{"id":44,"date":"2010-06-25T09:46:50","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T14:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/schizosoph.wordpress.com\/?p=44"},"modified":"2010-06-25T09:46:50","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T14:46:50","slug":"is-deleuze-a-speculative-realist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffreyabell.net\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"Is Deleuze a Speculative Realist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first it might seem he is. If Bruno Latour is on the right track with respect to speculative realism, as Graham Harman and others would argue, then it might seem that Deleuze is on the right track as well for there are a number of areas where their philosophies converge in significant ways \u2013 especially concerning events, multiplicity, and their embrace of an ontological monism. I cover much of this in Deleuze\u2019s Hume<\/em>. It would also seem that Deleuze would not be a \u201chyper-incommensurable\u201d postmodern philosopher as Latour discusses this in We Have Never Been Modern<\/em>. Not only does Lyotard, for example, continue to embrace the incommensurability between humans and nonhumans, but will go even further and claim that \u2018there is nothing human about scientific expansion,\u2019 thus radicalizing the incommensurability (hence the \u2018hyper-\u2018). Deleuze, by contrast, moves with ease in discussing human and nonhuman assemblages. The frequently used example of an assemblage \u2013 man-horse-stirrup \u2013 is a case and point of Deleuze (and Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s) readiness to at the very least blur if not eliminate the incommensurability between humans and nonhumans.<\/p>\n

Then there is Quentin Meillassoux\u2019s critique of the correlationists. One of the central planks of the SR platform is the critique of correlationism. Kant is frequently singled out as the subtle grandmaster of correlationism (the final chapter of After Finitude<\/em> sets out to undermine [and correctly so I might add] Kant\u2019s Copernican revolution). But Meillassoux doesn\u2019t simply have his sights set on Kantians; rather, he sees much if not all of the post-Kantian philosophical tradition as beholden to certain correlationist assumptions, or to what Harman calls a \u2018philosophy of access.\u2019 Most notably, the correlationist philosopher thinks that our only access to objects is through thought. Thus, we cannot think the thing in itself but only as given to thought, as a correlate of thought. As Meillassoux points out, however, a correlationist is not necessarily tied to a subject-object metaphysics, to a hypostasized subject and object in the manner of Descartes; rather, what is central to correlationism, at least since Kant, is \u2018not a metaphysics,\u2019 but rather \u2018it invokes correlation to curb every hypostatization, every substantialization of an object of knowledge which would turn the latter into a being existing in and of itself.\u2019 (After Finitude, p. 11). Correlationists, in short, cannot think an object as it is in itself and correlationism assures the impossibility of ever thinking an object in itself.<\/p>\n

With Deleuze, for Meillassoux, we have a classic example of an attempt to \u2018curb every hypostatization,\u2019 and moreover we have in Deleuze and Nietzsche \u2018the vitalist hypostatization of the correlation\u2019 as an integral aspect of their critique of metaphysics (ibid. p. 37). Without addressing the fact that Deleuze never saw himself as part of the \u2018critique of metaphysics\u2019 tradition, the question remains: is Deleuze hypostatizing the correlation with his notion of life and his emphasis upon process and becoming? In other words, if there are for Deleuze no objects, if objects are merely abstractions of a flux, much like Bergson\u2019s snapshot photographs were abstractions of duration (duree), then objects would indeed simply be correlates and abstractions of becoming. Deleuze would thus be a strong correlationist, as Meillassoux argues, or a hyper-correlationist as Latour might argue. As for Kant it is impossible to think the object in itself but only as a phenomenal correlate of thought, is Deleuze a strong correlationist who, as Meillassoux argues, that \u2018it is unthinkable that the unthinkable is impossible\u2019? (ibid. 41). If there remains something that is unthinkable, namely becoming, and if it is indeed unthinkable that this unthinkable is impossible, then Deleuze would most definitely not be a speculative realist since a central task of SR is to think objects in themselves.<\/p>\n

But what does it mean to think an object in itself, or as Meillassoux puts the problem, an object that is anterior to givenness itself? Put simply, it is to think the absolute, to think that which is not limited by being given to a consciousness, to a historical situation, discourse, etc., but to think the absolute in itself. This absolute, however, is not to be an absolute becoming, life, or will to power, for then we would be back in correlationism. Rather, the absolute, for Meillassoux, is contingency itself, or, as he puts it: \u2018The absolute is the absolute impossibility of a necessary being.\u2019 (Ibid. 60). It might seem that Deleuze would agree on this point, but it is precisely here where Deleuze would stumble, for in absolutizing becoming he ultimately calls upon a necessary being, a contradictory, paradoxical being. Meillassoux is quite clear on this point (as he is with most of the points he makes): \u2018the utterly Immutable instance against which even the omnipotence of contingency would come to grief, would be a contradictory entity. And this for the precise reason that such an entity could never become other than it is because there would be no alterity for it in which to become.\u2019 (ibid. 69). It would already include its contradictory other and thus such an entity would be a necessary being and hence undermine contingency itself. It is for this reason that to think the absolute one must not think it as becoming, if for becoming \u2018things must be this, then<\/em> other than this; they are, then<\/em> they are not.\u2019 (ibid. 70). \u2018The only possibility of introducing difference into being, and thereby a conceivable becoming, would be by no longer allowing oneself the right to make contradictory statements about an entity.\u2019 (ibid. 71). In the end, it is only through mathematics that one can think the absolute as the contingent without contradiction, and philosophers of becoming such as Deleuze, Bergson, and Nietzsche continue to affirm the right to utter contradictions, much as did their intellectual progenitor Heraclitus.<\/p>\n

Deleuze\u2019s philosophy, however, is not to be confused with Bergson\u2019s and Nietzsche\u2019s, despite the influence of the latter two on Deleuze\u2019s own thought, and for Deleuze to think difference in-itself, as he claims is the central task of his philosophy in the early pages of Difference and Repetition<\/em>, is not to think or to affirm a contradictory entity. As alluded to in my earlier post on Badiou and Spinoza, Deleuze rejects the idea that there is an identifiable difference, much less an identifiable contradiction, between two entities that it is the task of philosophy to think. This is not what it means to think difference in itself according to Deleuze. At the same time, identity for Deleuze is not merely a correlate of difference. Deleuze, however, does speak of the impossibility of thought, of an unconscious that is understood to be \u2018something that cannot be thought in finite thought.\u2019 (Fold, p. 89), or he will write in Cinema 2, in reference to Artaud and Blanchot, that \u201cwhat forces us to think is \u2018the inpower [impouvoir<\/em>] of thought\u2019, the figure of nothingness, the inexistence of a whole which could be thought.\u201d (C2, 162). This impossibility and unconscious that thought itself cannot think but forces thought is not a necessary being (e.g., duration, becoming, will to power, a life etc.) relative to which what can be thought would merely be correlates of this necessary being. To the contrary, and much in line with Meillassoux, that which \u2018cannot be thought in finite thought\u2019 is \u2018the absolute impossibility of a necessary being\u2019, to quote Meillassoux again. It is \u2018the inexistence of a whole which could be thought,\u2019 or as Meillassoux understands it, adopting Cantor\u2019s definition of transfinite numbers, \u2018the (quantifiable) totality of the thinkable is unthinkable.\u2019 (AF, 104). And the unthinkable nature of the totality is key to avoiding correlationism, for it is mathematics, especially Cantorian set theory, that is able to theorize the non-totalizable, the \u2018non-All\u2019 \u2013 hence Meillassoux\u2019s conclusion that \u2018what is mathematizable cannot be reduced to a correlate of thought.\u2019 (ibid. 117). To the extent that Deleuze too theorizes the \u2018inexistence of the whole,\u2019 what Deleuze and Guattari will also refer to as the \u2018nondenumerable,\u2019 then it would seem that we would be too hasty to exclude Deleuze from the speculative realist camp. Moreover, as was argued in the Spinoza post, the non-denumerable, the \u2018inexistence of a whole\u2019 (i.e., or the attributes as discussed there) is not separable and distinct from the denumerable (the modes) and that which is thought. There is nothing but objects and events, both human and nonhuman, and there is no incommensurability between them nor are they totalizable in a way that would return us to claiming that objects and events are correlates of a necessary being. Deleuze is not a correlationist. But is he a realist? That will have to wait for another post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first it might seem he is. If Bruno Latour is on the right track with respect to speculative realism, as Graham Harman and others would argue, then it might seem that Deleuze is on the right track as well for there are a number of areas where their philosophies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,23,27,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deleuze","category-latour","category-meillassoux","category-speculative-realism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t