Positions
François Laruelle
In Le déclin de l’écriture (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1977), 5-15.[1]
1) We begin with possessing the complex linguistic, stylistic and textual instruments to tackle, if not rigorously, at least without too much naivety, the Nietzschean text. However, this will be our object: we do not yet know too well (except its first rhetorical considerations) what Nietzsche’s thought can do, for its part specifically teaching us about the functioning of a text, even when Nietzsche’s thought speaks of another thing, for example the Eternal Return. No doubt, the aphorisms aren’t lacking, and we cite a few (the coming moment, cf. beginning of the third section), expressively putting the word, the sign, the phrase – the signifier, if you will – in relation with the fundamental concepts of force and the Will to Power. Yet, on the one hand, these texts are even less numerous than one can imagine. On the other hand, they are in a state of dispersion and elaboration that is so elementary that in a sense they are useless in the state where they present themselves immediately. We must be able to read them, possessing a specifically Nietzschean problematic of “reading,” or rather a specifically Nietzschean problematic of functioning of these aphorisms and these outlines.
Precisely, if a specifically Nietzschean theory of textual phenomena remains fallow, then these dispersed indications perhaps have not yet found the problematic capable of producing a reading for them which relates them to “Nietzsche-thought,” capable of transforming them from “random members” into a necessary theoretical body, transforming them from symptoms into an explicit, that is productive theory, susceptible of being developed and advancing a coherent perspective on the ensemble of the “facts” of the text and even the most strictly linguistic facts.
The risk is that it isn’t easy to miss the virulent scope of the Nietzschean indications if one does not dispose of the developed concept of what we call Nietzsche-thought: the problematic formed by the coupling of the Eternal Return and the Will to Power. For these rare “signs” subject to falsification cannot at all perhaps designate one theme beside others and locatable here and there, punctually, within the text – but rather a way of thinking, to pose the problems more than resolving them, and which as it happens gives its theoretical and material space, its conditions of possibility which could only appear as a “textual” and pseudo-linguistic theme that is isolated and without a future within Nietzsche’s work.
Therefore, a detour is necessary, and it seems to us that the reader must consent with us on this detour: in order so that these “indications” can become what they are, or become what they have to be, we must construct this problematic, first giving ourselves the theoretical – and more than theoretical – instrument of a productive reading of the Nietzschean text and what it makes us understand about itself and others.
This problematic to elaborate will allow not only to read the few aphorisms about language by making them produce all of their possible effects, it would just as much allow a nonlinguistic, nonrhetorical and non“textualist” treatment of the Nietzschean text: it could only be constituted by occupying and displacing the theoretical (and political) positions of linguistics and disciplines which remain in its movement (poetics, semiotics). Moreover, this means that it could have by itself, outside of its textual effects, a theoretical and more than theoretical interest, that its meaning or its power would not exhaust themselves in posing and resolving the problems of textuality and linguistics, and that this superior “validity” would be identical to its critical power, to its capacity in denouncing and displacing the positions of linguistics and its subordinate disciplines.
2) However, is it even necessary to speculate once more on Nietzsche’s “thought of thoughts”? Do we not know ad nauseum what the Eternal Return is? No thought is – by definition of its meaning – more misunderstood, more unrecognizable and falsifiable. For example, if one remembers that Nietzsche always has two concepts for one thing alone or two meanings for one same sign (e.g., “hierarchy,” “force,” “power,” etc.), would there not be two signs or two concepts of the Eternal Return and the Will to Power of unequal value? To justify our interpretation of Nietzsche-thought in the unheard-of terms of “Machinic Materialism” and “Libidinal Break,” we must proceed through several steps which will explain the multiple, equivocal character of its possible interpretations:
a) On the one hand, it begins by being if not admitted, at least plausible, that under the name “Will to Power,” Nietzsche advances a political theory of the unconscious and the libido which we now know has nothing to do with the Freudian one; and under the name “Eternal Return” the corresponding theory of repetition, repetition as production (of desire) of which this unconscious is capable of. It takes us some time to here perceive the correlation of a politico-libidinal matter and a specific functioning which we call, reserving the justification and elaboration of this term for the second chapter, “machinic.”[2] This interpretation of Nietzsche is in fact far from being admitted, which here is otherwise not of the least importance. However, as it is of all the most productive and therefore also the most critical, the only one which makes Nietzschean thought a break without return within the theory of matter (and, from there, within the theory of the text), we record it as a starting point for a new problematic of the text – as the raw matter which we have to elaborate on our side in view of establishing the theoretical and political positions of a “Machinic Materialism.”
b) On the other hand, this couple forms one “problematic.” This term designates a precise functioning: the circle or the chiasm of reciprocal affection of thought by its object and the object by thought. Thus, libidinal materiality is not an indifferent theme or object among others, it is the motor of the process of thought and the text (Nietzschean or not); “machinic” or différantial repetition is not a theme or an object among others, but the way in which thought and the text function (Nietzschean or not).
c) Now, it suffices to bring these two traits together (a theory of the unconscious which is at the same time a problematic) to draw out an inevitable consequence: since this problematic of the unconscious is affected by its object, it divides in its turn into two forms or two versions. First, a manifest or exoteric version of the Eternal Return as the repetition of the identical, and the Will to Power as physical or natural energy. This is the dominant and well-known, too well-known version of these concepts, which is given “open book” in the signifieds and signifiers of the Nietzschean text; what it must combat and which, at any rate, leads nothing to the materialism which we want to produce.[3] Then, a latent, “resistant” or minoritarian version, both in its “form” as a productive or unconscious thought, and in its object: the Eternal Return as repetition of the Other, rather than the same, and the Will to Power as power and libido, rather than natural-technical energetics.
Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to distinguish from the dominant form of the Nietzschean doctrine (which only authorizes itself from the manifest significations of the text and given nearly without work, even the “labour” of the signifier) a resistant and productive (ergo libidinal) form of this problematic, capable of producing ad infinitum theoretical effects which are as much libidinal positions. This problematic does not solely have the “machinic” libido as an object, it is on its side a theoretical apparatus but just as material (instinctual) as its object. It is why we treat this problematic of Machinic Materialism and consequently also Dialectical Materialism as (nonFreudian) unconsciouses or libidinal machines. Within the system of these positions of power and desire, we must subordinate the Nietzschean indications on the signifier and the text, it is from the theoretical and material place that it constitutes that we must decipher and interpret them as the symptoms of a latent theory of the text in general, for the aphoristic text with which it eventually appears says to us that it is a mundane text must be in its turn read as a set of symptoms whose intelligibility raises from this problematic. Therefore, we will not content ourselves with what it says explicitly and empirically on the Eternal Return, and on the signifier as the Will to Power. We will first establish the theoretical apparatus capable of rendering these empirical indications productive.
Yet to know how to read the Nietzschean text, to construct this problematic, we are if not constrained (the circle of the problematic) to assume it not as already known or given, at least it is manifested in its major concepts. We cannot produce it theoretically if we do not already possess some directing indications. In particular (they are the premises of any thought in a materialist-machinic thought) the Quadripartite which allows to define a politics of the Will to Power and the Eternal Return: active/reactive, affirmative/negative. We call these categories coupled two-by-two “différantials” [différantiaux] because they ground a thought of Différance and that Différance (or the Other), such that we understand it here – reprising but to displace this now well-known operator of “deconstruction” – is only the correlation of activity and affirmation in the Nietzschean sense of these words (as we will see by what follows, we first give a libidinal, rather than a textual, “definition” of Différance).
These machinic categories of the libido are not only what labours or produces, and what remains to be thought through themselves. Under their “ideological” form, under their immediate form or within their “signified,” they also constitute the minimum given, the raw matter of our theoretical work (but not only theoretical: thus, material, too). It is through them that we must produce this “finished product” which is called the problematic of Machinic Materialism, with its inventoriable theoretical content of theses, with its a-theoretical processes that we will call syntheses. Of course, we have recourse to other “philosophemes” offered by the theoretical conjuncture and drawn from diverse problematics (Nietzschean, linguistics, Marxist), strictly subject to work them out in their turn and to make them function and produce effects conforming to these four “hinges” of the problematic. Therefore, we are caught from side to side in the “current moment” of philosophy and theory, consuming materials provided by linguistics, deconstruction, dialectical materialism, etc. Yet we are also, already, so to speak outside of this current moment, working from theoretical and political positions which are those of Machinic Materialism and where our whole object is, if not to make them “appear,” at least to re-affirm and re-activate them through their theoretical construction.
3) Why do we give this latent problematic the name “Machinic Materialism” (MM)?
a) Why “materialism?” For strategic and paleonymic reasons, which hold to its “competition” with “Dialectical Materialism” (DM), holding to its ambition in displacing the positions of the dialectic and the type of materiality that it tolerates. And for reasons which keep more profoundly to its object: since it is libidinal materiality which is at once the object where it is the theory and motor which makes it function as an apparatus capable of producing theoretical effects. This object, this motor, is precisely what we call “Différance” = the Other = the ontic moment of the problematic. It constitutes one of the two or three terms or premisses that the theses place in relations of hierarchy or subordination. The second term, the correlative of Différance or the Other, could only designate the quasi-totality, the appearance of totality or the quasi-Being of Différance: what we call the Body-of-the-Other, or the Foll Body [le Corps plain][4] (cf. Chapter 2), or again the ontological moment of the materialist problematic.
b) Why “machinic”? This term requires great developments (Chapter 2). Through them, we begin the effective construction of MM. However, as a preliminary indication and to complete a first sketch, we call “machinic” a relation or a functioning where the Other or Différance, in the sense defined above, is both the motor and the object. Therefore, “machinic” strategically displaces “dialectic,” which designates a functioning where contradiction, and no longer Différance, is the motor and the object. Machinic also displaces the “technical” in the sense that Heidegger has made us familiar: as an activity of objectivation and representation (in their varying historical kinds).
But why this term machinic, what precise formulation does Nietzsche give without pronouncing the word, in which this concept allows to extricate the original materialism undoubtedly contained in the notion “desiring machines,” but that it exceeds in the measure where it functions within all contemporary thoughts from which they are (on varying modes) thoughts of “the” Différance [«la» Différance] – later on we will say, to ground simple nominal definitions, that they come by being given from the “machinic.”
“Machinic Materialism” is therefore the theory (the problematic, since what it says of its object is valid for itself) of the processes of production whose materiality is not economic, practical or signifying, but politico-libidinal, and whose law or syntax is Différance rather than contradiction.[5]
Its content is latent, it remains to produce it in a double sense: in the sense of its theoretical manifestation, but also in the sense of its material re-affirmation/re-activation. On the theoretical or dominant plane, we will extract (Chapters 2 and 4) a certain number of theses, positions, side-takings – posing each time in a theoretical mode their correlation, their subordination or their inclusion. However, this labour remains still precisely theoretical and positional: this is its insufficiency, for we know that MM is a problematic, or a process of production; if it produces some theoretical effects, it is because it too, like whatever process of production, responds to strict material conditions. Here, it is the “machinic” libido which is its productive force, production is that of Différance which is both (we shall see why) the producer and the product to-come of the process. To designate this material production, we will also speak of the machinic synthesis (production = synthesis) or the synthesis of Différance. This also gives to MM its complete and concrete meaning of the problematic which is affected by its object or its product (it produces power and functions with desire in consuming, for example, textual and linguistic givens), we must subordinate its theses to its real functioning, to include its theoretical theses within the material syntheses which they are also otherwise: the construction of the theory is identically its twilight, the production of theses is their destruction (cf. Chapter 1).
We call this concrete and double (theoretico-libidinal) functioning of the problematic MM the “Libidinal Break.” Under the dominant form of the Eternal Return and the Will to Power, Nietzsche produced in the history of theory, as in the history of all processes of production (in History tout court which is only the history of production), a Break without return, a Break in relation not only to the Hegelian dialectic, but more generally to the onto-theo-logy and the universe of presence, the logos, the representation where the dialectic and practice are only species of. The Libidinal Break is a Break which is not specific, but “différantial,” which is therefore not an epistemological break, but which equally affects all processes of production. Its cause is rightly the libido, defined under the strict machinic and différantial conditions which distinguish it from the “technical” or objectivated libido under organic, physical, or “signifying” conditions.
4) These investigations respond to two goals that we must carefully distinguish from the perspective of their scope and “generality,” though the systematic unity of this labour holds to their correlation practiced here: on the one hand (the principal goal) to attempt to renew the forms of materialism on nonMarxist and nondialectical bases; and on the other hand (the secondary goal) to invest this critical problematic of MM within the classical problems of textuality and, in the long run, linguistics.
a) The institution of which is not, truly speaking, a new form of materialism but a new functioning of the old materialism is not done in the ideological void and not done in the theoretical and political void. There is no slot to fill, we can only occupy positions by dislodging a potential adversary, both a principal adversary, the linguistic and semiotic representation of textual functioning, the libido-of-writing, and a secondary adversary on the plane of the treatment of materialism and textuality: Dialectical Materialism. The universe of ideology is full, as full as Spinozan substance: Deus sive “Ideologia.” We simultaneously construct this MM and we gradually occupy the principal positions of DM, but we can only occupy them to displace them, marking each time what its theoretical and political positions carry of noncritiqued practical and dialectical representation.
b) This materialist but machinic problematic is not specifically textual: we first intentionally construct it without reference to these problems to suggest that the whole of its critical power holds to the fact that it reflects nothing, within the conditions of its functioning at least, of the fundamental concepts of linguistics and the empirical disciplines of writing. This is the meaning of a central thesis which traces a line of demarcation, within the problems of textuality, between the theoretical conjuncture marked by the dominance of DM and Historical Materialism (HM) in these problems and our intervention within this conjuncture. This thesis poses that one must subordinate the linguistic and textual values to libidinal values. We do not say: we subordinate them to materialist values in general, for there are materialist values that do not resist, for example, deconstruction: and these are dialectical values of materialism.
Thus, the problematic of MM enjoys a generality or a universality that we will avoid considering too quickly as conceptual, generic or extensive. We at all do not propose, like Marxism, a generic and dominant concept of materialism (and idealism) – nor even, despite its considerable progress concerning the Hegelian contradiction, a specific or differential concept, but rather we propose a différantial concept of materialism. This means that its universality (what we call its intense generality) is not that of a genre, totality, foundation, or a structure. Machinic Materialism is universal from the universality of Différance rather than contradiction (“overdetermined” or not). We do not intend to repeat a classical gesture: investing, within the empiricity of sciences, molar or totalizing problematics. From this perspective, the contradiction does not suffice in destroying the molar aspect of Dialectical Materialism. We “oppose” DM with a theoretical-instinctual apparatus, both theoretical and material (its unity is precisely différantial rather than “contradictory”) which has the property of always being universal and partial, “general” and “minoritarian” at the same time: both the multiplicity of possible theoretico-libidinal positions and one position in this multiplicity.
It is this “minority” of the apparatus of MM which grounds its capacity to invest itself – among others – in the problems of writing without subsuming them under dialectical generalities or practical generalities like Marxism does. It is the set of conditions both within and without which make of an eventual science of writing a “revolutionary science” – let’s say, since the contradiction here is the object of a materialist critique, a “subversive” science. As however the appeal to subversion (the subversion of dialectical, practical, linguistic codes of writing) is the ultimate naivety and opening freedom, we will say, slower still, the “twilight of writing”[6] as the central problem of a materialist critique of textual and linguistic codes.
5) The object of the First Section is this “Machinic Materialism” that we will now strive to construct (produce) more in detail in its theses and syntheses, first under its machinic angle, then under its materialist angle, but always within the perspective of the unity of machinic theses and materialist theses.
The object of the Second Section is to invest this problematic within the theory and practice of textuality. This also signifies that this politico-instinctual apparatus invests – in the libidinal sense – the field of textuality.
The Third Section will provide some still elementary samples of the materialist treatment of writing as desiring, or the fusion of the sciences of the text and Machinic Materialism: notions of partial textual objects, the text as a formation-of-sovereignty, the Intense Aphoristic Body, etc. In other words, it draws some effects of this investment of the textual field through the political project of MM. It is through it that the reader who would put off the construction of a philosophical problematic can begin (even though it is like a conclusion without premisses).
Finally, the last two sections develop the correlative critical task of this fusion, the dissolution of the ideology of the signifier: not only ideologies which have exploited the signifier, but the signifier as ideology. Under this ultimate form – the materialist critique (the “selection” of linguistic structuralism – the few advanced indications in this essay will sufficiently show that the positive labour (and what labour) remains to be done: the fusion of linguistics and Machinic Materialism.
Before tackling the body of the text, the reader can refer to the discussion which follows.[7] This interview was staged by four questions from the co-directors of the collection. One will find specifications of intentions and some marked differences of this text to the “positions” of the collection.
[1] Any and all errors are my own. Notes that are not Laruelle’s but mine will be indicated. – Trans.
[2] To give a preliminary and provisional definition of this term, obviously taken from the theoretical conjuncture, we will say that “machinic” designates the relation which Différance is capable of, a unilateral relation (X is identical to Y which is distinguished from X) or the quasi-causality of Différance. For what différance this concerns, the whole problem is raised later (cf. chapter 2 and 3). Here, Différance = the correlation of the Active and the Affirmative in the Nietzschean sense of these terms: power (activity = resistance; reactivity = domination) and the libido (affirmation = revolution-process; negation = fascization-process).
[3] On the problem of the two possible versions of Nietzsche-thought, on their correlation and the paralogism to which they give rise, we recommend Nietzsche contre Heidegger (Payot).
[4] To intervene, Laruelle is crafting a neologism that accompanies the Derridean a of Différance alongside le corps plein of Deleuze and Guattari. For lack of a better framing, the foll body is utilized here to indicate its distinction with that of the full body. – Trans.
[5] For reasons which will appear later on, “Différance” synthetically returns to the materiality of the processes of production and their syntax.
[6] In the French, «le déclin de l’écriture» is a tongue twister and loses the sense of it in English if translated literally, as in the decline of writing. I have chosen instead to render it as “twilight of writing” not only to try and get back that tongue twister, but also to situate the text in its Nietzschean flair. – Trans.
[7] The interviews that follow are with Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Sarah Kofman, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, the co-directors of the series Philosophe en effet published by Aubier-Flammarion. Le déclin de l’écriture is partially a response to the text that some of these authors, Mimesis des articulations (ed. Sylvain Agacinski), published in the same series that this present text is part of, but a continuation of a review essay written by Laruelle on Mimesis des articulations, “La scène du vomi, ou comment ça se détraque dans la théorie,” in Critique 347 (April 1976), 418-433, which can be translated as “The Vomit Scene, or how it is broken down in theory.” – Trans.
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