MALICK BADJI Malick BADJI is lecturer and researcher in the Departement of Philosophy at the Université cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar. He specializes in logic, analytic philosophy and the philosophy of mathematics. He is the author of several publications in logic and philosophy of language. His research interests include logic and philosophy of language, analytic philosophy, transcendental phenomenology, Platonism and mathematical foundations, cognitive science, orality and epistemic pluralism. For some time now, Badji has been particularly researching the epistemic value of discursive practices in Black Africa.

LUCIANA VILLAS BÔAS Luciana Villas Bôas received her undergraduate and master's degrees in Literature from PUC-RJ. D. in Germanistics and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, New York, 2005. She has been a professor at the Department of Anglo-Germanic Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro since 2009, and a permanent member of the Graduate Program in Literature Science at UFRJ and the Graduate Program in German Language and Literature at USP. Villas Bôas is the author of Wilde Beschriftungen. Brasiliens historische Semantik in der Frühen Neuzeit (Königshausen & Neumann, 2017) and Written Encounters: historical semantics of Brazil in the sixteenth century (Editora da UFRJ, 2019).

ALAIN SUPIOT Alain Supiot est juriste, professeur émérite au Collège de France, où il a occupé la chaire État social et mondialisation : analyse juridique des solidarités . Ses travaux portent à la fois, et de manière complémentaire, sur le droit social et la théorie du droit. Ancien fellow du Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin , il est membre correspondant de la British Academy et docteur Honoris causa de plusieurs universités (Louvain-la-Neuve, Aristote de Thessalonique, Liège, Buenos-Aires). De 1998 à 2001, il a présidé le Conseil national du développement des sciences humaines et sociales et de 2017 à 2019 il a été membre de la Commission mondiale sur l’avenir du travail. Il a fondé, et a dirigé de 2008 à 2013, l’Institut d’Études Avancées de Nantes. Du bon gouvernement de la recherche 6 July 2021 Read Article

Si Sartre considère le « jouer le jeu de l’en-soi » comme conséquence de l’échappement à l’être qui caractérise la réalité humaine, nous voudrions plutôt esquisser les traits d’une posture existentielle où, précisément, c’est le fait de « jouer le jeu » qui empêche, toujours d’avantage, l’émergence à l’être. En ce sens, il nous est apparu que la manie, entendue comme la polarité joueuse du trouble bipolaire (ou trouble maniaco-dépressif) et telle que décrite par la psychopathologie phénoménologique et notamment par Ludwig Binswanger, correspond assez ponctuellement à l’expérience, tout à fait tragique, de l’impossibilité d’émerger à l’être, soit de tendre à une forme d’existence qui soit à la fois persistante, dans le sens de temporellement continuelle, et partagée, dans le sens de commune avec Autrui. “Jouer le jeu” ou la réification (im)possible du maniaque BENEDETTA TODARO 8 February 2021 PSYCHOLOGIE PSYCHOPATHOLOGIE ET SOCIETE Article PDF Laurent Joliton, sans titre ; Crédit d’image :Boum ! Bang ! Si Sartre considère le « jouer le jeu de l’en-soi » comme conséquence de l’échappement à l’être qui caractérise la réalité humaine, nous voudrions plutôt esquisser les traits d’une posture existentielle où, précisément, c’est le fait de « jouer le jeu » qui empêche, toujours d’avantage, l’émergence à l’être. En ce sens, il nous est apparu que la manie, entendue comme la polarité joueuse du trouble bipolaire (ou trouble maniaco-dépressif) et telle que décrite par la psychopathologie phénoménologique et notamment par Ludwig Binswanger, correspond assez ponctuellement à l’expérience, tout à fait tragique, de l’impossibilité d’émerger à l’être, soit de tendre à une forme d’existence qui soit à la fois persistante, dans le sens de temporellement continuelle, et partagée, dans le sens de commune avec Autrui. Le temps, l’espace : autant de nécessités inéluctables. Le sort, la fortune, les événements : traquenards que nous tend la vie. Voulez-vous exister ? Or, il n’est pas d’existence dans l’abstrait. Il faut que l’être se prenne au piège d’une forme, et, pour un temps, s’en accommode, ici ou là de telle ou telle façon. Toute chose, aussi longtemps qu’elle dure, est forcée de subir sa forme, la condamnation, la contrainte d’être ainsi, et de ne pouvoir se modifier. Luigi Pirandello, Un, personne et cent mille (1) « Jouer le jeu » Dans le langage commun l’expression « jouer le jeu » désigne un comportement respectueux des règles et des conventions, soit une attitude socialement cohérente répondant à et d’un certain rôle social. Toutefois, il s’avère, eu égard aux résonances étymologiques du latin jocus , qui signifie plaisanterie, badinage, blague, que l’usage de cette expression renvoie, aussi, à l’idée d’une distance, celle séparant la personne de son rôle ( i.e. celle que l’on perçoit entre l’interprète et son personnage) et, donc, à l’idée d’un jouer à être , d’une imitation ou, encore, d’une simulation . Nous pourrons être amenés à penser, depuis ces définitions, que celui qui « joue le jeu » n’est personne d’autre que l’homme tel que décrit par Sartre en ce que celui-ci, l’homme sartrien, semble incarner le double sens de l’expression « jouer le jeu » que nous venons d’évoquer. En effet, comme le montre l’exemple, archiconnu, du garçon de café, le garçon « joue le jeu » du garçon de café en jouant tous les gestes typiques du barman : « il joue sa condition pour la réaliser » (2) . Toutefois, il n’arrivera, au mieux, qu’à « joue(r) à être garçon de café » (3) , c’est-à-dire qu’il ne pourra jamais l’être « immédiatement (..), au sens où cet encrier est encrier, où le verre est verre » (4) . Cet exemple témoigne, selon Sartre, du fait que « l’homme est libre parce qu’il n’est pas soi mais présence – ou, nous pourrions aussi dire : distance – à soi » (5) : au travers de l’opération de néantisation, décrite par Sartre, le pour-soi se réalise comme « un décollement de l’être par rapport à soi » (6) , ce qui implique l’impossibilité d’une « coïncidence à l’identique » (7) , laquelle est la condition nécessaire pour « la véritable plénitude d’être » (8) , condition, celle-ci, réservée exclusivement à l ’en-soi . L’homme est donc libre de l’emprise de l’être puisque, d’une part, il se dégage de l’être-en-soi par la néantisation et, d’autre part, même s’il aspire à l’être-en-soi, il ne peut que j ouer à être à la manière d’un en-soi , soit faire semblant d’être. Toutefois, ce que nous voudrions essayer de penser, ici, c’est une forme d’existence ou, comme nous le verrons plus loin, une existence informe , qui puisse exprimer, de manière encore plus profonde que l’homme sartrien, la condamnation à la liberté. Si Sartre considère le « jouer le jeu de l’ en-soi » comme conséquence de l’échappement à l’être qui caractérise la réalité humaine, nous voudrions plutôt esquisser les traits d’une posture existentielle où, précisément, c’est le fait de « jouer le jeu », dans le double sens que nous avons attribué à cette expression, qui empêche, toujours d’avantage, l’émergence à l’être. En ce sens, il nous est apparu que la manie, entendue comme la polarité joueuse du trouble bipolaire (ou trouble maniaco-dépressif) et telle que décrite par la psychopathologie phénoménologique et notamment par Ludwig Binswanger, correspond assez ponctuellement à l’expérience, tout à fait tragique , de l’impossibilité d’émerger à l’être, soit de tendre à une forme d’existence qui soit à la fois persistante, dans le sens de temporellement continuelle, et partagée, dans le sens de commune avec Autrui. Le maniaque, au-delà de Sartre, avec Binswanger et Pirandello Nous essayerons donc de décrire l’attitude ré-creative du maniaque, en la différenciant, peu à peu, du jouer à être de l’homme sartrien. Tout d’abord, et il s’agira du point essentiel de toute notre argumentation, le jouer à être dont parle Sartre a toujours affaire à l’être. D’une part, nous le savons, pour que l’opération de néantisation ait lieu il faut de l’être ; en effet, en tant que Sartre situe son projet dans le cadre d’une ontologie phénoménologique, celui-ci ne peut que procéder de l’être et, par là seulement, aboutir à sa néantisation : « le néant ne peut se néantiser que sur fond d’être : si du néant peut être donné, ce n’est ni avant ni après l’être, ni, d’une manière générale, en dehors de l’être, mais c’est au sein même de l’être, en son cœur (…) » (9) . D’autre part, du fait de cette néantisation, bien que l’homme ne puisse que jouer à être il s’avère que dans et par ce jeu s’exprime « le projet originel » de toute homme, à savoir le « projet d’être » (10) . Ainsi la réalité humaine, chez Sartre, s’apparente au désir d’être « un en-soi qui serait à lui-même son propre fondement » (11) . Bien que ce projet demeure inachevable, reste, néanmoins, qu’il se déploie depuis l’être vers l’être ou, autrement dit, d’un en-soi à un en-soi entre lesquels se tend un pour-soi . Aussi la tension entre ces deux en-soi crée-t-elle la structure temporelle du pour-soi : le passé est l’en-soi, dépassé, que le pour-soi n’est plus et le futur est l’en-soi, possible, que le pour-soi n’est pas encore. En ce sens, nous pouvons affirmer que si le jeu du garçon de café s’apparente sans doute à une simulation il n’en demeure pas moins que cette simulation vise, toujours déjà, la plénitude de l’être. Le jeu du maniaque, quant à lui, est de toute autre nature. Si le maniaque échappait à l’identification par le masque et, donc, au concept d’identité personnelle et sociale, nous nous demandons s’il pourrait également se dérober du concept d’identité maintenant que celui-ci ne s’apparente plus à l’identité personnelle mais, plutôt, à l’identité biologique. Afin de pouvoir mieux appréhender cette nature joueuse du maniaque, ne pouvant certainement pas nous contenter de la liste aseptique de symptômes qui décrit la manie à l’intérieur de certains manuels de psychopathologie ( i.e. le Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders – DSM ), nous proposons d’en revenir à la littérature, laquelle nous fournit, parfois, des descriptions aux tons exquisément existentiels de certaines manières, disons : inusuelles , d’être au monde. C’est en ce sens que nous suggérons au lecteur l’aventure tragique de Vitangelo Moscarda, protagoniste du roman Uno, nessuno e centomila ( Un, personne et cent mille ) de Luigi Pirandello. Le récit porte sur l’histoire d’un homme (Vitangelo Moscarda) qui conduit une vie assez tranquille et aisée jusqu’au moment où sa femme lui fait remarquer un petit défaut de son nez, qui pendrait d’un côté. Le protagoniste, effrayé par cette révélation – révélation ouvrant narrativement le roman – qui engendre la perte de son identité de « homme avec le nez droit », s’aventure donc dans une « quête d’authenticité » en passant, notamment, par l’expérience des « cent mille », c’est-à-dire par le fait de se laisser être , ou de jouer à être , le reflet de soi qu’il perçoit dans le regard des Autres. La fragmentation identitaire à laquelle le protagoniste touche suite à la perte de confiance dans la spontanéité de l’incarnation dans un rôle social, l’expose à toute l’absurdité de l’effort, tout à fait éphémère, d’ être quelqu’un , voire d’ être. Cette quête d’authenticité mène le protagoniste de la vérité de l’être à la vérité du paraître , à savoir du jouer à être . Toutefois, il ne faut pas confondre ce passage de la vérité de l’être à la vérité du paraître avec le passage opéré par Sartre d’une essence qui précède l’existence à une existence qui en la niant, nécessairement, « implique son essence » (12) . En effet, la solution à laquelle parvient le protagoniste est de prendre au sérieux le jeu des rôles pour en dévoiler l’enjeu principal, à savoir que chaque rôle n’impliquerien ou, en reprenant le titre du roman, personne. Mais concrètement, comment le maniaque, ou les personnages des romans pirandelliens, mettent-ils l’être hors-jeu ? Autrement dit, comment empêchent-ils le renfermement du soi dans une personne, c’est-à-dire dans une identité ? C’est qu’en vivant, perpétuellement, le temps d’un jeu – d’un jeu qui ne commence de rien et qui ne termine en rien –, le maniaque rompt avec la temporalité de l’être, à savoir la triplette retentio-praesentatio-protentio : le maniaque vit dans l’instant, il vit « à l’instant ». Comme le suggère Sartre, l’instant est « un commencement et une fin » (13) et il est donc le point de conjonction des deux événements absolus : la naissance et la mort . Le maniaque, comme le suggère Binswanger depuis Heidegger, habite la « momentanéité », c’est-à-dire qu’il vit, sans trêve, dans et à l’instant tragique du commencement et de la fin absolus. Quand Sartre parle d’« instant libérateur », où l’on souffre du sentiment angoissant « d’être soudain exorcisé, c’est-à-dire de devenir radicalement autre » (14) , il touche à l’expérience de constante métamorphose et de constante « conversion » (15) qu’éprouve le maniaque. À ce propos, la conclusion du monologue de Vitangelo Moscarda, protagoniste de Uno, nessuno e centomila : « L’air est neuf. D’instant en instant, chaque chose s’anime pour apparaître. Je détourne les yeux de tout ce qui est appelé à s’immobiliser et à mourir. C’est à ce seul prix que je puis vivre désormais. Renaître d’instant, en instant. Empêcher en moi le travail de la pensée qui échafaude le néant des constructions vaines... (…) A chaque instant je meurs et je renais, neuf et lavé des souvenirs ; dans mon intégrité et vivant, non plus en moi, mais en toutes les choses extérieures » (16) . Il faut alors s’imaginer que le maniaque vit constamment dans des jeux de rôles, jeux qui, d’ailleurs, avec leur déplacement dans le temps (dans un passé ou dans un futur trop lointains pour être rattachés à notre propre temporalité) produisent l’effet d’évasion dont parlent les joueurs accros. Sauf que ceux qui jouent aux jeux de rôles vivent ces instants de jeu comme une parenthèse de la vie « ordinaire », pour retourner ensuite, une fois le jeu conclu, à leur identité habituelle et à la temporalité partagée. Le maniaque, quant à lui, vit la vérité précaire d’un jeu qui, toujours déjà, est à ré-jouer, dans un présent qui est purement fictif puisque délié du passé et du futur. Comme le souligne Binswanger depuis Husserl, le maniaque manque de l’habituel. Compte tenu de la définition bourdieusienne de l’ habitus , entendu comme un « système de dispositions durables et transposables » à la fois « structurées et structurantes » (17) , nous pourrions avancer que, chez le maniaque, l’ habitus ne fonctionne pas en tant que, chez lui, le moment structurant est le seul à pouvoir s’opérer et ce, exclusivement et constamment, ce qui empêche d’aboutir à une forme structurée, durable et transposable de l’existence (moment structuré). De sorte que, avec Merleau-Ponty, nous sommes amenés à penser que, chez le maniaque, le mouvement de « va-et-viens de l’existence » (18) entre « corps habituel et actuel » (19) ) tourne à vide dans l’actuel, ne permettant pas au processus constitutif de l’ Ipséité (processus par lequel le Soi se définit) de se développer entre le propre et l’ autre, ainsi qu’entre la stabilité et le changement. Le trouble structurel de la constitution du Soi est engendré par l’absence du mouvement par lequel le Soi se referme sur Soi-même en tant que ce Soi-même n’existe pas : le maniaque existe seulement dans le moment (ré)créatif de et du Soi. Ce faisant, nous devons distinguer l’opération de néantisation décrite par Sartre (opération qui, nous l’avons vu, implique voire nécessite l’être) du masquage auquel font recours le maniaque et les personnages des romans pirandelliens : ils changent leur masque à l’infini pour se jouer de la mascarade sociale des identités. Ils se masquent, donc, pour démasquer, pour montrer que derrière les masques (derrière leurs masques) il n’y a personne. C’est qu’en vivant, perpétuellement, le temps d’un jeu – d’un jeu qui ne commence de rien et qui ne termine en rien –, le maniaque rompt avec la temporalité de l’être, à savoir la triplette retentio-praesentatio-protentio : le maniaque vit dans l’instant, il vit « à l’instant ». Un dernier point fera l’objet de cette deuxième partie de notre article. Comme nous l’avons vu, le maniaque, du fait de la fragmentation du temps en instants, « en purs présents isolés (…) sans possibilité d’ordonner ces présents dans une continuité biographique interne » (20) , ne peut pas appréhender son histoire dans une forme apprésentative habituelle, c’est-à-dire qu’il n’arrive pas à se constituer en tant qu’ego. Les « présentations actuelles et momentanées » (21) ont le dessus sur les apprésentations biographique et, manquant de l’instauration d’une temporalité interne qui puisse lier les instants en une continuité passé-présent-futur, « les maniaques ne peuvent s’expérimenter comme ego dans le sens plein d’une apprésentation » (22) . Mais qu’en est-il des Autres ? Comment le maniaque fait-il expérience de l’Altérité ? Selon Binswanger, depuis Husserl et Szilasi, l’échec de la constitution egoique engendre l’échec de la constitution de l’Altérité : l’Autre ne peut donc pas être expérimenté « de manière apprésentative comme alter ego » (23) . Pour le dire avec Sartre, le maniaque n’arrive pas à fonder le « nous », entendu comme ce qui « enveloppe une pluralité de subjectivités qui se reconnaissent les unes les autres comme subjectivités » (24) . Toutefois, nous voulons prendre quelque peu les distances de la conception binswangerienne du rapport que le maniaque entretient avec l’Autre. En effet, Binswanger suggère que le maniaque instaure un rapport de réification avec l’Autre, dans le sens, certainement de dérivation heideggerienne, de « prendre l’autre pour quelque chose » (25) .Or, si nous avons soutenu, jusqu’ici, que le maniaque ne se rend jamais à l’être, nous nous sentons en mesure de refuser l’hypothèse binswangerienne. Le maniaque, et ce sera le thème de notre troisième partie, ne peut pas être ramené à l’être et donc échappe à toute réification ; de ce fait, nous croyons qu’il ne pourra pas opérer une réification de l’Autre ou « le prendre pour quelque chose ». Au mieux, il peut ou ne peut le prendre que pour « personne ». Citons, à nouveau, le monologue d’ Un, personne et cent mille : « Je ne suppose pas que vous soyez conforme à l’idée que j’ai de vous. J’ai déjà affirmé que vous n’êtes pas non plus celui que vous représentez pour vous-même, mais simultanément plusieurs individus, selon vos différentes manières d’être possible, les cas, les rapports et les circonstances. Et alors, en quoi vous fais-je du tort ? C’est vous que m’en faites en croyant que je ne possède (ou que je ne puis posséder) de réalité autre que celle que vous me donnez, laquelle est uniquement vôtre, croyez-le ; une idée à vous, celle que vous vous êtes forgée de moi, une possibilité d’exister comme vous l’entendez, telle qu’elle vous apparaît à vous, telle que vous la reconnaissez possible en vous : car, ce que je puis être pour moi-même, non seulement vous n’en pouvez rien savoir, mais moi non plus !... » (26) Avant de passer à notre troisième partie, nous voulons insister sur un point. Le maniaque que nous avons décrit se situe en-deçà aussi bien qu’au-delà de l’être : il s’agit, là, comme nous l’avions anticipé, d’une existence informe ou comme le dirait Pirandello une « Vie » sans « Forme » – mais il s’agit toujours d’une Vie. De ce fait, nous pourrions être tenté par une lecture quelque peu « romantique » de la manie, entendue comme pur esprit d’évasion et de libération. Vivre dans l’instantanéité d’un jeu, dans la précarité d’un régime de vérité jamais totalement conquis, sans jamais que le réel puisse se rapprendre dans une forme réutilisable, est une expérience effrayante qui mène souvent au geste suicidaire, tentative ultime de rédemption de l’ existence informe du maniaque. Image crédit: Another Brick in the Wall 2, Satellite Musical La réification (im)possible du maniaque Dans cette dernière partie de notre article, nous essayerons, dans le sillage des travaux de Michel Foucault et de Giorgio Agamben, de situer la manie par rapport aux dispositifs de pouvoir à l’œuvre dans la société actuelle, en observant le lien entre « dispositif de pouvoir et jeu de vérité, dispositif de pouvoir et discours de vérité » (27) . Tout régime de pouvoir, via ses dispositifs, produit des séries discursives qui œuvrent au maintien d’une certaine vérité sur ce qu’est l’identité de l’homme. Le pouvoir nécessite de rendre l’homme avant tout identifiable pour ensuite le rendre reconnaissable et « assujettissable ». Nous avons soutenu, plus haut, que le maniaque échappe à l’identification et à la réification en tant qu’il ne provient pas de l’être et qu’il ne se ramène pas à l’être. Toutefois, nous devons ajouter que cette affirmation est vraie seulement si elle est située dans le cadre d’un certain régime de pouvoir, historiquement situé, et, par conséquent, d’un certain régime de vérité. En effet, comme le montre Giorgio Agamben dans Nudità , avant le XIX siècle, avant donc l’émergence de dispositifs de pouvoir biométriques (dont nous parlerons plus loin), ce qui permettait l’identification l’homme c’était son identité personnelle. Le terme personne signifie, originellement, « masque » et c’était au travers du masque que l’homme pouvait acquérir un rôle et une identité sociale. Dans le monde grec ainsi que dans le monde romain, la personne était identifiée par son masque, c’est-à-dire par son rôle social. Si la personne « jouait le jeu » de son rôle sociale, à savoir : il tenait un comportement respectueux des règles et des conventions, soit une attitude socialement cohérente répondant à et d’un certain rôle social (c’était notre première définition de l’expression « jouer le jeu »), il était identifiable et reconnaissable par la communauté (cela soit dit en passant, comme le remarque Agamben, le besoin d’identification et de reconnaissance n’est pas seulement une nécessité de chaque régime de pouvoir mais aussi bien un besoin existentiel des individus). Dans un tel régime d’identification, où la vérité de l’homme coïncide avec son identité personnelle et sociale, le maniaque, opérant une distance entre la personne et le rôle (il double le « jouer le jeu » de sa deuxième définition), et changeant son masque à l’infini, devient « personne » ( nobody ), non-identifiable et non-reconnaissable par les dispositifs de pouvoir. Le maniaque pousse tellement à l’extrême la vérité du masque, c’est-à-dire la vérité du jeu des rôles sociaux, que le résultat est, paradoxalement, le dévoilement de l’inconsistance de cette vérité même. De la simulation de la vérité à la vérité de la simulation, le maniaque s’apparente aux hystériques dont parle Foucault : celles-ci avaient en effet « des magnifiques symptômes » (les symptômes des patients organiques que les psychiatres asilaires se réjouissaient d’observer chez les hystériques) mais, en même temps, elles étaient « tellement séduit(es) par l’existence des symptômes les mieux spécifiés, les mieux précisés, qu’elles les repren(aient) à leur compte » (28), en produisant, paradoxalement, l’esquive de la réalité (de la vérité) de leur maladie. Ce faisant, la distance que le maniaque ouvre entre la personne et le rôle social, au-delà du fait d’empêcher la réification du soi en un masque (le maniaque ressemble aux personnages shakespeariens qui tiennent leur masque dans leurs mains et instaurent, avec leurs propres masques, un dialogue), elle décolle la personne juridique , celle jugeable par le système de valeurs imposé par un certain pouvoir à l’œuvre, de la personne étique , laquelle échappe au jugement de tout système de valeurs. À partir de la deuxième moitié du XIXème siècle, des dispositifs d’identification nouveaux font leur apparition, ce qui indique qu’un changement de définition du concept d’identité a eu lieu. Si le maniaque échappait à l’identification par le masque et, donc, au concept d’identité personnelle et sociale tel que nous venons de le décrire, nous nous demandons s’il pourrait également se dérober du concept d’identité maintenant que celui-ci ne s’apparente plus à l’ identité personnelle mais, plutôt, à l’ identité biologique . Comme le montre Giorgio Agamben, l’identité doit s’exprimer, à l’heure des dispositifs biométriques, par le bios , c’est-à-dire par les données biologiques ou, comme l’écrit Agamben : par la « nuda vita » (la vie nue). L’identité de l’homme, à partir du XIXème siècle, n’est plus une identité sociale mais, au contraire, une identité a-sociale, liée, cette identité, au corps (et non pas au corps vécu mais au corps cadavre, purement biologique), mesurée par des machines et non pas reconnue par l’Autre. La réification, à l’époque du biopouvoir , n’est plus une réification au rôle social, réification à laquelle le maniaque pouvait échapper ; l’homme est désormais réifié en tant que corps , c’est-à-dire en tant qu’ensemble de données organiques (photos d’identité, empreintes, scanner de la rétine, test du DNA...). Désormais, le maniaque peut changer son masque à l’infini, peu importe : il sera toujours le même face aux outils d’identification biométrique. Premier, en ordre chronologique, a été l’outil « photo d’identité » : l’instantanée paralyse l’instant, le prive de son effet « libérateur », le rend au temps. La photo d’identité, d’abord rendue obligatoire aux délinquants, avait comme but de créer la catégorie du « criminel habituel », puisqu’elle avait le pouvoir de temporaliser l’« antécédent ». Une fois élargie à la société entière, cette pratique oblige tout le monde, y compris le maniaque, à avoir de l’ « habituel ». Ils changent leur masque à l’infini pour se jouer de la mascarade sociale des identités. Ils se masquent, donc, pour démasquer, pour montrer que derrière les masques (derrière leurs masques) il n’y a personne. Nous voulons conclure en rappelant que les pratiques de mesure du corps furent appliqués, à l’origine, tant aux délinquants qu’aux fous : le savoir phrénologique, les techniques de mesure du crane etc., avaient pour but d’identifier le criminel aussi bien que le fou. Ces techniques souhaitaient trouver une identité biologique aux rebuts de la société. Puis, comme le rappelle Foucault dans l’ Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique , Freud découvrit une nouvelle identité, pulsionnelle cette fois, valable tant pour l’homme malade que pour l’homme sain ; identité sur laquelle l’on pouvait enquêter avec les techniques de la parole. Aujourd’hui, c’est à nouveau le corps qui est mesuré afin d’identifier. Toutefois, l’on ne mesure plus l’anatomie du corps mais, plutôt, sa biochimique : non plus le cerveau mais ses « productions biochimiques », notamment les neurotransmetteurs. Comme l’écrit Agamben, nous devons encore attendre, patiemment, « une nouvelle figure de l’humain, ce visage au-delà tant du masque que de la faciès biométrique », « au-delà tant de l’identité personnelle que de l’identité sans personne », soit de l’identité corps-cadavre. Ou peut-être est-il déjà là, mais il attend, encore, patiemment, son Freud, à savoir celui qui lui offrira un nouvel espace de parole. NOTES 1 , PIRANDELLO, L., Un, personne et cent mille, Éditions Gallimard (coll. L’imaginaire), 1930 (1926 pour la version italienne), p. 107. 2 . SARTRE, J. P., L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, Éditions Gallimard, 1943, p. 94. 3. Ibidem, p. 94. 4. Ibidem, p. 94. 5. Ibidem, 485. 6. Ibidem, p. 113. 7. Ibidem, p. 113. 8. Ibidem, p. 113. 9. Ibidem, p. 56. 10. Ibidem, p. 611. 11. Ibidem, p. 611. 12. Ibidem, p. 21. 13. Ibidem, p. 511. 14, Ibidem, p. 520. 15. Ibidem, p. 520. 16. PIRANDELLO, L., Un, personne et cent mille, p. 268. 17 . BOURDIEU, P., Le sens pratique, Les Éditions de Minuit (coll. « Le sens commun »), 1980, p. 88. 18. MERLEAU-PONTY, M., Phénoménologie de la perception, Éditions Gallimard (coll. « Tel »), 1945, p.117. 19. Ibidem, p. 111. 20. BINSWANGER, L, Melanconia e mania, Studi Fenomenologici, Bollati Boringhieri, 2006 (1960 pour l’édition allemande), p.76, nous traduisons. 21. Ibidem, p. 85, nous traduisons. 22. Ibidem, p. 95, nous traduisons. 23. Ibidem, p. 95, nous traduisons. 24. SARTRE, J. P., L’être et le néant, p. 453. 25. BINSWANGER, L, Melanconia e mania, Studi Fenomenologici, p.84, nous traduisons. 26. PIRANDELLO, L., Un, personne et cent mille, p.117. 27. FOUCAULT, M., Le pouvoir psychiatrique. Cours au Collège de France (1973-1974), Éditions du Seuil/Éditions Gallimard (coll. « Hautes Études »), 2003, p. 15. 28. Ibidem, p. 253. 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FOAD HABIBI Foad Habibi is an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Kurdistan. He wrote a book on apocalyptic movies and disaster capitalism under the title Against End Ideologies (2014) and many philosophical and critical essays and articles in Persian. He has translated works of philosophers including Louis Althusser (Machiavelli and Us ), Gilles Deleuze (various pieces), Etienne Balibar (Spinoza and Politics ), Antonio Negri (Spinoza in Our Time ), Michael Hardt (Commonwealth, Assembly ), Miguel Abensour (Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment ), Warren Montag (Bodies, Masses and Power: Spinoza and his Contemporaries ), Philippo Del Luchesse (The Political Philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli , Conflict, Power, and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza: Tumult and Indignation ), Frédéric Lordon (Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire ), Margherita Pascucci (Potentia of Poverty: Marx Reads Spinoza ) and many others into Persian. He is one of the young scholars who try to introduce Machiavellian - Spinozist tradition in Iran through writing, translating, and holding courses on this radical underground current in philosophy. His current work is focused on late fascism and neo-fascism movements based on Deleuze and Guattari's theories and Antonio Negri's interventions. He has been a member of the Iranian Sociological Association since 2012. The Eternal Return of the Eterno Maestro 21 January 2024 Read Article

THE GRACE OF JEAN-LUC NANCY Jean-Luc Nancy : qui désespérément cherchait l’aurore FRANÇOIS WARIN Peut-être il restera (pour Jean-Luc Nancy) ESTHER TELLERMANN Jean-Luc Nancy’s Insurrectionary Insistence: to Start from Nothing DIDIER CAHEN Le Meravigliose Nascite di Jean-Luc Nancy SHAJ MOHAN Jean-Luc Nancy: in whose wild heart immortality sleeps homeless DIVYA DWIVEDI

In this interview Shaj Mohan discusses with Rachel Adams the possibilities for philosophy beyond metaphysics and of politics without the rhetoric of crisis. It proceeds by re-claiming reason as something endowed with polynomia so that a new theory of faculties can be discovered. “But, there is nothing outside of philosophy”: An Interview with Shaj Mohan SHAJ MOHAN with RACHEL ADAMS 24 February 2021 PHILOSOPHY POLITICS Shaj Mohan; Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons In this interview Shaj Mohan discusses with Rachel Adams the possibilities for philosophy beyond metaphysics and of politics without the rhetoric of crisis. It proceeds by re-claiming reason as something endowed with polynomia so that a new theory of faculties can be discovered. Politics needs a new beginning in philosophy which must prepare for anastasis through a new interpretation of architectonic. The conversation ranges from the philosophical concepts of the obscure, comprehending law and stasis to climate crisis, technological expansionism, revolution and democracy of the world. This interview is being published simultaneously with the special issue of the journal Episteme on the philosophical impact of the writings of Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan. RACHEL ADAMS: Since Kant (and we will be engaging and disengaging here quite precisely with a privileged canon of Western thinking), the role of the philosopher is to take stock of what we are today and to reflect on our present conditions. You are at the cutting edge of philosophical thought and, moreover, a philosopher of the ‘subaltern’ continent, which we might think of as including South Africa. We had approached you to think with us about what your re-conception of “the principle of reason” means and must entail. Can you speak to us about what you designate through “principle of reason”, and how you see it relating to the theme of the conference here on “Radical Reason”? (1) SHAJ MOHAN : Principle of reason or the principle obtained its classical form through Leibniz. As Heidegger, Michel Serres and others have observed, the principle is not always stated in an axiomatic fashion or in the form of a law. Instead, it appears in at least three forms. First, as the most fundamental question “ Why there is something? ”. Second, as the ethical imperative “ reason must be given ” for every change we make in this world. In the third form it is a principle— “ everything has reason ”. The third form is complicated, it does not say everything is reason, rather everything has reason. Then, there are the misconceptions about reason and the principle. The worst of these involves identifying reason with causality. But we know that either we receive each causal order with an implicit reason for it or we feel compelled to give it its reason. As Hegel responded to Leibniz’s critics, reason grounds causality. Today the ‘correlationism’ advocated by the theologians of machine learning and deep learning goes further and says that ‘there is no need for reason and causality, only the correlations discovered by machines will be sufficient as knowledge.’ The second is confusing reason with explanations. Reason is not equal to explanation because we do weigh one explanation against another. Sometimes we set certain experimental results as the reason for this kind of weighing, as we do in physics. A structure of explanation itself needs to be examined and reasons must be given for it. This was something that even Foucault agreed on in his own way. The third way is not just a misconception but also a method. It rejects the principle on the basis of the above-mentioned misconceptions while citing the authority of certain other laws which remain in acceptance without something like a critique for them. To give one example, Isabelle Stengers’ rejection of the principle follows from her interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. (2) It is too complicated to go into here. From the classical formulations mentioned earlier, we can already see that reason has several principles enjoined in a dynamic articulation which affects the way we state these very principles. In other words, reason cannot be restricted to a set of laws. Reason enjoys polynomia , or the power to be home to many laws and principles; that is, no statement of the principle is reducible to the others. Dangers and errors follow from the attempts to functionally isolate reason to one or two laws. For now, let me list a new group of these principles while respecting the polynomia of reason. To follow the Kantian image of the task of the philosopher, each philosopher finds in the familiar metaphysics ruins and then one must raise it according to a new comprehending law. This new comprehending law, if it does not have the games of political orientation of the east-west kind as its internal milieu, will then raise a thought which might have components that resemble metaphysics without being metaphysics. Reason asserts that there is a community of all that is and all that is not. That is, all that is, all that can be, all that will be, and all that will never be are in a community. Reason reveals that there are relations between everything there is, and also between everything there is and there is not. These relations in the classical form were often expressed as ratios —the ratios between things, between words and things, between thoughts and objects of thought, and god and creatures. Reason as drive is nothing but our impulse to find our relation to all things, which also implies the relations amongst things, and then the relation with nothing . This can be seen in the earliest statements that are classified as philosophical and in as recent as Heidegger’s meditations on the nothing, especially the text “What Is Metaphysics?”. Reason as drive is experienced as the responsibility towards everything where we are compelled to weigh our possible and actual actions against all things. That is, we are compelled to give the ratio between our existence and the existence of everything. To give an example, we cannot merely opt for lithium batteries without being concerned about the impact of mining. The responsibility of reason is essential to engage with climatic crises and the crises of democratic institutions of the world. Then, reason has not disappeared from our world since the so called theoretical breakthroughs of the 1960s. Instead, we, today, experience reason with maximum intimacy in our shared concern about climatic, demographic and democratic, and technological crises. In this context your title “radical reason” seems important. To me, it asserts that reason is without a radix. It opposes every pretence to radix. Radical reason is the project which disrupts the attempts to install every radix which is in violation of the polynomia of reason . Leibniz’ Rechenmachine; Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons RA: The Kantian critique of reason rejects reason for reason’s sake, and the unbounded rationalization of our conditions of life. Here, critique plays its role in articulating the legitimate bounds of reason: Foucault speaks of critique – in Kantian terms – as the court of reason. You speak in your work about forms and epochs of critique, and of the crises that face the current modalities of critique we have at our disposal. Why are there many kinds of critiques? SM : Critique is named after the Kantian project of the examination of reason performed by reason itself. Kant himself spoke of it in juridical terms. If we take the general principles from there, for this occasion, critique involves conceiving a region in the form of a system. Kant called the art of construction of systems “architectonic”. An architectonic can make systems for abstract objects, material objects, art, culture, a motor car, a game, and politics. But in all these cases such a system, which is assumed by critique, has certain essential features: A system is made up of variables and parameters which are found in specific relations. The system gives rise to regularities which can be identified and then be given laws. These laws of the system allow us to detect certain events as irregularities in it. Further the system is characterised by those parameters which are invariant within that particular system. This kind of a description of a system also tells us which kinds of events are possible and which kinds are impossible within the system. It also allows us to define the limits of tolerance for the system under consideration. In material systems we define what we consider as internal to the system and what we consider external to it. In philosophical systems there is no such outside or exogenous variable. This may be controversial but: there is nothing outside of philosophy . This leads to the Kantian sense of critique which is that the system of the Kantian type sets the limits on possible events on the basis of the primary or first order conditions of this very system. In the commonplace form critique shows us the internal limits for thought on the basis of the conditions of possibility. Kant’s famous example is that for flight to be possible there should not be a vacuum. From this we can also see that the same system can be organised according to more than one critique. In the previous centuries this possibility was treated as a matter of perspectives. But the reasons for this possibility were not explored sufficiently. This is one of the answers to the question about “the many ways to critique”. And today, we do not think of system in Kantian terms which was to find a unifying concept for a manifold, or for phenomena. But there is another way to architectonic or the art of systems, which I call anastasis . Kantian critique is only a “special case” of critique, to use an idiom which entered in thought from outside the Kantian milieu. As we know some of the invariants of Kant’s critique were soon found to be variables. That is, Kant’s presupposition of Euclidean geometry and the assertion of three dimensionality of space were set aside by Riemannian geometry. But the politics of feelings as opposed to reason is already here. Both what we call left and right share it. What remains to be done is to find a new norm for feelings and then technologies to ensure that a regularity of feelings is established according to this new norm to institute “homo sentimentalis” 7 as Kundera prophesied. We are not far from there. With a general theory of critique and of architectonic, when we look back at philosophy, we can find critique everywhere, including in Aristotle. On the basis of this general theory, critique is older than Kantian critique. Not just that, critique is something we all do at all times. For example, before cooking a meal we examine the conditions of cooking. These conditions exist outside the kitchen which includes the prices of and our political preferences for the conditions of cooking. The only invariant in this example is hunger. So, critique should not be treated as the activity of specialists. Instead, we are all responsible for our critiques. RA: What are the limitations, as you see them, of our current faculties of critique? You speak about the limits of critique. What does it mean to be at the limit of critique, and particularly for the subaltern continent whose crises include these modes of reasoning inherited from the Western thought of which Kant is a part? How is what you call “criticalisation” different from critique? SM : This is an interesting thought, is it not? Because critique is the very philosophical exercise in determining the limits of systems and you are asking about the limits to critique itself. Critique assumes a certain ethos of giving each other a sufficiently long interval between actions. If something new is happening then we are not supposed to respond to it with a reflex action. Instead, we are expected to take a sufficient duration and bring the new happening into the system of the critique, and then act according to the limits set by the critique. For example, if there is a new technology or a change in existing technologies, according to the ethos of critique we must take a distance, give ourselves an interval, and then bring the changes under the critique. Then, according to our findings we will propose a new regularity for the technical change which is consistent with the critique. This interval is the fundamental condition of critique as can be seen in Kant’s political writings. (3) We could expect to gain such intervals between changes, legislations, and setting up of norms until the middle of the last century. However, since the 1980s we have been seeing that the intervals are becoming shorter and critique is becoming rarer. This could be the reason why the greatest exponent of the critique since Kant had set his critiques in the past rather than the present. I am thinking about Foucault of course. We have now observed a limit of critique. Now, should the determinations of the limits of critique be called a meta-critique? It cannot be called that, because the interval is not given to even this very act of determining the limits of critique. Image Credit: Bloomsbury Philosophy What I, together with Divya Dwivedi, began calling criticalisation from 2007 refers to another limit of critique. We found that when any system, whether philosophical or political, is led to the limits of each of its components and relations, it will not be able to return to the very relations which constituted it. This is usually experienced as crisis. But criticalisation is more than that. In criticalisation the components function at their limits and undergo changes which make them incapable of returning to the familiar relations which were described by critique. To give an easy example, the worn-out parts of a combustion engine cannot be put back together. We can buy another engine but we cannot buy another world. This is really the problematic which occupies the philosopher today— what can be the critique of the irreplaceable? Today we see these two limits of critique. On the one hand the interval which founds critique is rarer. On the other hand, the familiar systems of politics, scientific enterprises, educational institutions and so on are being criticalised. Criticalised in such a way that we can only nostalgically observe the familiar components that are unable to return to familiar relations. At the same time we have new kinds of components all around us which have new kinds of componential laws. These “little laws” vary at rates which are not conducive to critique. We are now observing critique and its epochs with nostalgia. For those who can afford it critique might linger as a luxury, as do mechanical wrist watches and four wheel drive systems with manual transmission. RA: Perhaps more practically too, what can a critique of the irreplaceable do? This condition under which critique has to perform is, I agree, distinct to the modern world-space, and hence, for example, Foucault’s focus on a critique of the past. But, critically, the need for it, the ethos of critique, is now heightened. More than ever, we need practices by which we can conceive of and constitute new possibilities that prompt us out of the stasis of now. Has critique no role here? It seems that Foucault’s concentration on historical critique was not necessarily a reflection on his own limitations of thought, but the limitations of critique itself as fundamentally historicised, such that if anastasis calls for a radical break in the historical system of the world, then critique is not fit for purpose, rooted in the very forms of reason of the world that have reached their limit. Thus, as you have said, critique becomes just a form of nostalgia. Then, I think this question of what we take with us from the criticalised world into that which is new becomes really important to think with. What is your difference with Kant and Foucault here? Do you see a return to the metaphysics which Foucault – following Nietzsche – so emphatically rejects for encompassing a teleology of humankind which produced subjects of difference? Then, reason has not disappeared from our world since the so called theoretical breakthroughs of the 1960s. Instead, we, today, experience reason with maximum intimacy in our shared concern about climatic, demographic and democratic, and technological crises. SM : I will respond to your question about metaphysics and through it the other questions will be addressed. We cannot return to metaphysics. No returns are possible in the world we experience. However, most laws of physics are time invariant: that is, these laws work perfectly well, whether we are going back or forward in time. Therefore, they are indifferent to these temporal directions. What we call metaphysics has two component principles. The first is something like a semiotic milieu, which is not essential to metaphysics. That is, one may find different regularities within the same semiotic milieu or one may find oneself in a relation which comprehends several milieus. A metaphysician may incorporate the work of another metaphysician without any regard to the milieu of the other. The second principle is that metaphysics is abstract: that is, it conducts itself, the way mathematics does, with that which is irrespective of any object or milieu in particular. This is the reason for the profound classificatory schemas in scholastic philosophy where the goal was to find the degree of reality possessed by concepts. It is not that lesser or greater objective reality could make a concept invalid. But rather that all kinds and degrees of reality are valid. The emphasis on milieu came into philosophy from Hegel onwards. Heidegger gave it the most acute form which he gained through an interpretation of the biology of Jakob von Uexküll. Uexküll developed what we would call the bio-semiotics of animals. His biosemiotics corresponds to the internal milieu of animals; that is, an animal perceives what is given to it by the internal milieu. This can be called the transcendental horizon of animals. Uexküll provides an example of a flower in a meadow which appears as an object to be plucked for a girl, to be drilled into for an insect, and to be chewed for a cow. (4) That is, the sense of objects is revealed according to the functional isolations pre-given according to the internal milieu of the organism. Image credit: Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, University of Minnesota Press, 2010. When we read early Heidegger where he speaks about “being in the world” each of those terms—the world, being, being-in—will have to be examined with a view towards the concept of the human animal there, which he inherited from a certain kind of biology. All those who are called major philosophers who followed Heidegger inherited this concept of “internal milieu” as a certainty. RA: And therefore, self-imposed limitation. SM : Of course it is! But what is this milieu? It is what he inherited and modified as “the occidental”. Therefore, in Heideggerian terms « the history of metaphysics is the history of the west ». Both Heidegger and Derrida, and Foucault in his own style, euphemistically spoke of this internal milieu as “the tradition”. Now, what is interesting is that from Descartes to Kant there is no emphasis on a tradition. In fact, Heidegger would say in his Kant lectures that Kant was unfamiliar with the tradition. Is it not intriguing that Foucault the genealogist would not explore the conditions under which the “occident” was constructed in philosophy, and its effects? Your question on what comes after metaphysics has to go through this enquiry into the makings of the “occident”. In the course of this inquiry, I am waiting for two publications. Robert Bernasconi’s unpublished work on the construction of the west in philosophy in the 19th century is going to be essential to properly address this question. The other is Patrice Maniglier’s research on the ethnology of 20th century philosophy. On the second principle, which is that metaphysics has at least as much formality as mathematics , it is better to cite Heidegger here. The formal principles of philosophy as found by Heidegger cannot be rejected on the basis of his involvement with ‘milieu’ and ‘tradition’. As we know, Heidegger determined metaphysics in such a way that he could announce its end. If I play with it, then metaphysics of Heidegger’s conception is that style of thinking which privileges a component law of its system which then determines the whole system as its comprehending law. That is, in each instance metaphysics produces a stasis out of itself when it determines a being as Being . Each of these instances of the “determination of being” are often tremendous breakthroughs in thought. This fact should not be forgotten. In his posthumous work, Contributions to Philosophy , Heidegger spoke of “the other beginning” which will be the work of “the ones to come.” (5) Heidegger emphasises that this other beginning can neither be a counter force to “the west”, nor an imitation of it. Rather, it must be aware of the entrapments of milieus and the formal principles of metaphysics such that it gathers the formal organs of metaphysics as if it were a ruin. To follow the Kantian image of the task of the philosopher, (6) each philosopher finds in the familiar metaphysics ruins and then one must raise it according to a new comprehending law. This new comprehending law, if it does not have the games of political orientation of the east-west kind as its internal milieu, will then raise a thought which might have components that resemble metaphysics without being metaphysics. RA: What, then, do you see the relationship being between critique, criticalisation and crisis? If our current global conditions are in crisis, what do you decipher the nature of this crisis to be? Particularly in resisting and transcending racial and social inequality (whether local or global)? SM : We experience crisis as a situation where we don’t know what to do, because each action can potentially lead us to something worse than before. At the same time crisis, as in the case of a man who is in critical care in the hospital, has a way out. Crisis is managed through the additions and subtractions of components on the one hand and through the prescription of new regularities on the other. In a way this is how we have been trying to handle the world in recent years; we fire a few teachers in the universities and raise money from entrepreneurial programs; we bring austerity measures and lower taxes for the rich; we drop bombs with drones and maintain kill lists; reduce a few motor cars in the cities while burning more coal for electricity. In this sense we have been in crisis for a long time now. We have been even calling it a permanent crisis. How come we never found the adequate exchanges, transplants, and new regularities to find a way towards a recovery process? It is because we are not in crisis. Crisis is an inadequate designation for where we are today. Today we are being criticalised. The familiar components of a universal bourgeois life promised on the basis of the market are worn out. The institutions which guaranteed the promise of this universal bourgeois life—the university, the parliament, family, employment in a regular milieu, educational skills which could last for decades—are today insufficient. We act today with the confusions of a species that has found itself in a new milieu for which it does not have the adequate senses, or faculties. That is, we are unable to perceive in our new external milieu due to the old faculties which we still carry with us. It is the same as saying that we do not know what is happening to us. Anastasis is coming over stasis. Anastasis implies that we do not repeat the instruments and processes of metaphysics. What is meant by Anastasis is both a relation to metaphysics conceived as a ruin and at the same time it is a political thought. At the level of politics we know that we are being criticalised in so far as the older arrangements of the world are concerned. In the new arrangements of the world we are in stasis. We don’t have enough time to take up this question here and this lack of time partially answers the question. Since I have noted the nature of this criticalisation I should mention the components of our new milieu. First, all the essential economic and technical decisions are being made globally, which are then implemented using the sovereignty argument of whatever remains of nation states. Rather, nation states are merely the enforcers of a global order of economics and technology. Second, technology is somehow accepted as techno-theology which acts from outside the order of politics, as something that is to merely be received. This had begun through the constituting of the people across the world, I must say unequally, as data colonies. When I first wrote about these data colonisations in 2010 we did not have sufficient automatisation in all domains. Automation when combined with automated transportation, real-time monitoring of individuals, and automated residences will make a new demand on humanity. That this species should be distanced from reason, which always displaces every radix, towards “feelings” which can be regulated to exist within the new automated social system. I do not want to mention anything or anyone in particular. But the politics of feelings as opposed to reason is already here. Both what we call left and right share it. What remains to be done is to find a new norm for feelings and then technologies to ensure that a regularity of feelings is established according to this new norm to institute “homo sentimentalis” as Kundera prophesied. (7) We are not far from there. RA: Would you think with me on whether knowledge – or more precisely the present will to knowledge – is itself in crisis? I also think there are questions here in terms of the dogmatism of science which turns around the dogma of knowability, transparency and clarity, and which reaffirm humanistic precedence over the world in problematic ways. Your work stresses “the obscure” as a class of ideas. The obscure appears as a philosophical object in your joint text with Jean-Luc Nancy which was called “Our Mysterious Being.” (8) What could be the relation between transparency, which – given its privileged place within Western discourse and its fulfilment through the interconnection of digital technologies – could be understood as a comprehending law, and the obscure? I also wonder if we can think about the ethics of the obscure, and the not-quite-knowable? Within these spaces – which in some ways may be outside of the clutches of normative and traditional reason – might we find the practices of freedom which our philosophical thought seeks – perhaps rather ironically – to make intelligible? SM : Your work on transparency interests me. You find that transparency is extracted from those without the power to live in secrecy. We know that we will never know anything of the private lives of the techno-industrialists of our world while they preach to us about the virtues of leading our lives like an open book. Transparency as what you call continuous “self-disclosure” (9) is culture, ethics, politics, “security” and economics at the same time. The extraction of transparency from the people is unquestionable today. Between secrecy and transparency there is a range. This gradation has a proportionate articulation: As transparency decreases power increases. The people are more transparent today than the rulers and the techno-capitalists. If we take a principle of equivalence from the proportionate articulation, the techno-capitalists are our rulers. Rachel Adams; Image Credit: received Clarity, which belongs to the philosophical classification of those ideas which are known in intuition with all their differences, has an analogous relation to transparency. If X is a secret then, in principle, it can be decrypted and revealed. There is certainly an important political project being followed in this domain of secrecy, transparency, whistleblowing, encrypted communications by activists, and legislations seeking more privacy. However, the class of ideas marked as confused and obscure cannot be brought into the proportional articulation that I mentioned earlier, for obvious reasons. A confused idea in encryption and decryption will remain just that, confused. The same goes for the obscure. We know that confusions can be created to great effectivity in politics. A kind of confusion is shown to be equivalent to “divine violence” by Walter Benjamin in his text on violence. That is, in a situation where the political distinctions have become unclear or confused the forces have the chance for constituting something new. In fact, this makes the confused a necessary component of revolutionary theories. But the obscure is something else. It is that idea which we know to be distinct. It is distinct, and yet it does not give itself in our intuition. Rather, it is given as the obscure. There are several examples from history where obscure classes of ideas can be found, including time, being, reason, love, freedom and so on. It is not that the obscure appears only in philosophy. It appears eminently in art and even in the sciences. The obscure, much more than the confused, is the object of the drive of reason. Rather, reason is driven to it. I think that apart from continuing to engage in the proportional articulation that I mentioned earlier we should be inventing political praxis along the confused and the obscure. Immanuel Kant; Image Credit: Wikimedia commons The text you mention makes an argument through which an obscure experience, which is a mundane experience, can be had. I say that it is an experience in order to make the distance from Kant. For Kant, the obscure is that which is not an object of consciousness. Since we don’t have much time I can sum it up as follows. We experience ourselves anticipating events in our lives, which often go on imperceptibly. For example, you are anticipating the end of this sentence while I am speaking and therefore you are listening. This can lead to satisfactions, surprises, and disappointments. But the end of the world, the total vanishing of the world, is never in our anticipation. We do not have the faculty for it. Instead, the impossibility of anticipating such a thing according to reason gives us this experience of the certainty of the persistence of the world as the most intimate experience. The sharing of this experience is really the community of the forsaken, which we all are. That is, what we share as the most mundane is the experience whose sense has forsaken us. This obscure experience should be an experience of responsibility. That is, this commonplace and intimate experience, and the community of the principle that we discussed earlier, presuppose each other. They are the very sense of our belonging to each other and what we call the world. Therefore, this experience needs sheltering from technological exuberance and from ethno-nationalisms. RA: There is an ethical imperative – which we can speak about – of imagining a post-COVID world, one where we learn what it means to live with and share our planet with other forms of life and living. In some senses, we are more profoundly situated together as a “community of the forsaken” now and in the midst of the coronavirus, where death and disease advance more intimately into general consciousness, but remain, as you might put it, obscure. In your work, you use the 18th century term “faculties” in a different sense today. What are the faculties of thought by which we can begin to imagine and construct new worlds? SM : Faculty is that with which we perceive and act, and inhabit the delays between the two. It is the set of powers through which we make things into significant or insignificant wholes. If “faculty” is treated as individual powers, then it leads to a community which is incapable of acting together. Instead, all theories of faculty presuppose the community of the faculty. That is, the Kantian subject with its faculties is all of us. Then, there are specific faculties. Kant attended to this specific sense of faculties in a text called « The conflict of faculties ». That is, what we call departments are faculties. Those we call professors are faculties or powers. When I use the term faculties it does not presuppose a universal subject. The older universal subject was infiltrated by a milieu of racialisation and it was often complicit in racialisations and slavery. That is, this universal subject was the universal of some men, and not everyone. Further, following the challenges to Kant’s philosophy from the sciences, the pursuit of a theory of faculties was suppressed even as it was often assumed in the subsequent systems. For example, the analysis of text presupposes “reading” as a faculty. Today, it is necessary that we conceive a new set of instruments or faculties of thought which would be sufficient to think this world. In this world we cannot entertain the games of privileged faculties, universal subjects of privileged men, and of truth. Today we see these two limits of critique. On the one hand the interval which founds critique is rarer. On the other hand, the familiar systems of politics, scientific enterprises, educational institutions and so on are being criticalised. Criticalised in such a way that we can only nostalgically observe the familiar components that are unable to return to familiar relations. At the same time we have new kinds of components all around us which have new kinds of componential laws. These “little laws” vary at rates which are not conducive to critique. Instead, we need to conceive faculties without referring them to the identity of the subject and to identity itself. This last part about the law of identity is too complicated. But it is essential to make sure that we do not repeat the formal organisation of thoughts and objects of metaphysics. The elements of such a new thought of faculties are homology, analogy, functions, and polynomia. Homology shows us the constructibility in each and every thing. For example, it is easy to conceive of this very gathering in which you and I are speaking to each other as the first meeting of a political movement. Or to give a biological example, the wings of bats, the flippers of whales, and our forearms are homologous. That is, these distinct structures with distinct functions have a common origin. Analogy is the power which allows us to perceive the same function being performed by different structures, or material arrangements. When we look at cars with combustion engine and electric cars, they appear the same. But they are nomologically distinct while remaining analogous when we consider some of their functions. The use of these two terms—homology and analogy—away from their usual deployments presupposes a thought of functions. If we confine function to mathematics it tells us that P is a function of Q. We can give it a practical interpretation and say that in order to get P we need to have Q. In order to obtain P we need to do Q. As we found with analogy, functions do not require a particular arrangement. The same function can be performed by various arrangements. Therefore, the way we think of functions cannot be formally stated in the same mathematical form. Instead, it will have to be re-formalised. The variability of functions is between these two at a minimum, though it usually has a far greater range. The same function can be performed by multiple arrangements. The same arrangement can perform multiple functions. For example, the knife can perform many function in a kitchen including cutting, peeling, crushing, opening bottles and so on. This property inherent in all things and all functions is called polynomia. Polynomia designates the power in things, collectivities, people, and abstract objects to legislate themselves in multiple ways. Since these powers emphasise variations and exchanges of functions, they do not have a principle of subjective or objective identity underlying them. These are faculties of disorientation as opposed to the Kantian faculties which sought the proper orientation of man. Without a revolution in faculties, which would be capable of interpreting and constructing the world anew, all the other talk about revolution is at best tragic. RA: What is the function of your idea of stasis and anastasis at this juncture? SM : Stasis has several referents. One of these is as a determination of evil. As we know there are several conceptions of evil. For the ancient people of the Asian Mediterranean and its surrounding regions, Kakon was evil, which roughly meant disgusting. It is still used in French and German with slight variations. It exists in languages of the Dravidian family as a term for vomiting. With Aristotle evil was conceived as privation. At the same time in Greece stasis designated a certain political problem. Distinct powers together constituted the city state—the war lords, the politicians, judges, philosophers. These were powers which had their own componential laws, while they were comprehended in an order by a set of laws that were not reducible to any of the component laws. We can call comprehending law that law which is not reducible to the component laws and therefore it cannot be mastered. Stasis takes place when one of the componential laws seeks to legislate over or dominate all the other componential laws. It can take place as either the competition among all the components or as one dominating and destroying all the other components. Of course, the easy examples are totalitarianisms, which are always destructive. I must note that stasis came to determine evil later in philosophy. For example, it is evil understood as blockage. So a stone blocking the flow of water in a canal would be stasis, or evil, for Augustine. St. Augustin dans son cabinet de travail 2, Sandro Botticelli; Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons Anastasis is coming over stasis . Anastasis implies that we do not repeat the instruments and processes of metaphysics. What is meant by Anastasis is both a relation to metaphysics conceived as a ruin and at the same time it is a political thought. At the level of politics we know that we are being criticalised in so far as the older arrangements of the world are concerned. In the new arrangements of the world we are in stasis. The components of technology, economy, populist mass organisations, and the military are each competing to be the comprehending law of the world. We can see that technological corporations are more successful in projecting the componential laws of their domain as the comprehending law of the whole world. Anastasis at the level of politics will be the work of the new comprehending law which can gather the new and old components of this world in such a way that we come over our present stasis . RA: You have spoken about a “Democracy of the World”, which seems ever more urgent following the events of 2020. As I understand it, one of the critical points of departure here is the multitude of global crises, and the limitations of parochial thinking to address these crises. Can you speak to us about the urgency of this idea now? How is “a democracy of the world” different from “world democracy”? And, how can we think across disciplines, and think with non-experts and think with those whose thought is not formalized within the academy? How can we democratize the conversations that are needed to produce the moment of anastasis? SM : A world democracy will be a version of a national democracy, which we now know to be a terrible model. A democracy of the world will need another beginning. To philosophise is to experience the world as ruins which seek anastasis. It is not too different with politics; a political commitment is born out of the experience that we cannot go on in a particular way. Anastasis implies that we do not seek solutions on the basis of idyllic a priori . This is essential. The idylls of the past never existed. This is the first thing to note. Idylls are positions of privilege. These are raised, for example, by the critics of colonialism that there were better days before colonialism. In Agamben we find a certain idyll of the aesthetician and scholar in the past. Such idyllic experiences were possible for only a few and were sustained through extreme oppressions. For example, the idylls of the Sanskrit speaking art enthusiast in the pre-colonial subcontinent were made possible by the oldest and worst form of racial oppression, the caste order. When I use the term faculties it does not presuppose a universal subject. The older universal subject was infiltrated by a milieu of racialisation and it was often complicit in racialisations and slavery. That is, this universal subject was the universal of some men, and not everyone. Instead, anastasis would involve looking at the elements, knowledge, instruments, and institutions of the world with new faculties. The faculties should reveal the elements of the world as those which do not conform to any principle of identity. But as things and events which can be many other things and events. Then we will be able, as a democracy of the world, to think together and experiment together with the new comprehending law that can raise up the world again, which will have to be an unfamiliar world. When we do this, we should be guarding the community of reason founded on the obscure experience. NOTES 1. This conversation took place on the 10th December 2020 as part of the Radical Reason Conference organised by the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa. Prompted by the events of 2020 that saw life, science and race raised to new profiles, the ongoing project of Radical Reason seeks to explore – on the horizon of the emergence of a not yet fully determinable world – radical thought, science, ethics, institutional arrangements, and other shared systems of valuation and understanding, that are required to give depth and meaning to the full articulation of the questions that we need to be asking now to engender the arrival of a just and equal world to come. For more information on the Radical Reason conference, see: http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/events/events/sfsa-2020 The transcript was edited and references have been added for publication. 2. See Isabelle Stengers, Power and Invention: Situating Science , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 3. For the interpretation of the interval in Kant alluded to here, see Shaj Mohan, “On the Relation Between the Obscure, the Cryptic and the Public”, Public Sphere from Outside the West , Bloomsbury Academic (UK), 2015. 4. Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans , Trans. Joseph D. O’Neil, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 5. See Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy , Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. 6. Reference to the Dialectic of Critique of Pure Reason . 7. Milan Kundera , Immortality , Faber and Faber, 2000. 8. Jean-Luc Nancy and Shaj Mohan, “Our Mysterious Being”, Philosophical Salon , 2020. 9. Rachel Adams, Transparency: New Trajectories in Law , New York: Routledge, 2020 Related Articles Demosophia JEAN-LUC NANCY Read Article Through the Great Isolation: Sans-colonial DIVYA DWIVEDI Read Article

En juillet 2021, Jean-Luc Nancy, Divya Dwivedi et Shaj Mohan ont publié trois textes sur l'avenir de la philosophie. Ces textes portaient sur les thèmes de la "fin de la philosophie", de "l'autre début de la philosophie" et de l'anastasis de la philosophie. La famille bâtarde de la déconstruction SHAJ MOHAN 1 September 2022 PHILOSOPHY METAPHYSICS Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) , Van Gogh, 1888 ; Image Credit : Wikimedia commons En juillet 2021, Jean-Luc Nancy, Divya Dwivedi et Shaj Mohan ont publié trois textes sur l'avenir de la philosophie. Ces textes portaient sur les thèmes de la "fin de la philosophie", de "l'autre début de la philosophie" et de l'anastasis de la philosophie. Le 23 novembre 2021, Divya Dwivedi, Shaj Mohan et Maël Montëvil ont tenu un séminaire public à l'École Normale Supérieure, suivi d'une série de séminaires privés. Il s'agit du texte complet du séminaire du 23 novembre auquel des notes, des références et des détails bibliographiques ont été ajoutés pour la publication. Le texte examine la critique et la déconstruction à partir de diverses formalités et problématiques telles que la présence, la fermeture et l'identité. La déconstruction n'était pas un simple interlude dans l'histoire de la philosophie mais une gestation pour un autre commencement radical. Le texte révèle que sous la déconstruction la raison bâtarde avait été à l'œuvre préparant l'anastasis de la philosophie. Pour Hélène Nancy Un bon après-midi à tout le monde. Je dédie ce moment, cette conférence, à Hélène Nancy. Nous initions ici l'ouverture d'un projet, soit la mise en place des premiers refrains d'une chanson. Ce projet, intitulé « l'anastasis de la philosophie », est longtemps apparu comme nécessaire et essentiel à beaucoup d'entre nous. Pour ces premiers instants, nous pouvons définir ce projet comme la préparation à recevoir ce qui, dans la déconstruction, attendait d’entrer en scène ; autrement dit, ce qui était attendu par la spécifique famille de la déconstruction . La famille de la déconstruction est née avec la déconstruction de la famille , ce qui signifie également la déconstruction de toutes les communautés héritées, y compris tous les regroupements de personnes sur base des races, des ethnies, des langues, des nationalités etc. C'est-à-dire que, ce que la déconstruction s’est avérée être — toutes les déconstructions multiples — n'était pas la fin de la philosophie mais, plutôt, la création des conditions d'une politique et d'une philosophie qui ne devait pas être une simple communauté héritée, en ce qu’il s’agissait plutôt d’une communauté bâtardisée . Ainsi, tout comme la déconstruction n'était pas la clôture de la philosophie, elle n'était pas non plus la suspension de la pensée d'une clôture de la philosophie. Bien au contraire, la déconstruction était une sorte d'étirement de la délibération, l'étirement d'un arc qui ouvrait l'heure de la critique. Et l’ anastasis, soit le dépassement de la stase, a trouvé Kairos à cette heure de la critique. En ce sens, il y a une signification particulière à que cet auditorium soit nommé d'après Évariste Galois. (1) Maël Montévil est la personne la plus appropriée pour en discuter. Il y a trois ans, Jean-Luc Nancy, Bernard Stiegler, Divya Dwivedi et moi-même avions prévu une conférence pour questionner sur le sens du « mal ». Elle devait avoir lieu au Collège de France l'année dernière. Bien sûr la pandémie a provoqué une première interruption, comme si le mal ne voulait pas d'une telle confrontation, et la conférence a dû être reportée, mais un événement a eu lieu en ligne, dont les actes paraissent déjà sous la forme d'un livre intitulé Virality of Evil . (2) Dans les textes que beaucoup d'entre nous ont écrits pendant la pandémie, au milieu de polémiques inutiles, nous avions insisté sur la nécessité de ce projet. (3) Dans un certain sens, et dans un sens particulier de la détermination de ce qu’est la pensée, avant que nous, les animaux qui philosophent , ne nous mîmes à penser, le projet avait déjà commencé. L'anticipation avancée n'étant pas la mise en mouvement d'une machine, elle est, plutôt, la constitution d'un système d'anticipation, sans planification quelconque, qui entame l’énonciation philosophique. (4) Il s’agit encore, là, d’un ordre rationnel au sens où Thomas d'Aquin dirait qu'un monde éternel pourrait découler de l'essence de Dieu sans contradiction aucune. En un autre sens, la naissance de l'anastasis de la philosophie au sein de la famille de la déconstruction a été mise en place par bien de noms propres, a minima : Husserl, Wittgenstein, Gödel, Heidegger, Derrida et Nancy. Dans la concrétisation de sa promulgation, elle était et est destinée à purifier l'air de ce qui a été appelé la philosophie de l'auto-école par Jean-Luc Nancy et la philosophie de la maternelle par Bernard Stiegler. Il y avait déjà les autres malaises de la philosophie que nous avions identifiés, et un soir Bernard [Stiegler] avait déclaré « il faut faire la guerre, il n'y a pas d'autre moyen ». (5) L'éruption de la gigantomachie est nécessaire pour que la philosophie se clarifie tel métal. Cependant, la guerre à laquelle Bernard [Stiegler] pensait devait être menée contre une culture de la pensée fade et appauvrie laquelle assure, par la seule force, les érections insipides de propositions insensées. Cette culture philosophique appuie son inventivité sur, entre autres, l'oubli des textes et des problèmes philosophiques ; c'est-à-dire que si l'on oublie Kant, il est possible de profiter à nouveau des antinomies de la raison en guise de nouveautés. Autrement dit, une guerre doit être menée contre une culture philosophique qui a été privée de toute philosophie et qui a imité les petits fascismes que l'on retrouve partout aujourd'hui. Mais ensuite, en août dernier [2020], nous avons perdu Bernard [Stiegler]. Très vite, Jean-Luc [Nancy] prit le relai et réalisa un bouquet intime d'essais, écrits par des amis, en mémoire de Bernard Stiegler. (6) En août [2021] Jean-Luc [Nancy] nous a quittés. Faute de quoi, sur ce genre de scène, il y aurait eu, au moins, deux autres figures. Mais comme vous le savez, l'étreinte philosophique ne cesse d'arriver, et ils sont là, au milieu de nous. Mais nous, la famille bâtarde de la déconstruction , nous sommes en guerre pour cette raison bâtarde, laquelle a généré toutes les philosophies que nous connaissons depuis tout ce temps. Comme nous allons le montrer, à « l'origine » de tous les systèmes de pensée se trouve la raison bâtarde. Le 14 juillet dernier, Jean-Luc Nancy a publié un texte, qui deviendra son texte ultime, dans la revue Philosophy World Democracy qu'il a lui-même fondée avec beaucoup d'entre nous après avoir évalué l'état critique de la philosophie. Le texte était une suspension de l'essai de Heidegger « La fin de la philosophie et la tâche de la pensée ». Nancy y posait un défi « pourquoi pas, en finir, puisque nous avons apporté la preuve (que personne n'a demandée) d'une inanité superbe, majestueuse et abondante ? ». (7) Divya Dwivedi et moi-même avons publié nos textes respectifs le lendemain. (8) Ainsi s’ouvra une série de textes, tous faisant allusion à et donnant une réinterprétation de l'expression heideggerienne « l'autre commencement de la philosophie ». (9) Bientôt, d'autres ont suivi, et suivront, dans cette série de publications et de vernissages. Aujourd'hui, nous allons reprendre quelques-uns de ces thèmes aussi bien que certaines révélations de ces textes, non sans quelques précautions. Ces textes sont maintenant disponibles à la lecture en ligne pour tout le monde. Par conséquent, nous discuterons également des thèmes et des conceptualités qui ont à la fois précédé et débuté avec ces publications. Ce nous, cette légion, peut parfaoit prêter à confusion, et c'est pourquoi nous ne mentionnerons pour l'instant que quelques noms, mais pas tous : Kamran Baradaran d'Iran, Ivana Perica de Croatie, Benedetta Todaro d'Italie-France, Laurence Joseph de France, Reghu Janardhanan de l'Inde, Robert Bernasconi d'Amérique, Zeynep Direk de Turquie, François Warin de France, Sergio Benvenuto d'Italie, Mael Montevil de France, Rachel Adams d'Afrique du Sud, Jérôme Lèbre de France, Daniel J. Smith d'Amérique, Osamu Nishitani du Japon, Emily Apter d'Amérique. Ce que Heidegger entendait par cette expression, « l'autre commencement de la philosophie », est rendu compliqué par la manière dont ses publications posthumes sont apparues tout comme par les contenus qui s'y trouvent. Pour l'instant, on peut relever les implications de cette phrase à la suite de la distinction faite par Dwivedi entre « origine » et « commencement ». (10) Phaedra in agony, Alexandre Cabanel, 1880; Crédite d’image credit: Wikimedia Commons L'origine est un ensemble de conditions qui ont été (fonctionnellement) isolées de ce qu'on peut appeler le « pré-original ». Par conséquent, l’acte, ou la série d'actes, par lesquels la polynomia de la pré-origine et ses pouvoirs homologiques ont été restreints par des isolements fonctionnels et ont ensuite été convertis dans ces régularités que nous identifions comme le phénomène de la métaphysique, et sa politique, pourraient également toucher à leur fin. Par fin, il ne faut pas comprendre la cessation temporelle d'une activité (qui, dans ce cas, peut se poursuivre comme une inanité pourvu qu'elle reste vivable), mais il faut plutôt comprendre la sauvegarde de l'essentiel en tant que gamme. Pour l'instant, il faudrait aussi définir l'essence : l’essence est le rapport entre les possibilités et les impossibilités d'une articulation particulière d'un groupe de choses. (11) L'origine de la métaphysique déterminait son essence. Ensuite, à partir au moins de Kant, l'essence de la métaphysique est devenue visible, c’est pourquoi l'on peut aussi affirmer que la métaphysique demeurait dans un état de stase et ce, depuis longtemps soit avant que Heidegger ne révèle cette même stase . Ainsi commencement et origine sont-ils distincts non seulement au niveau étymologique mais aussi dans les écartements qu'ils nous montrent. Le commencement est la mise en scène inséparable de tout ce qui s'y déroule ; l'étape du commencement s'étend avec les événements mêmes de cette étape. Dans un autre sens technique, c'est l'apparition de nouvelles lois qui comprennent et élèvent les éléments de la stase tout en laissant aux archéologues les ombres des anciennes lois de compréhension. Ce que la philosophie est devenue Commençons par prendre en compte ce qui est arrivé à la philosophie au cours des dernières décennies. Nous pouvons procéder au moyen d’une liste et il sera dès lors facile de s’y retrouver au gré de brèves esquisses. La philosophie est entrée dans une crise de son propre fait lorsqu'elle a mis de côté les problèmes et les objets, tels que l'espace, le temps, la nature, la matière, les facultés, la santé, le mal, le monde, qu’elle avait elle-même crée. Le retrait de la philosophie créa de l’espace pour des espèces de sciences qui continuèrent soit dans une sorte d'ignorance de leurs origines, soit dans l’insouciance de leurs implications. Une telle ignorance un niveau des sciences est bien illustrée par la déclaration de Stephen Hawking quant à la « fin de la philosophie » en ce que ses fins auraient été « atteintes » par la physique et que, sans aucune autre interruption de la part des philosophes, la physique était devenue capable de garantir le sens des autres fins. C'est-à-dire que, du point de vue des sciences, la fin de la philosophie serait arrivée lorsque les fins de la philosophie avaient été accomplies par les sciences. Ces sciences comprennent également les sciences humaines ; autrement dit, lorsque nous avons perdu la leçon tenue dans l'ancienne distinction entre phusikoi et phusiologoi . La philosophie a entamé une détermination ethnique d'elle-même au travers d’un processus compliqué qui est certainement lié au colonialisme et à la traite négrière. Cet héritage a commencé à isoler la plupart des pratiques philosophiques dans une série de théories nationales ou culturelles, à partir de l’indentification de l’ « Occident » et de la philosophie « occidentale ». Ce faisant, toutes les critiques des colonialismes et même des crimes contre l'humanité ont commencé à chercher le coupable dans la philosophie. Aujourd'hui, les isolements nationaux, linguistiques et ethniques se déploient pour masquer l'absence du philosopher dans les courants philosophiques dominants. Si l’on n’aborde pas la persistance des tendances des époques coloniales et raciales de la philosophie dans une grande partie de ce que nous trouvons en tant que philosophies nationales contemporaines, le risque pour la philosophie elle-même s'accélérera. Comme nous l’a indiqué Divya Dwivedi, ce processus risque, au mieux, de confiner la philosophie à cette catégorie, celle de « théorie blanche », au sein du musée de la pensée. Au cours des dernières décennies, ce qu'on appelle la philosophie analytique et ses associés ont mis en place une domination bureaucratique croissante sur la philosophie. Cette domination convient à bien des intérêts, en ce qu'elle ôte à la philosophie ce qui fait d’elle, à proprement parler, philosophie ; c'est-à-dire la politique comme acte philosophique créateur de libertés. La philosophie crée des libertés et ces libertés n'ont de sens que dans les libertés pour lesquelles nous nous battons en politique. La liberté est entre nous, et « entre nous » est la responsabilité de la liberté. La prédominance croissante de la détermination technologique de toutes les activités ôte la place à la politique entendue comme combat pour les libertés, ce qui à son tour fait déjà des entreprises les seigneurs de la pensée ; et penser de moins en moins est le but même de l'automatisation de tous les domaines. La crise de l'éducation que nous appelons désormais les « universités néolibérales » a le plus touché la philosophie. (12) Lorsque l'accent est mis sur l'employabilité et la compétence, le philosophe est la chose la plus inutile au monde. Il y aurait plus à dire à ce sujet, comme vous le savez très bien. Mais il faut maintenant s'occuper de ce par quoi nous avons commencé, ce qui attendait son arrivée dans la déconstruction. Sans titre, Elodie Guignard, 2010; Crédite d’image: ©Elodie Guignard Le sens de la déconstruction Il existe beaucoup de déconstructions, y compris celles que nous trouvons dans les discours de cuisine et de couture. Mais qu’est-ce que cela en philosophie ? De quoi la déconstruction était-elle déconstruction ? La réponse habituelle, qui est fausse, est la présence . La déconstruction était déconstruction de la présence. La présence est l'affirmation de quelque chose en tant cette chose. Au contraire, une chose est ce qu'elle est du fait d'être identique à elle-même au gré d’un concept, et donc elle se présente. Toutes les catégories d'une chose tournent autour de cette notion de présence. Autrement dit, la présence implique que quelque chose qui nous apparaît est seulement cette chose particulière, appartenant à cette espèce, et rien d’autre ; la chose que l'on dit être présente l’est, dans un sens fondamental, sans kinésis ou sans changement ou, encore, sans vitesse. Il pourrait y avoir un part de confusion quant à ce que nous venons de dire en raison de la très récente perte de la distinction, en anglais, entre le particulier et l e spécifique , là où par spécifique l’on entend, souvent, le particulier. Autrement dit, c’est quand nous disons que ceci est un livre et que nous parlons de l’objet livre qui appartient à l’espèce des livres. Si la déconstruction est déconstruction de la présence alors il doit d'abord s’agir de déconstruction de l'identité . Dans toutes ces questions que nous reconnaissons aujourd'hui comme déconstructives — y compris du soi, du sujet, de l'identité entre sujet et objet, de la vérité, etc. — la question fondamentale est celle de l'identité. Ainsi la déconstruction remet-elle en question les identités. La remise en question de l'identité ayant acquis de nombreuses formes ainsi que de nombreuses interprétations différentes, cela a produit des effets théoriques et politiques. La déconstruction a également été populairement connue en tant qu’« anti-essentialisme ». (13) Anti-essentialisme signifie que les ethnies, les gendres, les linguismes ainsi que d'autres typologies de peuples et de cultures sont à comprendre en tant que s’appuyant sur l’identité, ce qui a été révélé par la déconstruction comme étant instable. La forme la plus basique de cela, c’est ce qui a été définit comme la déconstruction des binaires ou des soi-disant oppositions binaires. Dans ce cas, la déconstruction a récupéré quelque chose qui était l'insistance d'une relation dans ce qui se présentait soi-même comme auto-identique ou comme partiel envers soi-même et qui effaçait ainsi ses veines avec/aux ? d'autres fonctions et des autres « choses ». Par exemple, pour avoir du sens, les oppositions habituels de la lumière et de l’obscurité reposent sur une sorte de contamination réciproque de ces deux termes ; plus précisément, les isolements fonctionnels obtenus dans ces termes définissent leur sens. La déconstruction du genre, des typologies raciales, des superstitions jurisprudentielles, y compris celle du « migrant », des superstitions constitutionnelles quant à l'identité nationale, et plus encore, a rapidement suivi. Autrement dit, l'identité est contaminée par ses autres , qui sont supprimés et contenus à l’aide de forces qui se situent en dehors de la logique de l'identité. Ainsi, sous une autre forme, la déconstruction a révélé « l'autre ». L'autre est compris ici comme ce qui s’accroche à un système comme son extérieur. L'autre est ce qui, en donnant aux systèmes d'identité leur propre forme, est considérée comme la contamination à expulser par ces systèmes d'identité. En ce sens, l'autre reste encore un concept général sous la seule pensée de l'analogie, sans facultés suffisantes pour déterminer les pouvoirs homologiques de chaque « autre ». L'autre est, dans le système de justice, la justice elle-même rejoignant ce système en tant que son extérieur, ce qui peut paraître déroutant, mais pas trop difficile. Pour rendre justice, il faut prendre parti, ou devenir partial chaque fois qu'un jugement doit être rendu, tout en s'efforçant de justifier la cause d'une telle partialité. Cependant, la justice elle-même ne se déconstruit pas, car elle implique l'impartialité qui, dans un idiome derridien, « veille » sur le système judiciaire. A un autre niveau, la déconstruction n'interroge pas seulement les identités, mais aussi les systèmes mêmes qui déterminent les identités. Les identités reposent sur la fermeture cohérente d'un système au sein duquel ces identités ont un sens. A cet égard, la déconstruction fonctionnait comme la déconstruction de la fermeture . Le concept de clôture (14) peut s'expliquer, mais pas tout à fait comme nous le verrons avec la philosophie, par la notion algébrique de lois de champ. Un champ est ce qui obéit aux lois du champ telles que celles de fermeture, d’association, de commutation, d'identité, d’inversion et, pour l’algèbre, de distribution. Obéir implique deux choses : premièrement, toutes les relations ou actions doivent être identifiées par les lois, y compris les éléments ; et deuxièmement, les transformations et les actions aboutissent à des objets qui ne sont pas étrangers à ce champ. C'est-à-dire qu'un champ est ce dans quoi tous les éléments retombent à la suite des opérations formelles suivant les lois du champ et cet état de chute dans le champ s’apparente à la fermeture. Le champ, c’est ce qui naît en soi pour revenir à soi au travers de toutes les mutations et variations, en s'enferment ainsi en lui-même. La déconstruction au contraire révèle l'Autre, soit ce qui est toujours en dehors du champ donné. Mais la déconstruction fait tout cela en assumant comme suspendue la préoccupation centrale de ce qu'elle identifie comme la loi de champ de la métaphysique, c’est-à-dire la présence ou, plus précisément, l'identité. La loi de l'identité ne suffit pas à générer un champ de métaphysique. Dans un autre registre, si les lois classiques de la pensée formaient un système alors ce système ne serait pas suffisamment complexe pour en dériver de l'indécidabilité. On trouve donc dans la déconstruction la recherche de règles supplémentaires, de présupposés, de suppressions, de détournements et de jeux sémantiques au travers de lesquels tout est agencé pour retourner à l'identité. C’est pour cette raison que, au sein de ce qui a eu lieu comme déconstruction, l’on ne peut chercher un engagement avec la « logique » telle qu'elle est comprise par la plus grande partie de ce que l’on appelle la philosophie analytique. Les autres lois de la logique, celle de non-contradiction et celle du tiers exclu, se sont avérées à la fois s'appuyer sur et servir la loi de l'identité et ce, par le biais de ruses, de définitions insaisissables, de marginalisations des problèmes ainsi que d’affirmations pures et simples. Si l'on suit les rouages mêmes de la déconstruction, elle appelle un nouvel ordre de facultés qui ne sont pas réductibles aux lois classiques de la pensée. La déconstruction était aussi la déconstruction des origines . Nous avons trouvé que l'origine est ce qui distingue le pré-original et l'original par une série d'actes qui suspendent la polynomia et les pouvoirs homologiques du pré-original au gré d’isolements fonctionnels. L'origine est aussi une force qui tente d'enfermer en elle-même un champ qui exclue le pré-original. Néanmoins, les déconstructions des origines ont trouvé que le pré-original insistait toujours dans l'original. L'origine, en effet, n'a son moteur (qui a généré la métaphysique et ses histoires) qu'en conservant un rapport avec le pré-original. Le pré-original dans la déconstruction a émergé comme l'autre, l'étranger, le bâtard, la raison bâtarde, les paradoxes, les marges, le bricoleur, le cadre, l'inconscient de l'inconscient, etc. C'est-à-dire que dans chaque cas la déconstruction a trouvé que les systèmes qui ont construit l'identité, sous l'impératif de l'identité, se sont maintenus ensemble par une raison qui est plus ancienne que l'identité ; l'identité est plutôt quelque chose qui s'obtient chaque fois par des isolements fonctionnels. Sans titre, Elodie Guignard, 2006; Crédite d’image : ©Elodie Guignard Pour se situer dans le contexte de la métaphysique, l’origine : la condition persistante sous laquelle la loi de l'identité a été obtenue. Par opposition à la conception de lieu commun de la déconstruction, laquelle y voyait une simple stase de la métaphysique reçue, dans chaque acte déconstructif, la pré-origine a émergé comme une puissance qui détient les ressources pour un autre commencement d'un autre monde. Or nous savons que l'impératif de la déconstruction est celui-ci : La création urgente de nouvelles facultés, soit de pouvoirs de construction, qui soient adéquates à ce qui s'est révélé comme une raison bâtarde de sorte qu’il puisse y avoir un commencement. C’est à Jean-Luc Nancy d’avoir ouvert le domaine des homologies, sans lesquelles la déconstruction risquait d'être une procédure d'analogies, en ce que c'est ainsi que se représentaient ses versions populaires. Dans la conception nancéienne de la relation entre le sens, la pensée et l'existence, nous pouvons trouver un principe général pour l’homologie de la pensée, Ici, la pensée remonte à sa source. Il connaît cette source, son être même, comme ce qui n'est, en soi, ni pensé, ni impensé, ni impensable, mais le sens fini d'exister. La pensée retourne à sa source et ainsi, en tant que pensée, l'ouvre et la draine à nouveau en la recueillant et en la dispersant . (15) C'est-à-dire que le « sens », pour Nancy, est ce qui persiste comme domaine du pouvoir homologique — disons, l'existence elle-même — qui n'est jamais donné dans son ensemble à aucun domaine, même pas à la philosophie. Le sens est le pouvoir homologique qui est fonctionnellement isolable dans les exercices de fabrication des champs de la pensée qui, pourvu qu'ils n'entretiennent pas de rêves de clôture, pourront ainsi accéder à ce sens. Les textes de Nancy nous mettent aussi en garde contre les rêves d'un domaine de la pure polynomia où aucune régularité n'est obtenue, ce qui est proposé dans les travaux de Clastres, de Deleuze et de Foucault. Ces rêves anarchiques – des rêves qui se veulent identiques à l'arche – sont impossible car chaque perception se joue au travers d’isolements fonctionnels. En bref, la déconstruction n'a jamais eu pour objectif de garantir l’unité avec la pré-origine. La révélation de la déconstruction La façon dont la philosophie, ou la majeure partie de celle-ci, tournait autour de la loi de l'identité a été discutée dans des textes publiés précédemment. Il y a peut-être eu d'autres manières, au sein de la philosophie, de se conduire sans servir l'identité et nous pouvions permettre à ces manières et modes de réapparaître à condition de reconnaître la question qui est à poser. La question de la non-identité doit être plus ancienne, par ordre de priorité, que celle de l’identité. En effet, il s’agit d’une certaine expérience, on devrait dire une expérience très commune, qui est supprimée par le primat de l'identité. Dans un texte publié avec Jean-Luc Nancy, intitulé « Our Mysterious Being » (16) et dans d'autres publications également, j'avais appelé cette expérience, ou cette question, « l'expérience obscure ». Récemment, Reghu Janardhanan (17) et Jerome Lèbre (18) ont réalisé leurs interprétations de la question ou de l'expérience, dans lesquelles l'identité apparaissait comme la solution. Dans une certaine interprétation de la pensée ancienne, toute pensée était comprise comme étant concernée par la question de ce qui donne à chaque chose son identité. C'est-à-dire que le concept par lequel chaque chose a son identité était considéré comme la question centrale de la métaphysique, et la métaphysique en tant que discipline a fourni la réponse par une référence à une identité particulière. Cette identité particulière d'ancrage est une position qui a pris les diverses formes de dieu, du sujet, de la matière et ainsi de suite. Dans le langage de Derrida, il s’agit d’une position substituable qui ne peut jamais être occupée par une constante. Pour Heidegger ceci est l'histoire de la détermination de l'être en tant qu’ un être. Comme on peut le voir, l'accent est mis sur un être, soit sur une identité . C'est-à-dire que la critique de la métaphysique, qu'elle soit derridienne ou heideggérienne, présuppose toute la métaphysique comme champ qui opère sous la loi de l'identité. Le présupposé de l'identité met en suspens la critique ou le questionnement de la métaphysique à la limite de l'identité. C'est-à-dire que l'anastase de la philosophie, née avec le raisonnement bâtard , était toujours maintenue en suspens. Au contraire, nous avons constaté que la plus ancienne des questions – et même les questions les plus récentes – n'est peut-être pas du tout la question de l'identité. Nous avons constaté que dans la plupart des cas, l'identité apparaît en répondant à une autre question, qui est celle de la stabilité du monde. Il ne s’agit pas de la question du pourquoi le monde a de la stabilité , mais plutôt de celle de savoir s’il en a une . Par exemple, chez Aristote, l'identité répond à la question de la durée du monde, de sa permanence ou de la garantie de sa pérennité. Pour cette raison, dieu est posé comme ce qui se nécessite lui-même et donc sans désir de vitesse. Le domaine de dieu, qui forme la région ultrapériphérique du monde, enferme le monde de telle manière que le monde nous assure une stabilité comme celle qui se maintient dans l'éternité. Cependant, contrairement à l'éternité de dieu, les choses dans le monde subissent la vitesse ou les changements. La vitesse des choses du monde jouit d'une identité de durée, qui est une imitation de l'éternité. Le premier moteur existe donc nécessairement ; et pour autant qu'il le faut, il est bon, et en ce sens un premier principe [...] D'un tel principe dépendent donc les cieux et le monde de la nature. Et sa vie est telle que la meilleure que nous apprécions, et apprécions pendant une courte période. (19) Si l'identité est obtenue en tant que produit de la suppression d'une expérience fondamentale de la fin ou de la subsistance imprévisible du monde, il ne s’agit pas, là, de la loi de la philosophie. De plus, il n'y a pas de lois de champ pour la philosophie, ni la philosophie jouit de la clôture. Les multiples sens de ces expériences de non-fermeture de la philosophie ont été les thèmes centraux qui ont émergé, en particulier, dans les déconstructions de Derrida et de Nancy. Ils ont tous deux montré, tout en différant l'un de l'autre, que la déconstruction de la clôture ouvre la philosophie à la possibilité d'une pensée qui se situe au-delà de la clôture. On ne saurait trop s'attarder sur ces thèmes déjà abordés. Au lieu de cela, nous devons en venir à la question de ce qui a été en gestation dans la déconstruction. La famille bâtarde Par moments, comme dans des textes tels que « Sens du monde » et « Une pensée finie » de Jean-Luc Nancy, nous vivons l'extérieur de la déconstruction tel qu’un certain « terrain » qui empêche la stase de la fermeture de se prolonger. Par exemple, lorsqu'il s'agit des expériences les plus anciennes de la philosophie telles que l'existence, le sens et le temps, la déconstruction de la clôture ne leur fait rien, car soit elles sont en dehors de ce qui a été pensé par la loi de l'identité soit elles s'agitent au-delà du champ métaphysique fictif. Derrida suggérerait de relever un moment rare de la pensée antique dans son texte sur la Khora de Platon. Derrida d’écrire : On ne peut même pas en dire que ce n'est ni ceci ni cela ou que c'est à la fois ceci et cela. Il ne suffit pas de rappeler que la khora ne nomme ni ceci ni cela, ou que la khora dit ceci ou cela. C'est-à-dire que, bien que les opérations de déconstruction se soient souvent appuyées sur la logique classique pour montrer des paradoxes dans des systèmes qui ont été constitués classiquement, la déconstruction trouve en elle une logique qui n'est pas classique. La logique sous-jacente a été appelée « logique bâtarde » par Derrida à la suite de Platon. Platon n'a jamais pu développer ce terme de « raisonnement bâtard » ( λογισμ ῷ τινι νόθ ῳ ) d'une manière fondamentale car le souci même de ce discours était de supprimer toutes choses bâtardes ! Mais qu'est-ce que vraiment le « bâtard » ? C'est la rupture de la clôture. Ou bâtard est celui qui menace les clôtures et les enclos dérivés des identités. C'est pourquoi Euripide dit, dans la pièce Hippolyte : « Le bâtard est toujours considéré comme un ennemi du vrai-né ». Il existe plusieurs textes du monde antique que l'on peut approcher pour retrouver les premiers sens du « bâtard ». Nous retrouvons « l'enfant orphelin », qui signifiait souvent l'enfant bâtard dans les comptes populaires de plusieurs cultures. Dans les mythes, nous trouvons les dieux commençant leur vie comme des enfants bâtards orphelins et abandonnés, confrontés à des dangers extraordinaires. C'est-à-dire que tout commence par le bâtard qui en vient ensuite à être jugé selon les critères du « vrai né » par dérivation. Toutes les espèces de familles connues – car il n'y a pas d'Idée platonicienne de la famille, laquelle n’est que relations – ont des bâtardisations à leurs origines. Pour plus de commodité, continuons avec Hippolyte, le bâtard qui ressemble aux dieux eux-mêmes. Hippolyte est l'enfant bâtard du roi Thésée, né de l'Amazone Hippolyte. Le nom dit quelque chose de son destin. Hippolyte pourrait signifier, soit "celui qui déchaîne les chevaux", suivant la racine dite "proto-indo-européenne" *Lewh, qui pourrait avoir le sens de "lâcher" ; soit "celui détruit par les chevaux", suivant le sens grec ultérieur de "lyse". Les chevaux tels que nous les connaissons dans le monde antique (en particulier pour les tribus qui descendaient avec des chevaux de la steppe eurasienne) signifiaient la liberté, les passions et les sens. Dans la pièce, le bâtard Hippolyte refuse de participer à l'économie sexuelle de la famille en se consacrant à Artémis, qui est l'éternelle vierge. Une malédiction conduit sa belle-mère à le désirer jusqu'au suicide, mais pas avant de l'avoir accusé d'entretenir un désir inadmissible pour elle. C'est-à-dire que le bâtard, celui qui est né en dehors de la logique familiale, est maudit par le désir de sa belle-mère pour lui, qu'il refuse de reconnaître en raison de son obéissance à la logique même de la famille. Plus tard, Hippolyte a rencontré sa mort, écrasé par ses chevaux, à cause de la malédiction de son père. Cet élément de l'histoire, du père cherchant la destruction de son enfant bâtard, est également courant dans le monde antique ; Kronos et Zeus par exemple, en langue grecque. La leçon n'est pas trop difficile à interpréter : le bâtard, même lorsqu'il se porte volontaire pour s'abstenir de la logique de fermeture de la famille, il est condamné à une mort atroce. En même temps, les origines des cultes, des religions et des villes commencent par les bâtards, qui sont cérémonieusement rappelés et donc supprimés au niveau mondain. Le sens politique de ce terme pour le monde antique, et même pour notre temps, n'est pas difficile à voir. Dwivedi avait discuté auparavant certaines de ces questions au travers de l'examen d'une différence particulière en philosophie, celle entre l'orient et l'occident. En philosophie, la logique bâtarde implique de penser à partir d'une intuition plus ancienne que l'identité, soit à partir d'une famille bâtarde de la philosophie. En d'autres termes, la philosophie a la responsabilité de créer un nouvel ensemble de facultés qui fonctionnent sans identité en tant que loi fondamentale de la pensée. En termes de déconstruction, il s'agit de penser les familles et la politique, où la contamination n'est pas en marge, éliminant l'ancien dicton du « vrai né ». Une conduite possible en philosophie, qui allagerait la politique de l'amour qui dérive de la logique du vrai-né, est celle du lust . Sergio Benvenuto a récemment discuté de la relation entre une tel lust philosophique et la psychanalyse. Ce texte, qui s'inscrit lui aussi dans « l'autre commencement » est disponible en ligne. Nous avons déjà évoqué toutes ces facultés. Les développer, en particulier une nouvelle conception des pouvoirs, prendrait trop de temps, ce que nous n'avons pas aujourd'hui. La pratique philosophique des raisonnements bâtards, soit les actes des familles philosophiques bâtards, sont aujourd'hui nécessaires pour commencer à aborder les crises de notre monde. Sans elle, le monde des identités, y compris le monde des politiques identitaires, risque une criticalisation précoce. Translated by BENEDETTA TODARO NOTES 1. Évariste Galois, le mathématicien français qui a déployé une raison, qui a retenu les pensées essentielles de Leibniz et de Kant, pour donner des conditions pour la solubilité des polynômes, et dans cet acte, il a fondé la théorie des groupes. 2. Virality of Evil: Philosophy in the Time of a Pandemic , éd. Divya Dwivedi, London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. 3. Coronavirus, Psychanalysis and Philosophy , éd. F. Castrillón, T. Marchevsky, Londres : Routledge, 2021. 4. Voir S. Mohan, « Le bruit de toutes choses », https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/the-noise-of-all-things 5. Voir Amitiés de Bernard Stiegler , réunies par Jean-Luc Nancy, Editions Galilée, 2021 6. Amitiés de Bernard Stiegler 7. Voir Jean-Luc Nancy, « ‘La fin de la philosophie et la tâche de la pensée’ », Philosophy World Democracy , julliet 2021, https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/other-beginning/la-fin-de-la-philosophie 8. Voir Divya Dwivedi, « Le pari de Nancy's », Philosophy World Democracy , juillet 2021, https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/other-beginning/le-pari-de-nancy ; et Shaj Mohan, « Et le Commencement de la philosophie », Philosophy World Democracy, juillet 2021, https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/other-beginning/et-le-commencement 9. Voir la série « L'Autre commencement de la philosophie », la Philosophy World Democracy , https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/other-beginning 10. Dwivedi, "Le pari de Nancy". 11. Le sens moderne d'« essence » dont dérive « essentialiste » en tant que péjoratif renvoie à une tendance de la pensée à oublier la polynôme des choses. On obtient ainsi « l'essence industrielle » comme un minimum de caractéristiques qui permettent d'identifier un objet ou de lui donner une identité industrielle. Nous avons traité cette notion ailleurs. … », Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Antipolitics , London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 12. Voir « Les fins endogènes de l'éducation : pour Aaron Swartz », S. Mohan et D. Dwivedi, European Journal of Psychoanalysis , 25 mai 2020. https://www.journal-psychanalysis.eu/the-endogenic-ends-of- education-pour-aaron-swartz/ 13. Voir note 11 ci-dessus. 14. Le concept de clôture n'a pas été emprunté aux mathématiques par la philosophie, mais plutôt la clôture est née d'une série d'actes philosophiques guidés par des nécessités philosophiques. 15. Jean-Luc Nancy, A Finite Thinking , édité par Simon Sparks, Stanford University Press, Californie, 2003, p. 30. 16. Jean-Luc Nancy et Shaj Mohan, « Our Mysterious Being », Salon philosophique , avril 2020, https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/our-mysterious-being/ 17. Reghu Janardhanan, « Deconstructive Materialism : Einsteinian Revolution in Philosophy », Philosophy World Democracy , novembre 2021, https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/other-beginning/deconstructive-materialism Janardhanan avait appelé l’atmosphère d’anastasis et « l'autre commencement de la philosophie » du nom de « matérialisme déconstructif » bien plus tôt. Jean-Luc Nancy était ouvert à ce nom qui révélait la relation entre un matérialisme jusqu'alors inconnu et la déconstruction. Pourtant, pour des raisons logiques, Montévil a déployé le nom de « matérialisme bâtard ». 18. Jérôme Lebre, « Pourquoi pas », Philosophy World Democracy , août 2021, https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/other-beginning/pourquoi-pas 19. Aristote, Métaphysique 1072b. Related Articles Et le Commencement de la philosophie SHAJ MOHAN Read Article « La fin de la philosophie et la tâche de la pensée » JEAN-LUC NANCY Read Article

‘Populism’ can be defined as politics conducted in an impoverished language about poverty. The questioning of the realities of these two poverties—of thought and living conditions—whose provenance is the same, still retains the meaning of the more recent division of politics into the bio-spatial coordinate of right and left. The ‘Ismos’ of the Many SHAJ MOHAN 21 November 2020 PHILOSOPHY POLITICS Detail of Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus by Joshua Reynolds; Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons ‘Populism’ can be defined as politics conducted in an impoverished language about poverty. The questioning of the realities of these two poverties—of thought and living conditions—whose provenance is the same, still retains the meaning of the more recent division of politics into the bio-spatial coordinate of right and left. Man has to awaken to wonder—and so perhaps do peoples. —Wittgenstein, Culture and Value Populism’ can be defined as politics conducted in an impoverished language about poverty. (1) The questioning of the realities of these two poverties—of thought and living conditions—whose provenance is the same, still retains the meaning of the more recent division of politics into the bio-spatial coordinate of right and left. The slick hierophants of the former tactfully assert that a reason is still being exercised in the impoverished language. The latter assuages, sugar coats, by comparing the fact of poverty with the scale of historic poverty and accuses us of exiguity of the desire to pursue radical changes, such as veganism and other moral determinations of everyday life, in other words, hypophysics. It is important to register that today the bio-spatial coordinates have a meaning only in relation to what is being called ‘populism’. But before we come to reckon with the conditions under which ‘populism’ sustains itself—primarily the technological condition—it is necessary to understand what it means to call a collection of men ‘people’. The mysterious value invested in this notion—‘the people is the good’—has allowed confusions of concepts (for example, Heidegger on the ‘volk’ and ‘dwelling’) and the logics of miracles (Walter Benjamin’s ‘divine violence’) to cover over the ground of politics. Instead of falling into the temptations of ‘the people’ (which helped to create ‘Anna Hazare events’ in India that led to the Hindu fascist ascension) one must ask ‘what is a people?’ in order to find out if there is such a thing. Further, one must examine the functional isolations through which men are determined as a people such that an ‘ismos’ assigns to them a state of being self-immured and according to which they come to be the end for which they alone are the means. The Term Populism says nearly nothing. When one defines a doctrine in accordance with a genus it would certainly delineate that which lies outside it, in the manner of recording a gentle contrariness as Aristotle would have thought. For instance when we consider ‘Zoo-ism’ it retains within it the possibility for something like a ‘humanism’ to be articulated as a species, although explicitly it merely separates itself from the ‘non-Zoos’. The people implies a collection of men who are distinguished from a collection of petals, of stones, of prime numbers; more precisely the ‘non-people’. That is, an ‘ism’ of the people does not say much, except that it is concerned with the abstracted people from the various determinate gatherings of men and that it is not concerned with any other animal. But it indicates an underlying condition; it is difficult today to define any ‘ism’ as such without some embarrassment, or that there is a consensus that we have found the end of ‘ismos’ (-ισμός). We resist witnessing the contours of what is now called the people because it may be a certain image which could force us to abandon all our familiar notions of politics and, we are forced to reckon through it with something other than ‘man’ (as that which makes ‘the people’) emerge in the determination of all values which is technological determinism. But before we come to the new image of politics we have to have familiarity with the ‘ismos’. The ‘ismos’ suffix is used to create abstract nouns that refer to something which is not a particular thing but that which may define a particular thing as that very thing, such as truth rather than something true, or Marxism rather than Marx. The abstract nouns derived through the suffix – ισμός tend to indicate something of a doctrine which corresponds then to a set of practices with regularity. For example, one would not speak of a ‘pollen-ism’, unless we had already derived a concept through analogy from pollens. On the other hand when we speak of ‘Marxism’ it refers to a set of doctrines derived from the corpus of Marx, from which one can then obtain a limited number of distinct regularities through the selection of groups from the given set of doctrines. The Marxism of Lenin, say, is distinct from that of Mao, although they are both Marxisms. The mysterious value invested in this notion—‘the people is the good’—has allowed confusions of concepts (for example, Heidegger on the ‘volk’ and ‘dwelling’) and the logics of miracles (Walter Benjamin’s ‘divine violence’) to cover over the ground of politics. The practice of denoting states or defining regularities or creating abstract nouns through –ismos has had a theological passage and not a theological origin. Its early religious use was to denote doctrinally bound religious practices that could display regularity of conduct in the everyday life of the believer, including Judaismos and Christianism. The schoolmen would continue to derive abstract nouns to mark doctrines and distinct theological approaches such as Thomism and Scottism. The secular usage of–ισμός came to be common from eighteenth century onwards, as we can see in the ‘Spinozism’ contests of Germany. Politics was soon defined as a battle of competing–ισμός which we often mistakenly called ideological battles. (2) The regularities of practices and regularized projects include socialism, communism, liberalism and situationism. We also found the extrication of doctrines from the corpus of individuals to derive –isms, the–ισμός of proper names—Leninism, Maoism, Trotskyism and Gandhism. It is well known that these constitutions of abstract nouns in politics that originated in the nineteenth century were reliant on the place of ‘rumen’, a room for turning over and over, vacated by Christianism. The ‘rumen’ was where Christian theologies determined human essence through the permutations of the relation between the creator and the creatures with respect to being in such a way that one could set a for-what or telos for man which in turn could be used to prescribe forms of regularity for familial civil life. For example, if one were to argue that the creature and the creator are determinations of something prior, say being, this would grant man the status of a finite god and for the creator the position of the infinite man. Following from that, people would be a collection of finite gods. There are versions of this problematic in both Duns Scotus and M.K. Gandhi. However, by the time Christianity vacated the ‘rumen’, the conceptual resources and the tendencies of thoughts had been the engines of the turning over of man—that is, the discoveries of various regularities of man with respect to the infinite man—were exhausted. Yet, in the political abstract nouns derived from proper names entertained the sense of a finite destiny which did not refer man to the creator or the infinite man, rather to man himself as something which could determine a historical bound for itself. We should note for now that the practitioners of all these political abstract nouns of the past would not deny that they were concerned with the people and only the people. The proliferation of ‘isms’ in the last century denoted the confidence in the creation of new regularities while we must note that it was also the century which extended the critique of ‘essences’ towards the ‘criticalisation’ of –ισμός; a related but distinct group of activities of the latter kind came to have their own schools, and ισμός including deconstructionism and existentialism. The –isms of the last century while proliferating it were at the same time relieving it of any ‘essentiality’ and in that they were ‘anti-isms’. The secular usage of–ισμός came to be common from eighteenth century onwards, as we can see in the ‘Spinozism’ contests of Germany. Politics was soon defined as a battle of competing–ισμός which we often mistakenly called ideological battles. To a political–ισμός belongs a man who is then the –ianus of it; the latter is the man who adheres to the doctrines named by the former abstract noun, such as a socialist is someone adhering to socialism—the model of doctrine and the adherent. The doctrine makes it possible for the adherent to constitute various regular relations within the milieu of the doctrine, such as ‘friend and enemy’, the blasphemer, the renegade and the dissident. One can observe this tendency in the doctrinal schools of philosophy too, where the followers of a certain doctrine would either designate other distinct and interesting doctrines in their neighbourhoods to be a species of their own or some other similar doctrines which are less interesting as belonging to the opposite doctrinal school. The little distinctions that make the greatest differences in philosophy thus remain hidden for the adherents. The Use We can now come to the beginning of our search for the –ismos of the people: populism or, people-ism, came to be when the –ισμός had already lost its provenances and for this reason in a crowd named as ‘populist’ one will not find an –ianus or the doctrine and the adherent. As we know Walter Benjamin sought to find the occasions and the conditions under which a crowd emerges through the screens of doctrines and laws that had established regularities for it. Benjamin’s text, despite the efforts at remaining elusive, has a simple thesis: The regular forms of the people comprehended by law are maintained only through what he called mundane ‘violence’ and it is broken through a form of ‘violence’ which cannot be comprehended by the law that prescribes (and describes) the regularities of the people and for this reason he called it ‘divine’ that was his way of retaining a relation to the theological problematic of contingency and miracle as the conditions for the moral life of man. If this model could explain the people-isms of analog today then we will have arrived at the epoch of Benjamin-ism, and what we call ‘populism’ will be the beginning of the perpetual reign of divine violence. However, ‘populism’ may indicate something else altogether as we will find. We know that this is not quite the case with almost any particular phenomenon we have been designating as populist. Rather, we find that most populist political formations resemble ‘fascisms’ and that the exceptions constituted by ‘welfarisms’ and ‘socialisms’ indicate that people have come to be something easily determinable, a collection of men with a propensity to any regularity whatsoever as long as it is not meant for a long time. In other words, programmability marks men in the era of populism. The work Stumblers by Erdal Inci. Photo credit: blokartspace.com Martin Heidegger, while aligning with Nazism, was aware of the incipient forms of politics. Heidegger delivered a lecture course in 1934 at the University of Freiburg that was published later under the title ‘Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language’. The relation between the title of the lecture and the contents are not evident at first since the contents of the lecture are concerned with the determination of a people, of ‘volk’ and Nazism. As with his other texts of this period, Heidegger was pursuing here something like a decline in the history of being. That is, the departure from the experience of being filled with the wonder found in the texts of the pre-Socratics was set aside by Plato’s determination of being as ‘Idea’ in favour of the explanatory power given by the gathering of things under their ‘aspect’ led to the path marks through which metaphysics—the determination of being as a being—would lead to technology. The text refers to the original experience of logos as the comportment or being in the same milieu which unsettlingly differs with itself, as the gathering. The experience of coming to be in the milieu of ‘the same’ was eventually surrendered to logic as the rule-governed ordering of propositions—‘It is the science of the forms of the fundamental structures and fundamental rules of the proposition’. (3) Further, language too is found to reach the status of a mere domain of things to be ordered and organized in his time. All of these changes—from logos to reason and language to linguistics—are found to be in a reciprocal relationship with ‘the people’ which Heidegger would explore later in his texts on technology. In 1934, Heidegger would expose something that remained mysterious about his own works, and now unambiguously revealed in the recently published ‘Black Notebooks’: We can call it the meaning of the community, ‘the gathering’, of being which determines the meaning of being. Then, the question will be what is the community which is the ideal milieu which can be home to being’s mystery? There are several divisions and distinctions throughout this text which explores ‘the people’ or ‘the volk’. To obtain a sense of being of those days we will have to look at a lengthy passage: In a census, the Volk is counted in the sense of the population, the population, in so far as it constitutes the body of the Volk, the inhabitants of the land. At the same time, it is to be considered that in a governmental order of the census a certain part of the Volk is included, namely the part that dwells within the State’s borders. The German nationals living abroad are not included in the count, [they] do not belong in this sense to the Volk. On the other hand, those can also be included in the count, those who, taken racially, are of alien breed, do not belong to the Volk. (4) There is much to be understood from these passages for which Heidegger’s own conceptual apparatus are inadequate, or perhaps their adequacy was always concerned with masking the quest for the community of being. Two distinct logics are running through Heidegger’s corpus which are deliberately left entangled. We can call them analogy and homology. (5) Analogy, as we know, finds the proportion a thing has with some other thing and the discovery of the form under which the proportion is distributed is the work of reason; in general, analogy is presented through the mathematical expression A:B and B:C which can often be described under field laws. Analogy allows us to move between distinct domains that may have no prior relation or the domains which are without something common between them and reason invents the ground on which these relations can be formalized. For example, the function of flight is analogous between a hummingbird and a drone. Analogy directs us towards the freedom for exchanging functions. Homology, on the other hand, is concerned with relations that reveal ‘the pre-formal’ (6) shared ‘something’; what we often insufficiently call the materiality is that which is designated by homology. It is through homology that we find the constructability of something held in some other thing; the reed turning to the flute is possible through the discovery of homology. These two relations can be contrasted through the example of the ‘population’ of a typical Indian village. Two men from the same village without any familial ties will refer to one another as brothers since most of the functions of brotherly relations can be extended to neighbours and friends; and often they expect brotherly commitments from each other. At the same time when they are concerned with their land and property only ‘the blood brothers’ can enter into sharing arrangements. In the former the latter relation finds its analogue—the village is analogous to the home, although homology distinguishes the blood brother from the village brother. In most senses ‘Dasein’, ‘the being for whom its own being is the question’, is something prior to the faculties of analogy and homology. It is a being which witnesses in the nothing of the question—Why there is something rather than nothing?—the pressure of the unnameable plenitude which is its futurality; the nothing is the experience of more than everything. Yet, the abstract ‘Dasein’ which is both man and not-man, while experiencing in the ‘something’ homological powers and time as the freedom given by analogies, retains a particular determination of homology as ‘race’. The ‘Dasein’ of a racial community is different from that of a band of men constituted by chance or of a motley crew. From here onwards, it is not a question of the precise nature of Heidegger’s racism, but the scale of values according to which peoples are ranked. Heidegger’s thought on the one hand, like all those who are called philosophers, thought without any regard to a particular person. On the other hand, as we have found he conducted himself like the worst of ‘bourgeois thinkers’ in the sense in which Wittgenstein used the term for Ramsay—’he thought with aim of clearing up the affairs of some particular community’. (7) Underneath metaphysics lies another science in the corpus of Heidegger which is hypophysics. According to hypophysics, nature as that which is originary is identical with value, or a thing is at its highest rank in its originary nature. Heidegger himself would remark on the two senses of ‘race’—on the one hand, it merely indicates bloodlines and on the other, it also indicates a certain hierarchy or order of rank—‘That which is racy embodies a certain rank, provides certain laws, does not concern in the first place the corporeality of the family and of lineage’. As we know Gandhi undertook similar embarrassing argumentative steps to justify the caste order. The experience of being given for the people who are in this sense of a ‘higher rank’ is greater than that of the motley crew. Then, we can also argue that the history of being corresponds to departure from ‘the people of rank’ towards the motley crew—the decline. Even in the Heideggerian sense, the nature of such a process cannot be called metaphysical; that is, metaphysics is the determination of being as a being such that beings appear as that which is free for any logical organization. Underneath metaphysics lies another science in the corpus of Heidegger which is hypophysics. According to hypophysics, nature as that which is originary is identical with value, or a thing is at its highest rank in its originary nature. That is, unlike metaphysics which actively finds all the possibilities of things encoded in a domain that is unlike the domain of things, hypophysics claims a passive reception of the conjoinment of value in nature. From a hypophysical point of view, physics and metaphysics are operations that denature nature or the practices through which one descends in an order of rank (8) towards the motley crew. The Greek men who were given the originary experience of being were not ‘an arbitrary population and residents’. On the other hand, the Americans who are the objects of Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ are precisely the arbitrary population, who signalled for Heidegger the pincer movement along with the Russians against the essence of the higher ranking Germans. Hence, a hypophysics articulates Heidegger’s history of being and his interpretation of metaphysics from underneath ‘the ground’, or as the ur-ground. Population Politics Hypophysics led Heidegger to another discovery. Population, as counted by the census operations of the state, is indifferent to races of men and their ranks and the highest possibility of the State is to dissolve all orders of rank. That is, it reveals a certain epoch of freedom—both the voluptuousness of homologies and the unhomeliness of analogies—in such a way that thought is left disoriented, without a right and left (9) for it to recover its position in the darkest night. He would call a moment in this epoch without orientation as ‘population politics’. Heidegger designated through ‘population politics’ the comprehending of a people as the single empty aggregation exogenously corporealized, described and organized through the regularities given by the laws of the state which was made possible by the decline from logos to logic. We can now designate something more than Heidegger intended by this term; population politics (10) is the possibility of processing people as indifferent quantities through algorithms. That is, population politics is one of the limited possibilities of politics from the point of view of a new form of technocratic state that was anticipated by Heidegger and other thinkers. However, we are aware of another possibility that people can commune without the restricted homology of bloodlines. The idealized understanding of both America and Soviet Russia was something akin to it. Today this possibility is being realized and it implies that everyone can be everywhere. (11) It is perhaps the resistance to this possibility that dominates most political movements we call ‘populist’. It is here that ‘populism’ comes to be the symptom of a crisis in politics. The two tendencies that underlie politics are seeking to be the law which comprehends all organizations of people, and the very meaning of community and the common which is stasis of politics today. The tendency to constitute communities by relying on the regularities founded on hypophysical principles where the understanding of homology is limited to bloodlines is opposed to the tendency of constituting a motley crew of people, indifferent to their blood ties banding and disbanding according to no determinate rules nor principles other than the pursuit of this very freedom. Several religions express this unsettledness with the earth, the unhomeliness which projects another home in another domain. Most religions in this sense are the discourses of the refugee. Our literature and arts are the expressions of fugio-ness. Most versions of communism are restricted understandings of the latter possibility or the unhomeliness of man. (12) This notion that brings people together in uncanny ways without –ismos can be marked as anismos. In the communes and occupations of many of the protest movements today, the ‘do it yourself’ cultures which came with them, and the networks of sharing services which came up in Greece during the anti-austerity protests, one can sense the tendency of anismos. In the protests against the migrants, the hate crimes on the basis of bloodlines, in the events which began with Brexit and in the increasing calls for the technologization of borders we can sense the politics of a people or Volk. In other words, a process which surrenders freedom for the retention of bloodlines discards politics itself for its only objective is freedom. The assumption that populism is the co-existence of these two tendencies—anismos and Volk making—relies on liberalism in its metaphysical sense. The metaphysics of liberalism asserts that all tendencies can co-exist in politics. For example, it is known to us through experience that Nazism and constitutional liberalism could not co-exist. Rather a tendency—say anti-corruption—in politics either dissolve other tendencies—such as secularism—or appropriate the competing tendencies—such as ethno-nationalism. Across the world, and in India, this particular form itself has been witnessed in the past decade of ethnocentric fascisms which assume moral positions. Thus, instead of the pure presence of a people without determinations, we find that there are two tendencies which characterize ‘populism’ Volk making and anismos and we know that the former apparently dominates populism. This could be because the milieu of Volk making, of social orderings which are concerned with their ceremonial repetition such that bloodlines are conserved, is disappearing. Instead, the real contest in politics today is between anismos and population politics; that is, these two tendencies have already departed from the vanishing milieu of Volk making. Yet, as we found earlier, they share an important difference—while assuming the unhomeliness of man as that which is capable of freedoms which are incalculable, population politics seeks to determine people as something which can be algorithmically organized and mechanically regulated. Population politics is in preparation within what appears to be technologized border controls and biometric attested tracking of people in real-time. The Fleeing Being Earlier we indicated that our familiar concepts which delineated man, and hence people, are inadequate to think the new milieu of population politics. In what appears to be the immune reaction against refugees in the ‘populisms’ of most parts of the world, the very essence of man as the fleeing being is finally being revealed, despite the disastrous resistance to this idea, including the holocaust. The relation between the refugee and the human should be reconceived in such a way that we may not end up with a fetishism of the refugee. We conceive the human today as the complete subject of a state with all the rights it provides, and the refugee as someone who lacks it. Then, the problem is with the very notion of this human subject—citizen if you like—who has created its other in the refugee. Rohingya refugees, at Kutupalong Refugee Camp, in Bangladesh. Photo credit: UNHCR.org The word refugee comes from the Latin ‘fugio’, meaning ‘to flee’, to depart. Our ‘species’ is essentially the being which flees, or takes refuge, away from nature—the being which masters hypophysics in order to evade it. As Kafka said, the being which is always in search of the ‘elsewhere’ or ‘away from here’. The migration of the human out of Africa is only an expression of this essential fugio-ness of man. When a human settlement, any stable arrangement, starts to crystallize we flee; when it is collapsing we flee. We are the species that can never be at home, at ease, or we are unhomely of the earth. Several religions express this unsettledness with the earth, the unhomeliness which projects another home in another domain. Most religions in this sense are the discourses of the refugee. Our literature and arts are the expressions of fugio-ness. Therefore, it is time for us to assert something fundamental—the refugee is the ground upon which the human is standing as a special moment. It will be calamitous if we will not begin to imagine and invent global institutions with this new fundamental towards receiving people as anismos. Excerpt from Populism and Its Limits: After Articulation, P. Chakravarty, 2020, Bloomsbury Academic NOTES 1. See “The Between: The Dangerous Occupation of the Philosopher” in Revue des femmes philosophes (Special Issue Intellectuals, Philosophers, Women in India: Endangered Species) N° 4–5/December 2017 2. See Simon Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties, trans. Simon Leys, New York: New York Review Book, 2013 3. Martin Heidegger, Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language, trans. Wanda Torres, NY: SUNY, 2009, p. 4. 4. Martin Heidegger, Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence, p. 56; emphases added 5. See Shaj Mohan and Divya Dwivedi, Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics, Bloomsbury UK, 2019. 6. It is possible to establish a relation between “das vorformale Etwas” of Emil Lask, Heidegger’s early conceptions of intuition, and homology. 7. L. Wittgenstein. Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977. 8. We have called it the discipline which measures the hypophysical gradations of value “scalology”. Both the celestial hierarchy and scala naturae are species of scalologies 9. The ground of this question remains unexplored ever since Immanuel Kant asked the question “how to orient oneself in thinking?” in 1786. 10. These epochs cannot be understood through any of the versions of the universal. As Barbara Cassin, remarked all universals are someone’s universal. See Cassin, Eloge de la Traduction: Compliquer l’universel, Fayard, Paris, 2016 11. These epochs cannot be understood through any of the versions of the universal. As Barbara Cassin, remarked all universals are someone’s universal. See Cassin, Eloge de la Traduction: Compliquer l’universel, Fayard, Paris, 2016 12. See “The Between: The Dangerous Occupation of the Philosopher”. Related Articles Demosophia JEAN-LUC NANCY Read Article Through the Great Isolation: Sans-colonial DIVYA DWIVEDI Read Article

In this interview, Slavoj Žižek argues that the troubles we are confronting today are totally global and international. According to him, these predicaments cannot be solved with nationalism. “Piss Christ”, Internationalism, and the Night of the World: Interview with Slavoj Žižek SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK with KAMRAN BARADARAN and ANTHONY BALLAS 17 February 2025 PHILOSOPHY POLITICS Piss Christ , Andres Serrano, 1987; Image credit: Wikimedia Commons In this interview, Slavoj Žižek argues that the troubles we are confronting today are totally global and international. According to him, these predicaments cannot be solved with nationalism. At the same time, he believes that the usual Marxist hopefulness according to which theoretical insight can be connected and rooted in what ordinary people experience is not really possible today. Here Žižek persists on the failure of every ontology, a failure that echoes the thwarted character of reality itself. Introduction: The following conversation took place via video in late 2018 and early 2019, years that witnessed significant and influential political events, from the Yellow Vests movement to the sweeping wave of far-right extremism in the world, from the United States to Brazil and the United Kingdom. Now, six years later, not much has changed. The far right is still advancing with strength, claiming victims house by house, door by door. Perhaps it could be said that the only lesson that history has taught us is that, if we want to use Hegel's terminology, there is really nothing to be learned from it. The victory of the far right in many countries, including the United States, indicates that the crises and antagonisms that plagued the world in 2018-2019 have not only disappeared, but have also taken on more perverse forms and are now even being reproduced in technocratic formats. At the same time, the lack of any vision or roadmap in the face of crises, resorting to passive melancholy, and disregard for the formulas that generate apocalyptic situations, is what has continued to plague the left since 2018. To confront a system built on calypsology [1] , a framework where there is no distinction between means and ends, one must act like a proficient detective, rereading the hotspots that have affected the sick body of the world. As the following interview shows, overcoming crises cannot be achieved with easy and immediate solutions, and efforts must be redoubled to create a comprehensive and international coalition, a coalition that goes beyond the hyperactivity that has become everyone's daily routine these days. Kamran Baradaran and Anthony Ballas: Let’s begin from the ultimate horizon of Marxism and talk about knowledge, or as Lenin once called it, “basis of the materialist theory of knowledge”. Many believe that in the age of capitalist dominance, we are not only in need of a knowing subject but also the Lacanian subject supposed-to-know, namely a subject that initiates and embodies the whole process of transformation. What kind of a subject do we need to open up the space for another political articulation rather than the liberal-capitalist democracy? Do you think there is any link between the subject supposed-to-know and the idea of revolution and transgression in the 21st century? Slavoj Žižek: My problem is that, first of all, we know so little. And even regarding the things that we know, it is difficult to get it operative. Let’s consider the most obvious example; we know a lot about global warming, ecological problems and so on. But nevertheless, we suspend this knowledge and simply don’t take it existentially serious. As far as the idea of knowledge is concerned, I am becoming more and more a Hegelian. By Hegelian I mean that I don’t think we can simply act upon our knowledge. There is subject supposed-to-know, but anytime we act accordingly it goes wrong all the time. For me, the big lesson of the 20th century is precisely that! Lenin is a big example in this regard: He had a certain idea of the revolution, developed in his The State and Revolution . But then, he moved towards a totally different direction and so on. I think we have to fully accept what I call tragic-comic dimension of social change. We usually demand some vague changes, but at the same time, refuse this important dimension. This is also my problem with Yellow Vests movement in France. I am more and more skeptical about the whole thing and here is why: First, they have a really mixed series of demands but at the same time, they are looking for certain privileges within the existing system. And the problem is that these changes cannot be achieved within the current state of affairs. As long as one stays in the existing system, one can only have access to limited demands; lower fuel prices, better ecology, lower taxes, and better security and so on. This is left populism at its purest! The fact that far-right figures like Donald Trump endorsed this movement shows that the left must learn that simply raising several so-called radical demands alone is not enough. We should start to think in the terms of changing the system. One should also take into account the anti-immigrant racism of the mentioned movement, since one of their demands is to stop immigration. And this is something that you cannot find in the mainstream liberal media. Baradaran and Ballas: For many, the Yellow Vests movement harkens back to the good old days of May 1968. Can this movement be considered a new rise from those memories? Žižek: What was the result of May 68? The conservative victory and their triumphantly return to power! That’s my main problem; within the existing system, one cannot look for radical demands! The same issue arises in the case of immigrants: Their situation is completely tragic, but the predominant liberal left is still looking for easy access solutions; opening the borders and receiving everyone and so on. Even today, we are witnessing the outcome of this tendency: In all European countries, the majority of the people are against immigrants! Instead of these kinds of pseudo-activities, one needs to change the whole system. I hate this kind of moralist left which wants to make demands but is incapable of developing new visions. The problems are obvious more or less: Global warming, refugees, the impending chaos and so on. But how can the system be changed to stop and prevent these calamities? I’m a pessimist here. If you ask me, the result of all this disorder would be more power to the nationalist, right-wing, racist regime in Europe. Did you notice how Marine Le Pen and the French far-right reacted to the Yellow Vests movement? They all supported it! I’m not saying that the Yellow Vests protestors had anything to do with this, but at the same time, their set of unattainable demands provides such a context for attracting the support of the extreme right. Their situation is the typical popular discontent. To return to your previous question, with the subject supposed-to-know we think of some kind of vision that presupposes some kind of vision regarding radically changing the society. I don’t see of that kind in our current situation. For me, these protests are still demands addressed to the master! Baradaran and Ballas: The Left has always been critical of nationalism. But sometimes nationalism, especially in regions such as the Middle East, Africa, etc. played an emancipator role, given its anti-colonial disposition. Many revolutionary movements in the East and even in some cases in the West have been mixed with nationalist tendencies. What should be done in such a situation? Should nationalism be accepted as a part of revolutionary action? Žižek: In my opinion, in our current situation, nationalism no longer works. Can one defeat or at least resist global capitalism with a strong nationalist state and so on? As far as the anti-colonial nationalist movements in the East are concerned, can you name one successful example? The only truly successful one would be China. But is it really emancipatory? When I was young, the Left hated two things: Neoliberal competition and strong authoritarian state. China precisely combines these two elements and is a mega success. If by communism we mean a state where communism is in power, to my knowledge, this is the only form of communism that has worked so far. Again, nationalism did work up to certain point but I think that today one cannot find any global emancipatory potential in it. Album cover detail of Demanufacture, Fear Factory; Image credit: Wikimedia Commons The problems we have today cannot be properly approached through nationalism. For example, what does it mean to have a nationalist approach with regard to refugee crisis? The usual nationalist reaction to this problem is only to keep them out! What about ecology? The nationalist reaction to this obstacle is just to outsource the dangerous industries elsewhere. A long time ago, I had a debate with a friend of mine in Norway who said they want to keep their coasts clear of the chemical industry pollution. My reaction was that the usual solution would be to move your chemical pollution to the third-world countries. I think that today a new internationalism is absolutely needed. The only point where I support nationalism is in this type liberation movement , like Palestinians and so on. However, we should not forget that today’s Israel is the most nationalist regime one can imagine, introducing apartheid and so on. I must insist one more that the troubles we are confronting today are totally global and international. These predicaments cannot be solved with nationalism. I don’t believe in this dream of the new populist Left that we need a strong nation-state that somehow will regulate the impacts of the global capital. By doing this, one has lost the game in advance. This was exactly the reason for Syriza's defeat in Greece. The main reason is that they tried to build an international coalition, but they failed. And then the other option would be Grexit which would have been a mega economic catastrophe and possibly a kind of military rule due to chaos and poverty. I think we have to face the tragic news: Do we still want to be leftists? Do we even have a vision of what we want? I don’t think we do! Today, what the Left want is somewhere between a blind and politically correct moralism and modest social democracy. This is my true pessimism: When ordinary people revolt, they usually don’t know what they want! Their wishes by definition are contradictory, confused and so on. So, a true leader should provide some kind of a program, with all the risks involved. And we don’t have this today! Podemos in Spain is an excellent example here. In the last election in Spain, Podemos’s agenda was a very moderate welfare state and social-democratic. It’s easy to be a leftist in opposition; organizing protests and so on. I’m less and less interested in this kind of left. What really interests me is that what you would actually do if you magically win. I don’t think we even have a general idea about what needs to be done; do we remain within the limits of capitalism? Do we control it? The basic idea is probably a sort of welfare state capitalism. Maybe today this is the only option. I think that we should move forward step by step. Of course, I’m not a social-democrat! I know that radical changes are needed here. But I think that if things go on the way they do at the moment, in 20 years we will be pretty much in chaos. The problem is that Marxism still trusts that theoretical insight can be connected and rooted in what ordinary people experience. I think this is less and less possible today. My position might be an elitist one, but I don’t think this link is possible today. You know, Mao had this idea that the ordinary workers and farmers have a form of wisdom that we intellectuals should learn from them. I don’t agree with this. Of course, I’m not saying that the intellectuals know what is going on, but ordinary people are clueless as well. As I said before, the desire of the ordinary people is always contradictory. If things go on like this, in the near future the choice ultimately will be between radical, populist, and anti-immigrant far-right and a more civilized conservative form of politics that would do the same thing but with a human face. That’s why I think that in France Macron is in a tragic position; he is probably the best that today’s establishment can offer. But there is a miss-communication here and my fear is that this tension will grow on and before anything new emerges, if at all, some stronger social unrest will happen. We should also take into account something else which is for me the ultimate irony: Today people compare the current protests in France with May 68. But May 68 was always an enigma for me. One should consider the fact that during that time, the welfare state in France was at its highest point. There is something crucially important here. Today, social unrest emerges not when things are really catastrophic but, as a rule, protests arise when the level of living is relatively well. That’s why, for example, in China today the ruling party is afraid of the new leftists who organize the workers. But let’s face it. In China, overall, the most of ordinary people never lived as well as they do now. Of course, there is huge poverty on the country sides but they never protest since they are truly desperate. Iran is another example in this regard. Yes, the situation was horrible during the Shah’s regime, but it was not economically too catastrophic. And I still believe that there were some emancipator elements in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Baradaran and Ballas: Since the Arab Spring, in the midst of extensive social and political changes, the idea of direct democracy has once again been raised as one of the important ways out of the current situation. Does direct and immediate action possess any emancipatory potential? Do you think the idea of an open-source society, and a direct democratic government by all for all, is the antidote we all need? Žižek: One of my problems with the idea of “direct democracy” is that it cannot really work in the real world. Can you even tell me a few examples in which this idea really worked? Is it even possible to find an example of a society or community where this concept could function? I may come across as naive, but I'm not sure what people mean when they talk about direct democracy. People usually mention that Hugo Chávez tried this in Venezuela. But even here it was all supported by a very strong leader with an extremely strong apparatus. I even once asked Negri in a communist conference in Berlin if he could give me an example of multitude directly functioning. And he said Chine Cultural Revolution. But my response was that even then, the whole Cultural Revolution in China was organized through an extremely strong leadership. For the global problems we are facing today –ecology, rise of far-right and so on – international coalitions will be needed. Direct democracy is a certain model which may function in small, local communities. But even there, if you look closely, a very precise structure of authority is discovered. So again, my first response to those who argue that we should give direct democracy a try is to ask what it would accomplish. One idea here is Digital Democracy, but even here there are problems, namely who can control and manipulate the data and so on. I simply claim that different forms of direct democracy always rely on some secret power structure. Zizek; Image credit: Wikimedia Commons I have the same problem with the topic of toxic masculinity. First, it is also an ideological issue that is often addressed by medicalizing it. And I find this really terrifying. Secondly, the characteristic of toxic masculinity is also problematic. The only intelligent argumentation that I read about this subject was an article published in the Guardian in according to which the fact that thousands of men reacted to the idea of toxic masculinity and were threatened by it proves that they even don’t trust their masculinity. Accordingly, if men really believed in their masculinity, they wouldn’t be in such a panic. I agree with this argument, but what does it really say? It simply opposes this self-boasting masculinity where you don’t really trust yourself to a non-boasting masculinity. What I find really dangerous here is to medicalize total ideological distinctions. This is worst totalitarian procedure. This means than one can be simply accused not only of being ideologically a chauvinist but also on a clinical level. In the 50s, the worst form of politics against homosexuality was to medicalize it. The same American Psychological Association that half a century ago medically categorized homosexuality now is doing the same thing with toxic masculinity and so on. And what makes it really suspicious is that all the big corporations are now behind this form of approach. What I see is the entrance of a new conformist logic where any conflictual stance from a predominant social view is now potentially dismissed as pathological. Baradaran and Ballas: What do you think about nationalism with regard to contemporary capitalist logic? This point is particularly interesting because, in countries such as Russia, the government takes a quasi-colonial approach on the international stage while brutally implementing neoliberal and nationalist policies at home. Žižek: It is an interesting question. China is a good example here; internationally, they still criticize American imperialism and so on, but domestically it is the most brutal capitalism one can imagine. This is why that the Chinese officials are now arresting young students who take Marxism a little bit too seriously and so on. The same logic can be applied to Iran also, but in my opinion, Iran is not anything special in this regard since the same logic of capitalism with Asian values can be found in many countries all around the world. This is a wonderful paradox: internationally, they speak language of solidarity and ecological emergency, but domestically it’s pure brutal capitalism. This is a new formula! I think this is the new logic of capitalism which although seems contradictory, but works nevertheless; the same cruel system which is combined with some religious or ancient ideology and the result is a fake format of Marxism. This is a sad development in which as a radical leftist one can get easily re-appropriated by the system. This can be seen in the sympathetic approach of some of my leftist friends like Oliver Stone with a figure like Vladimir Putin. Here we witness the same paradox; internationally, someone like Oliver Stone criticizes American imperialism, but in Russia he supports Putin! The usual logic here is to emphasize the international aspect of the struggle against capitalism which is total madness. Or another example is the criticism of the policies of Muslim countries, which the liberal left rejects as the imposition of Western values on Eastern culture and so on. This paradox can be understood from the dynamics of the contemporary capitalism: The global capitalism doesn’t function as the old model of Fukuyama, as a democratic liberal order. On the contrary, global capitalism functions today as capitalism with a radical twist which relies on a certain nationalist logic. There are no easy solutions here, just like the case of the Yellow Vest Movement. In my opinion, this new world based on nationalist capitalism, whose main symbols are Modi, Trump, etc., will eventually have the upper hand. Baradaran and Ballas: In your “Sex and the Failed Absolute”, you talk about a “minimal withdrawal” which “is not a retreat into passivity but perhaps the most radical act of them all”. [2] Can hyperactivity (an activism without action) be also be characterized as a version of this radical act? Žižek: For me, sometimes hyperactivity can be a refined form of conformism that makes sure nothing changes. Let me be very brutal here: Many of the radical left’s criticism of the society in the West function as hyperactivity. They criticize the society all the time but are not aware that no alternative to the establishment is presented through this constant criticism and so on. In this sense, I think there is a form of hyper-criticism which not only means nothing but plays a positive role in the existing order. The Western societies can only function through this form of radical criticism. This is one of my points of disagreement with Alain Badiou. I believe that his radical stance simply isolates him and ensures that he maintains this kind of rigid political stance and avoids participation. He sees politics as an illusion that everyone engages in. He uses the same reasoning when discussing Syriza, Podemos, Chavez, and so on. Of course, I agree with him to a certain extent, but I also think that in order to succeed, we must experience this type of repeated failures. Remember Occupy Wall Street Movement? Back then, Badiou used to say that the whole thing was just upper middle-class protesting and didn’t take it too seriously. Of course, they disappeared, but nonetheless that movement created a background for presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders and so on. So, I think these important moments should be appreciated, although my view remains pessimistic. Baradaran and Ballas: “Sex and the Failed Absolute” also outlines the fate of ontology in our era, from Deleuzian ontologies of multitudes and assemblages, Badiou’s logics of the worlds emerging out of the multiplicity of being. On the other hand, you “persist in the failure of every ontology, a failure that echoes the thwarted character of reality itself.” [3] How are we to discern these ontological failures from post-structuralist indefiniteness? And can one link this failure to the Hegelian Night of the World? Žižek: As I have elaborated in the book, this thwarted character can be discerned in the irreducible parallax gap between the ontic and the transcendental dimension: the notion of reality as a Whole of being and the notion of the transcendental horizon which always mediates our access to reality. For me this failure of every ontology is another name for radical negativity. In this sense, the result of this failure is not just plural universe and so on, but as a positive ontological feature. I think that this is basically Hegel’s position. I love this paradoxical position in which you claim that some ontological pessimism and even catastrophism should serve as the philosophical foundation of radical Left politics. As far as Hegel’s Night of the World is concerned, these two can be linked but nonetheless my point here is that this doesn’t mean that we should remain in a mystical state and so on. What I absolutely emphasize on is full engagement and so on. My point is that a full authentic engagement is possible only against this background. Lacan knew this perfectly and he elaborated that an act is possible only in the background of anxiety. One can find traces of the same logic even in Badiou. By “ontological temptation” I simply mean that we should reject all of these big, positive ontological views of reality. And I think that even postmodernists offer some kind of ontology of plurality or disperse multiplicity and so on. I think that postmodernists like Deleuz function in the same way! I think it’s good that you noticed this, because my position is ultimately secluded here. No one follows my line of thought here! Even those who do follow me always keep their distance. For instance, my friend Adrian Johnston takes Dialectical Materialism , a term that I use with full irony, too seriously and buys into it as a kind of new positive ontology; reality moving through contradiction and so on. For me, all of this is still ontology. Baradaran and Ballas: Since the publication of the book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, there have been many criticisms of this idea. Fredric Jameson pointed out that Adorno’s idea of a culture industry was historically limited, since the society that developed in the 1960s and 1970s with new media went beyond the cultural possibilities available during the 1940s. For Terry Eagleton, both Adorno and Marcuse overestimated the dominant ideology, believing that capitalist society languishes in the grip of an all-pervasive reification. [4] Is it possible to go beyond the framework of the culture industry today? Žižek: Adorno is the perfect example of a pure, Eurocentric, and elitist modernist. With regards to his critique of culture industry, one should always ask from which position this criticism comes from. This is why Adorno for me is the extreme of modernist avant-garde. He never draws even a marginal vision of our perspective and only portraits a negative picture. He never took political sides, with a few exceptions. In other words, he was basically critical of everybody. I would also criticize Adorno in this sense that he dismissed all popular culture as Kulturindustrie which for me is an extremely simplistic and inaccurate analysis. I think that today’s popular culture is much more ambiguous. Yes, it’s still Kulturindustrie and so on but it’s also something. Take a look at Rock music for instance. Adorno was totally opposed it as a form of Culture Industry. And although I agree with him to some point, but at the same time there’s something more in it, in an emancipator potential sense of the word. On the other hand, it fascinates me that how the so-called avant-garde art, music and especially visual art are themselves a part of modern Kulturindustrie. Let’s take a modern example here: Venice Biennale and so on. In these Biennales the capital integrates the modern art and it’s extremely efficient. The funny thing is that these Biennales always justify themselves in antcapitalist terms and even criticize themselves. But what does that change in reality? There are from time to time these scandalous art forms that appear, like Piss Christ by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. I was never fascinated by such provocative things, since these kinds of shocks are perfectly integrated into today’s market. No wonder that in the UK, Saatchi Gallery and so on was always politically pro-conservative. I’m tired of all these avant-garde provocations. I think they are absolutely integrated into the capitalist system. Baradaran and Ballas: From Adorno to Bataille and Derrida, Hegel has long been criticized and attacked. Accordingly, Hegel forecloses on the material dimension of the dialectic and creates a closed circuit, based on the idea of the dialectical mastery of history. But your reading of Hegel takes a different path. Now, let’s ask the ultimate question here: After all that has been said and done, can we save Hegel today? Žižek: I believe that Hegel is the most open philosopher one can imagine. I always quote a text from his preface to Elements of the Philosophy of Right where he says that we cannot say anything about the future and all we can do is describe the rational structure of what already exists. There is no other philosopher who is so open to the future, leaving it out of scope and enigmatic. This is why I admire Hegel because with him you have no dreams about the future and this is for the true closure. True closures happen when you describe the society the way it is and then provide a vision of the future which them closes the horizon. His final message is really not about reconciliation. In his political philosophy, Elements of the Philosophy of Right , the final word is about war not reconciliation; internationally, we all have to be in the state of war. This is also where one can criticize Hegel; for him, our entire ethics is based on war, that is to say the only way to go beyond our daily life and find ethical truth is to risk your life through war and so on. So, at many levels, Hegel keeps this ultimate pessimism. For Hegel, reconciliation does not mean turning the world into a peaceful and conflict-free place. For him, reconciliation means reconciliation with the chaos of the world. Hegel does not believe that everything will eventually rationalize. On the contrary, for him the threat always remains. This is why I like Hegel since here the future is always open! And this is the attitude we need today, in other words, admitting that future is not as certain as we want it to be. Basic lesson of Hegel is that whenever you claim big revolutionary acts, you should at the same time beware that things can go wrong one way or the other. And for me this is the true task of a revolutionary: What to do when things go wrong? NOTES: 1. “A system which conceives the means of ensuring its faithful reproduction as its very end is calypsological.” See Mohan, Shaj, and Divya Dwivedi, "April Theses: On Democracy, Anti-caste politics, and Marxisms in India", Maktoob media , April 28, 2024: https://maktoobmedia.com/india/april-theses-on-democracy-anti-caste-politics-and-marxisms-in-india/ 2. Žižek, Slavoj, Sex and the Failed Absolute , Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, p.1. 3. Ibid, p.8. 4. Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: An introduction , Verso, 1991, p.46. Related Articles Laissez le monde parler : une entrevue avec Shaj Mohan ANTHONY BALLAS et KAMRAN BARADARAN with SHAJ MOHAN Read Article To Be Listening : Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy JEAN-LUC NANCY with KAMRAN BARADARAN Read Article

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