Immanence 2: Returning Home

Immanence is what remains in its place, even when what had once occupied that place has departed. It is the remnant of a transcendence. Yet, to be cautious, we must make this relation clear. In a movement of transcendence, that which is in-itself passes beyond itself, steps outside of itself, leaves itself vacated. And yet this outside-itself of the thing does not split it into two different entities, an empty container and an uncontained object, or rather, these two resultant elements are really the same thing, a thing whose paradoxical status makes a unified perspective upon it impossible, thereby necessitating the parallax structure.

In other words, the product of the movement of transcendence is properly a split, a two-fold articulation of things such that it cannot be reconciled. The thing outside-itself is not distinct from the empty itself, the empty place; it is rather the empty place seen from outside, in its opacity - the place is not seen as empty, but its contents cannot be seen; the thing for-us obscures what would be or might be in-itself. Hence, the thing outside-itself is the same as the outside of itself, the place as seen without reference to its occupation. The fact is that the vacuity produced by the moment of transcendence is indifferent to the presence or absence of an occupant or content; it is the vacuity or void of an interior whose interiority is already a primary datum, as that which cannot be seen or cannot be known. This is not simply a negative datum, but is expressed in the positive condition of the thing outside-itself or for us.

The movement of transcendence hence produces the thing as outside-itself along with a collateral negativity that is expressed in the positive, constituted thing. This negativity or 'withdrawal' of the interior is coextensive with the constitution of the thing for-us, or outside itself, and hence the giving of the given cannot itself be given, but is the necessarily opaque interiority that has been left behind, 'transcended'. The question of immanence is, then, whether there is a sense of the interior or the vacant place that does not make reference to the movement that produces it, that does not become a supposition of transcendence, and that is more than the unknowability of the interior from the purview of the outside.

To clarify: the thing outside-itself is constituted in the movement of departing or imparting whereby it leaves the very constituting movement obscured. The movement of constitution is also the movement of rendering this very movement unknowable, in rendering the point of departure unknowable. So the constituting or giving or the thing outside-itself, the movement of transcendence, is itself rendered transcendent in this movement. And yet the constituting movement also, simultaneously, constitutes or gives the interiority of the point of departure, it gives the in-itself as unknowable. The opacity that is thereby generated is thus that of both the movement of transcendence or giving, and of the immanence of the in-itself as such, as interior, given as such.

The point here is that the movement of transcendence essentially distinguishes itself from immanence, in its very giving of the thing outside-itself, its relation to this thing, whereas immanence cannot distinguish itself from this movement, it is constituted as such in this very movement, and is indifferent to any relation with the thing outside-itself aside from being given as without-relation to this thing. (This is close to Michel Henry's notion of immanence.)

Our question now is, in what sense can the thing outside-itself be reconciled with the immanence of itself, without reference to the movement of transcendence that relates them across a non-relation? Is there a sense of this immanence itself, without the givenness of its being as-such? Can you go home again?

The paradox here is that the immanence of the thing itself, the remaining-in of the interiority irrespective of a content, cannot simply be reduced to immanence 'as such', constituted as such in the movement of transcendence. But it can no more be immanence itself, devoid of transcendental determination, as purely given-without-givenness, foreclosed and indifferent to the movement of transcendence. (This is close to Francois Laurelle's notion of immanence.) The reason for this is that immanence already cannot be itself, as it is what remains-in itself and remains in-itself. It is the very impossibility of determining a content - or lack thereof - of this ipseity.

The itself must remain vacant and destitute, not even lacking a content, but indifferent to and independent of any content or lack thereof. There is no immanence 'itself' because immanence is the itself deprived of what is itself. It is a remaining-in or interiority without being-in; it is not given-without-givenness or there-without-disclosure, but is strictly indifferent even to a being-given or being-there. It is this impossibility of reconciling ipseity that immanence names. And the question of returning, or repetition, is not one of rendering the immanence perfectly reverisible or indiscernible with the movement of transcendence, but rather, of passing from a content toward which one's place is purely indifferent, to becoming the vacuous interiority of the place that undermines its ipseity, becoming the not-itself of what one is, in being-therein. Becoming the in-and-not-itself of the place and position one is given and to which one is given.

Immanence 1: Departing, Remaining, and Abandoned Homes

Immanence: to remain in... Immanence is not and can not be presence, which is simply to be, to be there, to be therein. Im-manence: to remain in, therein, which already refers to contrast with departing, imparting, or parting-with. Immanence remains in, rather than departing, stepping out. And in this sense, immanence already includes something which does or has passed, has departed or left behind its there, its presence. Not absence, not necessarily a being which was and now is not present, but a presence, a therein (a being that is in what it is) that passes outside itself, that is no longer in what it is, but is outside what it is, that is outside itself. Does this mean in another? Or is it already in-nothing, outside of everything, standing at the limit of all inclusion? This is the question of transcendence, of going beyond or stepping out, of leaving, departing, escaping.

Immanence thus cannot do without reference to a movement of transcendence by which something has departed and gone outside itself, leaving that which it was in, that is to say, leaving itself (an in-itself that has left itself, leaving itself empty). Immanence is that which, in regards to this movement of departing, nonetheless remains in. It is what stays behind, is left or abandoned. Yet it is not simply there, simply present. It is only there as left there by something that has gone. And, in leaving itself, the being leaves only an empty therein, wherein nothing remains, an empty itself without that which is itself and is in-itself. So we can propose that immanence is that pure therein that is no longer a being-in, as the presence of the being within has been evacuated.

This does not leave us with an absence, but with an abandon which is not the lack of presence, but a presence which gives only the loss of presence, a presence of the place itself without that which was in it. Absence prefers the place as emptied container, a pure, neutral recepticle. Abandon is, rather, the place as itself presence, now visible as itself in the lack of what occupied it. This is immanence: the abandon that resides in the vacated residence itself, the homelessness not of the being that has gone, but of the now unoccupied home that cannot be itself for lack of those it would keep in dwelling. Immanence is what remains in when no one is home.

Not Not Philosophy

The growing enthusiasm and interest around Speculative Realism and Laurelle's non-philosophy can not reasonably be ignored. I was indifferent at first, but my interest has been peaked after skimming Mullarkey's Post-Continental Philosophy, and more recently, having started reading Ray Brassier's Alien Theory and other available texts on the net. I do have certain reservations, especially concerning the apparent effacement of any discussion of language. One of the reasons non-philosophy interests me is its (maybe superficial) similarity to structuralism, which of course is born out of insights into the relation between being and language, or rather, differential structures as exemplified in language. I'm sure I will elaborate on this in the future, right now I can only note the thought. I'm also intrigued by Meillassoux's notion of 'ancestry', which seems quite close to the work I've been dong with Benjamin.

In my thesis, I deal with the question of materialism, and its ultimate point at which matter becomes the purely negative exclusion of any predication or conceptualization. So non-philosophy seems intriguing, if it indeed aims to develop the perspective of this pure void in thought, be it matter or whatever. Of course, this is not to say that the void is subjectived, that we aim to narrate its experience or some such nonsense. Rather, the subject as stranger occupies the place in which all thought, all predication and conceptualization, becomes excessive or superfluous, 'transcendent' in the sense of 'beside the fact' or 'after the fact'. It is not that the Real - the void of symbolization - is filled out, nor left empty, but rather becomes a kind of opening (to) or standing before the totality of empirical-predicable reality, a way toward phenomenality that nevertheless its outside, outside-looking-in, or even its internal-outside.

I am still quite ignorant, and these are brief speculations. But as I begin to research this already rich movement, a few questions to take into account:
- The prevalence of the prefix non-, and this in contrast to anti-. What are the different forms of negation, opposition, or refusal at work here?
- The 'non-dialectical' nature of the synthesis of Duality-without-difference and Identity-without-unity. Why the insistent need in philosophy (or non-philosophy) to reject Hegel, especially when one seems closest to Hegel?
- Is there a sense in which the non- of non-philosophy is a kind of Kanto-Hegelian infinite judgement - that is, not the negation of a predicate, but the affirmation of a non-predicate?
- Can we think of the relationship of non-philosophy with philosophy as the Pauline as not, in the sense of doing philosophy as not philosophy?
- How does Laurelle's theory of the philosophical Decision relate to Schimtt's theory of the sovereign decision?

Out Of It

Today, it is commonplace to question identity, to insist upon its problematic and unstable character. And yet, who today has the courage to submit this question to its own test? Who will question the identity of this question, which is to say, in the persistence of its iteration, who will question its consistent direction at one same object? This is not the trivial point that identities are only temporary crystallizations in a constant flux of difference, and hence that the identical object is only ephemeral and apparent. It is not that, in aiming at identity itself, self-identity, the identity of identity with itself, we can only ever find particular things that are perhaps identical with themselves, but that are nonetheless not identical to identity itself. Identity in such cases is only an apparent effect of differential relations. (This is most certainly not what Deleuze is claiming in Difference and Repetition.)

No, the claim is that, in aiming at the identity of things with themselves, we only ever find identity itself with itself. Identity is that which is the same, and hence not sameness, the relation of sameness between two things, but is that which is the same, directly is the same as... Identity is the same as itself, it is this comparison given in a comparable figure itself. Identity is 'the same' as itself, it is 'the same' the being of the same, in its ipseity, its identity with itself, together with itself. Identity is the same as itself, it is the same thing as its self, it is that which directly is its own ipseity or being-with-itself.

Some-thing is the same as some-other. This is the formula.

First: Some-thing is. It is not given, but is like the gift in which one gives what one never had. One does not promise to give, nor does one owe the gift as a debt. Rather, it is a gift that repays a debt that could not be repaid, it is the return delivered to an infinite debt, not by erasing the debt, but in erasing ownership itself, such that nothing can be 'had' to be given, and nothing can be 'had' in accepting a given.

'Some-thing is': something is there, is given, that could not have been given, that was not there for giving. The given is not taken for granted, as merely given, but that by which the given is given, the giving of givenness, is also not given nor is it owed to us. The given is given in the given of the some-thing without a givenness, some-thing given as not to be given and not given.

Second: the same as... We have adressed this element above in brief. This element, as itself, does not pertain to the comparison of two things more or less the same, nor to the sameness of something with itself or with another or with itself as another or another as itself. It is here, between, that the same as... is no longer bound between subject and direct object, between terms related in sameness. When it is the same as it is, it is as it is, which is to say, it is not the same as anything, nor is anything the same as it is. It is, the same as..., not the same, it is not-itself, it is not- the-same-as -itself, and the same as not-itself is.

Third: ...as some-other. The same, as it is itself, is as some-other, which is to say, is as-not, not-itself and some-other. Not other itself, but itself other. It is not itself the same as itself, but is itself the same as itself is some-other. Have we yet thrown you off the scent, or must you still persist in chasing this voice through the thorns?

The formula is, then, that identity as the same, as, the same as, some-other, means that there is no-other that is not itself, and thus that to say "the same" seems meaningless. How can we say something is the same, without say it is the same as (some-other thing)? It amounts to the claim that identity, without itself in ipseity, is the very condition of being-not-itself. And with itself in ipseity, being can only be-with if it is beside, and along with, another one or some-other, and hence, is either with another that is not it and hence not the same as it, or it is with itself alone, and without some-other to be the same as it is.

Identity can only ever claim that which, with itself, is not-itself, or is as not-itself. This is the secret being must keep and keep quiet, that in-itself being is not-itself, as not-itself, and then, maybe, in-itself only as outside, as an outside folded upon itself, facing itself and staring back at itself, which is to say, already beyond itself and toward the limitless reaches outside itself, on the outside in-itself.

Nothing Doing

In my previous post, "If All Else Fails", I gave a brief overview of the typology of violence that Slavoj Zizek develops in his new book, Violence. I did so to indicate a form of violence I believe Zizek to have omitted, or rather, to explicate the relation between revolutionary violence and the other types, a relation Zizek leaves unclear. However, I should clarify my account of his typology, which was perhaps too brief. Zizek does not simply enumerate three distinct forms of violence - subjective, systemic, and symbolic - but aims to show how violence is always caught in the knot of these three modes, which parallel the Lacanian triad of Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real.

Subjective violence is simply what we would ordinarily recognize as such: abusive, injurious actions that occur between people, inflicted by one person or group of people on another. This has the simple form of an Imaginary relation, in which the relation of ego to others and the predominance of Eros are the frame.

Such subjective violence is only visible against the background or context of normal, nonviolent relations, and is hence a disturbance of this equilibrium. Systemic violence is precisely an anonymous and impersonal collateral effect of sustaining the nonviolent background of Imaginary relations, it is that which cannot enter the contextual frame of subjective experience, but sustains this frame. If such violence does enter into the frame of our experience, we cannot help but to contextualize it, to ascribe it to a particular offender violating the normal run of things; we cannot accept that our comfortable life-world is sustained by an immense suffering. In this sense, systemic violence is the Real, that which cannot be integrated into Imaginary/Symbolic legibility, but is only a blotch or distortion, or better, the horrible thing behind the veil of non-violent normalcy.

Symbolic violence is visible as the relation between the subjective violence and its context, in the sense that the very standards by which we can recognize something as violent, and hence stand apart from it in a non-violent reflection, already is a form of violence itself. It is not simply that normalcy is sustained by a violence hidden behind its veil - the very act of veiling, of covering-up, is the very source of what it must hide, or better, what it hides is the fact that nothing is hidden. There is no reason for the massive excesses of systemic violence to not be recognized as such, they are not covered up or denied, but ignored, disavowed. "I know very well there is a genocide occuring somewhere in Africa, that hundreds of millions live in the worst poverty in urban slums, that children are starving all over the world, but nevertheless...what does that have to do with me, my non-violent lifestyle, in my innocent little town?" It is the very symbolic medium that, in enabling us to not subjectively register some things as violent, or better, to not subjectively account for the systemic violence that sustains our contextual life-world, is the most pressing form of violence.

In the aforementioned post, I elaborated the link between Symbolic violence and mythic violence, or law-founding violence, as Benjamin conceives it. Zizek also draws this link, and from there elaborates his notion of revolutionary or emancipatory violence, which he links to Benjamin's divine violence. Yet here we find a difficulty. Zizek associates this divine violence with what he calls "Bartleby politics", or passive aggression. The point here is that any intervention we make to correct the violent excesses of capitalism is inevitably incorporated into the system, making it run more smoothly. Every form of resistance is assimilated, and so all we can do is 'nothing'; that is, everything we try to do to change things ends up reinforcing the way they are, but if we do nothing, if we refuse to intervene, it would be unbearable for the system, it would not know how to react. This kind of passive aggression is the answer he offers to his own question from the final chapter of his book on Deleuze: how is revolution possible against an order that constantly revolutionizes itself?

The difficulty with this position has been registered in the philo-blogosphere, with complaints and criticism being the standard reaction. Moreover, this position seems quite inconsistent, both with the ethic of discipline and self-sacrafice (Those who have nothing have only their discipline, to paraphrase Badiou) that he elaborates in Lost Causes, and with his claim that we find examples of divine violence in the revolutionary terror of the French Revolution, the October Revolution, and so on. Can these apparent inconsistencies be reconciled?

I propose that Bartleby politics is far from simply doing nothing, from refusing to engage with struggles and socio-political problems of any kind, despite Zizek's apparent claims to the contrary. Rather, it rests with the distinction between not doing anything, simply not acting, and doing nothing in the sense of enacting a negativity or void, an act which renders visible the nothingness at the heart of the constituted order. Zizek himself gives us evidence in this direction in his exegesis of Saramago's story Seeing, in which the government of an unnamed democratic city is deeply disturbed when an overwhelming majority of their citizens, during an election, submit blank ballots. For Zizek, this mass refusal is a true Act, in the Lacanian sense. But is this a case of not doing anything, of passively sitting back and refusing to engage, or is it rather an act of making nothing happen, of foregrounding the void upon which this world stands, like the coyote hovering over the precipice, before looking down?

Bartleby himself is characterized not by simply not acting, by doing nothing at all. No, Bartleby acts, but in the paradoxical manner of enacting a refusal to act, of acting out nothing, through his familiar refrain: "I'd prefer not to". He does not say no, nor does he simply do nothing in response. He does something, he registers the void of his motivation. This is thus quite similar to other political themes Zizek has mobilized in the past: Badiou's Event as registering the void of the empty set, Ranciere's democracy as the demand of the part-of-no-part, and even Marx's proletariat as articulating their lack of place within the capitalist order. It would be fruitful to explicate the differences between Zizek's turn to Bartleby and these earlier references, but I cannot do so now. I would like to emphasize, however, that there is an undeniable political force - violence, we might say - at work in the tearing asunder of the existing order, the introduction of a void into the space of politics. The practical question is hence, what does it mean to actively do nothing, to will nothingness into existence? And where do we go from there? How do we live together, how do we found a society or reorient this society, on the basis of nothingness?

Giving Rise

John McCain has recently engaged in some creative history in an attempt to cover his own tracks. As the above video recounts, he misrepresented the time-line of the War in Iraq, claiming the Anbar Awakening occurred after and because of the 'Surge' strategy, when in fact it began at least half a year prior. The next day, he claimed this was not a mistake, and that the Surge began long before it was announced as a general strategy. Rather, according to McCain, 'surge' refers to any counterinsurgency strategy whose aim is to hold and secure territory, as opposed to simply chasing enemies without regard to sustained security. In this regard, the tactical engagement that enabled the Anbar Awakening was the begining of such a strategy, which was months later announced as a general strategy, one that would oblige a great increase in troop levels.

As has been pointed out, McCain is taking great liberty with the facts here. The Surge was so-named because of the 'surge', that is, increase or rise, in troop levels, and so decribing previous tactics that were meant to be generalized as part of this strategy is misleading. Even if McCain is correct in claiming that the tactics involved in Anbar were an inspiration or model for the Surge, this would still contradict his claim that the latter caused or enabled the former. Clearly, even in McCain's revised account, the contrary is still the case.

What appears to be telling here is McCain's peculiar claim that 'surge' generally refers to 'counterinsurgency' tactics. Etymologically, 'surge' and 'insurgence' are from the same source, the Latin surgere, to rise. This is a compound of sub-, meaning 'from below', and regere, to lead straight - literally, from below to lead straight. From a position in which the only straight or right course forward is to rise or ascend, it is to lead in this way. This should resonate with my previous mediations on 'leading'. Regere itself is related to rex, 'king', and can translate the Greek arche.

'Surge' literally means to rise up, increase suddenly, swell or rush forward, and 'insurgence' modifies this, meaning to rise up against an authority or rule, to rise from below this rule and exceed it. Yet insurgency here is already complicated, in that this rising already entails being 'led straight', 'leading' here being related to 'rule'. So does this mean insurgence, in rising above a ruling power, must already have recourse to a more 'right' or 'straight' rule, one that, rather than subordinating it and keeping it below, leads it to rise and stand? More than simple academic reflections, I believe these questions bear directly on the political matter at hand.

Recalling Lacan's famous quip in response to the student rebellions of May '68, "You are looking for a master. And you will find one." Are the Iraqi insurgents also looking for a Master, in this case, a theocratic one? This is likely the case for the most part, although there is undoubtly little consensus on the nature of this new rule. The one unifying feature we can point to, however, is that it would be a rule that leads the insurgents 'from below', and hence, is a right and straight leadership. The Nietzschean tones of these sentiments implicate far more reflective potential than I can muster here, although this is ground that needs to be covered.

In any case, it seems likely that, from the purview of American (neo-)conservatives, the insurgents themselves were only acting out under the bad influence of opportunist leaders, and the 'Surge' was in fact part of the ongoing strategy to install a 'right and straight' leadership in Iraq, one that would legitimately allow the people to 'rise above' both the unjust rule of Saddam Hussein, and the chaotic injunctions of terrorist and insurgent leaders. This right leadership that would amount to a legitimate 'rising above subordination', a legitimate 'insurgency', would of course be parliamentary democracy. For the insurgents themselves, however, this would only be the worst kind of subordination.

The problematic heart of this conflict is hence the paradox of how to recognize 'legitimate', right and straight leadership, what it means to rise above, and whether the violent rejection of rule we call 'insurgency' on the one hand, and 'spreading democracy' on the other, can be or should be arrested in the constitution of another rule, a new leader. Are the two senses of leadership, one subordinating and the other liberating, truly distinct or mutually implicated? Can they, should they, be separated and opposed?