Bryan, over at the marvelous Velvet Howler, weighs in on my response to Mikhail, remarking that,
I want to give Dr. Sinthome as much credit as is due to him, but if his main point in regards to the hegemonic fallacy is that reductionism is bad, what’s the point of the hegemonic fallacy and all of the abstract talk of objects? To an extent I agree with Mikhael that LS’s metaphysics obscures the fact that what he seems to be saying isn’t, at the core, all that interesting. If I could crudely summarize, it seems that LS’s point is this: the Ontic principle (“there is no difference that does not make a difference”) does not intend to describes Kantian Things-in-themselves (which would simply be a return to traditional metaphysics), but seeks to overcome the nature/culture divide that characterizes Modernist thinking by asserting (1) the horizontal nature of difference and (2) the “deconstruction” of objects.
In the case of these two points, the first involves the destruction of structure or hierarchy. This is another way of simply restating the hegemonic fallacy: no difference can attain a metaphysical status wherein it determines other differences (Sinthome gives Latour’s example of the Bible and the “savages”). The second point involves a critique of Kant, who, despite his attempt at limiting metaphysics to the scope of the (transcendental) conditions of possibility, nevertheless describes what is outside of consciousness (or what is for-us) as “objects,” which presupposes a modicum of organization that is itself rendered “metaphysical” under Sinthome’s “speculative realist” terms (and the same, for Sinthome, seems to be true of intuitions, but ultimately what I find disappointing about Sinthome’s reading of Kant is that it is simply boring)
There are few charges more damning or upsetting than the charge that one’s thoughts are boring or uninteresting. I truly hope this isn’t the case. At the moment there are a lot of moving parts to what I’m trying to do and there’s a lot of work left to be done. The Ontic Principle is only a starting point. First, in response to Bryan, the aim of the hegemonic fallacy is not simply to overcome the nature/culture divide. In formulating the Hegemonic Fallacy, I was first responding to some remarks that I had received on my blog and in email that seemed to suggest that people were assuming that, in affirming an object-oriented philosophy, I was simply opting for nature over culture or the physical world over the cultural world. The first aim of my post on the Hegemonic Fallacy was simply to dispel that notion.
read on!
However, in my view the Hegemonic Fallacy targets a field of thought is much broader than the Modernist divide between nature and culture. For example, Plato would be guilty of the Hegemonic Fallacy not because he divides the world between nature and culture, but because the Forms enjoy the position of the marked term within his ontology and appearances contribute little or nothing beyond a deceptive veil through which the knower must break to reach Truth. Carl asks why I don’t simply refer to the Hegemonic Fallacy as “reductivism”, and wonders if I simply take pleasure in naming. In part Carl is right in pointing out that all I’m referring to is reductivism. However, it seems advisable to choose a different term for what I’m discussing under the title of the Hegemonic Fallacy because, to my thinking at least, reductivism immediately brings to mind variants of physicalism such as the reduction of mind to brain, objects to atoms, etc., whereas I’m targeting reductivisms as wide ranging as Plato’s privileging of the forms, Kant’s privileging of mind, the Lacanian school’s privileging of signifiers, Leibniz and Spinoza’s privileging of God, and so on. I worry that if I restrict myself to the term reductivism won’t obscure all of this.
If the Hegemonic Fallacy weren’t so ubiquitous in the current world of philosophy, I would agree with Bryan’s conclusion that it is uninteresting or boring. However, it seems to me that everywhere in philosophy we find in idols and that these idols are very damaging. In particular, I have in mind work like Zizek’s where all political change seems to be located in the domain of the symbolic and the Act, ignoring all of the differences that make up the social assemblage. Thus we spend all sorts of time analyzing cultural artifacts– a worthy task –and see change as dependent on an Act that would shift the very co-ordinates of a situation. The focus is almost entirely on the signifier and effects that follow from signifiers. While I would be the last person to ignore the importance of signifiers, I do think this form of theory is myopic and functions to cloud the other associations that make up our world. What is ignored in all of this is the role that roads play in sustaining particular social orders, networks among various individuals or among various corporations, technology, relations to “nature” in a variety of ways, political economy, and all the rest. All of these things become invisible when we adopt an approach like Zizek’s because the social world has been hegemonized by the signifier.
The Hegemonic Fallacy thus simply invites us to look at these complex networks, how they’re put together, how they’re engineered, how they’re assembled, and so on. In engaging with this sort of cartography all sorts of other relations become visible that might allow us to strategize more effective means of producing change. I have similar problems with Badiou, Ranciere, and a host of others. The target isn’t so much Kant as these trends of thought that I see as descended from Kant. I want an ontology that allows me to see how things are put together and that doesn’t dominate things with a single principle from which all of them are to flow.
Bryan favorably quotes Shaviro’s stellar post on Harman’s object-oriented philosophy, while nonetheless remarking that he doesn’t understand just what Steven is getting at.
The other interesting problematic brought up in connection with this relates to Graham Harman’s argument, described over at Shaviro’s blog, about how:
It’s not a matter of forgetting Kant’s exclusion from the in-itself. It’s a matter of questioning why he gives humans a monopoly on such exclusion. In a sense, I’m trying to let rocks, stones, armies, and Exxon join in the fun of being excluded from the in-itself. A sort of Kantianism for inanimate objects.
I think this is an interesting point, but worth bracketing since I don’t understand it. But to return to Sinthome’s original discussion on object-oriented philosophy, it still seems unclear to me how the Ontic principle avoids reducing all difference to no difference.
I share this position with both Graham and Shaviro. Just as Graham and Shaviro both argue that the in-itself is not unique to humans, but rather to relations among all objects, I too hold that there is nothing unique or exemplary about the human-object relation and that therefore relations among objects, human or otherwise, is an ontological question rather than an epistemological question. I argued this long ago before I encountered object-oriented philosophy or critiques of correlationism in a post on Hegel. Granting this– and this is at the heart of everything I’m working towards –the question now becomes 1) what must objects be like for this to be the case (that is, what can we say of objects as such given this ontological chasm), and 2) what are the mechanisms by which objects relate or enter into assemblages. In this respect, Bryan is mistaken to suggest that I am trying to “deconstruct” objects. It might turn out that objects have a number of strange and unfamiliar problems, but I’m certainly not trying to eradicate objects. Quite the contrary, part of the target of the Hegemonic Fallacy is precisely all those orientations of thought that seem so consistently to banish the furniture of the universe.
Bryan remarks that,
Obviously there is the whole problem of reductionism, but is this really the case when, say, one argues that the structure of capitalism is responsible for global violence? Or when we say that “class,” in a sense, determines subjective modalities more than other categories (gender, race, etc.)? Is it possible, therefore, to make the case that some differences matter more than others, while at the same time avoiding the metaphysical position that elevates one difference to an exceptional status?
To this, I respond, of course! Here, perhaps, I should develop an account of self-referentiality. Assuming Bryan has been keeping up with my recent posts on these topics, he will recall that in addition to the Ontic Principle I have also formulated Latour’s Principle, the Principle of Reality, the Principle of Act-uality, and the Ontological Principle.
Of particular importance in this connection are Latour’s Principle and the Principle of Reality. The Hegemonic Fallacy doesn’t deny that some differences dominate and overdetermine other differences. Rather, it denies that all differences can be traced back to a single ground or origin that contains them “virtually” as Hegel’s category of Being already contains all the subsequent categorical determinations. The Principle of Reality states that the degree of power or reality possessed by an entity is a ratio of the extensiveness of the differences it makes. By this principle, some differences have a very low degree of power such that their existence is almost imperceptible to any other entity in the universe. Other entities vastly extend their power, producing differences in countless entities as in the case of the relationship of the sun to the planet earth and all of the creatures that populate the earth. Consequently, this principle allows us to begin developing an account of how a number of entities can be tightly bound up with some other entity or assembly of entities.
Latour’s Principle states that there is no transportation without translation. According to this principle, if we can speak of entities like capitalism or class, then we must be able to discuss how these entities are assembled or put together. How does class come to be an entity? How does capitalism come to be an entity? If this question emerges, then this is because capitalism and class must transport itself to other entities and this requires translation or labor. That is, the entities cannot simply be subsumed like so many variables in a mathematical function. Moreover, those entities that are enlisted or assembled by these “super-entities” often resist and have other ideas. Capitalism must enlist machines of all sorts, computers, humans coming from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds and biological dispositions, the body of the earth, and so on. Latour’s Principle simply dictates that we account for how these translations take place. One of the things that I love about Marx– especially the later Marx of Grundrisse and Capital –is that he is attentive to precisely these sorts of questions. Adopting Balibar’s language, we could say that Marx is deeply sensitive to the question of how masses are turned into classes or multitudes into a people. Marx does not begin with capitalism or class as a given, as a primitive notion, but painstakingly shows how certain differences or entities intervene and unfold, generating new entities.
Hopefully all of this is a little less boring.
Larval Subjects . 
January 16, 2009 at 1:49 am
As always, I really appreciate your thoughtful feedback on my otherwise unthoughtful responses. I haven’t read through this post yet, but just to clarify what I meant by boring. Perhaps this would be better phrased by saying that the criticism of Kant that you propose gives too much credit to his detractors. Maybe this is due to my own attachment to Kant, but there is so much in his philosophy that isn’t clear and that is worth breathing new life into. Along these lines, Kojin Karatani’s *Transcritique* comes to mind as a thoroughly Kantian work, but at the same time injects something totally new into the equation. Any philosophical position, whether it be subject or object or who-knows-what oriented, that has to limit itself by turning another philosophical system into its antipode and (at least ostensibly) can’t breath new life into other philosophers like Kant or even Lacan for that matter.
I suppose what I am saying is this: perhaps the content of what a philosopher says isn’t quite as important as how they say it, or how their thought develops, what kind of logic they use. And again, perhaps this is isolated to just me, but a philosophical critique based solely on content as opposed to logic/form/structure/style–especially when one develops a peculiar kind of logic–simply feels like one is commenting on a corpse rather than a living organism.
(And now I’ll read through your post!)
January 16, 2009 at 1:51 am
**…Lacan for that matter, doesn’t seem worth the time.
January 16, 2009 at 2:06 am
I think your last paragraph really touches on something fascinating and it would be exciting to see it developed in more depth.
In regards to your remarks on signifiers, I’m not so clear you’re doing Lacan or Zizek enough justice here. I mean, for one, Lacan goes on and on about the “materiality” of signifiers, that they make up the “material” of the unconscious. Consequently, I’m not so sure if the symbolic can be equated with the kind of Idealism you’re hinting at. Would it not be possible to interpret the Symbolic as a kind of material?
The other issue too which I debated including my post on the Howler, but refrained from since I’m not an expert on Lacanian theory, is how Lacanian logic can be applied to what you’re saying. Beyond the content of Lacan’s argument, the “not-All” logic that he uses to guide his thought seems to be of particular interest for these issues. For example, it seems that one way of interpreting the Hegemonic Fallacy would be to see it as pertaining to masculine jouissance, as opposed to simply “reductivism.” That is, granting one difference an exceptional status and all other differences are reduced to identifying with it.
On the other hand, I wonder, from the perspective of Latour’s and the Ontic Principle, how the logic of the “not-All” might be understood with regard to object-oriented philosophy–whether or not there is some compatibility here.
January 16, 2009 at 2:17 am
[…] 16, 2009 I’m not sure what THE VELVET HOWLER is so bored about. But LEVI TRIES TO BORE HIM LESS […]
January 16, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Hi. Thanks for this. I have little to contribute but the old noggin does have a bit of junk rattling around in it so for what it’s worth, here goes:
*First, a minor irritant of usage: in your discussions so far there’s a little slide in how you use “the Hegemonic Fallacy” between “the HF is a wrong way people think” and “the HF is a thinker in wrong ways,” and “the HF is a tool we can use to smoke out wrong thinking.” I’m uncomfortable especially with the disembodied agency of the second usage, and think it might be less tempting (and in general, less jarring to unContinental eyes) if you didn’t promote HF to Subject Nounhood by capitalizing It. As always, I may have missed a point here.
*A slightly more substantive irritant of usage: you are using “hegemony” in what any good Gramscian would consider a degenerate Poli Sci sense, as a point-source of power. Gramsci used the term precisely to escape that sort of vulgar reductionism (economic determinism, in the marxist tradition), to mean the highly differentiated and articulated field of actors, factors and interactions (objects, if you like) that tend toward an emergently dominative effect. I raise this point not to contest your repurposing of the term, but to cry caution that for some audiences your usage will be immediately counterintuitive and possibly counterproductive given how close what you and Gramsci are actually doing is.
*Along the lines of this rhetoric of naming, and coming back to whether you might want to just call reductionism reductionism, you replied “However, it seems advisable to choose a different term for what I’m discussing under the title of the Hegemonic Fallacy because, to my thinking at least, reductivism immediately brings to mind variants of physicalism such as the reduction of mind to brain, objects to atoms, etc., whereas I’m targeting reductivisms as wide ranging as Plato’s privileging of the forms, Kant’s privileging of mind, the Lacanian school’s privileging of signifiers, Leibniz and Spinoza’s privileging of God, and so on. I worry that if I restrict myself to the term reductivism won’t obscure all of this.”
I think this is a great point. It may well be wise to pick your battles this way. I’d just like to note that there’s an opportunity cost, because it would be really neat and powerful to show how all of these variants of reductionism work the same way and have the same consequences for our ability to understand the “mechanisms by which objects relate or enter into assemblages.” In fact, I think that at some future point in your project the effort to keep different zones of reductionism separate will prove just as unsustainable as current efforts to keep classes of objects purified that you rightly criticize.
Cheers!
January 16, 2009 at 9:16 pm
If the Hegemonic Fallacy weren’t so ubiquitous in the current world of philosophy, I would agree with Bryan’s conclusion that it is uninteresting or boring. However, it seems to me that everywhere in philosophy we find in idols and that these idols are very damaging.
First, you haven’t quite demonstrated why this “hegemonic fallacy” is in fact a fallacy or even why it is an error, therefore you’re not allowed to use it as if it is already established that “hegemonic fallacy” exists – describing something as “fallacy” requires demonstration. Thus Carl is on the money here, because if you simply called it “reductivism” or even “hegemonic tendency” you would still have to demonstrate that it is the case, but “fallacy” is a stricter term.
Second, the above-cited sentences frame your project as a kind of sophisticated denunciation crusade – “hegemonic fallacy” is everywhere, we need to expose it and reject it. Have you ever read about Stalinist purges in the 1930? It all started with exposing and denouncing and ended in tears. Of all the things wrong with the world today – wars, poverty, torture, disease – are you really suggesting that philosophers should abandon their efforts to change the world and return to their attempts to understand it? I am very concerned about the fact that there are more slaves in the world today then there were at the time of “official” slavery – do you really think that the fact that I don’t know what characteristics my apple really has should move me even a little bit?
January 16, 2009 at 10:03 pm
In fact I have shown why the hegemonic principle is a fallacy following from the ontic principle. I’m not at all sure what you’re on about with the slavery issue, as nowhere have I suggested that philosophy shouldn’t take part in trying to save the world. Again, I have neither the time, patience, or desire for this sort of discussion.
January 17, 2009 at 12:45 am
I have shown why the hegemonic principle is a fallacy following from the ontic principle.
The Ontic Principle that you have dogmatically postulated as “Let the ontic principle be this” and not deduced from anything – do you not see how this is pure dogmatism? I postulate Principle A, then I propose that B is a fallacy based on the principle I postulated. Let me give you an example:
I postulate a principle: no vegetable should be considered to be more delicious than any other vegetable.
I propose that there exists The Delicious Vegetable Fallacy that claims that some vegetables are clearly more delicious than others, in fact, oranges are the most delicious vegetable known to man.
I demonstrate that it is a fallacy by referring you to my proposed principle that no vegetable can be considered more delicious than any other vegetable.
No, it’s not funny, it’s very sad indeed.
January 17, 2009 at 12:58 am
Pulling my hair out in frustration.
Mikhail, I both made an argument for the Ontic Principle in my post responding to your post (“Response to a Snarky Critic”), and pointed you to a number of places where you could find additional arguments for the principle throughout our discussion. These arguments might be unconvincing or bad arguments, but I’ve certainly made arguments or given supporting reasons for the principle.
I agree, however, that there’s no point in continuing the discussion. Generally I’ve found your interaction to be boorish, uncharitable, and combative for no apparent reason.
January 17, 2009 at 1:00 am
Sorry, I meant to say “tomatoes” there instead of “oranges” – if you can edit it before you approve the comment, I would be grateful, otherwise it’s fine with me – I hope your abrupt “I don’t have time” comments are simply an indication of fatigue, not a strange unwillingness to continue the conversation… You seem to have plenty of time writing up good posts that I enjoy reading, even if recently I have found a significant number of peculiarities in them that I have decided, probably foolishly, to address…
January 17, 2009 at 1:03 am
It’s not combative, it’s engaging – if you want an audience of agreeable members of the same choir, you should put in a disclaimer – whatever happened to at least “let’s agree to disagree”?
January 17, 2009 at 1:49 am
Thanks for the observations, Carl. I’m really not using the term “hegemony” in any way that’s meant to comment on Gramsci, it’s just the term that popped into my mind when I was trying to think of a name for what I’m objecting to. You’re right, however, that I probably need to make that point clearly. You make an excellent suggestion with respect to future projects!
January 20, 2009 at 7:12 am
[…] generous response Bryan, over at the Velvet Howler, makes in response to my post entitled “Of Assembly“. Bryan writes, I think your last paragraph really touches on something fascinating and it […]