (June 1, 1943), Selected
Works, vol. 3 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), 118.- Tr.
See also Badiou, Theorie du sujet (Paris: Seuil, 1982), 217. In Bruno Bosteels's translation:
"I posit that there exists no intrinsic unknowable. This can be said clearly with Mao: 'We
can learn what we did not know.' Except to add that what we did not know before was
determined as leftover from that which just came to be known, at the crossover of the
movement without a name by which the real poses a problem and the retroaction, named
kno ledge, that offers a solution." Mao's quote is from his "Report to the Second Plenary
SeSSIOn of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China" (1949),
Selected Works, vol. 4 (Beijing: FLP, 1965), 374. We are thankful to Bruno Bosteels for this
reference.-Tr.

See Mao Zedong, On Contradiction (1937), chapter 4, "The Principal Contradiction and
the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction;' Selected Works, vol. 1 (Beijing: FLP, 1965), 331336.-Tr.
10 Ellipses here and throughout are Badi
ou's.- Tr.

Alain Badiou
11

Antagonistic contradictions under dictatorship of the proletariat are expressed in the


.
art as the battle of two roads (socialist and capitalist), two classes (proletanat and
ou geoisie), and two lines (revolutionary and revisi ist . '?wo roa s" were first ta en
.
b peasants and the agricultural development, m the sOCIahst educatIOn movement. In
t e "23 articles" of January 14, 1965, Mao spoke of the "power-holders in the party that go
the capitalist road." (Only much later were Peng Zhen and iu Shaoqi named.) For he
23 articles, see Richard Baum and Frederick C. Tewes, Ssu-Ch ing: The Socla/zst EducatIOn
Movement of 1962-1966 (China Research Monographs, UC Berkeley Center for Chmese
Studies, 1968), app. F, 120. The concept is omnipresent in the Cultural RevolutIOn: see
the CC circular of May 16, 1966 (Peking Review, May 19), as well as the "Decision of th e
CC CCP Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution;' in K.H. Fan, The Chl-.
nese Cultural Revolution: Selected Documents (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968),
162-182. Being antagonist, the scissions in the party allow no middle road; any "goIden
middle" is always on side of the reaction.-Tr.

12 The 1967 Shanghai People's Commune, announced on February 5, marks the entr of
the industrial proletariat into the Cultural Revolution, the beginning of the revolutIOn
as seizure of power. In January, the rebel worker groups seized the party paper, forced
reorganization of the party committee and proceeded to assume the onditions of pro
..
duction themselves from wages to organization of labor. (Both BeIJmg
rebel students
and revolutionary i tellectuals of the Cultural Revolution leadership were at the birth of
the rebellion, the Shanghai "directives" were soon affirmed by Mao and the central party
organs, as well as reannounced in the central press: a split unity of the workers and t e
.
party in control of revolutionizing the state.) For the ongmal
texts, see K. H. Fan, op. CIt.
.
The Paris Commune example had been invoked throughout the Cultural RevolutIOn,
including the 1966 "Sixteen Point" Central Committee decision (Fan, 169). In Shanghai,
to reannounce this history was also to speak of the March 1927 Shanghai Com une,
crushed by Chiang Kai-shek's coup. The objective contradiction between Shanghm and
Commune, the local and the universal, the promise of an industrial center that effectlvely
.
fragments the proletariat and the political demand of workers s workers reappeared m
.
1967. Real "contradictions among the people" were not resolved m the selzure: temporary
.
workers-peasants or youth forced from the city by lack of work-contmued
to challenge
new power structures. Within the totality of the country (of state o er) the chances of
: .
the revolution remained undecided: any weakness on its part, contmumg mSlde struggles
between various workers' organizations, a failure of production, could and would be used
by the structures and tendencies it ruptured. The name lasted a ere three weeks. After
Mao's interventions, the Commune's steering committee became Shanghai. RevolutIOn
ary Committee" and in the "triple alliance" [sanjiehe] of mass rebel organizations, the
.
army, and the cadres, the relative weight of the latter two displaced
the rebels. Agamst the
sense of "totalitarian expropriation" of a workers' revolt (howe er abstract " fragmented,
and isolated), Badiou sees, consistently with his argument agamst Deleuzes anarchism,
an invention of political form in the concrete conjecture.-Tr.

,:

13 As Mao writes in "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire" (1930):
"How then should we interpret the word "soon" in the statement, "there will soon
be a high tide of revolution"? This is a common question amo g c mrades. Marx
ists are not fortune-tellers. They should, and indeed can, only mdlCate the general
direction of future developments and changes; they should not and cannot fix the
day and the hour in a mechanistic way. But when I say that there will soon b e a
.
.
high tide of revolution in China, I am emphatICally not speakmg of somethmg
which in the words of some people "is possibly coming;' something illusory, un-

HH

Ihe Flux and the Party


attainable and devoid of significance for action. It is like a ship far out at sea
whose mast -head can already be seen from the shore; it is like the morning sun in
the east whose shimmering rays are visible from a high mountain top; it is like a
child about to be born moving restlessly in its mother's womb:'
See his Selected Works, 1.127.-Tr.

14 Aside from The Civil War in France (New York: International Publishers, 1988) itself, see
Marx's letters to Ludwig Kugelmann on the Paris Commune, April 12 and 17, 1871 (on
line at www.marxists.org), as well as Lenin's introduction to the letters. In Commune de
Paris: une declaration politique sur la politique (Paris: Les Conferences du Rouge-Gorge,
2003), Badiou recapitulates Marx and Brecht on the Commune, as well as the Chinese
"reactivation" of the Commune between 1966 and 1971, before proceeding to the "logic
of the Commune;' in terms of his Logic of Worlds. Our thanks to Bruno Bosteels for this
information.-Tr.
15

On the peasant revolt, see Mao Zedong's "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant
Movement in Hunan;' Selected Works, 1.23-59.
"Encircle the cities by the countryside" [nongcun baowh chengshi] defines Mao's con
ception of the guerrilla war. The metaphor, taken from the weiqi table game, dates to 1930
or earlier (the struggle against Li Lisan and the tensions with the Comintern); Mao de
veloped it in his 1938 anti -Japanese war writings. (On Protracted War, Selected Works, vol.
2 [Beijing: FLP, 1965] , 54, 146-147; Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War against Japan,
idem, 79-112; the report to the 6th Plenum of the 6th CC CPC, "On the New Stage;' ex
cerpted in Stuart Schram, ed., The Political Thought ofMao Tse-tung, 288-90.) Lin Biao's
"Long Live the Victory of People's War;' written to commemorate the 20th anniversary of
the victory in the anti-Japanese war (Renmin Ribao September 3, 1965; English by Foreign
Language Press, 1965) applies it as a global-political directive, in a double sense: every
where, liberation struggles are peasant struggles, making the Chinese military strategy
pertinent generally; through the allegory of "cities and villages of the world;' encirclement
becomes a sweeping notion of world revolution. The allegory originates with Bukharin
and the Comintern program of September, 1928: Mao had projected the strategy's global
political pertinence, in Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War against Japan (102), without
relying on the trope.-Tr.

16 As Bruno Bosteels has pointed out to us, the opposition of management [gestionJ and
politics proper (what here is direction) returns in Badiou's later writing, after the Mao
ist works, as well. See Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 12. Analogous oppositions, or "occlusions;'
are then posited regarding other truth procedures: sexuality and love, culture and art,
technology and science.-Tr.
17 The wordplay of "Etat" and "etat" ("State" and "state [of the situation]") is prominent in
Badiou's later work. The main explanation is found in "L'etat de la situation historico
sociale;' meditation 9 of L'Etre et l'evenement (Paris: Seuil, 1988), 121-128.-Tr.
18 Ouvriers specialises, unskilled workers. o.S., mostly immigrant workers, were key in the
Maoist mobilizations in post-May France.-Tr.
19 Strikes of the o.S. at Renault-Billancourt, in March-April 1973 and at Renault, of truck
drivers in the spring and of line workers in December, 1975. See Laure Pitti, "Greves ouvr
ieres versus luttes de l'immigration: une controverse entre historiens;' in Sylvain Lazarus,
ed., Anthropologie ouvriere et enquetes d'usine, Ethnologie fram;aise 31/3 (2001): 465-476.
The general context of the change is the incoming economic crisis on the one hand, and
the "unity" of the electoral, revisionist Left-long dreamt about and for this reason all the

89

Alain Badiou

more disappointing-after 1972 on the other. The victorious 1973 strike brough forward
the rupture between the demands and the strategies of the w rkers and the umon . This
.
antagonist contradiction, of the union demand for negotiatIOns an t e or ers non
negotiable claim to "equal pay for equal work;' the demand for the objectIve sta dard
of hierarchy, and the claim that the workers determine what is e ual to what, contmued
to determine the sequence of proletarian struggle throughout the 70S. Both a refinement
of hierarchies (granting a place on a wage ladder to all, including the former O.S.) and a
continuing workers' pressure against them ensued from the stnke.-Tr.

,,:

20 See Lenin, "'Left-Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder" (1920) Collected Works, vol.
31 (Moscow: Progress, 1964), 23.-Tr.
21 Mao Zedong, "On New Democracy" (January 1940), Selected Works, 2.369 and else
where.-Tr.
22 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (New York: Viking, 1977), 366-367 [trans
lation modified] .
r on
se
us
th
Al
is
nt
Ka
of
wn
do
e
sid
up
g
in
rn
tu
's
ze
23 The obvious subtext regarding Deleu
. Be n
ns
tra
,
arx
M
r
Fo
's
ser
us
th
Al
e
Se
l.
ge
He
of
al
ers
Feuerbach's-and early Marx's-rev
e Brewster
.
ns
tra
l,
ta
pi
Ca
ing
ad
Re
d
an
9
-3
35
),
69
19
,
ne
Brewster (London: Allen La
ct
p
as
l
lpa
nC
pn
e
th
ao
M
th
wi
g
in
riz
eo
th
,
re
he
(London: NLB, 19 70 ), 39 and passim. Elsew
lme
se
es
p
re
e
th
n
o
sh
as
ou
di
Ba
,
2)
-8
70
,
on
cti
of contradiction ( Theorie de contradi
Is ph lo o
eo
rg
ou
-b
tit
pe
or
n
er
od
tm
os
"p
low
fel
d
an
of inheritance that links Deleuze
, Samt
e
th
to
o
and Proudh
n,
ni
ku
Ba
,
rg
bu
m
xe
Lu
h
ug
ro
th
ath
m
er
aft
'68
phers of the
well
as
s,
on
ctI
di
ra
nt
co
y
ar
nd
co
se
d
an
al
cip
in
pr
If
Max" Stirner of The German Ideology.
ce on the
en
va
ui
eq
in
ed
at
ul
tic
ar
e
ar
,
on
cti
di
ra
nt
co
ss
.
as both aspects of the principal, cla
Ident . No
a
str
ab
an
th
pe
ca
es
l
ca
gi
lo
no
is
e
er
th
en
th
.
abstract axis of "domination;'
es
tak
e
Sir
De
al.
aw
dr
th
wi
,
er
th
ra
,
or
lt"
vo
"re
e
revolution is then possible, ju st subjectiv
posed to
op
r,
he
ot
ch
ea
or
irr
m
y
ch
ar
an
d
an
m
lis
ra
tu
the place of Stirner's "egoism;' struc
the dialectic and history.- Tr.
1.3 17. - Tr.
,
ks
or
W
ted
lec
Se
,
on
cti
di
ra
nt
Co
On
,
ng
do
Ze
24 Mao
Review
g
kin
Pe
in
66
19
st,
gu
Au
10
on
ng
iji
Be
in
s"
se
as
m
25 Mao's statement at "meeting the
Tr.
34 (August 19 ,19 66 ): 9 [translation modifie d] .in Contradicsm
ni
go
ta
An
of
e
ac
Pl
he
"T
6,
r
te
ap
ch
,
on
cti
di
26 Se e Mao Zedong, O n Contra
tion;' Selected Works, 1.3 43 -3 45 .- Tr.
,
com
to
th
pa
e
th
on
e
m
co
er
ov
be
all
sh
ich
wh
ie]
2 7 "Three major distinctions" [san da chab
and Len
e)
m
m
ra
og
Pr
a
th
Go
e
th
f
o
e
qu
iti
Cr
e
th
d
an
sto
munism. After Marx (in the Manife
C,
CP
e
th
f
ee
itt
m
m
Co
l
ra
nt
Ce
e
th
of
au
re
Bu
in (State and Revolutio n) , see the Political
,
gust 29 ,
Au
s,
ea
Ar
l
ra
Ru
e
th
in
es
un
m
m
Co
s
le'
op
Pe
"Resolution on the Establishment of
ral R volu
ltu
Cu
e
th
ri
du
,
as
ll
we
as
,
22
):
58
19
,
16
r
be
19 58 , Peking Review 29 (S eptem
g of
tm
ee
M
e
th
at
lk
Ta
or
)
66
19
,
21
ly
Ju
(
"
re
nt
tion, Mao's "Talk to the Leaders of the Ce
9 online at
l.
vo
,
ks
or
W
ted
lec
Se
),
67
19
9,
ry
ua
Jan
(
p"
ou
:
the Central Cultural Revolution Gr
ere
th
ts,
hc
f
n
co
ss
cla
to
al
r
ve
n
ra
"T
:
es
rit
w
ou
,
www.maoism.org. In Theorie du sujet, Badi
.
between
es
nc
re
ffe
di
r
ajo
m
e
re
th
e
es
th
s,
nt
ria
va
in
are these great millenary structural

la
l
tu
ec
ell
nt
d
an
l
ua
an
m
n
ee
tw
,
re
tu
ul
city and country, between industry and agric
IOn) .
lat
ns
tra
s
ls
ste
Bo
o
un
Br
(m
ish
ol
ab
to
m
ai
bor-which it is communism's entire
and sh pen
ish
bl
ta
es
re
to
cy
en
nd
te
e
th
s
se
us
sc
di
ou
di
In his forthcoming Ie Siee/e, Ba
One
e
Se
a.
m
Ch
ao
M
stpo
in
"ad
ro
t
lis
ita
ap
"c
e
the dichotomies-corresponding to th
tp://culturemaht
4,
ne
hi
ac
M
re
ltu
Cu
in
e
lin
on
o,
an
sc
To
rto
Divides into Two;' trans. Albe

'."

90

Alain Badiou

The Flux and the Party

fus e into one" [he er er yl] of Yang Xianzhen stands precisely against the Marxist-Leninist
"one divides into two:' The controversy is relevant to the struggle between two roads, to
the USSR as well as to all "post -capitalism" convergence theories. Regarding theory and
practice, the history of Marxism is full of fusions of opportunist practice and theory in
no tension with it. (Badiou takes up Yang's philosophy of "reconciliation" in Theorie de la
contradiction, 61-66. See also "New Polemic on the Philosophical Front: Report on the
Discussion Concerning Comrade Yang Hsien-chen's Concept that 'Two Combine into
One;" Peking Review 37 [September 11, 1964]: 9-12 and "Theory of 'Combine Two into
One' is Reactionary Philosophy for Restoring Capitalism;' Peking Review 17 [April 23,
197 1] : 6-11.)
In France, the concept of "fusion" emerges, as classical, in French Maoism and across
the '60S conjecture: Badiou or Althusser use it without having to quote. (See note 7 above;
Althusser, For Marx,16; Althusser, "Marx dans ses limites;' Eerits philosophiques et poli
tiques, vol. 1 [Stock/IMEC, Paris 1994], 371-387-)
In the opening blurb in the Yenan collection volumes (not in the present one), Badiou
and Sylvain Lazarus ask: "from what the anti-revisionist struggles in China and Albania
are, what is to be retained, and transformed, to battle revisionism in France? What way is
to be taken, here and now, so that Marxism and the real workers' movementfuse?" [empha
sis in the original]. New French misreadings have also appeared, from Debord's Society of
the Spectacle to Deleuze. Georges Peyrol's "Potato Fascism" ("Le fascisme de la pomme de
terre;' La Situation actuelle sur Ie front philosophique, 42-52) takes up the mistranslation
"one becomes two;' on whose basis Deleuze and Guattari, in "Rhizome;' do away with the
dialectic. We thank Bruno Bosteels for his suggestions on these points.-Tr.

chine. tees.ac. uk! Cmach/Backissuesl jo041Articles/badiou.htm. -Tr.


28 Lenin, "The Crisis Has Matured" (October, 1917), Collected Works, trans. Yuri Sdobnikov
nd George Hanna, 4th English ed. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 74-85. Slavo'
izek has taken up the play of "too early" and "almost too late" in "Repeating Lenin" (on
.lacan.com) and ' Georg Lukacs as the philosopher of Leninism;' his post
lme at
,
face to Lukacs s A Defence of HIstory and Class-Consciousness": Tailism and the Dialectic
trans. Ester Leslie (London: Verso, 2000), 162-166. See also Badiou's Theorie du sujet 18
and following. The account follows John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, ch p. 3,
onlme at www.bartleby.com.-Tr.

29 "In a peasant country, nd under a revolutionary, republican government which enjoys


the support of the Soclal st-RevolutlOnary and Menshevik parties that only yesterday
.
dommated petty-bourgeOIs democracy, a peasant revolt is developing. Incredible as this
is, it i a fact." "The Crisis has Matured;' n Lenin uses the phrase many times ("The
AgrarIan Program of the First Russian Revolution;' 1907; "A good resolution but a bad
speech;' 1913; "Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade;' 1918, and other s).
Tr.

30 "The Crisis has Matured;' 82. Italics in Lenin's original.-Tr.


31 "What has the Party done to study the disposition of the troops, etc? What has it done to
conduct the insurrection as an art? Mere talk in the Central Executive Committee and so
'
on!" Lenin's note to "Crisis Has Matured;' 83n.-Tr.
32 Throughout the history of Marxism after Marx and Engels, "fusion of Marxism and prole
tarian practice;' t e Leninist version of the "unity of theory and (revolutionary) practice;'
punctuates M rxlst t ory of organization. The latter is the threshold of Marxist thought
and Commumst polItIcs: here, m the concept of fusion, theory comprehends their scis
SIOn, their contradiction. Lenin determines the working class party through the fusion
.
of sOClahsm and the working class movement in "The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement"
(1900 ) Coll cted Works, trans. Jo Fineberg and George Hanna, vol. 4 (Moscow: Progress,
972), 368; 1\ Retrograde Trend m Russian Social-Democracy" (1899 ), idem., 257, and in
Left - i g Communism, an Infantile Disorder;' 23-4 . Rosa Luxemburg's polemic with
Lem m
rgamzational Questions of Russian Social Democracy" concerns the content
of thIS notIOn above all. See Lenin's "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Crisis in Our
Party" Collect Wo ks, vl. 7 (Moscow: Progress, 1972) , 203- 425. Luxemburg's 1904 text,

m the 1934 edltlOn, IS vaIl le online at ww.mar


w
xists.org. Mao Zedong first discusses
.
the otlOn m the late 30S ( The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National
War [1938 ] , Selected Works, 2.209 and passim). It comes to the fore in the rectification
movement of 1 42, a st uggle against those who both theorize instead of organizing work
and a ply fore gn SovIet models onto Chinese practice. The same concept, rather than
:,
. .
mere SlmficatlOn of Marxism, remains at stake: the concrete determination by Chinese
r vol tionary practice reconstitutes, rather than to negate the universal claim. "Dialec
,
tlZlng a concept of the legalist philosopher Han Fei Zi (280- 233 BCE) , Mao uses the
metaphor of the fusion between an arrow and a target ("Rectify the Party's Style of Work"
[February 1, 1942] , in Selected Works, 3.38, 42). Yet the concept the two characters name is
contr diction (mao dun) : in Han Fei Zi, the logical contradiction of an arrow that pierces
anythmg and a target that cannot be pierced, in Mao, two opposites that both repulse and
presuppose each other. As Badiou insists here, "fusion" is not immediate unity, it does not
oppose the general dialectical law of "one divides into two" [YI fen we; er], to which he
has remained faithful. See "One Divides into Two:' The concept must be divided: in the
.
major controversy on the Cultural Revolution philosophical front, the revisionist "two

91

33 Mao Zedong, "Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys" (1941), Selected Works, 3.12.-Tr.
34 Joseph Stalin, "On the Problems of Leninism" (1926), Problems of Leninism (MoscoW:
FLP, 1940), chap. 5, 132 and passim; online as "Concerning Questions of Leninism" at
www.marx2mao.org. Stalin quotes Lenin's "Greetings to Hungarian Workers" (1919), Col
lected Works, vol. 29 (Moscow: Progress, 1965), 388.-Tr.
35 Stalin's theory of transition in "On the Problems of Leninism" quotes Lenin's "Greetings
to Hungarian Workers" to this effect. The quotation here is from Mao Zedong's "Speech at
the CPC National Conference on Propaganda Work" (March 12, 1957), in Selected Works,
vol. 5 (Beijing: FLP, 1977), 423 [translation modified] . See also On the Correct Handling of
Contradictions among the People (February 27, 1957), Selected Works, 5A09.-Tr.
36 "We must have faith in the masses and we must have faith in the Party. These are two cardinal principles. If we doubt these principles, we shall accomplish nothing:' Mao Zedong,
On the Co-operative Transformation ofAgriculture ( July 31, 1955 ), Selected Works, 5.188 . In
his "Critique of Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" (195 8), in A Critique
of Soviet Economics, trans. Moss Roberts (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977 ), Mao
writes that "Stalin's book from first to last says nothing about the superstructure. It is not
concerned with people; it considers things, not people . . . . The basic error is mistrust of
,

the peasants (135) :'-Tr.


37 Revolutionary, not parliamentary, party as subject. The project of the "party of a new
type" is a constant concern in Badiou's Maoist, militant thought, beginning from his po
litical work from within the Parti socialiste unifie. See Badiou, H. Jancovici, D. Menetrey
and E. Terray, Contribution au probleme de la construction d'un parti marxiste-Ieniniste
de type nouveau (Paris: Maspero, 1970), as well as Theorie du sujet, 38. The concept itself
was developed by Lenin at the 1912 Prague party conference that refused the party model
of Western Social Democracy and split the Bolshevik party from the Mensheviks. It has

92

The Flux and the Party

received its canonic formulation in History of the CPSU(b): Short Course (New York: In
ternational Publishers, 1939), 138-142, 172. English online at www.marx2mao.org.
The instance and concept of the party, so central here, are put aside in further devel
opment of Badiou's philosophy-if indeed the logic of abandoning them does not compel
the transformations-as well as in his politics today. See Peter Hallward's "Politics and
Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou;' app. to Hallward's translation of Ethics: An
Essay on the Understanding ofEvil (London: Verso, 2001), 95, but also the theses Qu' est-ce
que I'Organisation Politique (Paris: Le Perroquet, 2001) and online at www.organisation
politique.com.) Yet, (Groupe pour la Fondation de) I'Union des Communistes de France
Marxiste-Leniniste, Badiou's Maoist organization, did not consider itself a party even be
fore it "re-began;' shedding some of its Maoist legacy, as Organisation Politique. As A.
Belden Fields observes in his Trotskyism and Maoism in France and the United States
(chap. 3 , online at www.maoism.org): .. The UCFML has made no claim to be a party. as
have the other two organizations [Parti Communiste Marxisie-Leniniste de France, PC
MLF, and Parti Communiste Revolutionnaire (marxiste-leniniste), PCR(m-I ) ] . In fact, it
has not even claimed to be a 'union' yet, but a 'group' for the formation of a 'union: It has
readily admitted that it does not yet have a mass base which would entitle it legitimately
to refer to itself as a party. It also questions the legitimacy of the PCMLF and the PCR(m
I) so doing:' Many thanks to Bruno Bosteels for his suggestions on this point.-Tr.
3 8 Deleuze and Guattari, Anti- Oedipus, 38
2.

Logics of Antagonism:
In the Margins of Alain Badiou's
liThe Flux and the Party"
Bruno Bosteels

Introduction:
Philosophy as the Struggle Against Revisionism

Alain Badiou's early Maoist text, "The Flux and the Party: In
the Margins of Anti-Oedipus;' is part of a 1977 collection of
polemical interventions titled The Current Situation on the
Philosophical Front. Published by members of the so-caled
. orgamza
Yenan-Philosophy Group, itself part of the MaOIst
tion UCFML, or ( Groupe pour la fondation de) ['Union des
Communistes de France Marxistes-Leninistes, these interven
tions tackle the state of philosophical thinking around the
mid-seventies in France by targeting Lacan (in the guise of
Jacques-Alain Miller's "Matrix" and Christian Jambet and
Guy Lardreau's The Angel: Ontology of RevolutIOn) and AI
thusser (in the guise of Dominique Lecourt's little book on
the "Lysenko affair") no less than Deleuze and Guattari (Anti
Oedipus and the short text "Rhizome" that would soon there
after become the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus). The
main thrust of the polemic states that a new revisionist mode
of thinking has taken hold of philosophy-a mode of think
ing that, whether in the name of writing, science, the bod!, or
desire and its libidinal flows, abandons the harsh questIOns
of political organization and the class struggle in favor of an
.
abstract and purely formal dualism that, by droppmg the ref
erent of the proletariat and its party vanguard, directly op
poses the masses to the State. "Everywhere to substitute the
couple masses/State for the class struggle: that's al there is to
.
.
,
it:' part of the collective opening statement reads; The pOIIh
.
cal essence of these 'philosophies' is captured in the followmg
principle, a principle of bitter resentment against the entire
history of the twentieth century: 'In order for the revolt of the
.
masses against the State to be good, it is necessary to r)ect
the class direction of the proletariat, to stamp out MarXIsm,
Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

94

Bruno Bosteels

Logics ofAntagonism

to hate the very idea of the class party:'" The result of such arguments is either the
complete denial of antagonistic contradictions altogether or the jubilatory recogni
tion of a mere semblance of antagonism. "They dream of a formal antagonism, of
a world broken in two, with no sword other than ideology;' whereas a complete
understanding of emancipatory politics would involve not just the joy and passion
of short -lived revolt, but the painstaking and disciplined labor of forcing the exist
ing contradictions of a particular situation, whether they are antagonistic or not, in
the direction of a generic truth: "They love revolt, proclaimed in its universality, but
they are secondary in terms of politics, which is the real transformation of the world
in its historical particularity:" On the philosophical front, therefore, one urgent task
for the authors of this polemic involves precisely the struggle against such revision
ist tendencies.
For Badiou and his Maoist comrades, this is the lesson to be drawn from the
militant sequence between 1968 and the onset of a backlash in 1972, with the so
called Common Program of the Left in France. "Everyone, including the Maoists,
is after all called upon today, after the Cultural Revolution and May ' 68, to take a
stance, to discern the new with regard to the meaning of politics in its complex ar
ticulation, its constitutive trilogy: mass movement, class perspective, and State;' the
opening statement reads, continuing: "Such is clearly the question of any possible
philosophy today, wherein we can read the primacy of politics (of antagonism) in
its actuality:') Is this still the primordial question for any possible philosophy today,
the reader might ask, nearly thirty years later? In the remarks that follow, I want to
argue that Badiou's current thought with regard to politics, despite a sharp distanc
ing from the idea of the party and its underlying debts to the dialectical mode of
thought and action, remains to a large extent inscribed within the framework of
presuppositions, if not the terminology, that articulate masses, classes, and the State.
The key to this articulation, as should already be obvious from the preceding lines,
is the notion of antagonism, particularly as developed by Mao in "On Contradic
tion" and "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People;' as well
as in their systematic reformulation by Badiou, first in Theory of Contradiction and
On Ideology and then even more abstractly in the footnotes to The Rational Kernel
of the Hegelian Dialectic. A first set of questions might thus concern the fate of an
tagonism in Badiou's later works. As I have tried to elaborate elsewhere, the treat
ment of antagonism in terms of division or scission and the forced return upon a
divided situation bespeaks a logic of social change that remains almost entirely valid
for these later works as well.4 Badiou's Maoists texts, moreover, not only illuminate
his later thinking in ways that are very different from what an isolated reading of
Being and Event, for example, would produce, but, for all their shocking bluntness,
polemics such as the ones fought out in The Current Situation on the Philosophical
Front also continue to prove invaluable, or they regain much of their initial urgency
today, nearly thirty years later, when for Deleuze and Guattari we might substitute
the names of Hardt and Negri, for Lacan, that of Zizek, and for Althusser-Lecourt,
those of Laclau and Mouffe-not to omit Derrida and the stubborn legacy of Hei
deggerianism.5
Whether or not these figures represent the front line of the philosophical battle

9S

e
activ
his
s
after
y
year
man
even
ou,
Badi
for
that
mind
in
keep
ld
shou
we
y,
toda
ist
sion
nst
revi
agai
gle
strug
its
in
ed
n
defi
to
be
s
inue
cont
hy
osop
phil
od,
peri
t
aois
M
'6
er
ism:
Rath
sion
revi
nst
agai
ggle
stru
the
is
hy
osop
phil
of
nce
esse
"The
s:
tion
evia
d
than to consider this period over and done with, perhaps we should entertain the
e
s
mor
fact
seem
in
ou
Badi
y.
tenc
ofla
a
stage
in
red
ente
has
past
the
that
esis
h
ypot
h
and more inclined of late to bring these latent continuities out into the open, pre
cisely in an attempt to answer inquiries such as my own, for example, regarding his
e
-on
oach
ic
appr
raph
riog
ly
histo
pure
a
e,
efor
ther
d,
avoi
us
Let
ism.
Mao
to
s
debt
that would reduce the significance of texts such as Badiou's early article on Deleuze,
now translated here for the very first time, to that of being a dusty and slightly em
barrassing museum piece. Instead, I will rely on Badiou's thought in general, and
try to demonstrate the timeliness of the translated piece in particular, by taking up
three basic orientations in the logic of antagonism as developed in political thinking
today.7 This will allow us to begin reading Badiou's work as a polemical intervention
that cuts diagonally across the divisions between immanence, transcendence, and
totality.
Immanence and the Life of the Multitude

The first orientation is the Spinozist - Deleuzian one that underlies the notions of
immanence and the multitude as expounded by radical Italian political philoso
phers such as Paolo Virno and Toni Negri. The latter, we are told, is now working
with Michael Hardt to prepare the follow-up for their bestselling Empire, a second
tome simply to be titled Multitude. Its follow-up but also its complement: indeed,
there is a relation of reciprocity and resistance at the same time, without dialectical
negation, between the multitude and the concept of Empire as developed by Hardt
and Negri.
Inside and against the imperial logic, like its photographic negative yet without
allowing any of the familiar dialectical topics of "the outside within;' there inevita
bly emerges the specter of the multitude. Better yet, Empire always has been an im
possible project to control the creative mobility and desire of the multitude, whose
vital constituent force should therefore be considered ontologically anterior to all
the attempts at its mediation on behalf of constituted power, whether in terms of
the market and globalization, in the name of the people, or by the State. From this
inexhaustible fountain springs what I would call the politico-ontological optimism
and unapologetic vitalism that characterize Hardt and Negri's brand of material
ism: "The creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of
autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organization
of global flows and exchanges:'8
When facing a massive work such as Empire, the crucial task of the reader can
not consist simply in evaluating the prophetic power of Hardt and Negri's book,
written long before the global war on terror, by comparing their theses with the
current situation. In fact, it is never a question of deciding whether a political phi
losophy is relevant, let alone applicable, to a given situation. Following the principle
that guides Badiou in his Abridged Metapolitics, the task is rather the other way
around: to study which conceptual instruments philosophy must elaborate in order

Logics ofAntagonism

to register in its midst the effects of what is happening, in the streets and elsewhere,
as a new figure of the present. A metapolitical approach thus puts philosophy under
condition, under the condition of "a" politics (une politique), rather than continuing
to define "the political" (Ie politique) together with the advantages and disadvan
tages of various regimes of state power, as has been the obsession of most hitherto
existing political philosophies. As Badiou writes, "By 'metapolitics' I understand
the effects that a philosophy can draw, within and for itself, from the idea that real
politics are themselves exercises in thinking. Metapolitics is opposed to political
philosophy, which pretends that politics is not thought, so that it falls to the phi
losopher to think 'the political:"9 Politics is an exercise in practical thinking in its
own right. In order to think, the process of a true politics fortunately does not have
to wait for the philosophers.
Two indications might suffice to show the magnitude of the task of a metapoliti
cal approach in relation to the work of Hardt and Negri. First of all, we should fur
ther reconstruct the complete and undistorted genealogy behind the concept of the
multitude. The novelty of this actor is in fact highly questionable. As Badiou writes
in Can Politics Be Thought?, "From Rousseau to Mao, a canonical statement, which
holds that the masses make history, posits in the masses precisely this vanishing ir
ruption of which political philosophy only tells the always belated, and always torn,
storY:'l0 The real question, then, concerns the ways in which we should articulate
the notion of the multitude, not only with the modern ideas of the people and the
nation-state, as both Negri and Virno propose, but also with the traditional Marx
ist, or Marxist-Leninist, triad of masses, classes, and the State. Here Badiou's early
hypothesis might still be valid, namely, that the multitude today presents the masses
without classes, whereas the tradition of the revolutionary left, from Lenin to Mao,
always supposed that the party would organize the masses into a common front by
way of the class struggle. Even if Badiou nowadays refuses the visible form of the
party, he is relentless in his insistence that politics is inseparable from some form
of organization: "Political organization is necessary in order for the intervention,
as wager, to make a process out of the trajectory that goes from an interruption to
a fidelity. In this sense, organization is nothing but the consistency of politics:'ll By
focusing on the tension-which is never really antagonistic, except in name only
between Empire and the multitude, Hardt and Negri in a sense re-actualize an older
opposition, the one that opposes the masses directly to the state apparatus, without
any mediation through class interests, social contradictions, or their concentration
into the political act proper.
Second, and to make the same point in a different way, we should perhaps ask
if the multitude does not run the risk of becoming the slogan of an anarchic and
speculative leftism of sorts, in the sense in which Lenin talks of leftism as the in
fantile disorder of communism-unless, of course, the category of the multitude
gives way to new and lasting forms of organization, in an ongoing series of wagers
on the capacity for thought and action of the many. Therein lies the importance of
debates such as the ones that surround the antiglobalization movement in Seattle or
Genoa, the forums in Porto Alegre, or the protests and uprisings in Argentina and
Bolivia-to mention but a few recent cases. Do these new forms of mobilization

Bruno Bosteels
reV1've

97

the idea of direct democracy? Do they mark the end of the political, ifby the
)olitical today we understand the war games of global capitalism that leave even the
I arliamentary rule in a position of either impotent ally or irrelevant opponent? The
ypothesis, rather, would be that these searching forms of organization indicate he
beg inning of a new political sequence, one ared by the closure and austJon
.
orgalllzatlOn
that
dommated
politICs for at
of the party as the privileged form of
least two centuries. A corollary of this hypothesis would explain the contemporary
resurgence of various forms of speculative ultra -leftism in so-called radical politi
cal philosophy today: In a situation of rampant conservatism and blunt reactionary
policies such as the ones that rule in the USA or Italy, when new forms of political
organization are either lacking or still insufficiently articulated, the most tempt
ing posture is indeed one of radical left-wing idealism or adventurism. Convers:ly,
whenever the question of organization is actually raised, the old specters of Lenm
ism, of democratic centralism, of party discipline and the critique of trade-union
ism and social-democratic reformism, inevitably raise their ugly head again.
Hardt and Negri barely allude to these questions in their conclusion. "We need
to investigate specifically how the multitude can become a political subject in the
context of Empire;' they posit in their short last chapter. "Recognizing the potential
autonomy of the mobile multitude, however;' they continue, "only points toward the
real question. What we need to grasp is how the multitude is organized and rede
fined as a positive, political power:'12 Hardt and Negri's book, in the meantime, does
not pretend to be the umpteenth messianic version of the passage through purga
tory-through the rule of Empire-so as to arrive at redemption-at the potential
ity of the multitude. Even so, the book does not always avoid the pitfalls of what we
might call "good (bad) conscience;' which in the sixties and seventies would have
been discussed in terms of the dialectic of the Hegelian-Lacanian beautiful soul. At
least Virno, in his Grammar of the Multitude, seems much more subtle and astute in
this regard, while recognizing the profound ambivalence of the multitude, capable
of the best and the worst: "The multitude is a form of being that can give birth to one
thing but also to the other: ambivalence:'J3 By starkly opposing the constituent force
of the multitude to its mediation by the constituted power of Empire, no matter
how flexible the latter's regime of control is made to appear, Hardt and Negri finally
end up repeating a familiar scheme that contrasts the purity of insurrection and im
manence to the equally pure power of transcendence and the established order. The
counterposing of Empire and multitude thus appears to repeat previous dualisms
such as those of capital and labor, order and anarchy, power and resistance, or even,
at bottom, the old Kantian dualism of necessity and freedom, as Badiou argues in
his early article on Deleuze. What this scheme wins in speculative radicality, how
ever, it looses in terms of its specific metapolitical effectiveness to think through the
present political situation.
The key to understanding the non-dialectical relation of reciprocity, or the disjunctive synthesis, between Empire and the multitude is in reality an idea that De
leuze, Negri and Hardt all borrow from Foucault. This is the idea not only that there
can be no power without resistance, but also, and more importantly, that resistance
is ontologically prior to power itself. "Even more, the last word on power holds that

98

Bruno Bosteels

Logics ofAntagonism

resistance comes first;' Deleuze writes in his Foucault: "Thus, there is no diagram
that does no contain, aside from those points it connects, other relatively free or
unbound pomts, elements of creativity, mutation, resistance; and we should start
frm these, perha s, to understand the whole:" 4 Badiou himself, in fact, proposes
.
.
thIS very Idea m hIS early attack against Deleuze, quoting directly from Chairman
Mao: "Where there is oppression, there is revolt;' to which Badiou adds, "But it
is the revolt that, at its own hour, passes judgment on the fate of the oppression,
not the other wa.r around:' '5 With Negri and Hardt, however, this understanding
.
of p wer an resistance qUIckly
leads to the conclusion that, even though there is
nothmg outsIde of Empire and, hence, all hitherto existing political philosophers
have gone astray when they continue to presuppose the existence of such an outside
Empire noetheless cn always at the same time be read as a sign of the potentialit
of the multItude. Agamst the claim that any sort of external aid or extension, such
as the vanguard party, would be needed to guarantee the effectiveness of the current
struggls, this logc leads to the almost perverse conclusion that the more power and
oppresslOn there IS, te better are the chances for resistance and revolt: "Perhaps the
.
more capltl extends ltS global networks of production and control, the more pow
. of revolt can be:" 6 Following this logic, to be sure, there is
erful any smgular pomt
nothing that we cannot hope for nowadays!
In Deleuze: "The Clamor of Being;' a book which in many ways rephrases the
a:gent from "The Flux and the Party" in strict ontological terms and without the
VitrIolic attacks, Badiou describes the Deleuzian orientation and method in terms
f a logic of th double signature. Every entity that from the point of view of enti
ties, or of CO stItuted power, appears to be a stable, molar identity, can also be read
at the same time as the sign of Being, as the event of virtualization of the actual and
ctualization f the virtual, that is, in political terms, as constituent power. Intuitive
m an ontologIcal sense, the method consists in following this itinerary back and
fort betee the two poles, without loosing the power of univocity in the hands
?f dalectIcs. From A as entity to B as Being, then from B as Being to A as entity,
.
mtUItlOn concatenates thought to things as copresence of a being of simulacrum
.
ad of a simula
rum of Being:" 7 Everything that exists thus presents itself as doubly
Igne?, dependmg on whether it is read as entity or as Being, as thing or as event, as
IdntIty or as becoming, as Empire or as multitude. This explains the radiant opti
llsm of Hardt and Negri in Empire. Indeed, if we adopt the principle of reversibil
Ity, not oly dos the new global order confirm the flexible rule of pure immanence,
ts makmg Spmoza into the quintessential philosopher oflate capitalism, as Slavoj
.Izek often repeats
by way of a critique, but the all-powerful rule of Empire itself,
m a sense, also always bears witness to the vitality of the multitude that sustains its
rule. To give but one especially eloquent example of this logic from Empire:

rom one perspective Empire stands clearly over the multitude and subjects

It to the rule of its overarching machine, as a new Leviathan. At the same


time, however, from the perspective of social productivity and creativity,
rom what we have been calling the ontological perspective, the hierarchy
IS reversed. The multitude is the real productive force of our social world,
whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vital-

99

ity of the multitude-as Marx would say, a vampire regime of accumulated


dead labor that survives only by sucking off the blood of the living.'s
Without mediation or negation, Empire and multitude stand opposed as two signs
of a gaze that is no longer dialectical but perhaps merely hermeneutical. The whole
p oint almost seems to be to read Empire in terms of the multitude, and vice-versa.
Real change is hereby reduced to a mere reversal or shift in perspectives. There is no
need, therefore, to wait for the second volume of Empire, announced under the title
Multi tude, since all the interpretive clues to understand the latter already coincide,
point for point, with the clues that serve to read the former.
This logic, in which antagonism is transmuted into a principle of immanent
reversibility, explains both the strength and the weakness-and thus, perhaps, the
remarkable international success-of Hardt and Negri's book. Their enormous force
lies precisely in the combination of two equally irrefutable interpretive gestures: by
declaring the real subsumption of labor into capital, oflife into biopolitics, they are
capable of filling the trash can of history with all those modern conceptions of poli
tics that still rely on an antagonistic contradiction between inside and outside, be
tween old and new, between friend and enemy; but by affirming the reversibility, or
the intuitive unity, between power and resistance, between Empire and multitude,
they are at the same time capable of overcoming the pessimism of the intellect with
the purest optimism of creativity, which is but the ontological name of life itself.
In this orientation, finally, the notion of antagonism does not vanish completely,
at least not in name, but it can no longer be understood in the context of older
dialectical categories such as the qualitative accumulation of contradictions into an
explosive antagonism, for instance, in the theory of the weakest link in Lenin, in the
theory of structural causality and overdetermination in Althusser, or in the theory
of antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions in Mao. Negri's work, inciden
tally, has undergone dramatic changes in this regard over the last few years. Going
against "the ABC of revolutionary dialectics;' Negri and Hardt thus reject any inter
pretation of resistance in terms of a theory of the weakest link in the imperial chain:
"In the constitution of Empire there is no longer an 'outside' to power and thus no
longer weak links-if by weak link we mean an external point where the articula
tions of global power are vulnerable:" 9 By contrast, as late as in his "Tw.enty Theses
on Marx;' Negri still advocated the highly orthodox idea that revolutionary change
takes place wherever and whenever contradictions accumulate into a strategic node
and thus become antagonistic: ''Actually, the fabric of the present is an enormous
node of strategic contradictions-it is like a boiling volcano which multiplies the ex
plosions and fluxes;' whereby "the strategic contradictions of development show, or
better, produce and institute a new antagonistic subjectivity. All this does not come
about in a deterministic way, but instead it is the fruit of a process dominated by the
multitude, which exalts its own power in freedom:'20 Even in the case of this earlier
formulation, however, Badiou's central question regarding Deleuze and Guattari
cannot be resisted: ''All this cultural racket, all this subversive arm-pumping, only to
slip us, at the end, that Freedom is Good and Necessity Evil?""

100

Logics ofAntagonism

Transcendence and the Real as Act

second orientation, one that gave rise to a new theory of radical democracy pre

cls ly b ptting the recognition of antagonism at the center of political philosophy,


d nves It Impetus from he leacies of Lacan and, to a lesser extent, of Heidegger
(via Dernda) that for a bnef whtle, during the late eighties and early nineties, found
a common round in the work of thinkers such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe
and Slavoj Zizek. From this perspective, the field of the political appears as a pre
carious social totality, articulated on the basis of a vanishing term whose function
in this whole is similar to that of Being for Heidegger or of the Real for Lacan. The
event of Being, in the deconstruction of ontology, gives its origin to the history of
metaphysics; this origin, however, only offers itself by withdrawing itself at the same
ime and as such it is irreducible to the continuous unfolding of history. The Real,
m psychoanalysis, is the point of the impossible that vertebrates the symbolic order;
the Real itself, however, is that which absolutely resists symbolization. It is in a
similar way that the place of power appears in the radical-democratic orientation.
Whether it is called lack, difference, or antagonism pure and simple, the founding
term around which the social order is constructed is an empty term; better yet, it is
an absent cause that completely vanishes into its effects. Following Claude Lefort's
;;ell-known thesis about the empty, unoccupiable place of power in democracy,
Zizek thus writes that "the Lacanian definition of democracy would then be: a so
ciopolitical order in which the People do not exist-do not exist as a unity, embod
ied in their unique representative. That is why the basic feature of the democratic
order is that the place of Power is, by the necessity of its structure, an empty place:' 22
Only by remaining empty does the place of power in democracy make possible the
regime of democratic representation; this place itself-like the center of Empire for
Hardt and Negri, by the way-is a non-place or blank space that is impossible to
reprsent, much less to embody in a particular historical subject-whether the pro
letanat, the party, or the charismatic leader. In an extreme reading, even civil society
no longer offers a valid alternative, insofar as it would do no more than reiterate the
illusion of a unique and indivisible bond in eternal opposition to the apparatus of
the State.
The structure of radical democracy paradoxically displays its greatest force at the
point of its greatest weakness, when it endlessly exposes the fragility of its Achilles'
heel. It articulates the field of the social following the principle of a lack of founda
tion, which is oth, ad t the same time, the condition of possibility of democracy
.
and the condition of ItS ngorous impossibility. This idea of democracy is radical, in
other words, not because it inaugurates a return to the root of the human essence
or to the stable ground of some ultimate truth but, to the contrary, because it aban
dons ny r:ens on to found politis on a principle of substantive power. "Society
. no such thmg as society:' is the first slogan of the thinkers
doesn t eXist, or , there IS
of radical democracy, a slogan obviously inspired by the Lacanian axiom: "There
is no such thing as a sexual relationship."23 Several years before Laclau and Mouffe
would consolidate this reading in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, the Lacanian real
is in :ct already understood in a political key in Badiou's Theory of the Subject, so
that , If the real of psychoanalysis is the impossibility of the sexual as relationship,

Bruno Bosteels

101

the real of Marxism states: 'There is no class relationship: What does this mean? It
can be said otherwise: antagonism:'24 For the radical-democratic orientation, too,
this means that politics is not based on the plenitude of the social bond, but on its
essential lack, due to the unbinding, or the dislocation, of the social whole by an
in trinsic exteriority, which others might call subalternity. It does not rely on a previ
ously established identity but on the constitutive alterity of any social formation. As
Roberto Esposito writes, "Democracy is that which guards alterity, which does not
give illusions or consolations, which does not dream terrible conclusions: the one,
im manence, transparency:'25 Above all, radical democracy is not grounded in the
sovereignty of the people as demos, but robs the ground from beneath any preten
sion to derive a politics from the immediate, organic or substantial self-presence of
a given community. Such self-presence is nothing but the eternal referent of myth.
All too often, however, this radical-democratic view of antagonism limits itself
to assuming, as in a kind of death drive, the inherent impossibility of the symbolic
order of a given society. The project seems able to formulate itself only in terms of a
categorical imperative that obliges us to recognize the intrinsic negativity of the so
cial, as though the task consisted merely in learning to live with the impasse-with
out opening a passage through it. As Zizek states most eloquently:
In this perspective, the 'death drive: this dimension of radical negativity,
cannot be reduced to an expression of alienated social conditions, it defines
la condition humaine as such: there is no solution, no escape from it; the
thing to do is not to 'overcome: to 'abolish' it, but to come to terms with it, to
learn to recognize it in its terrifying dimension and then, on the basis of this
fundamental recognition, to try to articulate a modus vivendi with it. 26
Metapolitically speaking, this mode of recognizing the constitutive nature of an
tagonism tends to be the only actual political experience, other than really existing
parliamentary democracies, capable of being thought in the categories of the radi
cal-democratic orientation.
Badiou often repeats how all political philosophies stand under the condition of
a specific politics. The only effective politics behind the concept of radical democ
racy, however, seems to reside in the double parliamentary-electoral game, in the in
terminable conversation achieved by means of the vote and the public debate; often
reducd to mere opinion-polls. In order not to identify themselves with the glaring
limits of really existing democracies, then, the proponents of radical democracy
sometimes have recourse to an aesthetic analogy in a paradoxical and necessarily
violent presentation of the void of power in the midst of democracy (or the political)
itself. By way of such aesthetic figurations, this political philosophy transcends the
framework of what can be thought objectively in history or in the social sciences.
This alternative could be called arch-aesthetic, if we accept the explanation offered
by Badiou in his reading of Wittgenstein: "I say arch-aesthetic, because it is not a
question of substituting art for philosophy. It is rather a question of posing within
the scientific or propositional activity the principle of a clarity the (mystical) ele
ment of which is beyond this activity, and the real paradigm of which is art. It is a
question therefore of firmly establishing the laws of the sayable (the thinkable), in

102

Logics ofAntagonism

such a way that the unsayable (the unthinkable, which in the final instance is given
only in the form of art) be situated as 'upper limit' of the sayable itself'2? Aside from
this arch-aesthetic alternative, there only remains the desire to repeat the power of
an absolutely radical act in an imitation, within philosophy, of the revolutionary act
itself-as when Benjamin seeks to "blast open" the continuum of history, or when
Nietzsche, calling himself dynamite, pretends to "break history in two:' The desire
for a radical act in this case can be called arch-political, if once again we take into
account the explanations given by Badiou: "The philosophical act is arch-political
in the sense that it seeks to revolutionize humanity at a more radical level than the
calculations of politics;' as in the case of Nietzsche, who "proposes to make formally
equivalent the philosophical act as an act of thinking with the explosive potentiality
that is apparent in the politico-historical revolution:'28 The arch-aesthetic and the
arch -political versions of the radical act, however, are never far removed from the
kind of speculative ultra-leftism already found in the first orientation.
Scission and the Symptomatic Torsion of Truth

For Badiou, both these orientations must be carefully avoided. His early polem
ic against Deleuze already indicates that a political truth arises neither by purely
intuiting the vital immanence of the multitude behind the oppressive machinery
of power, nor by merely recognizing the structural fact of antagonism as the hard
kernel of the real in the midst of everyday reality. Neither the immanence of pure
life nor the transcendence of the death drive can account for the possibility of real
change in a given situation. And yet, this is the only question that really matters
for Badiou. Not only: what is being, on the one hand, and what is the event, on the
other? But: what truly happens between ordinary configurations of the multiple of
being and their supplementation by an unforeseeable event? This means to think
of the truth of an event as an immanent excess from the point of view of the initial
situation: "It is thus an immanent break. 'Immanent' because a truth proceeds in the
situation, and nowhere else-there is no heaven of truths. 'Break' because what en
ables the truth-process-the event-meant nothing according to the prevailing lan
guage and established knowledge of the situation:" 9 Badiou thus agrees with those
contemporary Lacanians who affirm the structural necessity of an exclusion inher
ent in the formation of any subject-precisely the kind of "outside within" rejected
in the Spinozism of Deleuze or Hardt-Negri. As Lacan had written in his Ecrits,
and Badiou quotes this line approvingly in his Theory of the Subject: "The subject
stands in internal exclusion to the object:'3o For Badiou, however, no truth actually
comes out of this structural fact without also involving a symptomatic torsion of the
opening situation from the point of view of its unnameable excess. Whether this
process is described in terms of destruction and purification or, more recently, in
terms of subtraction and disqualification, the point is that the logic of the constitu
tive outside in and of itself remains an empty and purely structural scheme without
the supplementary effort of a forced return to the initial situation. "It is a process of
torsion, whereby a force reapplies itself to that from which it emerges by way of con
flict," Badiou wrote in Theory of the Subject: "All truth is new, even though its spiral
also means repetition. What puts the innovative break into the circular inflection?

Bruno Bosteels

103

certain coefficient of torsion. Therein lies the subjective essence of what is true:
th at it is distorted:'3!
Badiou's principal concern, in other words, is not with a pristine opposition of
being and event. Whenever he does seem to establish such a divide as that between
truth and knowledge, or between being and event, these should not be taken as two
alre ady separate dimensions, which moreover only his critics transcribe with capi
tals. Rather, from the point of a subjective intervention, they stand as the extremes
of an ongoing process of detachment and scission. Despite a recurrent temptation
by the Mallarmean wager, Badiou is rarely taken in by the absolute purity of truth as
a voluntaristic and self-constituent decision in the radical void of the undecidable.
To the contrary, much of his philosophical work is guided by the hypothesis that the
opposition between being and event, as well as that between structure and subject,
far from constituting in turn a structural given that would merely have to be rec
ognized, hinge on the rare contingency of a process, an intervention, a labor. Truth
as an ongoing process, moreover, actively destroys the premise of a simple face-off,
no matter how heroic or melancholy, between an established order of being and the
untainted novelty of an event-between place and force, or between necessity and
freedom. Was this not, after all, the most stringent Maoist lesson to be drawn from
the events of May ' 68 and the Cultural Revolution according to Badiou himself?
If we take this point of view a step further, even Badiou's later philosophy as
systematized in Being and Event begins to revolve around two key concepts-the
symptomatic site of an event and the forcing or torsion of truth-which his critics
tend to ignore, but which in fact sum up his contribution to a forgotten tradition of
the materialist dialectic. In ontology, the event is defined, not just in terms of a pure
self-belonging cut off from the situation, but as an event for a given situation as de
termined by its symptomatic site: "There is an event only in a situation that presents
at least one site. The event is tied, in its very definition, to the place or point that
concentrates the historicity of the situation:'32 The site of an event is symptomatic of
the situation in its totality for the same reasons that in the earlier days explained the
qualitative accumulation of contradictions into an antagonistic node. Except that
today, after the obscure sequence from the late sixties to the mid-seventies, such
antagonism can no longer be read off directly from a sociological an4lysis of the
structure, rather it is the result of a subject's intervention and fidelity to the events of
politics themselves. Antagonism, scission, or the fundamental twoness at the heart
of politics, can no longer be determined objectively, but must be produced through
the labor of chance interventions:
What is being sought after today is a thinking of politics which, while deal
ing with strife, having the structural Two in its field of intervention, does not
have this Two as an objective essence. Or rather, to the objectivist doctrine
of the Two (classes are transitive to the process of production), the political
innovation under way attempts to oppose a vision of the Two 'in terms of
historicity: which means that the real Two is an event-related production, a
political production and not an objective or 'scientific' presupposition.33
There is little doubt in my mind, in any case, that the idea of the event's site is a con-

104

Bruno Bosteels

Logics ofAntagonism

tinuation, in ontology, of the search for a certain dialectic in which every term Or
multiple, even the otherwise unfounded multiple of the event, is internally marked
by the structure of assigned spaces in which this multiple is placed. Otherwise, with
out the logic of scission and torsion, the ontological discourse risks leading us back
to a false structural or ultra-leftist scheme, insofar as the event would constitute a
pure vanishing insurrection of the void which founds the structure of being and
which merely stands revealed in the immeasurable excess of the state of a situation
over this situation itself. An event, however, is not pure novelty, revolt, and insur
rection, but it is tributary to a situation by virtue of its specific site; "The idea of
a turnabout whose origin would be a state of the totality is imaginary. All radical
transformative action originates in a point, which is, within a situation, the site of an
event:'H Even Badiou's later thought remains dialectical, in other words, by rejecting
such stark opposition between being and event in favor of the specific site through
which an event is anchored in the ontological deadlock of a situation that only a rare
subjective intervention can then unlock. "We have seen;' he writes, "that not every
'novelty' is an event. It must further be the case that what the event calls forth and
names is the central void of the situation for which this event is an event:'35
A subject's intervention, moreover, cannot consist merely in showing or recog
nizing the traumatic impossibility, void, or antagonism around which the situation
as a whole is structured. If such were to be the case, the dialectic would remain pro
foundly idealist-its operation delivering at most a radical, arch-aesthetic or arch
political act that either renders visible the unbearable anxiety of the real itself, or
ultimately calls upon the annihilation of the entire symbolic order in a mimicry of
the revolutionary break, which can then perfectly well be illustrated with examples
drawn all the way from Antigone to Hollywood. Badiou's thought, by contrast, seeks
to be dialectical and materialist in understanding the production of a new truth
as the torsion, or forcing, of the entire situation from the precise point of a ge
neric truth, as if the latter had already been added successfully onto the resources
of knowledge available in this situation itself. Despite Zizek's objections, the aim of
the generic extension and the subsequent forcing of the situation is profoundly anti
Kantian. It is not a question of treating the truth of what is otherwise indiscernible
in a given situation merely on the level of a regulative idea so as to avoid provoking
a "disaster" but quite the opposite, so that the "as if" here becomes key to a violent
forcing of the existing situation itself: "The idea is thus to see what happens when,
by force, one 'adjoins' this indiscernible to the situation:'36 Without the subsequent
process of forcing based on such a generic extension of the initial situation, further
more, the Real that resists symbolization will only have been the site of a possible
truth, but it is not already the given truth of the situation itself. In fact, the Real in
this case would merely indicate a structural impossibility and not even an event's
site whereby the regular structure of a situation becomes historicized. The subject,
finally, is a laborious material process that requires a putting to work of an event.
It does not come to coincide, in a purely formal act of conversion or a mere shift
in perspective, with the impasse of the structure as with the real kernel of its own
impossibility-say, through the traumatic symptom, with which a subject can only
identify after traversing the ideological fantasy. At best, to acknowledge or experi-

105

ence this radical impasse, as in the case of antagonism for the radical-democratic
orientation, is still only the inaugural act of subjectivization bereft of any subjec
tive process; at worst, it is actually that which forever blocks and radically obscures
the consequential elaboration of a new truth. For Badiou, a subject emerges only
by opening a passage, in a truly arduous production of novelty, through the im
passe-forcing the structure precisely there where a lack is found-so as to make
generically possible that which the state of the situation would rather confine to an
absurd impossibility. In a famous Chinese saying, frequently invoked in the course
of the Cultural Revolution, this means nothing if not to bring the new out of the old.
To force a new consistent truth out of the old order of things from the antagonistic
point where our knowledge of the latter is found wanting
.

An initial version of this paper wasfirstpresented under the title "The Future ofAntagonism"for
the Program in Literature and the Center for European Studies at Duke University (February
19, 2002). For this invitation and the ongoing dialogue surrounding this and other discussion
texts, I want to express my lasting gratitude to Alberto Moreiras. Thanks are also due to the
participants in the long special seminar on Badiou and politics that followed the day after the
talk, and to the Polygraph collectivefor inviting me to contribute this piece as an introduction to
the translation of Badiou 's text.

Groupe Yenan-Philosophie, "Etat de front;' in La situation actuelle sur Ie front phi


losophique (Paris: Fran<;:ois Maspero, 1977), 12. All translations in the present essay are
mine unless otherwise specified. In addition to Deleuze, Lacan, and Althusser, a fourth
interlocutor-Michel Foucault-is mentioned in a footnote as the subject of a future dis
cussion, but this polemic was never to take place. Incidentally, this lacuna can still be felt
in Badiou's current work, in which certain readers might want to see a more sustained
confrontation, particularly with Foucault's final seminars at the College de France.

Ibid., 10. The mention of Nietzsche's arch-political attempt "to break the history of the
world in two" anticipates a future version of this same polemic, in which Badiou will
once again reject the radical-anarchic figure of antagonism, or the two as such, as part
of Nietzsche's problematic legacy. See Badiou's Casser en deux l'histoire du monde? (Pa
ris: Conference du Perroquet, 1992). Compare also with Alenka ZupanCiC's recent book,
deeply inspired by Badiou's views, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003).

Ibid., 12-13.

See my "Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject: The Recommencement of Dialectical Ma


terialism?" published in two parts in PLI: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 12 (2001):
200-29; and 13 (2002): 173-208.

I have dealt with Badiou and the Heideggerian legacy in general in "Write et for<;:age: Ba
diou avec Heidegger et Lacan;' in Alain Badiou: Penser Ie Multiple, ed. Charles Ramond
(Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002), 259-93.

Badiou, "Quelques reponses a un ami exigeant" (author's unpublished typescript). The


English translation of this text will appear as an afterword in the volume Think Again:
Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy, ed. Peter Hallward (London: Continuum,
2004).

106
7

The notion of orientation itself is also borrowed from Badiou. See his meditation "Destin
ontologique de l'orientation dans la pensee;' in L 'Etre et l'evenement (Paris: Seuil, 1988 ) ,
311-15. Badiou distinguishes three orientations: constructivist, transcendent, and generic,
in a subdivision that roughly overlaps the one used in these pages.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000 ) ,
xv. Among the plethora of international commentaries on Hardt and Negri's bestseller,
I would like to single out the extraordinary critique formulated by Raul J. Cerdeiras, in
deep affinity with Badiou, in "Las desventuras de la ontologia biopolitica de Imperio;'
Acontecimiento: Revista para pensar la politica 24-25 ( 2003) : 11-43.
Badiou, Abrege de mtitapolitique (Paris: Seuil, 1998 ) , 7. The English translation of this
book by Jason Barker is forthcoming from Verso.

10 Badiou, Peut-on penser la politique? (Paris: Seuil, 1985 ) , 12. My English translation of this
book will be published by Duke University Press.
11

Bruno Bosteels

Logics ofAntagonism

Ibid., 112.

12 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 394 and 398.


13 See "Apendice: General Intellect, exodo, multitud. Entrevista a Paolo Virno por el Colec
tivo Situaciones;' Gramatica de la multitud: Para un analisis de las formas de vida con
temporanea, trans. Adriana Gomez, Juan Domingo Estop, Miguel Santucho (Madrid:
Traficantes de Sueiios, 2003 ) , 131.
14 Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (Paris: Minuit, 1986 ) , 95 and 51.
15 Badiou, "Le flux et Ie parti;' in La situation actuelle sur Ie front philosophique, 25. See the
translation in this issue.
16 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 58.
1 7 Badiou, Deleuze: "La clameur de I'Etre" (Paris: Hachette, 1997 ) , 57; De/euze: "The Clamor
of Being" (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) , 36 (translation slightly
modified).
18 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 62.
19 Ibid., 58. Of course the theory of the weakest link was never meant to be such an external
point of vulnerability to which the logic of immanent resistance can serve as an alterna
tive.
20 Negri, "Twenty Theses on Marx: Interpretation of the Class Situation Today;' in Marxism
beyond Marxism, ed. Saree Makdisi, Cesare Casarino and Rebecca E. Karl for the Poly
graph collective (New York: Routledge, 1996 ) , 163-64.
21 Badiou, "Le flux et Ie parti;' 31 (and included in this issue).
22 Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989 ) , 147. In the Foreword to the
second edition of For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as Political Factor (Lon
don: Verso, 2002) , Zizek seeks to distance himself-partially in response to my criticisms
of his reading of Badiou-both from the heroic and quasi-transcendental reading of the
Real as the impossible Thing-in-itself and from the liberal-Lefortian defense of radical
democracy, both of which arguments would signal the fundamental weakness of his ear
lier book. As I plan to argue elsewhere, however, there is little in this Foreword, and much
less in For They Know Not What They Do itself, to support this alleged break away from
the arguments in The Sublime Object.
23 See Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, "Beyond the Positivity of the Social: Antago
nisms and Hegemony;' in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic

107

Politics (London: Verso, 1985 ), 93-148. I offer a more complete critique of the political
philosophy of radical democracy in "Por una falta de politica: Tesis sobre la filosofia de la
democracia radical;' Acontecimiento: Revista para pensar la politica 17 ( 1999 ) : 63-89. Re
printed as "Democracia radical: Tesis sobre la filosofia del radicalismo democnitico;' in
Los nuevos adjetivos de la democracia, a special issue of the Mexican journal Metapolitica
18 ( 2001 ): 96-115. Several theses from this earlier text are reflected in the present sum
mary.
24 Badiou, Theorie du sujet (Paris: Seuil, 1982 ) , 145
25 Roberto Esposito, "Democrazia;' in Nove pensieri sulla politica (Bologna: II Mulino 1993 ),
58.
26 Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, S.

27 Badiou, "Silence, solipsisme, saintete. L' antiphilosophie de Wittgenstein;' i Barca! Poesie,


Politique, Psychanalyse 3 ( 1994) : 7
28 Badiou, Casser en deux l'histoire du monde?, 11.
29 Badiou, L 'Ethique: Essai sur la conscience du Mal (Paris: Hatier, 1993 ), 39; Ethics: An Essay
on the Understanding ofEvil, trans. Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001 ) , 42-43
30 Jacques Lacan, quoted in Badiou, Theorie du sujet, 142.
31 Badiou, Theorie du sujet 29 and 139. Badiou adds: "If the word 'torsion' is not current in
Marxism, it can nevertheless be inferred from it, by combining the notion of the circle
and that of the leap" ( 141 ) .
32 Badiou, L 'Etre et l'evenement, 199
33 Badiou, Manifeste pour la philosophie (Paris: Seuil, 1989 ) , 71-72; Manifesto for Philosophy,
trans. Norman Madarasz (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999 ) , 90-91 (translation modified to
keep the difference between "politics" and "the political").
34 Badiou, L 'Etre et l'evenement, 197- For the dialectical overtones of this and other key argu
ments in Badiou's later works, see my "On the Subject of the Dialectic;' also forthcoming
in Think Again.
35 Badiou, L 'Ethique 64; Ethics, 72
36 Badiou, L 'Etre et l'evenement, 393. In his Foreword to the second edition of For They
Know Not What They Do, Zizek quotes my argument about the "as if" mode of a generic
extension of the situation and then uses this argument to reassert his earlier claim, made
in The Ticklish Subject, about Badiou's na'ive Kantianism. See Zizek, For They Know Not,
Ixxxiii-Ixxxiv. This reply to my objection, however, completely misunderstands the pro
cesses of generic extension and forcing, which precisely break with the imperative to treat
regulative ideas merely in the mode of "as if" and not as a real, even violent change ef
fected in the existing situation itself. For a strict Kantian, Badiou's insistence on the need
to force a situation from the point ofview of its generic truth would be the prime example
of a transcendental illusion, which is another reason why Badiou has never ceased being
a profound anti-Kantian.

Kafka's Voices
Mladen Dolar

In order to provide a quick entry into Kafka one can take a


formula which stems from Gershom Scholem's correspon
dence with Walter Benjamin from the thirties: Geltung ohne
Bedeutung, validity without meaning. The formula economi
cally epitomizes the functioning of law in Kafka: one is faced
with the law that holds us in sway with its validity, but one
is unable to figure out its meaning. The meaning eludes us,
yet faced with the law one is by definition guilty, as Joseph K.
on the first page of The Trial, without it being clear of what
and according to which particular law; he will never learn this
throughout the book, despite his desperate attempts, he will
die on the last page, executed, without having found out why.
The law doesn't make sense, yet it is valid, it holds us to the
last straws of our existence like a blind automatism which has
no outside. One cannot escape it, one is always implicated in
it, it is like the dead letter which has got hold oflife in its total
ity, but not by mortifying life or killing it, Ie mort saisit Ie vif
(the formula by which Marx epitomizes the effects of the capi
tal on life in the Introduction to Capital). Quite the contrary:
the law provokes an animation in the subject, an excitement,
an agitation, an unrest, one hasn't got a minute of peace, there
is no recess, one has to anxiously examine oneself, investigate
the ways in which one could satisfy the law, one has to oscil
late between revolt and resignation, try to figure out its secret,
come to the bottom of its enigma, penetrate its source, its cen
ter, the origin of its authority, and one never can. The psychi
cal counterpart of the law is not mortification, but an anima
tion that permeates the subject with enjoyment, an enjoyment
coextensive with the rule of law and which makes it possible.
Guilt is not mortification but a wrong kind of vivification, as
it were, which binds the subject to the law. The indictment on
the first page instills great excitement into Joseph K:s life, it is
a beginning of a whole new life, but a wrong life, which coin
cides with the life of the law itself. There is no law without the
enjoyment, but precisely as an enjoyment that doesn't bring
life, but rather "undeadness;' to use Eric Santner's term.! The
Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

110

Kafka's Voices

law, the authority, the guilt and the enjoyment form a vicious circle.
The law functions as an interpellation, it addresses the subject but the subject
cannot figure out what is the meaning of this address. It is a call which lacks the
other part, the recognition, the subjectivation in the Althusserian meaning of the
word; a call to which the subject cannot assign a sense, he doesn't know what the
law wants ?f .him. Interpellation fails insofar as it doesn't produce a recognition,
the transmission of a mandate, but at the same time it succeeds triumphantly, since
the very non-recognition triggers a flood of doubts, self-interrogation, aggression,
revolt, humiliation, all of it futile. The subject is cooked, he has let himself fall into
the trap of the law through the very non-recognition, through the failure of as
suming a symbolic mandate, a mission, a vocation. This is how he becomes the
subject, .i. . : subjeced, subject to the law as such, not to some particular assignment
or prohlbltl n; he IS sl. uated in the empty validity, neither dead nor alive, subject
to :he law wIhout uahfications, which is at the same time the law that presents an
emgma, detaills a hidden secret. Where is the law, what does it command, what does
it prohibit?2 One is always "before the law:' outside of its gate, and one of the great
aradoxes of this law is that it doesn't prohibit anything, but is itself prohibited. It is
Ike a reduled Prohibition, the prohibition of the prohibition, the prohibition is
Itself prohibited.3 One can never get to the locus of prohibition, if one could do that
then one would be saved.
Yet what prohibits it is just an infinite deferral. The gate is open, the doorkeeper
,
doesn t stop the man from the country, but the doorkeeper is just the last and the
least of the doorkeepers, there is an infinite hierarchy of them that has no last in
stance. There is no physical impediment, anyone is welcome to enter, the door is
always open. And this is the next essential twist: the very openness is the form of
closue. e law is closed in the very form of openness. The more it is open, the
. Impossible
. to enter, the more it is impossible to revolt. If you don't enter, it
IS
ore
It

IS your own problem, one always falls into one's own trap. ("The court doesn't want
anhing from you. It receives you when yo coe and it dismisses you when you
. secret, yet III this elusiveness it is also what is the
go. ) The law IS. an ever-recedlllg
closest, it animates us from our most intimate interior, it holds us within it is unat
tainable and yet totally immanent, our own internal exteriority, our ex;imacy-to
. very fine word coined by Lacan.
. use this
It is impossible to enter through an open door. The openness itself immobilizes,
. stands awestruck and paralyzed in front of the open door, animation
the subject
and paralysis being two sides of the same position. The subject is excluded from the
law, but the vey exclusion is the form of his inclusion, since this is the way that the
. III sway. Before the law one is always inside the law, there is no place
law holds him
before the law, exclusion is inclusion.
The exclusie inclusion or the inclusive exclusion is precisely the way in which
fto'gaben. des nbes the tructure of sovereignty. Sovereignty is the point of excep
tion mscnbed n the law Itself, the point that can suspend the validity oflaws. On the
first pages of his book he defines sovereignty, following Carl Schmitt, as a paradox:
The sovereign is at the same time outside and inside the juridical order. . . .
The sovereign, having the legal power to suspend the validity of the law, is

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legally situated outside the law. This means that the paradox can equally be
formulated in this way: "The law is exterior to itself:' or rather: "I, the sover
eign, who am outside the law, declare that there is no outside of the law:'5
So sovereignty is structurally based on exception that is included in the law as its
own point of exteriority. The sovereign is the one who can suspend the legal order
and proclaim the state of emergency where the laws are no longer valid and the
exception becomes the rule. At the opposite end of the sovereign we have its inverse
figure, which is the homo sacer, the bare life excluded from the law in such a way that
it can be killed with impunity, yet without entering into the realm of the sacrifice.
Being outside the law, his bare life exposed to be killed with impunity, the homo sacer
is exposed to the law as such in its pure validity. The state of emergency is the rule of
law in its pure form-precisely the excess of validity over meaning, the suspension
of all laws and therefore the institution of the law as such. And one could say: Kafka
is the literature of the permanent state of emergency. The subject is at the mercy of
the law beyond all laws, without any defense. He can be arbitrarily stripped of all
his possessions, including his bare life. The law functions as its pure transgression.
Whenever one encounters the representatives of the law in Kafka-and one always
encounters only its lowest and the most insignificant emissaries-they always act
as the figures of transgression, disregarding any rules, the figures of whim who can
arbitrarily either enforce the law or make an exception, and are constantly making
exceptions for themselves, they are figures of total unpredictability. Kafka's heroes
are always homines sacri, exposed to the pure validity of the law which manifests
itself as its opposite. Kafka has turned homo sacer into the central literary figure,
thus displaying a certain shift in the functioning of the law that has taken place at
the turn of the twentieth century, and inaugurated a new era, with many drastic
consequences which will define the century.
Is there a way out of this world without exteriority? Agamben proposes an op
timistic reading of the parable "Before the Law:' precisely at the point where other
interpreters merely saw the defeat of the man from the country, for the man never
succeeded to get into the Law, he died outside the gate and when dying learned
that this gate was reserved only for him. Yet, the last sentence reads: "This gate was
,,
made only for you. I am now going to shut it. [Ich gehe jetzt und schliej3e ihn.] 6 But
if the very openness of the law is the pure form of its closure and of its unqualified
validity and power, then the man succeeded in a most remarkable feat: he managed
to attain the closure. He managed to close the door, to interrupt the reign of pure
validity. The closed door is a chance of liberation. It is true, he was successful only
at the price of his own life, so that the law is interrupted only when he is dead-one
reading would be: the law has no power over the dead alone, one doesn't stand a
chance while alive. Still, there is a perspective of closure, of invalidating the law if
only one persists far enough. Was the man from the country so naIve or so shrewd?
On the one hand he was very timid, he let himself be subdued very quickly, he was
easily diverted from his initial intention, instantly intimidated. But on the other
hand he displayed an incredible stubbornness, persistence and determination. It is
the struggle of exhaustion; it is true that they manage to entirely exhaust him with
the open door, yet in the end he is the one who exhausts the law. If one is prepared

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to persist to the end one can put an end to the validity of the law.
This seems a desperate strategy. But what other strategies are there in this im
possible predicament? If there is always some way out of the closure, there seems to
be none out of the openness. This is why Kafka is generally perceived as the depress
ing author of total closure with no exit. Misperceived, I think, for this is not Kafka's
message at all. There is a way out, at all times, and there is a politics in Kafka that
is not at all the capitulation before this unfathomable validity, this circle of internal
transgression and culpabilization. In what follows I will examine three strategies
that offer an exit, and they are all connected with the instance of the voice.
Why the voice? What makes the voice placed in a structural and privileged posi
tion? Let us briefly look at the intricate question of how does the law manifest itself.
It always shows itself through some partial objects, typically through a glimpse, a
tiny fragment that one unexpectedly witnesses and which in its fragmentation re
mains a mystery; by morsels; by servants, doorkeepers, maids; by trivia, by trash,
the refuse of the law. The massive validity without meaning is epitomized by partial
objects, and those are enough for the construction of fantasies, enough to capture
desire. The law acts as the pure metonymy, from one morsel to another, while the
construction of its unfathomable meaning falls entirely upon the shoulders of the
subject. And among those partial objects there is the voice, the senseless voice of the
law: the law constantly makes funny noises, it emits mysterious sounds. The validity
of the law can be pinned to a senseless voice.
When the land surveyor K. arrives to the village under the castle he is lodged
in an inn and he is eager to clarify the nature of his assignment. He was sent for, he
was summoned and he wants to know why, so he calls the castle, he uses this recent
invention, the telephone. But what does he hear on the other side of the line? Just
a voice that is some kind of singing, or buzz, or murmur, the voice in general, the
voice without qualifications.
There was a murmur coming from the receiver such as K. had never heard
before from a telephone. It was as if this murmur of countless children's
voices-but this murmur was no murmur, it was the singing of very distant,
extremely distant voices-as if this murmur, in an impossible way, was turn
ing into a single shrill high-pitched voice which was piercing the ear as if it
wanted to penetrate deeper than mere hearing.7
There is no message, but the voice is enough to stupefy him, he is suddenly para
lyzed: "In front of the telephone he was powerless:' He is spellbound, mesmerized.
This is just one example chosen at random among many.
Before going any farther one should note that the intervention of a voice in
this place is crucial and necessary. The voice epitomizes at best the validity beyond
meaning, it is structurally placed at the point of the exception of the law. For the law
is the law only insofar as it is written, that is, given the form which is universally
at the disposal of everyone, always accessible and unchangeable-but with Kafka
one can never get to the place where it is written to check what it says, the access
is always denied, the place of the letter is infinitely eluding. The voice is precisely
what cannot be checked, it is ever changing and fleeting, it is the non-universal par

113

excellence, that which cannot be universalized. This is why the superego, the reverse

side of the law, is always manifested by a voice.8 And this is the point of Lacan's use
of shofar: this ancient primitive instrument used in the Jewish rituals is the presen
tification of the supposed voice of the dying primal father which keeps resonating,
thus endowing the letter with authority. The letter of the law, in order to acquire au
thority, has to rely, at a certain point, on the tacitly presupposed voice which makes
that the letter is not "the dead letter;' but exerts power and can be enacted. So the
voice is structurally in the same position as sovereignty, which means that it can put
into question the validity of the law: the voice stands at the point of exception, the
internal exception which threatens to become the rule, where it suddenly displays
its profound complicity with the bare life. The emergency is the emergence of the
voice in the commanding position, its concealed existence suddenly becomes over
whelming and devastating. The voice is precisely at the unplaceable spot at the same
time in the interior and the exterior of the law, and hence a permanent threat of the
state of emergency. And with Kafka the exception has become the only rule. The
letter of the law is hidden in some inaccessible place and may not exist at all, it is a
matter of presumption, and we have only voices in its place.
I can add in parenthesis that this is also exactly Hegel's problem-Slavoj Ziiek
keeps coming back to this in several of his books.9 When Hegel introduces the mon
arch, which is for him the highest speculative category of the political philosophy,
the very embodiment of reason, he introduces it as the figure of supreme sovereignty
but deprived of any power. The sole function of the monarch is to add his signature:
the laws are written and passed by competent people, by democratic procedures,
etc., yet in order for them to acquire validity, the monarch has to add his signa
ture. But this is the only thing he does, the signature has the performative power
of instituting the law, of making it valid, his act resides in pure validation without
possessing a meaning. The monarch himself is chosen on the completely contin
gent and "irrational" basis of natural heredity, not by his abilities, in the maximum
contrast to the law as the embodiment of reason. So the monarch is the constitutive
exception, the exception is inscribed within the realm of the law, but in such a way
that it is made innocuous. It is reduced to the mere signifier, the signature, a pure
performative act without a meaning. This was Hegel's wager: to include the point
of exception and thus to neutralize it, to deprive it of all the pernicious effects and
taus to enact the realm of reason through the very irrational point of exception in
its center. There is a crucial point in this strategy: to reduce the externality and the
exception to a mere signifier, a meaningless signature as the seal of reason. The sig
nifier in the form of the senseless letter which, despite its meaningless nature, is still
a letter, that is, universally disponible and verifiable, a zero point of universality. This
is not the path that history has taken in the past century: it treated the exception not
as a signifier to be included, but as a voice which, in its senseless nature, cannot be
included, it is the zero point of non-universality, not the zero point of universality.
This is where the economy of the letter totally differs from the economy of the voice.
And this is why the voice constantly threatened to undermine the authority of the
letter, or rather to supplant it, to invalidate it. End of parenthesis.
.

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K. is spellbound by the voice emanating from the castle through the telephone, as
the wanderer is spellbound by the song of the Sirens. What is the secret of that ir
resistible voice? Kafka has an answer in his short story "The Silence of the Sirens;'
("Das Schweigen der Sirenen") written in October 1917 and published in 1931 by M ax
Brod, who has also provided the title. The Sirens are irresistible because they are
silent, yet Ulysses nevertheless managed to outwit them. Here we have the first strat
egy, the first model of escape from the unstoppable force of the law.
"To protect himself from the Sirens Ulysses stopped his ears with wax and had
himself bound to the mast of his ship:'l0 The first sentence is already one of Kafka's
wonderful opening coups de force, as, for example, in the opening paragraph of his
novel America, where we have his hero Karl RoBmann arriving by boat to the New
York harbor, admiring the Statue of Liberty with her sword rising high up in the
sun. One almost doesn't notice, but where is the sword in the Statue of Liberty?
Here we have Ulysses stopping his ears and tied to the mast, while in the legend it
was the oarsmen who had their ears stopped with wax while Ulysses was tied to the
mast. There was a division oflabor, indeed the very model of the division oflabor, if
we follow the argument that Adorno and Horkheimer developed in Dialectic ofEn
lightenment. There is a sharp division between those who are doomed to be deaf and
to work, and those who listen and enjoy, take pleasure in art, but helplessly tied to
the mast. This is the very image of the division between labor and art, and this is the
place to start scrutinizing the function of art, in its separation from the economy of
work and survival, that is, in its powerlessness. The aesthetic pleasure is always the
pleasure in chains, it is thwarted by the limits assigned to it, and this is why Ulysses
confronting the Sirens is so exemplary for Adorno and Horkheimer.
Kafka's Ulysses combines both strategies, the aristocratic and the proletarian
one, he takes double precautions, although all know that this is useless: the song of
the Sirens would pierce any wax and the true passion would break any chains. But
the Sirens have a weapon far more effective than their voice, which is their silence,
that is, the voice at its purest; the silence that is unbearable and irresistible, the ulti
mate weapon of the law. "And though admittedly such a thing has never happened,
still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing;
but from their silence certainly never:'" One cannot resist silence for the good rea
son that there is nothing to resist. This is the mechanism of the law at its minimal: it
expects nothing of you, it doesn't command, one can always oppose commands and
injunctions, but not the silence. The silence is the very form of the validity of the law
beyond its meaning, the zero-point of voice, its pure embodiment.
Ulysses is naive, he childishly trusts his devices and he sails past them. The Si
rens are not simply silent but they pretend to sing: "He saw their throats rising and
falling, their breasts lifting, their eyes filled with tears, their lips half-parted;' and
he believed they were singing and that he has escaped them and outfoxed them,
although their singing was unstoppable. "But Ulysses, if one may so express it, did
not hear their silence; he thought they were singing and that he alone did not hear
them:'12 If he knew they were silent he would be lost. He imagined that he has es
caped their power by his naive cunning, and in the first account we are led to sup
pose that it was his naivete that saved him.

115

Yet the truth of the story is perhaps not in his naivete at all: "Perhaps he had re
ally noticed, although here the human understanding is beyond its depths, that the
Sirens were silent, and held up to them and to the gods the aforementioned pretense
merely as a sort of shield:'13 The shrewd and canny Ulysses, the sly and cunning
Ulysses-Homer never fails to accompany his name by one of those epithets. Is his
ultimate slyness displayed by putting up an act of naivete? So in the second account
he outwitted them by pretending not to hear that there was really nothing to hear.
They were going through the motions of singing and he was going through the mo
tions of not hearing their silence. One could say that his ruse has the structure of
the most famous Jewish joke, the paragon among Jewish jokes, the one with the
two Jews on the railway station: "If you say you're going to Krakow, you want me to
believe you're going to Lemberg. But I know that in fact you're going to Krakow. So
why are you lying to me?"14 So by extension: "Why are you pretending that you don't
hear anything when you really don't hear anything? Why are you pretending not to
hear when you know very well there is nothing to hear? You pretend so that I would
think you don't hear anything while I know very well that you really don't hear
anything:' The Jewish joke is Ulysses' triumph, he managed to counter one pretense
with another. In the joke the first Jew, the one who simply told the truth about his
destination, is the winner, for he managed to transfer the burden of truth and lie on
the other one, who could only reply with a hysterical outburst. One is left with the
same oscillation as in our story: was the truth-teller so naIve or so shrewd? Which
is exactly the question that remained in the air with the man from the country dy
ing on the threshold of the law. Ulysses' strategy is not unrelated to the strategy of
the man from the country: Ulysses counters pretense by pretense, the man counters
deferral by deferral, exhaustion by exhaustion-he manages to exhaust the exhaus
tion, to bring an end to the deferral, to close the door.
This doesn't work with the Sirens. To be sure, they are defeated: "They no longer
had any desire to allure; all they wanted was to hold as long as they could the radi
ance that fell from Ulysses' great eyes:'lS Are they suddenly seized by the yearning
for the one who managed to get away? "If the Sirens had possessed consciousness
they would have been annihilated at that moment. But they remained as they had
been; all that had happened was that Ulysses had escaped them:'16 They have no
consciousness, all their behavior is going through the motions, they are an automa
ton, they are inanimate, they are a machine imitating humanity, they are cyborgs,
and this is why their defeat cannot have any effect. This one has escaped, but this
cannot dismantle the mechanism.
So can one fight the law by turning a deaf ear to it? Can one just pretend not
to hear its silence? This is no simple strategy, it defies human understanding, says
Kafka, it boggles the mind. It takes the supreme cunning and it doesn't introduce a
closure of the law. Ulysses was an exception, and everybody else is the rule.17
.

. .

Let us now turn to another strategy that has again the voice at its kernel, the voice
which can counter the voice, or the silence, of the law. "Josephine the Singer, or the
Mouse Folk" ("Josefine die Sangerin oder das Yolk der Mause"), is actually the last

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story that Kafka ever wrote, in March 1924, a couple of months before his death.
By its being the last one it is necessarily placed in the perspective of reading it as
his testament, his last will, the point de capiton, the quilting point, the necessary
illusion of it being the vantage point which would shed some ultimate light on his
work, provide a clue which would illuminate, with finality, all that went before. And
it is no doubt bizarre and ironical that this clue, this suture, is provided not only by
the voice, but by the tiniest of voices, the minute microscopic squeak,'8 and one is
structurally inclined to take this minuscule peep as the red thread that could retro
actively enlighten Kafka's obscurity.
There is a vast question of Kafka's multiple uses of the animal kingdom which
are so prominent in his work-here I can only follow Deleuze and Guattari, who
dwell upon this at some length. There is, most notoriously, the becoming-animal of
Gregor Samsa, which features, among other things, his voice, the incomprehensible
chirping sounds which come out of his mouth when he tries to justify himself in
front of the chief clerk. '''That was no human voice; said the chief clerk . . . ," '9 it is the
signifier reduced to pure senseless voice, reduced to what Deleuze and Guattari call
the pure intensity. The general question can be put in the following way: is animality
outside the law? The first answer is: by no means. Kafka's animals are never linked to
mythology, they are never allegorical or metaphorical. Here is the justly famous line
by Deleuze and Guattari: "Metamorphosis is the contrary of metaphor;'20 and on
this account Kafka is perhaps the first utterly non-metaphorical author. The animal
societies, the mice and the dogs to which we will come in a moment, are organized
"just like" human societies,21 which means that animals are always denaturalized,
deterritorialized animals, there is nothing pre-cultural, innocent or authentic about
them. Yet on the other hand they nevertheless represent what Deleuze and Guattari
cali ia ligne de Juite, a certain line of flight. The becoming-animal of Gregor Samsa
means his escape from the mechanism of his family and his job, the way out from
all the symbolic roles that he had assumed, his insecthood is at the same time his
liberation. Metamorphosis is an attempt of escape, though a failed one. But there is
a double edge to this: one can read the becoming-animal on the first level as becom
ing that what law has made out of subjects, that is, to become indeed reduced to the
bare animal life, the lowest kind of animality represented by insects, the crawling
. disgusting swarm to be decontaminated, the non-sacrificial animality (the insect is
the anti-lamb), the bare life of homo sacer. The law treats subjects as insects, as the
metaphor has it, but Gregor Samsa destroys the metaphor by taking it literally, by
literalizing it, and thus the metaphor collapses, the distance of analogy evaporates
and the word becomes the thing. But by fully assuming the position of the bare life,
the reduction to animality, a ligne de Juite emerges, not as an outside of law but at
the bottom of the full assumption of the law. Animality is the internal outside that
is endowed with ambivalence precisely at the point of fully realizing the implicit
presupposition of the law.
Josephine's voice presents a different problem. It is not a question of metamor
phosis, but of the emergence of another kind of voice in the midst of the society
governed by the law; a voice that wouldn't be the voice of the law, though it may
seem indistinguishable from it. Josephine's voice is endowed with a special power

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i n the

midst of this entirely unmusical race of mice. (A parenthesis: what Freud and
Kafka curiously have in common, apart from the obvious analogies of their Jewish
origins and sharing the same historical moment and the space of Central Europe,
is their claim that they are both completely unmusical, that music is the one thing
they don't understand at all. This is an extraordinary trait particularly given their
Jewish background, since music was historically one of the Jewish specialties, up to
this day.22 Couldn't one say that this absence of musical gift is the best entrance into
the susceptibility to the voice?).
So what is so special about Josephine's voice?
Among intimates we admit freely to one another that Josephine's singing,
as singing, is nothing out of the ordinary. Is it in fact singing at all? . . . Is it
not perhaps just piping [whistling, pJeifen l ? And piping is something we all
know about, it is the real artistic accomplishment of our people, or rather no
mere accomplishment but a characteristic expression of our life. We all pipe,
but of course no one dreams of making out that our piping is an art, we pipe
without thinking of it, indeed without noticing it, and there are even many
among us who are quite unaware that piping is one of our characteristics. . . .
Josephine . . . hardly rises above the level of our usual piping . . . . 23
Josephine merely pipes, whistles, as all mice do, all the time, even in a less accom
plished manner than the others. "Piping is our people's daily speech . . . ;'24 that is,
the speech minus meaning. Yet her singing is irresistible, this is no ordinary voice,
though indistinguishable from others by its positive features. Whenever she starts
singing, and she does it in unpredictable places and times, in the middle of the
street, anywhere, there is immediately a crowd that gathers and listens, completely
enthralled. So this very ordinary piping is suddenly placed on a special spot, all its
power stems from the place it occupies, as in Lacan's definition of sublimation, "to
elevate an object to the dignity of the Thing:' She may well be convinced herself that
her voice is very special, but it is just "to a straw" like any other. This is 1924, the
time of Marcel Duchamp, ten years after he displayed his La roue de bicyclette (1913),
the ordinary bicycle wheel, elevating it to the dignity of the Thing, this art object
that mysteriously looks exactly like any bicycle wheel (to be followed by shufl1ing
spades, urinals, etc.). As Gerard Wajcman put it, Duchamp invented the wheel for
the twentieth century.25 There is an act of a pure creatio ex nihilo, or rather creatio ex
nihilo in reverse: the wheel, the object of mass production, is created not exactly out
of nothing, but rather it creates the nothing, the gap that separates it from all other
wheels, and which presents the wheel in its pure being-object, deprived of any of its
functions, suddenly in its strange sublimity.
So Josephine's voice is the ready-made object, it is the extension of the ready
made into music. All it does is to introduce a gap, the imperceptible gap that sepa
rates it from all other voices while remaining absolutely the same-"a mere nothing
in voice."26 This can start anywhere, everywhere, at any time, with any kind of ob
ject: this is the art of the ready-made, and everything is ready-made for art. It is like
the sudden intrusion of transcendence into immanence, but a transcendence that
stays in the very midst of immanence and looks exactly the same, the imperceptible

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difference in the very sameness. Her art is the art of the minimal gap,>7 and this is
the hardest nut to crack.
To crack a nut is truly no feat, so no one would ever dare to collect an audi
ence in order to entertain it with nut-cracking. But if all the same one does
do that and succeeds in entertaining the public, then it cannot be a matter
of simple nut-cracking. Or it is a matter of nut-cracking, but it turns out that
we have overlooked the art of cracking nuts because we were too skilled in
it and that this newcomer to it first shows us its real nature, even finding
it useful in making his effects to be rather less expert in nut -cracking than
most of US.28
So any voice will do to crack the nuts, provided it can create nothing out of some
thing. Her genius is in having no talent, which makes her all the more the genius. An
accomplished trained singer would never have pulled off this feat.
Josephine is the popular artist, the people's artist, so the people take care of her
as the father of the child, while she is persuaded that she is the one that takes care
of the people; when they are "in a bad way politically or economically, her sing
ing is supposed to save" them and "if it doesn't drive away the evil, at least gives us
strength to bear it:'29 Her voice is a collective voice, she sings for all, she is the voice
of the people, who otherwise form an anonymous mass. "This piping, which rises
up where everyone else is pledged to silence, comes almost like a message from the
whole people to each individuaI:'30 In a reversal, she embodies the collectivity and
relegates her listeners to their individuality. There is the opposition between her
oneness and the collectivity of people-they are always treated en masse, they dis
play the uniformity of their reactions, despite some minor divergences of opinion,
and their commonsensical opinion is rendered by the narrator (Erzahlermaus, as
one commentator put it), the bearer of the doxaY They are non-individuals, while
she, on the other side of the scale, is the exceptional one, the elevated individuality
who stands for, and can awaken, the lost individuality of others.
But in her role of the artist she is also the capricious prima donna, there is the
whole comedy of her claims for her rights. She wants to be exempt from work, she
requires special privileges, the work allegedly harms her voice, she wants that the
due honor should be paid to her services, she wants to be granted the place apart.
She "does not want mere admiration, she wants to be admired exactly in the way she
prescribes:'32 But the people, despite the general esteem, don't want to hear about
any of this, they are cold in their judgment, they respect her, but want her to remain
one of them. So there is the whole charade of the artist who is not appreciated as
she would deserve, she doesn't get the laurel that she thinks belongs to her, she puts
up the act of the genius not understood by the contemporaries. Out of protest she
announces that she will cut down her coloraturas, this will teach them a lesson, and
maybe she does, only that nobody notices it. She keeps coming up with all sorts of
whims, she lets herself be begged and only reluctantly gives in. There is the comedy
of the hurt narcissism, the megalomania, the inflated ego, the high mission of the
artist's overblown vocation. So one day she indeed stops singing, firmly believing
that there would be some huge scandal, but nobody cares, nobody gives a damn, ev-

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erybody goes about their business as usual, without noticing a lack. That is, without
noticing the lack of the lack, the absence of the gap.
Curious, how mistaken she is in her calculations, the clever creature, so mis
taken that one might fancy she has made no calculations at all but is only
being driven on by her destiny, which in our world cannot be anything but
a sad one. Of her own accord she abandons her singing, of her own accord
she destroys the power she has gained over people's hearts. How could she
ever have gained that power, since she knows so little about these hearts of
ours? . . . Josephine's road must go downhill. The time will soon come when
her last notes sound and die into silence. She is a small episode in the eternal
history of our people, and the people will get over the loss of her. . . . Perhaps
we shall not miss so very much after all, while Josephine . . . will happily lose
herself in the numberless throng of the heroes of our people, and soon, since
we are no historians, will rise to the heights of redemption and be forgotten
like all her brothers.33
Despite her vanity and megalomania, people will do easily without her, she will be
forgotten, no traces will be left of her art, this is not a people of historians and ar
chivists, and besides, there is no way one could stack, collect, archive her art, which
consists purely in the gap.
So this is the second strategy, the strategy of art, of the art as the non -exceptional
exception, which can arise anywhere, at any moment, which is made of anything, of
the ready-made objects, providing it can provide them with a gap, make them make
a break. It is the art of the minimal difference. Yet the moment it makes its appear
ance this difference is bungled by the very gesture that brought it about, the moment
this gesture and this difference became instituted, the moment art becomes an insti
tution to which a certain place is allotted and certain limits are drawn. Its power is
at the same time its powerlessness, the very status of art veils what is at stake. Hence
the whole farce of the egocentric megalomania and the misunderstood genius, the
special privileges etc., which occupy the largest part of the story. Josephine wants
the impossible: she wants a place beyond the law, beyond the equality-and equality
is the essential feature of the mouse-folk, the equality in tininess, in their miniature
size (hence her claims to greatness are all the more comical). But at the same time
she wants her status of the exception to be legally sanctioned, symbolically recog
nized, properly glorified. She wants to be, like the sovereign, both inside and outside
the law. She wants her uniqueness to be recognized as a special social role, and the
moment art does this, it is cooked. The very break it has introduced is reduced
to just another social function, the break becomes the institution of the break, its
place is circumscribed and as an exception it can fit very well into the rule. That is,
into the rule of law. As an artist who wants veneration and recognition she will be
forgotten, relegated to the gallery of memory, that is, of oblivion. Her voice, which
opens the crack in the seamless continuity of the law, is betrayed and destroyed by
the very status of art, which reinserts it and closes the gap. At best it can be a tiny
recess: "Piping is our people's daily speech, only many a one pipes his whole life long
and does not know it, where here piping is set free from the fetters of daily life and it

120

Kafka's Voices

Mladen Dolar

sets us free too for a little while:'34 Just for a little while, but by setting us free it only
helps us bear the rest all the better. The miniature size of the mouse is enough to
open the gap, but once it is instituted and recognized, its importance shrinks to the
size of the mouse, despite its delusions of grandeur, and despite the temporary thrall
it will be forgotten. It is the voice tied to the mast, and the oarsmen, although they
may hear it in the flash of a brief recess, will continue to be deaf. Thus we end up not
with Kafka's version of Ulysses, but are stuck with Ulysses tout court, or rather with
the Adorno and Horkheimer version. Her sublime voice will finally be den Miiusen
gepjiffen, as the dictionary has it (and this German expression may well be at the
origin of the whole story), that is, piped to the mice, piped in vain to someone who
cannot understand or appreciate it-not because of some obtuseness of the mass,
but because of the nature of art itself. One could say: the art is her mousetrap. So the
second strategy fails, it is ruined by its own success.

Let us now turn to a third option. "Investigations of a Dog" ("Forschungen eines


Hundes") , written in 1922 (two years before his death) and published in 1931, the title
again given by Max Brod, is one of the most obscure and most bizarre among Kafka's
stories-and this is to say something-apart from being one of the longest. Here
we have a dog who lives a normal dog's life, like everybody, and who is suddenly
awakened from this life by an encounter with seven rather special music-producing
dogs.
. . . out of some place of darkness, to the accompaniment of terrible sounds
such as I had never heard before, seven dogs stepped into the light. . . . [Tlhey
brought the sound with them, though I could not recognize how they pro
duced it. . . . At that time I still knew hardly anything of the creative gift for
music with which the canine race alone is endowed, it had naturally enough
escaped my but slowly developing powers of observation; for though music
had surrounded me as a perfectly natural and indispensable element of ex
istence ever since I was a suckling, an element which nothing impelled me
to distinguish from the rest of existence . . . ; all the more astonishing, then,
indeed devastating, were these seven great musical artists to me.35
To start with the situation is similar to that of Josephine's singing: music is every
where in dogs' lives, the most run-of-the-mill thing, utterly inconspicuous, and it
takes "great musical artists" to single it out, that is, to produce the break. But there
is a twist:
They did not speak, they did not sing, they remained generally silent, almost
determinedly silent; but from the empty air they conjured music. Everything
was music, the lifting and setting down of their feet, certain turns of the
head, their running and their standing still, the positions they took up in
relation to one another . . . [theirl lying flat on the ground and going through
complicated concerted evolutions . . . .36
Where does the music come from? There is no speaking, no singing, no musical

121

instruments. It just came from nowhere, from the empty air, ex nihilo. Music was
everywhere in dogs' lives, ready-made, but this one was just created out of nothing.
We have seen that Josephine's problem was to create a nothing out of something, in
creatio ex nihilo in reverse, creatio nullius rei, but here it's even better: they create
nothing out of nothing, the gap of nothing which encircles the ready-made object
made out of nothing. There we have the great wonder: the ready-made nothing. The
ready-made nothing is epitomized by the voice without a discernible source, what
Michel Chion called the acousmatic voice.37 It is the voice as pure resonance.
Let me take a brief pause for a digression. In one of his (rather rare) reflections
about the voice in the (unpublished) seminar on anxiety on June 5, 1963, Lacan
argues for his tenet that the object voice has to be divorced from sonority. He curi
ously makes an excursion into the physiology of the ear, he speaks about the cavity
of the ear, its snail-like shape, Ie tuyau, the tube, and goes on to say that its impor
tance is merely topological, it consists in the formation of a void, a cavity, an empty
space, of "the most elementary form of a constituted and a constituting emptiness
[Ie videl ;' like the empty space in the middle of a tube, or of any wind instrument,
the space of mere resonance, the volume. But this is but a metaphor, he says, and
continues with the following rather mysterious passage:
If the voice, in our sense, has an importance, then it doesn't reside in it reso
nating in some spatial void; rather it resides in the fact that the simplest
emission . . . resonates in the void which is the void of the Other as such, ex
nihilo, so to speak. The voice responds to what is said, but it cannot be re
sponsible for it [La voix repond a ce qui se dit, mais elle ne peut pas en repon
dre.l In other words: in order to respond we have to incorporate the voice as
the alterity of what is said [l'alterite de ce qui se ditl .
What are we to make of this? I will take up just one thread. If there is an empty space
in which the voice resonates, then it is only the void of the Other, the Other as a
void. One speaks, and there is a response, a voice that comes back to us, the voice as
the answer to what was said, but this response is the mere resonance in the Other.
The voice comes back to us through the loop of the Other. We say something, some
minimal emission, and what comes back to us from the Other is the pure alterity of
what is said, that is, the voice. This is maybe the original form of the famous formula
that the subject always gets back his own message in an inverted form: the message
that one gets back in response is the voice. Our speech resonates in the Other and is
returned as the voice, something we didn't bargain for, the pure alterity: the inverted
form of our message is its voice, which was created from a pure void, ex nihilo, it is
the minimal form of the echo, not the sound echo that one can hear, but the inau
dible echo of the pure resonance, and this non-sonorous resonance endows what
is said with alterity. The pure void produces something, something emerges out of
nothing, there is a resonating nothing, although this resonance has no sonority. One
expects a response from the Other, one addresses it in the hope of a response, but all
one gets is the voice. It is a response to our words, but it is not responsible for them,
the subject is the one who is responsible for the emission. The voice is what is said
turned into its alterity, but the responsibility is the subject's own, not the Other's,

122

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Kafka's Voices

A politi cal slogan in the time of the general infantilization of social life,

which means that the subject is responsible not only for what he said, but must at
the same time respond for, and respond to, the alterity of his own speech. He said
something more than he intended, and this surplus is the voice that is merely pro
duced by being passed through the loop of the Other. This is I suppose at the bottom
of the rather striking phenomenon in analysis, the dispossession of one's voice in the
presence of the silence of the analyst: whatever one says is immediately countered
by its own alterity, by the voice resounding in the resonance of the void of the Other,
which comes back to the subject as the answer the moment one spoke.38 This reso
nance dispossesses one's own voice, the resonance of the Other thwarts it, burrows
it, makes it sound hollow. The speech is the subject's own, but the voice pertains to
the Other, it is created in the loop of its void. This is what one has to learn to respond
for, and respond to.39 The dispossession is at the same time an opening.
But this is just a digression, made in the wild hope of clarifying one obscurity
with another, that of Kafka by that of Lacan, the hope that two combined obscurities
might produce some light- ex nihilo. If we take up just the slogans of "the resonance
of the Other;' "the void;' "ex nihilo;' then we see that the seven dogs' voices are com
ing out of a pure void, they spring up from nothing, a pure resonance without a
source. As if the pure alterity would have turned into music, the music that pervades
anything and everything, as if the voice of this resonance would have got hold of
all possible points of emission, and not the other way around. The resonance of the
voice functions not as an effect but as a cause, a pure causa sui, but which in this self
causality encompasses everything. It is as if the pure void of the Other would start
to reverberate in itself in the presence of those great musicians, whose art consisted
merely in letting the Other resonate for itself.
The hapless young dog is overwhelmed:
. . . the music gradually got the upper hand, literally knocked the breath out
of me and swept me far away from those actual little dogs, and quite against
my will . . . my mind could attend to nothing but this blast of music which
seemed to come from all sides, from the heights, from the deeps, from ev
erywhere, surrounding the listener, overwhelming him, crushing him, and
over his swooning body still blowing fanfares so near that they seemed far
away and almost inaudible. . . . [TJhe music robbed me of my wits . . . .40
This experience entirely shatters the young dog's life, it is the start of his quest, his
investigations. His interest in all this is not artistic at all, there is no problem of the
status of this voice as art, as with Josephine, his interest is an epistemological one. It
is the quest for the source, the attempt to gain knowledge about the source of it all.
One of Josephine's endeavors was to preserve the dimension of the child in her art,
in the midst of that race of mice which is both very childish and prematurely old at
the same time, they are like children infused with "weariness and hopelessness;'41
and Josephine's voice was like preserving their childhood against their economy
of survival, against the always premature adulthood. But the young dog is at the
very opposite end of this, he decides that "there are more important things than
childhood:' Es gibt wichtigere Dinge als die Kindheit:42 this is one of Kafka's great
sentences, it should be taken as a motto, or indeed as a most serious political slogan.

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123

starting with
the infantilization of infants, the time which loves to take the despicable opposite
line, namely that we are all children in our hearts and that this is our most precious
possession, something we should hold on to. There are more important things than
childhood: this should also be seen as the slogan of psychoanalysis, which indeed
seems to be all about retrieving the childhood, but not in order to keep this precious
and unique thing, but in order to give it up. Psychoanalysis is on the side of the
young dog who decides to grow up, to leave behind "the blissful life of a young dog;'
to start his investigations, turn to research, to pursue a quest.
But his quest takes a strange and unexpected turn. The question "Where does
the music come from? Where does the voice come from?" is immediately translated
into another question: "Where does the food come from?" The mystery of the incor
poreal resonance of the voice is without further ado transformed into the mystery of
a very different kind, of the most corporeal kind imaginable. The voice is the reso
nance from nowhere, it doesn't serve anything (Lacan's definition of enjoyment),
but the food is at the opposite end, the most elementary means of survival, the most
material and bodily of elements. Indeed, it is the question about a mystery where
there doesn't seem to be any mystery. The dog sees a mystery where nobody else sees
a mystery, the simplest and the most palpable thing suddenly becomes endowed
with the greatest of secrets. A break has happened, from nowhere, and he wants to
start his inquiries with the simplest things. In a few sentences, in a few lines, one
passes from the enigma of song to the enigma of food-the stroke of Kafka's genius
at its best, in a passage that is completely unpredictable and completely logical at the
same time. Once one starts asking questions, there is no end to mystery. What is the
source of food? The earth? But what enables the earth to provide food? Where does
the earth get the food from? Just as the source of the law was an enigma that one
could never disclose, so is the source of food an ever-elusive enigma.
So the dog goes around asking other dogs, who all seem quite unconcerned by
such self-evident trivialities, nobody would dream of taking seriously such banal in
quiries. When he asks them about the source of food, they immediately assume that
he must be hungry, so instead of an answer they give him food, they want to nourish
him, they give him the bone, but no spirit. They want to stuff his mouth with food,
stop his questioning with food.43
. The dog's mouth cannot be stuffed, he is not put off that easily, and he gets so in
volved in his investigation that he eventually stops eating. The story has many twists
and turns that I cannot go into, all of them illuminating and strangely wonderful; I
must leave aside, e.g., the intriguing problem of the dogs floating in the air, etc. I will
just jump to the last section.
The way to discover the source of food is to starve. Like "A Hunger Artist;' "Der
Hungerkiinstler;' the story written in the same year, not the starving artist, which is
a common enough phenomenon, but someone who has brought starvation to an
art. The starvation was his ready-made, since his secret was that he actually really
disliked food. It was an art not adequately appreciated, just like Josephine's, and this
is why the hunger artist will die of hunger. But the dog is no artist, this is not the
portrait of the artist as a young dog, this dog is a would-be scientist, and he is starv-

124

Kafka's Voices

ing on his quest for knowledge, which almost brings him to the same result. 44 But
at the point of total exhaustion, when he was already dying (like the man from the
country), there is salvation, the salvation at the point of the "exhaustion of exhaus
tion:' He vomits blood, he is so faint that he faints, and when he opens his eyes there
is a dog that appears from nowhere, a strange hound standing in front of him.
There is an ambiguity-is this last part a hallucination of the dying dog? Or even
more radically, is this the answer to Hamlet's question "But in that sleep of death,
what dreams may come?" Is this last section a possible sequel to "Before the Law:'
the dreams that may come to the man from the country at the point of his death? Is
it all a delusion, the glimpse of salvation only at the point of death? A salvation only
at the price that it doesn't have any consequence? But Kafka describing this delusion,
his pursuing it to the end, bringing it to the point of science, the birth of science
from the spirit of a delusion on the threshold of death: this is all the consequence
that is needed, something that affects the here and now, and radically transforms
it.
The dying dog tries at first to chase away the apparition of the hound (is this a
ghost which intervenes at the end, as opposed to the other one which intervened
in the beginning?). The hound was very beautiful, and at first it even appears that
he is trying to pay court to the starved dog; he is very concerned about the dying
dog, he cannot let him be. But all this dialogue is but a haphazard preparation for
the event, the emergence of song, the song again coming from nowhere, emerging
without anyone's will.
. . . then I thought I saw something such as no dog before me had ever seen.
. . . I thought I saw that the hound was already singing without knowing
it, nay, more that the melody separated from him, was floating on the air
in accordance with its own laws, and, as though he had no part in it, was
moving toward me, toward me alone. . . . [T]he melody, which the hound
soon seemed to acknowledge as his, was quite irresistible. It grew stronger;
its waxing power seemed to have no limits, and already almost burst my
eardrums. But the worst was that it seemed to exist solely for my sake, this
voice before whose sublimity the woods fell silent, to exist solely for my sake;
who was I, that I could dare to remain here, lying brazenly before it in my
pool of blood and filth.4s
The song again appears from nowhere, it starts from anywhere, from a void, it is
separated from its bearer, it is only post festum that the bearer steps in, that the
hound can assume it, acknowledge it as his. And this song is directed towards the
starving dog alone, it is for his ears only, the impersonal call but which addresses
only him personally, just as the door of the Law was meant only for the man from
the country. It is like the pure voice of a call, just like the irresistible call of the law,
like its irrepressible silence, only this time the very same call as its opposite, the call
of salvation.
So this voice from nowhere introduces the second break, the dog suddenly re
covers on the threshold of death, the voice gets hold of him and instills new life in
him, he who couldn't move cannot but jump up now, resurrected, the born-again

Mladen Dolar

125

dog. And he pursues his investigations with redoubled forces, he extends his scien
tific interest to the canine music. "The science of music, if I am correctly informed,
is perhaps still more comprehensive than that of nurture:'46 the new science he is
trying to establish encompasses both his concerns, the source of food and the source
of the voice, it combines them into a single effort. The voice, the music, like the pure
transcendence, and the food as the pure immanence of the material world: but they
have the common ground, the common source, they are footed in the same kernel.
The science of music is held in higher esteem than the science of nurture, it reaches
the sublime, but this is precisely what prevents it from penetrating "deeply into the
life of the people:' it is "very esoteric and politely excludes the people:'47 It has been
erroneously posited as a separate science, different from that of nurture, its power
was powerless by being relegated to a separate realm. This was Josephine's unhappy
fate, her song was separated from food, the sublime was her mousetrap, just as be
ing immersed in nurture, the survival, was the unhappy fate of all the rest. Just as
the science of nurture had to lead through starvation, so the science of music refers
to silence, to "verschwiegenes Hundewesen," the silent essence of the dog, or the
essence kept in silence, the essence that, after the experience of the song, can be dis
covered in any dog as its true nature. For penetrating this essence, "the real dog na
ture:' the path of nurture was the alternative and simpler way, as it seemed, but it all
boils down to the same, what matters is the point of intersection. ''A border region
between these two sciences, however, had already attracted my attention. I mean the
theory of incantation, by which food is called down. [Es ist die Lehre von dem die
Nahrung herabrufenden Gesang.]"48 The song can call down, herabrufen, the food:
the source of food was mistakenly sought in the earth, it should have been searched
for in the opposite direction. The voice is the source of food that he has been seek
ing. There is an overlapping, an intersection between nourishment and voice. One
can illustrate it with one of Lacan's favorite devices, the intersection of two circles,
the circle of food and the circle of the voice, the music. What do we find at the point
where they overlap? What is the mysterious intersection? But this is the best defini
tion of what Lacan called objet a. It is the common source of food and music.49
Food and voice, both pass through the mouth. Deleuze keeps coming back to
that over and over again. There is an alternative: either you eat or you speak, use
your voice, one can't do both at the same time. Food and voice share the same loca
tion, but in mutual exclusion: either incorporation or emission.
Any language, rich or poor, always implies the deterritorialization of the
mouth, the tongue and the teeth. The original territoriality of the mouth, the
tongue and the teeth is food. By being devoted to the articulation of sounds,
the mouth, the tongue and the teeth are deterritorialized. So there is a dis
junction between eating and speaking. . . . To speak . . . is to starve.
so

By speech, the mouth is de-naturalized, diverted from its natural function, seized
by the signifier (and for our purposes, by the voice which is but the alterity of the
signifier). The Freudian name for this deterritorialization is the drive (if nothing
else, it has the advantage that one is spared that terrible tongue-twister, but it aims at
the same). Eating can never be the same once the mouth has been deterritorialized,

126

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Kafka's Voices

psychoanalysis.52

it is seized by the drive, it turns around this object, it keeps circumventing, circling
around this eternally elusive object. The speech, in this de-naturalizing function, is
then subjected to the secondary territorialization, as it were, it acquires a second
nature, with its anchorage in meaning. Meaning is a reterritorialization oflanguage,
its acquisition of a new territoriality, a naturalized substance. (This is what Deleuze
and Guattari call the extensive or representational function of speech, as opposed to
the pure intensity of the voice, if I undertake a smallfor(:age here.) But this operation
can never be successful, and the bit that eludes it can be pinned down as the element
of the voice, this pure alterity of what is said. This is the common ground it shares
with food, that in food which precisely escapes eating, the bone that gets stuck in the
throat (one of Lacan's formulas is precisely that objet a is the bone that gets stuck in
the throat of the signifier).
So the essence of the dog concerns precisely this intersection of food and voice,
the two lines of investigation converge, from our biased perspective they meet in the
objet a. So there would have to be a single science, the dog, on the last page, inaugu
rates a new science, he turns into the founding father of a new science. Though by
his own admission he is a poor scientist, at least by the standards of the established
sciences that went before. He couldn't pass
even the most elementary scientific examination set by an authority on the
subject. . . . [T]he reason for that can be found in my incapacity for scientific
investigation, my limited powers of thought, my bad memory, but above all
in my inability to keep my scientific aim continuously before my eyes. All
this I frankly admit, even with a certain degree of pleasure. For the more
profound cause of my scientific incapacity seems to me to be an instinct, and
indeed by no means a bad one . . . . It was this instinct that made me-and
perhaps for the sake of science itself, but a different science from that of
today, an ultimate science [einer allerletzten Wissenschaft]-prize freedom
higher than everything else. Freedom! Certainly such freedom as is possible
today is a wretched business. But nevertheless freedom, nevertheless a pos
session.51
This is the last sentence of the story. The last word of it all, Ie fin mot as Ie mot
, de la fin, is freedom, with an exclamation point. Are we not victims of a delusion,
shouldn't we pinch ourselves, is it possible that Kafka actually utters this word? I
think this is the only spot where Kafka speaks of freedom, but this doesn't mean
at all that there is unfreedom everywhere else in his universe. Quite the opposite,
freedom is there at all times, everywhere, it is Kafka's fin mot, like the secret word
one doesn't dare to utter, although it is constantly on one's mind. The freedom that
might not look like much, that might actually look wretched, but it is there at all
points, and once we spot it there is no way of going away from it, it is something to
hold on to, it is the permanent line of flight, or rather the line of pursuit. And there
is the slogan, the program of a new science that would be able to treat it, to take it as
its object, to pursue it, the ultimate science, the science of freedom. Kafka lacks the
proper word for it, he cannot name it, this is 1922, but he would only have to look
around, to examine the ranks of his fellow Jewish Austrian compatriots. Of course,

127

. ............
.

Eric L. Santner, On the Psycho theology of Everyday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2001), 18 and passim.
The problem of our laws: "Our laws are not generally known; they are kept secret by the
small group of nobles who rule us. We are convinced that these ancient laws are scrupu
lously administered; nevertheless it is an extremely painful thing to be ruled by laws that
one does not know. . . . The very existence of these laws, however, is at most a matter of
presumption. There is a tradition that they exist and that they are a mystery confided to
the nobility, but it is not and cannot be more than a mere tradition sanctioned by age, for
the essence of a secret code is that it should remain a mystery. . . . There is a small party
who . . . try to show that, if any law exists, it can only be this: The Law is whatever the
nobles do:' Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, ed. N. N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken
Books, 1995), 437-38. All quotes from Kafka's stories are from this edition.

Cf. Jacques Derrida, "Prejuges, devant la loi;' in J.-F. Lyotard, La faculte de juger (Paris:
Minuit, 1985), 122 and passim.

Franz Kafka, The Trial, 212.

Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer: Le pouvoir souverain et la vie nue (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 23

Franz Kafka, "Before the Law;' 4.

Franz Kafka, The Castle, 85

Hence the voice stands at the opposite end of the Kantian categorical imperative, and it
is crucial to draw the line between the moral law and the superego. Cf. Alenka ZupanCic,
The Ethics of the Real (London: Verso, 2000), 140-67.

-.

Cf., e.g., Slavoj Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do (London: Verso, 1991), 81-86,
267-70 and passim.

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10 The Complete Stories, 430.


11

Ibid., 431.

12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.

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14 This is of course one of the grand examples from Freud's book on jokes. Sigmund Freud,
Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), 161. In the
mdex of jokes, at the end of the volume, this joke is laconically referred to as "Truth a
lie (Jewish);' and indeed, as I have tried to argue elsewhere, this joke most economically
epitomizes the problem that "Jewishness" presented for Western culture: the indistin
guishable character of truth and lie, the fact that not only do they look the same but
actually coincide, so that "Jewishness" seems to undermine the very ground of the truth
telling capacity of language. This is the very problem with the "Jews": they look exactly
like us, just as the lie looks exactly like the truth.
15

The Complete Stories, 431.

16 Ibid., 432.
17 Before leaving Ulysses let me just recall that in the standard iconography Ulysses was
transformed into a Christian hero. This goes back to Saint Ambrose, in the fourth cen
tury, who depicted Ulysses as the man courageously resisting temptation. So in endless
renditions we see him tied to the mast, in a parody of Christ tied to the cross, surrounded

128

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Kafka's Voices

by a host of naked girls on the beaches, or the Sirens turned into mermaids; he is sweat
ing and shivering all over, fighting his inner struggles, heroically defying the temptation,
like St. Anthony, he is the Greek paragon of Christian virtue. And one can easily see that
he is enjoying, indulging in this very Christian form of surplus enjoyment, this thwarted
form-and hence irresistible form-of enjoyment in transgression and culpabilization.
For an overview of the multiple uses of the Sirens, cf. Vic de Donder, Le chant de la sirene
(Paris: Gallimard, 1992).

person-his is the voice of anonymity and must remain without an ''I:'


32 The Complete Stories, 362.
33 Ibid., 376.
34 Ibid., 370.
35 Ibid., 28l.
36 Ibid.

18 The German dictionary offers the following expression: das tragt eine Maus auf den
Schwanz fort, for a quantity so small that a mouse could carry it on its tail (with all the
German ambiguity of the word, tail/penis). There is a rather vulgar expression in Slovene,
"the mouse's penis;' which means the smallest thing imaginable, one cannot possibly con
ceive of anything smaller; the mouse's voice is of that order of magnitude. The mouse's
penis-a circumlocution for castration? Is Josephine a castrato, is this the secret of her
voice?

37 Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Chion
found its supreme example in the mother's voice in Hitchcock's Psycho, another voice ex

nihilo.
38 One might say that the real is but the resonance of the symbolic, the distance of the
symbolic to itself, the gap of its otherness, not a separate realm but the otherness within
the symbolic itself. This is why the real is not merely something always already lost and
unattainable, but rather something one cannot be rid of.

19 The Complete Stories, 98.

39 Bernard Baas puts it very well: "The voice is never my own voice, but the response is my
,
own response:' Bernard Baas, De la chose a [ objet (Leuven: Peeters/Vrin, 1998), 205

20 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Pour une litterature mineure (Paris: Minuit,
1975), 40. "There is no longer a proper sense and a figurative sense, but a distribution
of states along the fan of the word . . . . What is at stake is not a resemblance between an
animal and a human behavior, and even less a play upon words. There is no longer a man
or an animal, since each deterritorializes the other. . . . The animal doesn't speak 'as' a hu
man, but extracts from language the tonalities without meaning . . . :' (ibid.).
21 On closer inspection both mice and dogs in many respects strangely resemble the Jews
and their destiny, as several interpreters have pointed out, but I will not go into this. Cf.,
"No creatures to my knowledge live in such wide dispersion as we dogs . . . ; we, whose
one desire is to stick together . . . we above all others live so widely separated from one
another, engaged in strange vocations that are often incomprehensible even to our canine
neighbors, holding firmly to laws that are not those of the dog world, but are actually
directed against it" (279-80). But it is the literalization that annihilates the metaphor: to
live like a dog, poor as a mouse. To say nothing about mauscheln, with all its connotations
in German (a word derived from Yiddish for Moses, Mausche, and meaning to speak
Yiddish, and by extension to speak in an incomprehensible way, and by extension, secret
dealings, hidden affairs, deceit).

129

40 The Complete Stories, 282.


41 Ibid., 369.
42 Ibid., 286. For the German original I use Franz Kafka, Die Erzahlungen. Originalfassung,
ed. Roger Hermes (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2000), 420.
43 I cannot resist the temptation to quote some Lacan in parenthesis: "Even when you stuff
the mouth-the mouth that opens in the register of the drive-it is not the food that
satisfies it. . , . As far as the oral drive is concerned . . . it is obvious that it is not a ques
tion of food, nor of the memory of food, nor the echo of food, nor the mother's care. . . .
[T]he fact that no food will ever satisfy the oral drive, except by circumventing [circling
around] the eternally lacking object:' Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1979), 167-68, 180.

22 Just consider the list of the most famous violinists of the past century: David Oistrakh,
Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Shlomo Mintz, Pinchas Zuckermann, Itzhak Perlman, Ja
sha Heifetz, etc.

44 If the young dog manages to pursue his investigation further than Josephine this is not
due to the fact that "science" would be better situated than art, better suited to produce
emancipatory effects, etc. Science as an institution is just as doomed as the institution of
art, and what distinguishes the young dog is the persistence of his quest, his questioning
of the separation of realms, his will to pursue his course to the end, which can only be
done by blurring all the lines of division art/science/life. To use a pun, what distinguishes
the dog is his doggedness.

23 The Complete Stories, 36l.

45 The Complete Stories, 314.

24 Ibid., 370.

46 Ibid., 314-15.

25 Cf. Gerard Wajcman, L'objet du siecie, (Paris: Verdier, 2000), for the best analysis of Du
champ.

47 Ibid., 315. .

48 Ibid.

26 The Complete Stories, 36727 I can only add in a footnote that this resonates exactly with Kierkegaard's problem: how
to introduce a gap in the continuity as the transcendence in the immanence.

49 "If music be the food of love;' the famous opening lines of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, is
another great literary testimony which most economically marks that place, although it
immediately obfuscates it with the rhetoric oflove.

28 The Complete Stories, 361-62.

50 Deleuze and Guattari, op. cit., 35-36.

29 Ibid., 366.

51 The Complete Stories, 315-16.

30 Ibid., 367.

31

Kafka, in the manuscript, crossed over four instances where the narrator spoke in the first

52 I would like to thank Marta Hernandez Salvan and Juan Carlos Rodriguez, the readers
for Polygraph, for their extensive comments on this paper. I have tried to answer some of

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Kafka's Voices

their comments in this version of the paper, though the majority of their comments were
of such a nature that they would demand an additional paper-a task that I will try to
undertake at some point in the future, since this paper is already too long as it is.

Investigations of the Lacanian Field:


Some Remarks on Comedy and Love
Alenka ZupanCic

In the times when "positive attitude" (humor and cheerful


ness in life) and the importance of love are being often used
in the construction of most lamentable ideological horizons,
it is quite crucial that discussion of these notions (or some no
tions related to them) be also maintained on another, differ
ent level. Psychoanalysis had the merit of introducing into the
discussion of love certain elements that should make an im
mediate ideological appropriation of this notion much more
difficult. It also has interesting things to say about that mode
of producing satisfaction which is called comedy. As to the
notion of love, it undermines both tendencies that have been
predominant in the discourse on love: that of all-consuming
amour-passion, which is presented as the fusion of two lovers
in the flame of love, and that of the ideal (perhaps prevailing
today) of two autonomous and independent egos construct
ing a "meaningful" relationship, based on mutual recognition,
respect and exchange. Moreover, the Lacanian discussion of
love disentangles the latter from the thick field of feelings and
emotions with which it is often confused. Like all Lacanian
truths, love truth is out there, it is always outside (and not
inside, in the depths of our personality). There is a certain
affinity between love and comedy that has to do with the way
they are organized around a central object which incarnates
the very impossibility of any smooth complementarity of the
elements involved. This is the thread that I will pursue in my
discussion: comedy, as well as love, is only possible on the
ground of a fundamental disharmony.
The fact that things do not exactly add up is the starting
point of virtually every comedy (and very often, although not
always, also its concluding point). And the distinctive feature
of comedy is that it employs this fundamental discrepancy or
disharmony in the way that the latter keeps producing plea
sure or satisfaction (instead of displeasure, or even pain). This
is precisely why comedy is sometimes seen as socially conser-

Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

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vative. Simply put: by making us laugh at certain problems (and thus by giving us a
certain satisfaction in the very representation of these problems) it diverts us from
doing (or even wanting to do) anything against them. The contemporary capitalist
accent on (personal) satisfaction and happiness seems to be perfect for promoting
comedy. And yet, although entertainment is all around (one could even speak of
the presence of a certain imperative of entertainment), there is very little comedy
in the strict sense of the word. It is not the issue of this paper to investigate political
and (anti)metaphysical implications (finitude/infinitude) of comedy (and love). Its
aim is mostly to articulate certain important things concerning comedy as comedy,
which could also help us distinguish comedy within the more general notion of fun
niness and/or entertainment. I believe that this kind of investigation and reflection,
which this paper can only begin to develop, is necessary if one then wants to pursue
this topic in other perspectives, especially in political perspective.
The growing dissatisfaction with today's (economical and political) global order
gives rise to a vast conceptual search for paradigms that could shift or subvert it.
There have been many candidates for this role. Too many, perhaps. Sometimes it
almost seems that we keep inventing new paradigms and possible break-outs so that
we could go on living in the present one. In this respect, I am in no way tempted to
rush forward and add comedy and love to this list (or perhaps reassert them there,
since they have already been put on the list by some). Perhaps they can be much
more politically subversive when they are not immediately put into some service or
another (even a most progressive one).

The theme "psychoanalysis and tragedy" is a largely discussed and exploited topic,
which could not exactly be said for the theme "psychoanalysis and comedy;' al
though the latter would definitely deserve the same kind of attention. Not on ac
count of any rule of symmetry, but simply because the topic of comedy (as well as
that of jokes) is central to several fundamental issues of psychoanalysis.
One of the peaks of the Freudian opus is undoubtedly his Jokes and Their Rela
tion to the Unconscious. As to Lacan, it is worth pointing out that he introduces,
develops and illustrates his famous graph of desire (which is frequently commented
on in the context of his discussion of tragedy) through his commentary of Freud's
book on jokes. Lacan brings this discussion to its climax with a brief but poignant
commentary of Aristophanes and Moliere.' He returns to both these authors in sev
eral other places.
However, the link between psychoanalysis and comedy is far from being ex
hausted by pointing out that the theme of comedy is also present in Lacan's work.
The link in question is much more fundamental and concerns the way Lacan even
tually comes to perceive and to conceptualize the question of the analyst's desire and
of the end of analysis. J. -A. Miller puts this in the following terms:
In Lacan's seminar the obsoleteness of the Freudian tragic character is al
ready there. More on the side of the moque-comique then the tragique, with
him comedy is truer than tragedy. If suffering and pain are conspicuously
manifest in the treatment, la passe should transform tragedy into comedy. 2

133

La passe, of course, is the famous passage from the position of the analysand to the

, '-' '
,

position of the analyst that constitutes the proper (or most consequent) ending of
analysis. And this passage is supposed to have a certain effect of comedy. While
speaking of comedy, it would be a pity to deprive ourselves of the pleasure of exam
ples. The deservedly famous ending of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, for instance,
could be taken as a very good example of what happens at the end of analysis. Jack
Lemmon, still dressed as a woman, sits in a boat next to the millionaire who wants
to marry "her:' In order to discourage him from this idea, Lemmon starts point
ing out things that he supposes will disturb the millionaire (s/he admits to being a
heavy smoker, s/he confesses that s/he is not a natural blond, etc.). When none of
this works and the millionaire is still eager to marry "her;' contentedly smiling at
his prospective happiness while driving his boat, Lemmon desperately resorts to the
last drastic way out: he pulls the wig off his head and emphatically cries out: "But
I am a man!" Yet the millionaire just keeps on smiling contentedly, without even
looking at Lemmon, and replies: "Nobody is perfect:' This is the last sentence of the
movie. It could be taken as a very felicitous illustration of the end of analysis. If one
puts aside the psychology and the motives of the millionaire (which constitute his
movie character), one can easily picture him as an analyst who does what he does
in order to finally bring Lemmon to utter this emphatic sentence ("I am a man!"),
then leaving this sentence simply suspended in the air (as a kind of a bizarre ob
ject), which makes it ring in another, comical dimension. Or even more precisely,
the millionaire simply lets the sentence ring (without "absorbing" it by any kind of
understanding or recognition), this echo being precisely what produces the comic
effect. In other words, the reply "nobody is perfect" is not at all a kind of emphatic
acceptance of the other (such as s/he is), it is not an acceptance or an assimilation of
Lemmon's word by the Other, but rather functions as a panel from which Lemmon's
Word rebounds and is left hanging in the air. Lemmon's words do not provoke any
surprise or indignation in their addressee, so that the ultimate outcry of Lemmon's
identity (or being) is posited on the same level with the habit of smoking or the
color of his hair. If the millionaire were to react in any way to Lemmon's words (for
instance, ifhe were at least to look at Lemmon-instead of which he continues look
ing straight forward, driving the boat and smiling), he would become Lemmon's
interlocutor, he would accept and assimilate Lemmon's words or, which is the same
thing, he would-by recognizing them-bestow upon these words the meaning that
Lemmon aims at. Instead, the meaning does not fulfill itself, it does not get to be ac
complished (or completed) in the circuit between the subject and the Other. Some
thing else gets produced in this ultimate, yet very punctual and precise separation of
meaning and signifier. The signifier of Lemmon's Being emerges as such (one could
almost say that the signifier emerges as object), and it is precisely this emergence
that makes us laugh. In other words, Lemmon's words are diverted from the side of
the register of meaning, of interpretation and of understanding, towards the side of
the object where the eternal question "What am I?" gets separated from its usual
complement-What am I for the Other, what do I mean to the Other?
It seems, however, that the topic that Lacan takes up in one of his most famous
seminars, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, namely that of the relationship between de-

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sire and action, and the related question of a possible (ethical) act, is foreign to any
notion of comedy, but instead strongly emphasizes and makes the case for the "trag
ic dimension of analytical experience" (as goes the title of one of the sections of this
seminar). Still, at the end of The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis, where the central question
of the relationship between action and the desire that inhabits us is indeed explored
in its tragic dimension, Lacan reminds us again of its other, comic dimension:
However little time I have thus far devoted to the comic here, you have been
able to see that there, too, it is a question of the relationship between action
and desire, and of the former's fundamental failure to catch up with the lat
ter.3
Or:
Actions are inscribed in the space of tragedy, and it is with relation to this
space, too, that we are led to take our bearings in the sphere of values. More
over, this is also true of the space of comedy, and when I started to talk to
you about the formations of the unconscious, it was, as you know, the comic
that I had in mind.4
What is it, in fact, that both dimensions-tragic and comic-have in common?
They both, although in different ways, put forward and explore the problem of the
relationship between action and desire, or, to put it slightly differently, the problem
of the relationship between desire or demand, as far as the latter is articulated in
the signifier, and its satisfaction (i.e., that which is supposed to meet this demand).
Some fundamental discrepancy, which is coextensive with the signifying order as
such and which could be formulated in terms of dichotomy between the signifier
and the id (the Lacanian a), constitutes the motor of tragedy, as well as of comedy.
Within the tragic paradigm, the accent is on desire, and Lacan's choice of the figure
of Antigone (who does not "give up on her desire") is by no means accidental. The
alternative lurking behind Antigone's position is the following one: to die or else to
give up on one's desire (and thus to satisfy oneself with something less than what
desire ultimately aims at). This alternative is a consequence of the fundamental pre
supposition according to which the split between, to put it simply, the desire and its
satisfaction is an absolute one, i.e., that the demand as articulated in the signifier
and that what comes to answer this demand, can never meet or overlap. The real of
the desire is "impossible" in the sense that it is inaccessible to "the speaking being:'
The accent on the tragic dimension of human desire and the placement of the ethics
in this dimension springs from this fundamental axiom: the gap between desire and
its satisfaction (or realization) is irreducible, and the real as impossible refers to this
irreducible gap. The "pure desire" is an absolute demand that can only be met by the
other absolute, death. In this sense, tragedy (and particularly Antigone) is an hom
age to the fundamental non-relation between desire and satisfaction.
Comedy, on the other hand, introduces us to a different logic of the real and of
the non-relation (between demand and satisfaction). In comedy, the accent is not so
much on desire (or demand), but rather on satisfaction, and in a first approach we
could say that the discrepancy that constitutes the motor of comedy is the obverse

-r

135

of the one that constitutes the motor of tragedy. It is not that the satisfaction can
never really meet the demand, but rather that the demand can never really meet
(some unexpectedly produced) satisfaction. It is not that the satisfaction runs after
demand like Achilles after the tortoise, never able to actually catch up with it, it is
rather that the satisfaction immediately overtakes the demand, so that the latter now
has to stumble after satisfaction.
However, tragedy and comedy are not simply symmetrical, as the above descrip
tion might suggest. The fact that in comedy satisfaction precedes the demand, affects
the very nature of the satisfaction, which becomes, by definition, a supplementary
satisfaction (and is no longer the impossible complement of the demand). Comedy
is inaugurated by this kind of supplementary satisfaction (that we do not exactly
know what to do with). The elementary form of the emergence of a supplement
satisfaction could be best discerned in the phenomenon of jokes. The whole joke of
jokes, if one might say so, lies in the fact that-much to everybody's surprise-the
demand manages to find an unexpected satisfaction. (And one could say that com
edy (as genre) is an attempt to inscribe this momentary and unexpected satisfaction
into a framework of an extended temporality, i.e., of some duration.) In his discus
sion ofjokes Freud puts forward the notion of an "incentive bonus;'5 which could be
defined as a supplement of pleasure that allows the release of more pleasure. Lacan
suggest that " Witz restores to the essentially unsatisfied demand its jouissance, and
it does so in a double (although identical) aspect of surprise and pleasure-the plea
sure in surprise and the surprise in pleasure:'6 In other words, one could say that
the joke of the situation is precisely in the fact that we unexpectedly come across
a satisfaction. Of course, this is usually a satisfaction of a demand that hasn't even
been formulated (yet); satisfaction precedes the demand, and this is what accounts
for its nature of the supplement. The discrepancy at stake could also be formulated
in topological, instead of in temporal, terms: the satisfaction is produced elsewhere
than we expect it or await it. What jokes trigger in us is, as Lacan points out, not
only a pleasure in surprise, but also a surprise at pleasure. Something (a satisfaction)
gets produced where we least expected it. Even if we know that we are going to hear
a joke (and we usually know it, since part of the telling of a joke is to announce it,
for instance by saying "do you know this joke . . :'), it still always surprises us. Lacan
suggests that the narrative of a joke does not simply prepare the setting for its final
point, but also and above all directs and engages our attention elsewhere than where
the point of the joke will pass. This is indeed a mechanism that we can observe in
many jokes, and the following example makes it most palpable:
A man comes home from an exhausting day at work, plops down on the
couch in front of the television, and tells his wife, "Get me a beer before it
starts:' The wife sighs and gets him a beer. Fifteen minutes later, he says, "Get
me another beer before it starts:' She looks cross, but fetches another beer
and slams it down next to him. He finishes that beer and a few minutes later
says, "Quick, get me another beer, it's going to start any minute:' The wife is
furious. She yells at him, "Is that all you're going to do tonight? Drink beer
and sit in front of that TV? You're nothing but a lazy, drunken, fat slob, and
furthermore . . ." The man sighs and says, "It's started . . . .
"

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Investigations of the Lacanian Field

While drawing our attention to the television set and making us expect the Thing to
come from there (to "start" there), the narrative of the joke leads us away from the
actual direction from which the blow comes, accentuating the effect of surprise. No
joke succeeds without this element of surprise.
At this point one could draw a parallel between jokes and love encounters: could
one not say that a love encounter is structured like a good joke? It coincides with the
emergence of an "incentive bonus;' of an unexpected and surprising satisfaction,
the satisfaction of some other demand than the one that we had the opportunity to
formulate. That is to say: we can very well set off on a date with the explicit intention
to find ourselves a "mate;' or even to fall in love. Yet, if this happens, if something
like a genuine love encounter takes place, it still always surprises us, since it neces
sarily takes place "elsewhere" than we expected it or intended for it to take place, it
takes place, so to speak, along "other lines:' We look in one direction, and it comes
from the other. And it satisfies perfectly something in ourselves that we didn't even
demand to be satisfied. Two kinds of reactions can follow from this: we can take the
ball from there, so to speak, and play on, or else we can react by providing or for
mulating the demand to which this surprising satisfaction already was a reply. And
this is where the tricky part oflove begins, for we can get stuck here. The supplement
of pleasure, instead of allowing to release or produce more pleasure, could be ret
roactively transformed from supplement to complement. That is to say, every love
encounter brings with itself the temptation to re-inscribe the surprising, accidental
and bonus-like dimension of the satisfaction into the linear or else circular coupling
of demand and (its) satisfaction, or, in other terms, of desire and jouissance. This is
the temptation to recognize the other (that we encountered through this surprising
emergence of a bonus satisfaction) as the answer to all our prayers, that is to say, as
an answer to our (previously existing) demand. This understandable and seemingly
innocent, even charming move can have, however, rather catastrophic consequenc
es. To put it in a single formula: it immediately closes the accidentally produced way
out of the impossibility involved in the relation between demand and its satisfac
tion, and it closes it precisely by transforming this impossibility into a possibility.
In this move, the love-encounter is reconfigured in terms of an emphatic moment
of a perfect complementariness of demand and satisfaction, and glorified as a case
when the satisfaction did in fact meet our demand. We thus place the source of our
satisfaction directly in the other. If this occurs, the impossibility for the satisfaction
to ever meet our demand reaffirms itself in its full scale. Our next demand will of
course not be met properly, and we will not be able to meet properly the demand of
the other. And we'll interpret this as lack of love.
One should therefore stress that the funny, as well as the subversive side of love
(and of a love encounter) lies precisely in the fact that the other (that we encounter)
is an answer to none of our prayers. If we lose sight of this, i.e., if we lose sight of
the fact that, in a genuine love encounter, we get something that we haven't exactly
asked for, then we lose the perspective oflove, in both meanings of the word.
So what happens in a love encounter is not simply that the sexual non -relation is
momentarily suspended with an unexpected emergence of a (possible) relation, but
something rather more complex: it is that the non-relation itself suddenly emerges

137

as a mode (as well as the condition) of a relation. A "happy" love encounter is the
non-relation in its purest mode, or perhaps more precisely, it is a non-relation as re
doubled. Not only do we not get what we asked for, on top of it (and not instead of it)
we get something that we haven't even asked for. The non-relation is supplemented
by another non-relation, which can then use the thing that obstructs the relation
as its very condition (and can function like the Freudian "incentive bonus"). This
brings us to our next question.
If a love encounter is like a good joke, then what is love in its duration and tem
porality, what is, as we say, a love that lasts? One could reply that love is structured
like comedy, and that as such, it could be defined as a non-relation that lasts. Com
edy is the genre that uses the supplementary non-relation as the condition of a rela
tion. In order to explain this, let me now briefly consider the difference and the rela
tion between jokes and comedy. The main difference between them concerns their
temporality. A joke is always situated in the instantaneity of the moment in which
its point passes. The pleasure in jokes is instantaneous and very much confined as
to its time, which does not mean, however, that it can not be repeated. If we tell the
joke on, it will again produce satisfaction. The repeating or telling on of the jokes is
part of the pleasure we take in them, and in this sense we could say that jokes are by
definition a promiscuous way of finding pleasure, there is something donjuanesque
in them. We can only find pleasure in the same joke if we change partners, and en
joy the joke every time with a new partner. Of course, there is also the possibility to
turn this the other way around and to find or invent new jokes to enjoy them with
the same partner. But this could be very exhausting and is not yet the shift from the
temporality proper to jokes (their instantaneity) to another kind of temporality (du
ration). However, the opposition instantaneity/duration is not yet precise enough
to pinpoint the difference between jokes and comedy: it is not simply a question of
how long something lasts, there are very long jokes and very short comic sequences.
The difference in temporality concerns the temporality of pleasure (or satisfaction):
a joke is always final, it always comes at the end, which is thus also true for the plea
sure produced by jokes. At the end, we are left with a certain amount of satisfaction,
and what precedes it (the narrative of the joke) is a preparatory phase leading to and
making the final "joke" possible (also by means of distracting our attention). Comic
sequences are not constructed in this manner. Satisfaction usually arises already
at the beginning and is then kept alive (with fluctuations which follow a certain
rhythm) during the whole sequence. Satisfaction does not so much conclude the
game (as it does in the case of jokes), as it opens or launches it.
Let us simply take an example here, a piece of comic dialogue that was circulat
ing on the internet last year:

- .'

Hu's ON FIRST
By James Sherman
( We take you now to the Oval Office)
GEORGE:

Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?


CONDI: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
-1

Investigations of the Lacanian Field

Alenka ZupanCic

G: Great. Lay it on me.


C: Hu is the new leader of China.
G: That's what I want to know.
C: That's what I'm telling you.
G: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
C: Yes.
G: I mean the fellow's name.
C: Hu.
G: The guy in China.
C: Hu.
G: The new leader of China.
C: Hu.
G: The Chinaman!
C: Hu is leading China.
G: Now whaddya asking me for?
C: I'm telling you Hu is leading China.
G: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
C: That's the man's name.
G: That's who's name?
C: Yes.
G: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader of
China?
C: Yes, sir.
G: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the
Middle East.
C: That's correct.
G: Then who is in China?
C: Yes, sir.
G: Yassir is in China?
C: No, sir.
G: Then who is?
C: Yes, sir.
G: Yassir?
C: No, sir.
G: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China.
Get me the Secretary General of the UN. on the phone.
C: Kofi?
G: No, thanks.
C: You want Kofi?
G: No.
C: You don't want Kofi.
G: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then
get me the UN.
C: Yes, sir.
G: Not Yassir! The guy at the UN.

139

C: Kofi?
G: Milk! Will you please make the call?
C: And call who?
G: Who is the guy at the UN?
C: Hu is the guy in China.
G: Will you stay out of China?!
C: Yes, sir.
G: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the UN.
C: Kofi.
G: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.
(Condi picks up the phone.)

C: Rice, here.
G: Rice? Good idea. And a couple of egg rolls, too. Maybe we should
send some to the guy in China. And the Middle East. Can you get Chinese
food in the Middle East?

If one compares this example of comic dialogue with an example of a joke (for in
stance the one quoted earlier), the following temporal and dynamic difference is
most obvious. In jokes, the sparkle (of surprise and satisfaction) is produced at the
end, and the narrative leading to it is a construction that makes this final sparkle
possible. In comedy, there is first an unexpected sparkle (a kind of inaugural joke),
and the unexpected surplus it produces is not conclusive, but functions as a motor
of the subsequent comic sequence. One could also say that the inaugural surplus (or
incentive bonus) introduces a fundamental discrepancy that drives comedy further
and further.
I've suggested earlier that what is at stake in comedy is not that the satisfaction
runs after demand like Achilles after the tortoise, never able to actually catch up
with it; it is rather that the satisfaction immediately overtakes the demand, so that
the latter now has to stumble after satisfaction. Comedy is inaugurated by this kind
of supplementary satisfaction (that we do not exactly know what to do with), as
it is quite obvious in the quoted example. "Hu is the new leader of China" is what
starts off the comedy. Bush does not view this as an answer to his demand ("Lay it
on me"), he is surprised at this sentence, and decides to read it as a question. Condi,
on the other hand, does not take Bush's "Who is the man in China?" as a question
or demand, but as (a repetition of) the answer. (In one of the Marx Brothers' movies
we have a very similar construction of a delirious comic dialogue on the basis of the
similarity between the word "viaduct" and the question "Why a duck?") The begin
ning of the quoted dialogue is also a great example of the double or supplementary
non-relation that I claimed is at the heart of comedy: we do not get the satisfaction
we demanded, and on top of it, we get a satisfaction that we haven't asked for.
Now, one could say that the way Bush and Rice function in this dialogue is
precisely the way an "ideal couple" would function. And this is not meant as a joke.
There is an initial sparkle in which a certain nonsense makes sense, i.e., in which a
supplementary sense is produced. This sense is produced precisely on the ground
of a fundamental misunderstanding (the two protagonists do not exactly "read" one
another). And yet this non-relation becomes itself a mode of a long and happy rela-

1 40

Alenka ZupanCic

Investigations of the Lacanian Field

tion . The obstacle of their relation (or of their "communication") becomes itself the
very condition of it, i.e., the very thing that maintains it and drives it further. What
drives this non-relation forward in the form of a quite exciting relation and makes it
last is also the fact that none of the two protagonists appropriates the supplementary
object-sense that is produced in their encounter. Instead, they keep it in the air, or
at least on the table, like in a game of ping-pong. Yet, perhaps the essential thing in
the "game of love" is not so much that the ball never hits the ground, as it is the fact
that the ball remains there, somewhere between the two, as precisely the obstacle
that enables them to relate to each other. Remove this obstacle, and their "relation
ship" will fall apart. This is not the (un)famous obstacle that enables us to desire the
other in her very inaccessibility, on the contrary, it is an obstacle that gives us access
to the other in her very materiality, so to speak. In other words, the configuration
I am describing (the obstacle of a relationship becomes its very condition) has ab
solutely nothing to do with the configuration expressed in terms: "I can't love you
unless I give you up:' As opposed to the former, the latter cannot be defined as "a
non -relation that lasts"; with it, we lose the non -relation itself, since what is at stake
is no longer a non-relation between two terms: we are left with only one term which
appropriates or absorbs the other in the form of the loss.
In Seminar XX, Lacan states that love "supplements the sexual relation as non
existent:' and this statement should be understood in the perspective of the above
discussion: love is the obstacle that enables the non-relation to last. And it is not that
via this supplement two become One, on the contrary: via it, the two emerge as two
and are maintained as (irreducibly) two.
. .
.

This brings us further into the question of affinity between love and comedy. In
Lacan's seminar L'angoisse one finds the following, rather peculiar statement: "Only
love-sublimation makes it possible for jouissance to condescend to desire:'7
What is peculiar about this statement, of course, is the link it establishes be
tween love as sublimation and the movement of condescending or descending. It is
well known that Lacan's canonic definition of sublimation from The Ethics ofPsycho
analysis implies precisely the opposite movement, that of ascension (that sublima
tion raises, or elevates, an object to the dignity of the Thing, the Freudian das Ding). 8
In this last definition, sublimation is identified with the act of producing the Thing
in its very transcendence and inaccessibility, as well as in its horrifying and/or inhu
man aspect (for example, the status of the Lady in courtly love, which is, as Lacan
puts it, the status of an "inhuman partner"). Yet, as concerns this particular sublima
tion that is called love-which is thus opposed to courtly love as the worshiping of
a sublime object-Lacan states that it makes it possible for jouissance to condescend
to desire, that it "humanizes the jouissance:'9
The quoted definition is surprising not only in relation to sublimation, but also
in relation to what we usually call love. Is love not always the worshiping of a sub
lime object, even though it doesn't always take as radical a form as in the case of
courtly love? Does love not always raise or elevate its object (which could be quite
common "in itself") to the dignity of the Thing? How are we to understand the word

14 1

"love" in the quoted passage from Lacan's seminar on L 'angoisse?


Lacan himself provides a way to answer these questions when he states, in Le
transfert, that "love is a comic feeling:'l0 Indeed, instead of trying to answer these
questions immediately, we should perhaps shift our interrogation once more and ex
amine the one form of sublimation that incontestably fits the first definition quoted
above (as well as the condescending movement it implies), namely, the art of com
edy. This might then make it easier for us to see how love enters this definition.
Concerning the art of comedy, we can actually say that it involves a certain con
descension of the Thing to the level of the object. And yet, what is at stake in good
comedies is not simply an abasement of some sublime object that thus reveals its
ridiculous aspect. Although this kind of abasement can make us laugh, we all know
that this is not enough for a good comedy to work. As Hegel already knew very
well, the genuine comic laughter is not a scornful laughter, it is not the laughter of
Schadenfreude, and there is much more to comedy than just a variation on the state
ment "the emperor is naked:' The trick is that, instead of playing on the difference or
the discordance between the sublime appearance of the Thing and its real residue or
its Void, comedies usually do something else: they reduplicatelredouble the Thing
and play on (or with) the difference between its two doubles. In other words, the
difference that constitutes the motor of the comic movement is not the difference
between the Thing in itself and its appearance, but, rather, the difference between
two appearances. Suffice it to recall Chaplin's The Great Dictator, where "the Thing
called Hitler" takes the double form of the dictator Hynkel and a Jewish barber. As
Gilles Deleuze pointed out, this is a Chaplinesque gesture par excellence: we find it
already in City Lights (Charlot the tramp and Charlot supposed to be rich), as well as
in M. Verdoux. Chaplin's genius, states Deleuze, consists in being able "to invent the
minimal difference between two actions" and to create a "circuit laughter-emotion,
where the former refers to the little difference and the latter to the great distance,
without effacing or diminishing one another:'" This is a very important insight that
will help us specify the mechanism of comedy as well as that of love. But, first, let
us determine more precisely what this "minimal difference" is. We could say that it
stands for a split at the very core of the same. In order to illustrate this, let us take
another comic example, a punch line from one of the Marx Brothers' movies: "Look
at this guy, he looks like an idiot, he behaves like an idiot-but do not let yourself be
. deceived, he is an idiot!" We could say that comic art creates and uses this minimal
difference in order to make palpable, or visible, a certain real that otherwise eludes
our grasp. One could go even further and state that, in the comic paradigm, the
Real is nothing else but this "minimal difference" -that starts itself to function as
an object.
The comic line from the Marx Brothers also enables us to feel the difference
between the act of taking a (sublime) Thing and showing the public that this Thing
is, in fact, nothing more than a poor and altogether banal object, and the act of tak
ing the Thing, not to the letter, but, rather, "to the letter of its appearance:' Contrary
to what is often believed, the axiom of good comedies is not that "appearances are
always deceiving:' but, instead, that there is something in the appearance that never
deceives. Following the Marx Brothers, we could say that the only essential decep-

142

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Investigations of the Lacanian Field

1 43

yet, the dimension of the Thing is not simply abolished; it remains on the horizon,
thanks to the sentiment of failing that accompanies this direct passage to the Thing.
In Lubitsch's movie, the director tries to name or show the Thing directly ("That's it!
That's Hitler!"), and, of course, he misses or "passes" it, showing only a "ridiculous
object;' that is, the actor's picture. However, the Thing as that which he missed re
mains on the horizon and is situated somewhere between the actor who plays Hitler
and the picture of that actor, which together constitute the space where our laughter
can resonate. The act of saying "That's it, that's the Thing" has the effect of opening
a certain entre-deux, thus becoming the space in which the real of the Thing unfurls
between two "ridiculous objects" that are supposed to incarnate it. Let us be more
precise: to "move directly to the Thing" does not mean to show or exhibit the Thing
directly. The "trick" is that we never see the Thing (not even in the picture, since
it is merely a picture of the actor); we only see two semblances (the actor and his
picture). We thus see the difference between the object and the Thing without ever
seeing the Thing. Or, to put it the other way around: what we are shown are just two
semblances, and yet, what we see is nothing less that the Thing itself, becoming vis
ible in the minimal difference between the two semblances. This is not to say that,
through the "minimal difference" (or through that gap that it opens up), we get a
glimpse of the mysterious Thing that lies somewhere beyond representation-it is,
rather, that the Thing is conceived as nothing other than the very gap of/within the
representation. The Real is identified here with the gap that divides the appearance
itself, and in comedies this gap itself takes the form of an object (i.e., of an object
supplement).
Now, what has all this got to do with love? What links the phenomenon of love
to the comic paradigm is the combination of accessibility with the transcendental as
the configuration of "accessibility in the very transcendence"?
Already, on the most superficial level, we can detect this curious affinity be
tween love and comedy: To love, that is to say (according to the good old traditional
definition), to love someone "for what he is" (i.e., to move directly to the Thing),
always means to find oneself with a "ridiculous object;' an object that sweats, snores,
farts, and has strange habits. But, it also means to continue to see in this object the
"something more" that the director in Lubitsch's movie sees in the picture of "Hitler:'
Comic love (which is to say real love) is not the love that is called sublime, the love
. in which we let ourselves be completely dazzled or "blinded" by the object so that we
no longer see (or can't bear to see) its ridiculous, banal aspect. This kind of "sublime
love" necessitates and generates a radical inaccessibility of the other (which usu
ally takes the form of eternal preliminaries, or else the form of intermittence, the
relationship that enables us to reintroduce the distance that suits the inaccessible,
and thereby to "resublime" the object after each "use"). But neither is real love the
sum of desire and friendship, where friendship is supposed to provide a "bridge"
between two awakenings of desire and to embrace the ridiculous side of the object.
The point is not that, in order for love to "work;' one has to accept the other with
all her baggage, to "stand" her banal aspect, to forgive her weaknesses-in short, to
tolerate the other when one does not desire her. The true miracle of love-and this
is what links love to comedy-consists in preserving the transcendence in the very

tion of appearance is that it gives the impression that there is something else or more
behind it. One of the fundamental gestures of good comedies is to make an appear
ance out of what is behind the appearance. They make the truth (or the real) not so
much reveal itself, as appear. Or, to put it in yet another way, they make it possible
for the real to condescend to the appearance (in the form of a split in the very core
of the appearance). This doesn't mean that the real turns out to be just another ap
pearance; it means that it is real precisely as appearance.
In one of his best movies, To Be or Not To Be, Ernst Lubitsch provides another
excellent example of this. At the beginning of the film, there is a brilliant scene in
which a group of actors is rehearsing a play featuring Hitler. The director is com
plaining about the appearance of the actor who plays Hitler, insisting that his make
up is bad and that he doesn't look like Hitler at all. He also says that what he sees in
front of him is just an ordinary man. Reacting to this, one of the actors replies that
Hitler is just an ordinary man. If this were all, we would be dealing with a didactic
remark that transmits a certain truth, but that doesn't make us laugh, since it lacks
that comic quality having quite a different way of transmitting truths. So, the scene
continues: the director is still not satisfied and is trying desperately to name the
mysterious "something more" that distinguishes the appearance of Hitler from the
appearance of the actor in front of him. He is searching and searching, and, finally,
he notices a picture (a photograph) of Hitler on the wall, and triumphantly cries out:
"That's it! This is what Hitler looks like!" "But sir;' replies the actor, "this picture was
taken of me:' This, on the contrary, is quite funny, especially since we ourselves as
spectators were taken in by the enthusiasm of the director, who saw in the picture
something quite different from this poor actor (whose status in the company isn't
even that of a true actor or a star, but of a simple walk-on). We can here grasp very
well the meaning of the "minimal difference;' a difference that is "a mere nothing;'
and yet a nothing that is very real and has considerable material effects.
In the comic paradigm, the Real is, at one and the same time, transcendent and
accessible. The Real is accessible, for example, as pure nonsense, which constitutes
an important matter of every comedy. And yet, this nonsense remains transcendent
in the sense that the miracle of its real effects (i.e., the fact that the nonsense itself
can produce a real effect of sense) remains inexplicable. This inexplicability is the
very motor of comedy. One could also say that nonsense is transcendental in the
Kantian sense of the word: it is what makes it possible for us to actually see or per
ceive a difference between a simple actor and the picture of Hitler (which is, in fact,
the picture of the same actor). This difference that we "really" see is pure nonsense,
but yet it makes sense.
In relation to comic art, one could speak of a certain ethics of unbelief Unbelief
as an ethical attitude consists in confronting belief not simply in its illusory di
mension, but in the very real of this illusion. This means that unbelief does not so
much expose the nonsense of the belief as it exposes the Real or the material force
of nonsense itself. This also implies that this ethics cannot rely upon the move
ment of circulation around the Thing, which gives its force to sublime art. Its motor
is, rather, to be found in a dynamics that always makes us go too far. One moves
directly towards the Thing and one finds oneself with a "ridiculous" object. And
:.- ....

144

Investigations of the Lacanian Field

accessibility of the other. Or, to use Deleuze's terms, it consists in creating a "circuit

laughter-emotion, where the former refers to the little difference and the latter to
the great distance, without effacing or diminishing one another:' The miracle oflove
is not that of transforming some banal object into a sublime object, inaccessible in
its being-this is the miracle of desire. If we are dealing with an alternation of at
traction and repulsion, this can only mean that love as sublimation has not taken
place, hasn't done its work and performed its "trick:' The miracle of love consists,
first of all, in perceiving the two objects (the banal and the sublime object) on the
same level; additionally, this means that neither one of them is occulted or substi
tuted by the other. Secondly, it consists in becoming aware of the fact that the other
qua "banal object" and the other qua "object of desire" are one and the same in the
identical sense that the actor who plays Hitler and the picture of "Hitler" (which is
actually the picture of the actor) are one and the same. That is to say, one becomes
aware of the fact that they are both semblances, that neither one of them is more real
than the other. Finally, the miracle oflove consists in "falling" (and in continuing to
stumble) because of the real which springs from the gap introduced by this "parallel
montage" of two semblances or appearances, that is to say, because of the real that
springs from the non-coincidence of the same. The other that we love is neither of
the two semblances (the banal and the sublime object), but neither can she be sepa
rated from them, since she is nothing other than what results from a successful (or
"lucky") montage of the two. In other words, what we are in love with is the Other as
this minimal difference of the same that can itself take the form of an object.
Here we can clearly see the difference between the functioning of desire as
such (which is not to be confounded with lust) and the functioning of desire when
it enters the configuration of love. Desire necessitates an obstacle that maintains
the other in her inaccessibility. This explains the basic fantasy of love stories and
love songs that focus on the impossibility involved in desire. The leitmotiv of these
stories is, for instance: "In another place, in another time, somewhere, not here,
sometime, not now . . . :' This attitude is often read as misrecognition of an inherent
and structural impossibility, which it represents in terms of an external, empirical
obstacle. ("If we'd only met in another time and another place, then all this would
have been possible . . . :') One usually says, in this case, that the Real as impossible
is camouflaged by an empirical obstacle that prevents us from confronting some
fundamental or structural impossibility. However, the point of Lacan's identifica
tion of the Real with the impossible is not simply that the Real is some Thing that is
impossible to happen. On the contrary, the whole point of the Lacanian concept of
the Real is that the impossible happens. This is what is so traumatic, disturbing, shat
tering-or funny-about the Real. The Real happens precisely as the impossible. It
is not something that happens when we want it, or try to make it happen, or expect
it, or are ready for it. It always happens at the wrong time and in the wrong place;
it is always something that doesn't fit the (established or anticipated) picture. The
Real as impossible means that there is no right time or place for it, and not that it is
impossible for it to happen.
The fantasy of "another place and another time" that sustains the illusion of a
possibly fortunate encounter betrays the Real of an encounter by transforming the

Alenka ZupanCic

145

"impossible that happened" into "impossible to happen" (here and now). In other
words, it disavows what has already happened by trying to submit it to the existing
transcendental scheme of the subject's fantasy (instead of taking on the ball of sat
isfaction from there where it surprisingly and unexpectedly emerged). The distor
tion at stake in this maneuver is not that of creating the belief that something im
possible will, or would, nevertheless happen in some other conditions of time and
space-the distortion is that of making something that has happened here and now
appear as if it could only happen in a distant future or in some altogether different
time and space. A paradigmatic example of this disavowal of the Real (which aims
at preserving the Real as inaccessible Beyond) is to be found in The Bridges ofMadi
son County: What we have here is a fortunate love encounter between two people,
each of them very settled in their lives: she as a housewife and mother, bound to
her family (immobile, so to speak); he as a successful photographer who moves and
travels around all the time. They meet by chance and fall passionately in love-or
so we are asked to believe. But, what is their reaction to this encounter? They im
mediately move the accent from "the impossible happened" to "this is impossible
to happen;' "this is impossible:' Since she is alone at the time of their encounter
(her husband and children gone for a week), and since he has to stay there anyway
in order to complete his reportage, they decide to spend a week together and then
say goodbye, never to see each other again. Described in this way, this seems like
a casual adventure (and, I would say, that's what it is). But, the problem is that the
couple perceive themselves, and are presented to us, as if they were living the love of
their lives, the most important and precious thing that has ever happened in their
love life. What is the problem or the lie of this fantasmatic mise-en-scene?-that the
encounter is "de-realized" from the very moment it happens. It is immediately in
scribed and confined within a discrete, narrowly defined time and space (one week,
one house-this being their "another time, another place"), destined to become the
most precious object of their memories. We could say that even during the time
their relationship "is happening;' it is already a memory; the couple is living it as
already lost (and the whole pathos of the movie springs from there). The real of the
encounter, the "impossible that happened;' is immediately rejected and transformed
into an object that paradoxically incarnates the very impossibility of what did hap
pen. It is a precious object that one puts into a jewel-box, the box of memory. From
time -to time, one opens the box and finds great pleasure in contemplating this jewel
that glitters by virtue of the impossibility it incarnates. Contrary to what might seem
to be the case, the two protagonists are not able to "make do" with the lack. Rather,
they make of the lack itself their ultimate possession.
To return to the question of the difference between love and desire, we could
now say that the entre-deux, the interval or gap introduced by desire, is the gap
between the Real and the semblance: the other that is accessible to desire is always
the imaginary other, Lacan's objet petit a, whereas the real (other) of desire remains
unattainable. The real of desire is jouissance, namely, that "inhuman partner" (as
Lacan calls it) that desire aims at beyond its object and that must remain inacces
sible. Love, on the other hand, is what somehow manages to make the real of desire
accessible. This is what Lacan is aiming at with his statement that love "humanizes

146

Investigations of the Lacanian Field

jouissance" and that "only love-sublimation makes it possible for jouissance to con

descend to desire:' As should be clear from the previous discussion, this in no way
implies an "abasement" of a sublime object. Neither does it imply that it becomes
something like a fetish, although the reference to the latter can help us clarify what is
at stake. What is a fetish? An object that could be said to be "full of its own beyond:'
Fetish is the material support of the belief in something that is not there. This is why
it can play an important role in the economy of desire. In Freudian theory, fetish
is, to put it very simply, an object that allows us to disavow the lack in the Other.
Disavowal is not the same thing as negation, and Octave Mannoni pointed out the
rather more complex structure of the fetishist disavowal: je sais bien, mais quand
meme. For instance: "I know very well (that this object is only a common object),
but still (I continue to believe that it has secret powers):' In the context of our dis
cussion this could take the following form: I know very well that my partner is just a
human being like any other, but I still continue to believe that she is not.
On the other hand, the structure introduced by love is rather different, and one
could perhaps formulate it as follows: "I know very well that my partner is just an
other human being, but I still believe that she is just another human being:' In other
words, love rather produces a structure similar to that from the already quoted Marx
Brothers joke: "Look at this guy, he looks like an idiot, he behaves like an idiot-but
do not let yourself be deceived, he is an idiot!" In this respect, love is the very oppo
site of fetishism. And this is precisely what it has in common with comedy

Tradition and Transcendence:


Postmodernity's Entanglement
in Immanence

,"

r
'

,-

. '.-.

Cf. Jacques Lacan, Le Seminaire. Livre V. Les formations de l'inconscient, (Paris: Seuil,
1998).

Jacques-Alain Miller, "The Desire of Lacan;' Lacanian Ink 14 (Spring 1999) : 19.

Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1992), 313.

Ibid.

Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1976), 118. Cf. also "Three essays on sexuality;' in Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (Har
mondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 131. It was Joan Copjec who drew my attention to this no
tion of incentive bonus in Freud.

Les formations de l'inconscient, op. cit., 121.

Jacques Lacan, L'angoisse, unpublished seminar, lecture from May 13, 1963.

The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis, op. cit., 112.

L'angoisse, lecture from the May 13th, 1963.

10 Jacques Lacan, Le transfert (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 46.


11

Gilles Deleuze, L'image-mouvement (Paris: Les Editions de minuit, 1983), 234.

0 '

j
to

1,
"

"'

Robert Spencer

" Things that are modern:' claims Theodor Adorno, "do not
just sally forth in advance of their time:" Rather, they unblock
latent possibilities that until then lay dormant. Tradition is
worthy of preservation because it harbors possibilities that
are in danger of being disregarded in our impetuous desire to
transcend it. Our attitude to the tradition bequeathed to us is
therefore a circumspect one. We neither inherit nor reject tra
dition but engage with it, and as Paul Ricoeur has argued, the
condition of this engagement is a fully conscious reception
of all that has come down to us: "Nothing survives from the
past except through a reinterpretation in the presenf'2 Each
generation and each individual is faced with the choice of car
rying tradition on or calling a halt, of rejecting certain aspects
or releasing unblocked potentials stored within. In short, one
is not free of the past when one has rejected it out of hand for
she who exorbitantly gainsays tradition remains its prisoner,
since her stance towards tradition is dictated by it. Only when
one takes up a balanced and critical attitude towards tradition
can one hope to transcend it. The thinker who regards tra
dition should rather take as his model the gatekeeper whose
job it is to decide who can pass. We should neither sustain
nor forsake tradition, therefore, for that which remains of use
should be allowed admittance.
To engage with the history of that which has gone before
does not necessarily mean to accept it without reservation, to
affirm its momentum or to endorse history's present course.
The constructive engagement with tradition might also lead
one to continue or fulfill those aspects of it that remain esti
mable or useful while rejecting others. Thinking historically
therefore also means, as Walter Benjamin recognized, think
ing "against the grain" of hitherto occurring history.3 This is,
I think, the attitude that separates on the one hand certain
heralds of a "postmodern condition" such as Jean -Franc;:ois

Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

Tradition and Transcendence

Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard and on the other those defenders of an unfinished
modern project such as Jiirgen Habermas. Identified with the qualified defense of
the project of modernity-defined as the process of disenchantment, rationaliza
tion and secularization-Habermas's theory differs most markedly from those of his
self-proclaimed adversaries in its contention that the resources of modernity have
not yet been exhausted. His last-ditch effort to engage critically with modernity rep
resents an attempt to extract something of value from a tradition that postmodern
thinkers comprehensively eschew. Habermas is convinced that the project of mo
dernity has failed because the ideals it avows-the replacement of myth and super
stition with the sovereign powers of reason and the substitution of the democratic
will for arbitrary despotism-have not yet been realized.
Modernity is the name given to that abortive process whereby the secular ide
als of freedom and reason endeavor to succeed the arbitrary dictates of myth and
irrationalism. Frankfurt School Critical Theorists have concluded that, since the
ideals of modernity have not yet been realized, we are confronted with a situation in
which modernity's promise has been broken, in which the ideals of freedom, reason,
and democracy contrast with the incapacity of an inequitable economic set-up to
put them into effect. It is this lag between the ideal and the actual that characterizes
modernity and gives rise to the innumerable catastrophes of which it is guilty; esti
mabIe ideals are evacuated from the empirical sphere, becoming ideological props
of a system that allows suffering and injustice to run amuck. The difference between
modernist and postmodernist thought, therefore, boils down to a dispute about the
course of action that will best enable us to transcend this state of affairs. For Adorno,
one transcends tradition by bringing it down from within. "One must have tradi
tion in oneself;' he writes trenchantly, "to hate it properly."4 He who would release
himself from the burden of tradition can do so successfully only by first adopting
its maxims, just as we might manage to outstrip modernity only by holding it to its
word, pressing its ideals against the inability of a capitalist system unable to make
good on them. To modify Adorno's maxim: one must have modernity in oneself to
hate it properly. The process of transcending modernity, as Neil Lazarus has argued,
demands that we "think with modernity against moderniti'5 By contrasting the ide
al with the actual in modernity such constructive engagements with tradition turn
anew to its discredited project. They refuse to forget tradition in case by so doing
they overlook the means of moving beyond it.
Habermas's defense of modernity, therefore, is by no means a pig-headed fidel
ity to a discredited epoch. Rather, he attributes the current disillusionment with
the modern era to which the various currents of postmodern thought attest not to
modernity but to its incompleteness. The basic contention of Habermas's theory is
that the depredations of the unfinished project of modernity are attributable not
to those ideals but rather to their hitherto inadequate and partial realization. He is
convinced that any precipitate attempt to ditch modernity in toto risks throwing out
the baby with the bathwater, renouncing laudable ideals on account of the blanket
rejection of a society that had failed to adequately accomplish them. The Enlighten
ment project of disenchantment, rationalization, and secularization has undeniably
gone awry. Instead of disavowing it, however, Habermas like his predecessors argues

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149

that "enlightenment can only make good its deficits by radicalized enlightenmenf'6
He contends that modernity has misfired because the model of communicative ra
tion ality has been obscured: "spheres of communicative action, centered on the re
production and transmission of values and norms, are penetrated by a form of mod
ernization guided by standards of economic and administrative rationaliti'7 For
Habermas a form of instrumental reason geared towards abstract imperatives has
squeezed out the founding bourgeois ideal of unhindered democratic communica
tion, which acts throughout modernity's infamous career as a counterfactual norm.
Not reason, then, but its misuse and distortion is at fault for the crimes committed
in modernity's name. Habermas's account of modernity bears witness to "a selective
pattern of rationalization, a jagged profile of modernization:'8
He is not, therefore, content to see reason retained unmodified. His ideal of a
public sphere in which each and every participant would have the right to speak
and partake on equal terms with his or her peers, in which the unforced force of
the better argument would win out, gives shape to an alternative notion of inter
subjective reason that constitutes a normative critique of society based upon radical
democratic principles. Although, since about 1980, he has increasingly suggested
that a workable public sphere could be realized within the constraints of capitalist
society,9 the ideal of Habermas's thought nevertheless stands as a radical, norma
tive challenge to the status quo. " [I]deologies;' he previously contended, "are not
only manifestations of the socially necessary consciousness in its essential falsity . . . .
[T]here is an aspect to them that can lay a claim to truth inasmuch as it transcends
the status quo in utopian fashion, even if only for purposes of justification:'l0 Yet if
Habermas, as Peter Dews has remarked, assiduously reconstructs the narrative of
modernity in order to unearth buried alternatives within it, the drastic disavowal of
modernity in Lyotard and Baudrillard "appears to imply a denial of the meaningful
ness of any counterfactual history, the belief that no epoch can contain possibilities
other than those which have been actually realized:'ll By modernity, then, is meant
that flawed epoch in which the dreams of social emancipation and the triumph of
reason over myth struggle to be realized but which, because of the existence of these
unfulfilled elements, points towards its own transcendence. Critical Theory, which
maintains a qualified commitment to modernity, reconstructs the narrative of mo
dernity in order to salvage from its hitherto inadequate realization those aspects of
it that might do service in the cause of political emancipation.
Critics have taken up two broad positions in the ongoing "postmodernism" de
bate. The first, which offers a qualified defense of the heritage of the Enlightenment
trust in reason and knowledge, rejects the thesis that we now live in a transformed
epoch in which the boundary between ideal and actual that characterized moder
nity has been blurred by wholesale commodification. For these modernist think
ers-most prominent among whom are Habermas, Alex Callinicos, Christopher
Norris, David Harvey, Peter Dews and Terry Eagletonl2-our task, despite certain
novel obstacles that late capitalism places in our paths, is still the modern one of
measuring the status quo against its ideals, fact against fiction, truth against ideol
ogy. These thinkers have highlighted the philosophical contradictions in postmod
ern thought and combated the caricature it offers of the modern tradition. For them,

150

Tradition and Transcendence

Enlightenment reason is not a unitary tradition that bred and could not have avoid
ed breeding the Holocaust and other crimes committed in the name of progress.
They see modernity as the scene of diverse possibilities. The second position in the
postmodernism debate proclaims the obsolescence of the modern project resulting
from the advent of a totalitarian system of commodities, an all-inclusive regime in
which we can no longer contrive enough discrepancy between the ideal and the ac
tual and between the illusory and the real to allow us to hold the system to account.
It is represented most vocally by Lyotard and Baudrillard. The case of America's
foremost Marxist critic Fredric Jameson, however, requires special pleading. For
Jameson has a foot in both the residual modernist and the fatalistic postmodernist
camps, mitigating as he does his undaunted faith in political transformation with
a melancholy insistence that reification is now more or less total, an iron cage that
allows no possibility of critique.
Fredric Jameson and the End of Modernity

The immanent criticism advocated by modernity's beleaguered partisans is intend


ed not to uphold or endorse modernity but to indict its failure. Such criticism con
trasts a deficient and inadequate empirical sphere with its own ideology, with the
ideals that it has not yet realized. Yet it remains true to modernity insofar as the ide
als it proclaims originate in that epoch. Immanent criticism holds modernity to its
promises. As Max Horkheimer once claimed, "it is not the ideals of the bourgeoisie,
but conditions that do not correspond to them, which have shown their unten
abilitY:" 3 The essential paradox of Jameson's recent work is that although he stays
true to rational comprehension or what he calls "cognitive mapping"-the project
of graduating to some total knowledge of late capitalism's gargantuan system'4-he
nonetheless defines postmodernity as that age in which cognition as such has been
written off in advance by the preponderance of reification. Jameson concludes that
the fall of communism and the advance of capitalism into hitherto uncommodified
areas-the definitive closing of the frontier of the world system-means there are
no territories that have yet to be subjected to the rule of capitalism. There is no high
ground from which we might espy capitalism's advance. Nor, despite the empha
sis in Jameson's earlier The Political Unconscious on the utopian nature of aesthetic
experience, is the formerly autonomous sphere of culture able any longer to give
reification the slip.
No theory of cultural politics on the Left today has been able to do with
out one notion or another of a certain minimal aesthetic distance, of the
possibility of the positioning of the cultural act outside the massive Being
of capital, from which to assault this last. What the burden of our preced
ing demonstration suggests, however, is that distance in general (including
"critical distance" in particular) has very precisely been abolished in the new
space of postmodernism.'s
Whereas modernity harbored a variety of time scales and modes of production
what Raymond Williams has called residual and emergent tendencies'6-in our own
unprecedented epoch the depthless commodities spawned by late capitalism have

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no rival. Postmodernism is the only game in town.


postmodernity therefore denotes for Jameson the final extinction of those areas
that hitherto remained outside the scope of commodification. His eschewal of the
possibility of critical, modernist art is therefore one of the m?st conspicuous symp
toms of his theory's political fatalism. Autonomous modermst art was once able to
give voice to alternatives to capitalism bause it origi ate in those limes where
,
capitalism had not yet been entrenched. Modern art, m thIS respect, Jameson a:
gues, "drew its power and its possibilities from being a backwater and an archalC
holdover within a modernizing economy:" ? The novels of Franz Kafka, for example,
are privileged a last-ditch critical distance from the impersonal, bureaucratic exis
tence instilled by monopoly capitalism; they view the onset of this epoch from the
fast-eroding breakwater of a still largely feudal nation. Postmodernity, which for
Jameson tends to spawn depthless and self-referential cultural products, no longer
provides any vantages from which such insight might be contrived. Now all vestiges
and remnants of the past have been expunged. Our age is not uneven but flat and
featureless, not an amalgam of differing time scales but a single temporal continu
um. "Everything has reached the same hour on the great clock of development or
rationalization (at least from the perspective of the 'West'):',8
Jameson discounts the possibility of autonomous modernist art because there is
now no possibility of getting outside the reified system. But he is too easily discour
aged, for he has misjudged modernism. For him it is a full-scle dress re earsa for
.
utopia. Modernism is "a Utopian compensation for everythmg relficatlOn
bnngs
with iC'9 Though it serves an ideological function by providing images of reconcili
ation in the midst of an alienated present, modernist art nonetheless constitutes for
Jameson a portent of the utopian life of the collective, a signpost to the emancipated
condition. Adorno, however, offers a subtly different account of modernist art. Here
the accent falls not upon utopia but upon its frustration.20 Modernism for Adorno
does not so much embody utopia as articulate its absence: "Modern art, with its
vulnerability, blemishes, and fallibility, is the critique of traditional works, which
in so many ways are stronger and more successful: It is the critique of success:'21
The modernist work amounts to an immanent critique of the traditional artwork,
exemplified for Adorno by the harmonious structure of the sonata. Modern works
deliberately thwart the ideal of reconciliation and in so doing testify both to an
alienated world in which reconciliation cannot be found and to the enduring urge
to bring reconciliation about.22 Since society itself is unreconciled, it would be ideo
logical for art to feign reconciliation, and therefore the modernist w? rk gives itsef
over to dissonance and thus mimes in its broken form the antagomsms that spilt
society apart.
Modernism is charged not with anticipating utopia but with articulating its absence. It exists not to compensate or to console but to incite dissatisfaction. Modern
ism, then, is not utopian as such but an expression of the frustration of utopian im
pulses under present conditions. Jameson contends that since the ass imilati? of ca
.
.
nonical high modernism mass culture can now bear the load of utopIan antlClpatlOn
that modernism has put down. The sting is taken out of the daring and iconoclastic
modernists when they are hung in the lobbies of investment banks or co-opted by

152

Tradition and Transcendence

the official approbation of university syllabuses.2) Thereafter, according to Jameson,


it is those products of the culture industry unjustly spurned by Horkheimer and
Adorno that shoulder the burden of utopian presentiment. Jameson points to "their
Utopian or transcendent potential-that dimension of even the most degraded type
of mass culture which remains implicitly, and no matter how faintly, negative and
critical of the social order from which, as a product and a commodity, it springs:'24
Jameson objects to the fact that Adorno and Horkheimer place a positive value on
high, modernist art yet repudiate mass culture as sheer manipulation. He proposes
instead to redress the balance by seeing high and mass culture as "objectively related
and dialectically interdependent phenomena:'25 Yet as Andreas Huyssen points out,
this is exactly how Adorno saw the relation of high and mass culture.26 They are, in
Adorno's famous phrase, "torn halves of an integral freedom, to which, however,
they do not add Up:'2?
Adorno is not out to defend some sacrosanct aesthetic realm but to show that
modernist art is parasitic on modernity, an articulation of the dissonance to which
modernity unavoidably gives rise. He actually concurs with Jameson in present
ing modernism as a symptom of and not as a solution to the crises that modernity
brings about. Adorno is also at one with Jameson in portraying modernism as an
effect of commodification and not an escape from it. He is therefore emphatically
not to be likened to conservative opponents of mass culture or to uncritical adher
ents of modernist art. Indeed, for Adorno mass culture and modernism are basically
alike. The former obscures social injustice and alienation by feigning reconciliation,
issuing promises on which, given the continued existence of social divisions, it is
necessarily unable to fulfill. "The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers
of what it perpetually promises. . . . [TJhe diner must be satisfied with the menu:'28
Modernism, on the other hand, unabashedly confesses this discrepancy, giving
shape to the gulf between art's promise of reconciliation and its inability on its own
to make good on that promise in an unreconciled social order. In the end the dis
tinction between the two lies in the greater obviousness with which this is achieved
in modernist works. Modernist art eschews premature affirmation in a world that
is not yet reconciled, that is still disfigured by the disjunction between ideal and
reality. Jameson is therefore, I think, in error when he reads the last rights over mod
. ernist art. The only evidence he adduces for its obsolescence is the appropriation of
formerly iconoclastic modernists by an official canon. But modernism has its origin
not in the prestige or otherwise of its outlaw practitioners but in social conditions
of uneven development. It is not modernism itself but individual modernists that
become obsolete.
Charged with articulating the gap between the system's ideals and its inability to
make good on them, modernism lasts for as long as the fallible epoch of modernity
endures. Adorno's defense of modernist art is therefore akin to Habermas's defense
of modernity. Both assume the task of decrying the gap between the systems ideals
and its current inability to fulfill them. Ostensibly, Jameson attributes both postmo
dernity's absolute break with the incomplete epoch of modernity and the demise of
modernist art to the sheer universality of capitalism. Yet his qualification-that this
is true "at least from the perspective of the 'West"'-gives the lie to his own thesis. In

Robert Spencer

153

more guarded moments, therefore, Jameson is prepared to concede that capitalism


is not quite as ubiquitous as his rhetoric frequently implies. Moreover, the economic
authority that Jameson calls to bear witness to his contention that postmodernity
and late capitalism constitute an "absolute break"29 with modernity and a still fallible
monopoly capitalism also tells a quite different tale, for it is precisely this clean break
that Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism repudiates. Mandel claims that "the ideology
of 'technical rationality' mystifies the reality of late capitalism by claiming that the
syste m is capable of overcoming all the fundamental socio-economic contradictions
of the capitalist mode of production. The present work has sought to show that
late capitalism has not, and cannot, accomplish this:'30 Capitalism is incapable of
becoming a universal system; it is perennially hobbled because its fundamental fea
tures-the extraction of surplus labor (the transformation of living labor into com
modities) and the class relationship that impels this-still obtain under late capital
ism and generate divisions that give the lie to the systems apparent universality.
"Uneven geographical development and expansion;' as David Harvey has written,
"cannot possibly cure the internal contradictions to which capitalism is heir:')1 The
expansion of the system into the third world is as likely to aggravate contradictions
as it is to resolve them.
The ideology of globalization which Jameson's thesis resembles is therefore as
false as any other ideal avowed by capitalism. Superficially this term is used to de
scribe the growing interconnectedness of the planet whereby the fates of disparate
climes are linked by global systems of production, finance, and trade. Globalization
is shorthand for a process of homogenization, the transcendence of the nation -state
and the rendering insignificant of territorial frontiers. It reorders time and space,
putting global processes beyond local control in a fully planetary division of labor.
Yet the flip side of this interconnectedness is increased division. The peripheries of
the system are integrated not by bringing them up to speed with the most advanced
nations-by promoting development in hitherto under-developed climes or by ex
tending the remit of nominally democratic Western institutions-but by forcing
them to act as impoverished and biddable dependencies, profitable sources of raw
materials and cheap labor. The global system is unitary but unequal; it fragments as
it amalgamates.
Modernism, according to Adorno, originated in those societies in which inequality was most flagrant, in which the high -flown avowals of a modernizing
system contrasted most flagrantly with the reality of backwardn.e s and under-d.e
velopment.32 For Eagleton too, unevenness is the essential condItion of modermst
artY More importantly, Jameson himself occasionally concedes that autonomous,
modernist art might be achieving a second wind in peripheral societies where the
systems ideologies clash openly with the brutal reality of har.dship and partitio .34
If Jameson is to maintain his faith in a possible transformation of postmodermty
then he must countenance the endurance of what I have described as the paradigm
of modernity, the existence of disjunctive spaces which allow us to mount a politi
cal critique of the system by measuring its rarefied ideals against its less edifying
achievements. He must concede the persistence of disjunctions upon the periphery
of the kind that give rise to modernist art's "critique of success:' Since capitalism

154

Robert Spencer

Tradition and Transcendence

is unable to totalize itself, we are still able, like the classical exponents of Critical
Theory, to contrast critically its aims with its accomplishments.
Ostensibly for Jameson late capitalism is the final termination of that non-capi
talist space that, in friction with capitalism, ignited modernism, and thus the elimi
nation of the negativity that enables critique. It seems churlish to point out that
capitalism is sustained by immanent contradictions because we can be sure that
Jameson knows this already. The problem is that his desire to maintain an "absolute
break" with modernity demands the assertion that capitalism has definitively put
paid to its contradictions, a claim that does not stand up to empirical scrutiny. The
contention that reification is now total induces a political defeatism that threatens
to forestall Jameson's project of "cognitive mapping" and is in any case belied by the
current regime's inherent fallibility. If the global network of production is now invis
ible beneath the superficial, depthless culture of postmodernism, then Jameson has
written offhis political project in advance. When there is no reality to be discerned
beneath the ubiquitous commodities and simulacra because " [p ]ostmodernism is
what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for
good" then there is no longer any possibility of political critique.J5 Jameson is torn
between his desire to present late capitalism as a novel regime of total reification
and the political necessity of claiming that reification is not yet invulnerable and
therefore susceptible to examination. "The problem for Jameson under these cir
cumstances is;' according to Steven Connor, "how to remain true to the analysis of
postmodernity which he has produced, while yet preventing the enormity of the
analYSis from overwhelming the possibility of critique:'J6 In the end the only way for
Jameson to maintain his radical credentials is by confessing the essentially uneven
character of late capitalist social development and thereby conceding that the still
fallible epoch of postmodernity is not suffiCiently discontinuous to merit its prefix.
Yet the totalizing account of the postmodern always included a space for
various forms of oppositional culture: those of marginal groups, those of
radically distinct residual or emergent cultural languages, their existence be
ing already predicated by the necessarily uneven development of late capi
talism, whose First World produces a Third World within itself by its own
inner dynamic.37
I now seems that postmodernity, like modernity, accommodates a host of divergent
tle scales nd oppositional cultures, and therefore provides room for the system's
hIgh-flown Ideals to be contrasted with its woeful accomplishments, its claims to
universality with its acrually rather limited scope. We would be justified, therefore,
in questioning whether postmodernity merits the novelty he claims for it. More
over, we would be correct to conclude that this claim has obscured the essential
continuity between our own epoch and the modern age to which many theorists
have bade a premature farewell. So-called late capitalism constitutes, as David Har
vey's more serviceable account of our era contends, not a break with modernity
but an exacerbation of previously existing trends.38 Over the past thirty years we
have witnessed a quantitative, not a qualitative, transformation. Jameson, when it
comes down to a choice between postmodernity and critique, chooses the latter. To

155

t h uS take issue with Jameson's "postmodernism" thesis is in a sense to do no more


than follow the momentum of his own thinking. It is therefore by no means to im
pugn the radicalism of his thought but merely to remark that his salutary attempt
to stress the changes wrought in the world economy since the Second World War
leads him to postulate an "absolute break" with the modern era that falls foul of his
theory'S own better instincts, his unfashionable awareness of the need for political
critique and radical action. It is not, therefore, Jameson's commitment to a root and
branch transformation of the social order that is at issue here but his assessment of
its feasibility. Ultimately he prefers to accentuate the continued imperfection of late
capitalism, the existence of alternative tendencies germinating within the system
and therefore the endurance of the modern project. It is to his immense credit that
his theory avoids the reckless fatalism of other, less circumspect proponents of the
"postmodern condition:'
Baudrillard, Truth, and Art

When the dust settles Jameson sides with the opponents of the idea that postmoder
nity constitutes an "absolute break" with the preceding epoch. He can be assigned
to that group of radical thinkers for whom modernity is not yet complete and for
whom modernist art can still play a critical role. On the other sides of the barri
cades, however, are postmodernity's precipitate celebrants, for whom the disjunc
tion between ideal and real on which modernism fed has collapsed. " [A]rt is dead;'
according to Baudrillard, "not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but
because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from
its own structure, has been confused with its own image:'J9 Stripped of its autonomy,
art has become defunct. Or rather, art has not really been made redundant, for in a
sense it has never been more in demand. Indeed, the dreams of the avant-garde have
at last been accomplished, and on a scale it could scarcely have envisaged; according
to Baudrillard art has been realized in all spheres of social existence. There is no lon
ger any need for a separate aesthetic realm quarantined from everyday life because
image, color, and illusion now proliferate interminably in an exhilarating dissemi
nation of all that was formerly ghettoized in the aesthetic. Baudrillard breaks into
the palace of bourgeois culture and disburses the bounty. Everything has become a
bewitching daydream, an object of carefree aesthetic pleasure. "[O]ur society has
given rise;' claims Baudrillard, "to a general aestheticization. . . . Whereas art was
once essentially a utopia-that is to say, ultimately unrealizable-today this utopia
has been realized:'40 Art's hideout has been detonated and the fallout bathes us all
in pop culture's lurid glow. In an increasingly self-identical world, then, there is no
normative or critical aesthetic refuge that might give commodification the slip and
vaunt its incompatibility with the status quo. Art is put out of commission because
it can no longer transcend the airtight immanence of postmodernity. No more is it a
distant ideal that furnishes a critical contrast with a debased and unaesthetic social
sphere; it is rather a realized utopia that attends our everyday existence.
With a flamboyant fin-de-siecle nonchalance Baudrillard announces both the
end of culture and the exhaustion of modernity's dreams of social transformation.
"I don't want culture;' he has provocatively declared; "I spit on it."41 Modernity had

156

Tradition and Transcendence

maintained its faith in the existence of some sacrosanct reality that remained outside
the spreading ambit of commodification. Postmodernity, by contrast, is that epoch
in which reification is thought to have swallowed all alternatives. Effecting a radical
break with modernity, it constitutes, according to Baudrillard, a wholly novel era
in which all traces of some ultimately discernible reality have been expunged. Just
as Jameson bemoans the onset of a "whole global, yet American, postmodern cul
ture;'42 Baudrillard heralds the advent of a world modeled upon what he sees, with
equal measures of condescension and homage, as the United States' awesome su
perficiality. Modernity saw the commodity as a cryptic, apparently self-acting thing
that nevertheless belied some hidden essence that could be decoded and reappro
priated. In America, however, there is nothing but reification. The commodity, like
the desert, is an impenetrable and mysterious thing that can never be deciphered,
comprehended, or reappropriated. What America exemplifies for Baudrillard is the
desertification of modernity's formerly verdant and uneven landscape. Here one is
bewitched by "the fascination of the very disappearance of all aesthetic and critical
forms of life in the irradiation of an objectless neutrality. . . . The fascination of the
desert: immobility without desire. Of Los Angeles: insane circulation without de
sire. The end of aesthetics:'43
Baudrillard commenced his career as a Marxist supplementing the critique of
political economy with a theory of the sign.44 In its attempt to buttress Marx's analy
sis of reification in the sphere of production with his own account of reification in
the sphere of consumption, Baudrillard's project bore a family resemblance to the
similar efforts of the Frankfurt School a generation earlier. Lately, however, Bau
drillard has gone one step further than his predecessors, who still retained a mini
mal hope that alienated subjectivity might call a halt to reification. In Baudrillard's
eyes whatever was once considered the opposite of illusion and false conscious
ness-truth, objectivity, reality, authentic needs, use-value-has now been utterly
overwhelmed by reification. Exchange value has swamped use-value, and symboliC
exchange generally has obliterated production, meaning, and rationality. The divid
ing line between culture and economics has been effaced because we have entered
upon a wholly novel economic regime in which society is suffused through and
through by signs and images and in which political opposition, deprived of the pos
sibility of making out the system through the impenetrable haze of simulacra, has
vanished. This is a nihilistic world in which the downtrodden have no chance of
arming themselves with the truth because such a thing no longer exists; what we say
bears no relation to what actually is.
From a strictly diagnostic account of the obscurity of truth in an age of consumer
capitalism and mass media simulations, Baudrillard leaps zealously to a grandiose
skepticism about the validity of any truth-claim whatsoever. Henceforth signs and
codes constitute the real instead of merely designating it. According to this idealist
and relativist creed, the universe is but a figment of our imagination. Reality is not
so much obscured by a veneer of illusion as constituted entirely by discourse to the
extent that, as in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, truth is nothing but a con
venient fiction established by convention and ratified by habit. Whereas the Situ
ationist Guy Debord still saw the commodification of everyday life in the "society

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157

of the spectacle" as an identifiable development f moder capitalis and thereore


Baudnllard sees It as
" potentially susceptible to critical, hermeneutic evaluatIOn,
as
.
realm
of
images
that could never be cogmzed or redeemed : vve are no
depthless
onger in the society of the spectacle wich th Situti?nists t ed about, nor in the
.
types
of
alienation
and
represslO
whICh
t
hls Implted.

s pecific
.
.
.
.
in
the
dispute
about
the
contmued
eXistence
of
realtty
and
stake
Its
cogmtlOn
At
is the very possibility of a critical consciousness of late capitalism. On t is dep ds
.
the chances of genuinely radical social change. In the eyes of the matenallst cntlcs
of postmodern theory, for whom late capitalism can still be interpreted and tans
formed, Baudrillard's insistence that the world is no longer within reach of ratIOnal
subjectivity amounts to collusion with reification. Probably Baudrillard's most co
bative foe in the ranks of modernity's embattled adherents is Christopher Norns.
What aggravates Norris about Baudrillard's work is its flattenin of t e distinction
.
between truth and illusion. He is incensed above all by Baudnllard s provocative
contention that "the Gulf War did not take place;' an outlandish inference drawn
from the otherwise uncontroversial observation that government propaganda and
media disinformation contrived for most people in the West to obscure the indis
tinct real event.46 When reality for many has become a matter of indifference and
opinion has become the reflection not of genuine events but rather of whichever
media-inspired discourse happens to possess the greatest rhetorical force then there
is, of course, no denying the diagnostic value of Baudrillard's insights. Far more
dubious is the extrapolation of this local insight into an overstated thesis about the
liquidation of any reality outside of the particular discourse t at happens to hld
sway. For when we decree that the video-game imagery of the mghtly news IS. realtty
then we are summarily stripped of the ability to hold that discourse to account by
critically contrasting it with the truth. For an unabashedly polemical Norris, Bau
drillard's emphatic, albeit tongue-in-cheek, insistence on the illusory character of
the conflict in the Gulf amounted to a risible failure of political nerveY
It is surely the case that when reality is thought to be constituted etirely by is
course and there is no longer any operative distinction between what IS happenmg
on the ground and what the authorities tell us is taking place there, we relinquish
the possibility of appealing to truth and historical record. We forgo the chanc of
denouncing our opponents' discourse as self-serving propaganda or self-consolt g
ideology. When we are told that there is no chink in the armor of the present m
which we might lever open some revealing distinction between what the p wers
that be would like us to believe and what actually is the case, we lose the capaCIty for
critically contrasting different viewpoints. Indeed no discoure can b more odios
.
w
relatIOn
tive
c
fi
equally
an
have
h reah
than any other, since henceforth they all
ty.4" We live in a Lyotardian archipelago of disconnected language games o phrase
regimens" in which the creative art of concocting fictions has been substituted for
the onerous labor of uncloaking reality. Famously, for Lyotard " [w1 e no longer have
recourse to the grand narratives-we can resort neither to the dialectic of Sprit
nor even to the emancipation of humanity as a validation for postmodern sClenttc
.
discourse:'49 Instead of explaining phenomena with reference to some maglstenal
grand recit we now recount modest fables, the validity of which extends no further

"lAT

158

Robert Spencer

Tradition and Transcendence

than the lips from which they fall. The Enlightenment ideal of scientific judgment is
supplanted by a hotchpotch of little narratives. Where knowledge was, there point
of view shall be. Politics is now the art of persuasion, of telling the most gripping
yarns. Lyotard claims that the one remaining criterion of justice is the compulsion
not to encroach upon other narratives and "language games;' not to speak over one's
fellow storytellers: "each genre is played as such, which implies that it does not give
itself as the game of all the other games or as the true one:'50
But when we lose faith in truth we lose the possibility of measuring interests
against reality. We abandon any standard of judging certain interests truer or more
just than others and lose sight of the fact that some interests might benefit from
and thus be interested in the prolongation of a particular historical reality. "For if;'
reasons Norris, "everything is ultimately constructed in discourse-truth, reality,
subject-positions, class allegiances and so forth-then ex hypothese we could only
be deluded in thinking that any particular discourse (for instance, that of feminism)
had a better claim to truth or justice than any others currently on offer:'51 Norris ar
gues that the rejection of any possible criterion by which to judge a discourse more
true or false than another is politically disastrousY We risk inaugurating a situa
tion in which, because no particular viewpoint seems any more disreputable than
any other, the viewpoint that wins out is simply the one that leaps the highest. Ac
cording to the strict letter of their theories, Baudrillard and Lyotard would have no
reason to consider Holocaust-denial particularly despicable so long as he who held
thse views did not try to foist his opinions on others. A retention of the concept
of Ideology, on the other hand, allows us, as Eagleton points out, to draw "attention
to the ways in which specific ideas help to legitimate unjust and unnecessary forms
f politial omination:'53 The willingness to accuse some discourses of being more
.
IdeologIcal than others opens the way to an understanding of some viewpoints as
truer than others due to their greater insight into the way the world happens to be.
Public intellectuals such as Edward Said and Noam Chomsky wisely disregard
the postmodern suspicion of truth. They continue to contrast the norms nominally
accepted by the powerful with the truth that these ideals are all too often jettisoned
for reasons of realpolitik and political and economic gain. They stubbornly uphold
the modern conviction that the laborious task of research and documentation can
unearth explosive data-evidence of hushed-up massacres, for instance, or of of
ficial connivance in environmental destruction-that can be used to denounce the
duplicitous actions of those in power and hold them to account.54 Chomsky argues
that it is the responsibility of the intellectual, assiduously digging for facts, to ex
hume the truth from beneath the covering of obfuscation, ignorance, and official de
nial.55 Too many postmodern intellectuals, however, have taken literally Nietzsche's
injunctions to foreswear truth and embrace ignorance. Theatrically overreacting to
the arrogant positivist assumption that the truth is a stable entity vouchsafed to a
learned elite, they have swung too far in the opposite direction. For the arrogation
of truth is not the only weapon in the arsenal of the powers that be. They are equally
adept at concealing the truth, at whitewashing the true state of affairs in order to
keep the downtrodden from an empowering intimacy with their fate and the forces
that govern it. The Nietzschean claim that truth is just a self-promoting fiction fails,

1 59

in ditching the notion of truth altogether, to realize with Eagleton that dissimulation
is the status quo's stock in trade.

In such conditions, the true facts-concealed, suppressed, distorted-can


be in themselves politically explosive; and those who have developed the
nervous tic of placing such vulgar terms as "truth" and "fact" in fastidiously
distancing scare quotes should be careful to avoid a certain collusion be
tween their own high-toned theoretical gestures and the most banal, routine
political strategies of the capitalist power-structure. The beginning of the
good life is to try as far as possible to see the situation as it really is. 56
The prevailing skepticism about objective truth deprives the downtrodden of the
means by which they might contrast the claims of their rulers with the reality of
their rulers' wrongdoings.
Baudrillard, then, has taken one geographically and socially specific tendency
within our epoch and made it into the whole of reality. From his experience of a
consumer capitalism that obtains only in a tiny sliver of the world, he extrapolates
a series of exaggerated, globe-encircling proclamations about a totalitarian system
of signs and the liquidation of objective reality. By accentuating the sheltered well
being of the West at the expense of the oppression on which it is built, Baudrillard
is, as Steven Best and Douglas Kellner have argued, "too one-sided, reductive, and
blind to the continuing importance of the economy, state, race and gender domina
tion, neglecting a wide range of economic, environmental, and political issues:'57
It is undeniable that he has successfully captured the fatalistic mood of a disen
chanted intelligentsia in an age that has witnessed several concussive rebuffs to the
labor movement and a wholesale consolidation in the west of consumer capitalism.
Yet this setback hardly warrants his hyperbolic assertion, unaccompanied by either
analytical or demonstrative rigor, that reification is now total. Baudrillard would be
better advised to acknowledge the limits of his undoubtedly productive insightsY
For there are tendencies germinating within late capitalism that might help us peer
beyond it and attain enough leverage between fact and fiction to denounce it. Oth
erwise Baudrillard risks committing the same blunder he accuses his opponents of
making, totalizing history by discounting the possibility of alternatives taking shape
within it.

Conclusion: Modernity as Unfinished Business

The two positions in the postmodernism debate-the case for the prosecution and
that for the defense-have one crucial thing in common. For both, our epoch has
been the scene of capitalism's wholesale consolidation. We are faced with both a
deepening and a broadening of reification. On the one hand the reign of the com
modity has extended into the most intimate minutiae of everyday life and on the
other it has overflowed the frontiers of the first world and saturated those enclaves
it formerly disregarded or excluded. Mass media simulation has veiled reality to
the extent that we find it ever more difficult to tell fact from fiction whilst the near
universality of capitalism leaves us at a loss to find any space from which to get its
measure. Yet if, as political and moral agents, we wish to avoid throwing in the towel

160

Robert Spencer

Tradition and Transcendence

(and either heralding the brave new world of the consumer society or reluctantly
bemoaning the exhaustion of the modern projects of emancipation and enlighten
ment), then we must concede that a gulf persists between the system's ideals and its
achievements. An increasingly globalized capitalism professes to be, imminently if
not already, universal. But in a world as unequal as ours this claim obviously rings
false. Unprecedented global unity goes hand in hand with increasing fragmentation.
Our age remains modern by virtue of this enduring discrepancy.
Too much postmodern theory is guilty of a catastrophic failure of political imag
ination in not acknowledging the regional limits of its insights and in overlooking
the conflict and indigence that prevail in more remote locales. This is why the work
of the Frankfurt School, from its early practitioners to its contemporary advocates,
ought to be heeded. This tradition, unafraid to stress the daunting totality in which
we live, has the great merit of also stressing the contradictions that inhere within
the dispiritingly monolithic status quo. The possibility of redemption, as Benjamin
argued, stirs inconspicuously in the most unpropitious circumstances.
For Benjamin, as for Herbert Marcuse, the work of historical construction is fix
ated with the past,59 The inveterate backward gaze of the attentive historian finds not
a benign tale of progress but an unremitting Calvary of slaughter and exploitation, a
sequence of calamities and abortive revolts. Benjamin argues that it is the task of all
radical politics to reverse these setbacks, to make victories of our forebears' gallant
defeats. Indeed, it is by paying heed to this narrative of recurrent and continuing
failure that we are enabled to transcend the status quo. Not optimism but pessimism
is the correct disposition of the radical thinker; he espies not success but the ubiq
uitous fallibility of a purportedly monolithic system. Benjamin's paradoxical claim,
then, is that those interested in transcending the ongoing catastrophe have as their
immediate concern only the past. Radical thought looks for transcendence where it
might be least expected. Instead of ecstatically heralding some imminent utopia it
ransacks the status quo for the means of exceeding it. Transcendence, therefore, is
not anterior to the debilitating continuum of immanence but takes shape within it.
It does not so much develop alongside immanence as germinate furtively within it.
"That things 'just go on;" writes Benjamin, "is the catastrophe . . . . Redemption looks
to the small fissure in the ongoing catastrophe:'60
Benjamin argues that it is the task of the historical materialist to break apart
the homogeneous appearance of history. He shows that history is not a monologue
but a cacophony of different voices that can intercede and object. For every official
account there is a minority report, a suppressed and disregarded "tradition of the
oppressed" that articulates the outlook of the underlings. What could be is therefore
stealthily fomenting in what is. The immanent method seeks not to forecast impetu
ously the political hereafter but instead to unblock the way to a future society by
showing up the contradictions and fallibilities of the present one. We might say that
Critical Theory, like Marxism in general in the words of the young Georg Lukacs,
"changes the transcendent objective into an immanent one:'61 We can call a halt to
the ongoing catastrophe because the status quo is defective and flawed. Capitalism
can be wound up because it is already insolvent. Transcendence, in short, takes root
in the omnipresent fallibility of the status quo. It is to be achieved not by promulgat-

161

ing
the
ront
conf
y
dedl
-hea
hard
by
but
r
orde
l
socia
ed
sform
tran
a
of
rints
p
blue
g
in
present's ragged and ruptured character.
.
.
et
disr
postmodern thinkers like Lyotard and Baudnllard display an Irreveren
um
tinu
co
ive
ruct
dest
the
ys
alwa
is
ry
histo
that
nds
grou
the
on
ry
histo
for

pect
s
.
gard
disre
Yet
this
be.
that
ers
pow
the
d
by
cate
advo
t
men
hten
enlig
and
ess
r
prog
of
is itself an inadvertent form of historicism. Postmodernists write off the history of
preceding epochs as an unmitigated catalogue of atrocities brought about by instru
mental reason and thus go on to foreswear the grand narratives that drove human
kind to such hubristic acts of social engineering. Despite their wariness of totality,
therefore they impute a grandiose homogeneity to history itself. Thus spooked by
this leviathan, Lyotard in particular sets about advocating his utopia of discon
nected and monadic language games. In so doing he appears to imagine that grand
narratives could be repudiated by theoretical fiat as if totality were imposed not by
capitalism but by its critics, as if it were not an objective fact but a pattern imputed
to history by the malign schemas of Enlightenment theorists. Baudrillard even ar
gues that Marxism, by prioritizing production, is capitalism's mirror image.62 But as
Eagleton argues, the incessant history of exploitation is the result of capitalism, not
of the totalizing zeal of its opponents.
.

History for Marxism is indeed, as Mr. Ford wisely commented, bunk, or


at least the same old tedious story. Those who celebrate history as change,
difference, plurality, unique conjuncture, and who hone their theoretical
instruments accordingly to capture something of this precious specificity,
simply blind themselves politically and intellectually to this most scandalous
of all transhistorical truths.63
Those who celebrate the proliferation of language games and the inauguration of
an achieved aesthetic existence are jumping the gun, for it would take a concerted,
practical effort of refusal to overhaul the system. Because totality endures, toe
who ignore it tend to collude in its perpetuation, and it is therefore the responslbli
.
ity of intellectuals to tailor our concepts and theoretical vocabulary accordmgly.
Gainsaying grand narratives brings us no closer to stopping them. Lyotard wants to
stop the world and get off, but even ifhe could it would then carry on spinning. Our
task as responsible critics is to ferret out the hidden conflicts lurking beneath the
graveyard stillness of postmodernity. We are to remind ourselves that because these
antinomies endure we remain within the paradigm of modernity, which has still to
be put to bed. Instead of starting from scratch, therefore, we should settle our scores
with modernity before setting sail for its successor.
The method that I advocate is at once dolorously pessimistic and determinedly
hopeful. It is pessimistic because it considers the brave new world champio ed by
postmodernism to be but a continuation of the deficient epoch of modermty. Yet
it is decidedly more optimistic because the hope nurtured by dialectics-nothing
more than the "regulated, methodically-cultivated spirit of contradiction;' as Hegel
defined it in conversation with Goethe64-lies precisely in contradiction. Holding
fast to these contradictions-not least of which is that between the ideals of mod
ernism and their current lack of realization-it would like to kindle what Jiirgen

162

Robert Spencer

Tradition and Transcendence

Habermas has called "the good and true life" from the antinomies that still fissure
the bad and false one.65 Modernist artworks articulate this state of permanent and
irredeemable crisis. They express in their form the social struggles that beset soci
ety at large. We should bear in mind the fact that by defending aesthetic autonomy
Adorno wished only to point out the capacity of aesthetic experience to bring to
mind the secret contradictions that we otherwise tend to overlook. By neglecting
art as a means of critical self-reflection, therefore, we hammer one more nail into
the coffin of critical distance.
The Frankfurt School's emphasiS on the hindward gaze of the immanent critic
proves, then, to have been an abiding commitment to settling our scores with mo
dernity before we can win the right to post-modernity. The notion that we have
outstripped modernity, on the other hand, only masks its endurance. The portrayal
of it as a thing of the past presumptuously applies to the whole uneven and multi
form planet the narrow life experiences of a well-heeled and contented minority. We
should, however, be more careful to recollect the plight of those for whom truth and
critique are not the passe shibboleths of a discredited metaphysics but the essen
tial means of resisting their pitiable fate. Adorno recognized time and again that to
make precipitate acclamations of a reconciliation not yet apparent in the lives of the
alienated and the downtrodden is to be guilty of culpable indifference, of complicity
by default in the injustices such a position chooses to ignore. The hasty disavowal of
modernity therefore allows it to continue its injurious work in secret, to sustain the
gulf between the system's laudable ideals and its deficient accomplishments. Pay
ing heed once more to the discredited paradigm of modernity, however, offers the
chance to resolve these antinomies and thereby fulfill modernity's promise.
The widespread conviction that reification has overwhelmed everything from
nature to the unconscious and from pre-capitalist backlands in the third world to
reality itself is both, as I have sought to show, an abdication of political and intel
lectual responsibility and a piece of dubious rhetoric unsupported by the facts and
susceptible to empirical refutation. Baudrillard's skeptical denial of objective truth is
at once politically inefficacious and philosophically contradictory. Indeed, he is vul
nerable to the standard philosophical criticism of relativism, for despite his disbelief
in truth he still makes a definite claim about what is the case. The relativist creed
denies the existence of truth, but for its exponents relativism is itself true and can
be said to obtain. Indeed, if knowledge is now all about the telling of tales and the
invention of worlds then there is no reason why Baudrillard's own account of post
modernity is not a partial account without wider validity outside the circumscribed
milieu of Baudrillard and his TV screen. Yet it is difficult to make this charge stick in
Baudrillard's case for he is determined not to play by the usual academic rules which
require him to justify his hyperbolic theses with evidence and exegesis. Challenged
to defend his theories, Baudrillard would doubtless refuse to pick up the gauntlet
and perhaps restate his conviction that it is not his task to purvey cogent theoretical
models. For his undertaking is not one of positive construction but one of cathartic
destruction, and it is this blase unconcern for the arduous labor of social transfor
mation that so exasperates his critics on the left who see in his destructive vigor a
noxious form of philosophical vandalism.

There is one way, however, in which we can redeem Baudrillard's fertile insights
and diagnostic acumen for the modernist cause. We might think of Baudrillard's
to
and
gal
nt
affro
to
be
ld
then
wou
job
His
r.
labo
tive
nega
a
as
lly
ntia
esse
vre
oeu
vanize and not to elucidate and to instruct. If this is the case then we can safely dis
count his more excessive pronouncements. Baudrillard then becomes like Soc rates,
more vexing gadfly than the herald of a totalitarian system of depthless signs, a
licensed fool calling into question our positivist faith in rational subj ectivity and
k
brea
the
tes
gera
exag
lard
dril
Bau
that
s
tend
con
ner
Kell
glas
Dou
ge.
wled
kno
le
stab
with modernity in order to give us advance warning of a society as indifferent about
es
writ
er;'
pref
"I
tics.
poli
l
iona
osit
of
opp
ine
decl
the
ut
abo
d
erne
onc
unc
is
as
it
h
trut
Kellner, "to read Baudrillard's work as a science fiction, which anticipates the future
t
wha
ut
abo
s
ning
war
y
earl
ides
prov
thus
and
es
enci
tend
ent
pres
ting
gera
exag
by
might happen if present trends continue:'66 The joke in the end might be on Bau
h
oug
alth
For
d.
wor
his
at
him
ng
taki
and
y
iron
his
sing
mis
for
ics
crit
st
lefti
's
lard
dril
opposition is not the goal of radical politics, it might transpire that Baudrillard's fu
rious negative labors are a perfectly justifiable endeavor, robbing us as they do of our
arrogant epistemological certitude. Yet this negative labor only becomes worthwhile

bet
ng
ethi
som
aise
we
upr
in,
jam
Ben
by
ted
oca
adv
ic
crit
tive
truc
des
the
like
n,
whe
ter in place of that which we demolish: "What exists he reduces to rubble, not for
ow
st
foll
mu
7
We
if'6
ugh
thro
ing
lead
way
the
of
that
for
but
ble,
rub
the
of
e
sak
the
the adherents of a postmodern break with modernity only as far as their critique
cal
phi
loso
phi
ir
the
of
shy
ht
g
fi
n
to
lear
and
s
ion
itut
inst
and
xies
odo
orth
nt
of exta
prescriptions.
Benjamin's injunction to reveal alternative subaltern tendencies ben eath the
unvarying immanence of history has never been more germane. Immanence en

uni
ed
fess
pro
s
em
syst
The
on.
icti
trad
con
es
pos
sup
pre
'
lity
tota
and
e
enc
erg
tails div
versality is belied by its systematic inability to remedy under-development and it
re
refo
the
uld
sho
We
.
nge
cha
al
itic
pol
for
g
nin
ope
an
rds
affo
t
tha
ity
ibil
fall
is this
not return to modernity in order to rest easy with a flawed and deficient epoch.
bad
the
but
gs
thin
old
d
goo
the
m
"fro
not
t
star
uld
sho
we
hat
-t
xim
ma
's
Brecht
as a
new ones"68-still holds true. Modernity should rather be rehabilitated only
to
nd
-a
nity
der
mo
to
rn
retu
st
mu
ker
thin
ical
crit
The
lf.
itse
ng
ndi
sce
tran
of
means
be
modernism-and take a single step backwards so that two strides forward might
. possible. His or her task, as Adorno once put it, is to "kindle the flame of utopia on
the smoking ruins of the pasf'69

........ ... .
.

Theodor W. Adorno, "Vienna;' Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. Rod
ney Livingstone (London: Verso, 2002), 216.

Paul Ricoeur, "Ethics and Culture: Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue;' trans. David
Pellauer, Philosophy Today 17-2/4 (1973): 165.

Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History;' in Illuminations, ed. Hannah


Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana, 1992), 248.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflectionsfrom Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jeph


cott (London: Verso, 1974), 52.

Tradition and Transcendence


5

Neil Lazarus, "Hating Tradition Properly;' New Formations 38 (1999): 13.

Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence


(Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 84 Similarly, Horkheimer and Adorno renounce not the En
lightenment per se but a particular, distorted version of it. The Enlightenment, they hope,
might become enlightened about itself. "We are;' they write, "wholly convinced-and
therein lies our petitio principii-that social freedom is inseparable from enlightened
thought:' Max Horkheimer and Theodor W Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans.
John Cumming (London: Verso, 1999), xiii.

political about it, is precisely our inability to conceive it, our incapacity to produce it as
a vision, our failure to project the Other of what is, a failure that, as with fireworks dis
solving back into the night sky, must once again leave us alone with this history:' Fredric
Jameson, "Of Islands and Trenches: Neutralization and the Production of Utopian Dis
course;' in The Ideologies of Theory: Essays, 1971-1986, vol. 2: The Syntax of History (Min
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 101.

21 Theodor W Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, eds. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, trans.
Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone, 1999), 160.

22 Theodor W Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 99-100.

Jiirgen Habermas, "Modernity-An Incomplete Project;' in Postmodernism: A Reader,


ed. Thomas Docherty (Harlow: Harvester, 1993), 102.

Jiirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and the Rational
ization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (London: Heinemann, 1984), 241.

23 Jameson, Postmodernism, 4.

"The goal is no longer to supersede an economic system having a capitalist life of its own
and a system of domination having a bureaucratic life of its own but to erect a democratic
dam against the colonizing encroachment of system imperatives on areas of the lifeworld:'
Jiirgen Habermas, "Further Reflections on the Public Sphere," trans. Thomas Burger, in
Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999),
444

25 Ibid., 14.

10 Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into
a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cam
bridge: Polity, 1989), 88.
11

Peter Dews, "Editor's Introduction;' Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jiirgen
Habermas, ed. Peter Dews (London: Verso, 1992), 25.

12 See especially Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique (Cambridge:


Polity, 1989); Christopher Norris, Whats Wrong with Postmodernism: Critical Theory
and the En s of Philosophy (London: Harvester, 1990); David Harvey, The Condition of
Postmodermty: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995);
Peter Dews, Logics ofDisintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical
Theory (London: Verso, 1987), The Limits ofDisenchantment: Essays on Contemporary Eu
ropean Phzlosophy (London: Verso, 1995); Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

13 Max Horkheimer, "Materialism and Morality;' Between Philosophy and Social Science:
Selected Early Writings, trans. G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993), 3714 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Ver
so, 1992), 51-54.
15 Ibid., 48.
16 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
121-27.
17 Jameson, Postmodernism, 307.
18 Ibid., 310.
19 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London:
Routledge, 1996), 236.
20 Jameson elsewhere seems conscious of the inevitable frustration of utopian aspirations in
an unequal SOCiety. "Utopia's deepest subject, and the source of all that is most vibrantly

24 Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible (London: Routledge, 1990), 29.


26 "Contrary to what Fred Jameson has recently argued, Adorno never lost sight of the fact
that, ever since their simultaneous emergence in the mid-19th century, modernism and
mass culture have been engaged in a compulsive pas de deux:' Andreas Huyssen, After the
Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (London: Macmillan, 1988), 24.
27 Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence: 1928-1940, ed.
Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), 130.
28 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 139.
29 Jameson, Postmodernism,

xx.

30 Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, trans. Joris De Bres (London: Verso, 1999), 505-6.
31

David Harvey, Limits to Capital (London: Verso, 1999), 431.

32 Theodor W. Adorno, "Culture and Administration;' trans. Wes Blomster, in The Culture
Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein (London: Routledge, 2000),
105
33 Terry Eagleton, "The Archaic Avant-Garde;' in Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies
in Irish Culture (London: Verso, 1995) and "Nationalism: Irony and Commitment;' Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature, eds. Terry Eagleton, Edward W Said, and Fredric
Jameson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 23-42.
34 Fredric Jameson, "Third-world Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism;' in The
Jameson Reader, eds. Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) and "On
Magic Realism in Film;' Critical Inquiry 12.2 (Winter 1986): 301-25.

35 Jameson, Postmodernism, ix.


36 Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 48.
37 Jameson, Postmodernism, 159
38 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity.
39 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton, and Philip Beitchman (New
York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 151.
40 Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena, trans. James
Benedict (London: Verso, 1993), 16.
41 Jean Baudrillard, Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews, ed. Mike Gane (London: Rout
ledge, 1993), 105

166

Robert Spencer

Tradition and Transcendence

42 Jameson, Postmodernism, 5.

61

43 Jean Baudrillard, America, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 1991), 124.
44 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 199 6
[1968] ) .
45 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, 56. For Debord, see Guy Debord, The Society of the Spec
tacle, trans. Donald Nicholson Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1995 [1967]).
46 Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, trans. Paul Patton (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1995).
47 Christopher Norris, Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War
(London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992).
48 Christopher Norris, Truth and the Ethics of Criticism (Manchester: Manchester Univer
sity Press, 1994).
49 Jean-Fran<;ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geof
frey Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992),
60.
50 Jean-Fran<;ois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich and
Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 60.
51 Christopher Norris, The Truth About Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 25.
52 "Worst of all, these ideas deprive critical thought of the one resource most needful at
present, i.e., the competence to judge between good and bad arguments, reason and
rhetoric, truth-seeking discourse and the 'postmodern' discourse of mass-induced media
simulation:' Christopher Norris, Whats Wrong, 44.

62

Georg Lukacs, "Tactics and Ethics;' in Political Writings, 1919-1929: The Question of Par
liamentarianism and Other Essays, ed. Rodney Livingstone, trans. Michael McColgan
(London: New Left Books, 1973), 5.
Jean Baudrillard, "The Mirror of Production;' in Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Cam
bridge: Polity, 1988), 98-116.

63 Terry Eagleton, "Base and Superstructure in Raymond Williams;' in Raymond Williams:


Critical Perspectives, ed. Terry Eagleton (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989),
167
64 Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann (London: J. M. Dent, 1930), 244.
65 Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Huma n Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Cambridge:
Polity, 1987), 317.
66 Douglas Kellner, "Jean Baudrillard and the Fin-de-Millennium;' in Jean Baudrillard: A
Critical Reader, ed. Douglas Kellner (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 13.
67 Walter Benjamin, " The Destructive Character;' in One- Way Street and Other Writings,
trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: Verso, 1992), 159.
68 Walter Benjamin, "Conversations with Brecht;' in Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna
Bostock (London: Verso, 1992), 121.

69 Theodor W. Adorno, "Alban Berg:' in Sound Figures, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stan
ford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 79.

53 Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1996), 167.

54 Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures ( London: Vin
tage, 1994), 63-75.

55 "For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the
training to seek the truth lying behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideol
ogy, and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us .
. . . It is the responsibility of the intellectual to speak the truth and to expose lies:' Noam
Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: The New Press, 2002
[1969]), 324-25.
56 Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 379.
57 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations (London:
Macmillan, 1991), 125.
58 Norris sees postmodernism's grandiose heralding of an "absolute break" with preced
ing rationalist paradigms as "just another (all too typical) case of self-induced cultural
myopia, of short-term localized symptoms mistaken for a long-term epochal decline,
or of thinkers absurdly willing to extrapolate from their own limited perspective-their
experience of 'theory' as a god that failed-to world-historical pronouncements about the
'postmodern condition:" Christopher Norris, Reclaiming Truth: Contribution to a Cri
tique of Cultural Relativism (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1996), 195.
59 Herbert Marcuse, "Philosophy and Critical Theory;' in Negations: Essays in Critical Theo
ry, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).
60 Walter Benjamin, "Central Park;' trans. Lloyd Spencer and Mark Harrington, New Ger
man Critique 34 (1985): 50.

Immanence and (Its) Interruption:


Critical Reconstel lations
Juan Carlos Rodriguez

In memoriam Itzolin (Tito) Garcia (1976-2003)


No estoy. No estas.
No estamos. No estuvimos nunca
aqui donde pasar
del otro lado de la muerte
tan leve parecia:'
-Jose Angel Valente, Elfulgor
Immanence: A life

. . .

? An Exercise on Critical Ferocity

Two years ago I was invited by Marta Hernandez Salvan to


collaborate in editing this issue of Polygraph dedicated to the
notions of immanence, utopia, and totality. We began with
a simple question: is immanence the organizing principle of
society? It was around this question that, with the help of the
editorial collective of Polygraph, we elaborated a set ofvarious
interrogations concerning the implications of a possible struc
turation of the global field (in its cultural-political-economic
dimensions) in terms of immanence. Instead of endorsing the
notion of immanence as a given structural fact in the consoli
dation of a unified global field of power, our interrogations
departed from the suspicion that the antagonism between
planetary domination and global emancipation seemed to
collapse in a plane of thought where political transformation
and simulational reversibility were becoming indistinguish
able.' Our main critical task was twofold, a dual performance:
to put immanence into question as a mere structuring fact
of globalization, and, at the same time, to evaluate the impli
cations of recognizing or dismissing the constitutive role of
immanence in contemporary critical theory, arts and politics.
These are the questions we included in our call for papers:
If both global capital and the multitude stand for the
universal producing an autarchy of absolute imma-

Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

170

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

nence, a relation without a relation, or an absolute totality, how can one


account for the singularities subsumed under the logic of the universal?
How can we interrupt the absolute character of immanence without fall
ing into transcendence? Do we need a transcendent move in order to reach
utopia? Is there a way out of transcendence without falling into immanence?
Is there a mode of alterity or difference that remains incommensurable to
both immanence and transcendence? We invite articles addressing the po
litical implications of imagining a time to come beyond the duality imma
nence-transcendence.
As the questions suggest, it is evident that our strategy to interrogate the present
stage of globalization intends to create a dialogue with Hardt and Negri's Empire.
The idea behind this formulations is to displace the centrality of the Empire/Mul
titude combination precisely by framing that very centrality in a different theoreti
cal terrain that would allow for the otherwise than immanence to emerge with all
its questioning force. The questions included in our call for papers attempted to
push for a thinking both beyond immanence and in response-with/in responsibil
ity-to immanence, while allowing the practice of critical theory to experience the
vertigo of not knowing whether it is still possible to think otherwise than with/in
immanence. Resituating the force of this suspense coming from the affective tuning
informing our theoretical spectrumS-integrated by Marxism, psychoanalysis, and
deconstruction-gave some of us the opportunity to relate ethically and politically
to that which we felt was missing in the critical mood celebrating the emergence of
some sort of "immanent enthusiasm" in post-Cold War globality. Can the otherwise
than immanence serve as a critical supplement to the narrations of the global in
Empire and Multitude?2 This question is an invitation to read.
For me, questioning immanence is an exercise of critical ferocity and, also, an
exercise on critical ferocity. After witnessing the consolidation of the imperial im
pulse to command the planet-most visible in the so-called wars on terrorism ex
ecuted by the United States against Afghanistan and Iraq under president Bush's
military rule-we should embark ourselves in a self-criticism in order to determine
to what degree the militarization of the globe has affected the relevance of our origi
. nal task: editing an issue on immanence, utopia and totality. Let's keep in mind that
the war against Iraq has taken place while we were editing the texts that form part
of this issue. In an effort to maintain fidelity to our critical ferocity, I would like to
ask whether the questions raised in this issue as well as the responses collected in it
can still sustain their pertinence in the contemporary critical constellations that suf
fer from Empire. Even if the questions and responses included here can eventually
come to be outdated-running the risk of failing to measure the current state of the
situation-it is the force to think immanence beyond itself what should remain as a
powerful gesture to intervene with critical ferocity in the actual global conjuncture.
Most of the arguments in this issue, while mapping the contemporary political lim
bos that do not cease to inform our theoretical constellations, show the ferocity of
the Nietzschean hammer (sometimes even hammering in spite of itself) : a critical
effort in the abyss of immanence that, even when facing the void, attempts to inter
rupt immanence in itself before interrupting itself in immanence. I would like to

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

171

thank all the contributors of this issue for their generosity when responding to our
questions. I would also like to recognize the fabulous work of all the members of
the Polygraph editorial collective: their patience and stimulating intellectual engage
ment in the editing process of this issue is a great example of the critical insistence
made by theoretical reflection in times of war.
Art and Immanence: Life does not just go on"
II

Recent reflections on the notion of immanence involve the work of two French phi10sophers: Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Luc Nancy. For Deleuze, immanence is "not a
concept that is or can be thought but rather the image of thought, the image thought
gives itself of what it means to think, to make use of thought, to find one's bearings in
thought:'3 Deleuze also conceives of immanence as a life, but a life that does not be
long to an individual, a life that cannot be claimed by a subject or attributed to a self.
According to Deleuze, immanence is both an image of thought and a life. As image,
immanence does not coincide with an object but rather it is pure movement at infi
nite speed. As a life, immanence does not belong to a subject but rather it is "a pure
stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, a
qualitative duration of consciousness:'4 If immanence is "image;' "pure movement;'
"qualitative duration;' it is very strange that, when having to exemplify his statement
"What is Immanence? A Life . . . ;' Deleuze-after having written two books on cin
ema-preferred to use a novel rather than a film for this purpose: Charles Dickens's
Our Mutual Friend. Was Deleuze evading something?5 If cinema is a technology
that exceeds "life" while doubling it in a moving and (un)timely image, then why did
Deleuze decide to avoid the risk of having to explain, from the standpoint of cinema,
the proximity of the image and a life as it is proposed in his notion of immanence?
Couldn't Deleuze justify "Immanence: A Life" departing from the mechanism of
the film camera: a technological invention that produces the illusion of life from the
artifice of shadows? It seems that between life and its cinematic illusion there is a
.
slim barrier threatening to interrupt Deleuze's notion of immanence.
For Jean-Luc Nancy the question of interrupting immanence and transcendence
involves an encounter between art and death. 6 According to Nancy:
Death, mere death removes any speculation on "immanence" and "transcen
dence:' In death, substance or act disappear. Simultaneously, however, death
forms the only passage of subsistence outside itself. Subsistence rids itself of
the envelope that maintains it subsisting (thus subsistence rids itself of that
under which it sub-sisted) and develops into ek-sistence, or into "sistence"
outside itself. Into insistence, so to speak. Either within or through death
(for death is but a slim barrier) the "sisting" insists far from any sub-sistence
or con -sistence:'7

Then, Nancy goes on to suggest that


I could say as much for what we call the "work of art:' How do we recognize
such a work? Only by the following: That faced with it, we do not stay faced,
but we meet, we strike, we are struck, we lose our envelope just as this thing,
the work, loses its own-its forms, its mannerisms [manieres J . We develop

172

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

within it as it does within us. We enter and exit. We are always in this in-be
tween [entre-deux] of it and us. Rather quickly we understand there is about
as much an "it" as there is an "us" (or "me"). There isThere is only reality that neither immanates nor transcends: that's the
obstacle-the good-obstacle or the bad-obstacle, but the chock, the chock
ing obstacle against what is neither within nor without, but an erected bar
rier: death, birth, love, spoken word [parole]. There we strike, we are struck.
We do not remain in ourselves, we do not leave ourselves. Just in between:
we get a bump, a bruise, a blood clot. Being gets out of there swollen, tumes
cent, distended. Neither fluid such as water immanent to water, nor leaping
such as a dolphin transcending waves. Rather dull, dingy and uncertain like
a Medusa between two waters. Admittedly, that Medusa terrifies the phi
losopher:'s
After reading Nancy's piece, I asked him about death, and about that slim barrier
between his notion of death and Gilles Deleuze's notion of immanence as "a life
playing with death." The following passage comes from a personal communication
I sent to him.
Do you see any relation between Gilles Deleuze's formula-"What is im
manence? A Life . . ."-in his essay "L'Immanence: Une Vie" and your sug
gestion that death is the only passage of subsistence outside itself, a passage
marked by insistence? To re-articulate my question, let me refer to Deleuze's
essay. Commenting on Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, Deleuze sug
gests that
Between his life and his death, there is a moment that is only that of a life
playing with death. The life of the individual gives way to an impersonal
and yet singular life that releases a pure event freed from the accidents
of internal and external life, that is, from the subjectivity and objectiv
ity of what happens . . . . It is a haecceity no longer of individuation but
of singularization: a life of pure immanence, neutral, beyond good and
evil . . . . The life of such individuality fades away in favor of the singular
life immanent to a man who no longer has a name, though he can be
mistaken for no other. A singular essence, a life . . . .9
What is the relation between that which Deleuze calls "a life playing with
death . . . a singular essence . . ." and what you refer to when you suggest that
"dans la mort ou a travers la mort (car la mort est une mince paroi) Ie 'sis
tant' insiste loin de toute sub-sistance ou con-sistance. La 'transcendance' y
devient 'l'immanence' meme, retour nee comme Ie doigt d'un gant"? Does
the insistence of the "sistence" coincide with the singular essence that De
leuze refers us to as "a life . . ." or is that insistence of the "sistence" something
else that cannot be reduced to "une vie . . ."?
It took me a while to formulate these questions but Nancy never offered an answer
to them. Nancy did respond though, and it seems that he approved these comments
when he encouraged both Marta and me to publish our questions, but if chang-

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

173

ing them from the interrogative to the affirmative mode. It could be argued that
Nancy's endorsement to our questions, when read in the context of the comments
referring to Deleuze, would imply the recognition that there exists some relation
ship between his idea of death interrupting immanence and Deleuze's idea that im
manence consist of "a life playing with death:' But if one looks at the last question
I made to Nancy in reference to Deleuze, one notices that it cannot be transformed
into the affirmative mode since it was not intended to affirm a correspondence be
tween two notions but involved a decision to be made: either Nancy's "insistence
of the sistence" coincides with Deleuze's pure immanence of a life or differs from
it. In other words, when Nancy's interruption of immanence through death, in the
"insistence of the sistence;' encounters Deleuze's "pure immanence" as a "life play
ing with death" in this "either . . . or" structure, it becomes impossible for anyone to
transform the statement into a declaration confirming the correspondence of the
two notions as complementary articulations of the same affirmation. Affirming the
statements coming from each side of the "either . . . or" is therefore a false choice.
We are left with no other alternative but to decide for affirming the very suspense
emerging from the confrontation between Nancy and Deleuze. Nancy's invitation
to affirm the two alternatives presented in the last question is therefore a trap. Can
this trap be read as the symptom of the work of art that, according to Arturo Leyte,
cannot but desist to represent death?
It is precisely this very suspense between Nancy and Deleuze what Arturo Leyte
problematizes when he comments: "But how, exactly, might a given artwork (paint
ing, sculpture or architecture) better reveal a thing's own finitude? Only through an
ability to reveal its 'nothingness' [su nada] : not 'emptiness; but what was described
above as 'the light of death: or what might also now be termed 'the time of death: as
opposed to that of the absolute:'l0 (Let's advance these questions: couldn't the "light
of death" and the "time of death" belong to the cinematic apparatus as it happens
in painting, sculpture, or architecture? Or, do we have to see the cinematic appara
tus through another "light" and at a different "time"?) Leyte, analyzing Van Gogh's
famous painting "Starry Night;' argues that the revelation of death in the work of
art does not correspond to its thematization but, quite the contrary, it involves "the
emergence of the singular 'other'" in the unfolding of death as disappearance:
l;Iegel's amended formulation takes death to be a necessary condition of the
very emergence of the singular "other" that, in turn, the artwork might re
veal. This does not mean that death constitutes a theme within the artwork;
rather, the formulation grants death-which is not a concept, but not even
really a fact or an act-its constitutive role in the emergence and consumma
tion of the work of art itself. We might understand this idea as the idea that
death's revelation in a work of art demonstrates this negative, unreal com
ponent by exposing the work's intrinsic finitude more than any immanent
process through which it might be supposed that death "must appear" -for
if death must appear, then it is no longer death.ll
The film 21 Grams!2 could be seen as the re-enactment of the very suspense between
Deleuze and Nancy where the thematization of death leads to its disappearance in

174

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

the work of art. Taken as a work of art, 21 Grams shows the point where the de
cision between immanence (Deleuze . . . a life . . . ) and its interruption (Nancy . . .
-death-) is suspended (Leyte's notion of the work of art as the emergence of the
singular other): decision seems to remain suspended when immanence and its in
terruption are transcoded into the power to affirm life or death in the work of art.
21 Grams narrates the story of Paul, Cristina, and Jack. Paul receives a heart
transplant whose donor is Cristina's husband, Michael, killed in a car accident by
Jack. Paul, moved by "the tyranny of the gift;' the "guilt that some transplant re
cipients feel after receiving this gift that is inherently one-sided;' decides to contact
Cristina and, in the course of their friendship, they become romantically involved.'3
In despair after the loss of her husband and two daughters, Cristina takes refuge in
Paul, but her frustration also drives her to abuse drugs and alcohol. Later, while us
ing cocaine, she transforms her frustration for a lost family into a call for justice. She
decides to kill Jack, the driver who accidentally took the lives of her husband and
daughters. Paul, who has revealed to Cristina that he holds Michael's heart, agrees
to assist her in punishing Jack. When Paul is about to kill Jack, he finds himself
unable to take Jack's life and decides to let him escape death. Later, Jack, an ex-con
vict converted to Christianity, comes back to receive the punishment he considers
deserving since he cannot deal with the feeling of guilt provoked by the traumatic
memory of watching the victims of the accident about to die. When Jack comes back
to confront the couple and demand punishment, Paul cannot deal with the guilt of
having frustrated Cristina's attempt to find justice for her family and shoots himself
in the chest.
Before analyzing the thematization of death as disappearance in the work of
art, let's analyze the roles of Paul's hearts. It is worth noticing that Paul's old heart,
once detached from his body, is shown to him after the transplant surgery. In this
scene, Paul takes in his hands the bowl of glass containing his heart and asks the
doctor: "Ohhh! Is that my heart? . . . The culprit:' The culprit, the heart that has been
removed from Paul's chest, leaving the empty space for the consummation of the
"tyranny of the gift;' becomes what Zizek has called here and elsewhere, an "organ
without a body;' a quasi-cause "that fills in the gap of corporeal causality" with a
"pure, transcendental capacity to affect" precisely by detaching itself from the materiality of the body. When the culprit is substituted by Paul's new heart (Michael's
heart, Cristina's dead husband) the "point of non-sense sustaining the flow of sense"
remains as a spectral entity that marks the change of heart in Paul's desire. The
culprit provokes in Paul the need to put an end to "the tyranny of the gift" precisely
by realizing a tyrannical act against that gift which is not the culprit, but that has
taken its place: Michael's heart. When Paul shoots himself in the chest, he is not
only punishing himself for not being able to take revenge in the name of Michael,
he is also shooting at Michael's heart, performing a false enactment of Jack's crime
that is made to coincide with the punishment Jack demanded. The culprit cannot be
punished, and it is in the absence of the culprit that punishment takes place in the
subject. Punishment takes place precisely as the re-enactment of a crime that has
not been committed by the subject but of which the subject pleads guilty, driven by
the complete non-sense of the "tyranny of the gift:' Crime and punishment become

175

indis tinguishable in the space left by the culprit. Paul suffers from the law of the
culprit since he no longer has a heart, his heart does not belong to him. After the
culprit, Paul's desire is at the mercy of his own broken heart.
In "Shattered Love;' an elaboration on transcendence and love, Nancy suggests
that
In the broken heart, desire itself is broken [ . . . J the heart does not belong to
itself, not even in the mode of a desire [ . . . J . Actually, the heart is not broken,
in the sense that it does not exist before the break. But it is the break itself
that makes the heart. The heart is not an organ, and neither is it a faculty.
It is: that I is broken and traversed by the other where its presence is most
intimate and its life most open. The beating of the heart-rhythm of the par
tition of being, syncope of the sharing of singularity-cuts across presence,
life, consciousness:" 4
As opposed to death-death is not-the heart, once broken, is. The broken heart be
comes the liberation of a cut: a cut across life. After Paul's suicide attempt, Cristina
and Jack take him to the hospital; it is here when the film presents Paul on the verge
of death. If the broken heart liberates a cut across life, it is not an abuse of reading
to point out that such a cut across life is reflected in the editing of the film: the mo
ment when Paul confronts death is divided into two scenes in the film's fragmented
narrative. Paul's heart moves in a slim barrier, a slim barrier suggested by Nancy's
various elaborations on the heart, a slim barrier between a "broken heart" whose
beats cut across life and "the heart of things . . . a unique way of not beating-which
has nothing to do with a death:" 5 This slim barrier is suggested by the film in the fol
lowing way: while it is evident that Paul's broken heart cuts across life in the visual
crosscutting of the two sequences (showing life events juxtaposed with shots of Paul
in the emergency room), in the soundtrack we hear Paul's voice, but aul's broken
heart has lost its beating. It is precisely the beeping sound of medical technology
what has substituted the beating of Paul's broken heart. The cinematic image allows
us to see the suspense of Paul's passage from heart to heart: the visual crosscutting
shows us the unheard beating of things coming from Paul's broken heart while the
soundtrack projects the silence of "the immobile heart" of things that "does not
even beat:' This occurs precisely when Paul gives voice to das Ding as it disappears:
death121 Grams.
In the first scene, alluding to this confrontation with death, the first shot presents a lamp viewed from Paul's subjective point of view in an emergency room.
Then, there is a close-up of Paul's face with a tube in his mouth, and a voice-over
corresponding to Paul's voice: "So this is death's waiting room:' It should be noticed
that there is a lack of correspondence between Paul's visual image and Paul's voice:
the film shows us that Paul's mouth is covered by a tube that impedes the emis
sion of sound, but the voice-over in the soundtrack corresponds to Paul's voice.
The autonomy of Paul's sound image from Paul's visual image allows us to confirm
that enunciation is taking place beyond any corporeal emission. The voice travels
outside of Paul's body without ever emerging from it. His voice is a virtual emission
taking place outside the subject. It invades the space of the emergency room. The

Immanence and (Its) Interruption


voice lists a set of ridiculous things while the camera films them: tubes, needles, etc.
Then the voice asks: "what am I doing in this pre-corpse club? What do I have to do
with them? I don't know when anything begins anymore or when it is going to end.
Who will be the first to lose his life, he in the coma or me?" This feeling of not know
ing when things have begun or are going to end, accentuated by the film fragmented
narrative, comes from the virtuality of a voice that, while no longer coinciding with
Paul's corporeality, cannot desist to occupy that slim barrier between life and death
where Paul is.
The virtuality of Paul's voice can be related to Mladen Dolar's arguments pre
sented in his paper on "Kafka's Voices" included in this issue: "The voice is precisely
what cannot be checked, it is ever-changing and fleeting, it is the non-universal par
excellence, that which cannot be universalized. This is why the superego, the reverse
side of the law, is always manifested by a voice:' Paul's voice marks the very suspense
where both Nancy and Deleuze seem to confront each other in the slim barrier of
the following question: Does Paul's voice correspond to a pure immanence, a life
playing with death, as in Deleuze's notion of immanence, or does it echo the pas
sage where death interrupts immanence as it throws subsistence out of itself in the
"insistence of the sistence" affirmed by Nancy? There is no answer: the singularity of
Paul's voice remains and it can only offer itself as a question exposing how the zero
point of non-universality sabotages any claims attempting to produce a response
to the question of immanence that would fill the void of the universal.16 In other
words, when I argue that Paul's voice marks the very suspense between Deleuze
and Nancy, it is not only because it is impossible to decide between immanence
("a life playing with death" ) and its interruption ("death as the insistence of the sis
tence")-as we saw before when analyzing Nancy's response to our questions-but
because Paul's voice verbalizes the very suspense reflected by Leyte in reference to
the work of art. Death-that which interrupts immanence-can only emerge in the
work of art to disappear in it as "nothingness": 21 Grams. From his bed in the emer
gency room, Paul goes on to ask: "How many lives do we live? How many times do
we die? They say we all loose twenty-one grams at the exact moment of our death.
Everyone. And how much fits into twenty-one grams? How much is lost? When
do we loose twenty-one grams? How much goes with them? How much is gained?
How much is gained? Twenty-one grams, the weight of a stack of five nickels . . . a
chocolate bar. How much the twenty-one grams weight?" Again, there is no answer;
only Paul's voice remains.
In this scene, Paul's voice crosses through the film's fragmented narrative that, up
to this point, has presented the thematization of death as a series of tragic situations
interrupting the everyday lives of the characters. As Arturo Leyte has commented,
the serial interruptions of the image in the works of art that began to emerge in the
nineteenth century, correspond to the representation of time as infinite and absolute
in German Idealism. In the serial fragmentation of the narrative of 21 Grams, the
infinity of time is made to coincide with the infinity of life.
As a cinematic work of art, 21 Grams plays precisely with the recognition that
human finitude is marked by death and death interrupts the course of life, but the
serial representation of the course of life in the infinity of time cannot but desist to

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

177

represent death. This is why the last scene of the film re-stages Paul's voice through
the film's fragmented narrative in an ironic self-critique that questions the mean
ing of (the) 21 Grams. As it thematizes death, Paul's voice appears in the film as an
internal diegetic sound that put into question the meaning of the twenty-one grams,
the measure corresponding to the amount of weight one looses when one dies, as if
denouncing the incapacity of this measure-unit to represent death. However, when
the voice questions the meaning of the twenty-one grams and its incapacity to rep
resent death, one should observe that a non-diegetic element, the title of the film ( 21
Grams) has invaded Paul's voice. What the voice ends up questioning is the capacity
of the film itself to represent death. Death never appears in the film; 21 Grams corre
sponds to the non-sense of attempting to consolidate a thematized representation of
death, but the voice emerges as that sensible mark guarding the margin where death
is allowed to disappear in the work of art in order to haunt its own finitude.
The expression 21 Grams performs two tasks. Taken as a non-diegetic element, it
serves as the title of the film, a serial narration of the story of a man that becomes "a
life playing with death" (Deleuze's immanence?). Taken as a diegetic element, it re
fers to a piece of information given in the film by a voice playing with its own death:
"They say we all loose twenty-one grams at the exact moment of our death" (Nancy's
insistence of the sistence, immanence interrupted?). However, what about death in
itself, those "twenty-one grams" "we all loose" "at the exact moment of our death"?
Let me emphasize this point: death as such never appears in the film but rather
death is thematized as it disappears in the screen. 21 Grams becomes a sound image.
Before I asked if Paul's voice (the locus of enunciation) corresponded to immanence
or to its interruption, now I would like to ask: is "21 Grams" (Paul's big statement) "a
life playing with death" (Deleuze's immanence), or does it express "the insistence of
the sistence" (Nancy's interruption of immanence by death) ? As it is clear from the
analYSis of 21 Grams, in the art of cinema, "life does not just go on:'
.
As we observed previously when following Leyte's argument, the serial fragmen
tation of life corresponding to the infinity of time governs the film and becomes its
ideological fantasy. This ideological fantasy, the infinity of life in serialized time,
presented in the film's fragmented narrative coincides with the ideological fantasy of
some of the characters in the story. In various segments of the film, when different
characters have to confront death, we hear a common answer coming from differ
ent voices: "life goes on:' The continuation of life in the infinity of time-linking
in a common ideological fantasy the discourse of different characters to the film's
strategy of fragmented narration-recalls one of the passages in Empire when Hardt
and Negri defend the infinity of desire and life against the restrictions of the big
government. Hardt and Negri suggest that
In imperial postmodernity big government has become the merely despotic
means of domination and the totalitarian production of subjectivity. [ . . . J
We, on the contrary, struggle because desire has no limit (since the desire to
exist and the desire to produce are one and the same thing) and because life
can be continuously, freely, and equally enjoyed and reproduced.l?
But, contrary to Empire, in 21 Grams, it is precisely the despotism of the continua-

178

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

tion of life in the infinity of time what provokes Cristina's rage in the funeral of her
husband and two daughters. When Cristina's father is trying to comfort her during
the funeral, he recalls his sufferings after the death of Cristina's mother. Then, the
father provides Cristina with a dose of the ideological pharmakos of the filill'. "I'e
lle
.
goes on." A funous daughter expresses that she could not reconcile the death of he
mother with her father's attitude towards it and then she responds: "That's a lie, lif
does not just go on:'
When 21 Grams is put into question by Paul's voice or when Cristina states that
"lif does not j ust g n:' their voices also open the space for the possibility of an
. as It IS expressed by Alenka ZupanCic in her essay on comedy and
ethiCs of unbehef
love. ZupanCic suggests that

n elief as n eth cal attitde consists in confronting belief not simply in

ItS Illusory dImensIOn, but In the very real of this illusion. This means that
unbelief does not so much expose the nonsense of the belief as it exposes the
Rea or the a;rial force of nonsense itself . . . The act of saying "That's it,
that s the ThIng has the effect of opening a certain entre-deux, thus becom
ing the space in which the real of the Thing unfurls between two "ridiculous
ojects" that are supposed to incarnate it. Let us be more precise: to "move
dIre;I t te Thing" does not mean to show or exhibit the Thing directly.
,
!he tnck IS that we never see the Thing (not even in the picture, since it
IS merely a picture of the actor); we only see two semblances (the actor and
.
.
hIS piCture). We thus see te difference between the object and the Thing
.
.
Without ever seeIng the ThIng. Or, to put it the other way around: what we
are sh wn are just two semblances, and yet, what we see is nothing less that
.
the ThIng Itself, becoming visible in the minimal difference between the two
semblances. This is not to say that, through the "minimal difference" (or
throu.gh that gap that it opens up), we get a glimpse of the mysterious Thing
that hs somewhe:e beyond representation - it is, rather, that the Thing is
conceived. a notIng other than the very gap of/within the representation.
The Real IS Identified here with the gap that divides the appearance itself
...
))18

After Paul's voice mentions that 21 Grams corresponds to the weight one looses
. he goes on to compare it to a series of ridiculous objects weighing
when one dIes,
tenty-one grams, among them a stack of five nickels and a chocolate bar. Although
thls film is far from the genre of comedy, 21 Grams, at least in the final scene, shares
.Ith comedy a acanian convention that cuts across various film genres: sublima
,:
.
tion-a set of ndiCulous
objects are elevated to the level of the Thing. Failing to
mark the passage from life to death, 21 Grams becomes the ridiculization of such a
passage in Paul's voice. The film itself is a ridiculous object that cannot but desist to
represent death, as s ack o five nickels or a chocolate bar would do. In this way, 21
Grams marks the mInimal difference between various ridiculous objects (including
the fil n:) standing as appearances that cannot but desist to represent death and at the
s me tIme reveals the en!r:-deux that becomes the very gap of/within representa
.
tion. If we transfer the mInimal dIfference
we encounter in the analysis of 21 Grams

to the terrain of theory, it becomes clear what our analysis suggests: that, at least
from a reflection on art, it is almost impossible to affirm or negate the consistency
of immanence or its interruption as theoretical objects, there is a fracture in theo
retical representation. This fracture is the Real of theoretical production. Although
this fracture in theoretical representation expresses itself in the slim barrier between
life and death, a form of striving that easily transcodes the suspense between imma
nence and its interruption as the Real of theoretical production, one should insist
that the Real is the very fracture where both immanence and its interruption persist
in suspense, even before any notion of life or death (or their suspense) present itself
as fictional representation for the sublimated reproduction of the theoretical.
It seems that the question of immanence and its interruption is captured: the
sublimation of theoretical reflection to the horizon of life and death is the screen/
name of this capture. Cinema, screening the sublimation of immanence and its in
terruption to the simulation of the living/mortal being, shows the common ma
trix where Deleuze's, Nancy's, and Leyte's reflections are captured. Our future task
consists in mobilizing the question of immanence and its interruption beyond the
point of sublimation-at the expense of loosing the friendship of three adorable
Slovenians (Zizek, Dolar, Zupancic)-: we have to risk life and death as objects of
thought. But what happens when it becomes impossible to disengage the Real, this
very fracture in theoretical production, from that slim barrier that crosses between
life and death as it haunts our theoretical imagination?
Break:
Infrapolitical Use of History and Im m anent
Beyond Post-Political Citizenship

Al
,
ue
iss
is
th
in
ed
lud
inc
:'
on
cti
fle
Re
ial
ter
ma
Im
d
an
ics
lit
po
fra
In hi s essay "In

mo
o
tw
to
g
din
on
sp
rre
co
y
tor
his
of
es
us
o
tw
een
tw
be
es
berto Moreiras distinguish
l
ica
ret
eo
th
a
In
y.
tor
his
of
e
us
al
tic
oli
rap
inf
an
d
an
l
ica
lit
po
bio
a
ments of nihilism:
s
rk
wo
e
th
n
ee
tw
e
be
nc
lue
nf
co
in
rta
ce
"a
of
g
din
fol
un
e
th
trajectory that involves
l.
ica
lit
po
bio
e
th
on
es
rat
bo
ela
as
eir
or
M
'
er;
gg
ide
He
tin
ar
M
d
an
lt
of Michel Foucau
re
mo
d,
An
n.
tio
isi
qu
In
ish
an
Sp
e
th
to
on
ati
rel
in
ty
gn
rei
ve
specificity of imperial so
s
wa
n
tio
isi
qu
In
e
th
at
th
nt
me
ica
ed
pr
a's
Le
es
arl
Ch
y
precisely, in the context of Henr
as,
eir
or
M
to
ing
rd
co
Ac
:'
elf
its
te
Sta
e
th
to
r
rio
pe
su
te
"a power within the Sta
d
an
e
ur
pt
ca
of
r
we
po
e
th
as
d
oo
rst
de
un
r,
we
po
l
ica
that power is biopolit
a
im
an
l
ica
lit
po
of
r
we
po
e
th
is,
at
th
l,
ro
nt
co
l
ica
lit
po
to
e
lif
subjection of
to
r
we
po
e
Th
e.
ipl
inc
pr
ty
gn
rei
ve
so
e
th
to
e
lif
of
on
cti
tion of life, the subje
r
rio
pe
su
te
sta
e
th
in
th
wi
r
we
po
e
th
se
ca
ery
ev
in
is
ty
gn
rei
ve
so
to
subject life
ere
th
ich
wh
ut
tho
wi
te
sta
e
th
to
t
en
lem
pp
su
or
ss
ce
ex
an
to the state itselfwould be no state.
es
go
ife
("l
s
ko
ma
ar
ph
al
gic
olo
ide
y's
dd
da
nts
ro
nf
co
s,
When Cristina, in 21 Gram
t
jus
ad
all
sm
"a
s
rm
rfo
pe
on"
go
t
jus
t
no
es
do
e
Lif
.
lie
a
t's
ha
"T
on"), her proteste
th
of
ts
en
gm
fra
ial
ser
e
th
es
tur
su
t
tha
y
tas
fan
al
on
ati
rel
e
ment" that unbinds th
y
tor
his
of
e
us
l
ica
lit
po
bio
a
of
e
vic
ser
e
th
in
rs
cte
ara
ch
film and the discourse of the

un
on"
go
t
jus
t
no
es
do
e
Lif
.
lie
a
t's
ha
"T
e.
tim
of
y
nit
infi
the
in
that captures life
s
rm
rfo
pe
e
rag
's
ina
ist
Cr
elf.
its
film
e
th
in
th
wi
m
fro
film
e
th
of
masks the ideology

180

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

protest as critical agency when it interrupts the illusion that the film commodity
tries to sell: "life goes on:' (One could even suggest that here is "a power within
commodity superior to the commodity form" that can be related to president Bush's
campaign to continue doing "business as usual") . This moment corresponding to
the interruption of the film's ideological fantasy from within itself recalls Moreiras's
infrapolitical use of history which, following Eric Santner, he has also related to the
praxis of exodus. Moreiras suggests that
the characteristic procedure of the second use is the interruption of the prin
ciple of sovereignty, the unworking of the biopolitical, the de-production of
the use of history. This is still a messianic nihilism or a nihilistic messianism.
This "overturning" of the first use, the "redemption" that Benjamin promises
as precisely a redemption regarding the infinite biopoliticization of life, is
still a use, even if a useless use, and it is still therefore under the gaze of the
political-but in a very especial form, that is, in an infrapolitical form.
I would like to read Moreiras's notion of the "infrapolitical use of history" in rela
tion to Bosteels's insistence that Badiou's notion of truth-procedure, conceived of as
"immanent break;' can only occur when an intervention by a situated subject takes
place.'9 Following Moreiras, it is evident that the site of politics where the subject of
immaterial labor dwells today corresponds to the field of forces where the infinite
biopoliticization of life takes (its) place. In order for the subject of immaterial labor
to emerge in a truth procedure that would allow him or her to interrupt the simula
crum of biopolitics as principle of sovereignty, it is not enough to declare his or her
fidelity to the immanence of life or the transcendence of death. Following Badiou,
Bosteels suggests that "a political truth arises neither by purely intuiting the vital
immanence of the multitude behind the oppressive machinery of power, nor by
merely recognizing the structurl fact of antagonism as the hard kernel of the real
in the midst of everyday reality. ' Neither the immanence of pure life nor the tran
scendence of the death drive can account for the possibility of real change in a given
situation:'20 If we transfer Bosteels's insight to Moreiras's reflection, it is possible to
suggest that the subject of immaterial labor has to irrupt in the threshold where the
void of the event that corresponds to politics refuses to be named life or death.
Back in 1998, I was shooting a video documentary about the history of the anti
Navy movement in Vieques, a small island in the eastern part of Puerto Rico with
a population of 9,000 residents that served as a weapons testing range. At a public
hearing of the Department of Natural Resources (an agency of the commonwealth
government of Puerto Rico) I was videotaping, Carlos Zenon, one of the leaders of
the 1970'S fishermen movement against the presence of the Navy in Vieques, made
an unexpected connection that surprised many of us simply because it didn't sur
prise any of us. He suggested that the Navy's control of the 75% of the land of Vi
eques made him feel-and lead him to think-that he was living in a concentration
camp. It could have passed as an excessive and dramatic reference to the Nazi ho
locaust made by a subject denouncing his place in history, and this is precisely the
way it should be read. Zenon's comment should be read as the theater of the subject,
an abyssal locus that allows for the recognition of the relational fantasy as it binds

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

11$1

the history of modern politics from Nazism to US. democracy: the passage from
biopolitics to thanatopolitics, from the administration of life to the administration
of death.21 When Zenon said, "no debemos olvidar que . . . vivimos en un campo
de concentraci6n" ("we cannot forget . . . that we live in a concentration camp") the
experience of the concentration camp was reclaimed by a subject who inscribed
himself within the perimeters of the state of exception. Zenon, who was evicted
from his "home/land" by the US. Navy at the age of four, made a link with the past
when referring to the concentration camp: the construction of the US. military fa
cilities that justified the expropriation of thousands of Viequenses was motivated
by the Nazi's threat. But Zenon's intervention also made a link with the present
military conjuncture to which he was exposed: the subject recognizes that he can be
one of the "random" victims of a planned genocide motivated by the Navy's will to
occupy the island of Vieques entirely in order to facilitate the destructive operation
of training with live explosives without any concern for environmental or health
regulations. There is also another phrasing made by Radames Tirado, former mayor
of Vieques (1976-1980), that confirms the anxiety of the subject when having to rec
ognize that he or she is exposed to genocide: "We are a species in danger of extinc
tion. We, the people of Vieques, are in danger of extinction. And no one heard US:'22
But, in contrast to Tirado's ecological trope, when Zenon insisted on reclaiming the
trope of the camp to describe his "living conditions" in Vieques, one has to realize
the camp was not just a trope. Rather, Zenon touched on the very core of the rela
tional fantasy that, according to Giorgio Agamben, constitute the nomos of modern
politics: the experience of the camp.23
In his essay "What is a camp?" Agamben suggests that
The state of exception, which used to be essentially a temporary suspension
of the order, becomes now a new and stable spatial arrangement inhabited
by that naked life that increasingly cannot be described into the order. The
increasingly widening of the gap between birth (naked life) and nation state
is the new fact of the politics of our time and what we are calling "camp" is.
this disparity. To an order without location (that is, the state of exception
during which the law is suspended) correspond a location without order
(that is, the camp as permanent space of exception). The political system no
longer orders forms oflife and juridical norms in a determinate space; rather
it contains within itself a dislocating location that exceeds it and in which
virtually every form of life and every norm can be captured. The camp in
tended as a dislocating location is the hidden matrix of the politics in which
we still live, and we must recognize it in all its metamorphoses. The camp is
the fourth, an inseparable element that has been added to and has broken up
the old trinity of nation, state and territory.24
Here it is important to point out the various consequences of the role of Puerto
Rico in global military history, especially as it relates to the notions of the camp
and citizenship. Puerto Rico was taken along with the Philippines by the United
States as spoils of war in 1898, after the United States defeated Spain in the Span
ish American War. As a Spanish colony, Puerto Rico served as a strategic military

182

Immanence and (Its) interruption

zone for the expansion of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. When the United
States occupied the island in 1898, Puerto Rico was again conceived as a strategic
military zone for the expansion of the United States' rule over the Americas. When
American citizenship was granted to all Puerto Ricans in 1917 by the Jones Law, this
political concession was motivated by the threat of the German submarine force in
the Caribbean, and the citizenship was conceived by the U.S. government as a way
to build a sense of loyalty in the residents of Puerto Rico.25 The American citizen
ship given to Puerto Ricans depended precisely on the military role of Puerto Rico
in global geopolitics, a territory whose political status has been pushed to the limbo
of sovereignty for more than a century. It is in its military role as dislocating location
for citizenship that Puerto Rico, the last colonial enclave of the Americas, encoun
ters the camp: it materializes the old trinity of nation, state, and territory as it breaks
down in the margin of history.
The American colonial rule over Puerto Rico belongs to the genealogy of the
camp.26 During World War II, the United States intensified its military presence
in Puerto Rico, creating a complex training facility that covered the municipality
of Ceiba and the islands of Vieques and Culebra. In an attempt to contain the ef
forts of the nationalist movement to decolonize Puerto Rico, the United States sup
ported a strong plan for the modernization and industrialization of Puerto Rico that
excluded Vieques and Culebra. The industrialization of Puerto Rico depended on
transferring to Vieques and Culebra the impact of the military exercises that justi
fied the strategic importance of the archipelago for the United States. This genealogy
suggests that the disparity of citizenship and intensified militarism that lead to the
interruption of the principle of sovereignty (a perverse version of "a power within
the state superior to the state itself;' colonialism's turning into camp in the service of
the infinite biopoliticization of subjugated life) has a name: Puerto Rico, a colony in
the postcolonial world where the old trinity of nation, state, and territory is simply
impossible to formulate or to make intelligible in a project of liberation. However,
the American citizens living in Puerto Rico didn't suffer from the effects of such a
disparity; they were suffered by those whose dislocated location made them live on
the verge of permanent danger. "The real risk of living on a military target range"27
was suffered by Viequenses-and Culebrenses until the navy closed its training fa
cilities in Culebra in 1975-alone, while the residents of the main island of Puerto
Rico benefited economically from the supposed strategic and military importance
of the region. Puerto Ricans in the main island benefited from a fundamental geo
political role whose damaging effects did not affect them. Puerto Rico, the industri
alized island, the showcase for democracy and modernization in the periphery sup
ported by the United States, provided the relational fantasy its illusion, the ground
for a post-political citizenship (i.e., citizenship emptied out of political horizons)
as Ken Surin has discussed it in his paper for this issue.2 8 In contrast, Vieques had
no option but to materialize the relational fantasy as formulated by Agamben: "The
camp is the paradigm itself of political space at the point in which politics becomes
biopolitics and homo sacer becomes indistinguishable from the citizen:'29
The recognition of the relational fantasy made by Zenon in 1998 as it binds the
inscription of Vieques in the history of American global militarism is just the first

step towards an infrapolitical use of history. The vision of this community leader is
consistent with Agamben's analysis: "the camp is the new hidden regulator of the
inscription of life in order-or rather it is the sign of the system's inability to func
tion without transforming itself into a lethal machine:'30 If the state of exception has
become today's principle of sovereignty allowing the infinite biopoliticization oflife
to turn into thanatopolitics, what happens when the state of exception is subverted
by a subjective intervention that consists in putting in practice an infrapolitical use
of history? Wouldn't the recognition of living in a concentration camp had prepared
the way for what would happen in Vieques a year later, when the events following
the death of David Sanes (killed by a Navy missile that missed its target) made pos
sible the establishment of what have been known as the civil disobedience camps?
Are the civil disobedience camps established in the Navy's target range of Vieques
from April 21, 1999 to May 4, 2000 (camps that made possible the interruption of
all military and bombing training on this island) just another version of Agamben's
camp or an unexpected metamorphosis of it?
Here it would be useful to comment on Katherine McCaffrey's reading of the
experience of the civil disobedience camps in her book Military Power and Popular
Protest: The us. Navy in Vieques. As the title ("David Sanes Rodriguez: Vieques's
Martyr") of one of the sections of her book suggests, McCaffrey's reading of the civil
disobedience camps focuses on the impact of the fetish of the dead victimY This is
how McCaffrey narrates the memorial of David Sanes and the establishment of the
first civil disobedience camps:
Several days later, hundreds attended Sanes's funeral mass in the Monte
Santo Catholic Church in Vieques. Following the ceremony, the Committee
to Rescue and Develop Vieques organized a group of fishermen, anti-Navy
activists, and members of the Sanes family to enter military lands and erect
a twelve-foot high white cross in honor of David Sanes. It was supposed to
be a religious ceremony. Sanes's family wanted no part of politicizing his
death . . . . When the group arrived at the hill in the center of the impact zone,
events took an unexpected course. The contingent staked its cross, according
to plan, and christened the spot Monte David, in memory ofSanes. But then
a member of the group, Alberto de Jesus (Tito Kayak), a self-proclaimed en
vironmental "warrior" from Vega Baja, known throughout Puerto Rico for
his high-profile acts of civil disobedience, stole the spotlight.
De Jesus gave an impassioned speech against the navy and vowed to re
main, to personally block the resumption of military maneuvers. Members
of the Sanes family who were ambivalent about confronting the Navy were
upset about politicizing the memorial. Committee members, who for years
had painstakingly organized the military presence, were indignant that De
Jesus, an outsider, was imposing his individual agenda on the group. The
contingent left de Jesus on the target range, where he remained alone over
night, while anti -Navy activists struggled over how to proceed. The next
morning, Eleida Encarnacion de Zenon, the wife of fisherman Carlos Ze
non, called Julia Ramos, a member of the Committee, and argued that de
Jesus could not be left alone and that he deserved support. The Zenon sons

184

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

joined de Jesus on the target range, bringing food, water and supplies and
eventually founding an encampment. More followed.
For over a year activists positioned themselves as human shields on the
bombing range, bringing military maneuvers to a halt. To get there, protes
tors scaled fences or shuttled into the range by fishing boat. Over a dozen
encampments sprang up on the target zone. Thousand of supporters from
Vieques, Puerto Rico and the United States visited the campsites to express
their solidarity.
. . . David Sanes's death opened a new chapter in a decades-long story
of conflict between the U.S. Navy and the residents of Vieques Island. The
Committee to Rescue and Develop Vieques has laid a foundation for a
movement to evict the Navy over the course of six years of organizing and
coalition building. During the six years that the Committee denounced the
Navy as a persistent threat to safety and health, it created the context for un
derstanding the death of David Sanes. The Committee developed an organi
zational structure and links to a broader network of supporters that would
prove vital to sustaining more spontaneous and creative forms of protest.
The Committee's work made possible the much broader mobilization that
grew from de Jesus's individual act of defiance:'32

quotes this line approvingly in his Theory of the Subject: "The subject stands
in internal exclusion to the object:' For Badiou, however, no truth actually
comes out of this structural fact without also involving a symptomatic tor
sion of the opening situation from the point of view of its unnamable excess.
Whether this process is described in terms of destruction and purification
or, more recently, in terms of subtraction and disqualification, the point re
mains that the logic of the constitutive outside in and of itself remains an
empty and purely structural scheme without the supplementary effort of a
forced return to the initial situation. "It is a process of torsion, whereby a
force reapplies itself to that from which it emerges by way of conflict;' Ba
diou wrote in Theory of the Subject: "All truth is new, even though its spiral
also means repetition. What puts the innovative break into the circular in
flection? A certain coefficient of torsion. Therein lies the subjective essence
of what is true: that it is distorted:'35
Later, he adds:
If we take this point of view a step further, even Badiou's later philosophy
as systematized in Being and Event begins to revolve around two key con
cepts-the symptomatic site of an event and the forcing or torsion of truth
which his critics tend to ignore but which in fact sum up his contribution
to a forgotten tradition of the materialist dialectic. In ontology, the event
is defined, not just in terms of a pure self-belonging cut off from the situa
tion, but as an event for a given situation as determined by its symptomatic
. site: "There is an event only in a situation that presents at least one site. The
event is tied, in its very definition, to the place or point that concentrates the
historicity of the situation:' The site of an event is symptomatic of the situa
tion in its totality for the same reasons that in the earlier days explained the
qualitative accumulation of contradictions into an antagonistic node. Except
that today, after the obscure sequence from the late sixties to the mid-seven
ties, such antagonism can no longer be read off directly from a sociological
analysis of the structure, rather it is the result of a subject's intervention and
fidelity to the events of politics themselves.3 6

This is how anthropology reads the events of the civil disobedience camps: loosing
the event of politics in favor of constructing the simulacrum of solidarity. The death
of the native animates the mobilization of the outsiders (the transcendence of death
and the vital flow of immanence: complicity in action). It is true that the people
that constructed the first camps of civil disobedience in the Vieques bombing field
might have identified themselves with David Sanes, even to the point of experienc
ing politics as a time and a space of mourning.33 But one should keep in mind that
the political event should not be confused with an act of identification or solidarity
with a victim; it always exceeds the operation of identification and solidarity.34 If an
event has taken place at all in Vieques, its political edge cannot be constituted on
the basis of producing an operation of identification with the victim. The symbolic
manipulation of the dead victim, the political speculation that profits from the victimism of the dead, is not an element of politics at all; it is rather the capture and
pacification of the political by the regime of ethical calculation. The political event
always exceeds ethical calculation and irrupts in the void of the incalculable.
Again, following Badiou, Bosteels invites us
,

to think of the truth of an event as an immanent excess from the point of view
of the initial situation: "It is thus an immanent break. 'Immanent' because a
truth proceeds in the situation, and nowhere else-there is no heaven of
truths. 'Break' because what enables the truth-process-the event-meant
nothing according to the prevailing language and established knowledge of
the situation:' Badiou thus agrees with those contemporary Lacanians who
affirm the structural necessity of an exclusion inherent in the formation of
any subject-precisely the kind of "outside within" rejected in the Spinozism
of Deleuze or Hardt-Negri. As Lacan had written in his Bcrits, and Badiou

185

As suggested by Bosteels when reading Badiou, it is only through the intervention


of the subject that has been seized by a truth that an immanent break can occur
in order to unleash the force of the event. When Alberto de Jesus, Tito Kayak, "a
self-proclaimed environmental 'warrior' from Vega Baja;' decided to remain in the
bombing field "to personally block the resumption of military maneuvers;' he was
not performing "an individual act of defiance;' as McCaffrey suggests. Rather, he
was subverting the nomos of modern politics by forcing a new notion of it, and,
probably, without knowing it: a new camp, a "Civil Disobedience Camp:' The "Civil
Disobedience Camps" in Vieques name a torsion of truth forced by a situated sub
ject: the camp is forced to become the site where the interruption of the state of
exception takes place without juridical remainder; here, the suspension of the law
is interrupted by the outlaw,37 the one who, according to the codes of anthropology,
only "stole the spotlight:'38

186

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

Although I have to recognize that McCaffrey's rigorous work is probably one


of the most lucid accounts of the anti-Navy struggle in Vieques, it seems that the
ethnic staging of the conflict plays a central role in obscuring the analysis of the
political sequence that takes place in Vieques and the truth procedure that belongs
to it. McCaffrey's reading obscures the truth -procedure of the event by modeling the
civil disobedience camps on a cultural fetish: the role of the "casita;' a wooden con
struction very common in Puerto Rican rural imagination, that served as a symbol
of national identity to the Nuyorican diaspora during the 1970S urban struggle for
recognition. McCaffrey insists that the "casita" should be read as an affirmation of
Puerto Rican culture: "the casita . . . is a particularly Puerto Rican form of protesf'39
McCaffrey's insistence on both the fetish of the victim and the fetish of national
culture when reading the civil disobedience camps in Vieques is misleading. Doesn't
the event of the civil disobedience camps in Vieques name an excess of the law, a
void in a colonial situation that is both beyond the state of exception as it becomes
the ground for a thanatopolitical enterprise and beyond national culture as it be
comes a formula for liberation? It is precisely in Vieques's civil disobedience camps
that the post-political experience of American citizenship in Puerto Rico is for the
first time interrupted.
I am tempted to propose that the interruption of post-political citizenship tak
ing place in the civil disobedience camps in Vieques is consistent with Surin's politi
cal and theoretical orientation:
Very briefly, in a time when citizenship can increasingly be bought and sold,
and when the forms of sovereignty are becoming variable, and the state itself
is best conceptualized as an assemblage of projects, no interesting problems,
I was tempted to say no interesting philosophical problems, are posed by
these modulations of the post-political. But the post-political is precisely the
form of the political today, and so more important, much more important,
than the task of defining and describing post-political citizenship is the one
which asks of the body politic how if at all it is going to take politics beyond
the lineaments of this post-political.40
"Who" established the civil disobedience camps? What formes) of life or (non-)
subject inhabits the site where the interruption of the state of exception takes place
without juridical remainder? Is the figure of the human shield a political figure at all,
or does it reterritorialize the place of the victim in the context of poliical protest?
Is the human shield a human or post-human figure? Is it a figure of thought at all?
Isn't the human shield the counterpart of the refugee in the present stage of global
militarization? It is clear that the civil disobedience camps in Vieques involved the
intervention of a subject situated in an infrapolitical experience of history, a kind
of "who" that cannot but interrupt the infinite biopoliticization of life (and its turn
into thanatopolitics) by incarnating the potentiality of immaterial labor as radical
powerlessness. Pushed to the extreme, this experience of immaterial labor--this
"Building, Dwelling, Thinking"41 on the verge of chemical disaster--as it unfolds
in a bombing field that has been transformed into a new camp, neither express the
"vital immanence of the multitude" nor the death drive of the militant suicide: it

::

'" '

'. ,
-"',

187

only points to the radical powerlessness of dwelling without a name in the site of
the event.
Talking about powerlessness, I used to be the target of a not-so-funny joke ev
ery time I shared with friends some of my personal experiences in the Vieques's
"Civil Disobedience Camps": "Hey dude, you were not a human shield, you were
at the Vieques Beach experiencing a radical version of tourism:' One would have
to ask: up to what point does an economic torsion of truth (if there is such thing as
an economic torsion of truth) belong to the truth-procedure that opens the event
of politics? If tourism is precisely the form of political solidarity today, up to what
point does tourism belong to the torsion of truth that occurs in a subjective inter
vention as it irrupts in the middle of a truth procedure, especially when the political
sequence emerges elsewhere, abroad? Tourism . . . I would prefer not to . . . . Instead, I
am strongly oriented to think that the fidelity to a political event is always exposed
to the danger of trivializing itself in the simulacrum of the market effects. This is
why the fidelity to a political event has to constitute itself as the persistent refusal
to any form of capture. However, it is also here, in the simulacrum of the market
effects of Academia, that the question of immanence and its interruption runs the
risk of getting stuck on the threshold where the striving between life and death takes
politics as its name in order to fill the void of our current situation. Running the risk
of interrupting the vital flow of immanence before abandoning themselves to the
transcendence of the death drive seems to be the challenge of the human shields.
However, how far are the human shields from the tourists? How far are the tourists
(on the side of political solidarity) from the fantasy of incarnating the place of the
refugees? At least now, let politics name the void: perhaps . . .

...... ... ...


.

Bosteels's reading of Empire confirms and elaborates on this suspicion. See his "Logics of
Antagonism: In the Margins of Alain Badiou's 'The Flux and the Party'" in this issue. See
also Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2000).

Apart from Empire, see also Hardt and Negri's Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age
of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004).

See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 37.

Gilles Deleuze, "Immanence: A Life . . ." in Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, (New York:
Zone Books, 2001), 25.

This question has been formulated by Zizek when discussing Deleuze's relation with
Guattari as a form of resistance assumed by this thinker when having to face the impasse
between his two logics of thought. See ZiZek's "The Becoming-Oedipal of Gilles Deleuze"
in this issue. See also his Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (New
York: Routledge, 2004).

According to Nancy, his contribution to this issue, "Imm/Trans;' is a new elaboration


on the notions of immanence and transcendence that differs from a previous elabora
tion made by him under the label of "transimmanence:' I won't elaborate on this matter,
although it could be great a contribution in future interventions to examine this turn. For
those interested in Nancy's notion of "transimmanence;' see his The Sense of the World,

188

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

25 This reading is consistent with Ramon Grosfoguel's position: "The United States has
made political and economic concessions to working classes in Puerto Rico (which have
rarely been made to any other colonial or postcolonial people) primarily because of the
military and symbolic strategic importance of the island:' See Grosfoguel's "The Divorce
of Nationalist Discourse from the Puerto Rican People: A Sociohistorical Perspective;'
in Puerto Rican Jam: Essays on Culture and Politics, ed. Frances Negron-Muntaner and
Ramon Grosfoguel (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 58. For a more
detailed trajectory of the military conjuncture that motivated the United States to con
cede American citizenship to Puerto Ricans during the First World War, see Maria Eu
genia Estades Font, La presencia militar de Estados Unidos en Puerto Rico 1898-1918 . In
tereses estrategicos y dominaci6n colonial (San Juan: Ediciones Huracan, 1988), especially
chapter 6 of this book, "Guerra y reforma colonial: Puerto Rico en 191i' pages 165-215.

trans. Jeffrey Librett (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).


7

Jean-Luc Nancy, "Imm/Trans;' in this issue.

Ibid.

Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence, 28.

10 See "Leaving Immanence: Art from Death" in this issue.


11

Ibid.

12 Dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Iflarritu, 2003.


13 "Finally, a market could help overcome what has been referred to as the 'tyranny of the
gift: This is guilt that some transplant recipients feel after receiving this gift that is in
herently one-sided:' This passage, in which the therapy prescribed to patients receiving
transplanted organs to overcome the "tyranny of the gift" gets a not so innocent name
"market"-was found in S. Gregory Boyd, "Considering a Market in Human Organs;'
North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology, 4.2 (Spring 2003).

,,

, . ,'
,

14 Jean-Luc Nancy, "Shattered Love;' in The Inoperative Community, ed. and trans. Peter
Connor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 99.
15 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes et al. (Stanford: Stanford Uni
versity Press, 1993), 167.

,,i
'5;>

I,k:,

, 'C'

16 "So the voice is structurally in the same position as sovereignty, which means that it can
put into question the validity of the law: the voice stands at the point of exception, the
internal exception which threatens to become the rule, where it suddenly displays its
profound complicity with the bare life. The emergency is the emergence of the voice in
the commanding position, its concealed existence suddenly becomes overwhelming and
devastating. The signifier in the form of the senseless letter which, despite its meaningless
nature, is still a letter, that is, universally disponible and verifiable, a zero point of univer
sality. This is not the path that history has taken in the past century: it treated the excep
tion not as a signifier to be included, but as a voice which, in its senseless nature, cannot
be included, it is the zero point of non-universality, not the zero point of universality. This
is where the economy of the letter totally differs from the economy of the voice. And this
is why the voice constantly threatened to undermine the authority of the letter, or rather
to supplant it, to invalidate it:' Mladen Dolar, " Kafka's Voices;' in this issue.
17 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 349.
18 Alenka ZupanCic, "Investigations of the Lacanian Field: Some Remarks on Comedy and
Love;' in this issue.
19 Again, see Bruno Bosteels, "Logics of Antagonism:'
21 See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller
Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
22 Quoted in Katherine McCaffrey, Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in
Vieques, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002) 98.
23 See also Giorgio Agamben, "What is a Camp?" in Means without Ends: Notes on Poli
tics, trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000). All the passages quoted from Agamben in my essay come from this short
text.
24 Ibid., 43-44.

26 It would be important to add here that there is at least one historical instance where Cuba,
another island in the Hispanic Caribbean, is linked to the genealogy of the camp as it un
folds in Hispanic/American history. According to Agamben: "Historians debate whether
the first appearance of camps ought to be identified with the campos de concentraciones
that were created in 1896 by the Spaniards in Cuba in order to repress the insurrection
of that colony's population, or rather with the concentration camps into which the Eng
lish herded the Boers at the beginning of the twentieth century." Agamben, op. cit., 38.
Agamben links the death of Spanish poet Antonio Machado to the history of the camp.
It is pertinent to consider here that there might be a relationship between these series of
reference to Hispanic history made by Agamben and Moreiras's genealogy of biopolitics
as related to the Spanish Inquisition. This could be an important link to take into consid
eration in future elaborations on the genealogy of biopolitics.
2 7 McCaffrey, op. cit., 149.
28 See Ken Surin, "Post-Political Citizenship;' in this issue.

"

29 Agamben, op. cit., 4l.

30 Ibid., 43.

;-
,,,
,
,

';.

,
,
,
,
"

"
,
:,
,

, ,)

20 Ibid.

189

,
,

31

If one reads Beruff's analysis of David Sanes's photograph quoted by McCaffrey on page
151, one realizes that the characterization of the victim, a civil servant "in uniform and
in military salute;' combines in a single image the two important features of the Puerto
Rican political transaction taking place under U.S. rule: civil citizenship in exchange for
intense militarization.

32 McCaffrey, op. cit., 148.


33 According to Derrida, "in an economic, elliptic, hence dogmatic way, I would say that
there is no politics without an organization of the time and space of mourning, without a
topolitology of the sepulcher, without an anamnesic and thematic relation to the spirit as
ghost, without an open hospitality to the guest as ghost, whom one holds, just as he holds
us, hostage:' Aporias: Awaiting (One Another at) the "Limits of Truth," trans. Thomas Du
toit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 61-62. Wouldn't it be relevant in this Der
ridean context, following Moreiras's notion of the infrapolitical use of history, to push for
a notion of an infrapolitics of mourning? In the case that an infrapolitics of mourning
could be formulated, one would also have to ask about its relation to Badiou's fidelity to
the event conceived as subjective intervention and symptomatic torsion of truth.
34 Badiou suggests that in some narrations made by subjects that have survived extermina
tion in the camps there is a refusal to identify themselves with the victims. "That some
nevertheless remain human beings, and testify to that effect, is a confirmed fact . But

190

Juan Carlos Rodriguez

Immanence and (Its) Interruption

191

es necesario designar el par que componen el sitio (la fabrica, la calle, la Universidad) y
el singleton del acontecimiento (la huelga, el alzamiento, el desorden), pero no puede
llegar a fij ar la racionalidad del vinculo. Ademas, es una ley del estado ver en la anomia
de ese Dos-que es el reconocimiento de un disfucionamiento de la cuenta-Ia mano del
extranjero (el agitador externo, el terrorista, el profesor perverso) Carece de importancia
que los agentes del estado crean 0 no 10 que dicen. Lo que cuenta es la necesidad del
enunciado. Porque esta metafora es, en realidad, la metafora del vacio: 10 impresentado
opera, esto es 10 que el estado dice, por designaci6n de una causa externa a la situaci6n.
El estado obtura la aparici6n de la inmanencia del vacio mediante la trascendencia del
culpable" (233). The metaphor discussed by Badiou, the hand of the foreigner (outsider),
is mobilized in McCaffrey's characterization of Tito Kayak along with another metaphor:
"stole the spotlight:' Is this metaphor, coming from the stage of media culture, an ironic
twist of the discourse of the state after having been domesticated by the discourse of
global communications? Or, is this metaphor a symptom of the way in which both the
discourse of the state and that of media attempt to impose the protagonic role as repre
sentational imperative to the fetish of the local victim struggling for a new site on earth?

this is always achieved precisely through an enormous effort, an effort acknowledged


by witnesses (in whom it excites a radiant recognition) as an almost incomprehensible
resistance on the part of that which, in them, does not coincide with the identity of the
victim:' Ethics, trans. Peter Hallward (New York: Verso, 2002), 11. According to Badiou,
it is the ethics of human rights, and not politics, what makes possible the recognition
of man as victim. "The heart of the question concerns the presumption of a universal
Subject, capable of reducing ethical issues to matters of human rights and humanitarian
actions. We have seen that ethics subordinates the identification of this subject to the
universal recognition of the evil that is done to him. Ethics thus defines man as a victim. It
will be objected: 'No! You are forgetting the active subject, the one that intervenes against
barbarism!' So let us be precise: man is the being who is capable of recognizing himself as a
victim." Ibid., 1 0 .

35 Bosteels, op. cit.

36 Ibid.
37 The notion of the outlaw that I am proposing as the very naming of the excess of the un
namable that occurs when the interruption oflaw is suspended by a situated subject leav
ing no juridical remainder has been inspired by Badiou's discussion on the illegality of the
name of the event from the perspective of the state of the situation. According to Badiou:
"Esta nominaci6n es esencialmente ilegal, por el hecho de que no se puede ajustar a nin
guna ley de la representaci6n. He mostrado que el estado de una situaci6n-su metaes
tructura-permite hacer-uno de todas las partes en el espacio de la presentaci6n. De este
modo, queda asegurada la representaci6n. Dado un multiple de multiples presentados,
su nombre, correlato de su uno, es asunto de estado. Pero como la intervenci6n deduce
el significante supernumerario en el vacio que bordea al sitio, la ley estatal alii se inte
rrumpe. La elecci6n que realiza la intervenci6n es, para el estado-por 10 tanto, para la
situaci6n-una no-elecci6n, ya que ninguna regia existente puede especificar el termino
impresentado que es asi elegido como nombre del puro 'hay' del acontecimiento:' In the
paragraph I am quoting, Badiou's line of thought jumps from the illegality of the name to
the term of the site: there is, beyond representation, the outlaw. "Diremos tambien que el
termino del sitio que nombra el acontecimiento es, si se quiere, un representante del sitio.
Tanto mas que su nombre an6nimo es: 'pertenence al sitio: Sin embargo, esta represen
taci6n no es jamas reconocible desde el punto de vista de la situaci6n-o de su estado-,
puesto que ninguna ley de representaci6n autoriza a determinar un an6nimo en cad a
parte, un puro termino cualquiera, aun menos extender este procedimiento ilegal por el
cual de cada multiple incluido saldria-lPor que milagro de una elecci6n sin regla?-un
representate desprovisto de toda otra cualidad que no sea su pertenencia a ese multiple,
al vacio mismo, tal que la singularidad absoluta del sitio seiiala su borde. La elecci6n del
representante no puede ser, en la situaci6n, admitida como representaci6n:' See "Me
ditaci6n Veinte" in Badiou's EI Ser y el acontecimiento (Buenos Aires: Manantial, 1999),
230-31. Let us force a certain confluence between the notions of Agamben and Badiou as
they converge in the question of the state: is not the permanent state of exception the state
of the situation in which we live today? If the event taking place in Vieques-interrupting
the suspension of law-belongs to a site, wouldn't this site be necessarily linked to the
passage from the Nazi camps (state of exception) to the Vieques camp (stateless inscrip
tion of the outlaw)?

39 McCaffrey, op. cit., 155


40 Surin, op. cit.
41

38 Let us consider Badiou's comments on the figure of the agitator in the same meditation
we discussed above from El Ser y el acontecimiento: "Cada vez que un sitio es el teatro de
un acontecimiento real, el estado-en sentido politico, por ejemplo-ve claramente que

..1

See Martin Heidegger, "Building, Dwelling, Thinking:' in Basic Writings (San Francisco:
Harper Collins Publishers, 1993).

Contributors

teaches philosophy at the Ecole Normale Sup:'


rieure and the College International de Philosophie in Paris.
In addition to several novels, plays, and political essays, he has
published a number of major philosophical works, including
Theory of the Subject (1982) and Being and Event (1988). Sev
eral of his books have recently appeared in English, including
Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (Verso, 2001),
Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford Univer
sity Press, 2003), Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Phi
losophy (Continuum, 2003), and On Beckett (Clinamen Press,
2004.) Badiou's enormously original work has made major
contributions not only to philosophy and political theory, but
also to mathematics, psychoanalysis, film theory, and aesthet
ics. The next issue of Polygraph will be devoted to critical es
says on his thought.
Alain Badiou

is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Cornell.


He has also held positions as an assistant professor at Har
vard University and at Columbia University. He is currently
preparing two book manuscripts, After Borges: Literature and
Antiphilosophy and Badiou and Politics (under contract with
Duke University Press). He is also translating and introduc
ing two books: Badiou: Can Politics Be Thought? followed by
An Obscure Disaster: Right, Politics and the State and What Is
Bruno Bosteels

Antiphilosophy? Essays on Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Lacan


(both for Duke University Press). He is also the author of nu
merous articles on Latin American literatures and cultures.
Mladen Dolar taught philosophy at the

University of Ljublja
na until the year 2002.He collaborated with Slavoj Zitek in
Opera's Second Death (Routledge, 2002). His Master's Voice is
due by Verso next year.

is the chair of the Painting Department at


the School of Plastic Arts in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His work
could be characterized as an effort to think politics by com
bining painting, poetry, and critical theory. On April 4, 1980,
Escobar was arrested and accused of being a member of the
Puerto Rican clandestine movement struggling for the inde
pendence of his nation. He received a sentence of 68 years
in prison. During 19 years and 5 months in prison, Escobar
Elizam Escobar

Polygraph 15/16 (2004)

il

194

Contributors

continued painting and writing. (The works reproduced in this issue were created
by him while he was in prison). His work has been exhibited in New York, Chicago,
San Juan, Anchorage, Edinburgh, Madrid, Havana, Managua, and many other Latin
American cities. Upon his release from prison on September 10, 1999, Escobar re
turned to Puerto Rico. That same year he published Los ensayos del artificiero: Mas
alIa del postmodernismo y 10 politico-directo. He has recently published DobIes de
Elizam Escobar, which includes an essay by Joserram6n Melendes addressing one of
the thematic aspects of his plastic work.
is a PhD candidate in the Romance Studies Department
at Duke University. She works on Cuban post-revolutionary cultural production
and trauma in the wake of globalization. She has published, with colleagues Carlos
Pessoa, Lasse Thomassen, Seoungwon Lee, eds., "The Left, Democracy and Theory:
An Interview with Ernesto Laclau:' Umbr(a) 1 (200 1): 7-29, and "A Dialogue with
Michael Chanan: On New Latin American Cinema and the Intricacies of Film The
ory:' Polygraph 1 3 (2001 ) : 1 29- 144.

Marta Hernandez Salvan

is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vigo, Spain. He is a


highly distinguished Spanish philosopher who has published several books on Hei
degger, Schelling, and H6lderlin. He is also one of the main translators of Heidegger
into Spanish. Some of his latest books and translations include Escritos sobre ji
Arturo Leyte

losofia de la naturaleza (1996), Caminos de bosque (1998), Carta sobre el humanismo


(2000), Hitos (2000), Un modelo para lajilosofia desde la musica. La interpretaci6n
adorniana de la musica de Schonberg (2003).
Alberto Moreiras

is Professor of Romance Studies (Spanish) and Literature. He

University Press, 1989) and Theology and the Problem of Evil (Blackwell, 1986). His
book Liberation and the Next World Order is forthcoming with Duke University
Press.
.',

is Professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana, Slovenia as well


as Professor of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School
in Sass-Fee, Switzerland. Zizek is a prolific writer, having published over 50 books
including translations into a dozen languages. He is the founder and president of
the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana. His latest publications include
Enjoy Your Symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (Routledge, 2000); The
Ticklish Subject: An Essay in Political Ontology (Verso, 2000); The Fragile Absolute,
or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (Verso, 2001); For They Know
Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (Verso, 2002); Organs Without
Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences ( Routledge, 2003); The Puppet and the Dwarf
The Perverse Core of Christianity (MIT, 2003). Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, the latest of
his many books, is out now from Verso.
Slavoj Zi:tek

Alenka Zupancic is a member of the

faculty at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific


Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slove
nia, and of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana. She is also editor
in chief of the journal for psychoanalytical and cultural studies Problemi. Her books
include Ethics of the Real (Verso, 2000), Das Reale einer Illusion (Suhrkamp, 2001),
Nietzsche: Filozojija dvojega, Analecta (Ljubljana, 2001), Realno Iluzije, Jesenski i
Turk (Zagreb, 2001), Esthetique du desir, ethique de la jouissance (Thetete Editions,
2002), and The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two (Zone, 2003).

(1987), Interpretaci6n y diferencia


(1991), Tercer Espacio: Duelo y Literatura en America Latina (1991), The Exhaustion
of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Studies (Duke University 2001), and
co-edited Pensar en la postdictadura (2001) with Nelly Richard. "Piel de lobo. Mor
fologia de la raz6n imperial" is forthcoming in Biblioteca Nueva (2005). "Line of
has published La escritura politica de Jose Hierro

Shadow. The Non-Subject of the Political" is his latest work in progress.


is is a PhD candidate in the Literature Program at Duke
University. He teaches Spanish Literature at the Universidad de Puerto Rico (Rio
Piedras). He works on the intersections between Latin American visual culture, glo
balization, and critical theory. He is currently working on a video project in Vieques
and recently received the Olga Nolla Poetry Prize in Puerto Rico.
Juan Carlos Rodriguez

reading for a PhD at the University of Warwick. His publications


include "This Zone of Occult SenSibility: The African Novel in the Era of Decoloni
sation" in New Formations 47 (2002) and "Optimism of the Intellect and Optimism
of the Will: The Unseasonable Art of Ngugi wa Thiong'o" in Law, Social Justice, and
Robert Spencer is

Global Development 6 (2003).


in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is the au
thor of numerous articles in politics and theory. He has also published The Turnings
of Darkness and Light: Essays in Philosophical and Systematic Theology (Cambridge

Kenneth Surin is based

polygraph 17: The Philosophy of Alain

Badiou (2005)

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