Ben Woodard
Nick Srnicek
Taylor AdkinsNina has a really nice piece up over at Infinite Thought, critiquing what she sees as the ‘race to the bottom’ of contemporary philosophy and its focus on meaningless nature – and in particular, the potentially apolitical nature of much recent speculative realism. These are valid concerns, though I (unsurprisingly!) disagree with them. As I see it, the specifically political beauty in speculative realism is that it resolutely denies that politics can be read off from ontology, or that politics is derivative of philosophy. Here we need to take Badiou at his word (and not at his actions) when he says that philosophy merely elaborates upon the truths found in other fields. Of course, he then goes onto to produce a political vision that is suspiciously close to his ontology, but the principle is correct nevertheless. Which is to say that philosophy and politics are born of two different questions: ‘what is it?’ and ‘what to do?’ The latter, political, question need never concern itself with the former question. At best, it must ask ‘how does it work?’, but this is a pragmatic question which never needs to speculate about metaphysical realities.
Contra Nina’s claim then, something like actor-network theory can be used to great political success, without ever having to concern itself with ontology. As Alex Williams put it to me recently, we might see actor-network theory as “good politics, bad metaphysics”.
But Nina’s post points to a greater problem with modern political thought – one not limited to speculative realism, but in fact infesting much of continental philosophy. Namely, the tendency to try and read politics off of theoretical systems. We see this in the knee-jerk reactions against states, institutions, building alliances, mobilizing movements, etc. There is a tendency to see “true” political action as only occuring in some spontaneous action, or in the consequences of an event, or in the refusal to build long-lasting institutions, or in the purely social (non-state) sphere. The result of this self-imposed limit on what political action is, I would argue, has been the weakening of the left. The right, on the other hand, has been happy to let the left wallow in self-doubt and theoretical aporias, while they gladly build new institutions, mobilize alliances (even incoherent ones), and refuse to wait for an event to show them the way. The positive political outcome of speculative realism, then, is to refuse the move of deriving politics from philosophy – and to restore politics to its own relative autonomy.
[UPDATE:] Further comments and debate from Ben Woodard, John, Benjamin Noys, and Reid Kotlas.
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I think there are a lot of contradictions going on here. For one, actor-network theory has been circulating in popular form amongst activists for some time now, it isn’t anything new at the level of practice (though it seems many who write about politics are disconnected from that practice). This being the case, what “the Left” are you talking about? I understand we’re supposed to all be worried about the Even or something, but that seems to be something that Badiouians worry about more than “the Left”. Had Left groups have been making compromises for decades! Getting involved in working with mainstream parties, trying to build in-roads in local government, etc. It seems like you’re talking about two different things, one of them is about a group of people who do high theory in a very different way than Marx & Engels did high theory, and another group (of groups) that may be depressed, but not because they’re waiting on ‘the Event’.
[...] The post makes a number of statements which need to be addressed. Nick has addressed some of them here [...]
Wrote that as I was rushing out to the shop to get some food for dinner. Let me try and phrase all that a bit more clearly.
1. I’m confused as to what you’re trying to say about actor-network theory. It seems like it has been around in practical form for quite a long time amongst militants and political action groups. It is only recently with Harman’s and Bryant’s work(and perhaps your work) that it is now being taken seriously as high philosophy (not an insult).
2. I don’t recognize this “Left” you’re talking about that is always waiting on the Event. It seems at the level of practice the Left has never been shy about making alliances. Those on the far-left made compromises in the US with the Obama campaign and in the UK continue to make compromises with the Labour, while other groups work go so far as to work with businesses as best they can. It is theorists, largely marginal, who wait upon the Event. I know your project is focusing on moving past revolution, but it seems most people in unions, militant groups, students groups (maybe less so here), are doing stuff in addition to waiting for the Event (if they are even waiting, as many of them are likely not). Where are you getting this vision of the Event?
3. I think you’re confusing Nina’s criticisms of the politics from nature line. It seems there is a melange of various positions going on here, partly due to the cryptic nature of her criticisms. While some who call themselves SR argue for the complete separation of ontology and politics, others write on the darkness of ontology/nature have imported that into discussions of politics. The criticism you level against Badiou is equally applicable to these dark visions of politics.
1) I’d be interested in hearing about groups using actor-network theory, since I don’t know of any myself. If there are, that’s fantastic, though.
2) I don’t think ‘the Left’ I’m talking about is different at all from what most people would consider leftist groups. There is certainly a theory section, and I think it’s largely moored in problematic conceptions of politics (and those problems are not limited to the focus on the event – a Badiouian and Deleuzian thing – which I tried to make clear in the post). You have sort of endless discussions about withdrawal, secession, waiting, preferring not to, infinite demands, no demands, etc. – but all too rarely do you have these theories stating an idea of how to get from our present situation to a better situation.
Now besides the theory section of the left, you have the more practical, hands-on section – and clearly they aren’t subject to the same faults as the theory section. But I look over the past 30 years of history and only see a massive failure of practical leftism, despite the hard work of activists. In Deleuze and Foucault’s discussion of intellectuals, they talk about how theory is used to carry praxis past its impediments, and when theory gets stuck, praxis carries it past its impediments as well. It seems to me extremely clear that praxis has failed, and that theory is necessary to move it past its current impediments. Yet theory, as I tried to say above, has been focused on the wrong things, and isn’t currently capable of forming a relay between current praxis and a future praxis.
3) You’re right that some have used ontology within politics, and I could have been clearer that my statement was only about a particular part of SR, and not necessarily representative of every SR position.
[...] conclusion, I couldn’t disagree more with Nick’s riposte to Nina over at Speculative Heresy: The positive political outcome of speculative realism, then, is to refuse the move of deriving [...]
1. I’m not able to give you any names, but at a few critical theory conferences (in Cardiff, Nottingham, and London) they have been referenced. I remember hearing about it in relation to anti-GMO groups in France and with the Battle of Seattle. I’ve also seen it used to explain the success of certain actions, like defeating a lawsuit brought by McDonald’s against activists.
2. I agree that there are a string of failures on the Left, but I don’t know that this is down to problems in the praxis that can’t be fixed by the current theory. There are external conditions at work here, but I don’t know how to make that argument convincing without doing a lot more fieldwork.
That race to the bottom of postmodernism, ending in nihilism revisited after the modern, post-war, era (Sartre’s Nausea), has already been won by the leftists (definition: http://bit.ly/1jEo3e) with Obama in the maxim, the Nobel prize as the maxim above that, and Chomsky awarded the most honorable White House prize they could think of. Let’s now hope that unlike rightists in the late 50s, leftists in the late 00’s, are capable of CREATIVE nihilism as well. I fear not. For it is as if the whole charade has bypassed the post-postmodernism that is sick with political correctness, elite multiculturalism with fences around estates in between, forced into every European street with walls in between not even keeping the neighbor’s sounds in AND scrumming 140 cultures together wherever you turn your head.
I do not agree that leftists are self-critical and that the right has left it doing so, while it for itself only kept on building institutions. There is something deeply off-track in that vision. Imho, the left has lost its capacity for self-criticism when the Wall came down and created a pro-Islam, anti-American political sheet all across Europe, isolating the right, and demonizing it, even murdering it twice politically in the Netherlands (2002 and 2004). The right, on the other hand, were capable of self-criticism since those days and allowed their principles to be discussed and deliberated, not dogmatically defending any criticism, as if it were their religion and, indeed, closely related to Islamic doctrine.
[...] I have to disagree with Nick, who claims that “The positive political outcome of speculative realism, then, is to refuse the move of [...]
[...] with three posts on the relationship between politics and ontology over at Speculative Heresy (here, here, and here), arguing that ontology is completely independent of politics such that it is [...]
Just to echo Anthony’s point I’m not sure what beyond giving up on revolution this all means – in truth 99% of the left gave up on revolution ages ago in any case.
So beyond a call for what seems an ultra-reformist, popular front style leftism, or a Laclauian hegemonic battle, I’m still feeling very much in the dark as to what all this is means. I eagerly anticipate new theory; I am certainly no dogmatist; I just still don’t know what it amounts to.
The Left as an entity is a very problematic term too – I tend to lapse into using it as shorthand in the way that Zizek does, but what is the left?
I’m not sure this blog is the best place to have this discussion, but it is an important one to have. Perhaps your advice heeded about the irreducibility of politics to ontology, we need a serious political theory blog to have out these debates.
[...] straight off I should say that for the most part I agree with Nick’s opinions on the matter (here and here), although I think he made claims for Speculative Realism as a whole that were perhaps [...]
hi Nick,
I like your point about the autonomy of politics here, as not driving from philosophical commitments. If anything, I think most meaningfully political philosophy derives from political commitments, in attempt to be useful to those commitments. (I’m also generally convinced that a fair amount of philosophy takes the form of retroactive justification of values and intuitions that people are already committed to.) I think there are at least two different directions to go from here, though. One is to do SR and other philosophy out of philosophical interest, a move that I find intellectually liberating though I don’t do this sort of work – I care a lot about politics but it’s nice to have the intellectual room to do other stuff that’s not so directly determined by political concerns and where every conversation doesn’t have to leap to political questions. Another is to set aside philosophical issues and do political work – that could still involve theorizing, but in a way closer to its object, I think. That is, it seems to me that if one accepts your claim then SR loses any real political justification. I like that, as I think a lot of work has a sort of … cache’ that derives from an air of politicalness that is questionable at best.
cheers,
Nate
…Hmm… Unlike many of your regular interlocutors, I agree with you that it would be very much to the credit of speculative realism that it does not see ontology as political (thus leaving room for actual politics as opposed to unconvincingly politicised ontology)
Having said that, I have been thinking (to put it crassly) “what about Brassier?”
Having just looked at his brilliant, frightening, PhD thesis I’m particularly thrown by the extent to which he seems to think that overcoming correlationism is the first step on the royal road to the overthrowing of capitalism. This seemed completely mystifying to me at the time, but seems even more so now, in the light of your claim that speculative realism does -not- confuse politics with ontology.
I mean, to me, Brassier’s formula for politics is something like:
1) Bernard Henry-Levy is a humanist.
2) Speculative Realism is incredibly anti-humanist (human beings=cosmic excrement under the sign of imminent extinction.
Ergo, speculative realism, is on the side of revolutionary politics.
Am I being grossly unfair or just confused?
Best,
Mal
Hi Mal,
I’m not sure precisely what Brassier would say himself, but I’d just point to the fact that all the capitalism stuff gets dropped by the time he writes his first real book. There’s no politics in Nihil Unbound, and I have a hard time imagining where one could extract it from without undermining the thesis of being-nothing. I do know that he’s writing a book on historical materialism, so it’ll be interesting to see whether he thinks his work falls on the side of intrinsically radical politics. Maybe he agrees there’s a separation between ontological discourse and political action, maybe not.
Nick,
Thank you for your generous reply to my question.
I haven’t (obvioulsy) read “Nihil Unound” yet, so it is extremely interesting that Brassier would have dropped all the odd “let’s take a shot at capitalism by disorienting with Laruelle” line that seems quite pronounced in his thesis.
Well, I’ll definitely await what he has to say about historical materialism.
Cheers and congratulations on an informative blog.
Mal
He does and doesn’t. On one side he did say to me personally that he actually thought justice and the distribution of goods was not so much a mysterious problem and therefore did not require the depths of ontology for their determination. But on the other hand, I have on good authority that his new bok coming out is on neuroscience and Marx – a kind of neuro-Marxism, perhaps.
I concur with Nate here about the questionable politicalness one finds spun out from a lot of philosophical (continental) literature and from the blogging sphere. This stuff often lacks even elementary engagement with the real world, and the unique stuff of politics. Often what we get touted as ‘radical politics’ is just mainstream, liberal anti-capitalism framed with witty theoretical syntheses and rhetorical fireworks.
Maladjusted:
“Having just looked at his brilliant, frightening, PhD thesis I’m particularly thrown by the extent to which he seems to think that overcoming correlationism is the first step on the royal road to the overthrowing of capitalism. This seemed completely mystifying to me at the time, but seems even more so now, in the light of your claim that speculative realism does -not- confuse politics with ontology.
I mean, to me, Brassier’s formula for politics is something like:
1) Bernard Henry-Levy is a humanist.
2) Speculative Realism is incredibly anti-humanist (human beings=cosmic excrement under the sign of imminent extinction.”
I cannot possibly see how any perspective that sees human kind as ‘excrement’ under the future of extinction could possibly constitute any form of emancipatory anti-capitalist politics? It seems closer to fascism and the early 20th century surrealists and Nietzschean anti-communists.
Likewise, in the 21st century materialism conference when pressed on the political implications of OOP Graham Harman gave some weird suggestion that we shouldn’t ruin a nice landscape with a factory because that would be not respecting the objects! His tone of voice didn’t sound particularly ironic; but his position is classically petit bourgois — you get the same sort of thing from Nimby Rural Alliance groups.
This is why I would follow Nick in seeing SR as permitting (even demanding) the separation of metaphysics and politics. But at the same time, I think to engage in radical, emancipatory, even Marxist, politics one also has to be a radical humanist and assert the importance of the break from nature signalled by the human — and it own autonomy and unique importance.
“I think to engage in radical, emancipatory, even Marxist, politics one also has to be a radical humanist and assert the importance of the break from nature signalled by the human — and it own autonomy and unique importance.”
After reading this sentence I may become a Brassierian.