I began reading Ray Brassier’s dissertation today, Alien Theory: The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter. Throughout he deals heavily with Laruelle, Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Henry, Churchland, and Quine. If the opening pages are any indication, his forthcoming work with Palgrave, Nihil Unbound, will be a true tour de force. The work is rigorously developed, wide ranging (dealing with both specific epistemological, ontological, and political questions), and argued in a vigorous and spirited fashion. The following passage left me shaking with excitement and filled with relief, feeling as if perhaps the malaise of the primacy of anthropocentricism, culturalism, and the linguistic turn are, at long last, coming to an end and it is becoming possible to philosophize once again without being shackled to the phenomenological condition. I quote at length.
Challenged by the philosopher to provide something like an ‘adequate’ account of the phenomenon of human sapience, the scientist, distilling the various insights provided by evolutionary biology, AI, and thermodynamics, is in a position to put forward a perfectly precise response: human sapience, like many other instances of negentropic energy capture, is a carbon based variety of information processing system, and nothing besides. The philosopher of course will immediately protest that the response is ‘inadequate’ vis a vis the phenomenon in question because hopelessly reductive. But it is not more reductive than the claim that water is nothing but H20; that temperature is nothing but mean molecular kinetic energy; or that the colour red is nothing but electromagnetic radiation with a determinate spiking frequency. All scientific truth is ‘reductive’ precisely insofar as it dissolves the veneer of phenomenological familiarity concomitant with the limited parameters of anthropomorphic perspective. The real question the philosopher has to ask him/herself is this: what is it exactly about the scientist’s banal but remarkably well-supported statement that he or she finds so intolerably ‘reductive’? Is not part of the philosophers unease concerning scientific ‘reduction’ directly attributable to the unavowed wish that, as far as man is concerned, there always be ‘something’ left over beside the material: some ineffable, unquantifiable meta-physical residue, some irreducible transcendental remainder?
Nowhere is this unavowable philosophical longing more transparent than in the phenomenological project, which seems determined to stave off this putative ‘disenchantment’ of phenomena by science by delmiting a dimension of radically unobjectifiable transcendence: that of the phenomenon’s invisible phenomenality. It is with the inapparent ‘how’ of the phenomenon’s appearing, rather than the ‘what’ which appears, that transcendental phenomenology concerns itself. Yet the phenomenological conception of ‘phenomenality’ seems to us so dangerously narrow and parochial as to render the much-vaunted project of a ‘transcendental phenomenological ontology’ into an insidious form of anthropmorphic imperialism [amen to that, and likewise to any position that would shackle all being to language, culture, etc]. If the conception of ‘phenomenon’ is, in Heidegger’s definition, that of something ‘which shows itself in itself’, a ‘self-showing’ which ‘manifests itself in and through itself alone’, then we require:
1. A rigorously theoretical, rather than intuitive, definition of individuation in order to explain what is to count as an individuated appearance, one which does not simply reinstate the metaphysical circularity implicit in Leibniz’s maxim according to which, ‘to be is to be one thing’.
2. A rigorously theoretical, rather than intuitive account of ‘appearance’ or ‘manifestation’ which does not surreptitiously invoke the predominantly optical paradigm of sensory perception which we are empirically familiar.
On both of these counts, phenomenology– whether it take intentional consciousness or human being-in-the-world as its starting point –seems to us to remain wanting: it illegitimately universalises a paradigm of ‘phenomenality’ constructed on the basis of intuitions about individuation and manifestation derived from our empirical perception of middle-sized objects. Yet in exactly what sense, for instance, can the Big Bang, the Cambrian Explosion, or a 26 dimensional superstring (phenomena which are strictly unphenomenologisable precisely because they remain utterly unintuitable in terms of our habitual statio-temporal parameters), be said to be things that ‘show themselves in themselves’? What are the parameters of this ‘showing’? To whom and for who is it supposed to occur? Whence does the mysterious faculty of intuition that is supposed to provide us with an immediately pre-theoretical access to the phenomenological essence of these rigorously imperceptible entities originate?
The standard phenomenological rejoinder to such questions, which consists in protesting that these, along with all other varieties of scientific object, are merely ‘theoretical’ entities whose mode of being derives from that ‘more originary’ mode of phenomenality concomitant with our ‘primordial’ pre-theoretical engagement with ‘the things themselves’, is hopelessly question-begging. Belief in this pseuo-originary, pre-theoretical dimension of experiential immediacy is the phenomenological superstition par excellence.
Briefly: the claim that intentional consciousness subtends a continuum of eidetic intution running from tables and chairs at one end to transfinite cardinals and hyperdimensional superstrings at the other is grotesquely reductive. Just as the suggestion that objects of ‘regiional ontology’ such as quarks, leptons and black holes have as their ultimate ontological root in Dasein’s being-in-the-world (or the subject’s infinite responsibility for the Other; or the auto-affecting pathos of subjective Life [Michel Henry]) is an outrageous instance of anthropocentric idealism. If anyone is guilty of imperialistic reductionism as far as the extraordinary richness and complexity of the universe is concerned, it is the phenomenological idealist rather than the scientific materialist. Husserl’s idealism is as punitive as it is unmistakable:
The existence of Nature cannot be the condition for the existence of consciousness since Nature itself turns out to be a correlate of consciousness: Nature is only as being constituted in regular concatations of consciousness. (Husserl, 1982, 116)
When it was written in 1913– a full 54 years after the publication of Darwin’s On the origins of Species –this statement was already profoundly reactionary. Now, 142 years after Darwin, Husserl’s idealism is utterly indefensible– unless it be by those who approve of phenomenology’s boundless contempt for natural science. The choice with which we are confronted is as clear as it is unavoidable: either Darwin or Husserl. To continue to persist on the course initiated by the latter is to plunge headlong into intellectual disaster and the ruin of philosophy as a credible theoretical enterprise. The future vouchsafed to philosophy by phenomenology is too dismall to contemplate: a terminally infantile, pathologicall narcissistic anthropocentrism. The situation is too grave, the stakes too high to allow for equivocation or compromise.
Once again, the issue seems to us to boil down to a simple matter of intellectual honesty, a blunt but irrecusable alternative that no amount of conceptual obfuscation or rhetorical sophistry can obviate. Either the philosopher insists that man is de jure irreducible to the natural ontological order investigated by science because the essence of human being is transcendence (subjectivity, Spirit, Dasein, etc.), in which case everything science implies concerning the ontologically derivative character rather than transcendentally constitutive character of Homo Sapiensfalse; or scientific statements of the type ‘Man is a carbon-based information processing system’ are true, not just ’empirically adequate’ or ‘factually correct’–, and man is not a transcendent exception to the cosmos but just one relatively commonplace material phenomenon among others. There is no longer any room within the bounds of a univocally physical natural order for a special category of putatively trans-natural being called ‘human’. (14-17)
A little further on:
Against such reactionary philosophical protectionism, it is the business of a thoroughgoing naturalism to emphasize– rather than minimize –the corrosive power of scientific reductionism vis a vis both the tenets of phenomenological orthodoxy and the established parameters of socio-cultural consensus. The task can be achieved by exposing the entirely contingent, conventional character of the phenomenological self-image promulgated through the myth of subjective interiority; by denouncing the hallucinatory character of privileged access [the lynchpin of all foundationalist demands]; and by inveighing against the illusory authority of the first-person perspective; myths which, whether taken separately or in combination, serve to shore up the subjectivist ideology through which liberal democratic capitalism convinces a stupified population of consumers that they are sovereign individuals, naturally endowed with freedom of choice, and that the interests of subjective freedom coincide with the interests of a free market economy. It is by punturing the persistent myths of first-person autonomy and of the irreducibility of consciousness; it is by excoriating the apparently inviolable ubiquity of the cultural privilege which folk psychological superstition has successfully arrogated itself through the process of its enshrinement in the medium of natural language, that a virulently anti-phenomenological skepticism of the kind espoused by Quine, or an eliminative materialism such as that endorsed by Paul Churchland, suggesting as they do that a radical reconfiguration both of our own self-image and of our vision of the world around us is always possible, can help undermine those phenomenological Ur-doxas which help perpetuate the cultural consensus manufactured by capitalism. (21)
To Quine and Churchland, he also adds Dennett’s work in biology as the most eloquent and creative of the three. At any rate, wow, just wow. Open the windows and let in the fresh air. It’s been beginning to stink in here for quite a while, what with the lingering odors of Germanicism, postmodern language philosophy, and anthropocentric police forces striving to carve out a free zone for themselves in the face of science. As my friend Melanie likes to argue, art, philosophy, and theory must always think closely with the latest developments in science (just as science must think closely with the developments in these other practices). For too long, however, it seems that philosophy and theory have adopted a reactionary stance, seeking to disavow these developments, by asserting the primacy of a phenomenological being-in-the-world, or the hegemony of language games. It seems that a particular style of philosophy is quickly coming to an end, even if there are many still walking about like Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense. I, for one, would like to be the first to welcome our new insect overlords.
UPDATE: Marc Goodman has kindly provided a link to the entire dissertation here (warning pdf). Given the passages I quoted, I do not wish to give the impression that Brassier simply mobilizes a variety of sciences to debunk varieties of idealism. The particular passages quoted come from the introduction where he’s discussing his commitments. The remainder of the text rigorously engages with varieties of idealism and materialism, drawing heavily on the “non-philosophy” of Laruelle in relation to figures such as Deleuze, Michel Henry, Husserl, Heidegger, Kant, etc., to develop an account of matter free of idealism. That is, his argument unfolds at the level of philosophemes. Not having ever read a word of Laruelle, I’m not entirely sure what he’s up to yet.
Larval Subjects . 
July 13, 2007 at 7:33 pm
The entire dissertation (Note: PDF) may accessed here:
http://www.cinestatic.com/trans-mat/Brassier/ALIENTHEORY.pdf
July 13, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Thanks Marc! I wasn’t sure whether it was publicly circulating about or not.
July 13, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Good stuff – and many thanks for the link (I have the book on order, but hadn’t realised the dissertation was out there). There’s a slight asymmetry, though, in the passages quoted, which places the argument in the form “there used to be history, but there no longer is any”: the positions being criticised are treated as illusory, and pointed back to the social function they serve, while the critic’s own position is treated as resulting from peeling back the illusion…
I’m obviously very drawn to the notion of materialism in the naturalistic sense as an important critical sensibility – but this attraction makes me a bit suspicious of forms of argument that might be smuggling into their structures the sort of exceptionalism they are criticising in other positions.
As well, we are clearly in a kind of “materialist turn” at the moment – the contours of which also deserve critical attention. I’m of course also relieved at the resources this turn provides against various forms of fundamentalism. But I tend to see historical shifts as ambivalent in their potentials, and so I find myself wanting to move beyond this relief, and also start casting ahead to identify the risks and potentials of this new moment, so that we have some chance of not being blindsided by consequences we could have, but didn’t, foresee…
Apologies if this is very scattered – I’m horrifically ill at the moment – browsing a bit aimlessly as I can’t breathe when lying down ;-P So if this comment makes no sense, it may just mean that I’m reading a half-hallucinated passage :-)
July 13, 2007 at 11:20 pm
I haven’t gotten far enough to decide whether he’s doing what you’re suggesting with respect to exceptionalizing himself. The sort of thing you’re calling for seems to be what Laruelle’s work is designed to do. He doesn’t strike me as “peeling back an illusion”, but as showing the inadequacies of the phenomenological position. But, once again, I’m not far enough to say. I also get a little nervous with the implication that “peeling back the illusion” is something to be rejected tout court. I wonder if there aren’t plenty of illusions worth peeling back. I find myself increasingly nervous at what strikes me as an implicit Hegelianism in such claims, premised on the thesis that all shapes of thought contain a partial truth. I’m not entirely sure where I fall with respect to this thesis and its variants, but the thesis does make me increasingly nervous. The question, of course, arises with regard to the final sentence of your second to last paragraph:
There is a tremendous question as to whether we could have seen the sorts of consequences you allude to. It might be that risk is an inherent feature of any theoretical wager. At any rate, whatever else one might like to say, Brassier is exceptionally rigorous in the development of his thought. The text is well worth the read, though, I suspect, tough going for anyone who doesn’t have a thorough grounding in phenomenology as articulated through Husserl, Heidegger, and Henry. This is what I find so impressive in the work. Too often someone simply begins with “materialism” and dogmatically makes a number of assertions. The inevitably rejoinder is then that one is engaging in a pre-critical speculative metaphysics. Or one brings Sokal into the mix. Brassier is absolutely unique in the way he approaches these issues, giving a very nice grounding for a “materialist” thought (read the text and you’ll understand the scare quotes).
Hope you feel better soon.
July 13, 2007 at 11:38 pm
I should emphasize, once again, that the two passages I pulled out are not representative of what Brassier is doing in the text. Throughout the first part, the main target is phenomenology, which is arguably the most rigorous attempt to provide a transcendental grounding that takes into account reflexivity and its own stance that we have today. Later in the text, in his engagement with Laruelle, he unfolds what Laruelle refers to as “non-philosophy”. Non-philosophy is not anti-philosophy, but the Decision upon which philosophical orientations are based on which philosophy itself necessarily cannot articulate. I’m murky on all of this so I can’t say a whole lot as of yet, but I suspect this is approaching the issues of self-reflexivity you were referring to.
I cited the passages I did because it was just so refreshing to read a continental philosopher making these sorts of remarks about contemporary science and the anthropocentric reductivism of phenomenology (and, we might add, German idealism). It is amazing that there is such a prohibition (like the Jewish prohibition against saying G-d’s name) in philosophy and theory when it comes to speaking of science. The rationale, of course, is clear: it is thought that one falls into speculative dogmatism when doing so. Yet I suspect there’s something very different going on here that has to do with disciplinary battles. It is odd that the theorist can talk about other artifacts that are not immanent to consciousness such as literary works, cultural formations, political formations, language, and so on, yet talk of science is strictly forbidden unless it is treated as a cultural text and then fed through the critical theory machine, the semiotic machine, the psychoanalysis machine, the hermeneutic machine, the phenomenological/descriptive machine or whatever other machine you might wish to use… So long as it falls within Geisteswissenschaft.
These positions are all based on particular concepts of immanence: immanence to consciousness, immanence to culture or society, immanence to language. In each case an “immanence-to” is formulated, and this is used as a way of sanctioning what can and cannot be discussed within theory or what is and is not originary and derivative. What is needed is the abolishment of all “immanence-to’s”, in favor of just plain immanence… An immanence that would be the ruin of all Urdoxa or the primacy of the lifeworld as the measure of what is and is not to be thought by philosophy.
July 13, 2007 at 11:40 pm
When I object to the notion of peeling back an illusion, I’m basically just making the sort of point that I would take Deleuze to intend, when talking about moving beyond representational assumptions – a different form of argument is implied within this kind of framework – you don’t have to go to Hegel for this. I wouldn’t know whether Brassier’s piece is adequate to that form of argument or not – I was just reacting to the way in which the passage above makes some glancing comments about the functionality of the positions it criticises for capitalism.
When I speak of foreseeing consequences: I tend to think that we can try to analyse potentials that are already immanent to situations. Yes, left-field and unpredictable consequences can follow – but there’s a long history of social and intellectual movements being blindsided by things that actually were happening at the time. If we only look “backward”, to how a new sensibility or practice will equip us in the criticism of earlier movements, we aren’t exploring the potentials of our own situation – I’d like to see whether it’s possible to to do this, rather than ruling it out a priori.
I’m probably also in an odd position in that phenomenology has never held any attraction for me, and I’ve always felt that arguments that try to preserve some sort of transcendent “bit” that overhangs the material world are, in a sense, pre-philosophical, or more theological than philosophical – I find such claims baffling. So this work interests me, not so much for the critique it offers there (which I’m likely already to share), but for how it’s understanding the ontological status of naturalism/materialism. But I’ll have to read and assess the argument when I’m more coherent.
July 13, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Sorry – my post crossed your second post. The issue when dealing with humans is that a fully naturalistic account – an account that treats humans in a non-exceptionalised way – still needs to deal with certain phenomena that emerge in time, or are understood to have emerged in time – including the naturalistic perception of the world. This does not mean reducing naturalism to some kind of “mere” product of human culture – it does mean understanding the situation in which we might have become open to the possibility of naturalism, such that the potentials of this way of orienting ourselves and organising our experiences became available to us.
Amusingly, Habermas also does a great deal with science in the way that you call for – not treating it as a cultural text, etc. – Habermas’ project also aims at the sort of broad conception of immanence (what he means when he talks about historical materialism, which is to re-situate recent human societies in a long-term materialist process) so the concept of doing this isn’t completely alien to all forms of continental philosophy. But I think we’d both agree that we’d like to see this done in a better form than Habermas offers :-) I’m sure this work will do this – my point in my previous comment is simply that I’m probably coming from a disciplinary background that probably isn’t as hostile to science to begin with, but that also tries to grapple with the fact that our particular form of creatureliness stumbles across its orientations to the world in a way that unfolds in a aleatory fashion over time – such that even orientations with as much potential as naturalism/materialism are something to which we have become sensitised or open in particular ways, which can be analysed just as we can analyse those alternative orientations of which we are critical.
I’m sure I’m being very murky in how I’m formulating these points – sorry not to be more up to the discussion.
July 13, 2007 at 11:57 pm
By the way, on this:
If I’m understanding you, this is actually the point I was trying to make, in criticising the notion of a “peeling away”: I think such forms of argument have the structure of looking for what is originary, and then claiming to criticise other positions as being derivative. I’m happy to accept that Brassier doesn’t do this – but I suspect you and I share an objection to a particular form of theory here.
July 14, 2007 at 12:31 am
I basically see this as a historical issue and an instance of “immanence-to” as immanence to history. That is not to suggest that it is without merit, just that one can certainly engage in naturalism without having to take up these questions just as one can write a history without
having to take a detour through physics.
This is news to me with respect to Deleuze. Deleuze offers a trenchant critique of representation and more properly the form of the Self and of the Object as the framework of all individuations. He doesn’t give a historical account of how things came to be viewed in terms of representation, unless you would call his discussion of the history of philosophy and Plato such an account. Nor does he give an account of how things came to be viewed in this way. Again, though, I might just entirely misunderstanding what you’re calling for here. The remarks above about how things come to be always make me extremely irritated, as I simply don’t share the assumption that one has to engage in such an activity even if everything is the result of an individuation, i.e., that’s not a particular discussion I wish to have and which won’t be particularly productive (hint hint). A lot of these things are the target of what I’m inveighing against.
July 14, 2007 at 12:52 am
I wasn’t suggesting that Deleuze gives an historical account, but that his position would also be critical of a notion of “peeling away” – arguments that have the form of conceptualising themselves as a “peeling away” would seem, to me, to suggest a concept that there is some originary or authentic position from which a critic speaks – I would understand Deleuze to be arguing against this notion?
There is a difference – we’ve discussed this before – between talking about how things came to be, and engaging in a form of theory that is aware that things came to be. I am not interested – you know this – in the issue or origins, but in the issue of understanding the current potentials of a situation. Those potentials won’t be seen, I would argue, if the situation is regarded as expressive of some ahistorical position.
In terms of the passages quoted above: Brassier sets up an opposition between perspectives that he takes to play some role in the reproduction of capitalism, on the one hand, and his own position on the other. So his argument is that own position enables a critique of capitalism because it sits in some way outside capitalism: this is his analysis of the situation of capitalism. I’m very, very sceptical of this sort of claims – I strongly suspect that it flattens capitalism by defining capitalism in terms of the market, and therefore assumes that critical perspectives that aren’t expressive of market relations are critical of capitalism as such. Historically, we’ve been down this road before.
My suggestion would be that his analysis of the situation – of the individuation of the forms of thought in which he sees critical potential – will predictably suggest a particular direction for political practice – and that this direction for political practice will predictably not hit the core of what it’s expressly trying to hit. Of course, I say this in part because I have a different theory of what capitalism is. Not a different theory of the origins of capitalism, but a different theory of its current state.
Most of his thesis may not focus around this issue at all – although, since his introduction is talking about things like “resistance to intellectual commodification” (p. 9), it’s reasonable to think this is a major motivating intention of the work. My point is that it can become very important to understand what those sensibilities we identify as critical are – what their ontological status is – and this can be impeded if those sensibilities are things that have emerged in time, and yet the form of analysis does not enable us to problematise and explore the implications of this.
Again, I’ve read very little, and am in no real state to assess the work. It’s just that it seems that the work intends itself at least in part as a political intervention, and therefore issues that one might, in fact, be able to bracket if one were just abstractly interested in naturalism, or if one were a scientist applying a naturalist sensibility to find out about some other thing, become front and centre, given the intentions of the work.
July 14, 2007 at 1:04 am
Deleuze rejects the model of critique you’re alluding to as a juridical model. He offers an alternative in Nietzsche and Philosophy, based on distributions of force and a theory of interpretation, where every phenomenon is a symptom of the forces overtaking it (active and reactive forces). You must be incredibly talented and clairvoyant to discern what a person’s project is from a single quoted paragraph of their work.
July 14, 2007 at 1:08 am
To clarify, Deleuze would find the thesis that we must/can account for the position from which we engage in critique equally chimerical to the one you are attributing to Brassier, as it would for him presuppose a possibility of transcendence he argues is foreclosed. Additionally, for Deleuze, what would be at issue would be the development of life, not the reactionary stance of critique. For instance, an amphibian doesn’t pause to ask whether or not it’s evolving in the right way, rather it lives or it dies. Very different paradigm of thought than that found in critique.
July 14, 2007 at 1:16 am
This is much clearer. I would suggest that you need to find very different language for what you’re trying to get at. For instance, you could say “does the position accept that things come to be and pass away, or does it advocate ahistorical eternalism?” The answer in Brassier’s case is “yes”. It’s a shame he didn’t say that in a passage quoted by someone else to emphasize that his project wasn’t simply about making room for science, but is thought to have political implications as well. Having established that, it would be nice to actually talk about the content of the philosophers position rather than approaching it with a priori lenses and ready-made criticisms.
July 14, 2007 at 1:43 am
I mean, “yes, Brassier does accept that things come to be and pass away or are contingent, not that he adopts an ahistorical eternalism.” I personally do not think any position can be described as a materialism if it does not accept this basic axiom. To put it dramatically, all genuine materialisms are Heraclitan, the posit that all things come to be and pass away in the order of time. I likely would have responded in a very different way had you expressed yourself in something like the form “does the theorist acknowledge the contingency of forms of subjectivity and social institutions?” or something to that effect. Your first paragraph made an allusion to history which gave the impression that you hold every theorist has to write something like Hegel’s histories to defend their position. I do feel, however, that you’re being very unfair here. You place the theorist in a very difficult position. Brassier says “x, y, and z about phenomenological, anthropomorphic positions with regard to capitalism” and you jump all over him saying “he’s exceptionalizing, he’s exceptionalizing!!!” Well tell me, how is poor ray able, given the very nature of language, it’s linearity, its temporal unfolding, to simultaneously say this and q, r, and s about the conditions of individuation for his own position? Fox News likes to show pictures and footage of Iraq where people are happily going to the market, kids are going to the school, etc. I wonder what’s outside those pictures, outside of what’s selected, what’s outside the frame?
July 14, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Just wanted to say that I have the exact same reaction to Brassier’s writings. A version of one of the chapters of Nihil Unbound is available as video here: http://www.eri.mmu.ac.uk/deleuze/journalapril06_2.php
Fascinating stuff on Heidegger and Deleuze and their conception of time.
July 14, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Was wondering how long it would take for you to get into this. Still, I’m surprised that it is happening at the same time as you are getting into Whitehead.
Since everyone is having such a good time I won’t give my opinion. Do enjoy.
July 14, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Since everyone is having such a good time I won’t give my opinion. Do enjoy.
Anthony, come to the Parody Center, I’ll show you a good time! I just published the Adumbration of The Week by A. Kotsko!
July 14, 2007 at 7:47 pm
A good bricoleur draws on whatever happens to be at hand. I don’t know that I have fixed commitments to any particular thing, which is why I’m simultaneously able to appreciate elements of Hegel, Deleuze, Lacan, Freud, Whitehead, Badiou, these things, and so on without being committed to all aspects of any one particular position. I haven’t really gotten far enough into Brassier to know what his particular position is, but I do like the polemics against phenomenology.
July 14, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Thanks for the link, Jonas!
July 14, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I wonder if this means that in this century we will see science begin to view mind as an empirical organ (that is, an organ of experience), as much as sight, taste, hearing or touch. It would go along way to de-problematize the “yeah, but…” of what in this quote is called “transcendental phenomenology.”
If mind-objects are recognized as much as objects of other sensorial fields, then the transcendental is easily brought down to the level of the material. At this point, though, it makes more sense to collapose both– transcendental and material– and think in yet a newer way.
July 14, 2007 at 9:38 pm
The autopoietic theorists (Maturna and Varela) for instance, have already tried to synthesize phenomenology and neurology in this way. Of course, Brassier thinks this is a reactionary move.
Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism is also a transcendental materialism, as well. The transcendental, for Deleuze, is not a property of a transcendental subject or a cogito, but the material world.
July 15, 2007 at 12:16 am
I’m not saying you have to accept everything you read, not at all. I was just struck by this is all.
I’m kind of tired of polemics myself, but I’m sure that says nothing about either of us. More importantly, ‘The autopoietic theorists (Maturna and Varela) for instance, have already tried to synthesize phenomenology and neurology in this way. Of course, Brassier thinks this is a reactionary move.’ It’s this sort of thing that bothers me about Brassier. Still, I do appreciate, if only because it gets me going, his work.
Dejan, keep trying. Sorry I haven’t been able to get you that dictionary.
July 18, 2007 at 6:43 am
if you’re interested in the Laruellian line of thought, there are a couple other places to look as well (though none as interesting as Brassier, in my opinion, aside from Laruelle himself).
1. John Mullarkey’s new book “post-continental philosophy” deals with Deleuze, Badiou, Henry and Laruelle. the reading of Deleuze was not one i found particularly interesting, but he deals with Laruelle and it’s in English, which is wayyyy overdue.
2. Brassier had written on Laruelle already in Vol 12 (i think that’s the number) of Pli, “materialism.” the whole issue is fan-tas-tic. he provides an overview of Laruelle’s notion of transcendental philosophy, his notion of matter vs. materialism, and non-philosophy. the title of the review is the same as B’s dissertation. in the same issue there is an article translated by Laruelle as well, and a separate article by brassier in which he discusses laruelle, quine, and Kant.
3. http://www.non-philosophie.com/
this is one of the main sites for laruelle stuff. most is in french. either this one or the other one (www.la-non-philosophie.net) had some english pieces too though if I recall. some short theses on non-philosophy by brassier were avail there too, and i found them useful as intro stuff (french though).
if people are not aware of how prolific this laruelle guy is, or how absurd it is that no one in english unis talk about him, check out the publication page on that site…
http://www.non-philosophie.com/publications.php
he was, I believe, also the first person to publish a serious philosophical response to Deleuze, as early as the 70’s, replying to anti-oedipus (ok besides lyotard’s Lib Econ).
4. a difficult but fascinating paper of laruelle’s called Identity and Event is avail in pdf format on the Pli website here
(http://www.warwick.ac.uk/philosophy/pli_journal/pdfs/laruelle_pli_9.pdf)
(vol 9, 2000).
i’m glad people are talking about this stuff. i look forward to hearing more of everyone’s responses to Brassier’s book.
thanks to the person above for the video link too, that’s great.
July 18, 2007 at 8:49 pm
so I just watched the talk on Deleuze and Heidegger by Ray Brassier of Middlesex College.
http://www.eri.mmu.ac.uk/deleuze/journalapril06_2.php
it’s an interesting paper, and worth watching.
(my comments below cite a video by Derrida on Deleuze. you can find it on youtube if you just search derrida deleuze.)
so i thought I’d submit a brief review of Brassier’s talk. here’s my take.
the opening discussion of Heidegger is very promising as a problem, but he doesn’t pull it off, he merely poses a limit of phenomenological approaches to fundamental ontology. the notion of transcendence of time and the disjunct between existential and ontological time is a familiar one to readers of Heidegger’s being and time, but was anyone else a bit miffed by the speed with which he ran it into later heidegger? as if the single and sole problem of heidegger’s career is in this problem? certainly its not irrelevant, but is it enough to dismiss heidegger’s oeuvre as a ‘problematic of access’? on the other hand, as a general characterisation of the phenomenological tradition, it’s not so far-fetched, and rings true. what did others think of the application of this idea to Derrida? I’m not well-versed enough to evaluate this…
so, then he moves into Deleuzeland…
Brassier moves through the first two syntheses perfectly fine, i think. but once he gets to the third synthesis, which is supposed to raise the problem of psychic individuation, he seems to flounder and again only manage to pose the problem, without seeming to go very far with it. his disclaimer in the beginning of the paper about the ‘missing part’ of his paper becomes frustratingly true toward the end. on the other hand, he undeniably broaches a very difficult problem worthy of consideration. the proximity of this paper to the problem of the thesis I’m now wrapping up is very close. how the third synthesis is able to distribute an order, totality and series to time, without presupposing a ‘measure’ of time…this is the problem, in a nutshell.
basically, my complaint/critique is this: if you listen carefully, the way Brassier sets up the problem of the third synthesis still ends up presupposing the existence of a pre-existing virtual totality of coexistence in the Bergsonian sense. that is, the second synthesis, although critiqued earlier in the paper (and he highlights all the important critiques of Bergson from D&R), seems to return full-fledged when he explains how the third synthesis is situated vis-a-vis the other two. in other words, he is trying to overcome Bergson but he’s already given Bergson everything. personally, I think Deleuze did overcome Bergson (at least in D&R), and if one reads the 3rd synthesis carefully in the 5th chapter and conclusion, one sees the 2nd synthesis drop out. I try and show this in the work i’m doing now. in any event, this seems to me to be the thing that causes problems for Brassier, and gets him lodged in a dilemma of thought/existence, which cannot be resolved except to say that psychic individuation (deleuze’s schematism on this reading) provides the third term as it did for Kant. naturally, you end up with an idealism (or ‘pan-psychism’) if you go this route. but is not the third synthesis ultimately developed exclusively through the synthesis of intensity in chapter 5?
what do others think?
as an aside, brassier’s brazen dismissal of derrida (which he gets chopped for in the question/answer period, predictably) is ironically kind of funny in sense, because for those of us who recently watched the youtube transcription of Derrida’s paper on Deleuze and stupidity (Betise)/animality, which also (exactly like Brassier’s paper) ended up hinging on the problem of a ‘priveleging of psychic individuation’ , the topic ends up bringing them closer than Brassier would probably like to admit, at least regards their suspicions of Deleuze. in other words, B beats up on Derrida but ends up having almost exactly the same concerns about Deleuze. and he’s equally unable (as was Derrida) to articulate the problem thoroughly, without flopping about.
such is my initial take, having just watched it. i’m interested in hearing other reactions.
has anyone else watched it yet?
August 11, 2007 at 11:37 am
[…] his Alien Theory: The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter is being chatted about over at Larval Subjects. I too am making my way through Brassier’s PHD thesis, and I am slowly making summary notes […]
August 22, 2007 at 4:08 am
Palgrave’s updated page for Nihil Unbound now links to a .pdf which features the first chapter of the book in addition to the contents and the index of subjects.
The publisher’s page is here:
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=279047
The .pdf is here:
August 22, 2007 at 4:25 am
Many thanks, Marc!
October 10, 2007 at 1:35 am
[…] tip: Ray Brassier (himself an amazing next-gen […]
October 22, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Does anyone know why the release date for Nihil Unbound keeps getting pushed bakc?
November 20, 2007 at 12:05 am
In case anybody is interested, my review of Nihil Unbound is now online at the New Humanist website.
The address is here:
http://newhumanist.org.uk/1643
March 10, 2008 at 9:05 pm
The books been out for a while now – I’d really appreciate any opinions on it as I’m addressing it (and trying to discredit its claims) as part of my thesis. Does anyone fancy re-opening this thread?
March 11, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Good luck my friend! No seriously, it would be great to get a discussion going about Brassier’s old thesis and his new book: it’s probably the most interesting work out right now…hope you manage to find some interlocuters who are up to the job!
March 12, 2008 at 12:06 pm
OK, I will get back to you with some thoughts over the next week. Please tell interested persons and we can try and unpick this difficult (and sometimes worrying, depending on your stance) text.
March 15, 2008 at 5:10 am
Great, I look forward to your response. I’ll be interested to see what you consider to be the main claims of the book, because aside from the general claims put forward in the preface, I’m still not sure exactly what these claims are. But it works perfectly well as a sharp critique of all the main players in continental philosophy (including a critique of Laruelle, which Miller’s otherwise excellent review failed to notice). My own crude critical hunch about the book relates to the way there seems to be no role for art or aesthetic construction in his philosophy. What is the status of art for Ray Brassier? I’m sure that he doesn’t consider art to be merely a form of qualia, or simply another means of communication. Awhile back there was a piece published in Multitudes about one of his favourite Noise bands, and towards the end of his thesis there’s this enigmatic invocation of a Universal Noise which will resist capitalism exchange, yet I’m not sure how concepts like intelligibility, and his brand of realism, can account for the role of experimentation, or creation in the arts and sciences. In this regard I find Deleuze and Guattari’s late philosophy to be more versatile, but I’m willing to be put straight on this issue. Why is the issue of art of critical importance for understanding Brassier’s project? Because his is a nihilism that would do away with that last comforting thought, that life can be justified aesthetically. My hunch is that there’s a disavowed, residual aesthetics in speculative realism… Anyway, will try and get others involved in this thread too-
Cheers
March 15, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Here’s link to the Brassier article, ‘Genre is Obsolete’:
http://toliveandshaveinla.blogspot.com/2007/05/ray-brassier-genre-is-obsolete-from.html
March 16, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Interestingly, the role that art might play in an existence devoid of meaning is precisely the subject of my thesis.
Yes, Brassier appears to afford no significance to ‘art’ even in his criticisms of Adorno and Horkheimer, which is suprising considering the importance of art to the formers overall project. Of course to follow Brassier’s account, one would have to take art (going on the account of Brassier, Churchland, Meillassaux, et al.) to be inscribed within their wider ‘Speculative Realist’ system, which reduces the human mind to a random system of chemical reactions in line with neuro-scientific discovery. Therefore, going on their argument, art can be of little consequence, aside from testifying to the lengths that the human will go to to feign meaning in a meaningless universe.
However, I would argue (and will continue to)that art in its affirmation of its own meaninglessness can testify to the continued possibility of meaning even as the output of human activity (governed as it is by random material occurrences).
This accords rather with another argument I have with Brassier’s work that states that his proclamation that life has no inherent meaning (as opposed to a post-Kantian stance that that tries to maintain meaning as an a priori condition of consciousness) is a bias that contradicts itself, on account of the fact that in a universe with no meaning the terms ‘meaning’ and ‘no meaning’ are of equal measure – they both occur as proclamations issued from human minds that only think themselves to have the power of logical discrimination: in this case whether to proclaim a meaning or not is an irrelevance – the opposed statements are purely flipsides of a personal philosophical bias that in any case ‘does not exist’. In this sense, providing that we beleive ourselves to have conscious discriminating minds, and providing we cannot really know for sure the truth as to whether we have meaning or not(an argument I can divulge later in this thread), arts status as the field which has as its sole purpose the proclamation of ‘meaning’ (or beauty)despite its meaninglessness (which is inherent in the notion of ‘art’)is the viable, and indeed ethically necessary. In this case I would argue art to be of greater import to the philosopher than ‘science’, in direct contradiction to Brassier’s claims.
March 16, 2008 at 5:51 pm
EDITOR: PLEASE TAKE THIS EDIT IN LACE OF LAST POST. And to answer your question, the main aims of the book appear to me to be those laid out in the preface. Several philosophers and thinkers are addressed in communicating these aims, principle amongst them Meillossaux, Adorno and Horkeimer, Kant, Hegel, Badiou, Laruelle Heidegger, Nietzcshe, Lyotard, Levinas and Freud. The main aim of the book is to discredit philosophical accounts that place existence as having a direct correlate to occurrences in the human mind, as it is argued that they are mere inheritors of mythic and Judaeo-Christian tradition. Taking statements about archaic history together with reliable scientific predictions Brassier points out that human consciousness is but a blip on the scientific radar as it registers the history of our Universe.
Personally I can speak most reasonably about what I understand best, and that is Brassier’s accounts of Adornianism and Nietzschianism, as well as his account of the importance of neuro-scientific study. On all three counts I would argue that Brassier’s extreme (nay, ‘evangelical’) nihilism demonstrates a peculiar bias that could be seen as a ‘belief’ of sorts and thus is out of keeping with its own rationalist claims, which demand non-bias.
March 16, 2008 at 7:17 pm
The mobilization of Laruelle’s non-dialectical unilateralization is intended to annul the distinction of meaning and meaninglessness, which are, in any case, both folk-psychological terms. In this respect, the real indexes a ‘positive insignificance’ contra the collapse into relativism and perspectivism that ultimately lands Nietzsche in trouble.
It is simply not the case that human ‘meaning’ is simply reduced to the random fluctuations of matter etc.., rather, the point is that meaning can not be upheld as the transcendental vanguard that insures some form of qualitative interiority or other unbreachable realm. What cogsci a la Churchland, Dennett, Metzinger, offer, is a philosophical charge that states that ‘meaning’, qualia etc. are in fact perfectly amenable to objective scientific description; they can be completely (without affective or phenomenological excess) explained with regard to underlying insensate, inorganic, insignificant processes.
March 16, 2008 at 7:33 pm
but, editor, please remove this line: ‘EDITOR: PLEASE TAKE THIS EDIT IN PLACE OF LAST POST,’
from the post as this was an instruction to you and not for the post itself !!
apologies, thanks
March 17, 2008 at 2:16 am
I am not the “editor” but rather the owner of this blog and am being kind enough to allow my forum to be a site for this discussion. As such, I follow neither instructions or orders as I am not a caretaker and would kindly ask you not to address me as such.
March 17, 2008 at 4:27 am
Logical Progression, thanks, this seems like a good summary of what is at stake in Nihil Unbound, and it’s great to discover that I’m not the only one who thinks that the question of art might be the key to determining the value of Brassier’s work. Now before I carry out any further research, here’s a preliminary response to your post:
1) Just because Ray Brassier (and perhaps the other philosophers grouped under the title ‘Speculative Realism’, which I think we should from now on refrain from referring to, for the sake of clarity: Brassier’s work is complicated enough!) believes that the human mind can ultimately be explained by physical and chemical processes, does it necessarily follow that ‘art can only be of little consequence’ for his philosophy? I agree with you that there seems to be an almost ‘evangelical’ tone to his nihilism, perhaps Brassier would value art which contributes to the displacement of Man as source of meaning for the universe? I’m hoping that a close reading of his essay ‘Genre is Obsolete’ might provide us with an outline of his position on art.
2) This leads on to my second point: I’m sure that for Brassier, art is not a legitimate realm of mystificatory Being. The significance of art lies not in its evocations of an originary nature which must be forever interpreted. When you write that ‘art in its affirmation of its own meaninglessness can testify to the continued possibility of meaning’, what kind of ‘meaning’ are we talking about here?
I’m resistant to the idea that art contains hidden truths, or that it provides a platform upon which ‘meaning’ for the intentional subject can be grounded, because then it seems to me that art becomes nothing more than a form of communication which needs to be hermeneutically decoded. Following Deleuze and Guattari, my preference is for a physiological conception of art, as something which affects us, transforms us, creates a ‘new partition of the sensible’ (Ranciere) and thereby creates ‘a new people, a new earth’. (Deleuze and Guattari)
3) No doubt this conception of art is something which Brassier would consider to be incurably Romantic. I believe that he does subscribe to the notion that life IS inescapably ‘meaningful’, but only according to the intrinsic biological teleology of the finite organism, rather than it being an a priori (transcendental) condition of human consciousness. However, Brassier doesn’t seem to consider the idea that human beings might be capable of transforming themselves through the artistic construction of their material environments, perhaps because for him these transformations don’t go far enough, and can only be accounted for through a feeble phenomenology of sensation. How can we assess the way that art and culture (understood as ‘institutions of instinct’) have really transformed humanity, through endless descriptions of qualia? Instead, the idea that the human species might be genetically remodelled in order to make it isomorphic with capital is viewed as a potentially positive outcome of technological developments, and getting involved with this process, rather than lamenting for the lost original meaning of humanity, is for Brassier a political exigency.
4) When you write about ‘the fact that in a universe with no meaning, the terms ‘meaning’ and ‘no meaning’ are of equal measure’, I assume you are alluding to Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal recurrence. After learning that the world has no intrinsic unity, origin, or purpose, it is only the artist (as overman) who can reinvest the world with value, and redeem our meaningless suffering. Yet Brassier believes that Nietzsche’s aesthetic transvaluation illegitimately endows human-beings ‘with an infinite reservoir of spiritual energy which furnishes them with an inexhaustible capacity for physical resilience’. Justifying life through art amounts to investing suffering with meaning, which will ‘automatically reinscribe woe into a spiritual calculus which subordinates present suffering to some recollected or longed-for happiness.’ Brassier thinks it is crucial to do away with this redemptive valuation, but I would question his seemingly literalist reading of Nietzsche’s usage of the terms ‘suffering’ and ‘pleasure’. Nietzsche insists that ‘joy is deeper than the heart’s agony’, not because human beings as finite organisms have the physical capacity to experience more pleasure than pain if only they choose to affirm life, but because the human species transforms what it experiences as pleasurable and painful through its collective culture, understood as the highest expressions of the (inhuman) will to power. By this I mean the intensification of experience which is concomitant with the constructions of culture (art in its broadest sense, and not a million miles away from Marxian notions of collective labour) through which the limited pleasures of the finite organism takes ever more circuitous routes to find satisfaction.
5) I’ll draw this long post to a close with what I consider to be the main problem with the position I’ve just put forward, the status of the will to power as a speculative biological impulse. if Nietzsche’s will to power will be re-constructed by Freud as the death-drive, and transformed into the concept of desire by Deleuze and Guattari, then it is also worth remembering that it began life as a vitalist principle in Romantic philosophy, not unlike Schiller’s concept of the ‘play-drive’. My question is, on what grounds can we attribute such a striving capacity (conatus) to life? Life is redeemed through art as the expression of the inhuman will to power which intensifies it, but how does this anthropomorphic notion apply to life as a whole, to unicellular organisms, for instance, to use Brassier’s example? Is this not just a postulation of a vital capacity to life as a means of comforting ourselves, a new god to replace the old one? I will wait patiently for your reply.
March 17, 2008 at 4:38 am
Apologies to The Conformist, who seems to have already partly answered my question before I finished writing it! I haven’t quite got my head around the chapter on Laruelle yet, but I’m working on it…
March 17, 2008 at 6:56 am
and apologies to Logical Regression, for not following your counter-intuitive name logic!
March 17, 2008 at 11:43 am
‘What cogsci a la Churchland, Dennett, Metzinger, offer, is a philosophical charge that states that ‘meaning’, qualia etc. are in fact perfectly amenable to objective scientific description; they can be completely (without affective or phenomenological excess) explained with regard to underlying insensate, inorganic, insignificant processes.’
Yes, but this implies a bias. Churchland is not against meaning per se, but meaning as materially inscribed; he sees meaning as not central to existence, but amenable to it. Meaning is something felt by humans, but to exteriorize it would be to place an anthropomorphic dimension on an otherwise oblivious objective reality. Whereas meaning for many people, particularly for the post-Kantians that Brassier derides, is intrinsic to existence. That is, meaning is inscribed in the experience of the subject.
With regard to Laruelle’s thought; even to nullify the distinction between meaning and non-meaning implies a bias and a ‘decision’. Besides, the distinction between meaning and non-meaning in any case implies that we live with ‘no meaning’ or ‘non-meaning’, under the terms that we understand meaning. It favours one pole of the dialectic. This is something necessary to such a statement, and cannot be a criticism as such against Brassier’s cause, yet it still demonstrates a bias incompatible with his theory!
March 17, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Logical Regression, when you write that ‘meaning is intrinsic to existence’, what kind of ‘meaning’ are we talking about? Surely Brassier would argue that although human beings as finite organisms are compelled to find meaning in existence, bound as they are by their specific needs; this pre-theoretical subjective notion of meaning is not as valuable as the insights gained from more objective forms of knowledge, ‘cogsci’ being one example, Spinoza being another. The point is that these more objective, rational forms of knowledge can reveal certain things about the human species which we would prefer not to know: i.e. that we are driven by biological drives rather than free will, or that our solar system will explode in four billion years; hence the reason why philosophy should be ‘the organon of extinction’. If not, then philosophy loses its value as a means by which we can comprehend our existence, and becomes little more than a subjective therapeutics.
What is this sense of ‘meaning inscribed in the experience of the subject’? A hermeneutics of language? A subjective phenomemology of sensation? Instead of trying to discount the apparently circular logic of his argument (‘he argues that life is meaningless but then he must have a notion of meaning to assert that’), it might be more productive to analyse the specific metaphysical (epistemological and ontological) arguments which correspond to his veneration of the natural sciences. Yes, there seems to be an evangelical tone to his enthusiastic nihilism, but is that surprising given that the book originally had ‘gnostic skepticism’ as part of its subtitle? Brassier’s position isn’t arbitrary: his own explicit metaphysical commitments outlined in Nihil Unbound, I would argue that there is an implicit ‘aesthetic’ dimension to it too. It is this ‘constructive’ aspect of Brassier’s philosophy which I am keen on exploring.
March 17, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Sorry, the second from last line should read ‘Brassier’s position isn’t arbitrary: his own explicit metaphysical commitments ARE outlined in Nihil Unbound, AND I would argue that there is an implicit aesthetic dimension to it too.’
March 17, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Thanks, this is interesting: I understand with regard to Nietzsche that Brassier gets very hung up on Nietzsche’s instruction to grasp every joy and pain equally. Whilst Brassier points out that to do so is to accord some spiritual significance to the experience of both joy and pain I take it rather that Nietzsche wished to point out that both were of equal import. i.e. he does what Laruelle does with regard to ‘meaning’ and ‘non-meaning’: neither exist as dialectical oppositions. I would argue that, overall, Brassier does with Nietzsche what he does with Adorno: he takes the endless cycling of suffering and joy (for the latter ‘hope’) as indicative of a wish for redemption when, rather, both of these philosophers do not argue for a redemption, but merely point out that life exists within the circling of death, pleasure under the aegis of pain and joy as concomitant with suffering. Taken in this sense, and against Brassier’s claims philosophy, and art, could be seen as the inscription of the conditions of the possibility of life and meaning coexistent with their opposites, rather than philosophy being taken to be the ‘organon of extinction’. Given that I don’t see anything radical in my readings of Adorno or Nietzsche I still maintain that Brassier’s thought holds a peculiar bias towards an amoral and unaesthetic rationalism – scientism, in a word.
With regard to Brassier’s piece on Noise we could perform a close reading to see if he gives anything away there. But I have a feeling that he could counter that the piece you refer to was never intended as ‘philosophy’ per se, and in any case, as a different text to Nihil Unbound perhaps it cannot be criticised in the same breath? Brassier, incidentally has an interest in ‘Noise’ as the organiser of NoiseTheoryNoise# 1 and 2 – two conferences held at Middlesex University in 2003 and 2004. Yes, with regard to Brassier’s interest in Noise we could ruminate that he may hold some aesthetic yearnings, but I’m not sure if we could go deeply into this unless he divulges himself where such a link may reside in his theory. We can only gather, arguably, that his dismissal of ‘poesis’throughout Nihil Unbound rules out an interest in ‘art’ (other than in its dismissal as wish projection).
March 17, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Logical Regression, I’m guessing that the reason why you haven’t yet attempted to define your concepts of art and meaning is because there’s a backlog of posts on this thread. (and before I forget, thanks to Larval Subjects, for enabling this discussion to occur!)
When you write, “philosophy, and art, could be seen as the inscription of the conditions of the possibility of life and meaning coexistent with their opposites, rather than philosophy being taken to be the ‘organon of extinction’” do you mean that philosophy and art is the intelligible grounds upon which our understanding of life and death, meaning and non-meaning, is given? If so, then I’m not sure that Brassier’s position is so far removed from yours, only he might add that scientific knowledge and logical argument also provide us with an understanding of life and death, meaning and non-meaning, which is not as dependent upon human consciousness as say, a hermeneutic understanding of philosophy and art.
I’m still interested in what you make of my point five in my earlier post, as it’s a problem that I’m wrestling with at the moment.
I thought the Multitudes article might be useful for providing us with clues to the aesthetic dimension of Brassier’s philosophy. I still think that this is the case, and I’ve explained why I believe the question of art is of critical importance to his position, and why I believe there’s an implicit aesthetic ‘constructive’ dimension underlying his book. Examining a shorter article specifically concerned with (non-)aesthetics might be an expedient way of figuring out this ‘implicit aesthetics’, regardless of whether ‘he’ will refute my argument!
Frankly, I’m not interested in trying to simply refute the claims of Nihil Unbound on the basis of a banal argument. His dismissal of the Romantic concepts of poesis, poiesis, and autopoiesis, is a result of a serious study of philosophy as well as the biological sciences, and I believe it is these arguments which we need to clarify if we’re to have an insight into the role of art for Brassier.
I’ll be busy for the rest of the day but I look forward to your reply.
March 17, 2008 at 11:19 pm
OK, apologies to define art and ‘meaning’:
Art I would define in an Adornian sense – art is , as the ‘absolute commodity’, that which can claim to stand aside from a commodified society by mimicking the autonomy of the commodity form. It therefore plays the trick principally of claiming to be other than it is, and on that basis claiming to be ‘free’ and to have ‘meaning’. I would argue, however, that it is unclear whether it could really bare this capacity today, in our contemporary society, when it may be subsumed within the capitalist/rationalist framework before it has a chance to elide it. However, I argue that it is necessary to suppose that art, as the communication of that which is truly ‘autonomous’, ostensibly at least, must be evoked in the sense that its concept allows the potential promise of us transcending the conditions of a reified society.
With regard to ‘meaning’, I mean to argue for the possibility of their being a meaning even in face of the possibility that there is not a meaning inherent in life: i.e. there is not a meaning that is god-given, neither one that operates by dint of a sensus communis, or in terms of a historical destiny. In light of there being no meaning as such I would like to argue that meaning can be construed, but that it might be in spite of there being no intrinsic ‘meaning’ to life. I.E. It can be construed as the ‘projection’ of meaning via art as illusion.
– – –
In response to point 5, then yes I agree entirely that the will to power as you consider it could be seen as ‘a new god to replace the old one’. Yet, I would argue that art need not support this position, as art in its illusory capacity does not necessarily support the will to power but rather points to ‘meaning’ as ‘illusory’: thus art does not will power as such. Art is truthful in that illusion inheres in its very being – yet it continues to exist all the same; thus its truth resides in its inherent untruth. It is in this sense that I believe art could well account for the possibility of ‘meaning’ – even in striving after a meaning that is not a given and does not necessarily exist. It can ‘mean’ something in that it has the capacity to feign meaning no less than the human mind does. Yet, unlike science and rationality, it does not have as its condition a duty to meaning as material truth, and so as a capacity of the human mind is not bound to objective truth as are the aforementioned capacities/disciplines.
The only terms on which I could see Nietzsche as reflecting this attitude is in an extreme reading of his attitude towards Christ in The Antichrist, where Christ demonstrates his power, given as an example of the Uberman, by ceding all power…by walking to his death willingly. Art essentially does just this in that its striving after perfection is undertaken in the acknowledgment of the impossibility of reaching such perfection. In that sense the will to power as expressed through the artwork could be seen as an expression and acceptance of mortality, of human imperfection, of a lack of meaning, and thus would not be just a new god replacing the old one. But that is to view Nietzsche on account of one extreme interpretation – and there are so many readings of him. In this sense, however, I could find myself quite liking Nietzsche.
Yes, we could attempt a close reading of the piece from Multitudes. I would be grateful if you would start us off and I am sure I could benefit from this as I have done from our exchange (and thanks to Larval Subjects for the opportunity – I would not have found a worthy debate on the subject elsewhere).
Yes, I agree there has to be a concentrated effort to address the complexity of Brassier’s text. I would propose that if we are to look at the ‘aesthetic’ in relation to Nihil Unbound the sections on Adorno, Nietzsche and Deleuze would be most useful to us at this point. Thanks.
March 18, 2008 at 8:00 am
This sounds good to me, it’s the sections on Adorno and Horkheimer, Deleuze and Nietzsche that are most interesting for me too. I will try and extrapolate the key aesthetic arguments from ‘Genre is Obsolete’ today and then see what we can come up with on the Thanatosis of Enlightenment chapter- I’m particularly interested in defining the radically different conceptions of nature used by Adorno and Horkheimer, and Ray Brassier.
Cheers
March 18, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Ok, that sounds good. A close reading of the two would be a grand idea. Look forward to what you initially come up with.
March 20, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Logical Regression continues his discussion of Brassier here:
http://logicalregression.blogspot.com/
Check it out.
May 21, 2008 at 4:23 am
[…] May 21, 2008 Several points in the post are indebted to discussions here and here. […]
September 26, 2008 at 7:05 pm
[…]with which we are confronted is as clear as it is unavoidable: either Darwin or Husserl. To continue to persist on the course initiated by the latter is to plunge headlong into intellectual disaster and the ruin of philosophy as a credible theoretical enterprise. The future vouchsafed to philosophy by phenomenology is too dismall to contemplate: a terminally infantile[…]
May 27, 2010 at 12:14 am
For those interested, Brassier appears as a musician, of all things, on a new release, a live performance from 2008 in the company of Jean-Luc Guionnet, Seijiro Muryama and Mattin. The recording and lengthy notes on the performance by all four participants can be freely downloaded at: http://www.mattin.org/recordings/IDIOMS_AND_IDIOTS.html
October 25, 2010 at 8:05 pm
[…] encountered these thinkers in the predictable ways. I learned of Meillassoux and Laruelle from Ray Brassier who has translated and written on both figures (and was kind enough once a few years ago to let me […]
August 23, 2012 at 9:55 am
[…] discussion (Levi R. Bryant) […]
July 27, 2016 at 12:45 pm
I like this review: http://newhumanist.org.uk/1643