Levi on Misunderstanding Laruelle

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Update: Michael cuts to the heart of the matter. It’s all about OPP.

Levi, current Speculative Realist of the Object-Oriented Onticologist wing, is upset with me. In the course of the argument he makes some quite harsh accusations implying that I’m a CV-packer one could use Laruelle to pack their CV, have clogged up the internet tubes with my absence of understanding, that I want to hold philosophy back, etc., etc. It all has to do with the that short Speculative Heresy interview with Badiou where he claims not to understand Laruelle’s work, in addition to finding it lacking because what he takes to be a religious structure to non-philosophy. Levi adds his voice to those who do not understand Laruelle. Well, his claim is actually attempting to be more damning than merely saying that Laruelle is too jargon-laden to be understood. Levi’s claim is that “Laruelle is a dead end, a regressive move, a fall back into the project of endless critique, rather than a new opening.” His reason for this is that he understands Laruelle to be a “warmed over” version of deconstruction. While it is currently fashionable to hate on the very talented late Derrida, almost in inverse proportion to when it is fashionable to love every word he wrote, this connection to Laruelle is tenuous at best.

Levi became very upset with me for what he perceived to be a mocking tone from this comment:

Levi, have you read much Laruelle? I get the impression from what you’ve written here, in typical blue fishman style, that you have only gleaned from blogs and Brassier’s work that he is critical of [a] structure he thinks is invariant in philosophy. That is true, but it’s not the end of his work and, if anything, is an attempt to get past endless critique by getting to the root of the problem so that one can be productive.

Levi reacted, in my view, very poorly to this remark and took it to be very rude. His response was overly aggressive and unfortunately I lost my temper and called him a dick, bypassing the accepted typology of SR, and for that I apologize. Though Levi did overreact to my remark, calling him a rude name wasn’t going to move things forward at all. The problem though is, well, that my initial comment is true. Laruelle isn’t trying to set up another task of endlessly analyzing texts, but an attempt to escape the vicious circle of philosophy so that one can do original work. In the midst of all his work on philosophers, largely in the period of his work he calls Philosophy II, he is developing theories of philosophy in so far as philosophy is a mirror of the World. When he moves on to Philosophy III and IV he now attempts to formulate theories using the material of philosophy but with disinterest towards the claims of philosophy. Now, I’m of the old school of blogging that these things exist for random thoughts, half-baked ideas, pub-strength arguments, and the fostering of intellectual friendships (and perhaps intellectual adversarial relationships as well). So, I’m not going to make the case that Laruelle succeeds all the time, he doesn’t, or that everyone should bow before non-philosophy as the new master discourse, it isn’t. No one needs Laruelle’s permission to do interesting work and no one needs to read him if they don’t find him helpful for their projects. The only point I am here making, the evidence for which is available for everyone to see in his works, is that he is not just analyzing texts and that the analysis of texts makes up a very small part of the practice of non-philosophy.

Speculative Realism, whatever it may be, those bloggers who self-identity with it seem united in making the claim that the time for philosophy through the philosophers is over. That seems cool, though at the same time they all do work alongside the concepts of other philosophers and theorists. For instance, the OOO types are working closely with Latour’s work and writing manuscripts on Meillassoux, so obviously there is still something to be said of this kind of apprenticeship. Where is the rigorous analysis that explains what the difference between these two practices are? In many ways Laruelle provides that analysis in his Principes de la non-philosophie. Moving from a criticism of what, he claims, is the invariant structure of philosophy in order to take a disinterested approach to philosophy-escaping the self-enclosure of philosophy-in order to do work with them. He may fail, all attempts risk failure, but this misunderstanding is not non-philosophy.

Posted by Anthony Paul Smith
Filed in Laruelle, academia, philosophy

31 Comments »

31 Responses to “Levi on Misunderstanding Laruelle”

  1. Hill Says:

    Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:35 pm I felt like something useful could have happened in that comment thread until it went meta and mutual accusations of “hysteria” of one form or another ensued. I actually just read it before browsing here and finding this post… which I have not really even read yet.

  2. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:40 pm Mutual accusations? Hill, you’re being very naughty. I didn’t accuse him, in any of the comments he allowed to post, of being hysterical. I’m really not interested in arguing about the argument though.

  3. Hill Says:

    Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:51 pm I did imply a symmetry there that I did not intend. I suppose I just meant that there was mutual recourse to accusations of the transgression of blog etiquette that were needless (you accusing him of being a dick and him accusing you of being hysterical). As a neutral observer with little appreciation of the background of the discussion, I found both to be unfounded (at least in terms of that particular conversation). I am quite interested in the subject as I’ve taken a look at a bit of Laruelle and find myself baffled. I am certainly withholding judgment, but I was hoping that some sort of strategy might have emerged from the comments that would have been helpful to me.

  4. Hill Says:

    Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:53 pm And could you explain “Red Ate” and “Blue Fishman?”

  5. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:01 pm Hill,

    Oh, yes I see what you mean. I agree that my calling him a dick was uncalled for and didn’t help things, which is why I apologize in the above post. As was using the “Red Ate” and “Blue Fishman” avatars to mock the typology that has developed from k-punk, Harman and Levi’s blogs. I find all the talk about grey vampires and minotaurs to be silly and the high theory-style analysis really annoys me. I let that get the better of me and it lead to be a bit of snark, though I don’t think anything like the kind of abusive tone that was directed toward me. That said, I do get that people get angry during these exchanges and so I’m not actually made at Levi for it. Who knows, maybe I’m his therapeutic Chad (from The Weblog) whom I unapologetically heap abuse upon.

    I understand the bafflement regarding Laruelle. I experienced much the same when I first started reading about him online and in Mullarkey’s Post-Continental Philosophy. I think Laruelle’s work does make sense, despite being highly abstract, and I find a lot of his work interesting. But, for me, it is his general stance that I have found helpful. I have written on this, but it is likely going to be published so I haven’t posted it to the blog.

    Regarding the difficulty in understanding Laruelle, it seems to me, and I think many others in this field, that if a philosophy/theology/general thought doesn’t stupefy you at first it isn’t one that’s going to change the way you think. For me I was stupefied by Laruelle and wanted to understand it. I don’t agree with everything he’s written and I’ve cottoned to him far less than I did to Deleuze when I first was stupefied by him, but I’ve found his work to be helpful in giving a frame to the project I’m undertaking in my dissertation.

  6. Hill Says:

    Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:37 pm I heartily agree with your third paragraph. I have had/am in the midst of that process with Deleuze, but even when I had no idea what Deleuze was talking about, I stillknew, in some primordial sense, that Deleuze was awesome. I’m not yet getting that vibe off of Laruelle. That’s just to say that if, hypothetically, Levi were totally right about Laruelle, I wouldn’t be surprised, although I repeat that I am in no position whatsoever to make that sort of judgment (and have therefore refrained from doing so). Are you still doing the ecology thing for your dissertation? I’m still working through your MA thesis. I’m really interested in the intersection of philosophy, theology and science, being something of a scientist myself. I’ve been through a really long dry spell in feeling like there wasn’t much interesting to say on the three subjects together, but my recent encounters with what one might call “Post-Continental Philosophy” has rekindled that fire.

  7. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:37 pm Well now that I’ve had a chance to reread the post, I’m less pissed than I was initially. My question, however, remains, what does Laruelle allow someone to do? How does it advance one’s theoretical work or desire to make sense of the world? Even on initially reading Deleuze you get a sense that there’s a positive project there that will allow you to do all sorts of things. Unlike the hermeneutic orientation that came out of Heidegger and Gadamer or the deconstructive orientation that came out of Derrida, you get the sense that you won’t simply be talking about other philosophers, but actually engaging with the world and trying to make sense of it and change it. When I say Laruelle strikes me as “warmed over deconstruction” my point isn’t that he’s doing something equivalent to deconstruction, but that he’s going to lock us in the same rut of endlessly analyzing texts and philosophies rather than building theories. Honestly, haven’t we had enough of that? Shouldn’t the period of homage to the master thinker be over by now? This might not be Laurelle’s own intention according to the letter of his philosophy, but it does seem to very much risk more of the same. I’ve never read philosophers because I want to understand the philosopher or know about the philosopher. I’ve always read philosophers because I think they can help me understand something about the world. The problem with the myopic naval gazing of those approaches that direct our attention at grappling with the tradition is that they become all about the philosophers and not about the world. And again, my point is not, that we shouldn’t engage with other philosophers. Clearly I engage with them all the time and draw from them in all sorts of ways. My point is that philosophy shouldn’t be about philosophers. I’m opposed to anything that makes the primary focus about philosophers.

  8. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:42 pm As my comments aren’t being approved at Larval Subjects I’m going to cross post comments here.

    Not sure if this one is going to get past.

    Nick,

    It may be that nothing can be done with him in the sense that you want to do things with philosophers. There is probably a difference of perspective there. I think he opens up philosophy to do things with it in an occasional way, rather than providing a TOE, which you may be looking for in ANT or eliminativism.

    Levi,

    We’ve emailed a few times and I don’t know if I’ve made it clear that Laruelle is not going to create a commentary industry where you apply him to philosophical texts. If anything, he’ll probably be applied to problems arising out of philosophers (which seems to be what you want). I very much doubt you’re going to see a Laruelle take over of SPEP.

    I don’t know about these criticism of your ontology from a non-philosophical perspective. If they are saying you don’t understand the critique cause you’re stuck inside the circle of non-philosophy, well, I can see how that can be annoying. At the same time it is possible that their critique is correct and without knowing what you’re talking about I don’t have the material to make a judgment from. It may be that your ontology is post-non-philosophical, I don’t really know, my point has always just been that on this issue, the one about whether or not non-philosophy is just warmed over hermeneutics or deconstruction, you are misunderstanding Laruelle. Philosophy is, in your terms, one object amongst many that is given attention in non-philosophy.

  9. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:53 pm Levi,

    On the one hand, I understand what you’re saying about not wanting philosophy to be about philosophers. On the other hand, philosophers and philosophies are objects in the world that are also available for interrogation. So, I’m not ready to completely through out those interrogations even if they have been hegemonic within certain circles.

    What Laruelle gets you, amongst other things (including theories in ethics, religion, psychoanalysis, history of philosophy, art, politics, Marxism, etc.) is a theory about how one uses philosophy without making it about philosophy. It tries to separate out the material that can be of use for understanding occasions in the world, but without falling into the confusions that arise when philosophy-of-X confuses itself for X.

    In Laruelle’s own words he puts it this way: “If noesis and noema are not solely the extract of philosophy, but of the philosophy-of-X, then they are not taken from X as it gives itself “in itself” but more “in philosophy”. The noetico-nomatic relation thus associates and distinguishes, not philosophy and X, nor philosophy and the philosophy-of-X, but the non-philosophical extracts, noetic and noematic, of philosophy-of-X.”

    This the way that philosophy is an object for non-philosophy, but that then goes on to be used in “unified theories” with other regional knowledges around X. In short, what I think non-philosophy gives, and why it already escapes the critique of being warmed over deconstruction, is a theory and methodology for how to not become a warmed over deconstruction, still interact with philosophers, but without falling into the classic errors of philosophers, in order to clear away problems and create better theories.

  10. Brad Says:

    Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:54 pm From what I gather about L., granted much of it comes by way of reading Anthony’s work, I think he (Laruelle) would agree w/ Levi’s last sentence. Isn’t that the upshot of non-philosophy’s “disinterest”? — a creative disinterest that emerges from an investment in the materials of philosophy. Much like how a work of art, whose attention is art, or the stuff that goes into the creation of art [memory, consciousness, etc.], need not be mere navel-gazing (though at its worst, some of this kind of stuff is just this), but in fact open its viewer/reader to a new way of apprehending the world as a whole. And in the process of opening the world, eschews the art from which this opening is made possible — whereupon you, the viewer/reader, almost forget you’re engaging with a work of art. The best works of Sebald are an example of this.

  11. Alex Says:

    Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 6:56 pm Levi,

    As you are someone who has slogged through both Deleuze and Lacan, I find it remarkable that your critique of Laurelle is that you find his writing obscure and unclear.

  12. Hill Says:

    Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 7:22 pm “I took the time to learn how to read Hegel, Deleuze, Kant, the various phenomenologists, the semioticians, Lacan, etc., because I had a clear sense of what the payoff would be and what this effort would allow me to do. Nothing that I’ve read by or about Laruelle has so far given me a clear sense of what the payoff would be. The non-philosophical analysis of philosophy, with its distinction between the faktum and datum and its talk of decision just strikes me as warmed over deconstruction, while all the talk of the “real in the last instance”, the one without duality, etc., sounds like so much gesturing without any real content. Now you’re free to mock me for not making a greater effort to penetrate Laruelle, etc., but if Laruelle and his enthusiasts can’t make a good pitch for the importance of what they’re doing, if they can’t provide a way in that’s their failing, not mine, and no one is under any obligation to take their work seriously when it requires a substantial contribution of time and effort without giving any clear indication of what that time and effort is for or what it does.”

    -Levi

    His critique isn’t that Laruelle is obscure and unclear, it’s that he has yet to discern any real point to the obscurity or lack of clarity (as opposed to Deleuze, Lacan, et al.). I don’t think this is unfair, even if there is actually a point. He’s explicitly asking for someone to help him understand what that point is, and thankfully that actually took place in spite of an inauspicious beginning.

  13. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 10:07 pm This conversation reminds me of the good old days when I was engaged in debate with certain parties about Zizek — the conversation, even after several years, never really got past the point of me saying that the certain party misunderstood Zizek. All kinds of crazy accusations were thrown out — that I was an asshole, that I was psychopathologically devoted to Zizek, that I wouldn’t “allow” anyone to say anything negative about the master, etc., etc. But really, all I was saying was that Zizek was being misread.

    And in this particular thread, it seems like Levi is saying that Laruelle is a text-based philosopher of a type that he dislikes. Anthony says he’s not and that if Levi thinks he is, he is misunderstanding. The conversation does not seem to have budged an inch since then — even when Levi makes a gesture of admitting that he may have misunderstood, he consistently goes back to (what Anthony says is) his misreading. This basic pattern constantly repeats itself in conversation with Levi, I’ve found — not to be all text-based and everything.

  14. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:14 am First, I recognize that in these comments you are focusing very much on a personal preference. This would suggest that the rest of us should be unconcerned with your preferences and that they are therefore not up for discussion. That would be fine, yet I’m finding that hard to square with the global pronouncements. The ones where you are defining what gets to count as philosophy. Surely you recognize that this will upset people and they will want to respond.

    That said, I am going to try and go with the first part and remain unconcerned with your delimiting of the borders. Mostly because, as you admit, I find your stated difference too fuzzy to do much work and because there is no theory from nowhere. Theories are part of the world and the world has itself been shaped by theory. A promiscuous ontology would accept that it seems.

    Still, and I don’t want to keep saying this over and over, so this will be the last time. Even by your own criteria Laruelle fits in the positive philosophy camp. You keep repeating the Brassier summary of the theory of philosophical decision, which is a major aspect of non-philosophy, but it is not the end all of the work. He has developed theories of aspects of the world. He has a theory of subjectivity, of ethics, of religion, of science. These theories are not developed through other texts and if other philosophers are used they are just that used. He writers from the things themselves, not about texts. He’s not writing about interpretations of thinkers, he’s using the ideas of thinkers.

    Before you start demanding I play with real money, that I tell you what Laruelle’s positions are on all these things, I’m going to have to say no. I don’t have the time and the law of diminishing returns would surely kick in for both of us. In your comment above you use the completely valid argument that I should just read and compare these books and I’ll see a difference. I agree that the evidence is there to show there is a difference in approach between Badiou and Derrida (though I respectfully disagree with how you then delimit the two into philosophy and not philosophy). If you read almost any of the works from Philosophy III and IV you’ll find your theories. You may still find them worthless, it has never been my intention to convince you that Laruelle is worth your time for your project, only trying to correct a misunderstanding about his work. Non-philosophy as Laruelle has practiced it is not about textual analysis, it has more objects than philosophy itself, it provides theories of the kind you talk about.

  15. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:14 am Because I recognize that misunderstanding could occur, let me be clear about that first paragraph. I really am having trouble squaring the way you put these as personal preferences and yet make the tone and style of your writing makes them global prescriptions. If you could explain that I would appreciate it. I’m also not sure how I should take this “not about or through philosophers” line with the published work of OOO philosophers. Or the mythological theory philosophical types, which also seems to be about philosophers (or if you want to deny them that name, others or thinkers or whatever, doesn’t matter for the sake of discussion). All of this seems to be of concern and I would guess you’d see them as theories of some kind, but I’m having trouble understanding how they are but differance isn’t. I’m not calling you to account or anything, just expressing confusion.

  16. Alex Says:

    Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:21 am Hill,

    Fair enough. Still though, my impression, via Brassier’s work, of Laurelle is just simply that he isn’t into textual commentary. Indeed as Brassier has repeatedly emphased, non-philosophy is not just another puerile ‘end of philosophy’ rhetoric.

  17. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:51 am Just to anticipate Levi’s response to Alex, I think he would say that the problem with non-philosophy is that it takes philosophy as its object. It isn’t just about textual analysis, it is about focusing on philosophy. Setting aside the usefulness of still considering philosophy when considering the world, if only because philosophy has often confused itself with the world and because philosophy is part of the world, my point remains that Laruelle does not just focus on philosophy. That his science of philosophy develops to include other regional knowledges in what he calls a democracy (of) thought or unified theory of philosophy and any regional knowledge.

  18. Alex Says:

    Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 7:38 am So it seems that fundamentally Laurelle is about argument (which may be made in texts) and Derrida is about how texts undercut arguments etc.

  19. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 10:10 am Hill nails my concerns. What worries me is this strong focus on philosophies to what I take to be the detriment of philosophy. Now, like Derrida, I am not denying that in engaging with philosophies in this way Laruelle is doing “something more” than simply analyzing philosophies. But I still find this focus on philosophies to be problematic from an institutional perspective. It seems to me to risk more of the same sort of cloistered philosophical practice that we’ve seen in Continental philosophy for the last forty years where we endlessly talk about the texts of the tradition that preceded us as if there were nothing more to philosophy. The impression I’ve gotten from my readings of Laruelle is that he all too easily appeals to a number of bad habits among Continental thinkers.

    But again, I could be mistaken. I think what Laruelle needs is, above all, a good apostle or advocate. Nate from “What in the Hell” suggested something along these lines over at Larval Subjects. I’d like to know what Laruelle can do. I’d like to know what one can do with Laruelle. I’d like to know how Laruelle assists me in theory building. And I’d like to know the specifics of the theory that he’s building or developing. That’s all.

    When I first started reading Deleuze it was a painful experience. I’d throw Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense across the room in fits of frustration and irritation. I finally began to get a foothold in his thought with What is Philosophy?. The hook that got me in that book was the idea of philosophy not as a representation of the world, but as a construction and creation of concepts. Deleuze’s philosophy told you that you could do something with it. In addition to that, it was evident to me early on that Deleuze was doing metaphysics and that he was thinking about relations, complex systems, becoming, emergence, etc. These were all things I wished to understand or think about more, so I dealt with the pain of reading Deleuze and trudged on. The case was similar with Lacan. I first started with Ecrits. Big mistake. It struck me as a bunch of nonsense and I put it down for a long time. However, a year or so later I happened to pick up Zizek’s Sublime Object of Ideology and Fink’s Lacanian Subject. Zizek showed me what could be done with Lacan and how Lacan could help me both to understand all sorts of things about the social and political world and other persons, but also how Lacan could help me to understand all sorts of trends in French Continental theory. So given that hook, I trudged through Lacan and gradually began to make sense of his work. This has been my problem with Laruelle so far: I haven’t found an answer to the “what is it for?” “what does it do?” questions. Without that telos it’s difficult to see how the concepts are organized and what they’re doing.

  20. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 11:13 am Levi,

    Do you acknowledge at all that I’ve gone some ways towards explaining why Laruelle doesn’t fit into your critique? That I’ve made a case, within the limits of comment boxes, to say what it is that his non-philosophy does?

    As for the your worries about what kind of effect Laruelle will have on institutional Continental philosophy, I think they are unwarranted. So far a few people have cottoned to Laruelle, mainly through a few essays, articles and chapters about him, and some draft translations. In some ways they are working with a very small sampling of the source material and really we’ll see how things go down when some of his books are published this coming year. I will point out that two of them are within the period of Philosophy II, which I’ve stated is the main period where Laruelle took philosophy as his object, and one is from IV where he is constructing theories outside philosophy. There is a real need to have some translations from Philosophy III, especially Principes, but it is my guess that what makes him unattractive, the heavy conceptual apparatus, to you will make him unattractive to most mainstream Continental philosophy.

  21. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 11:17 am Adam,

    You didn’t benefit from that two or three year discussion about Zizek despite the fact that consensus wasn’t reached? It seems to me that the aim of discussion shouldn’t be consensus– that’s a one way street to a lot of frustration and anger –but rather the refinement of ones own position and claims. That said, I tend to think the claim that someone has “misunderstood x” is always rhetorically a losing move because it tends to cause the person you’re trying to persuade to dig their heels in and defend their reading all the more. That is, it evokes the stubbornness of the ego because the discussion then becomes more about saving face than about the issue at hand.

    I’m not good at practicing these things myself. However, I’m always struck by the rhetorical strategies of folks like Nick Srnicek or Nate over at What in the Hell. Somehow they manage to make their points and maintain their positions without everything going meta and becoming about how people are talking to one another. As a result, they seem to generate far more productive discussions. I think part of their success in this regard lies in extending recognition to the kernel of truth embodied in the position of the person they’re addressing and then developing their own views from there. Somehow a little recognition seems to go a long way towards diminishing sterile debates.

    I note that in your post you have situated me a priori as having certain essential features that make me impossible to enter into dialogue with. I’m situated in the “enemy” side of the friend/enemy distinction in such a way that anything I say is, at the outside, undermined because “I just won’t budge.” Certainly that poisons the well and makes it far more difficult for discussion to advance given that I’m already put on the defensive and stereotyped as having certain essential characteristics. I’m sure you’ll tell me that you’ve come by this conclusion honestly, but then again there’s that whole logic of the mobius strip and feedback loops and how often we produce the very thing we’re decrying. Which isn’t to say I haven’t had my own role, but I can’t really see what your comment had to add to this discussion or how it strategically worked to diminish certain things from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course now the discussion has gone meta and I suspect there will be a slew of sarcastic rejoinders about how I talk and what I do, rather than about Laruelle and the institutional structure of philosophy and what Laruelle can enable us to do.

  22. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 11:53 am I think Adam was making an off-hand comment and there is no need to take this to a meta-discussion.

  23. Craig Says:

    Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 12:51 pm For the most part, I’ve stopped talking publicly about thinkers who interest me for the very reasons identified above: apparently you can’t talk about or correct someone on a point of fact or interpretation without being accused of being overinvested in the thinker. Of course, the accuser is just as often as not “overinvested” in the complete opposite point; i.e., in persevering in error. I’ve experience this repeatedly in discussions of Foucault and Schmitt, for instance. People don’t seem to get especially upset if a point of fact or interpretation is corrected on someone who has been dead for a couple hundred years: e.g., Hobbes or Locke.

    I, for one, would like to hear more on how Levi understands the difference between “doing” (which he favours) and “applying” (which he despises). Both seem to be a species of technological reductionism to me: thought reduced to procedure. The only difference is that the latter is “applied” to texts while the former is “done” on objects other than texts. (Isn’t a text an object? Doesn’t a text have a complex involvement in a network of objects, thoughts, affects, relations?)

  24. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:25 pm Levi,

    Please stop with the insults and the insinuations. Taking this to the meta- level is neither helpful nor does it give a clear idea of what you want. An example is present in your recent comment where you bring in the ever shifting goal post for what would count as evidence or what would “show you the money” while seemingly holding yourself to different (I might add more reasonable standards when you tell me to read X and Y next to each other). I’ve stated repeatedly here and at AUFS what my goal has been. It was not to convince you that Laruelle has great theories, it was to say that Laruelle isn’t this thing that you are critiquing. I’ve responded to your accusation, an accusation you made without evidence or demonstration, and have tried, with the exception of some names that I have since apologized for, to be polite while having this conversation. Yet, even though you provided no evidence to refute, I’m the one who has to give you article length summaries of Laruelle’s work on ethics, religion, psychoanalysis, etc? Do you really think that’s reasonable? I expect you do see this, so can we drop this side of things?

    My problem has been and continues to be that your are criticizing something that isn’t there. I don’t know what Laruelle you’ve read as you’ve told me, but obviously some of this misunderstanding (and that’s all I’ve ever called it, a misunderstanding is usually not a malicious charge) stems from the fact that most of his work isn’t translated and many of the French copies are hard to come by. This coupled with the fact that most of the English language work has been focused on his criticism of philosophy, well, yeah I get if that’s all you’ve come across you would think it’s a kind of philosophy-centric practice. Still, it’s wrong, and if you read Principes or the the Non-Marxisme book or his work on religion or his most recent book on generic science you’d see it isn’t that. Perhaps, as works begin to come out and if Laruelle is discussed then a common vocabulary will begin to form, this sort of thing will be less common. Still, I don’t think he’s going to be doing the kind of philosophy you want, but it is also not the kind you accuse it of being.

    You can, of course, continue to perpetuate this misunderstanding if you want, but I’m going to continue say it is incorrect. If you want to continue to call me a goon or psychologize my positions, well, then it would suggest your commitment to dialogue is a overcome by your dislike of me.

  25. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:30 pm “I, for one, would like to hear more on how Levi understands the difference between “doing” (which he favours) and “applying” (which he despises). Both seem to be a species of technological reductionism to me: thought reduced to procedure. The only difference is that the latter is “applied” to texts while the former is “done” on objects other than texts. (Isn’t a text an object? Doesn’t a text have a complex involvement in a network of objects, thoughts, affects, relations?)”

    I agree Craig. I’ve tried to bring this up, but Levi doesn’t seem to accept that texts are objects or maybe he just thinks that they are overlooked at objects, but it would seem that there is a difference between using texts and the kind of secondary industry he’s not happy about. At the same time, it seems that there is a performative contradiction here between wanting to decide what counts as using a figure within the context of a problem and what counts as developing the thought of a figure.

  26. Hill Says:

    Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:46 pm I see we’ve gone meta about going meta, actually even to a degree beyond that.

  27. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:00 pm With your comment I think we’ve gone to meta-meta-meta-meta. Are you doing that thing where you argue for the sake of it again?

  28. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:46 pm “My problem has been and continues to be that your are criticizing something that isn’t there.“

    Hmm, this issue seemed to have come up several times in the context of the disagreements on Kant and Catherine Malabou as well.

  29. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 6:49 pm Levi, although I’m excited to see that someone picked up my torch of getting into pissy fights with you, after so many people doing getting into it with you, isn’t there at least an inklining that it might in fact be you and not them?

  30. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 7:12 pm I realize that other people may have issues with Levi’s rhetorical way of arguing and I understand those frustrations, but can we please keep this thread on topic. I don’t want to piss off everyone else, but we’ll have to go into enforcing the Stalinist comment policy.

  31. Monday, September 7, 2009 at 8:58 am Levi, What you are saying is critical of philosophy, at least certain practices of philosophy. Some of them have gone in unproductive directions, and you don’t want to follow them. Some have done things you want to emulate in your own way. Figuring out what you want to do as a philosopher requires you to do that. Therefore, it seems to me that your discourse, too, is about philosophy. And that insofar as Laruelle is trying to figure out a way to get past certain recurring impasses in philosophy, you have something in common, even if his particular method of doing so doesn’t convince you.

    Update: Michael cuts to the heart of the matter. It’s all about OPP.

    Levi, current Speculative Realist of the Object-Oriented Onticologist wing, is upset with me. In the course of the argument he makes some quite harsh accusations implying that I’m a CV-packer one could use Laruelle to pack their CV, have clogged up the internet tubes with my absence of understanding, that I want to hold philosophy back, etc., etc. It all has to do with the that short Speculative Heresy interview with Badiou where he claims not to understand Laruelle’s work, in addition to finding it lacking because what he takes to be a religious structure to non-philosophy. Levi adds his voice to those who do not understand Laruelle. Well, his claim is actually attempting to be more damning than merely saying that Laruelle is too jargon-laden to be understood. Levi’s claim is that “Laruelle is a dead end, a regressive move, a fall back into the project of endless critique, rather than a new opening.” His reason for this is that he understands Laruelle to be a “warmed over” version of deconstruction. While it is currently fashionable to hate on the very talented late Derrida, almost in inverse proportion to when it is fashionable to love every word he wrote, this connection to Laruelle is tenuous at best.

    Levi became very upset with me for what he perceived to be a mocking tone from this comment:

    Levi, have you read much Laruelle? I get the impression from what you’ve written here, in typical blue fishman style, that you have only gleaned from blogs and Brassier’s work that he is critical of [a] structure he thinks is invariant in philosophy. That is true, but it’s not the end of his work and, if anything, is an attempt to get past endless critique by getting to the root of the problem so that one can be productive.

    Levi reacted, in my view, very poorly to this remark and took it to be very rude. His response was overly aggressive and unfortunately I lost my temper and called him a dick, bypassing the accepted typology of SR, and for that I apologize. Though Levi did overreact to my remark, calling him a rude name wasn’t going to move things forward at all. The problem though is, well, that my initial comment is true. Laruelle isn’t trying to set up another task of endlessly analyzing texts, but an attempt to escape the vicious circle of philosophy so that one can do original work. In the midst of all his work on philosophers, largely in the period of his work he calls Philosophy II, he is developing theories of philosophy in so far as philosophy is a mirror of the World. When he moves on to Philosophy III and IV he now attempts to formulate theories using the material of philosophy but with disinterest towards the claims of philosophy. Now, I’m of the old school of blogging that these things exist for random thoughts, half-baked ideas, pub-strength arguments, and the fostering of intellectual friendships (and perhaps intellectual adversarial relationships as well). So, I’m not going to make the case that Laruelle succeeds all the time, he doesn’t, or that everyone should bow before non-philosophy as the new master discourse, it isn’t. No one needs Laruelle’s permission to do interesting work and no one needs to read him if they don’t find him helpful for their projects. The only point I am here making, the evidence for which is available for everyone to see in his works, is that he is not just analyzing texts and that the analysis of texts makes up a very small part of the practice of non-philosophy.

    Speculative Realism, whatever it may be, those bloggers who self-identity with it seem united in making the claim that the time for philosophy through the philosophers is over. That seems cool, though at the same time they all do work alongside the concepts of other philosophers and theorists. For instance, the OOO types are working closely with Latour’s work and writing manuscripts on Meillassoux, so obviously there is still something to be said of this kind of apprenticeship. Where is the rigorous analysis that explains what the difference between these two practices are? In many ways Laruelle provides that analysis in his Principes de la non-philosophie. Moving from a criticism of what, he claims, is the invariant structure of philosophy in order to take a disinterested approach to philosophy-escaping the self-enclosure of philosophy-in order to do work with them. He may fail, all attempts risk failure, but this misunderstanding is not non-philosophy.

    Posted by Anthony Paul Smith
    Filed in Laruelle, academia, philosophy

    31 Comments »

    31 Responses to “Levi on Misunderstanding Laruelle”

    1. Hill Says:

      Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:35 pm I felt like something useful could have happened in that comment thread until it went meta and mutual accusations of “hysteria” of one form or another ensued. I actually just read it before browsing here and finding this post… which I have not really even read yet.

    2. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:40 pm Mutual accusations? Hill, you’re being very naughty. I didn’t accuse him, in any of the comments he allowed to post, of being hysterical. I’m really not interested in arguing about the argument though.

    3. Hill Says:

      Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:51 pm I did imply a symmetry there that I did not intend. I suppose I just meant that there was mutual recourse to accusations of the transgression of blog etiquette that were needless (you accusing him of being a dick and him accusing you of being hysterical). As a neutral observer with little appreciation of the background of the discussion, I found both to be unfounded (at least in terms of that particular conversation). I am quite interested in the subject as I’ve taken a look at a bit of Laruelle and find myself baffled. I am certainly withholding judgment, but I was hoping that some sort of strategy might have emerged from the comments that would have been helpful to me.

    4. Hill Says:

      Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 4:53 pm And could you explain “Red Ate” and “Blue Fishman?”

    5. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:01 pm Hill,

      Oh, yes I see what you mean. I agree that my calling him a dick was uncalled for and didn’t help things, which is why I apologize in the above post. As was using the “Red Ate” and “Blue Fishman” avatars to mock the typology that has developed from k-punk, Harman and Levi’s blogs. I find all the talk about grey vampires and minotaurs to be silly and the high theory-style analysis really annoys me. I let that get the better of me and it lead to be a bit of snark, though I don’t think anything like the kind of abusive tone that was directed toward me. That said, I do get that people get angry during these exchanges and so I’m not actually made at Levi for it. Who knows, maybe I’m his therapeutic Chad (from The Weblog) whom I unapologetically heap abuse upon.

      I understand the bafflement regarding Laruelle. I experienced much the same when I first started reading about him online and in Mullarkey’s Post-Continental Philosophy. I think Laruelle’s work does make sense, despite being highly abstract, and I find a lot of his work interesting. But, for me, it is his general stance that I have found helpful. I have written on this, but it is likely going to be published so I haven’t posted it to the blog.

      Regarding the difficulty in understanding Laruelle, it seems to me, and I think many others in this field, that if a philosophy/theology/general thought doesn’t stupefy you at first it isn’t one that’s going to change the way you think. For me I was stupefied by Laruelle and wanted to understand it. I don’t agree with everything he’s written and I’ve cottoned to him far less than I did to Deleuze when I first was stupefied by him, but I’ve found his work to be helpful in giving a frame to the project I’m undertaking in my dissertation.

    6. Hill Says:

      Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:37 pm I heartily agree with your third paragraph. I have had/am in the midst of that process with Deleuze, but even when I had no idea what Deleuze was talking about, I stillknew, in some primordial sense, that Deleuze was awesome. I’m not yet getting that vibe off of Laruelle. That’s just to say that if, hypothetically, Levi were totally right about Laruelle, I wouldn’t be surprised, although I repeat that I am in no position whatsoever to make that sort of judgment (and have therefore refrained from doing so). Are you still doing the ecology thing for your dissertation? I’m still working through your MA thesis. I’m really interested in the intersection of philosophy, theology and science, being something of a scientist myself. I’ve been through a really long dry spell in feeling like there wasn’t much interesting to say on the three subjects together, but my recent encounters with what one might call “Post-Continental Philosophy” has rekindled that fire.

    7. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:37 pm Well now that I’ve had a chance to reread the post, I’m less pissed than I was initially. My question, however, remains, what does Laruelle allow someone to do? How does it advance one’s theoretical work or desire to make sense of the world? Even on initially reading Deleuze you get a sense that there’s a positive project there that will allow you to do all sorts of things. Unlike the hermeneutic orientation that came out of Heidegger and Gadamer or the deconstructive orientation that came out of Derrida, you get the sense that you won’t simply be talking about other philosophers, but actually engaging with the world and trying to make sense of it and change it. When I say Laruelle strikes me as “warmed over deconstruction” my point isn’t that he’s doing something equivalent to deconstruction, but that he’s going to lock us in the same rut of endlessly analyzing texts and philosophies rather than building theories. Honestly, haven’t we had enough of that? Shouldn’t the period of homage to the master thinker be over by now? This might not be Laurelle’s own intention according to the letter of his philosophy, but it does seem to very much risk more of the same. I’ve never read philosophers because I want to understand the philosopher or know about the philosopher. I’ve always read philosophers because I think they can help me understand something about the world. The problem with the myopic naval gazing of those approaches that direct our attention at grappling with the tradition is that they become all about the philosophers and not about the world. And again, my point is not, that we shouldn’t engage with other philosophers. Clearly I engage with them all the time and draw from them in all sorts of ways. My point is that philosophy shouldn’t be about philosophers. I’m opposed to anything that makes the primary focus about philosophers.

    8. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:42 pm As my comments aren’t being approved at Larval Subjects I’m going to cross post comments here.

      Not sure if this one is going to get past.

      Nick,

      It may be that nothing can be done with him in the sense that you want to do things with philosophers. There is probably a difference of perspective there. I think he opens up philosophy to do things with it in an occasional way, rather than providing a TOE, which you may be looking for in ANT or eliminativism.

      Levi,

      We’ve emailed a few times and I don’t know if I’ve made it clear that Laruelle is not going to create a commentary industry where you apply him to philosophical texts. If anything, he’ll probably be applied to problems arising out of philosophers (which seems to be what you want). I very much doubt you’re going to see a Laruelle take over of SPEP.

      I don’t know about these criticism of your ontology from a non-philosophical perspective. If they are saying you don’t understand the critique cause you’re stuck inside the circle of non-philosophy, well, I can see how that can be annoying. At the same time it is possible that their critique is correct and without knowing what you’re talking about I don’t have the material to make a judgment from. It may be that your ontology is post-non-philosophical, I don’t really know, my point has always just been that on this issue, the one about whether or not non-philosophy is just warmed over hermeneutics or deconstruction, you are misunderstanding Laruelle. Philosophy is, in your terms, one object amongst many that is given attention in non-philosophy.

    9. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:53 pm Levi,

      On the one hand, I understand what you’re saying about not wanting philosophy to be about philosophers. On the other hand, philosophers and philosophies are objects in the world that are also available for interrogation. So, I’m not ready to completely through out those interrogations even if they have been hegemonic within certain circles.

      What Laruelle gets you, amongst other things (including theories in ethics, religion, psychoanalysis, history of philosophy, art, politics, Marxism, etc.) is a theory about how one uses philosophy without making it about philosophy. It tries to separate out the material that can be of use for understanding occasions in the world, but without falling into the confusions that arise when philosophy-of-X confuses itself for X.

      In Laruelle’s own words he puts it this way: “If noesis and noema are not solely the extract of philosophy, but of the philosophy-of-X, then they are not taken from X as it gives itself “in itself” but more “in philosophy”. The noetico-nomatic relation thus associates and distinguishes, not philosophy and X, nor philosophy and the philosophy-of-X, but the non-philosophical extracts, noetic and noematic, of philosophy-of-X.”

      This the way that philosophy is an object for non-philosophy, but that then goes on to be used in “unified theories” with other regional knowledges around X. In short, what I think non-philosophy gives, and why it already escapes the critique of being warmed over deconstruction, is a theory and methodology for how to not become a warmed over deconstruction, still interact with philosophers, but without falling into the classic errors of philosophers, in order to clear away problems and create better theories.

    10. Brad Says:

      Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 5:54 pm From what I gather about L., granted much of it comes by way of reading Anthony’s work, I think he (Laruelle) would agree w/ Levi’s last sentence. Isn’t that the upshot of non-philosophy’s “disinterest”? — a creative disinterest that emerges from an investment in the materials of philosophy. Much like how a work of art, whose attention is art, or the stuff that goes into the creation of art [memory, consciousness, etc.], need not be mere navel-gazing (though at its worst, some of this kind of stuff is just this), but in fact open its viewer/reader to a new way of apprehending the world as a whole. And in the process of opening the world, eschews the art from which this opening is made possible — whereupon you, the viewer/reader, almost forget you’re engaging with a work of art. The best works of Sebald are an example of this.

    11. Alex Says:

      Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 6:56 pm Levi,

      As you are someone who has slogged through both Deleuze and Lacan, I find it remarkable that your critique of Laurelle is that you find his writing obscure and unclear.

    12. Hill Says:

      Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 7:22 pm “I took the time to learn how to read Hegel, Deleuze, Kant, the various phenomenologists, the semioticians, Lacan, etc., because I had a clear sense of what the payoff would be and what this effort would allow me to do. Nothing that I’ve read by or about Laruelle has so far given me a clear sense of what the payoff would be. The non-philosophical analysis of philosophy, with its distinction between the faktum and datum and its talk of decision just strikes me as warmed over deconstruction, while all the talk of the “real in the last instance”, the one without duality, etc., sounds like so much gesturing without any real content. Now you’re free to mock me for not making a greater effort to penetrate Laruelle, etc., but if Laruelle and his enthusiasts can’t make a good pitch for the importance of what they’re doing, if they can’t provide a way in that’s their failing, not mine, and no one is under any obligation to take their work seriously when it requires a substantial contribution of time and effort without giving any clear indication of what that time and effort is for or what it does.”

      -Levi

      His critique isn’t that Laruelle is obscure and unclear, it’s that he has yet to discern any real point to the obscurity or lack of clarity (as opposed to Deleuze, Lacan, et al.). I don’t think this is unfair, even if there is actually a point. He’s explicitly asking for someone to help him understand what that point is, and thankfully that actually took place in spite of an inauspicious beginning.

    13. Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 10:07 pm This conversation reminds me of the good old days when I was engaged in debate with certain parties about Zizek — the conversation, even after several years, never really got past the point of me saying that the certain party misunderstood Zizek. All kinds of crazy accusations were thrown out — that I was an asshole, that I was psychopathologically devoted to Zizek, that I wouldn’t “allow” anyone to say anything negative about the master, etc., etc. But really, all I was saying was that Zizek was being misread.

      And in this particular thread, it seems like Levi is saying that Laruelle is a text-based philosopher of a type that he dislikes. Anthony says he’s not and that if Levi thinks he is, he is misunderstanding. The conversation does not seem to have budged an inch since then — even when Levi makes a gesture of admitting that he may have misunderstood, he consistently goes back to (what Anthony says is) his misreading. This basic pattern constantly repeats itself in conversation with Levi, I’ve found — not to be all text-based and everything.

    14. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:14 am First, I recognize that in these comments you are focusing very much on a personal preference. This would suggest that the rest of us should be unconcerned with your preferences and that they are therefore not up for discussion. That would be fine, yet I’m finding that hard to square with the global pronouncements. The ones where you are defining what gets to count as philosophy. Surely you recognize that this will upset people and they will want to respond.

      That said, I am going to try and go with the first part and remain unconcerned with your delimiting of the borders. Mostly because, as you admit, I find your stated difference too fuzzy to do much work and because there is no theory from nowhere. Theories are part of the world and the world has itself been shaped by theory. A promiscuous ontology would accept that it seems.

      Still, and I don’t want to keep saying this over and over, so this will be the last time. Even by your own criteria Laruelle fits in the positive philosophy camp. You keep repeating the Brassier summary of the theory of philosophical decision, which is a major aspect of non-philosophy, but it is not the end all of the work. He has developed theories of aspects of the world. He has a theory of subjectivity, of ethics, of religion, of science. These theories are not developed through other texts and if other philosophers are used they are just that used. He writers from the things themselves, not about texts. He’s not writing about interpretations of thinkers, he’s using the ideas of thinkers.

      Before you start demanding I play with real money, that I tell you what Laruelle’s positions are on all these things, I’m going to have to say no. I don’t have the time and the law of diminishing returns would surely kick in for both of us. In your comment above you use the completely valid argument that I should just read and compare these books and I’ll see a difference. I agree that the evidence is there to show there is a difference in approach between Badiou and Derrida (though I respectfully disagree with how you then delimit the two into philosophy and not philosophy). If you read almost any of the works from Philosophy III and IV you’ll find your theories. You may still find them worthless, it has never been my intention to convince you that Laruelle is worth your time for your project, only trying to correct a misunderstanding about his work. Non-philosophy as Laruelle has practiced it is not about textual analysis, it has more objects than philosophy itself, it provides theories of the kind you talk about.

    15. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:14 am Because I recognize that misunderstanding could occur, let me be clear about that first paragraph. I really am having trouble squaring the way you put these as personal preferences and yet make the tone and style of your writing makes them global prescriptions. If you could explain that I would appreciate it. I’m also not sure how I should take this “not about or through philosophers” line with the published work of OOO philosophers. Or the mythological theory philosophical types, which also seems to be about philosophers (or if you want to deny them that name, others or thinkers or whatever, doesn’t matter for the sake of discussion). All of this seems to be of concern and I would guess you’d see them as theories of some kind, but I’m having trouble understanding how they are but differance isn’t. I’m not calling you to account or anything, just expressing confusion.

    16. Alex Says:

      Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:21 am Hill,

      Fair enough. Still though, my impression, via Brassier’s work, of Laurelle is just simply that he isn’t into textual commentary. Indeed as Brassier has repeatedly emphased, non-philosophy is not just another puerile ‘end of philosophy’ rhetoric.

    17. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:51 am Just to anticipate Levi’s response to Alex, I think he would say that the problem with non-philosophy is that it takes philosophy as its object. It isn’t just about textual analysis, it is about focusing on philosophy. Setting aside the usefulness of still considering philosophy when considering the world, if only because philosophy has often confused itself with the world and because philosophy is part of the world, my point remains that Laruelle does not just focus on philosophy. That his science of philosophy develops to include other regional knowledges in what he calls a democracy (of) thought or unified theory of philosophy and any regional knowledge.

    18. Alex Says:

      Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 7:38 am So it seems that fundamentally Laurelle is about argument (which may be made in texts) and Derrida is about how texts undercut arguments etc.

    19. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 10:10 am Hill nails my concerns. What worries me is this strong focus on philosophies to what I take to be the detriment of philosophy. Now, like Derrida, I am not denying that in engaging with philosophies in this way Laruelle is doing “something more” than simply analyzing philosophies. But I still find this focus on philosophies to be problematic from an institutional perspective. It seems to me to risk more of the same sort of cloistered philosophical practice that we’ve seen in Continental philosophy for the last forty years where we endlessly talk about the texts of the tradition that preceded us as if there were nothing more to philosophy. The impression I’ve gotten from my readings of Laruelle is that he all too easily appeals to a number of bad habits among Continental thinkers.

      But again, I could be mistaken. I think what Laruelle needs is, above all, a good apostle or advocate. Nate from “What in the Hell” suggested something along these lines over at Larval Subjects. I’d like to know what Laruelle can do. I’d like to know what one can do with Laruelle. I’d like to know how Laruelle assists me in theory building. And I’d like to know the specifics of the theory that he’s building or developing. That’s all.

      When I first started reading Deleuze it was a painful experience. I’d throw Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense across the room in fits of frustration and irritation. I finally began to get a foothold in his thought with What is Philosophy?. The hook that got me in that book was the idea of philosophy not as a representation of the world, but as a construction and creation of concepts. Deleuze’s philosophy told you that you could do something with it. In addition to that, it was evident to me early on that Deleuze was doing metaphysics and that he was thinking about relations, complex systems, becoming, emergence, etc. These were all things I wished to understand or think about more, so I dealt with the pain of reading Deleuze and trudged on. The case was similar with Lacan. I first started with Ecrits. Big mistake. It struck me as a bunch of nonsense and I put it down for a long time. However, a year or so later I happened to pick up Zizek’s Sublime Object of Ideology and Fink’s Lacanian Subject. Zizek showed me what could be done with Lacan and how Lacan could help me both to understand all sorts of things about the social and political world and other persons, but also how Lacan could help me to understand all sorts of trends in French Continental theory. So given that hook, I trudged through Lacan and gradually began to make sense of his work. This has been my problem with Laruelle so far: I haven’t found an answer to the “what is it for?” “what does it do?” questions. Without that telos it’s difficult to see how the concepts are organized and what they’re doing.

    20. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 11:13 am Levi,

      Do you acknowledge at all that I’ve gone some ways towards explaining why Laruelle doesn’t fit into your critique? That I’ve made a case, within the limits of comment boxes, to say what it is that his non-philosophy does?

      As for the your worries about what kind of effect Laruelle will have on institutional Continental philosophy, I think they are unwarranted. So far a few people have cottoned to Laruelle, mainly through a few essays, articles and chapters about him, and some draft translations. In some ways they are working with a very small sampling of the source material and really we’ll see how things go down when some of his books are published this coming year. I will point out that two of them are within the period of Philosophy II, which I’ve stated is the main period where Laruelle took philosophy as his object, and one is from IV where he is constructing theories outside philosophy. There is a real need to have some translations from Philosophy III, especially Principes, but it is my guess that what makes him unattractive, the heavy conceptual apparatus, to you will make him unattractive to most mainstream Continental philosophy.

    21. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 11:17 am Adam,

      You didn’t benefit from that two or three year discussion about Zizek despite the fact that consensus wasn’t reached? It seems to me that the aim of discussion shouldn’t be consensus– that’s a one way street to a lot of frustration and anger –but rather the refinement of ones own position and claims. That said, I tend to think the claim that someone has “misunderstood x” is always rhetorically a losing move because it tends to cause the person you’re trying to persuade to dig their heels in and defend their reading all the more. That is, it evokes the stubbornness of the ego because the discussion then becomes more about saving face than about the issue at hand.

      I’m not good at practicing these things myself. However, I’m always struck by the rhetorical strategies of folks like Nick Srnicek or Nate over at What in the Hell. Somehow they manage to make their points and maintain their positions without everything going meta and becoming about how people are talking to one another. As a result, they seem to generate far more productive discussions. I think part of their success in this regard lies in extending recognition to the kernel of truth embodied in the position of the person they’re addressing and then developing their own views from there. Somehow a little recognition seems to go a long way towards diminishing sterile debates.

      I note that in your post you have situated me a priori as having certain essential features that make me impossible to enter into dialogue with. I’m situated in the “enemy” side of the friend/enemy distinction in such a way that anything I say is, at the outside, undermined because “I just won’t budge.” Certainly that poisons the well and makes it far more difficult for discussion to advance given that I’m already put on the defensive and stereotyped as having certain essential characteristics. I’m sure you’ll tell me that you’ve come by this conclusion honestly, but then again there’s that whole logic of the mobius strip and feedback loops and how often we produce the very thing we’re decrying. Which isn’t to say I haven’t had my own role, but I can’t really see what your comment had to add to this discussion or how it strategically worked to diminish certain things from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course now the discussion has gone meta and I suspect there will be a slew of sarcastic rejoinders about how I talk and what I do, rather than about Laruelle and the institutional structure of philosophy and what Laruelle can enable us to do.

    22. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 11:53 am I think Adam was making an off-hand comment and there is no need to take this to a meta-discussion.

    23. Craig Says:

      Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 12:51 pm For the most part, I’ve stopped talking publicly about thinkers who interest me for the very reasons identified above: apparently you can’t talk about or correct someone on a point of fact or interpretation without being accused of being overinvested in the thinker. Of course, the accuser is just as often as not “overinvested” in the complete opposite point; i.e., in persevering in error. I’ve experience this repeatedly in discussions of Foucault and Schmitt, for instance. People don’t seem to get especially upset if a point of fact or interpretation is corrected on someone who has been dead for a couple hundred years: e.g., Hobbes or Locke.

      I, for one, would like to hear more on how Levi understands the difference between “doing” (which he favours) and “applying” (which he despises). Both seem to be a species of technological reductionism to me: thought reduced to procedure. The only difference is that the latter is “applied” to texts while the former is “done” on objects other than texts. (Isn’t a text an object? Doesn’t a text have a complex involvement in a network of objects, thoughts, affects, relations?)

    24. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:25 pm Levi,

      Please stop with the insults and the insinuations. Taking this to the meta- level is neither helpful nor does it give a clear idea of what you want. An example is present in your recent comment where you bring in the ever shifting goal post for what would count as evidence or what would “show you the money” while seemingly holding yourself to different (I might add more reasonable standards when you tell me to read X and Y next to each other). I’ve stated repeatedly here and at AUFS what my goal has been. It was not to convince you that Laruelle has great theories, it was to say that Laruelle isn’t this thing that you are critiquing. I’ve responded to your accusation, an accusation you made without evidence or demonstration, and have tried, with the exception of some names that I have since apologized for, to be polite while having this conversation. Yet, even though you provided no evidence to refute, I’m the one who has to give you article length summaries of Laruelle’s work on ethics, religion, psychoanalysis, etc? Do you really think that’s reasonable? I expect you do see this, so can we drop this side of things?

      My problem has been and continues to be that your are criticizing something that isn’t there. I don’t know what Laruelle you’ve read as you’ve told me, but obviously some of this misunderstanding (and that’s all I’ve ever called it, a misunderstanding is usually not a malicious charge) stems from the fact that most of his work isn’t translated and many of the French copies are hard to come by. This coupled with the fact that most of the English language work has been focused on his criticism of philosophy, well, yeah I get if that’s all you’ve come across you would think it’s a kind of philosophy-centric practice. Still, it’s wrong, and if you read Principes or the the Non-Marxisme book or his work on religion or his most recent book on generic science you’d see it isn’t that. Perhaps, as works begin to come out and if Laruelle is discussed then a common vocabulary will begin to form, this sort of thing will be less common. Still, I don’t think he’s going to be doing the kind of philosophy you want, but it is also not the kind you accuse it of being.

      You can, of course, continue to perpetuate this misunderstanding if you want, but I’m going to continue say it is incorrect. If you want to continue to call me a goon or psychologize my positions, well, then it would suggest your commitment to dialogue is a overcome by your dislike of me.

    25. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:30 pm “I, for one, would like to hear more on how Levi understands the difference between “doing” (which he favours) and “applying” (which he despises). Both seem to be a species of technological reductionism to me: thought reduced to procedure. The only difference is that the latter is “applied” to texts while the former is “done” on objects other than texts. (Isn’t a text an object? Doesn’t a text have a complex involvement in a network of objects, thoughts, affects, relations?)”

      I agree Craig. I’ve tried to bring this up, but Levi doesn’t seem to accept that texts are objects or maybe he just thinks that they are overlooked at objects, but it would seem that there is a difference between using texts and the kind of secondary industry he’s not happy about. At the same time, it seems that there is a performative contradiction here between wanting to decide what counts as using a figure within the context of a problem and what counts as developing the thought of a figure.

    26. Hill Says:

      Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 4:46 pm I see we’ve gone meta about going meta, actually even to a degree beyond that.

    27. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:00 pm With your comment I think we’ve gone to meta-meta-meta-meta. Are you doing that thing where you argue for the sake of it again?

    28. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:46 pm “My problem has been and continues to be that your are criticizing something that isn’t there.“

      Hmm, this issue seemed to have come up several times in the context of the disagreements on Kant and Catherine Malabou as well.

    29. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 6:49 pm Levi, although I’m excited to see that someone picked up my torch of getting into pissy fights with you, after so many people doing getting into it with you, isn’t there at least an inklining that it might in fact be you and not them?

    30. Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 7:12 pm I realize that other people may have issues with Levi’s rhetorical way of arguing and I understand those frustrations, but can we please keep this thread on topic. I don’t want to piss off everyone else, but we’ll have to go into enforcing the Stalinist comment policy.

    31. Monday, September 7, 2009 at 8:58 am Levi, What you are saying is critical of philosophy, at least certain practices of philosophy. Some of them have gone in unproductive directions, and you don’t want to follow them. Some have done things you want to emulate in your own way. Figuring out what you want to do as a philosopher requires you to do that. Therefore, it seems to me that your discourse, too, is about philosophy. And that insofar as Laruelle is trying to figure out a way to get past certain recurring impasses in philosophy, you have something in common, even if his particular method of doing so doesn’t convince you.

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