Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
*Carsten Strathausen *
/ University of Missouri-Columbia/
StrathausenC@missouri.edu
(c) 2006 Carsten Strathausen.
All rights reserved.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------1. The term "ontology" occupies an increasingly prominent place in
current politico-philosophical discourse. "Political philosophy
forces us to enter the terrain of ontology," declare Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri (Empire (354). Ernesto Laclau recently said that
he has "concentrated on the ontological dimension of social
theory." According to Laclau, his work should be judged at "the
theoretical and philosophical level" ("A Reply" 321) because it
"requires a new ontology" (304). Such investment in ontology is
important in much recent self-avowedly leftist political theory.
Giorgio Agamben's critique of the state of exception and of
today's concentration camps is intimately tied to his ontological
reflections regarding our potential existence beyond sovereign
power: "Until a new and coherent ontology of potentiality" has
been found, he argues, "a political theory freed from the aporias
of sovereignty remains unthinkable" (Homo Sacer 44). Likewise,
Alain Badiou's political writings are intertwined with his
mathematical ontology of set-theory, and Slavoj Zizek's
exhortation to return to the legacy of Lenin in order to combat
global capitalism remains inseparable from his ontological
determination of capital as the real.
2. An early call to re-invent a "first philosophy" was Jean-Luc
Nancy's seminal essay "Being Singular Plural," first published in
1996. Here, Nancy says that we must think "an ontology of
being-with-one-another" (53) as the basis for a new communal
politics beyond sovereignty and domination: "there is no
difference between the ethical and the ontological" (99), he
declares, because "only ontology, in fact, may be ethical in a
consistent manner" (21). In his view, only a radical
recommencement of philosophical thought can move political theory
beyond its current impasse caused by the liberal defense of the
status quo. In particular, Nancy distinguishes his new ontology of
"being-in-common" both from Heideggerianism and from Marxism.
Heidegger, so Nancy, did not take his own analysis of "/Mitsein/"
far enough, but instead remains committed to a thinking in
hierarchies: "The analytic of /Mitsein/ that appears within the
existential analytic remains nothing more than a sketch; that is,
even though /Mitsein/ is coessential with /Dasein/, it remains in
a subordinate position" (93). Against Marxism, Nancy's ontology
insists on dissolving the the various oppositions (between essence
and appearance, base and superstructure) that sustain a
dialectical (i.e. Hegelian) mode of critique: "Both the theory and
the practice of critique demonstrate that, from now on, critique
absolutely needs to rest on some principle other than that of the
ontology of the Other and the Same: it needs an ontology of
being-with-one-another" (53).
3. In this essay, I use Nancy's reflections as a starting point for
examining the reasons for and the significance of the renewed
interest in a "new ontology," particularly among certain leftist
political thinkers. I argue that ontology had become a shunned
concept in traditional leftist discourse because it was tainted by
Heidegger and his involvement in German fascism. Moreover, I
demonstrate that Jameson's recent attempt to revive ontology as a
crucial concept for Marxist theory inevitably leads him back to
embrace the same old (Hegelian) dialectics of self and other, form
and content--that is, precisely the kind of dualist thinking that
Nancy and other neo-left ontologists seek to leave behind.
Contrary to the Marxist belief in the recuperative power of
negativity, they conceive of political ontology as a paradoxical
terrain that "'contradiction,' in its dialectical sense, is
entirely unable to capture," as Laclau argues (Populist Reason
84). "So forget Hegel" (148).[1 <#foot1>]
4. However, in spite of this rejection of traditional Marxism, these
theorists acknowledge the necessity to base their political theory
on explicit assumptions about the "nature" of social life and the
world at large. It is this tension between being and becoming that
gives rise to the paradoxical definitions of ontology as a
"groundless presupposition" (Nancy) or "limiting horizon"
(Laclau)--formulations that seek to describe or conceive of a
de-essentialized ontology, an ontology that recognizes a given
(social or natural) foundation as /both/ structurally given /and/
as historically changing. This, then, is the problem: how to move
beyond Marxist dialectics without falling prey to an essentially
conservative ontology (such as Leo Strauss's firm belief in the
natural superiority of philosophers and gentlemen or Carl
Schmitt's seminal distinction between friends and enemies as
constitutive of the political). Can one choose something other
than (Marxist) dialectics and (Heideggerian) /Dasein/?
5. I believe one can, and this essay introduces some of the major
theoretical positions that have developed in response to this
question. I use the generic term "neo-left" to address them in
unison. I choose "neo-left" primarily because it goes along with
the other two terms that have become widely accepted
today--"neo-conservative" and "neo-liberal." Moreover, the prefix
"neo" connotes some of the drastic changes in global capitalism
and technology, that play an important part in contemporary
politics, while the suffix "left" emphasizes the continuing
commitment of these thinkers to issues of economic justice and
social equality. Thus, the purpose of my essay is to compare the
current use of and reference to "ontology" as a crucial concept in
contemporary political philosophy. Needless to say, such a
comparison can neither be comprehensive nor can it do justice to
the full complexity of the particular works discussed. It must be
satisfied instead with an outline of the major trends and their
underlying assumptions.
6. My overall thesis is that the current interest in ontology
signifies a profound change within the leftist
politico-philosophical tradition, namely the belief that thought
has the intrinsic power to affect and alter (but not to control or
govern) the "nature" of what it thinks: "A thought is an event,"
claims Nancy; "what it thinks happens to it there, where it is
not" (175). Only if Being and thinking are the same can the
creative "reflection" on the "nature" of things be concomitant
with their "change." Put differently, thought neither represents
objective materiality (as some orthodox Marxists would claim) nor
does it /reflect/ the autonomous "dis-appearing" of things (in the
sense of Heidegger's /aletheia/). Rather, thought /partakes/ of
reality; the two are consubstantial. This leads me to embrace what
Stephen K. White has called a "weak ontology" as the basis for
thinking leftist politics. Such an ontology registers the
affective power of theory to influence politics above and beyond
its rational content.
Marxism, Heidegger, and Ontology
7. As exemplified in Nancy's text, Heidegger's work often serves as a
springboard for those envisioning a "new ontology," because
Heidegger was among the first to de-essentialize ontology in his
effort to move beyond classical metaphysics.[2 <#foot2>] For
example, this is how Agamben states the situation:
The fact that must constitute the point of departure for any
discourse on ethics is that there is no essence, no historical
or spiritual vocation, no biological destiny that humans must
enact or realize . . . . This does not mean, however, that
humans are not, and do not have to be, something, that they
are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore can freely
decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt
this or that destiny (nihilism and decisionism coincide at
this point). There is in effect something that humans are and
have to be, but this something is not an essence nor properly
a thing: /It is the simple fact of one's own existence as
possibility or potentiality./ (Coming Community 43)
Here, the debt to Heidegger is as unmistakable as in the work of
Derrida or Levinas. But there is also the deliberate attempt to
move beyond Heidegger and to dissociate his de-essentialized
ontology from the horrors of fascism. Agamben first emphasizes
"that Nazism . . . has its condition of possibility in Western
philosophy itself, and in Heideggerian ontology in particular."
But he soon finds "the point at which Nazism and Heidegger's
thought radically diverge," because the latter allegedly resists
the "biological and eugenic" drive that characterizes the former
(Homo Sacer 152-53). Whether this distinction is ultimately
convincing seems less relevant than Agamben's overall effort to
think with and beyond Heidegger as he searches for a new,
non-foundational and non-relational ontology.[3 <#foot3>]
8. The recent interest in political ontology thus departs from the
traditional leftist position to equate ontological thinking (via
Heidegger) with German fascism. Since Heidegger and up until the
mid-1980's when a deconstructive version of Marxism emerged in the
works of Laclau, Mouffe, Zizek, Badiou, a.o., ontology was
synonymous with Heideggerianism: "Contemporary philosophical
187).
22. The latter claims are central to Agamben's work. Agamben, too,
recognizes the increasing interdependence of political philosophy
and ontology that determines the fate of what he calls "/homo
sacer/." A crucial notion in Agamben's overall
politico-philosophical project, /homo sacer/ defines a life that
may be killed but not sacrificed, a life that is neither secular
nor divine and thus "exceeds the sphere both of law and of
sacrifice" (86). Agamben's most frequently used historical example
is life in the German concentration camps (his examples include
the German concentration camps, the Gulag, and Guantanamo Bay):
the inhabitants of the camps are stripped of all civil protection
and thus are the literal referent for--indeed the embodiment
of--"human rights." For what exactly are the "rights" of human
life outside of any concrete juridical order? Situated at "the
zone of indistinction" between the sacred and the profane, between
the (unprotected) biological order of "bare life" (/zoe/) and the
(protected) juridical order of "socio-political life" (/bios/),
/homo sacer/ defines the very "threshold" that both connects and
separates the two spheres.
23. Agamben contends that these human "objects" that have been reduced
to bare life posit a basic ontological challenge to political
philosophy. If the twentieth century has indeed witnessed the
gradual ascension of the state of exception to the overall
paradigm of Western government, as Agamben claims,[14 <#foot14>]
then the very distinction between inside and outside can no longer
be maintained. Instead of trying to reestablish these classical
distinctions, one needs to think beyond categories and
distinctions in general:
Every attempt to rethink the political space of the West must
begin with a clear awareness that we no longer know anything
of the classical distinction between /zoe/ and /bios/, between
private life and political existence, between man as a simple
living being at home in the house and man's political
existence in the city. This is why the restoration of
classical political categories proposed by Leo Strauss . . .
can have only a critical sense. There is no return from the
camps to classical politics. In the camps, city and house
became indistinguishable, and the possibility of
differentiating between our biological body and our political
body . . .was taken from us forever. (187-88)
On the basis of this premise, Agamben calls for a new or "coming
politics" that moves beyond the state of exception as the
contemporary paradigm of governance. Such a new politics, however,
can only emerge in the context of a new metaphysics and a new way
(xiv).
are likely to support, and second, that the future result of these
actions remains contingent and unpredictable from our present
position. Marxists cannot endorse either of these propositions.
34. However, on the other side of this divide separating Marxist and
contemporary discourse, there obviously remain vast and crucial
differences among those who (explicitly or implicitly) call for a
"new ontology." Hence, it is hardly surprising to find a variety
of names attached to different groups of thinkers engaged in
political ontology today. Since the term "New Left" is already
taken (it refers to the group of writers and activists around
Herbert Marcuse in the late sixties and early seventies), most
critics associate the current ontological turn with "post-Marxism"
or with the movement toward "radical democracy."[17 <#foot17>]
These terms, however, are also problematic, because they are
strongly linked to the works of Laclau and Mouffe, who originally
promulgated them (and were supported in this, at least initially,
by Zizek). Hence, "post-Marxism" and "radical democracy" are less
apt to describe some of the other theorists who, albeit
confronting the same questions, pursue a somewhat different route
than do Laclau and Mouffe. Alain Badiou, and Bruno Bosteels, for
example, reject what they call "speculative leftism," that is, a
form of "post-Marxist" theory that is severed from the original
communist project.[18 <#foot18>] Bosteels in particular has
criticized "radical democracy" for its actual "lack of politics."
What remains of the project in the end, he argues, is "an
imitation, within philosophy, of the revolutionary act" rather
than the real thing itself ("For Lack" 73).
35. This problem of "naming" remains crucial to contemporary political
philosophy. It is not just an academic but a political issue.
Because if thought and discourse matter in the sense that they are
politically effective, then the question of how to name the
current strand of political ontology will itself have some
influence on our current situation. This is why Badiou (as well as
Jacques Rancire) has advanced the term "metapolitics," which he
opposes to traditional political philosophy. The former is
concerned with "real instances of politics as thought," whereas
the latter believes that "since no such politics exists, it falls
to philosophers to think 'the' political" (Metapolitics xxxix).
Metapolitics describes "what a philosophy declares, with its own
effects in mind, to be worthy of the name 'politics.' Or
alternatively, what a thought declares to be a thought, and under
whose condition it thinks what a thought is" (152). Following
Badiou, Hallward has argued for what he calls a "politics of
prescription." The latter, he claims, can break more radically
with the existing liberal-democratic system than those inspired by
"radical democracy" or by "post-Marxism."
36. Obviously, there will not and there /cannot/ be one name that fits
all, and my own suggestion--the "neo-left"--is hardly an
exception. But I want to insist on the /political/ importance of
what might otherwise appear to be an abstract theoretical debate
about labels. The point is that non-essential ontologies undermine
this very distinction between theory and practice, thought and
action. The same is true for the monist philosophical tradition
(leading from Spinoza to Bergson and Deleuze) that influences many
2005.
http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.506/16.3strathausen.txt