Be guided by Richard Feynman. When he was describing the structure of an atom he said “If you enlarge an atom to the size of a house, then the nucleus would be the size of a spec of dust inside the house.”

Maybe I should clarify something, as much for me as for you and because I’m not completely sure where I stand on this and how to think about it. That is: It might sound like I’m hinting that all metaphysics is necessarily political. I don’t think I want to say that. So maybe I should clarify: *Some* metaphysics *can* be political, even if it doesn’t deal directly with political concepts and subjects. … At least I think I want to say that.

I think I now see partially where you are going with the foundation stuff; namely, that people want to use philosophy to gain the upperhand, to adopt the perfect idiom and participate in the ultimate feeling of being in the know. Sort of like the academic-speech conversation we had awhile ago. I hadn’t gotten that before.

Also, I agree with you on recommendability. And on the glories of puttering. Maybe that should be a revolutionary demand: More time for puttering!

I’m intrigued by your second-to-last paragraph. After reading it in different ways several times, I think I’ve got it: Your objection to metaphysical foundations is that if they are the basis for political claims, changes in in the former lead to changes in the latter. It’s not really metaphysics per se that you object to, but use of it as primary and determinative. Well, one possible objection to that is that a radical metaphysic is compatible with terribly conservative politics, and vice versa. Which is to say that the relationship is not automatic. But arguing this way cedes something I’m not sure I’m willing to admit; that is, that metaphysics are not imminent to politics, or that politics is not imminent to metaphysics….And this is sort of where we came in, no?

Re. your last paragraph re. infinite regress and tautology as the the two types of thought. In other words, the beginning and the end. But see, if you were a Deleuzean you’d know that the action is really in the middle, the space for experimentation and discovery. This is why Deleuzeanism is the perfect idion … man, I’m so happy I could work that in.

Take care, Nate.

Thanks for this. I clearly failed at least partially in my explanation in my last comment, given that to-defend-or-not is still in the range of reactions provoked by my post. I withdraw the claims about Deleuze, I can’t back them up anyway. Rather, I’d like to change the claims to claims about “some of the reasons some people might turn to -” or “some of the things some people seem to be doing with -” Deleuze. (Also, I do recognize my vague “some people” would clearly be a straw person if this were an argument rather than a set of provisional observations that I want to put down to keep in mind later when I finally get around to reading the D-man.)

I have to admit I kind of did have the sense of “irrelevant puttering” in mind at first when I made the remarks about metaphysics, but that was unfair and inconsistent of me. I try hard to always leave open the possibility that my own interests and projects may turn out in the end to be such irrelevant puttering. (And to some degree there’s nothing wrong with irrelevant puttering as an aesthetic pursuit, we all ought to be allowed a lot more of that, and will be one day once surplus value has been abolished.)

You wrote: “when [Deleuze] critiques the concepts/categories of, say, identity and representation as they relate to thought, why are those necessarily outside or even ancillary to politics?” Certainly. They’re not, certainly not necessarily outside of or ancillary to politics. But, not necessarily not outside of or ancillary to politics. You wrote, “It seems to me they are intertwined.” Fair enough. I’d want to say “they can be intertwined” or “they may be intertwined for some of us some of the time” or “we may find it useful to intertwine them some of the time for some purposes”.

I’m trying to get myself thoroughly inculcated into believing the idea that people can do good things with bad ideas (put in less loaded language, that people sometimes do things that one wouldn’t expect they could or would given some of what they think and say). As part of that, I don’t want to deny a potential efficacy to any set of ideas. But that also means there can’t be any best set of ideas (except, of course, for mine) which claims a universal monopoly on modes of efficacy. (None of this is to say one can’t or shouldn’t object to certain uses of ideas and idioms, or ask questions about their recommendability and utility - that’s what I was trying to do in the Lenin conversation.)

Another way to put this is that for me a lot of this stuff boils down to some level to a question of recommendability. I get a lot out of Marx and out of the bits of Foucault and Negri and Virno I’ve read. That may be recommendation for people who know me (it’s not so much for my wife, who doesn’t have patience for the idioms anymore). It’s not likely to be for strangers. And, the ‘what’ that I get from those folks might well be ‘gettable’ from some other source, in which case the question of whether or to what degree others should read things like my own interests or speak in the idioms I prefer (or, and this is the real issue for me, that to which I should read and speak according like some others) is in no way clear.

In my experience, encounters with people who are engaged with metaphysics (and I used to really dig the little bits of stuff I’d read) are in part - or can be read consistently as - an expression of a desire for a best vocabulary, something not unlike what we’d have if there was a god who appeared who told us the plans and order of the world in the world’s/god’s own terms. That’d be the best vocabulary, which would provide more security to the users of it and render other vocabularies superfluous or ancillary to it. I’ve had encounters with Deleuzians that seem to have some idea or desire like that, that the Deleuzian idiom is one I should adopt, that it’s a better one. Friends I used to hang out with who were super into Hegel had the same attitude, except they were happy to just say straightforwardly that they had the best idiom, and could do so in an internally consistent fashion. I think it’s harder for Deleuzians who want to do that to do so consistently with their idiom, because parts of the idiom reject the idea of any monopoly (I think, again, in my limited encounters with reading the guy).

All of that said, I do have the following other thoughts:
I think some people read Deleuze and use that to break certain bad habits of thought. That’s great, and means that Deleuze is someone that people with some bad habits of thought should be cajoled to read. (Probably myself included.) But here’s how I think it may work sometimes. One breaks certain habits of thinking about being (moving to becoming), and breaks some authoritarian political habits. That latter’s the part I’m most concerned with. And it seems to me that it goes like this: one gets comfortable making a declaration (assertion) about being/becoming. Then one gets comfortable making that declaration about politics. I think that second step is an important one. The claim about politics should not rest on the claim about being/becoming (such that if one got one’s mind changed about being/becoming one’s politics would change). The ontological/metaphysical claims/innovations may be a useful avenue for coming to hold certain political views/claims . To that degree, I’m all about it. If, on the other hand, they’re a ground or foundation for the political views/claims, that strikes me as a problem.

I generally think there are two types of thoughts/assertions: infinite regresses and tautologies. The former are harder to build things on. The claims about being/becoming I think end up in one or the other - a la my friend with his remarks about the conservation of energy and the identity of matter and energy. I suspect there’s a moment in there rather like a faith, an assertion, a tautology — it certainly is for me, I mean, I believe all that stuff to the very limited degree I understand it - or probably beyond that degree of understanding - but mainly I just have heard people in positions of authority or people I respect talk about them and so I sort of go along. Given that I can do that for matter and energy and all that, why not just do that for politics and that’s good enough? Or, put another way, I think for politics the tautology should be as close to politics as possible. That is, I think it’s better if the tautology is “X political project/condition is possible/is the case” rather than “Y ontological condition is the case such that X political project/condition is possible/is the case”. Hence, at the moment I’m taken with the little bits of Badiou and Ranciere I’ve read, in that they seem to start from equality as axiomatic.

I hope this stuff makes sense.

take care,
Nate

I’m trying to avoid being a brave defender of the master, both because that’s not in my political makeup and because I’m pretty much a newcomer to Deleuze; I don’t know him well enough to have either much of a stake in defending him or the engagement with his work to pull it off.

Anyway, I also should have assumed you were being more precise than I did. I read metaphysics as a pejorative, an assignation of irrelevant puttering. Of course you didn’t. But even when compared to classical metaphysics, Deleuze so thoroughly left behind the old categories–even the idea of categories–that it seems false to me to lump him with what came before. You mention being several times. Deleuze turned being into becoming, and to me the latter seems irreducible to the former. And other concepts get similar treatment… Or maybe I’m just wanting to see novelty in this.

What I objected to more than the question of whether Deleuze and his followers are metaphysicians or not–and what I think Tzuchien is getting at–is the fixed and rigid distinction between metaphysics (philosophy?) and politics (political theory?). So when he critiques the concepts/categories of, say, identity and representation as they relate to thought, why are those necessarily outside or even ancillary to politics? It seems to me they are intertwined (though I’m not sure I fully get, or can articulate, the connection right now); in other words, the separation seems a rearticulation of the distinction between thought and action. But, as you said so well the other day in a post, “Movements think.”

It seems you’re agreeing with 1) and disagreeing with 2). Is that right? Please let me know.

Eric, you on the other hand are disagreeing with 1), right? Such that for you my 2) is a non sequitur re: Deleuze/Deleuzians. And I should say, when I say “Deleuzians” I mean “some Deleuzians I’ve met” or “some version(s) of Deleuzianism”, not all Deleuzians or everyone who reads, likes, uses Deleuze. I realize that may not be clear and I’m sorry for that.

I want to clarify a bit, as I think I spoke poorly the first time around. Let me try to rephrase. I don’t think Deleuze and Deleuzians are doing metaphysics exclusively. I think one of the impulses at work in at least some of that work (and I should say once again, I’ve read very little Deleuze and I do plan to read more of him and to take him seriously, I’m more thinking here of conversational encounters I’ve had with a fair amount of Deleuzians) is a desire for a sort of metaphysical certainty. Hmm. That’s clumsy. Let me try again.

First, clearly Deleuze can function and has functioned for many people in ways that’s helped them move past or around certain bad habits of thought. (This is something of what I meant when I said in an earlier post that there can be an important private and ethical component to reading theory, part of a project of self-creation.) That’s tremendously useful and does have a political value/effect. This moving past or around might be (and has been) accomplished by others using different sources.

I do think there’s something of a metaphysical desire at work in some of what goes on w/ some Deleuzians though. That is, there’s reference to being and all that as a way to get past or around a habit of thought that’s probably not really a problem because of its account of being. (For instance, Leninism or orthodox marxism.) Going to the account of being is sort of a process of moving backward to a point then reconstructing from that point forward. Like I said, that’s great as an ethical project if it works for one. But not required. That’s where I’m pausing in this post: the idea that talking about being may be required. Wait. Strike that.

Talking about - or sounding like talking about, issuing sentences that can be read as claims about - being is not necessary for politics. Non-necessary is not grounds for stopping a certain habit of thought or speech, but it is grounds for not adopting it.

More directly (I hope), I’m not sure it matters very much for my politics whether matter is essentially active or passive or whether time/history is kairological or teleological, etc. The example I like to use for this is the existence of some god. If it turns out to be definitively and incontrovertibly the case that god exists or if I’m right that god doesn’t exist or some other answer I can’t conceive, that doesn’t change my politics. My politics are more or less autonomous from other arenas (or idioms). I don’t think they should be absolutely so (but nor should they be utterly not so), and harmonizing all of that _is_ something I’m interested in.

The incident that prompted (or crystallized) this was a conversation relayed secondhand where a friend talked about Deleuze and Spinoza and the law of conservation of energy and monism (energy is matter is energy, neither created nor destroyed but in different modes and passing between them in ways hard to articulate). That’s tremendously fascinating, and if it has a political use for people then people should use it. But that does strike me as unnecessary. I’m much more taken with Badiou and Ranciere on the declaration of equality, politics as axiomatic, prescribed. Now, the Deleuzian (or Hegelian - that’s also a useful idiom, and one that is actually quite like the Deleuzian one at least in the vulgar forms of the two in my experiences) idiom, or other forms of metaphysic - recourse to accounts of being - may be useful as a way to convince people or otherwise move them (move themselves) into a place where they do or relate positively to such a declaration. In that regard, I’m all for a use of metaphysics. I think that moving can also be accomplished by stories from history, literature, and other sources too. That’s the bit I most pause over, what I take to be an implication that a metaphysical route is a privileged one (and not just privileged for us) or worse, a necessary one.

I hope this makes more sense.

take care,
Nate

here’s where i’ll diagree with our good friend Colin (who’s been cited many times in blogsphere..oh my!) It matter what we mean when we say “politics” or do “politics.” Its very broad. In a sense we don’t need reference to metaphysics when we do politics, but we might have to ask the question : what is this (what i’m doing) for? reference to telos, whether in a mundane or an ultimate sense requires a metaphysical inquiry. What conditions or prefigures our activity in any particular sphere?
-in this way, we might understand why Spinoza’s texts “Ethics” and the “Political treatise” are full of metaphysical claims.

Not that we have to accept what his self-description. But I do think that his key concepts–difference, representation, etc.–*are* political. I won’t weigh in on whether they are metaphysical or not. So I don’t see his use of them it as a return, which I infer as an evasion or retreat into less calamitous surroundings, so much as a doing/talking politics in a different language.