(This is the second of two excerpts from my talk at “Superpositions--A Symposium on Laruelle and the Humanities” hosted at the Center for Transformative Media at the New School. Read part one.)
In preparing for this conference, I was reminded of the many different kinds of undertakings represented here and elsewhere. With his background in philosophy and religious studies, Anthony Paul Smith has produced a treatise on a non-standard theory of nature and ecology. And I am just finishing Katerina Kolozova's book Cut of the Real on Laruelle and poststructuralist feminism, which I find to be an incredibly original and courageous undertaking, not least because she's taking on some of the most fundamental assumptions of the entire field of feminist theory!
At the same time, Rocco Gangle has produced an invaluable text on Philosophies of Difference, and likewise Anthony has one forthcoming on Principles of Non-Philosophy.
Elsewhere, beyond the ground breaking work of Ray Brassier, John Mullarkey is currently in production on a book that will combine Laruelle and theories of animality and non-humanness.
And there are many others--some of whom are assembled here at the conference--who are extracting much from Laruelle's non-standard method... and extending it in new ways.
Here are some of the many questions and concepts that have emerged from my own reading of Laruelle, some of which I'm sure will be discussed tonight and tomorrow during the conference. In no particular order:
- The dynamic between, what we might call, “prophylactic” ontologies and “promiscuous” ontologies, particularly those espoused by Deleuzians. If we're swimming today in an endless Deleuzian sea in which everything can touch everything else, does Laruelle's “prophylactic” ontology offer some alternative?
- The event -- in counterpoint to Badiou's strident theory of the life-altering event, or Deleuze's notion that millions of micro-events happen all the time in a vital, potent landscape of agents, does Laruelle offer a radically new conception of the event? Event, not as action, but as withdrawal. Not so much the voluntarist decision, but the non-standard “decision not to.”
- Determination, destiny, fate -- Does Laruelle provide a way to return to these most derided and scorned concepts? In other words, can I finally come out of the closet as a vulgar determinist?! What does Laruelle mean by destiny? Is there a way to talk about determination that does not collapse back into some form of authoritarianism?
- The generic -- Are we in the middle of a renaissance in apophatic reason? What about finitude and insufficiency? Can we change philosophy's Principle of Sufficient Reason into a “Principle of Insufficient Reason”? Can the generic give us a way to think beyond difference, without losing all the gains won by poststructuralism? (This is Kolozova's question, in a nutshell.)
- Identity. What are the uses of identity? What about tautology? I've suggested the notion of “autistic reason." What about algebra -- and can we more accurately theorize the shift, as I see it, from Deleuze's use of calculus to Laruelle's use of algebra? Or, in a different sense, Badiou's use of set theory, to Laruelle's algebra. Is algebra the consummate “identity” mathematics?
- Withdrawal -- Withdrawal is appearing in a number of different thinkers today. What is withdrawal good for? Or is it just narcissistic and defeatist? (I'm thinking one of us needs to write something quickly, along the lines of an “Anti-Thoreau,” to separate Laruellean withdrawal from a kind of back-to-the-land hipster lifestyle, in which withdrawal means little more than buying a Prius and canning bespoke pickles.)
- Finally, theory -- this reflects my own bias, to be sure, but I wonder if Laruelle is in fact the greatest boon to critical theory since Althusser. In other words, do we finally have a way to enact the edict given by Marx in the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, that the best response to philosophy is to cease doing it. To disarm, after so many centuries, to stand down, to demilitarize philosophy and transition into a theoretical undertaking, a generic science.