Rhythm, Limit, and Autonomy through Bergson and Irigaray In this paper I share a broad desire to experiment with

the potential of re-claiming the concept of autonomy from liberal theory, as has been expressed in the book The Autonomous Animal and the discussion around it at the AAG. Today then, I present some preliminary thoughts on how Henri Bergson and Luce Irigaray further this project in way that allows us to think the real and symbolic together. While I do not have time to explore how this varies from other theories of autonomy, I hope this may come up in the question section. Therefore, in order to explore autonomy, rhythm, and limit, I broadly trace how Bergson and Irigaray think about action and perspective. I will argue for two theses on limit and rhythm that Irigaray and Bergson provide for thinking autonomy ontologically, which resituates the importance and potential of subjectivity and ideality in politics. This paper argues that they provide a conception of autonomy as an insinuation into material and symbolic flows that creates its own rhythm

Rhythm So lets begin with rhythm. Drawing from Bergsons discussions about action and movement, which I will elaborate shortly, I want to make one primary claim about rhythm in this paper The assertion of a new rhythm within the movements of the world creates an autonomous movement.1 But we need to work our way up to that statement which I will try to do through a few simple claims drawn from Bergsons conception of action.
It is autonomous in the sense that it is free from the immediate response of what it has received, which would be to continue the same rhythm.
1

 In thinking about action within Bergson we need to think about two movements that are present within his thought. The first movement is that of the whole, or all of matter in

relation to itself, in a complete continuity with its own duration.2 The second movement is that of bodies, or life more generally, that occurs within the movement of the whole but is able to create a relative degree of freedom for itself. It is important to remember that these movements can in fact never be separated or dissociated from one another. Yet for the moment, I want to focus on the body as a center of action. Thinking about the body as a center of action is in some ways what Matter and Memory allows us to do by elaborating the action of the body as resulting from two processes that are different in kind, perception and memory. The first process of perception deals with the relation of body to matter. To understand how this relation introduces freedom we must start from Bergsons temporary assertion that the images of the universe react among themselves according to the laws of nature in completely determinate and potentially knowable ways. This assertion provides one way of conceiving the rhythm of the universe, which comes up in chapter four. This starting point is important because autonomy eventually comes to be defined by ones ability to slip through the necessity of such a rhythm. To forge ones own duration rather than simply continue the one received. This brings us to my first claim: The Insertion of a delay between the stimulus and a response of a body creates a new rhythm through processes of perception and memory. In this way rhythm is not the speed of movement, or simply repetition and the division of time. It also has to do with an interval, such as the distance and relation between notes on a music sheet; or as I will elaborate, the interval between the stimulus and response of an acting body. To tease this out lets continue to think through the relation of the body to matter.
2

Bergson, Matter and Memory, 197201.

 In relation to matter, Bergson makes clear that we do not perceive the totality of

matter, either in its relations or intensive qualities. Rather our perception has an orientation to our action, which means that we perceive within matter and the universe that which is useful for our action. This reductive process is necessary for our free action and the introduction of indeterminacy more generally. Meaning that a Bergsonian concept of autonomy is a form of reduction that is simultaneously its limit. Yet this process of perception is different in kind from the process of memory, though never separated in its actualization. Therefore memory must be considered on its own terms in order to form an understanding of autonomy within Bergson. If perception presents a stimulus to which the body must act, memory is a simultaneous response to these perceived images by which the past may act on the present. This is how Bergson comes to describe the body as both an ever advancing boundary between the future and the past3 and a conductor4 that receives movements and transmits them. The question for us at this point is if perception is the process of receiving movements, what intervenes in their transmission and how? The process by which we can grasp the past within the present is called recognition and it affects two types of memory.5 The first kind of memory is that of a motor tendency that is acted before it is thought, while the second requires the intervention of a memory image. 6 While these two types of memory are different in terms of how they transmit received movements, for our purposes, their important difference is the length of the interval that they introduce into any given movement. Motor-memory produces less of an interval, making
3 4

Ibid., 78. Ibid., 77. 5 Ibid., 90. 6 Ibid., 98.

 action less free, and memory-image producing more of an interval, making action freer. The length of the interval correlates to the degree of autonomy within any given movement. Thus in putting the processes of perception and memory together we can come to an understanding of the role of the body as rhythmically introducing indeterminacy into the movements within which it is situated. This leads to my second point justifying my thesis:

The creation of a new rhythm is the basis of action.7 But even more than this, action itself is the orientation of the body, which is necessary to remember when thinking about our limits and especially those of our intellect. Therefore any singular autonomous body is inherently partial in its perspective and this partiality is the condition of its autonomy. Or, autonomy itself always entails a limit and it is this limit that makes it possible. This is the process by which the body may become a center of action and autonomous to greater or lesser degrees. While the autonomy of the body in relation to the rhythm of a moving universe requires the always-partial reduction of perception and recognition of memory, this autonomy does not directly translate into a speculative symbolic order in which multiple autonomous becomings may be actualized as such. In fact, the extension of these processes of autonomy beyond their limit results in a phallocentric order that reduces these differences into the same under the criteria of action. But thinking about the symbolic order pushes Bergsons boundaries. To think about autonomy here we need Irigaray.

Limit

Ibid., 20.

5 Thus for Bergson, the formation of the speculative realm through the overextension of

action occurs by forgetting the orientation, specificity, and limits of the body. Yet while Bergson cares about the body because of its orientation, Irigaray insists that the body is important because it is sexed. Thus from Irigaray I draw my thesis on limit. Autonomy must recognize the limit of action, perspective, and subjects. It is this assertion of Irigaray that allows us to extend the critique of overextension from the realm of speculation and knowledge into the entire symbolic order and subjectivity. Irigaray asserts that the subject of that order is not only sexed, but that it is masculine.8 Thus, in the way that Bergson describes the dominant tendency of the intellect in redefining instinct and intuition as a lapsed intelligence: We can assume that any theory of the subject has always been appropriated by the masculine. When she submits to (such a) theory, woman fails to realize that she is renouncing the specificity of her own relationship to the imaginary.9 Following this, the question for Irigaray becomes how to actualize an already existing autonomy within a phallocentric imaginary and symbolic orders.10 Irigaray wants to realize at least two subjects where there has previously only been one, actualizing the autonomy of the feminine rather than subsuming it to the subconscious of the masculine. This is important for this paper because it means that autonomy as a concept requires recognizing the limits of any single morphology to allow the formation of others as autonomous. But in order to affect such autonomy, Irigaray must intimately know the social order that she has recieved, its evolution and how it operates.

Luce Irigaray, Any Theory of the Subject Has Always Been Appropriated by the Mascluine, in Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1985), 13346. 9 Ibid., 133. 10 Luce Irigaray, Womens Exile, Ideology and Consciousness 1 (1977): 6276.
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 This is partially what Irigaray does in Women on the Market in which she not only

demonstrates that woman cannot relate to the imaginary in her own specificity, but elaborates what exactly her role is within a masculine social order through use and exchange value. Thus she describes the phallocentric rhythm of a patriarchal society and masculine imaginary, which actualizes a flow of abstraction from the body and the reverse inscription of that abstraction onto the body, such as occurs with exchange value and commodities. Through this process of abstracting the exchange value from the commodity, she argues that the labor of men finally results in producing a mirror for the value of man.11 Woman. This is the movement that Irigaray is situated within and receives when she seeks to actualize an autonomous flow rather than maintaining the rhythm patriarchal abstraction-inscription. This sets up my second claim: Overextending a single subjects limits subsumes other modes of being to its own. This means that while the rhythm of the masculine social order orients itself to the abstract and forgets the materiality, sex, and limit of the body, Irigaray responds by turning precisely to that which the masculine forgets and must actively repress in order to maintain its systems of exchange.12 She orients herself to the unconscious and corporeal limits of bodys in order to form her own movement, beginning at the body and actualizing a movement that disrupts the phallocentric symbolic order rather than abstracting and then inscribing the body. Meaning that the differences repressed, forgotten, and overlooked by the social order are the material by which she creates here rhythm; a movement that asserts at least two flows rather than one. Therefore, in stating that it would be necessary for women to be recognized as bodies with sexual attribute(s), desiring and uttering, and for men to rediscover the materiality of their
11 12

Ibid., 177. Irigaray, Women on the Market.

bodies she is making a return to the corporeal limits and specificity of the body. 13 This is the rhythm of Irigarays movement, which replaces the masculine rhythm of abstraction with the necessary and productive limits of a sexed body. It is only through this attention to the limit that at least two autonomous bodies and perspectives may actualize within symbolic and social orders. Ignoring or overextending ones limit is to repress the autonomy of other becomings. With this in mind, I now turn to the concept of autonomy itself and how Irigaray and Bergson open it up.

Autonomy Recapping this papers claims on autonomy. The first section on rhythm largely thought about autonomy ontologically, focusing on the body as a center of action in the relation between matter and memory. The main contributions of this section were to demonstrate the rhythmic foundations of autonomous/free movement and the necessary limit within autonomy due to its reductive and recognizing processes of perception and memory. The second section on limit focused on autonomy within the symbolic order yet also developed the notion of its rhythm, which emphasizes the relationality and temporality of this concept. Thus a movement may only become autonomous in relation to the rhythm of the movement that it receives. As when Irigaray creatively responded to the reception of a patriarchal symbolic order by changing the rhythm of abstraction and bodily inscription. Through these two sections then I have tried to develop limit and rhythm as Bergson and Irigarays contributions for autonomy. Limit being the condition of both specific autonomous actions and also a symbolic order that allows for the actualization of at least two autonomies, and rhythm emphasizing the relational and relative
13

Ibid., 76.

 character implicit within autonomy that creatively responds to a stimulus or flow that is received. Bringing these two characteristics and thinkers together then, it becomes clear that autonomy is not a concept that can remain isolated within either the realm of the real or the symbolic, it is a concept and process that spans this divide and functions the same way in

both. Bergson and Irigaray want to return to the real in their own ways, which forces them to point out the limits ignored by phallocentric orders. It is to the excess of that which has been divided, abstracted, and repressed that the rhythm of autonomy within Irigaray and Bergson turns and draws closer to. Leaving us with a concept of autonomy that is created, in the relation of the body to flows of matter and symbolic meaning, which delays the response to the reception of this movement and produces the potential for ones own rhythm and flow rather than simply continuing the one received.

Works Cited Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Irigaray, Luce. Any Theory of the Subject Has Always Been Appropriated by the Mascluine. In Speculum of the Other Woman, translated by Gillian C. Gill, 13346. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1985. . Women on the Market. In This Sex Which Is Not One, translated by Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke, 170191. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1985. . Womens Exile. Ideology and Consciousness 1 (1977): 6276.