The Love of Thought: Essays on Freud, Adorno and Deleuze

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Title Page

The Love of Thought: Essays on Freud, Adorno and Deleuze

James Alexander Hellings

Goldsmiths

College, University of London

PhD

Declaration

I declare that the work preseited

James Alexander

in this thesis is my own.

Hellings

Abstract

Philosophy,

and art are little spoken of in the same critical breath. To

fandom

argue for reciprocity

between them is to risk courting

support from each camp. This thesis, an interdisciplinary argues

the prejudicial

against

The three chapters,

following

tie,

comprising

that could best be described intellectual

comportment,

restrictive

which

-

to philosophy

of personal

and critical commentary

Freud's

identity,

I map

generally.

comportments (emotional

a secondary

out Adorno's

on fanaticism,

work

Chapter Three attempts to reconstruct

their relation to my own conception in various

Kierkegaard,

Deleuze's

Deleuzian

of fandom. encounters:

as objectin

analysed a

conclusive

in the work of of

and

fanatical

(love) and Freud figures.

of Deleuze through

the

and affect, whilst emphasising I critically comment Deleuze's

Proust, Deleuze's Masoch et al.

'I

a

at theorising

as uncompromising

the philosophy

love and passion, admiration

amatory

constellation

fanatics

Kierkegaard

ties), arguing for fans to be understood

of

fandom has in more -

and passion, love and seriousness

in relation to Kant (enthusiasm),

concepts:

provides

-

to extend

attempts

as it appears

Adorno. This essay also evaluates the importance concepts - admiration

One,

and critically

Two

on fandom

and

as admiration,

traced

Chapter

artworks.

I wish

an intellectual

amateur

in Chapter

potential.

tie - are conceptually

Hirschhorn's

to

conceptual

concepts

love).

It is from the perspective

affective,

I attempt,

that -

- as constitutive

as emotional

promote

of fandom's

understanding

identification

relation

for a fandom of thought.

artworks

attachments

following

as one of fandom

Plato and Spinoza - to argue for the love of thought,

Hirschhorn's

choice,

this thesis, each argue for a certain relation to

uncompromising

love - and by extension

on fandom,

encomium

opinion that would wish to isolate these fields.

thought, a richer entanglement, (emotional

and the loss of

scandal

Spinoza,

upon these Deleuze's

Table of Contents

Title Page

1

Declaration

2

Abstract

3

Table of Contents

4

Introduction:

7

Fan(atic)s

foe(s) - philosopher-fans

as philosophy(er)s

the love of thought

contra

intellectual -a

Precautions Against Fan(atic)s

-

Plato and Spinoza

(Barthes) -a

philosophy

aspect

of love (Irigaray)

Danto calls -

richer

Cavell's -

being beside Cavell oneself as artisanal-philosopher-fan of fan comportment

entanglement

uncompromising

- self-destruction

of love and thought

spirit and idea (Adorno),

(Green)

in fandom intellectual

-

of thought and emotion

Cavell a fan - Cavell's fandom - love's work and love's knowledge Thoreau

Hegel -

for the love of thought

love - Adorno and Deleuze's reconfiguration

lover's discourse

- artist-fans

double -

- self-enhancement (emotional

-

tie (Freud),

love (Deleuze))

- chapter

synopses.

Chapter One: A Psychology of Fandom

27

Hirschhorn's artworks: A/tars, Kiosks and Monuments - fandom devalued and revalued: taken seriously - Mann's admiration - Hirschhorn's weak, amateur, amatory aesthetic - Ì'm a fan' - Hirschhorn's admiration, love and passion love's knowledge - passionate pedagogy - you cannot be serious - weak knowledge - both affective and intellectual identification - identification in The Interpretation of Dreams: as sympathy, as unconscious common element and contagion - identification in On Narcissism: as anaclitic object-choice and/or narcissistic object-choice - identification in Mourning and Melancholia: as sexual object-choice - confusion over having and being - identification in Group Psychology: as emotional tie, as love attachment - identification in The Ego and 4

the Id- unconscious (de)structured like an affect - taking admiration seriously idealising identification - intensification of affect versus disinterest of serious thought - taking the sensuous non-serious seriously.

Chapter Two: A Socio-Political

Philosophy

of Fandom

81

Adorno's

culture - commodity fetishism - consumer regression - childish versus childlike - pseudo-activity - enthusiasts (fans) - eager individuals amateur experts - disrespectful play - sadistic humour - bestial seriousness Benjamin's romanticization - ubiquity-standardization - fan-mail - identification with the aggressor - fandom's fascism - fandom's faith - Kant's schwärmerei: enthusiasm versus fanaticism - mimesis - uncompromising figures - Kant's (im)maturity - love-cum-hatred - lunatic fans - Adorno's Freud - fanatical love as bourgeois self-sacrifice, self-preservation - culture requires love - Adorno's Proust - intolerant and possessive love - uncompromising love - the art of fandom - imitation and mimetic comportment - aesthetic cultivation - shock and shudder - Adorno's Kierkegaard - Kierkegaardian following, imitation and higher lunacy - Adorno's admiration and aestheticism.

Chapter Three: A Philosophy Deleuze's passion

of Fandom

philosophy

reconstructed

making

use of excess

185

through

admiration,

affect,

love and

disjunctive

synthesis - spiritual, schizophrenic choice - decision versus indecision - Deleuze as fan of Spinoza Spinoza's love, love (of God) Deleuze's Spinoza intellectual affect, extending affect: passing versus passage - affect versus identification -

unnatural participations - Deleuze's love-cum-hatred - anomalous choice Deleuze anthropomorphises Spinoza - Deleuze's Kierkegaard - knights of faith figures by transcended chosen ones excessive, power uncompromising powerlessness - Deleuze's Proust - learning love - (jealous) love as thoughts violence, outside - Plato-Spinoza-Proust connection - Deleuze's Masoch - art of ideal love - amateur love - divine and demonic contracts - non-possessive love - idealisation versus identification - weakness as strength - the passion of thought - force and constraint - passion as the dark precursor of thought, its outside - schizophrenic revolutionary love - Deleuze's Kafka: the letter of love 5

pact with the devil - love as epiphany - Deleuze's Foucault: the power of love Deleuze's admiration - passion versus love - passion and affect - curiosity and fascination - betrayal and perfidy - Deleuze's indecision over affect. Conclusion:

The Love of Thought

308

Acknowledgments

313

Bibliography

314

6

Introduction:

Precautions Against Fan(atic)s'

And I said to him: "I am one who, when Love breathes in me, takes note. And in whatever way he dictates within, that way I signify. i2

The heart has its reason of which reason knows nothing. 3

But there are Richer entanglements, enthralments far More self-destroying, leading, by degrees, To the chief intensity: the crown of these

Is made of love and friendship, and sits high Upon the forehead of humanity. '

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. 5

The introduction to this felicity [love] is in a private and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period, and works a revolution in his mind and body. '

Should

it be necessary for our age to have the ridiculous appearance of an enthusiast in order to find something to laugh at, or is it not rather more necessary that such an inspired character would remind it of what has been forgotten? ' It is philosophy's power to cause wonder, decides who is to become a philosopher. '

Yes, we will have all loved philosophy,

or to stun - to take one aside - that

who can deny it? 9

' My title repeats that of a short film written and directed by Werner Herzog (1969), wherein it is risibly impossible to distinguish the amateur fanatics from the professional experts, no matter what precautions are taken. 2 Alighieri, Dante [1961], The Divine Comedy: // Purgatorio, Tr. John D. Sinclair, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 311 (Canto XXIV). I have also used part of a translation of the same section as it appears in: Nussbaum, LK, p. 3. See: Nussbaum, UT, p. 575. 3 Pascal, Blaise [1966], Pensees, Tr. A. J. Krailsheimer, London, Penguin, 1995, p. 127. 4 Keats, John [1818], 'Endymion: A Poetic Romance, ' in: Keats, John [1973], John Keats: The Complete Poems, Ed. John Barnard, London, Penguin, (2006 edition), p. 128. 5 Thoreau, W, p. 9. 6 Emerson, Ralph Waldo [1841], 'Love, ' in: Emerson, Ralph Waldo [1995], Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Poems, Ed. Tony Tanner, London, Everyman, p. 83. Kierkegaard, FT, pp. 101-2. 8 Cavell, PP, p. 63. 9 Derrida, Jacques [1995], 'I'm Going to Have to Wander All Alone, ' in: Derrida, Jacques [2001], The Work of Mourning, Eds. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, Tr. Leonard Lawler, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, p. 193.

7

Philosophy, fandom and art are little spoken of in the same critical breath. To argue for reciprocity between them is to risk courting scandal and the loss of support from each camp. One is either a philosopher or a fan or an artist, rarely a combination of the three. Bertrand Russell's standard introduction, History of Western Philosophy, may well have less entries for `philosophy' than it does for variations on fandom ('fanatic, ' `fanatical, ' `fanatically, ' `fanaticism'), clearly revealing one particular anxiety peculiar to philosophers - fear and loathing of and/or precautions 1° fan(atic)s. Here, at least, fan(atic)s - rogue followers armed with their against unregulated devotion, mad love and enthusiasm - are the philosopher's foe. The inverse condition cannot be so categorically demonstrated. There is an ever-increasing quantity of critical theory of varying quality, which I have chosen to subsume beneath the catch-all category: fan studies. The great majority of this material has emerged from a cultural studies perspective and although of minor influence to this thesis (I am not writing about vampires,

Star Trek, Doctor

Who, football and/or comic books), it ought to be acknowledged that, beyond giving me the necessary confidence to proceed by the example of their own work, parts of this material have informed my argument and expanded my understanding

of the heterogeneity of my subject.

Material in footnotes,

throughout this thesis, acknowledges my indebtedness and marks differences of opinion. Fans are everywhere, yet artist-fans or fan-artists lack both visibility and discursiveness. To my knowledge not a single essay, book or exhibition takes 10There are, on my count, twenty-two occasions when Russell uses variations on the theme of fandom, two of which are reserved for his concluding paragraph. See: Russell, HWP, pp. 265, (x2), 347,349,391 (x2), 392,394,416,509,545 267,313,315,339,342 (x2), 551,616,712, 744 (x2). R

this area of inquiry explicitly as its theme. Whether willed or not this lacunae must be considered pertinent. It was, then, a happy accident that led me to encounter a contemporary artist whose practice challenges just this repression. The fandom I discovered at play in the work of Thomas Hirschhorn - for philosophy and philosopher's thoughts - opens this collection of theoretical " bridge disciplinary to the gap. essays and serves This thesis, unashamedly and unreservedly an encomium on fandom, argues against the prejudicial and divisive opinion that would wish to make separate these three fields. It is, therefore, an interdisciplinary investigation. Taking the relation between philosophy, fandom and art, seriously - submitting it to theoretical

investigation,

critical reflection

and conceptual

analysis

does not -

irredeemably damage either philosophy or fandom or art, but rather increases the fields of reference of each. 12 The relation between love and thought, affect and reason, feeling and idea, is of minor importance

to the history of philosophy,

and in its own way this thesis

seeks to rectify this marginalisation. Hegel, in an early theological tract entitled The Spirit of Christianity, categorically states, À thought cannot be loved. '13 aim to complicate if not refute this assertion. The three chapters, which comprise

this thesis,

each argue for a certain

relation

to thought,

a richer

entanglement, that could best be described as one of fandom (emotional tie,

"A

recent collection of essays goes some way toward criticising, 'the myth that fans are peculiar to popular culture by examining fans of reputable and "high" culture. ' Gray et al., F, pp. 12-14, pp. 73-122. Needless to say, visual art(ists) are overlooked. 12 'Fans are, in fact, the most visible and identifiable of audiences. How is it, then, that they have been overlooked or not taken seriously as research subjects by critics and scholars? (... ) we are all fans of something. We respect, admire, desire. We distinguish and form commitments. By endeavouring to understand the fan impulse, we ultimately move towards a greater understanding of ourselves. ' I agree with Lewis that fans ought to be taken seriously, yet her text nowhere reflects on what this seriousness consists in. Lewis, AA, p. 1. 13Hegel, SC, p. 247.

9

comportment, intellectual love). I wish, following Plato and

uncompromising

Spinoza, to argue the inverse of Hegel's proposition - for the love of thought, an intellectual love14 - and, therefore, by extension, for a fandom of thought. Accordingly, I intend to argue for the intelligence of love, love's knowledge. 15 Both Adorno and Deleuze, each in their own way, seemingly stand in opposition to Hegel on this issue. Adorno remarks, in an unsurpassable aphorism, The assumption that thought profits from the decay of the emotions, or even that it remains unaffected, is itself an expression of the process

of

stupefaction.

(... )

Because

even

its

remotest

objectifications are nourished by impulses, thought destroys in the latter the condition of its own existence. Is not memory inseparable from love, which seeks to preserve what yet must pass away? (... ) 14The Plato of the Phaedrus: Ì'm lover a of learning. ' '(... ) a lover of discourse. ' `(... ) the love of wisdom. ' "lover of wisdom. " Plato, CD, Phaedrus, 230d (p. 479), 236e (p. 484), 252e (p. 499) the best view of love bases it on a view of and 257b (p. 502), 278d (p. 524). 'The Phaedrus': the individual as essentially constituted by values and aspirations. This is not a description of what passionate love in general is like. It is a description of the best type of passion. Socrates argues that this sort of "mad" passion for another individual is an essential part of the best human life and the way that passion best figures in a good life. This is also supposed to be the best way in which love loves an individual. Against Lysias, who argues that the person in love never gets to know who the beloved really is, Socrates argues that it is in passion (not all sorts, but this high sort) that one person is most truly able to know and to love another - to love what the other most truly is. It begins with the recognition of values. (... ) The values are recognized in a way that truly involves, even requires, passion. And being passive. The first thing that happens is that the lover is simply, mysteriously, struck by the splendor of the other. (... ) He is dazzled, aroused, illuminated. (... ) The beauty of the other is not, even in the beginning, seen as mere superficial attractiveness but as the radiance of a committed soul. Awe and wonder are essential components of his love. The point is, he wouldn't be in love really if the other didn't answer to his aspirations. Love and sexuality (at least in good people) are themselves selective and aspiring. What excites the passion, makes him shudder and tremble, is the perception of something that answers to the desires of his soul, Passion loves that it demands an object that is radiant with value. What it wants from the person, ultimately, is a mutual exchange of love and ideas that will be a seamless part of each one's pursuit of their central aspiration. (... ) The crucial first step toward truth and knowledge comes when the stream of beauty that enters in at the eyes is allowed to moisten and melt the solid dry elements of the soul. Only then does the soul begin to have insight into itself and its aims. And as time goes on, with "unfeigned passion, " both touching and conversing, they "follow up the trace, " each in the other, of their own god, coming to know one another, themselves, and true value at the same time. (... ) The essential individuality of each is to be found in the fineness of soul, the character and commitments that make each the follower of a certain god. ' Nussbaum, LK, pp. 324-5. 15 `Dante's intelligenza d'amore is not an intellectual grasp of emotion; it is an understanding that is not available to the non-lover, and the loving itself is part of it. ' Nussbaum, LK, p. 41. See also: Nussbaum, UT, pp. 571-90.

10

But if the impulses are not at once preserved and surpassed in the thought which has escaped their sway, then there will be no knowledge

at

unpredictable, emotion

all.

(... ) Memory

[and

love

are]

tabooed

as

unreliable, irrational. (... ) Once the last trace of

has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought

but

absolute tautology. 16 Deleuze, under a Nietzschean influence, " argues something very similar - that the condition of possibility for both philosophy and critique may be sought within affective landscapes, Ìt is through admiration that you will come to genuine critique, '18 Ìf you don't admire something, if you don't love it, you have no reason to write a word about it. (... ) For me this is philosophy itself. '19 I wish to argue, paraphrasing Irigaray, that what is required is a new knowledge and a new approach to knowledge, in short a thinking through love and a love of thought -a

lover's discourse and/or a philosophy of love20 -

whereby the affect and the idea are no longer thought in opposition or isolation and through which a new relation with others, objects, texts and thoughts can be written and lived.21 What I aim to investigate are new combinations of thought and love - thought, thought differently. The figure of the fan is understood, primarily, as a Barthesian amorous subject, and this new relation an equally amorous one. To give some weight to my conjecture, I would like to introduce and consider an occasion when philosophy and love are not made distinct, and when the 16Adorno, MM, pp. 122-3. 17Òne must /earn to /ove. 'Nietzsche, 18 Deleuze, D/, p. 139. 19 Deleuze, Dt, p. 144. 20 Barthes, LD, p. 8.

21See: Irigaray, WL, pp. 1-12.

GS, p. 186.

question of fandom becomes paramount. In a book-review, Arthur C. Danto outs a fellow American philosopher as a fan. That philosopher is Stanley Cavell. Cavell's sensibility as a thinker is thoroughly saturated by what one might call movie culture. The overall relationship in which he stands to the star philosophers in his own intellectual

firmament,

for

example, is essentially that of a fan: he is a Wittgenstein fan, a Nietzsche fan, just as he is an Alfred Hitchcock and a Groucho Marx fan, but also, which is rarer, both for the form of the relationship and its target, a fan of Emerson and of Thoreau. 22 Cavell's prose style, according to Danto, `has something of the character of artistic expression in its own right, ' à kind of willed outrageousness, ' is evident in Cavell's writing which is also described by Danto as, `so personal, so confessional and confiding, so caught up with the history of his enthusiasms and his disaffection' that any potential reader of Cavell is expected to, `relive with him the history of his philosophical and esthetic crushes. 723Danto's problem with such an artisanal and amatory approach to philosophising, a philosophy of exaggeration or principled over-interpretation, lies in his belief that one is left with, `the sense that one has undergone a journey, ' without arrival. Or, to put it differently, that one cannot easily detach Cavell's thesis from its

22 Danto, R, p. 3. 23 Ibid. Cavell prefers to speak of his fandom, not as being `personal, ' but as instances of philosophical autobiography and/or anecdote. Life-writing, àutobiographizing, signing the world. ' 'From the beginning of my philosophical in recent years, I have writing, and increasingly intermittently to announce itself, and this tendency has allowed the draw of autobiography elicited questions, sometimes friendly. Sometimes the questions have been couched in terms of the "personal" manner of my writing, a hasty, and to my way of thinking, misguided description. ' Cavell, PP, p 35, p. 187. Nussbaum backs Cavell up on this point, `(... ) narrative writing, more than standard philosophical writing, seems to express the author's own acknowledgment of the power and importance of particular love and to elicit from the reader a similar response. ' Nussbaum, LK, p. 329.

i2

in Danto's

pejorative

words -

himself, does take up the subject of taking fandom

seriously,

expression

of and engagement

with -

`philosophical detritus. '24 Cavell,

specifically in relation to film, in, Àppendix: Film in the University, ' to his 1981 book, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cavell asks whether or not there exists, àn honorable objection to the serious, humanistic study of film, ' in other words, whether film itself is a `proper' object for serious philosophical analysis and teaching, thereby raising the question of discipline specificity. 25 Choosing to take film seriously, of necessity in the university, means displacing other subjects. Cavell finds the very idea of submitting, `the objects of its study [film] to a kind of cult, ' dangerous, ugly and abhorrent, 26thereby seemingly ruling out any fandom on his part. It appears as if Danto accuses Cavell of the very thing the latter occludes. Yet, Cavell goes on to remark that if a teacher has, `something to love and something

to say and a

talent for communicating both, ' (love's knowledge and work), then this danger is 27 little of significance. I have spoken of a university, with its commitment

to rational

discourse toward some public goal, as if it too is an agent of the destruction of cults; but I have also admitted its own propensity to cultism. And I have spoken as if, for example, Wittgenstein and Heidegger,

and perhaps Thoreau

24Danto, R, p. 3.

25 Cavell, PH, p. 265. 26 Cavell, PH, p. 269. 27 Cavell, PH, p. 270. 11

and

Nietzsche,

were

clear

candidates for a university curriculum, yet I know that each of them is mainly the object of a cult.28 What matters for Cavell, as for me, is that either the fan's or the professor's love is taken seriously, that love can be known, learnt and taught, transposed into and transformed in a work, ultimately that one can stand in relation to objects (of knowledge) as a lover, as a fan, as an admirer, as an impassioned professor

of philosophy -

entangled or immersed

both emotionally

and

intellectually. 29There exists a fine line differentiating this fandom (love and its communication) from fanaticism (imitation and/in worship), which I agree with and aim to expose and complicate throughout the essays collected here. Cavell self-describes as both, à professor, ' and as, àn advocate of film, ' in Danto's language he is a fan of film. 30 He has no problem, for instance, in taking the films of Buster Keaton seriously - from the perspective of Heidegger. Cavell is, therefore, the first of my artisanal-philosopher-fans. What I take from Cavell is this belief in an amatory, affective, relation worth taking seriously. 31 Elsewhere, he cites a wonderful sentence from Thoreau, which I believe, adequately describes this relational comportment, `With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. '32Thoreau goes on to write, in the fifth chapter of Walden entitled, `Solitude, ' `By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and

28 Cavell, PH, p. 273. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the most theoretically engaged and encompassing work to emerge out of the literature I am calling fan studies. Hills cites this section of Cavell, but makes no mention of Danto. See: Hills, FC, p. 4. 29 See: Cavell, PP, p. 131. 30 Cavell, PH, p. 270. 3' `But then wherever there really is a love of wisdom - or call it the passion for truth - it is inherently, if usually ineffectively, because it is the same as hatred of the revolutionary; falseness in one's character and of the needless and unnatural compromises in one's institutions. ' Cavell, MWM, p. xxxix. 32 Thoreau, W, p. 87. See also: Cavell, PP, p. epigraph.

14

bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. (... ) I maybe affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing

no experience,

but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is

you. '33Cavell refers to this being beside oneself in a sane sense as a 'prephilosophicali34 experiencing of ecstasy, as a doubleness of self, 35 precisely, which makes one into either a `traveler' or a 'stranger'36 - and I am inclined to agree with him on its valuation with respect to thinking. It is a realm that, ìs to be understood as an irrupting of a new perspective of the self to itself. '37 Estrangement from oneself - `the realization of "our infinite relations, " our kinships, is an endless realization of our separateness"'

is invested theme an -

as Cavell quoting Thoreau observes, "'Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are Yet, this ecstasy of the stranger, what and the infinite extent of our relation S.11939 Cavell also terms òutwardness, outsideness to the world, distance from it, 140is

33 Thoreau,

W, pp. 87-8. 34,Pre-philosophical' before, 'the thoughts signifies sophistication or primitivism professionalization of philosophy. ' Cavell, W, p. xiii. 35 `The writer specifies my relation to the double as my being beside it. Being beside oneself is the dictionary definition of ecstasy. To suggest that one may stand there, stay there in a sane sense, is to suggest that the besideness of which ecstasy speaks is my experience of my existence. ' Cavell, W, p. 104. 36 Cavell, W, p. 54. 3' Cavell, PP, p. 145. 38 Cavell, W, p. 54. 39 Cavell, W, p. 50. Thoreau, W, p. 111. 40 Cavell, W, p. 55.

is

not for another extraordinary world, another thought, another love - but, for this world, this thought, this love returned to and thought again. It is an ecstasy of the ordinary, the common, the vulgar, the familiar and the low. 41 It is what Kierkegaard calls, `the sublime in the pedestrian, '42or the weak vision of the knight of faith. It is as if Thoreau identifies a kind of experimental

and

explorative sense of self, now doubled, which Cavell discusses accordingly, `My self is something,

apparently,

toward which

I can stand in various

relations,

ones in which I can stand to other selves, named by the same terms, e.g., love, hate [etc]. "3 `The impersonality, or impartiality, of Walden's double is the spiritual breakthrough from yearning and patience which releases its writer's capacity for action. It is a mode of what he calls "being interested in."'44This ecstatic entanglement, this emotional tie or identification, this fascination or curiosity, may or may not lead to self-destruction

from, the withdrawal -

abandonment or forgetting of, the self through enthusiasm. 45 It is, I will argue, the comportment particular to fans, those lovers of thought. Indeed, just this tendency toward self-destruction is taken up as the point of departure for Julian Green's, 1947, novel, /f / Were You... (Si J'etais Vous). Green's book unfolds the philosophical `riddle' of identity, a complex problem which he chooses to render - echoing, perhaps, Thoreau - as the `double anguish, ' of the self, `which consists in the knowledge that a man can neither escape his own destiny nor the approach of death and the bewilderment of

41 See: Cavell, p. 142, p. 146, p. 147. 42 Kierkegaard, FT, p. 41. See also: Cavell, W, p. 150. 43 Cavell, W, p. 53. 44 Cavell, W, p. 102. 45 See: Cavell, W, p. 136. 'For the significance of leaving lies in its discovery that you have settled something, that you have felt enthusiastically what there is to abandon yourself to. ' Cavell, W, p. 138. 'One of Emerson's terms for [immigrancy] is abandonment, meaning both leaving and ecstasy; another is going onward. ' Cavell, PP, p. 47.

16

finding himself alone in the midst of an incomprehensible universe. 146Green's story operates

as if one could change identities,

really escape oneself,

transform into another, become someone else - it is no accident that he selects Rimbaud's infamous aphorism, "Je" est un autre, as the epigraph to his own novel. For Cavell, self-metamorphosis is specific to the, òntology of film (... ) on film the actor is the subject of the camera, emphasizing that this actor could (have) become other characters (that is, emphasizing

the potentiality

in human

existence, the self's journeying). 47 Although imaginary and fantastical, Green's text can be interpreted as arguing for the potentiality of human existence: that things could be otherwise, that if our identities are not expressions of divine providence,

`God's will, ' then

necessity

is complicated,

overturned

and

displaced. The uncompromising figures Green identifies as being capable of escaping the prison of themselves are poets (novelists) and mystics. The former achieve this by transforming their ego into something other (via identification, via emotional ties). The latter entirely forget that they have an ego, thereby escaping in another way. Green's protagonist, Fabian Especel, a lowly office clerk, who has character `weakness[es]'48 but cannot countenance suicide ('he was too much in love with life'49), and who imagines or dreams of himself as a hero, differently than he is, `possesses this power, '50this ability to become an other, to `see the

46 Green, I/WY,, p. vi. 47 Cavell, PP, p. 137. 48 Green, //WY, p. 4. 49 Green, 1/WY,, p. 13. 50 Green, I/WY,, p. v. 17

world through someone else's eyes. 5' Especel, variously described as a stealer of souls, 52 as à thief of the wind, '53as à man in the grip of an obsession, '54 receives this demonic power from a stranger and Green's book maps his becoming

others (five metamorphoses

are attempted,

four of which are

successful). Green clearly considers his protagonist's desire, `to get out of one's shell, to become someone different, '55to be the same drive that makes one love.

He developed also a new curiosity concerning the men and women whom he saw around him. An enormous appetite for life began to trouble him. He longed passionately to understand everything. The idea that the more knowledge he could acquire the greater would be his power of yet further acquisition but served to increase the bounds of his covetous desires. But even beyond the bounds of knowledge in general he longed for love. 56 Especel's

longing for love, his becoming (like the stranger),

à lover of souls, ' 57

his being interested in, is the degree-zero of his becoming other. It is only because he refuses a reduced reality (unrequited love) and chooses to stay with his ideal that this devilish power becomes his. 58Green's novel follows Especel's transmigrations, and with each change the self is further destroyed - on one occasion Green's protagonist actually murders another character! The novel ends with the reader being uncertain as to whether Especel dreamt the entire 51See: Green, I/WY, pp. v-vi, p. 13. 52See: Green, I/WY, p. 23.

53 Green, I/WY, p. 19. 54 Green, I/WY, p. 25. 55 Green, I/WY, p. 56. 56 Green, I/WY, p. 22. 57 Green, I/WY, p. 42, p. 50. 58 See: Green, I/WY, p. 43.

1R

plot or actually lived it. Before Especel dies (returned to himself), Green informs his reader that, "'he had a feeling that he suddenly had it in him to love even those who in every respect were furthest removed from all that was himself, 71559 thereby concluding that elements of suffering and self-destruction are inevitable in any and all love understood as an exercise in narcissism and possession. Especel's urge toward self-destruction is tied to his longing for love, but his urge to love testifies to the idea, valorised by Green, that one receives Love if one loses love, if one refuses to give up on Love, to work through its knowledge, then, this possessionless Love will return is the message of Green's text. I mention Green's novel as it is of significance to my wider argument. If the fan is a figure whom, through their affective comportment, actively participates with others, with thoughts, then there are various ways in which this can be achieved.

Green's

novel exposes the urge toward self-destruction,

which may

have something meaningful to say with respect to fan comportment

(the

pathology which led Mark David Chapman to kill John Lennon and Valerie Solanas's attempted murder of Andy Warhol spring immediately to mind). Yet, there

may

also

be a more sane

self-enhancing

experience,

a richer

entanglement, an escape and an engagement, which I aim to investigate in the following

three chapters.

I would like to position the fan as an uncompromising

figure whom, via love and passion, affect and admiration (so many emotional ties and uncompromising

identifications), reconfigures the relation between

thinking and living, knowledge and love, while also expanding one's more ordinary, everyday, relationships with others. I think that the following phrase, taken from Agamben, expresses the affirmative and complex relationality of the

59 Green, I/WY, p. 250.

19

fan comportment adequately, `being-within an outside. s0 Ìn love, pieces of the self go out into objects that the lover does not control. But this means that the object also goes inside the self, creating upheaval in the inner world. '61 Fan experience, much like the being beside oneself of Cavell and Thoreau, is to be 62 both à from, ' understood as part of and apart experience. Fans, through their fandom - their weak, exposed and vulnerable relation to an outside, conditioned as it is affectively - experience themselves differently (in a sane sense). I suspect that there is, in fan comportment, a critical edge - what I refer to in each of the following chapters as `perfidious fidelity. '63 Fans, I will attempt to argue, make strategic use of the fanaticism of the fanatic, turning it against the fanatic, and in so doing create their very own participation. Each of the chapters I have written, I have written as a fan, as a lover of thought. My own experience of working with love and its knowledge confirms my suspicion that philosophical fidelity cannot be presupposed. Each of my chapters, then, attempts what Adorno suggests an essay should do, namely, confronting each thinker / thought with their / its own blind spot, `with the truth that each one intends even if it does not want to intend it. " My methodology, therefore, is consistent across each essay, bearing witness either, `to an excess of intention over the object [of thought], '65or, as Zizek puts it, `fidelity to what is in the author more than the author himself (... ), to the impulse that activates the author's endless work, '66or,

60 Agamben,

CC, p. 68. 61 Nussbaum, UT, p. 458. 62 1 am indebted to O'Sullivan

for this turn of phrase: O'Sullivan, AE, p. 40. Adorno writes similarly, 'Nothing less is asked of the thinker today than that he should be at every moment both within things and outside them. ' Adorno, MM, p. 74. 63 I am indebted to Düttmann for this turn of phrase: Düttmann, WRF, pp. 202-7. 64 Adorno, EF, p. 20.

65Adorno, EF, p. 11. 66 Zizek, Slavoj [2003], `Foreword: Hallward's

Fidelity to the Badiou Event, ' in: Hallward, 70

B, p. xii.

moreover, as Deleuze renders it, `that which he does not say in what he says. '67 In each chapter I aim to notice and explain unexplained silences in the texts under consideration. This critical enterprise is how I understand love's work.68 It is from the vantage point of Hirschhorn's art practice - concerned as it is with promoting affective, amateur and amatory attachments to philosophy, with declaring his love of knowledge, through admiration and passion - that I attempt, in Chapter One, to extend a restrictive, commonsensical and cultural studies, understanding of fandom's potential. I argue that Hirschhorn's artworks both encounter and read the lives, thoughts and works of others in a different weak, embedded and affirmative - way, all of which is differentiated from other forms of cultural participation and knowledge production. Hirschhorn's artworks are understood from a Platonic perspective - as providing a pedagogy of passion, the artist becoming a lover of knowledge and a teacher of the knowledge of love. I ask whether one can take this amatory fan relation, and by extension fans and fandom, seriously and argue that it is only by being impassioned, by admiring and being enamoured that one can take someone, something,

thought

seriously. Hirschhorn's

admiration,

love and passion,

compelled him to take the thoughts, works and lives of others seriously through the act of sculpting them. His artwork, therefore, really ought to be understood

6' Deleuze, D/, p. 139. 68 Love's work - 'the long travail and discipline of love' (Rose, LW, p. 61) - is the name given to Gillian Rose's, `passion for philosophy' (p. 102,119), as a way of life - an experimentation of the self, a process of subjectivation. It is a work for beyond the lover and the beloved there is a third partner, `the work [which] equalises the emotions, and enables the two submerged to (p. 131). The work is a 'carnival, ' a surface in series of unpredictable configurations' bacchanalian revelry of speculative thinking, à love in which each is equally teacher and taught, Lover and Beloved' (p. 131). In this work, `to live, to love, is to be failed, to forgive, to have failed, to be forgiven. (... ) [Love] denies that there is no love without power; that we are at the mercy of others and that we have others in our mercy' (p. 98). There is a necessary failure (p. 71) in love's work, 'If I am to stay alive, I am bound to continue to get love wrong, all the time, but not to cease wooing, for that is my life affair, love's work' (p. 99). For Rose, then, love is equally powerful and powerless, equally mighty and graceful (pp. 56-7, p. 74, p. 115).

21

as love's work, i.e., an active comportment, affirmative critique and affective relation. I investigate the conditions of possibility of this fan relation or emotional tie which, I claim, binds these disparate elements together.

Hirschhorn's

practice, therefore, acts much like a screen on which many competing claims may be put into play. Freud's various attempts at theorising identification - as constitutive of personal identity, as a type of sympathy, as admiration, as an unconscious common and contagious element, as cannibalistic incorporation, as either an anaclitic or narcissistic form of sexual object-choice, as a love attachment

or emotional tie - are conceptually

mapped out and critically

analysed in relation to Hirschhorn's artworks. I am, in this chapter, particularly interested in examining Freud's perplexing conceptualisation of identification as both an emotional tie and an object-choice and, by performing an exhaustive reading of it, I claim to have engendered an expanded and altogether different theory of relationality, which is, at bottom, the major aim of my thesis. Through an investigation and analysis of identification and admiration, coupled to the structures and practices of idealisation, I aim to show that no matter how much Freud's psychoanalytic theory tries to conceptually unravel these affective or emotional ties they remain inextricably bound to one another. That Freud cannot adequately

and consistently

detach

having from

being,

mine from

me,

judgements of attribution from judgements of existence, only consolidates my critique. I aim to show that identification neither constitutes nor determines identity but actually serves to disrupt and defer this act, (de)structuring it like an affect (Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe). I also hope that my first chapter sets a foundation upon which I build a more complex reading of cultural participations,

22

events and encounters - all of which have something meaningful to say with regard to fandom and the love of thought. On the one hand Chapter Two merely aims to provide a conclusive conceptual and critical commentary on fandom as it appears in the work of Adorno - as such a study has hitherto not been undertaken. This chapter, therefore, has most to say about fandom on an explicit level. On the other hand this chapter also

the

evaluates

importance

a secondary

constellation

of

concepts

-

admiration and passion, love and seriousness - has in fandom more generally. This second movement acts as a bridge between Chapters Two and Three of this thesis. Adorno's work is little used in fan studies and when it is, more often than not, this use is regrettable. My initial aim, therefore, is to redress this uncritical application of his work. I show that Adorno identifies three childish, fetishistic

or regressive, personality types whom

practice

pseudo-activity,

disrespectful

play and sadistic humour, by taking

commodities

bestially seriously: enthusiasts or fans, eager individuals and

mass culture and its

amateur experts. At a later point in this chapter, I show that Adorno's distinction is actually undermined by Adorno himself. Collectively, this trio of mass cultural consumers constitute Adorno's somewhat negative if precise understanding of fandom. Fans, perhaps, exhibit promise to resist what Adorno calls ùbiquity standardization'

but their pseudo-activity and irrational psychology (fascism /

authoritarian personality) makes them dependent, incapable of transcending this condition entirely. Fans start with co-option not options, according to Adorno's view - they identify with the aggressor, they are passively subsumed beneath the false whole, resigned to a reduced reality, and do not oppose the totalitarian

conflation of advertising and reality engendered

T3

in the culture

industry, but actually propagate and perpetuate its fantasy. Fans are framed as consumers groomed by producers (Adorno refuses to acknowledge any real difference between the two), who engage in leader worship and who suffer from blind conformity, yet I attempt to show that his personality types actually undermine this narrow perspective. Adorno's negativity for so-called popular culture must be read as a counterpoint to Benjamin's positivity, and I wish to argue that there are slippages and constructive arguments to be found in his melancholy science. To achieve this I map out Adorno's work on fanaticism, fanatics and fanatical comportments beyond mass culture in relation to dialectic of enlightenment, uncontrolled mimesis in life and art (aesthetic cultivation), Kant's distinction between enthusiasm and fanaticism, maturity and immaturity, Freud's theory of identification as an emotional tie, Kierkegaardian

love,

enthusiasm, admiration, following and inwardness. I attempt to describe how fanatics

are, inadvertently,

valued by Adorno

insofar they as exhibit -

uncompromising spirits and ideas. This radical comportment is compared with another,

the uncompromising

actually

make a difference to damaged

critical

thinker,

which

Adorno

suggests

might

life. Perhaps, then, a particular

pathology is supported by Adorno - through love and art? Fans will be positioned as amateur enthusiasts and differentiated from fanatics. Fanatical comportment, it will be shown, exhibits a certain love-cum-hatred, an intolerant and delibidinalised

love, which is similar to that witnessed in authoritarian

personality types. Such fanatical figures must learn to love (thought), and in the process, perhaps, transform a fanatical comportment into a fan comportment. I attempt to dissociate fandom from controlled or (ir)rationalised mimesis and to

24

argue that the fan, satirising the fanaticism of the uncompromising figure of the fanatic, ought to be thought anew. Following on from my second, extended, reflection on love and passion, admiration and seriousness - in Adorno's reading of Kierkegaard, specifically Chapter Three attempts to reconstruct the philosophy of Deleuze through these concepts, whilst emphasising their relation to my own conception of fandom. I argue for the importance of affective, amorous and affirmative, relations or constellations between Deleuze and those he writes of. I attempt to show that philosophy and critique necessarily pass through these concepts, and that the love of thought can be thought of in at least two ways: (1) as being indecisive; (2) as being decisive. Deleuze places great significance on both making decisions and being made by decisions, but I attempt to show that Deleuze's underlining is, perhaps, undermined by Deleuze himself. In short, I argue that the Deleuze way - the mode of existence favoured by Deleuze - has a certain applicability to fandom, albeit a complex one. To achieve this end I examine Spinoza's

understanding

destructuring

of

affect

(understood

as

an

interdisciplinary

device: interference between thought and feeling), love and

passion - relating it to Deleuze's own reading of Spinoza. I attempt to position Deleuze as a fan of Spinoza, as an impassioned admirer - both capable of loving and hating his object (Spinoza's life, works, and thought). Admiration is read as being exemplary of a perfidious fidelity, a strategic use of excess, or a twisting of it, which, I argue, illumines the relation between a fan and a fanatic. In short, I wish to show that the fan (lover of thought) hides behind the mask of the fanatic (imitators), actually doubling or folding the fanatic's fanaticism against them. In Spinoza I am particularly interested in unfolding the differences 2S

between ordinary love and intellectual Love, the latter is understood to be synonymous with Plato's love of thought, which - of course, I intend to affirm. I map

these

concepts

through

various

Deleuzian

encounters;

Deleuze's

Kierkegaard, Deleuze's Proust and Deleuze's Masoch et al. I wish to show that thought can be thought of in a new arrangement, in ever new combinations, thus,

I attempt to distinguish

two uncompromising

professional philosopher and the artisanal-philosopher-fan

critical thinkers:

the

(amorous amateur),

and I also try to distinguish between two types of affect: an affect that destructures ad infinitum (achieving little, self-destroying), and an affect wherein the destructuring remains structured (achieving much, self-enhancing).

26

Chapter One: A Psychology

Men do not always take their great thinkers

of Fandom

seriously,

even when they profess

most to admire them. 69

Introduction

I am interested by Hirschhorn70

in introducing, charged

conceptually

with an intense

and critically,

quota of affect,

only those artworks which connect

and

relate to others. I wish to focus on the relation between Hirschhorn and those others at once explicitly and implicitly tied to his practice. A practice, I claim, which both encounters and reads the lives and works of others in a different, weak and affective, way. In short, I will investigate Hirschhorn's pantheon of proper names - conditioned by the concepts; admiration, passion and love for ìnfamous men'" and women, and perhaps more importantly the conditions of possibility of this fan relation or èmotional tie'72 which, I claim, binds these disparate elements together. This exposition of Hirschhorn's fandom will be succeeded by a tracing of the consequences drawn from a critique of Hirschhorn's practice. To achieve this aim it is necessary to take a detour through a particular system of thought that 69 Freud, GP, p. 91. 70 b. 1957, Bern, Switzerland. Currently living and working in Paris. " This is to appropriate a title from an essay by Foucault, wherein he sets out to write an intensive, passionate and fragmented, 'mood-based and subjective, ' 'anthology of existences, ' of lowly and degenerate lives, as they are brought into being via contact with discourses of power. See: Foucault, LIM, pp. 157-9. Deleuze speaks enthusiastically of Foucault's text and speculates that there one is able to locate Foucault's decisive turn from an understanding of the by power relations toward a resistant subject beyond subject conditioned power and knowledge - conditioned by the affect (passion) alone. Deleuze writes, 'Foucault doesn't use the word subject as though he's talking about a person or a form of identity, but talks about "subjectification" as a process, and "Self" as a relation (a relation to oneself). ' Deleuze, N, p. 92. 72Freud, GP, p. 91.

27

posits emotional tie(s) at its heart: Freudian psychoanalytic theory. I will argue that Hirschhorn's work with others (and by extension, fandom) cannot, only, be thought within the (dis)comfortable confines of this discourse. To achieve this I wish to exhaustively analyse this exhausted analysis, pushing it further than it would like. By so doing I do not wish to decouple Hirschhorn's work from this tradition, abandon it, nor collapse the differences between positions. Merely, I wish to complicate their relation through complicating relationality itself by investigating, identifications, demands,

precisely,

the

characteristic

affective of any

resonances, theory

of

emotional

relationality.

tie(s)

and

Hirschhorn's

in particular for a practice of cultural participation grounded in

fandom, functioning

specifically via the non-specificity

of affect73 is quite

different, I claim, and necessitates further serious thought. These demands will form the basis for a decipherment of the prehistory contained in Freud's phrase used as the epigraph heading this chapter. For there is, I sense, a commonly held understanding by which both the knowledge production of fans is overlooked and devalued - considered light thought in contradistinction

to serious thought, amateur not professional - while their

73 àn

unscientific concept. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 85. It is true, they refer to love, but does not affect share in this equivocality? Massumi states the aporia of thinking and writing affect, `The problem is that there is no cultural-theoretical specific to affect. ' vocabulary Massumi, PV, p. 27. Affect is neither synonymous with èmotion, ' nor, the `passions, ' yet Massumi does lump it together with ìntensity. ' The difference being that affect is ùnqualified' energy -'it is not ownable or recognisable and is thus resistant to critique. ' Massumi, PV, p. 28. Emotion and passion are, inversely, qualified and I assume wide open to critique. A similar plea for understanding the affect is made in a fan studies essay, `we know far too little about the nature - and possibilities - of varieties of affection, attachment, sentiment and interest, as they are manifested in people's lives. ' Jenson, AA, p. 25. This plea is answered, by another essay in the same collection, authored by Grossberg. Although masquerading as an insight into the affective dimension of fandom, Grossberg's essay -I think - refuses the possibility of analysing the fan impulse, the affect, 'the generation of energy and passion, ' and is therefore of little interest to my own study. See: Grossberg, FH, pp. 50-65. Jenkins outlines the problem `So I would say that my entire work has been about intensity and emotional accordingly, but what I lack, and still do -I haven't seen anyone later introduce one - is an engagement, adequate language to describe emotion or affect in theoretical terms that would be acceptable within academic discourses... ' Jenkins, F, p. 26.

2R

participation with culture, more generally, is understood to be passionate and 75 fanatical not and without reason. This pathological74 critical and measured would be the conclusion Freud would arrive at; that to admire a thought, a thing, another, is to be seized by that other, thing, thought. Hence the phrases, `starryeyed, ' `bewitched, ' ùnblinking, ' which connote fan's ìmmaturity, ' i.e., the inability to think without the thought of another acting as barometer for their own thinking, an exterior model or outside orientation for thought. 76 Accordingly, fans dogmatically and uncritically will their own domination. Yet, I will argue the following paradox: that in order to take some thing, some one, some event seriously, i.e., to practice serious thought, it is necessary to be shocked or seized by it, and that this shock is motivated, that is to say created and reflected upon within the register of affect, of which admiration is certainly a type. (... ) Admiration is the best thing we have; (... ) What would man be, above all what would an artist be, without admiration, enthusiasm, absorption, devotion to something not himself, something much too large to be himself, yet something to which he feels most intimately

74 This is the subject of Jenson's essay, which argues that fans are often and unfavourably described as `deranged, ' `deviant, ' 'excessive. ' Òbsessed individual' fans and the 'hysterical crowd' are two models available when pathologizing fans. See: Jenson, AA, p. 9. Adorno takes and Freud the second. I am more interested in what up the first of these characterizations Jenson has to say of the affective comportment of fans, which I think comes close to what I argue - in my Introduction - is important to Cavell, 'But is a scholar, collector, aficionado ìn love' with the object of his or her desire? Is it the existence of passion that defines the distinction between fan and aficionado, between dangerous and benign, between deviance and normalcy? Unemotional, detached, 'cool' behavior is seen as more worthy and admirable than emotional, passionate, `hot' behavior. ' Jenson, AA, p. 20. That there is not a difference in kind between fan and academic but only a difference of degree, will be further elaborated upon. 75 In his pioneering fan studies text, Jenkins usefully lists seven stereotypes used to debase fans as: (1) stupid consumers, (2) purveyors of non-official knowledge, (3) inhabitants of trash culture, (4) obsessives, (5), asexual, (6) 'infantile, emotionally and intellectually immature, ' (7) confusing fantasy and reality. Jenkins, TP, p. 10. According to the Pietist Kant, one suffers from affects and affections, 'To be subject to affects and passions is probably always an illness of mind because both affect and passion, exclude the sovereignty of reason. ' Kant, A, p. 155

76See: Kant, WE, p. 54.

29

allied. (... ) Admiration is the source of love, it is love itself - which would be no deep love, no passion, and above all, without soul, if it " for its incapable doubt, if it object. of could not suffer were Admiration,

understood as that which occurs between subjects, ideas and

things - `the capacity to love and learn, the power of assimilation, adaptation, transmutation,

continual personal development'78 - regularly passes without

critical note yet, I will argue, when considered together with its aforementioned counterparts

one encounters something very special indeed. I identify this

`something very special' with fandom as an occasion for `(s)elective affinities, ' or in a Freudian vernacular as, èmotional ties, ' so many affective events, encounters and relations. To rephrase my paradox: love opens oneself up to an outside, it makes participation possible in the first instance, yet when this love is subjected to serious thought, when it is determined, recognised and identified, when love is cognitively

chosen

the intensity

of love withers

away,

becomes

diluted

and

diffused. 79 1 claim, it is possible to write through and with admiration, love and

77 Mann, RWR, p. 353. I am indebted to Düttmann for bringing this text to my attention. To love and admire, as Düttmann powerfully argues, is to take up an ethical position where one opens oneself up to others, receives others and gives to others, an act and art of transforming oneself without referring this otherness to oneself for gain as is the move made in a political, possessive, position. Düttmann, SDR, unpublished mss. 78 Mann, RWR, p. 354. 79 This paradox is concisely formulated by Rose, 'If the Lover retires too far, the light of love is extinguished and the Beloved dies; if the Lover approaches too near the Beloved, she is effaced by the love and ceases to have an independent existence. The Lovers must leave a distance, a boundary, for love: then they approach and retire so that love may suspire. This may be heard as the economics of Eros. ' See: Rose, L IN, p. 133. Is this experiencing of a threshold, this continuous traversal between immanent implication and transcendental reflection, precisely the economy of affect understood via Agamben's own understanding of 'being-within an outside? ' One must accept being bounded and unbounded when philosophising (living and loving), one needs both fusion and resistance, both nearness and distance, both interpretation and excess. The formula either/or, does not function effectively within this economy. Düttmann argues, in a similar vein, that the speculative movement of dialectical thought finds itself in an externality, 'As a limit, every positing keeps something excessive within bounds and at the same time boundlessly exposes itself to something excessive. ' Düttmann, PE, p. 52.

V)

passion, and it is one of my tasks to argue and verify that such affects do not block but are integral to serious thought. Ergo, fandom itself becomes a kind of resistant and strategically tense knowledge or aporia that points to the necessary crises of there being a given and pure serious thought independent of the playfulness of the thinkers desires, interests and experiences. Such a paradoxical argument may be thought of as two sides of a coin with only a single side, much like the surreal disk Borges describes

in his short story or tall tale of the same name,

The Disk. 80 On this

single-sided coin may be found the inscription `love's labour's lost' while also, "" `love's labour's Love is all too often thought of within, the on same side, won.

`the logic of either/or, of consequence and antinomy. '82Accordingly, love is; either lazy or laborious, either blind or clear-sighted, either eros or agape, either narcissism

or altruism,

either self-preservation

or self-denial,

either passive or

active - but never both these attributes at once. À choice is still made, but only between totalities. '83 `What people cannot endure is the attempt to evade the either/or. '84 `That is the discourse of the "healthy" subject; either / or. But the amorous subject replies (... ): I am trying to slip between the two members of the 80 Borges, Jorge Luis [1975], The Book of Sand, Tr. Andrew Hurley, London, Penguin, 1998, pp. 86-8. 81 An plays of the same name, which as well as offering a detailed, allusion to Shakespeare's delightful and not disconnected plethora of linguistic witticism and wordplay, parapraxes and implies in love is both that puns - not lost on a `friend' of psychoanalysis also a state of one captured - both in thought (critical reflection) and action (labour) - and liberated through works intelligence). Tellingly, no text survives for Love's Labour's Won. See: of love (emotional Shakespeare, William [1997], The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, Ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al., New York, W. W. Norton and Company, pp. 733-803. 82 Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 31. 83Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, Cumming, p. 200. 'The only choice is either to join in or to be left behind. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, Cumming, p. 148. Indeed, one has to reach as far back as the sixteenth century `metaphysical' poet Donne for a more dialectical comprehension of love, `Love's not so pure, and abstract, as they use ¶ To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse, ¶ But as all else, being elemented too, ¶ Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do. ' See: Donne, John [1633], 'Loves Growth, ' in: Gardner, Helen (Ed. ) [1985], The Metaphysical Poets, London, Penguin, p. 67.

84Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 198. 31

alternative. '85 1 am interested in investigating

both `positive' and `negative

capability, ' in other words, `the capacity of being in uncertainties, ' the discursive interstice, which I discern in the curiosity of and choices made by fans (amorous 86 subjects), on an affective plateau. As I hope to argue, the affect, which I wish to attribute to fans, in a way assists the fan's choice of object, however, in a certain way the exact same movement allows an object to choose the fan, and, as such, the possibility of choice is removed. As Kierkegaard once made categorical, the task is not to choose either / or, one way or the other, but to deliberate over both land, these decisions - to `continually keep [one] self on the spear tip of the moment of choice. '87 Choose choice! The objective of such a purposiveness without purpose is not to create or restore harmony, to unite disparate and contradictory elements in a totality, to gather non-identity under the sign of identity, difference subjugated to the same, but, rather, to allow the immanent tensions to play out in chaotic conflict - allowing, in turn, for the possibility of both critical, serious and playful questioning. My question, my entire project even -a sketched answer to which will be offered in the reply I give here - is therefore; can fans and fandom be taken seriously? 88

85 Barthes, LD, p. 62. 86 Also worthy of note, here, is what Rose writes regarding method and motivation, `philosophy is a passion. (... ) To be a philosopher you need only three things. First, infinite intellectual eros: endless curiosity about everything. Second, the ability to pay attention: to be rapt by what is in front of you without seizing it yourself, the care of concentration (... ). Third, acceptance of pathlessness (aporia): that there may be no solutions to questions, only the clarification of their Eros, attention, acceptance. ' I wish to acknowledge to Rose's statement. my indebtedness thinking and can only hope that one day I may ascend the dizzying heights attained by her heroine, Miss Marple, where one may be allowed `to pass unnoticed, ' while actively moving `from loss to grace, ' becoming 'the sublime in the pedestrian. ' See, in order of appearance: Rose, P, pp. 31,42,17,18. See also: Plato, CD, Republic, VII, 535 (p. 767). 8' Kierkegaard, EO//, p. 163. 88 Düttmann thinks (and dances) through the implications seriously and imaginatively and complications of fidelity and event in the writings of Badiou, to which I am indebted. See: Düttmann, WRF, pp. 202-7. It could be argued that taking seriously things that have no right or merit to be taken seriously is the scandalous comportment fans apply to culture and its objects. Jenkins makes this point, see: Jenkins, TP, pp. 16-8.

'37

(Love's) Work: Hirschhorn's Altars, Kiosks and Monuments.

An altar is a personal, artistic statement. I want to fix my heroes. The altars attempt to memorialize a person who is dead and who was loved by someone else. It is important to testify to one's love, one's attachment. Heroes can't change. (... ) I choose locations that are not in the center or a strategic point of a city, just any place, for people may die anywhere. (...) The form of these four altars comes from spontaneous

altars,

which one may see here or there,

made

by

people who wish to give momentary homage to someone who dies on the spot, by accident, suicide, murder, or heart attack (Gianni Versace, John F. Kennedy Jr, Olaf Palme). (... ) In this wild mixture [of

forms], the love and attachment to the deceased

is expressed

without any aesthetic preoccupation. It is this personal commitment that interests me. It comes from the heart. It is pure energy. One is not preoccupied message

with the form or quality of the elements,

to be conveyed.

only with the

(... ) I have chosen artists that I love - for

their work and for their lives; they are not cynical, they are committed. The forms of these altars, which are profane and not 89 form based on weakness. religious, convey a visual Hirschhorn's four Altars, purportedly, provide a site for both the preservation (Adorno) and the communicability (Cavell) of his love-attachments, they are

8) Hirschhorn, Thomas [2000], Àltars, ' in: org/publications/hirsch/statement. www. http: //thegalleriesatmoore. 2006).

31

shtml.

(Accessed

5

May

90 Hirschhorn's professed weakness for the in amorous amateurism. exercises thought of these four others - his fandom - is what matters. Hirschhorn's artworks, therefore, may be described as love's work or, their failure to become a labour of love seriously admits the possibility of questioning what it means to attest to admiration, love and passion. I chose [Bachmann] for her writings, for her magnificent poetry and for her beauty. Her work manifests itself as an exchange value in the I Bachmann. fan. I fan Ingeborg I'm I that that am a of a assert sense give something, I uncover myself, I assert. The fan decides on his 91 for personal reasons. attachment Hirschhorn's fandom, the affective commitment expressed in his artworks, is intended to be contagious, ìntoxicating' and pedagogical, offering knowledge 92 Hirschhorn's oft discourse. determinist structures of outside recognised and repeated musings on method, Ì link what has no correlation, '93Ì liked bringing together what shouldn't be brought together, '94his obsessive and amateurishly crafted assemblages, his `weak affinities, '95all signal a demand for mapping, in ' `heteroclitic, the evident at once elusive yet arranging and uncovering discourse,

which

is elsewhere

called

an archaeology

of the

`positive

unconscious of knowledge. '96Hirschhorn has become a lover of thought and a

90 Piet Mondrian-Altar, 1998, Ingeborg Bachmann-Altar, 1997, Otto Freundlich-Altar, Raymond Carver-Altar, 1999. 91 See: Hirschhorn, THb, p. 35. 92 See: Hirschhorn, /, p. 397. Hirschhorn in conversation with the author, September Paris. 93 Hirschhorn, EY, p. 93. 94 Hirschhorn, THb, p. 18.

1998,

2003,

95 See: Hirschhorn, WA. 96 The kept [Chinese Encyclopaedia] from Borges Foucault's, `[t]hat me passage phrases are laughing a long time, though not without a certain uneasiness that I found hard to shake off. Perhaps because there arose in its wake the suspicion that there is a worse kind of disorder I mean the than that of the incongruous, the linking together of things that are inappropriate;

'14

teacher of the knowledge of love providing, as Hal Foster suggests, à species of passionate pedagogy in which the lessons on offer concern love as much as knowledge. 797 It is, perhaps,

interesting to note that Hirschhorn

contradicts

his own

understanding of the force driving these displays of affection - the emotional tie(s) of a fan. In an interview, where Hirschhorn discusses the eight proper names that make up his Kiosks, he avers, `They are artists and writers that I admire and whose work I love, '98whereas,

in a later artist's statement,

he writes

of his relation to Warhol thus, Ì love Andy Warhol with a love that is exclusionist and egoistic. It is not respect or admiration that I have for Warhol and his work, it is love. '99This confusion prompts two questions: is the emotional tie of a fan conditioned by admiration or love, and what does this do to thought? I make monuments for philosophers because they have something to say. Philosophers can give the courage to think, the pleasure to reflect. I like the strong sense in philosophical writings, the questions about human existence and how humans can think. I like full-time thinking. I like philosophy, even when I don't understand the third part of their reflexion. I'm interested in non-moralist, logical, political thinking.

I'm interested in ethical questions. That's why I chose

philosophers to make Monuments. But the monuments for these

disorder in which fragments of a large number of dimension, without law or geometry, of the heteroclite; literal, etymological sense: in such a state, things are different from one another that it is impossible to find common locus beneath them all. ' Foucault, OT, p. xix. `" Foster, Al, p. 6.

possible orders glitter separately in the and that word should be taken in its most 'laid', `placed', àrranged' in sites so very a place of residence for them, to define a

98 Hirschhorn, 1999, /, p. 398. Robert Walser-Kiosk, 1999, Ingeborg Bachmann-Kiosk, Emmanuel Bove-Kiosk, 2000, Meret Oppenheim-Kiosk, 2000, Emil Nolde-Kiosk, 2001, Fernand Leger-Kiosk, 2001, Otto Freundlich-Kiosk, 2002, Liubov Popova-Kiosk, 2002. 99 Hirschhorn, LW ý5

philosophers are conceived as community commitments in contrast to the altars which are personal commitments. Something beautiful that human beings are capable of, is thinking, is reflection, the ability to make brains work. '00 Hirschhorn's Monuments monumentalise the life and works of philosophers Hirschhorn claims to be a fan of. 101The question is to what extent do these artworks - Hirschhorn's productive fandom - enter into the thought of the four proper names, which entitle the works? Without an expansive, professorial and Hirschhorn

to loving

professional,

knowledge

passionately,

without having performed extensive textual research, without

of the thinkers

professes

so

being able to give an overview, Hirschhorn monumentalises them, regardless. 102 I want to make monuments which bring activity, the activity of reflection, of thinking. I want to make monuments coming from below, made out of admiration, out of love. (...) I try to give a visual form to the memory of someone or something, and question the reasons for such an homage. (... ) mine are monuments for non-specialists, but also for those who are professionals, or amateurs. I want to give '03 both. to equal access

100Hirschhorn, SM, p. 5. 101 Spinoza Monument, 1999, De/euze Monument, 2000, Bataille Monument, 2002, Gramsci Monument, not yet realised. 102This critical observation is, perhaps, better expressed in the following sentence, Àcting much like the student who mentions intellectual heavy-weights of the canon, people he/she thinks will legitimate his/her position, but without doing the background analysis that demonstrates the support, the artist expects us to take on faith that his relationship with these persons is profound, simply by his decision to commemorate them so publicly. ' Estep, RH, p. 86. Estep's is a fair reading and faith certainly has something to do with fandom. Estep's argument positions Hirschhorn's weak knowledge in alignment with the difficulty of understanding Lacan. The trick i.e., to fail. This lack of but to understand one cannot understand, is not to understand theorisation and its frustrating effect on the viewer is also addressed in: Vergne, Philippe [1999], `Thomas Hirschhorn, You Are So Annoying, ' in: Hirschhorn, P, pp. 138- 44. 103Hirschhorn, EY, p. 93.

16

Again, the question is whether or not Hirschhorn's work with others has something serious and meaningful to say or whether or not Hirschhorn is an artist who simply makes use of the exchange-value of all the proper names entitling his works? Of course, I would argue that Hirschhorn's `weak, ' base knowledge of and love for the thought of those others implicated in his practice is both meaningful and serious. 104Hirschhorn's love and admiration, I claim, synchronistically creates an event, an emotional tie, which may be understood as the `common loci, ' particular to fandom -a

playful, serious and critical

(dis)position. This conception immediately establishes and facilitates, according to him, spaces for and of serious reflection and `full-time' thinking. Now, Hirschhorn's practice may well fail to achieve all the things he claims for it yet, it does allow for these questions.

That said, I would like to remain within the confines of this criticism, taking Hirschhorn's apparent non-seriousness seriously. Indeed, just this charge was made by Isaac Julien who, during a conference, observed of Hirschhorn's engagement with Bataille a form of ìntellectual identification. '105Julien was less interested in the form of Hirschhorn's Monuments and/or their art historical antecedents Hirschhorn's

and more concerned

with the conditions

of possibility

of

relations with these proper names. Julien argued that Hirschhorn's

choice of (lost) subject, Bataille here, produced a kind of reflexive glory that Hirschhorn must be aware of and necessarily have benefited from. Therefore, the ìntellectual' of the identification, according to Julien, positions Hirschhorn within a familiar, exceptional and exemplary, fantasmal community. Fantasmal,

104Jenkins argues that fans, 'argu[e] from a position of weakness. ' Jenkins, TP, p. 21. 105'Field Work: Reports from the Fields of Visual Culture, ' Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 16 - 17 May 2003.

37

for all the figures with which Hirschhorn works are no longer present and, as such,

can

only populate

Hirschhorn's

106 Hirschhorn's psyche.

fan(tastic)

constellation of cultural stars signified for Julien a knowing acknowledgement of the valorisation these names hold in the contemporary (art) world. For example, by referencing someone like Foucault Hirschhorn's practice is trading in the cultural capital and cache the proper name `Foucault' connotes, its exchangevalue, the effect of which is that Hirschhorn himself becomes associated with Foucault and thus more culturally visible and accredited. 107

Both Affective and Intellectual Identification

In light of Julien's

criticism, which I will take seriously

and extend, and in an

attempt to answer some of the questions outlined above, it is logical to turn to tradition - exposing the fabric and operation of identification as it emerges and is 106Although

in English this spelling is incorrect, I prefer to keep the French 'f' and drop the Greek and Latin 'ph, ' to create continuity between 'fan' and 'fantasy, ' a connection I choose to theory whom valorise unlike many commentators on both fans and fandom and psychoanalytic the two with the aim being to position the fan as 'in control' of their prefer to differentiate fandom. On this view fans must remain wedded to the real, recognising their fandom so as to resist, or critically encounter the coercive culture industries. I ask simply, why this cannot be Why does fantasy block change in reality? Adorno comes to my performed fantastically? rescue, 'Is not each stirring of fantasy engendered by desire which, in displacing the elements of what exists, transcends it without betrayal? (... ) Fantasy alone, today consigned to the realm of the unconscious and proscribed from knowledge as a childish, injudicious rudiment, can establish the relation between objects which is the irrevocable source of all judgement: should fantasy be driven out, judgement too, the real act of knowledge, is exorcised. ' Adorno, MM, pp. 122-3. 107 Julien's critique is clearly influenced by Bourdieu's notion of accruing and exchanging 'cultural capital' et al., as put forward in: Bourdieu, D. It is worth noting, here, that fans make just in this text. See: Bourdieu, D, p. 386. Commentators two appearances on fans and fandom however, Bourdieu's for enthusiasm often cite Bourdieu, work retains a sociological human experience, which, in the final analysis, can only fall short of lived schematising its complexity, multifariousness For a discussion of experience, and inherent contradictions. Bourdieu's reception in fan studies see the following essay: Fiske, John [1992], 'The Cultural Economy of Fandom, ' in: Lewis, AA, pp. 30-49. For a collection of essays, which are united in their collective enterprise of describing, organising and explaining (away), the enigmatic and incommensurable character of fandom see: Harris, TF. I am not interested in constructing a discourse shaped by so-called found patterns taken from observed structures and practices, be they sociological, ethnographic etc., rather, I am interested in deliberation, which does not presuppose knowledge of the terms under investigation.

3R

implemented in a particular system of thought. I wish to focus on the role of identification in Freudian psychoanalytic theory taking into account both the intellectual and affective economies operating between Hirschhorn and those others with whom he works and Hirschhorn's own amorous confessions and amateur

displays.

It must be declared

that in no way am

I applying

psychoanalysis to Hirschhorn, and his work, nor is his fandom to be understood as illustrative or explanative of psychoanalytical structures, particular concepts, his is in Hirschhorn is the techniques. nor work, position of analysand, not or 108 far I the I throne the am pulpit of analyst. sovereign or priestly ascend while from claiming that Hirschhorn's work is symptomatic of some manifest, latent or repressed, clinical disorder. If there is no (psycho) analysis happening, then why privilege psychoanalysis?

108I feel required to differentiate my analysis from another theoretical engagement with fandom Sandvoss, / fantasy etc., read through the lens of psychoanalysis. and fan's identification though warning of the pitfalls of such endeavours, performs this exact anathema, i.e., applying to a fan and using it illustratively, which I oppose vehemently. See: 'Chapter 4, psychoanalysis The Inner Fan: Fandom and Psychoanalysis, ' in: Sandvoss, F, pp. 67-94. It is also worth mentioning that, although his book is by far the most interesting economical analysis of fandom, to merely invert or mirror Bourdieu's sociological theory of consumption is to remain forever under its spell. Distinctions between producers (objects of fandom) and consumers (fans), and the ideological control of the former over the latter, and/or the latter's subversion of the former and/or the latter's internalisation of the structuring ideological hierarchies of the former, positions theories of fandom as always already locked into power relations, populated by subject positions at best. Logically one arrives at an impasse, an object forever presupposes a subject. forces of While I accept Sandvoss' positioning of fandom as a mirror in which socio-political in the relationship consumption battle and blur the distinction between use- and exchange-value between fans and objects of fandom, I am not content to rely on ruptures, Sandvoss writes, `little breakages' (notably that there remain 'gaps' in the own insistence echoing Adorno's homogenising culture industry), nor am I willing to accept that fandom's value lies in its `negative potential' only. This reliance on the mirror, ultimately adds up to a return, a repeat, a Lyotard phrases this Narcissus. of the repressive subject par excellence: reintroduction dependence succinctly, à sick person does not get better looking in the mirror. ' It is also worth noting that Jenkins and Sandvoss see fandom differently. For Jenkins fans relation to culture is 'inflective' permitting possibility and change, whereas for Sandvoss it is reflective making this possibility impossible. See: Jenkins, TP, p. 23. I disagree with both views. It is the task of this chapter to agree with Sandvoss' first theorisation of fandom, i.e., its complication of use- and in the capitalist mode of production yet, I will go further, by affirming a exchange-value transformation of self, i.e., its indiscernibility, understood as the reduction of 'aesthetic distance' (Sandvoss' phrase) in relation to the object of fandom on the register of affect as precisely a critical position worthy of the name.

39

Without anticipating the dynamics of my argument, I feel, identification, not for identification by Freud fully defined is trying, nowhere wont of -

resists

identification. However, much of Freud's later systematisation of psychoanalytic theory

in describing -

personality and subjectivity,

in particular - relies

substantially

on it. Freud is surely one of the foremost thinkers of the

unthinkable,

an idol or ideal of thinking the outside of thought, and the

insurmountable in thought - all of which I value. 109By attempting an exhaustive expose of Freud's exhausted analysis, then, I wish to show and champion the fact that identification remains unthought within his system - disrupting and dehis be taken to Freud to it. I that think extreme, resisted, needs structuring criticised immanently and, finally, forced to transgress all those taboos he himself could not. "o The claim that identification is only ever ambiguously defined by Freud, that its theorisation is inadequate, àn enigma is left in the air, ' floating `failure, impasse, "' its is ' I antecedents. not without must admit or suspense, diligent

Laplanche, a

Freudian, writes in his, Life and Death in Psychoanalysis,

that

identification, `remains either too simplistic or too vague, as though it were being

109 Freud, concerning the major shibboleth separating psychoanalysis and philosophy, writes, 'The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental (... ) consciousness [is] a quality of the psychical (... ) To most people premise of psycho-analysis who have been educated in philosophy the idea of anything psychical which is not also conscious is so inconceivable that it seems to them absurd and refutable simply by logic. I believe this is only because they have never studied the relevant phenomena of hypnosis and is incapable of solving the problems of dreams dreams (... ) The psychology of consciousness and hypnosis. ' Freud, E/, p. 13. 10 I am in agreement with Cohen's entertaining and revelatory approach to reading Freud in the following lines, which although particular to dreams can also be used to expressed is that it's invocate the aporia facing any exegetical effort, `The paradox of interpretation complete only when it runs up against the impossibility of completion. (... ) In drawing out its possible meanings, we neither resolve nor explain it, but simply reveal the unknowable and excessive sources from which it might emerge. ' See: Cohen, HRF, pp. 42-3. 111Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, UDA, p. 196.

40

used to mask under a single rubric phenomena which are quite diverse. '12 I would counter this observation by suggesting that it was Freud himself who first realised his theory was too vague. 1' Identifications, according to Freud, remain ìnsufficiently-known processes, ' which are `hard to describe. '14 And it is Freud's indefinite and indeterminate vagaries, not those of his disciples, with which I wish to work and expose. It can be argued that psychoanalysis relies rather heavily on identification, serving as it does to condition and even constitute the human personality, subject, 1' or ègo' itself. I might venture to speculate that identification is the `royal road' to identity, as dreams are to the unconscious (a sovereign right of way which never arrives at its destination, Identification,

a noun, is here understood

but I get ahead of myself). reflexively,

a pronoun, as an

ìdentification of oneself with'16 an other. Identification

is an act between

subjects, one subject acting on and reacting to an other, that is to say it is an

112Laplanche, LDP, p. 79. 113 Freud excuses himself on several occasions in his text, Group Psychology, the most interesting apology being the following, `We are very well aware that we have not exhausted the (... ) and that we have consequently nature of identification left part of the riddle of group formations untouched. A far more fundamental and comprehensive psychological analysis would have to intervene at this point. A path leads from identification by way of imitation to empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by means of which we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another mental life. Moreover there is still much to be explained in the manifestations of existing identifications. ' Freud, GP, p. 110. This rupture at the heart of the Freudian system, which I will map, is also identified by Evans who writes, 'Identification (... ) is thus a concept of central importance in psychoanalytic theory. However, it is also a concept which raises important theoretical problems. One of the most important of these problems, which Freud himself struggled with, is the difficulty of establishing the precise relationship between identification and object-love. ' Between who and how we love, and what we love - between being and having, in essence. See: Evans, Dylan [1996], An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, London, Routledge, pp. 80-1.

114Freud, GP, p. 104.

]]5

`(... ) it may be useful to recall that the word subject appears only rarely in Freud, who preferred to speak of the "ego, " the "id, " the "superego, " or of the "conscious" and the "unconscious. "' For an introduction to subjectivity in Freud, both complex and simple, see the following essay: 'The Freudian Subject: From Politics to Ethics, ' in: Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel [1991], The Emotional Tie: Psychoanalysis, Mimesis, and Affect, Tr. Douglas Brick et al., Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992, pp. 15-35. 116Laplanche and Pontalis, LP, p. 205. 41

attempt to define the quality of the unconscious relations between subjects. Identification

is an encounter that can be thought of differently, either as

imitation operative on a mimetic register or as sympathy functioning on an alternative register. Laplanche and Pontalis define Freudian identification as a, Psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed,

wholly or

partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified. "' This is differentiated from the action of identifying, i.e., to identify, to recognise, to categorise and to cognize an object, though both systems work within the limits of the same. That is to say, both are fully reliant on a conception of identity

that

psychoanalytic

defines

itself,

as

oneself

(philosophical

introspection

or

primary infantile narcissism) by that which it is not, through

alterity, opposition, negation - negative determination or positive negation. Freud is more interested in the former, familial or intersubjective

act of

psychical identification. This homogenisation of heterogeneous phenomena, i.e., identification, does seem to be processual and relational rather than discrete and enclosed in terms of its operation, that is to say dynamic not descriptive. It is figured as a psychological mechanism and therefore not so figurative at all. 118A seriously scientific phenomenon, then, traversing subjects and oscillating between subjects -a kind of psychological relation that ultimately invests and influences the subject (ego) throughout

their conscious

and

"' Ibid. ""

Cohen

correctly identifies Freud's philological vocabulary can't conceal - indeed only accentuates it describes. ' Cohen, HRF, p. 24.

42

misdemeanour, disturbing the -

'The dry, quasi-scientific indeterminacy of the object

unconscious life. If an other is thought of as a mould or paradigm, then what can be said to happen in the psychical leap or throw (Freud, at one point, refers to identification being caught as one may catch a cold), of identification is, according

to Freud, the casting of one subject from this mould, or a

transformation of self, which produces a resemblance, a double, or a similarity in part or in whole between the subject and its other. Subjects become identical and thus other to their own subjectivity, or have something that is in common, or identical between them. 19 Identification goes through a variety of reformulations in Freud's thinking, which I will attend to here. There are at least three independent models, or orientations identification takes in Freud's oeuvre. Identification first appears in an invested, formulated and theoretical, manner in Freud's, 1900, text, The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud conceives of identification in his analysis of the notorious dream of the butcher's wife - as the ability of hysterical patients to see the world from another point of view, with a different set of eyes. This positions identification as a type of sympathy - symptomatic of pathological disorders - in which one subject takes the place of another, feels-with another, or feels in common with an other. Freud expresses this in the following lines, (... ) she had put herself in her friend's place, or, as we might say, that she had ìdentified' herself with her friend. (...) What is the meaning of hysterical identification? It requires a somewhat lengthy explanation. Identification

is a highly important factor in the mechanism

of

119Nancy is undoubtedly the most major voice in terms of theorising a relational ontology, or identifying the division that lies at the heart of sharing, and/or that there is always a `between' in community. See: Nancy, Jean-Luc [1986], The Inoperative Community, Ed. Peter Connor, Trs. Peter Connor et al., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1991. See also: Nancy, JeanLuc [1996], Being Singular Plural, Tr. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000. 43

hysterical

symptoms.

symptoms

not only their own experiences but those of a large

It enables

patients

to

express

in their

number of other people; it enables them, as it were, to suffer on behalf of a whole crowd of people and to act all the parts in a play single-handed. I shall be told that this is not more than the familiar hysterical imitation, the capacity of hysterics to imitate any symptoms in other people that may have struck their attention - sympathy, as it were, intensified to the point of reproduction. (... ) identification is not simple imitation but assimilation on the basis of a similar aetiological pretension;

it expresses a resemblance

and is derived from a

common element which remains in the unconscious. "' What is of immediate interest is that Freud views identification

as an

embodiment of an unconscious common element, as if this non-representable characteristic,

which caused the patient to become

hysterical, could be

psychically transferred - thrown (ject) and caught (contagion) - between patients and, as such, become in common between them. Freud terms this `psychical infection, ' it is fantastical properly speaking, and I prefer to translate this movement as affect. Identification is, accordingly, affects that are inferred unconsciously

by others, or an affect, which both affects and is affected.

Identification is, on this evidence, a sign standing for an unconscious common element, a displaced element and/or a wish for a common element between

120Freud, ID, pp. 149-50. It is important to note that the earliest two appearances identification makes in Freud's published texts are in his letters to Fleiss, where he discusses feminine identification only. It must also be recorded that Freud viewed identification from a particularly Indeed, his entire theory of identification could be said to promote phallocentric perspective. normative heterosexuality as is evident in his writings on homosexuality and Oedipus. Feminine identification before the publication in 1912/1913 of, Totem and Taboo, is considered synonymous with hysteria.

44

subjects. A kind of unconscious, or virtual image of thought, as it were? 121 These parallactic psychical mise-en-scenes are the basis for being in common between subjects, and according to Freud the aetiology of their symptoms (if they are unhealthy, hysterical, patients). This unconscious common element, or affect as I render it, does seem to faithfully trace Hirschhorn's earlier assertion that the energy harnessed in his works - his fandom - may affect, intoxicate, radiate and implicate others. Can this contagion be caught, and if so will it poison or cure? Does fandom have a similar capacity for assimilation, and if so are all fans hysterics? But this is to pathologize fans, to treat them as patients, and I do not believe that Hirschhorn's work with others stems from a sickness. Freud goes on to speculate that this common element, more often than not, has at its root sexuality. That this common element should be thought of as sexual, i.e., that identification could therefore be traced back to some historical infantile sexual experience, will be explicated further in my analysis. At this point,

however,

assimilations,

I wish to remain with the idea that identifications

are

not mere mimicry or imitations, at once integration and a

commonality.

12' This is an allusion to Deleuze, though it goes further. I do not intend to discuss the role of identification in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory but it seems remiss not to mention Lacan's famous quip, `What one cannot keep outside, one always keeps an image of inside. Identification with the love-object is as silly as that. ' Lacan, SX/, p. 243. Identification, a silly thing for Lacan, takes place in the imaginary order like the ego itself - overpopulated as it and, is by fantastical images is be to trusted. Imaginary identifications connect with what Lacan not calls an ideal-ego and are differentiated from symbolic identifications that connect with an egoideal. The former, being illusionary, lack the symbolic structure basically language and law that the latter make use of. The Lacanian subject can be terrorised by both the ideal-ego (practicing self-deception as witnessed in the 'mirror phase') and the ego-ideal (the gap between myself and my ideal (Father) is too great to be bridged). In an imaginary identification lack is not recognised, which leads to a greater loss, and in a symbolic identification lack is all too recognisable!

45

Identification is further developed by Freud in two later works122where it is associated

with

èating well, )123 which

is to say with the

cannibalistic

incorporation of the totem meal and/or oral phase of the infant's pregenital libidinal organisation and development in relation to its familial environment, i.e., its parents or primary care givers (the suckling of the mother's breast or bottle). This oral incorporation is a kind of prototype of identification, indeed, Freud will claim that all later adult love relations are conditioned, in part, by a regression to infancy. Freud further

problematises

his theory of identification

in his text, On

Narcissism: An Introduction. In this text, which is concerned with what has since become known as object-relations theory, or the relations between the inner world of the ego and the external world of objects (including other egos), Freud complicates the relation between the sexual object-choice and identification by dialecticising object-choice. On the one hand object-choice is ànaclitic, ' or of an àttachment' type and on the other hand object-choice

is 'narcissistic. '124

Narcissism lacks an external sexual object the regressive tendency of the anaclitic model to the infantile prototypes, i.e., the oral phase (the mother's 122 See: Freud,

TT. See also: Freud, TETS. Fuss, correctly in my view, lucidly exposes and criticises Freud's othering, primitivism, colonialism and normative treatment of sexuality through an analysis of identification. See: Fuss, IP: pp. 32-6 (primitivism); `Chapter 2: Fallen Women' pp. 57-82 (homosexuality in women); `Chapter 3: Oral Incorporations' pp. 83-105 (homosexuality in men); `Chapter 5: Interior Colonies' pp. 141-172 (colonialism). My argument will take a slightly different route, following the affects role in producing emotional ties and Hirschhorn's work with others as a case study of fandom. 123This is to trace Derrida's complex notion of responsibility and calculation with regard to the metaphysics of subjectivity, beneath or above a Freudian theory of identification, as illuminated in an interview with Nancy. Derrida's oratorical throws the following up, Òne must eat well (... ) This evokes a law of need or desire (... ) orexis, hunger, and thirst (... ), respect for the other at the very moment when, in experience (... ) one must begin to identify with the other, who is to be interiorized, understood ideally (something one can never do absolutely without assimilated, limiting understanding addressing itself, the oneself to the other and without absolutely identifying appropriation), speak to him in words that also pass through the mouth, the ear, and sight, and respect the law that is at once a voice and a court. ' Derrida, Jacques and Nancy, Jean-Luc [1989], "Èating Well, " or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida, ' in: Cadava, WCA, p. 115. 124Freud, ON, pp. 87-8. 46

breast) - as it is purely concerned with either itself or a fantastical position which is irreducibly its own. Nothing exists externally as everything or every object is the infant. The infant is the mother's breast etc. The infant cannot separate internal from external, within from without, at this stage. Humanity, in all its universality and necessity is predestined to suffer the fate of this primary narcissism, apparently. 125 Narcissistic object-choice is comprised of four separate categories, two of which

are

important

to this inquiry.

À person

may love according

to the

narcissistic type: what he himself is (i.e. himself) (...) [and] what he himself would like to be. ' A person may love àccording to the anaclitic (attachment) type: the woman who feeds him [and] the man who protects him. )126The anaclitic object-choice is aligned with the drive for self-preservation, the need for hunger to be satiated, and from this emerges the sexual drive, which directs the former toward an object (the mother's breast) that can satisfy it. In short, one arrives at the model of `sexual aim' and `sexual object' as put forward in Freud's controversial text, Three Essays on A Theory of Sexuality. The mother's breast - the original sexual object par excellence is, in time, taken away from the infant who may choose to suck their own thumb, or enact any number of other auto-erotic acts. In essence, auto-eroticism - even though it is a development from primary narcissism toward the anaclitic type needs no external sexual object to satisfy it and is therefore closely aligned with a 125Are all love relations, or emotional ties narcissistic? Leader thinks so, `Love relations, more often than not, are constructed out of images linked to the subject's view of himself. Eduard, in Goethe's novel Elective Affinities, is finally convinced of the reality of his love relation with Ottilie at the moment he sees that her handwriting is exactly the same as his. (... ) Freud called this 'narcissistic object choice': one loves someone like oneself or who incarnates what one would want to be. In a general sense, the aim of love here is to be loved back. ' Leader, Darian [1996], Why do women write more letters than they post? London, Faber and Faber, pp. 62-3. I am arguing for a different understanding of love, one that works!

126Freud, ON, p. 90.

47

`narcissistic' object-choice. 127Narcissism overwhelms all attempts at external connection, it would seem. The ego, if it is possible to speak of such an entity at this stage, is enclosed - being the world in all its heterogeneity it remains cut off from the external world of objects and subjects. All later love relations follow this route, although the sexual object will or should be displaced both from oneself, the mother and the father! It is worth noting that to have i.e., to possess an object, and to be a subject are both schematised according to the general narcissistic object-choice. Primary narcissism gives way to a secondary narcissism during and after the dissolution

of the Oedipus complex (which I will discuss in relation to

identification below), in puberty at which time the riotous libido of sexual objectchoices is displaced and attaches òn to an ego ideal imposed from without. '128 Identifications, on this evidence, must be understood as displaced libidinal energy, as developments of both the earlier narcissistic and anaclitic sexual object-choices that are forever trying to regress to an earlier, complete, state. If identifications can be aligned with the formation of a differentiation of the ego, i.e., the ego-ideal, and this seems to be external, i.e., ìmposed from without' and thus correlative with the anaclitic type of object-choice, how is it possible for Freud to state that narcissistic object-choice

includes within it a form of

idealisation, i.e., `what one would like to be? ' Surely his earlier division simply collapses in on itself? Is idealisation anaclitic or narcissistic? Does idealisation attach to others and condition the subject from without (anaclitic) or is idealisation only ever idealisation of those attributes in others that are already 127 Freud

writes about the oral phase and thumb sucking, 'The object of both activities is the same; the sexual aim consists in the incorporation of the object - the prototype of a process which, in the form of identification, is later to play such an important psychological part. ' Freud, TETS, p. 198. 128Freud, ON, p. 100.

4R

present in the subject, i.e., conditioned from within (narcissistic)? Can I be some other subject, can I become other or am I forever becoming the subject I already am, re-finding myself, being in a position I already have? I will return to this problematic when discussing the role of the ego-ideal in identification. Freud rearticulates this theory, already labouring under a cloud of confusion, in his next substantial theoretical engagement with identification, where he writes, We have elsewhere shown that identification is a preliminary stage of object-choice, that it is the first way - and one that is expressed in an ambivalent fashion - in which the ego picks out an object. The ego wants to incorporate this object into itself, and, in accordance with the oral or cannibalistic phase of libidinal development in which it is, it wants to do so by devouring it.129 Identification is originally, which is to say primarily and initially, a form of sexual object-choice performed by the ego. Object-choice, or object-cathexis which is readily used as a terminological substitute by Freud, signifies the selection of another, or the taking of a part of another as a love object to be ingested, incorporated. The object, here, in extension signifies a subject, or an ego that is in position, however unconsciously, to choose an object for assimilation. Thus, one arrives at a subject of desire, a subject with desire and a subject whose subjectivity itself is desire. A subject or ego that lets its libido do the ta(l)king, as it were. The object is embodied through the choice itself, put inside the selectors own corpus. This reintroduction of the narcissistic ego goes some way toward explaining why identification is understood as being reflexive and not transitive, which simply denotes the fact that it refers back to the ego / self, òf

129Freud, MM, pp. 249-50. 49

oneself with' an other. The formula presupposes that there must be a self, one self, for identifications to come into being. Again, and at the risk of further pathologizing

Hirschhorn, might it not be suggested that this òbject-choice'

clearly recalls Hirschhorn's own amorous confessions; his `love' for those others with whom he works? Must I listen to Hirschhorn's libido, its amplifications and resonances? In the same text, Mourning and Melancholia, Freud argues that the loss of the object of the ego, which occurs when mourning a dead family member or in depression, is reinstated in and by the ego. That is to say, the loss of the object becomes the object of the ego once again (incorporated unconsciously by means of fantasy). This fantastic and traumatic reinstatement of the objectchoice or regression to the oral phase is identification and operates similarly to the oral phase already outlined. Would it not be proper to suggest that Hirschhorn's

artworks

are

likewise

`reinstatements'

`mourning' made manifest, bordering Adorno's

of

lost

aforementioned

love-objects, claim that,

`memory [is] inseparable from love, which seeks to preserve what yet must pass away? ' This is, then, the first orientation identification takes, though its path is labyrinthine. It remains

unclear,

however,

in what

way

object-choice

differs from

identification - in what way having and being are differentiated. Is identification a mode of object-choice or are the two different in kind? Does object-choice need to be incorporated or lost before it can be named identification? Does it need to be devoured, or ànnihilated' as Freud elsewhere entitles this process so that identification may replace it somehow fantastically, mythically and a posteriori? By extension, if an object-choice is deemed actual, in the world, affecting 90

sensual bodies on the level of affect in a reduced reality etc., can it be said that identification

is something virtual? Can this virtuality

only ever become

actualised when the actual object is lost or does it have duration of its own? I have shown how idealisation -a fantasy of an external object is present in the essentially narcissistic type of object-choice, and thus the difference between positions (having and being) is collapsed. What am Ito make of all this? Freud addresses

this conceptual

confusion

between

object-choice

and

identification in his next and most engaged and engaging theorisation of the latter concept. Written twenty-one years after his first major consideration of the concept in his dream-book, outlined above, Freud offers the following important explanation,

which is worth quoting in full,

Identification is known to psychoanalysis as the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person. (... ) It behaves like a derivative of the first, oral phase (... ) It is easy to state in a formula the distinction between an identification with the father and the choice of the father as an object. In the first case one's father is what one would like to be, and in the second he is what one would like to have. The distinction, that is, depends upon whether the tie attaches to the subject or to the object of the ego. The former kind of tie is therefore already possible before any sexual object-choice has been made. It is much more difficult to give a clear metapsychological representation of the distinction. We can only see that identification endeavours to mould a person's own ego after the fashion of the one that has been taken as model. 1 '

130Freud, GP, pp. 105-6. 51

Identification is categorically positioned within the vocabulary of affect, as an èmotional tie' or attachment between subjects and as such perhaps resembles the fandom

Hirschhorn affirms? Identification is clearly differentiated

from

object-choice, in fact it comes before any object-choice, though it operates in a manner which may appear derived from the object-choice, or a preliminary stage of object-choice itself. Freud's ego is tied to a subject before it treats them as an object to be had. The first section (up to but not inclusive of the have and be distinction)

of the above extract, of course, anticipates

Freud's later

discussion of identifications importance in the Oedipus complex. Hic et nunc seems as good a juncture as any to table an aside, toward Oedipus, in order to fully extrapolate the effects of the second section of the quotation. This takes place in Freud's final attempt at theorising identification in the third chapter of his text, The Ego and the Id, entitled, `The Ego and the Super-Ego (Ego-Ideal). ' There, Freud claims famously, mythically and universally, 131that identification of oneself with another in the Oedipus complex constitutes the subject (ego). The complexities of the complex are well known, but I will, nonetheless, retrace the most significant aspects of Freud's critical conception 132 it develops. In Freud's formula, as has been shown, the infant makes an as object-choice (signalling the infant's bisexuality, or ambivalent sexuality at this stage), directed at either its mother or father. Freud, in turn, qualifies this 131 Freud, in his classic dream-book, and in a much celebrated passage, writes of the mythic Oedipus, `His des - '" night have been ours - because the oracle laid the same curse u him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual it i our first hatred and our first murderous wish this is so. ' Freud, ID, p. 262. Freud, famously, against our father. Our areamc, ,. _.. Freud's insistence came across his discovery through self-analysis. on the complexes is evident in a letter written in 1897 to Fliess. Freud writes of the complexes universality universal validity, 'The Greek legend seizes on a compulsion which everyone recognises because he feels its existence within himself. ' Quoted here in: Laplanche and Pontalis, LP, p. 283. 132 Freud I will trace the nowhere sets out a systematic account of the Oedipus complex. importance of identification and its relation to the complex only. 5?.

choice. It can be said to be `negative' when the infant identifies with a parent of the same sex as the infant itself. 133 It is `positive, ' echoing the tragic legend itself, when Oedipal desire gets blocked, its sexual union inhibited and its aim repressed and its consequences deferred resulting in the prohibition of incest. Here, the male-infant selects the mother as love-object.

The male-infant

identifies with the father in particular with the father's sexual desire for the mother (object of the ego). In identifying with the father the infant chooses not to have him but to be like him, the father is used as a model for the infant's sense of self - reflexively and narcissistically. The father threatens the male-infant with castration, the infant (should) understand that it is required to relinquish the mother as a sexual object-choice. Identification arises from the infant viewing the father as rival barring its relationship to its object-choice, i.e., the mother. The infant develops, matures, by either transforming this object-choice into an identification with the mother or the infant further intensifies its identification with the father. The infant uses the father as a kind of yardstick for personal development philosophers,

and later makes use of a panoply of others, i.e., teachers, lovers etc., to fill this role. It is important to note that in

identification something is lost. That something is love, which is turned or transformed

into hate and this metamorphosis

goes

some

way toward

explaining the destructive and negative aspect of all later àttachments. ' Recalling the second section of the quote - the have / be distinction it may now be possible to elucidate it.134Realising that it cannot have its object-choice

133This is the identification with his path Freud treads in his popular analysis of Leonardo's See: Freud, mother, beyond his primary object-choice, and its relation to homosexuality. Sigmund [1910], Leonardo da Vinci, Tr. Alan Tyson, Ed. James Strachey, London, The Hogarth Press, 1957; Standard Edition, II. 134This distinction would trouble Freud till the end. In a short note which makes up part of a work entitled, Findings, Ideas, Problems, Freud writes, "Having' and `being' in children. Children 51

by being the father, it cannot realise its desire for the love-object, the rivalry with the father and the threat of castration is too great, the infant's choice (love) is repressed (or to put it another way but which has the same effect, the father inhibits the infant's desire for sexual union with the mother), and the infant settles for further intensifying its idealisation of the father (ego-ideal) in a second wave or folded identification - identification minus the sexual-object. Identification is, according to Freud, riddled with negative affect, with hate, fear and anxiety. All adult loves, attachments and sexual relations, for Freud, trace this infantile sexual object-choice - now lost (on the model of the mother's breast). This loss is constitutive and is the first experiencing

of anxiety.

Identification for Freud does seem to emerge at a stage when the libido is lacking an object - when it is disappointed in love, which begs the question: are all love affairs unhappy, sad and agonising, events? 135The male-infant reacts to the threat of castration by selecting `to be like' the father, though an impotent and imaginary facsimile, an ascetic ideal beset by bad conscience

and

136 In short, it relinquishes or loses its object-choice and identifies. ressentiment. Identification is being in a position without having the object associated or attributed to this being - it is fractured, fragmentary and failed. It is a `subject'

like expressing an object-relation by an identification: 'I am the object. ' `Having' is the later of the two; after loss of the object it relapses into `being'. Example: the breast. 'The breast is a part of Freud, Sigmund [1938], me, I am the breast. ' Only later: Ì have it' - that is, 'I am not it' .. .' Findings, Ideas, Problems, Tr. & Ed. James Strachey, London, The Hogarth Press, 1964; Standard Edition, XXIII, p. 299. I am indebted to Leader for bringing this important article to my attention, in conversation. 135 Rose is, once again, instructive here. 'My desire to possess Roy Rogers for my love was inseparable from my equally unshakeable desire to be him: I wanted to be and to have. ' Rose's fantastical love, an identification worthy of the name, was renounced upon being commanded by her mother to accept the more gender specific role of Roy Roger's muse Nellie Dean. This impoverished reality conditioned by the recognition and acceptance of loss held no sway for Rose who persevered with the joys of love and the chaos of desirous idealisation (being and having) without reserve. See: Rose, LW, p. 56 (chapter pp. 54-69). 136'Reactive forces' according to Deleuze. See; Deleuze, NP, pp. 111-46. These concepts will be taken up in Chapter Three.

54

dispossessed of its òbject. ' Identification, thus, never arrives at a full and fixed identity - being - for it lacks the essential attributes of this subject position. Identification, at most, possesses a relation to identity without ever realising identity itself. How, therefore, can Freud claim such great things for the psychical process of identification in the constitution of the ego, if it only serves to defer this very constitution? The underground object-choice, however, does remain set up inside the ego (oh daddy! how I mourn the lack of mummy's lovely breast), seething away under the surface waiting for a future opportunity to reawaken in neuroses worthy of analysis. Repression enters stage right, as it were. It is also worth noting that in The Ego and the Id Freud substantiates his view that identification precedes object-choice, though notice that the latter is not totally autonomous from the former. (... ) the effects of the first identifications made in earliest childhood will be general and lasting. This leads us back to the origin of the ego-ideal; for behind it lies hidden an individual's first and most important identification, his identification with the father in his own personal

prehistory.

This is apparently

not in the first instance

consequence or outcome of an object-cathexis;

the

it is a direct and

immediate identification and takes place earlier than any objectcathexis. But the object-choices belonging to the first sexual period and relating to the father and mother seem normally to find their outcome in an identification of this kind, and would thus reinforce the primary one. 13'

137Freud, E/, p. 31. 55

The infant must experience rivalry and the incest interdiction if they are to work through the Oedipus complex, which Freud unfortunately proposes is the same for all (with important alterations between genders). Identification, which is here associated with the super-ego or ego-ideal, thus, emerges after the dissolution of the Oedipus complex. 138 This exposition of identification in Freud's system has encountered two types of

identification

(object-choice

and

identification),

neither

of which

can

categorically be said to be autonomous, nor can it readily be said whether one emerges from the other or vice-versa. Though I have shown that Freud states identification comes before object-choice, he cannot relieve identification of the overburdening

weight of the libidinally charged

object-choice,

which in its own

way `reinforces' identification itself as a means without end, an ongoing process of identification which never arrives at identity. Freud seemingly suggests that there exists a primary identification, followed by an object-choice, which is supplanted by another identification. So, on the one hand there is the objectchoice that will later become aligned with the workings of what Freud calls das es, (the it), the Ìd,' i.e., the unconscious libidinal energy and drives of the infant (object-choice / sexual desire / pleasure principle). And on the other hand, there is the identification that is congruent with that psychical apparatus Freud terms das über Ich, (the Over I), the ègo-ideal, ' i.e., the heir to the Oedipus complex, which is only a differentiation of the ego and whose task is to repress (inhibition of the object-choice / desire). Between the two, in the midst of their tendentious and competitive oscillation, das Ich, (the I), the ègo' or psychoanalytic subject 138The infant, it is claimed, undergoes the complex between the ages of Freudian vernacular this is referred to as the, 'phallic stage. ' It is such an for Freud's construct that he once referred to the Oedipus complex as the, neuroses, ' thereby suggesting that all other neuroses could be associated extent, determined by it. See: Freud, TETS, p. 226, note. 3. 56

three and five, in a important grounding 'nuclear complex of with it, and to some

mysteriously gets constituted (reality testing the pleasure principle in a drive toward death). The ego that has already undergone identification loses its object-choice to placate the ego-ideal, yet retains the object inside itself, in an identification to appease the id. In other words; the male-infant selects to be in the position of his father, to be like him and to have what he has knowing that he cannot have what he wants. In bad faith he sets up the father as his ideal (ego-ideal). Two questions must be raised in light of this rephrasing. The first being; who is? which flows into the second; who is in possession of whom or what here? The crucial distinction between being and having that so troubles Freud's critical development judgement

of identification

can

be better

of existence for being and a judgement

former judgement

of attribution

states that this something or someone

states that this someone or something

possesses

the existence

presupposes

being, but being does not - of necessity

Lurking behind a judgement

of attribution

for having. The

is, the latter judgement

or something.

In short,

- presuppose

having having.

is the idea that the ego takes things

into it or ejects things, thus it is an ego-dependant exist to perform the introjection

a

this attribute and in so doing

presupposes

of this someone

by substituting

understood

judgement,

and ejection of attributes.

i. e., the ego must

The ego must be an

ego for it to have or not have things. If there is an ego, given in itself, then it is not too great a leap to make the equally grand claim that there is such a thing as an inside and an outside. 13'

139In preparing this discussion of Freud's distinction between being and having, I am indebted to the following: Hyppolite, Jean [1956], 'A spoken commentary on Freud's Verneinung, ' in: Lacan, Jacques [1975], The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book /: Freud's Papers on Technique; 1953-1954, Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, Tr. John Forrester, New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1988, pp. 289-97. Hyppolite refers to Freud's presupposition of the existence of both an inside and an outside as the latter's, 'primary myth (p. 294). ' 57

Such a schema begs the following question; is the ego possessed by an object or does this ego possess its object, which has been lost - read `repressed' and so not lost completely? Is there really a difference here? Perhaps, a more important question is; how is it possible for an ego to be an ego prior to having objects (relations and identifications with others external to it). Perhaps, Freud should have begun with a judgement of existence before extending a judgement of attribution - beyond it's calling - to a judgement of existence thereby collapsing the important distinction between the two; being and having? Who is this ego, does it exist? Returning to Freud's text, Group Psychology, crucial for any understanding of the concept of identification, Freud distinguishes a meta-mode of identification, which on first reading seems entirely devoid of sexual aim and union, or inhibition and repression. The three modes of identification are as follows, First, identification is the original form of emotional tie with an object; secondly, in a regressive way it becomes a substitute for a libidinal object-tie, as it were by means of introjection of the object into the ego; and thirdly, it may arise with any new perception of a common quality shared with some other person who is not an object of the sexual instinct. The more important this common quality is, the more successful may this partial identification become, and it may thus represent the beginning of a new tie. 14o Identification is first of all an, èmotional tie, ' characteristic of an Oedipal and libidinal relation primarily between an ego (male infant) and its object (mother). This tie is original; it marks the earliest genesis and offers the formula for all

140Freud, GP, pp. 107-8.

58

future identifications. Freud remarks in `Chapter IV' of the same text that èmotional tie, ' is only a neutral term for `love relationship. ' Yet, this contradicts Freud's earlier theorisation, his view that identification comes before objectchoice - identification, object-choice, identification - the confusion continues. Following this is the second mode in which the object loses its libidinal presence and intensity, it regresses and gets consumed and the incorporation of the object into the ego is the early stage of narcissistic identification with an ideal (father). The final move of the ego, this `new tie' dependent on a nonsexual `common quality' with an other engenders a `partial identification, ' and appears to echo the common unconscious element previously seen in Freud's dreambook. This is, for Freud, an uncharacteristically messy theoretical formulation, which seems to hang on the distinction Freud draws between having an object and being a subject. With the possessive former clearly denoting the objectchoice

(id) and the repetitious, uncanny or doubling

latter denoting the

identification (ego-ideal). I am no nearer to discovering the make-up of this èmotional tie' with its internal divisions. It is not too difficult to dismiss any past allusions I have proffered between Hirschhorn's fandom and the first two stages of identification introduced here. However, might not this desexualised `new perception' of a `shared' `common quality' be better suited to Hirschhorn? Laplanche and Pontalis offer a structural way of thinking through these three modes of identification, arguing that it is constructive to separate out the different orientations identification takes. In short, they map the trajectories of identification.

To paraphrase,

identification;

2) a centrifugal

reciprocal

identification

they distinguish identification

which complicates

59

between:

1) a centripetal

and; 3) a constellational,

or

the relation between 1) and 2). In the

first identification, `the subject identifies his own self with the other. ' This form of identification is the original èmotional tie with an object. ' If I were to offer a geopolitical metaphor for this centripetal movement I might suggest the familiar imperialist maxim, àll roads lead to Rome. ' Centripetal force moves toward a centre, in much the same way as a vortex functions, or the tidal pull of the mythological Charybdis. This does not mean necessarily that it reaches its telos, i.e., the centre, only that its inclination toward the centre is its defining characteristic. It has the subject reaching out to others for its own constitution (mother/father).

It subsumes, or in a Freudian vernacular àssimilates' albeit

àmbivalently' the particularities of the other in an act of further enriching its own totality. It is a narcissistic identification, properly speaking there is no without, no outside. In the second variation the identification the / centrifugal subject ego, conversely, ìdentifies the other with himself. ' This logic has as its clearest example the regressive replacement for an abandoned sexual object-choice. It incorporates the object into the ego selecting those things that are similar, or identical to the ego itself and then sets up an ideal (ego-ideal). To offer another geopolitical metaphor I could perhaps say diaspora figures this movement adequately. Centrifugal force is marked by its dispersion, its tendency to move away from the centre. Centrifugal force flees, it is fugitive and forever on the run. It is closest to the anaclitic or attachment mode of narcissism, seen above, in its propensity toward a without. Moreover, it must be added that this force does not reach its final goal, merely that its force is directed accordingly. What is in common between these two models is a centre and what lies hidden

6n

beneath this centre? The ìnterior colony, '141ego or subject, n(one) other. Both centripetal and centrifugal trajectories revolve around a centre - an origin - in an ongoing reflexive movement, which seeks as Foucault so deftly puts it the `principle of their intelligibility only in their own development. 7142 Both models are essentially narcissistic, be it in a primary or secondary form there is always present what Freud termed, `His Majesty the Baby, ' or `His Majesty the Ego. ' The third and final variant incorporates both classes in an economy of reciprocity and, `we are said to be dealing with a more complex form of identification, one which is sometimes invoked to account for the constitution of a 'we. 9043This constellation exposes and charts the conflicting centripetal and centrifugal forces in much the same way as planetariums project togetherness. Indeed, this togetherness of a group formation or community is precisely what is at question in this third mode. The former two identifications rely, to some degree, on sexual desire for the other as object, however, this third mode only requires the existence of something or someone being in common between those who make up this group, or constellation. It is with an investigation of this latter mode, an emergent `we,' that I will draw this exposition of the position of identification

within Freudian psychoanalytic theory to a conclusion before

subjecting it to a critical evaluation within the wider remits of this chapter.

141Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 139. 142 Foucault, OT, p. xxv. Foucault signals the problem facing any reflexive discourse, Ìt is extremely difficult to find a language faithful to this thought. Any purely reflexive discourse runs the risk of leading the experience of the outside back to the dimension of interiority; reflection tends irresistibly to repatriate it to the side of consciousness and to develop it into a description of living that depicts the "outside" as the experience of the body, space, the limits of the will, and the ineffaceable presence of the other. (... ) Hence the necessity of converting reflexive language. It must be directed not toward any inner confirmation - not toward a kind of central, unshakable certitude - but toward an outer bound where it must continually contest itself. ' See: Foucault and Blanchot, FB, pp. 21-2. 143Laplanche and Pontalis, LP, p. 206.

61

In, Group Psychology, Freud challenges himself with exposing the way groups can be said to form psychically and in so doing positions otherness at the heart of his dearly beloved narcissistic ego. As though

individual ego-centred

analyses of the subject cannot be extracted, or cannot be thought autonomous from the social relations with which these egos come into contact with and produce. 144Ì' becoming `we,' or `we' constituting Ì.' This is perhaps to trace the mode of identification extended from Julien's earlier criticism of Hirschhorn's fantastic community of others. As such I will continue to perform a close reading of Freud's essay and attempt to relate it to said criticism. Group psychology, according to Freud concerns, (... ) the individual man as a member of a race, of a nation, of a caste, of a profession, of an institution, or as a component part of a crowd of people who have been organized into a group at some particular time for some definite purpose. 145 On this evidence quite general in its sense man, that ego-being, is always in relation with and influenced by others, contrary to the narcissistic ego I have already described - within the world not without it by being it, as it were. Individual or ego psychology cannot be dissociated or distinguished from sociality or a group psychology however the latter's manifestation is constituted. For Freud this coming together is always determined, i.e., there is always a '44 Freud writes on this point, Ìn the individual's mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent; and so from the very first individual psychology, in this extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words, is at the same time social psychology as well. ¶ The relations of an individual to his parents and to his brothers and sisters, to the object of his love, and to his physician - in fact all the relations which have hitherto been the chief subject to psychoanalytic research - may claim to be considered as social phenomena; and in this respect they may be contrasted with certain other processes, described by us as 'narcissistic', in which the satisfaction of the instincts is partially or totally withdrawn from the influence of other people. ' Freud, GP, p. 69. This `someone else' may well be the individual subject itself, become alienated and estranged. 145See: Freud, GP, pp. 70-1.

62

definite idea, individual or object around which these individuals manifest. This ego-being ìs connected by something, ' cut through with `relations, ' and Freud believes he can uncover the conditions of possibility of group psychology in a `bond, ' uniting this `social instinct. ' Freud's primitive or regressive coming together

is liminally differentiated from another entitlement

phenomena,

for the same

`herd instinct, ' toward a `Gemeingeist, esprit de corps, `group

spirit, ' which eventually comes into being as a `primal horde. ' It is Freud's archaeological task to find in this feeling the fossil of the family. 146 Freud takes as his cue for thinking through how it is that the individual mind (ego) gets transformed in a group the work of others (note the absence of narcissism intensification

in his

method! ) from

which

he

extracts

two

theses,

`the

of the affects and the inhibition of the intellect in primitive

groups. '147The former intensification of affects signifies for Freud the emotional ties or affective bond as encountered above - object-choices and identifications these love and relationships themselves, `constitute the essence of the group Sociality, or community and by extension the unconscious itself is thus mind. 7148 (de)structured through the affect and its inherent relationality. 149The latter inhibition exposes that a group `has no critical faculty'150as àn intensification of

146Freud, GP, pp. 120-1. 147Freud, GP, p. 88.

148Freud, GP, p. 91. 149 This

does to the political and vice-versa, is the political affect, i.e., what psychoanalysis subject of Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy's text from which I have already drawn. For them, the affect resists identity, it forces a withdrawal or dispersal of identity itself. It is precisely because Freud positions affect at the heart of identification, in the figure of the 'emotional tie' as sociality, that allows them to assert that identification is always only a doubling 'dissociation, ' 'the incorporation is therefore, of the withdrawal of identity. ' Identification, always only a dissimulation, there is no proper object or subject to assimilate. See: Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, UDA, p. 208. 150Freud, GP, p. 78. 61

affect creates unfavourable conditions for sound intellectual work. i151 For a group mind, then, "all you need is love" as the popular song has it yet this mind is a `double-headed monster' of `salvation' (from oneself) and `damnation' (inhibited intellect). 152Love both frees and fixes ('love's labour's won' / `love's labour's lost'). To unfold this proposition it is necessary to carefully trace Freud's claim that the èmotional common quality, ' which constitutes a group identification, seen in numerous guises above, relies precisely on the determination of that common quality itself, that is to say that the tie between subjects is conditioned by a particular idea, object or individual. Freud draws a clear distinction between a subject and its relation to its object in two subjective phases that are of interest to this investigation. The first stage is named, `being in love, ' and the second, `hypnosis, ' (also referred to as `fascination' and `suggestion' and it might be added `psychoanalysis' itself as a cure through love). According to Freud, the former enamoured subject takes the object and uses it to further enrich it thereby following the centripetal movement I traced above. In the latter the object itself comes to dominate the subject and thus impoverish it. In both there is `the same absence of criticism. 7153 Freud

does

not

believe

this

economy

between

enrichment

and

impoverishment to be of any real consequence and privileges a distinction of degree of the ego. In the former phase of enrichment the ego creates an emotional tie and incorporates the lost object transforming itself after the model of the lost object itself therefore combining both centripetal and centrifugal

15' Freud, GP, p. 85. 152Beckett, Samuel [1931], Proust and Three Dialogues, 153Freud, GP, p. 114. 64

London, John Calder, 1965, p. 11.

movements.

In the latter phase, however, it cannot be unequivocally said

whether the object-relation can be figured centripetally or centrifugally. In short, what Freud is arguing and what I am labouring toward illuminating is that with the overburdening

presence of the object comes implication - an intensive

relational affect - and lack of critical rigour. And all this is at the heart of sociality, of the group mind, a community of affect. The object has so overpopulated the ego that it is slave to it. The degree, of which I hinted at, is the common object / elements metamorphosis from the ego-ideal to the super, massive, group-ideal. An example of this overburdening of the ego is the figure and function of a group leader for the group itself. It is impossible, so Freud claims, for a group to exist in the absence of a leader, unless the absence of the possibility of having the leader is the common quality that unites all others in the group. In this way fascination, or hypnosis (identification) can be synthesised with being in love (object-choice). Consider the following citation, We have only to think of the troop of women and girls, all of them in love in an enthusiastically sentimental way, who crowd round a singer or pianist after his performance. It would certainly be easy for each of them to be jealous of the rest; but, in the face of their numbers and the consequent impossibility of their reaching the aim of their love., they renounce it, and, instead of pulling out one another's hair, they act as a united group, do homage to the hero of the occasion with their common actions, and would probably be glad to have a share of his flowing locks. Originally rivals, they have

65

succeeded in identifying themselves with one another by means of a similar love for the same object. ' A case study - albeit a phallocentric and derogatory one of a certain kind of fandom. The pop-band and groupies phenomenon

of modern times are

reflected in Freud's `hero' and `troop of women and girls. ' The object is thus displaced from the hero itself to the common quality that exists between the `troop, ' i.e., the lack of attaining this object its loss impossibility. The or individual object-choice, i.e., the sexual love each individual woman and girl has for the hero is replaced by group identification, i.e., the fascination all the women and girls have in common for being in love with the hero they fail to have. This signals for Freud an essential aspect of any society namely the fact that all members must be equal yet all these equal members desire to be dominated by a single individual, leader or hero, in a clear foray into the political. Freud's examples of such leadership - the army and the Christian church - are organised institutional communities precisely because they are constructed from above. Both have a leader who remains outside of the group and whose presence in effect transforms the ego-ideal of the subject into a `group-ideal as embodied in the leader. i155 Indeed, the ego-ideal can be understood as the chief of the `primal horde, ' the leader and hero of the ego, thereby echoing Freud's own proposition `The primal father is the group ideal, which governs the ego in place of the ego ideal. '156 Yet, and this is what I want to argue, the id disrupts this ùpper, ' top-down and transcendent orientation of force, power and knowledge. Affection affects power

154Freud, GP, p. 120. 155Freud, GP, p. 129. 156Freud, GP, p. 127.

66

and knowledge. It works from a position of weakness - the `lower, ' immanent and base - ambivalent affects. It is intensive, indeterminate and undecidable. Ultimately, for Freud, this third mode of identification does not overcome the ties of the subjects earlier infantile emotional ties. His third mode still relies entirely on the repression and inhibition of the primitive sexual object-choice and its transformation into identification (from immature erotic love to grown-up hate). Although it is altered slightly in a group, the genealogy of the common quality resides at home with the `pyramidal hierarchization' of mother / father / child. 157 Thus,

Laplanche

and Pontalis' carefully

orchestrated

structuring

in turn

becomes destructured and indistinguishable from the affect. The sexual instinct, which apparently had been lost, an original absence and its double, i.e., the reinstatement of the loss, crawls back into the fray emerging precisely as the repressed

sexual

instinct for all members

of the group, the common

unconscious element, as seen in the following extract, Moreover, those instincts which are inhibited in their aims always preserve some few of their original sexual aims; even an affectionate devotee, even a friend or an admirer, desires the physical proximity and the sight of the person who is now loved only in the `Pauline'

sense.158 Freud's third mode of identification is, then, little more than an adult version of the earlier infantile mode. The vital venery of the passionate id is assuaged but not totally extinguished - by the serenity and maturity of the ego-ideal, after all, the Father is reintroduced as the figure of both law (of castration) and lack. In this inhibition of the sexual drive, for this is the major aim of identification, a 's' The phrase is Foucault's: 158Freud, GP, pp. 138-9.

`Preface, ' in: Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. xiii.

67

serious attitude overcomes a light touch. Distance is required from the libido for critical reflective and seriously considered application of thought. Pauline love (agape) triumphs over passionate love (eros), reason over desire, chiefly law over the anarchy of the multitude. However, this victory is hollow. Freud crucially

cannot

keep the binaries

apart,

id and ego-ideal,

affect and

identification, or so I claim. This draws my exposition of Freudian identification its trajectory

throughout

have made transparent identification,

Freud's oeuvre and plotted the equivocalness

the ambiguity

Object-choice

to a close. I have mapped its more salient points.

Freud himself maintained

inherent in any attempt at identifying

and identification

are indiscernible,

seeping

another, and the emergent `we' of the group identification conception.

I have

assimilation

on a primary

transferred

the difficulties

associated

level of object-choice,

to other object-relations.

between possessing a subject,

shown

I

in thinking

identification.

in and out of one

is certainly an opaque with

aporias

association

and

that may easily be

I have noted Freud's dubious differentiation

an object, i. e., having, and what might be termed the às if'

i.e., being.

I have shown that psychoanalysis

as a system

rests

squarely on the shoulders of an èmotional tie' populated by affects yet these affects block, or inhibit intellect. To make sense of all this requires a logic of sense itself, a logic Freud attempts but ultimately fails to achieve. Why? How does psychoanalysis undo itself? How is Freud beaten by his own discourse and why is this failure so very seductive - if not successful in itself? These are the questions I aim to address in the following, final, section that returns (like the repressed) to a reconsideration of Hirschhorn's works and their attachment to or detachment from the points raised above.

6R

The Problem: Hirschhorn the admiring fan as serious subject?

Hirschhorn categorically rejects Julien's observation that his work with others is an instance of intellectual identification. Their relation, their togetherness does not, according to him, take place on this register. Hirschhorn is equally dismissive of psychoanalytic thought in general, Ì can't take it seriously. '159It seems timely, therefore, to ask; what can I salvage from my exposition, if indeed I can salvage anything at all? Hirschhorn's fandom, his affective and emotional ties with those others with whom he works, I claim, contra Hirschhorn's own assertion, is precisely an exercise in identification. On this point Hirschhorn is not his own best judge. However,

evaluates,

as I will argue, this fan identification

operates

Freud's own theory of identification

differently

to, and re-

and importantly, moreover,

neither of these models arrive at their destination; identity (via a gathering of non-identity under the sign of identity). In essence, my exposition hinges on the degree of emphasis and accent one places on `taking seriously' admiration. For it can be argued, as I have shown, that identification seen through the lens of the ego-ideal cannot be separated from admiration. Freud himself says as much, the infant's ego-ideal (or super-ego - the two are here synonymous), that `higher-nature' of being, which is symbolised by the figures of the infant's parents, is directly responsible for instailing two affects: admiration and fear. 'so This is critically

important. The role of the ego-ideal

in identification

may either

perform the negative repressive function, i.e., fear and loathing - hate, in a word it idealising function, the i. or can perform positive e., admiration and joy - love, 159Hirschhorn in conversation 160Freud, E /, pp. 35-6.

with the author, Paris, September

69

2003.

in a word. According to Freud idealisation is required to extract `His Majesty the Ego, ' from his enclosed sovereign environment. Idealisation is necessary to position the ego symbolically in the world, discontentedly among civilization - to make the ego at once free and dependant - unbounded and bounded. I agree such an operation is necessary, but everything depends on where the emphasis is laid and how this `transformation of affect7161 is read in the idealising aspect of identification. The transformation of affect, for Freud, progresses from archaic (mythical), autonomous

and

unchecked,

pleasure

toward

modern

(psychological),

defensive and heteronomous, displeasure - it is selfish self-preservation in and through self-denial: 'love-in-hate. 062The affect is not stripped of its economy with the `self, ' and the formers possession by the latter. Freud's ego-ideal can be conservative,

preserving cultural traditions

against the dangerous and

harmful egocentric wilfulness of the passionate id. It can be a torturous faculty that terrorises the ego into obeisance, the law, the law-giver and the practice of law, as it were. Alternatively, but equally cruelly, the ego-ideal can take on the practical mantle of Kant's cold `categorical imperative' and install in the ego an ènlightened' and universally valid sense of morality, conscience, and duty. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the ego-ideal is the critical faculty and that this faculty is constructed out of rivalry and fear. Of course, analysts will argue that admiration

can only ever emerge

in a repressed

body, precisely,

'6' Freud, ID, p. 604. 162Mann, SGRW, p. 314. This transformation is the same for Lacan who views love as limited, limiting: 'love is impossible' (Lacan, SXX, p. 87). Lacanian love is 'impotent, ' 'narcissistic' (p. 6), and 'ambivalent: ' `true love gives way to hatred' (p. 146). Lacan believes 'that one cannot speak about it (p. 12), ' in any symbolic and significant way. Love works fantastically - in the imaginary (giving something one does not have). order - and is, thus, a phenomenon of self-deception Love is an illusion (p. 47). Love, 'makes up for the sexual relationship. ' (p. 45) i.e., desire - that higher truth - and therefore must not be trusted no matter that 'people have done nothing but speak of love in analytic discourse' (p. 39). 70

understood negatively as a force which displaces, condenses and/or sublimates the libidinal intensity of the id, in essence a repression of a higher truth (desire and sexuality). Yet, with this transformation of affect - `love-cum-hatred ''63 Freud (and his followers) manufacture a false division between love and law, which I believe to be untenable. The two embrace, both seriously and in play. I choose to read in identification, which emerges synchronistically with the ego-ideal, an idealisation which refuses to relinquish an idea of the ideal. Identification becomes an affective and affirmative idea or art of the ideal, which retains a healthy scepticism of idealism, exactly. The ego-ideal operates, so I claim, as a less intense variant of the id, if the id is passion, then, the ego-ideal may well be admiration - the intensity of affect is here reduced but not transformed

wholesale

into its opposite,

i. e., hate.

It's in the word, which

I

choose to take for granted in a curiously naive manner! Having faith means that I believe, albeit stupidly and passionately, immaturely and in a pre-critical affective - manner perhaps, that the ego-ideal idealises as if from an affirmative and affectionate angle - in contradistinction to Freud. 164This faith is necessary for a genuine relation to the concept identification

and its connection to

163Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, Cumming, p. 234. 1641 am here reminded of two things from Lyotard. The first concerns passionate practice and the second affective approaches. 'There is the farce that words play with us, that intensities play with us and that our passion itself will play with us from one end to the other of this book: this fit of passion, reader, Unkind one, will reach you at second hand, reported, (... ) Words burning the point of the pen, whipped like an inert herd by this point, making them run and trapping the most noble, the fastest, the strongest amongst them, in flight, you receive them as a lexicologist. And all the comparisons which may come to mind, they are damned in advance by the accumulation (cum) which they comprise and which subject them to procedures of weighing, thought, for ever incapable of yielding commensurability, good for the register and accountability, intensity in its event. ' And, `We must come to take Marx {Freud} as if he were a writer, an author full of affects, take his texts as a madness and not as a theory, we must succeed in pushing aside his theoretical barrier and stroking his beard without contempt and without devotion (... ) reawakening his hidden desire and ours along with it. There is no need to criticize Marx {Freud}, and even if we do criticize him, it must be understood that it is in no way a critique: we have already said and repeated that we laugh at critique, since it is to maintain oneself in the field of the criticized thing and in the dogmatic, indeed paranoiac, relation of knowledge (... ) We will rather treat him as a 'work of art. " See: respectively; Lyotard, LE, p. 17, p. 94-5.

71

Hirschhorn's work. However, coupled to my faith is an awareness of this faith exactly, a knowledge that this faith is the condition of possibility for taking seriously both Hirschhorn and Freud's practices which, itself, effects a temporal mediation and a spatial distancing - an estrangement from faith that suggests I am in fact not taking it seriously or practicing it at all -a lies its success.

failure of faith, therein

Identification, I claim, resides between these two poles,

destructuring them in equal amounts, making both irreparable both land more than either / or. I believe that the ego, it is irrelevant whether it is considered narcissistic or not, sets up an ideal which is to say an object / subject of admiration and an affect, which traverses this line, traces the same lines as those traversed by the id. Some repressor at the gates of affect does not inhibit it, it frees and flees in an excess that opens it up to the outside Agamben's `being- within an outside. '165 What does this do to the epigraph I selected to head this chapter? Such a pithy expression, I believe, jars with the major movement and inner unity of the essay in which it appears and the wider topology of Freudian psychoanalytic theory and, perhaps, offers a way of thinking (seriously) through the Hirschhorn / Freud (dis)connection of, identification, affect(ion) and fandom. A responsible interpretation of fandom, admiration or identification would suggest precisely that the identifier, admirer or fan is captured by a thought, thing, other and beholden to the latter ('love's labour's lost). The fan is always co-opted. The fan's self, accordingly, mirrors the(ir) object of fandom itself, and by extension the fans relation with a thought, thing or other is either one of being consciously

165Agamben esteems love accordingly, 'Seeing something simply in its being-thus - irreparable, but not for that reason necessary; thus, but not for that reason contingent is love. ' Agamben, CC, p. 89. 77

dominated, i.e., self-reflectivity or unconsciously dominated, i.e., self-reflexivity. Indeed, this is what Freud tells his reader occurs in the process of identification. Such reasoning also accounts for why admirers cannot take their object of admiration seriously as a thinker could say take their object of knowledge in all seriousness, there is no affect in effect, no absorption or entering into and therefore no possibility of change. However, as should be clear, I am not only interested in reasonable interpretation. Freud, it has been noted, draws a clear distinction between an intensification of affect internal to any admiration which makes it impossible for the ego to act impartially and critically, to gain the necessary time and distance adequate for exercising reflective thought, so possessed and overburdened is it by the object of its desire. The starry-eyed naivety and unblinking passionate devotion a fan, admirer, identifier has for its object is to be precisely seized by a thought, a thing, an other. Serious thought would be impossible precisely because to reflect on fandom, to recognise admiration, to represent to oneself identification is to exit the event of fandom itself. Should I not, therefore, admire and identify with my teachers, philosophers, and lovers - so many cultural models? Should I not fall for them, embrace them and be embraced

by them - become

enamoured, touched and learn to love thought? Without confessing my love and admiration am I guilty of not taking these figures seriously? The fan participation

and knowledge

Hirschhorn's

practice

successfully

introduces through failing to introduce it in all its variation, the reading of the effects of affects - love's work - would thus seem to hover between the following paradox. Being impassioned, enamoured and admiring, is thus to be unaware of being in it at all - `love's labour's lost' -a reflexive position. Being productive 73

with passionate love and admiration, putting it to work and action, which would require some semblance of awareness - `love's labour's won' -a

reflective

position. What are the effects of affect in fandom? Could such effects be either pathological,

i.e., neuroses and psychoses,

or a serious and expanded

production of cultural participations, knowledge and channelling of desire, outside of determinist and subjectivist structures and repressive discourses? If the ego-ideal contains within it a seed of admiration, then, according to Freud's formula it becomes important not to take `great thinkers' seriously, to be free of them will necessarily mean to find oneself. Indeed, this not taking seriously can be extended to identification itself, and beyond that to the psychoanalytic subject or ego itself and ultimately, of course, to Freud and his theories. Admiration undoes Freud's theory of identification and in effect its creator. I admire Freud, there, I have written it, but must this mean I cannot take him and his work seriously? Must my initial admiration and idealisation of his work so many affects blocking my cognitive powers - be crushed and castrated in a development toward intellectual maturity? Is my analysis of identification in Freud's thinking a step toward bounded and unbounded adulthood? If Freud is positioned as one of my ego-ideals, and I choose to both love and admire this ideal rather than hate it therefore practicing a joyous idealisation, am I forever conditioned by an infantilism of thought? On the contrary, if Freud is one of my ego-ideals and I choose to not take him seriously therefore expressing a doubtful idealisation, am I putting his authority into question? Can I take anything seriously without first admiring it? Is this text, written by a selfconfessed encomiast, serious? I claim that to take something or someone

74

seriously is, beyond casting doubt upon personal attachments, 16' always only available to those who admire. 167 Hirschhorn is a fan, he admires and at times he is moved to love. It is in the nature of affect to be meretricious and unfaithful, betrayal is always a possibility. Conversely, admirations may last a lifetime, making change and the loss of faith impossible. Hirschhorn declared in an earlier cited passage that `heroes can't change. ' Perhaps

his cannot but this does not preclude

others from replacing

their cultural models with new ones. If such identifications do not develop, if they are replaced or substituted for new ones, must I consider them more or less genuine? Hirschhorn's practice gestures toward a fanatical faith in another yet, I claim, this must be read as either a satirical borrowing of a particular cliched

cultural participation

(fandom), or as a failure to take seriously

admiration. Hirschhorn takes great pains to declare his love yet fails to do the work required of love. The uncertainty over Hirschhorn's genuineness - his failure to take admiration seriously and by extension those others with whom he works - however, makes this text possible in a way. What happens to Hirschhorn's statement about psychoanalytic thought within this frame?

If admiration and taking seriously imply one another then is

Hirschhorn really taking psychoanalysis seriously when he says that he cannot take psychoanalysis seriously? Or am I putting words into his mouth and admiration somewhere else? Am I suggesting that he is not his own best judge '« I would like to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to an intelligent PhD thesis, which asks what it means for a philosopher to take an artist seriously. Kuhlken, Julie [2004], Why would a philosopher take an artist seriously? Middlesex University PhD, unpublished thesis. "'' Heidegger, a very serious philosopher, uses the publication of his magnum opus, Being and Time, as an opportunity to publicly profess his personal admiration. Being and Time is dedicated to Husserl 'in friendship and admiration. ' Is Heidegger guilty of not taking his master seriously? Heideggerian thought is not usually considered 'immature' or 'weak. ' See: Heidegger, Martin [1927], Being and Time, Trs J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Oxford, Blackwell, 1962, p. 5. 75

and does such an act betray my own personal admiration for his practice, transforming my affect - à case of infidelity as a result of excessive fidelity? '168If admiration contains within it the possibility of betrayal then I might be able to substantiate this view. I admire Hirschhorn's work, look, there, I have written it, yet hot on the heels of my admiration comes my betrayal. I have taken both psychoanalytic theory seriously and my invocation of Hirschhorn's practice is itself a serious attempt at entering into his work and world is this text testament to my commitment. If this text is, as I wish it to be, a work of love, how may I verify or test that my admiration is serious importance the being of -

earnest? I might suggest that Hirschhorn's fandom, his love and admiration, is an instance of serious non-seriousness in thought? Irrational, headless, weak the immature, playful, deliberations of a child. Àrt says what children say. '169A portrait of Foucault by Blanchot would signpost what I mean by this, `he is on a perpetual slalom course between traditional philosophy [serious thought? ] and the abandonment of any pretension to seriousness. '170But, can I really compare the two, is this not a straightforward

conceit?

Is the real problem with

comparison itself, placing non-identity under the sign of identity? Hirschhorn's comportment to `serious' thought, professorial and professional knowledge, and his reading habits are explicitly discussed in the following, I've only read a few books by Georges Bataille. But I read, for example,

headless,

what he wrote about an àcephalous

stupid or silly, in German:

16$Adorno, SF, p. 32. 169Deleuze, CC, p. 65. 170Foucault and Blanchot,

FB, p. 93.

76

society',

one that's

kopflos. I really like that

`headless' idea. (... ) I've never claimed to be a specialist, or even a `connoisseur'. I'm a fan of Georges Bataille in the same way that I could be a fan of the football club Paris Saint-Germain.

I'm not

obliged to go and see all the matches. (... ) You can even be a very fickle fan (... ) That's why I like the term `fan'. The fan can seem kopflos, but at the same time he can resist because he's committed to something without arguments; (... ) It's a commitment that doesn't require justification. The fan doesn't have to explain himself. He's a fan. It's like a work of art that resists, and preserves, its autonomy. "' Hirschhorn professes or confesses his love and admiration for those others with whom he works. Freud's charge would be, as has been made elsewhere, that Hirschhorn is not taking this thought seriously, that he is not in earnest in his relation with the other. This is so, but it does not refute Hirschhorn's serious commitment to not-knowing and his failure in relation to others - his weakness. Freud's position would suggest that Hirschhorn's intensification of affects, his commitment to love and admiration, strips his practice of all possibility for critical, serious, reflection. Hirschhorn's confessed love, admiration and fandom, so many emotional ties and affects, is mere unadulterated juvenilia, silliness. This would be a fair criticism, there is little doubt. Yet, Freud's theory of identification itself rests upon an equally affective terrain. There cannot be identification without passion, without admiration and without love, so many attributes of the sensuous serious non-seriousness.

There cannot be any

identification without the idealising work of the affect, without taking seriously concepts such as love and admiration. Indeed, I claim, admiration constitutes

171Hirschhorn,

THb, p. 35.

77

and reflects the event of identification. It is its condition of possibility and the possibility of breaking through the conditional, at once. Admiration and identification - two serious experiences and relations integral to fandom - between which there is only a difference of degree not of kind are ways of participating seriously that ultimately break open the subject rather than constitute it. They are dynamic processes and so speaking of `the' subject or `the' fan is to miss the point. Identity withdraws or is exaggerated and the line of the outside of thought emerges. Fans trace such a line and this is the great claim I wish to make for fandom. Fans can be fanatical -a

little mad - often

fascinated and obsessed, curious, amorous and amateur in their production but they can also be `fickle' as Hirschhorn testifies to (and is guilty of). I wish to claim that fans admire and identify, love and idealise, and they can take things very seriously indeed. Indeed, fandom can be said to question `serious' thought through seriously committing itself to its objects (admiration et al. ). Being a fan propels oneself beyond oneself (even if only in italics), opens oneself up to the outside, i.e., an ideal, a love et al, and opens up the outside within

oneself without possession,

i.e., processes

of subjectivation.

This

creation does not bring the outside in, determine it, nor conversely does it turn the inside out, evacuating determination - rather, there is a rich experiencing of thresholds, a vital experimentation that transforms exactly how the outside can be thought through transforming oneself. This is what is meant by Agamben's phrase, which I have interjected like a musical leitmotif -a refrain - throughout this chapter, being-within an outside. 1' Some fans consider themselves as they 172My use of this musical trope is in sympathy with what Adorno writes concerning Berlioz's use of it as, `guided at least in tendency by free association. (... ) By virtue of its own identity, its purpose is to hold together what threatened to collapse into chaos. (... ) it can make its appearance in a variety of situations and do its duty. But in the process it becomes much further

7R

might consider an artwork, both entered into and irreducibly apart from themselves. Fan identity is never a settled business, the production of identity is (pre)destined

to fail -

the impossibility

is necessary.

`The principle

of

individuality was contradictory from the outset (... ) no individuation was ever really achieved. 173Or, to put this a little differently, the outside cannot be captured in thought, yet thought continually thinks it. There exists a choice or a deliberation at any rate between two competing passionate pedagogies anchored on an affective plane. Perhaps, this is the ultimate commitment; a commitment to choosing choice - between either/ or and in ways which I hope to have argued this is both Hirschhorn and Freud's contribution.

A commitment

the spearhead

Kierkegaard

choose to take admiration,

to `being-within describes.

an outside'

eternally

balancing

on

So, to restate my aporia; Either, I may

love and passion seriously ties so many emotional -

the identification affect as an amorous the figure of the fan as I understand

idealisation,

and affirmative it and which,

I claim,

serious critical thought. Or, I may prefer to take seriously

peculiar to

is necessary

for

Lacan's assertion that

ties with others - be they reading and writing, knowledge of and participation with cultural objects - stems from the `worst of intentions, 074 because, òne

it is superseded, fragmented. ' removed from its original form. (... ) Through its development Adorno, SF, pp. 56-7. 173Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 125. 174 Lacan, SXX, p. 65. Lacan is here referring to the following text; Nancy, Jean-Luc and Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe [1972], The Title of the Letter, Trs. David Pettigrew and Francois Raffoul, Albany, SUNY Press, 1992. Lacan, also in Seminar XX, speaks of Nancy and LacoueLabarthe's text, Ì have never been so well read love. ' Lacan further, with so much goes a few pages on, 'I have never seen a single one of my students do such work, alas, no one will ever take seriously what I write, except of course [Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe] whom I said earlier that they hate me in the guise of desupposing Taking my knowledge. ' (My emphasis). something or someone seriously, for Lacan, is clearly an expression of love-cum-hatred. Is this the condition of possibility for all critical theory? Is there another way of (re)configuring the relation between love and knowledge? 79

knows nothing of love without hate. '15 Between say, the love of thought and the love-cum-hatred

of thought?

Perhaps however,

I should

both ask, with

Hirschhorn, `who do you love? ' and, with Freud and Lacan, `who do you hate when you talk about love ?,176

15 Lacan, SXX, p. 91. 176`The fundamental

principle of liberal philosophy was that of both/and. Today the principle of either/or seems to apply, but in such a way that the decision has already been taken for the worse. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 183. Adorno writes elsewhere, 'We like to present alternatives to choose from, to be marked True or False. The decisions of a bureaucracy are frequently reduced to Yes or No answers to drafts submitted to it; the bureaucratic way of thinking has become the secret model for a thought allegedly still free. ' Adorno, ND, p. 32.

80

Chapter Two: A Socio-Political

Academic

when they survey the history of art

adopt a false superiority

philosophers

to procure for themselves

the satisfaction

of nil admirari and, living in the domestic

of eternal values, derive from the ever-sameness

company separating dismiss

out what is truly different it as a rehashing

sociopsychologically of critical

of the classics.

reactionary

that aesthetics

self-consciousness

This

of things the profit of

the status

and endangers

and institutionally

of Fandom

Philosophy

is in league

attitude attitude.

quo, in order to with

a

It is only in the process

is able once again to reach art, if it

was ever capable in the first place. "'

Introduction

The major aim of this chapter is to provide a thorough conceptual invocation

and exegesis,

`fanatics, ' `fanaticism' Adorno's

my earlier

constellation

relations

will then

discussion,

generally

and affective

-

be taken

by evaluating

of concepts; admiration more

its derivatives,

in Adorno. This the work of preliminary -

conceptualisation

extending

in fandom

of fandom - incorporating

farther,

i.e.; `fans, '

investigation

complementing

the importance

as a complex

network

introducing as well as -

into and

a secondary

"8 love and seriousness, and passion,

understood

participations

commentary,

has

of human

one or two new

ones gleaned from Adorno's own schemata. 1'

177Adorno, AT, p. 340. 178In confessing this much this early I risk the immediate wrath of Adorno, "'passion" (which is the inevitable topic wherever critical ability is insufficient. ' Adorno, KCA, p. 13. 179 Adorno's humble description of the aim of the collaborative project that found, in 1950, literary expression Personality, holds true for this chapter, under the title, The Authoritarian `simply trying to add something new to what was already known. ' See: Adorno, SEESA, p. 231. Adorno takes this from Freud. See: Adorno, ISM, p. x. Of equal relevance to both the approach and hopes of this chapter is the following imperative, `Yet a gaze averted from the beaten track, a hatred of brutality, a search for fresh concepts not yet encompassed by the general pattern, is the last hope for thought. ' Adorno, MM, pp. 67-8.

91

This chapter is, therefore, at once prescriptive and descriptive, `closed and open, '18°`static and dynamic. "" My approach - against Adorno somewhat - is to formulate a definition for certain of these concepts while, at the same time, accepting the fallibility of such endeavour - with Adorno - in tracing, not erasing, their tensions and contradictions through attending to their appearance shifting contexts.

Experimenting with the relations of concepts, fragments

oscillating

in a limited

conclusion.

Concepts, then, will be crystallised

This chapter

in

sphere,

is here

privileged

over

any

authoritative

in motion but not laid to rest. 182

is also, I hope, close in character

to Adorno's

own Ur-

methodology of, `principled over-interpretation, '183testifying, as it does, `to an excess of intention over object. ''84Èssential to it is an element of exaggeration, of over-shooting the object, of self-detachment from the weight of the factual. '185 I will follow the advice bequeathed by Adorno, ä /a /ettre, insofar as my specific object - fandom, in the first instance - will be, `taken more seriously than it might itself wish to be. '186Words and language, here, too, will clearly `vibrate with emotion3187- the love of thought -I will not pass over in silence that which has 188 Any definition given is intended to be neither systematic nor affected me.

180Adorno, EF, p. 17. 181Düttmann, MT, p. 2. See also: Adorno, EF, p. 22. 182Ìn the essay discrete elements set off against one another come together to form a readable context (... ) the elements crystallize as a configuration through their motion. The constellation is a force field. ' Adorno, EF, p. 13. 183Adorno, EF, p. 4. 184Adorno, EF, p. 11. 185Adorno, MM, p. 126. 186Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. xix. `To reflect the thing as it is, the subject must give back to it [the object] more than it [the subject] receives from it. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 155. 187Adorno, EF, p. 7. `Rather, since language is erotically charged in its words, at least for the kind of person who is capable of expression, love drives us to foreign words. In reality, it is that love that sets off the indignation over their use. ' Adorno, WA, p. 187. 188This is an allusion to the oft-quoted, seventh and concluding, proposition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, `What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. ' Wittgenstein, Ludwig [1921], Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Trs. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinnes, Intro. Bertrand Russell, London, Routledge, 1961, p. 89.

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exhaustive, and, in fearlessly `saying more than was meant, '189my method must be considered essentially eccentric; both `lucky' and `playful, '190a fortuitous touching or, even, an exaggerated `groping'191of the matter in hand. Adorno's work is little called upon in fan studies yet when an address is made and his work is forced to speak this use is, I claim, often disparaging - replete with both fear and spite. 192My simple objective is, on the one hand, to redress this over-determined, imprecise and uncritical, use of his work to balance the scales, as it were. On the other hand, I aim - without falling back on the aforementioned negative affects - to `disrupt'193and 'interrupt, '194not capture nor catch out, Adorno's claims by confronting his thinking with its own blind spot, `with the truth that each one intends even if it does not want to intend it. '195I trust that my `seriously' `playful' efforts, here, will add yet another critical perspective

189Adorno, EF, p. 4. 190 Ìnstead of accomplishing something scientifically or creating something artistically, [the essay] reflects the leisure of a childlike person who has no qualms about taking his inspiration from what others have done before him. The essay reflects what is loved and hated instead of presenting the mind as creation ex nihi/o on the model of an unrestrained work ethic. Luck and play are essential to it. ' Adorno, EF, p. 4. (English words italicised are mine). 191`(") an intention groping9 its wa Y"' Adorno, EF, p. 16 ( Italics mine). 192For an analysis of fan studies that do cite Adorno see: Hills, FC, p. 31. 193 Düttmann, PE, p. 14. 'Without a disruption, without an interruption of attention, whose increase

is an exaggeration of concreteness, one does not observe with precision, one simply sees what one wants to see, one side of things. Only through the disruption of exaggeration does observation become precise, does concreteness The rub up against abstraction. difference between the patience and impatience of exaggeration, between a fanaticism of exaggeration and an art of exaggeration is the difference between two abstractions, between the abstraction of imprecision and the abstraction of precision. The impatient, fanatical, idling, paralysing exaggeration touches no limit, stiffens, unable to escape the approximate and the vague. ¶ Whether exaggeration creatively opens one's eyes or shuts them, prepares through into any individual at all or damns the individual to isolation, action the liberating transformation reveals a possible world as such or leaves it caught in explanation cannot be decided on the basis of principles but must show itself in specific objects. ' Düttmann, PE, p. 21 (Italics mine). 194Cohen's 'interruption' insists on the following paradox, witnessed in Adorno's work et al., that positing an urgent moral imperative is, at once, to posit the impossibility of fulfilling it - this impossibility rather than paralysing the imperative actually makes it more necessary. `The impossibility of actualizing the imperative prevents thinking from coming to rest. ' Cohen, /A, p. 26. 195Adorno, EF, p. 20. R3

to those readings, which really enter into the complexity and enigma that is Adorno. 196

Fandom

The first text by Adorno to draw an explicit reference to the phenomena of fandom was published when the philosopher was in his mid-thirties, in German and in 1938, in the Ìnstitute of Social Research's't97 journal - Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (later renamed, in English, `Studies in Philosophy and Social Science'). The text in question bore the title, On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening. 198In this relatively early text, which I will here follow closely, countless concerns and concepts that would find more eloquent and extended

articulation in Adorno's

subsequent

works are already in

evidence; the àll-encompassing exchange relationship, '199commodity fetishism and reification, the administration and standardization of the culture industry, the regressive

and authoritarian personality,

maturity and immaturity, the

1961am here thinking of the works I have truly benefited from, referred to in extension below and referenced in my Bibliography, by authors such as; Cohen, Düttmann, Jarvis and Rose. 197Two, extremely comprehensive, historical studies of the Frankfurt School, which have greatly benefited my reading are: Jay, Martin [1973], The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research; 1923 Berkeley, 1950, University of California Press, Revised Edition, 1996. See also: Wiggershaus, Rolf [1994], The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, Tr. Michael Robertson, Cambridge, The MIT Press. 198Adorno, FCMRL, pp. 29-60. This text is, first and foremost, a critical response to Benjamin's, 1935 and 1939, essay, The Work of Art in the Epoch of its Technical Reproducibility (also first published in the Institute's, Zeitschrift). It was the first text Adorno wrote on arrival in America, in the same year, as part of the Institute's forced exile and attachment to Columbia University, N. Y. C. Moreover, this 'treatise', so Adorno claims, 'determined theoretically' the work he was to be involved with, between 1938-41 also in N. Y. C., whose working-title was, The Princeton Radio Research Project. Benjamin's essay can be found in: Benjamin, /, pp. 211-44. The two citations from Adorno can be found in: Adorno, SEESA, p. 230. Adorno's work, of interest to this chapter, for the Princeton Radio Research Project has been published, in German (though the text is written in English on the whole), as: Adorno, CMERT, p. 163. Finally, it is, perhaps, worth noting that this essay is the only text by Adorno that Jenkins includes in the bibliography to his own (seminal fan study) text, tendentiously dismissive of Adorno's work: Jenkins, TP, p. 51. 199Adorno, MM, p. 239. 84

relationship between producers and consumers in mass culture, identification, imitation and mimicry. Adorno's text, no matter how provocative and irritating its title, need not be understood, merely, as a defence of aesthetic value judgements of `taste' in the age of the latter's decline, for as Adorno writes, `the concept of taste is outmoded )200and again, later, `taste no longer exists. '201`[H]e exaggerates. (... ) But only

exaggeration

is true. '202 Taste

is certainly

anachronistic

and

`sermonizing' about `degeneration' is itself degenerative. 203The faculty of taste has wilted and the world, with it, has withered since the time of Kant's third critique. However, Adorno's

the purportedly time

standardizing,

is,

progressive

perhaps,

in

mode of cultural

actuality

a

regressive,

participation stultifying

of and

mode of passivity ('progress is reverting to regression 7204),Ìf

nobody can any longer speak, then certainly nobody can any longer listen. 9205 if it is true, as the promotional poster for Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction film Alien declares, that, ìn space, no one can hear you scream, ' then more locally in the vacuum of mass culture individual the by perishes similar means; alienation. Perhaps, then, it is too early (or too late) to be entirely done with taste? 206Though, of course, the answer to this question remains beyond the horizon of this essay!

200Adorno, 201Adorno,

FCMRL, p. 29. FCMRL, p. 40.

202Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 92. 203Adorno, FCMRL, p. 31. 204Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. xviii. 205Adorno, FCMRL, p. 30. 206Jenkins certainly does not consider taste to be outmoded. Fans and fandom, he argues, may not be to everyone's taste, but in this rupture of sensibility lies the scandal (of taste). Jenkins cites both Bourdieu's classic, 1979, Distinction, and de Certeau's, 1984, The Practice of Everyday Life, to shore up the political, social and economic impact such scandalous activity 85

Either way, if I were to accept Adorno's diagnosis - and it seems more unimaginable to negate than to affirm this point - mass culture finds itself in a serious,

if not entirely 'catastrophic, 7207situation.

Without any faculty of

orientation, that is to say without the capacity to make choices between artworks and commodities, to differentiate between `serious' music/art and `light' music/art, mass culture negates via equivalence the very thing responsible for its possibility. In quashing any rights to protest, mass culture - this totally homogenising system - by extension, silences itself to a harmonious medium can effect in the world. What Jenkins refers to as `good taste' becomes, in someone like Bourdieu's hands, a signifier for one's educational capital, cultural capital, class capital etc. 'Good taste' is only a part in the larger sphere of social relationships and exchange in the market place that forms culture. Taste is, in short and so reductively, class bound and Social distinctions rest on such ideological constructions, essentially discriminatory. and for Jenkins following Bourdieu, such taste ìs always in crisis. ' Ideological conflict is a constant, one cultural group claims their taste as the highest, another class competes, and with such hierarchization comes the necessity of policing whichever order succeeds, of maintaining the distinction (read separation), between 'good taste' (read bourgeois) and `bad taste' (read working class). The former comprising the world of rational, educated, detached interest. The latter signals the all too human world of desire, immersion, enjoyment and satisfaction. Fans, according to Jenkins, disrupt and pervert the status quo, `The stereotypical conception of the fan, while not without limited factual basis, amounts to a projection of anxieties about the violation of dominant cultural hierarchies. The fans' transgression of bourgeois taste and disruption of dominant cultural hierarchies insures that their preferences are seen as abnormal and threatening by those who have a vested interest in the maintenance of these standards. (... ) Fan culture muddies those boundaries, treating popular texts as if they merited the same degree of attention and appreciation as canonical texts. Reading practices (close scrutiny, elaborate exegesis, repeated and prolonged reading, etc. ) acceptable in confronting a work of "serious merit" seem perversely misapplied to the more "disposable" texts of mass culture. (... ) Fan interpretative practice differs from that fostered by the educational system and preferred by bourgeois culture not simply in its object choices or in the degree of its intensity, but often in the types of reading skills it employs, in the ways that fans approach texts. From the perspective of dominant taste, fans appear to be frighteningly out of control, undisciplined and unrepentant, Bourdieu suggests is a cornerstone rogue readers. Rejecting the aesthetic distance of bourgeois aesthetics, fans enthusiastically embrace favored texts and attempt to integrate into their own social experience. Unimpressed by institutional authority media representations and expertise, the fans assert their own right to form interpretations, to offer evaluations, and to construct cultural canons. Undaunted by traditional conceptions of literary and intellectual property, fans raid mass culture, claiming its materials for their own use, reworking them as the basis for their own cultural creations and social interactions. (... ) Fan culture stands as an open challenge to the "naturalness" and desirability of dominant cultural hierarchies, a refusal of authorial authority and a violation of intellectual property. ' Jenkins, TP, pp. 16-8. Fans, for Jenkins, treat `light' cultural objects `highly, ' and are àctive producers and manipulators of meaning: ' textual poachers as the title of his book suggests. Jenkins, TP, p. 23. Fans are, therefore, firmly locked into relations of power. I differ from Jenkins in not viewing fans as possessors (poachers, thieves, borrowers etc), whether or not this possession is legitimate or not, as poaching only reinforces the paradox of there existing an official, regulated, area out of bounds to fans. Fandom is, I think, less a question of creative reappropriation than one of experimentation. 207Adorno, FCMRL, p. 60. R6

heard by everyone and therefore no one -a

vulgar average or mean ground.

This `no one' cannot resist such a `levelling tendency, '208few kick against mass culture for in it there appear more pricks than kicks and, `nowadays most people kick with the pricks. '209Civilization is discontent yet continues to labour under an illusion. 21' By positioning itself centrally and in reducing every incommensurable to a common measure thereby instrumentalising à spurious balance, '21 mass cultural conformism - integrationist par excellence - forgoes any toleration of ìntellectual deviations, '212of possibilities, of contradictions and exaggerations. 2'3 `Whatever might be different is made the same. That is the verdict which critically sets the boundaries to possible experience. The identity of everything with everything is bought at the cost that nothing can at the same time be identical to itself. Enlightenment (... ) amputates the incommensurable. '214THE SITUATION IS CATASTROPHIC. The sexual and spontaneous individual fares no better than its one time ally, culture, and is `liquidated' by the latter, mass adversary, according to Adorno. 215 The erroneous belief in the truthfulness of the whole, the ìllusion of existing harmony, '216proceeds centripetally and subsumptively - as all roads lead to Rome. Mass culture wishes it were enjoying an Italian city-break without the


MM, p. 120. MM, p. 109. 210See: Freud, CD, pp. 57-145. 211Adorno, FCMRL, p. 43 212Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 135. 213Ànything that is not reified, cannot be counted and measured, ceases to exist. ' Adorno, MM, p. 47. 'He who integrates is lost. ' Adorno, MM, p. 240. 214Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 8-9. 215 Adorno, FCMRL, p. 40. However, Ìn the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew. ' Adorno, MM, p. 129. 216Adorno, FCMRL, p. 33.

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217 being broken. This delusional belief is older still, it is appearance of anything Greek, and as archaic as the mythical Charybdis -a quarry

into

itself eradicating

difference

by

whirlpool that pulled its

identifying

it, classifying

it,

218 it it. Yet, to recognise the error of this belief and assimilating and possessing ensuing act, to reject them, is not necessarily enough to escape the equally catastrophic

encounter with the Scylla. Simply privileging dissonance over

harmony, serious over light, producer over consumer - valorising this very separation

in the

process

of division

-

will

not offer

salvation

from

the

damnation heralded by this double-headed monster. `Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up. '219Culture is no longer the sum of its parts, no matter how these parts are configured. The imperative 220 heeded The division is imperialism, divide impera, be no more. et must of derisory

221 is false, ' `The whole cannot be put `the the the or untrue. as whole

together by adding the separated halves, but in both there appear, however Two distantly, the changes of the whole, which only moves in contradiction. 7222 wrongs do not make a right - opposites do not always attract and reconcile their differences - as one of Adorno's oft-quoted aphorisms makes clear, `wrong life cannot be lived rightly. '223Being right ìn the abstract conception of universal wrong, '224the organon of domination and `spirit of self-preservation, '225is in any

217 `What is offered is not Italy but evidence that it exists. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 119. Caesar non est supra Grammaticos (Caesar is not above the Grammarians), quoted here in: Kant, WE, p. 58. 218 See Adorno and Horkheimer's description for the methodology of Enlightenment reason: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 20,97,182. 219Adorno, LWB, p. 123. 220`(... ) imperialism, reason in its most terrible form. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 70. 221Adorno, MM, p. 50. 222Adorno, FCMRL, p. 35. 223Adorno, MM, p. 39. 224Adorno, 225Adorno,

MM, p. 25. MM, p. 70.

RR

event undecidable when the coordinates are askew. 226The task is to hold fast to the appearance of antagonism in the relation of `halves' hoping that, futurally, in strengthening it this contradiction may expose the conditions of possibility for achieving something beyond the conflicting parts themselves. Such tension is illustrated in the fetishism of the commodity as Adorno, following Marx, argues, `the veneration of the thing made by oneself which, as exchange-value, simultaneously alienates itself from producer to consumer. '227 The `tired businessman, '228 the `woman who has money, ' and the `jazz enthusiast' [Jazzenthusiasten], all succumb to the mysterious intoxication of the àct of buying. '229Both producers and consumers fetishise or become fixated upon the tit for tat àct of exchange, 1230which `destroys use values 123'by masking,

under

the

appearance

of

immediacy,

mediation

(i.e.,

the

`crystallisation of social labour 132).In a culture where gifts come wrapped with receipts, proof of purchase enabling the recipient to exchange the gift for

226For a seriously touching working through of this aporia see: Düttmann, AR, pp. 179-189. 227Adorno, FCMRL, p. 38. 228Adorno, FCMRL, p. 42. This is an oft-repeated personality type in Adorno's oeuvre. 'For all the noblesse of his gesture, Schiller secretly anticipates the situation under the culture industry in which art is prescribed to tired businesspeople as a shot in the arm. ' Adorno, IAL, p. 248. 'If, as a theory of knowledge, it contests all objective meaning and classes as art every thought that is irreducible to protocol sentences, it a timine - though without admitting it - negates art, which it takes no more seriously than does the tired businessman who uses it as a massage. ' Adorno, AT, pp. 264-5. A 'prick, ' the tired businessman needs a lot of 'kicks. ' 229Adorno, FCMRL, p. 39. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 26. I will, hereafter, provide the German for equivocal phrases related to fandom. 230 Marx, Karl [1867], Capital: Volume /, Trs. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 2003. Reprinted in the text used and referred to here: Marx, Karl [2000], Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Ed. David McLellan, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 474.

231Adorno, FCMRL, p. 39. 232Marx, Karl [1865/98], Value, Price and Profit, http: f/www. marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/chO2. November 2006.

R9

htm,

accessed

5

another of equivalent value or even to cash it in, the actual commodity matters little, the buying matters most.233Alienation is not only for aliens. `The counterpoint to the fetishism of music is a regression of listening. '234If mass culture has become one great fetish, reifying everything in its wake, then the mode of participation within it, listening to music, so Adorno warns, has not progressed and then regressed, rather, it has been, àrrested at the infantile stage' of `deconcentration. ' Such a listener is `childish' not `childlike, ' an important distinction, and their development, concentration and experience, is blocked along with the belief in the possibility that there might come into existence something unheard of, something unforeseen, something 'new. 7235 Regression is not only a characteristic of music listeners but of consumers more generally who, under the productive power of Monopoly capitalism and in the face of advanced advertising and developed distribution, have relinquished their

ability

to

resist -

both needs

and

demands

of consumers

are

predetermined and exhausted by the producers peddling standardised wares. Behaving childishly, the consciousness of regressive listeners, so Adorno insists, resembles the process whereby à child imitates the teacher. '236The hollowed out and alienated consumer, emptied of both spontaneity and desire, imitates the very vacuity and sterility of the system that same system taught

233Èarlier, fetishes had been subject to the law of equivalence. a fetish. ' Adorno, DE, p. 12. Èverything is perceived only from as something else, however vaguely that other thing might be only in so far as it can be exchanged, not in so far as it is Horkheimer, DE, p. 128.

Now equivalence itself becomes the point of view that it can serve envisaged. Everything has value something in itself. ' Adorno and

234Adorno, FCMRL, p. 46. 235Adorno,

pp. 46-9. `The regression of the masses today lies in their inability to hear with their own ears what has not already been heard. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 28. 236 Adorno, FCMRL, p. 52. Evoking Zarathustra's advice, Òne repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. ' Nietzsche, TSZ, p. 103. FCMRL,

90

them.

Integration,

adaptation

and conformism

are the culture industry's

catchwords. For Adorno there are three specific childish `types, ' which can be extracted and identified, `from the masses of the retarded. ' This infantile triad share the following regressive modus operandi, `whenever they attempt to break away from the passive status of compulsory consumers and àctivate' themselves, they succumb to pseudo-activity. '237 The first type of regressive personality,

what

I understand

Adorno to

understand when he writes `fans,' is sketched as ènthusiasts' [Enthusiasten], who

write

dismissingly

`fan

letters'

[Begeisterungsbriefe]238

and entirely unsympathetically,

Adorno

subsequently,

refers to them as `bigots who

complain. '239These fans also refer to themselves as, `jitterbugs, as if they 240 Fans, individuality. loss their to of and mock affirm simultaneously wanted here, are caught in negotiating positions of authority - power relations24' - with the aid of 'parody'242and `caricature. '243However, the possibility of advancing beyond mere `pseudo-activity, ' becoming individuated and progressively active, is not open to them. Adorno describes fans thus, 237Adorno, FCMRL, p. 52. 238Adorno, FCMRL, p. 52. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 41. It ought to be stated that Adorno does not, consistently, differentiate between enthusiasts [Enthusiasten] and fans [Fans], in the same way he distinguishes enthusiasts [Enthusiasten] from fanatics [Schwärmerei]. This equivocality of language is compounded when Adorno confuses the latter difference in a later text where he writes of the 'ambivalent relation to authority, ' peculiar to the psychology of, 'the jazz fanatic' [Jazzfanatiker]. See: Adorno, PNM, p. 135. For the German see: Adorno, GS12, p. 168. 239Adorno, 240Adorno,


241There must be more to life than this recognition? The inability to evade domination is echoed in the following lines, 'Only those who subject themselves utterly pass muster with the gods. The awakening of the subject is bought with the recognition of power as the principle of all relationships. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 5. Adorno goes farther still, 'The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others; nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us. ' Adorno, MM, p. 57. 242Adorno, FCMRL, p. 52. 243Adorno, FCMRL, p. 53.

91

Their ecstasy is without content. That it happens, that the music is listened to, this replaces the content itself. The ecstasy takes possession of its object by its own compulsive character. It is stylized like the ecstasies savages go into in beating the war-drums. (... ) Passion itself seems to be produced by defects. But the ecstatic ritual betrays itself as pseudo-activity by the moment of mimicry. (... ) The imitative assimilation to commodity models is intertwined with folkloristic customs of imitation. '244 Fans are charged with practicing commodity fetishism. Lacking the requisite faculty they skip productive listening and regressively rest content by dancing along to the music. Dancing substitutes for listening, reactive letter writing replaces active productivity. The mimicry that Adorno speaks of here betrays the ritual - imitating `stages of sexual excitement'245 - and is fixed upon at the expense of an active libidinal ecstasy. Fans parody or caricature the ecstasies of `savages. ' The ecstasy of fans is not of this magnitude - it borrows its vernacular but has not the breath to speak. I can only assume that, for Adorno, parody and caricature are childish, not childlike, activities. Fans are phony. By importing a Freudian conceptualisation into the present discussion it may be possible to understand how the relation between sexual drive and sexual aim,

Adorno's

ècstasy, ' is confused

and estranged

in the

regressive

consciousness of the fan. They objectify this condition, alienating themselves in the process. The fan, in privileging the exchangeability and in overvaluing their object, may be said to abandon the antagonistic relation between drive and



92

246 In an extreme case of commodity fetishism - as exhibited, perhaps, in aim. Adorno's fan, enthusiast or jitterbug - the object actually `takes the place' of the 247 The object of exchange takes the place of the objects use. Though, it aim. must be noted that Adorno does not simply oppose exchange and use, preferring a critical engagement with both. The fan is, strictly speaking, objectless. The use-value of objects, or their content, becomes reified, thing-like, so it may be exchanged more rewardingly. The exchangeability of the commodity, its quid pro quo condition, is fetishised. The consequence of all this perversity, this fetishism, is that the sexual aim infinitely regresses and with it the drive is emptied of its content. It is as if the fan writes love-letter after love-letter without ever posting them, dances without a partner or consistently masturbates without reaching climax. The means, here fetishised and blocked, are without end. `Means and end are inverted. 7248 The second personality type practicing pseudo-activity,

`the eager person'

[Eifrige], is more private in their occupation - they would, in the safety of their own domestic sphere and probably with the aid of high-tech tools, play with their privates and come but never dance in public or post letters. `He is shy and inhibited, perhaps has no luck with girls. '249For this type, ìt is irrelevant to him what he hears or even how he hears; he is only interested in the fact that he hears and succeeds in inserting himself, with his private equipment, into the 246 See: Freud, TETS, pp. 123-243. Freud's jargon is repeated in Adorno's own choice of words, 'Such substitutes [for the sexual object] are with some justice likened to the fetishes in which savages believe their gods are embodied. ' Freud, TETS, p. 153. 247Freud, TETS, p. 154. 248Adorno, MM, p. 15. `The preponderance of means over ends which holds sway throughout the culture industry is manifested in popular music as a waste of egregious interpreters on unworthy products. That so many who know better let themselves be thus misused is due, of course, to economic reasons; but their bad conscience creates a climate perfect for poisonous rancor. With cynical naivete, yet not without a certain measure of awful justification, they tell themselves that they are holding the patent on the spirit of the times. ' Adorno, ISM, pp. 32-3. 249Adorno, FCMRL, p. 53. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 42. 9l

Once again, public mechanism, without exerting the slightest influence on it. 1250 means, by privatisation, are divorced of their relation to an end. The third and final type is the èxpert' [sachverständingei 251an example of 252 is `jazz [Jazzamateurs]. the More knowing than a fan and which amateur' more public than an eager individual this type, `can identify every band and immerses himself in the history of jazz as if it were Holy Writ. '253However, even this heightened degree of exegetical expertise on the part of the amateur expert ultimately fails to resist the domination exercised by the status quo. Their childishness is witnessed in the self-delusion of believing that they actually do make a difference to the whole. Such a type, for Adorno, has nothing to say of ends but knows a great deal about means. These

men, for they all appear to be males

in Adorno's

eyes, who

fetishistically and regressively engage in pseudo-activity, do so in order to differentiate themselves from the crowd, to elevate themselves above the mass. Yet, in endeavouring to rise from the rabble, `he is simultaneously betraying the possible and being betrayed by the existent. 1254It appears as if, according to Adorno's criticism of `the `new possibilities' in regressive listening, '255the fan is not fanatical enough, the eager individual is not public enough and the amateur is not expert enough to destructure the whole wrongness of the status quo. Adorno, does not leave the case entirely closed and without hope, however, as witnessed

in the following statement, `[o]ne might be tempted to rescue

[regressive listening] if it were something in which the àuratic' characteristics of 250Adorno, 251Adorno,

FCMRL, p. 54. FCMRL, p. 54. For the German see: Adorno, 252Adorno, FCMRL, p. 55. For the German see: Adorno, 253Adorno, FCMRL, p. 54. 2-14Adorno, FCMRL, p. 56. 255Adorno, FCMRL, p. 56. 94

GS14, p. 43. GS14, p. 44.

the work of art, its illusory elements, gave way to the playful ones. 7256 If (and it is a big IF), play overcomes illusion, art and for that matter music (not to mention the personality types who participate), may prove to have all the more serious consequences. This furnishes my commentary with a further point. Fans or enthusiasts, eager individuals and amateur experts, for Adorno, are not playful enough - or, rather they are playful in the wrong way - fan play is a `disrespectful play. '257`The infantile play [of the regressive listener] has scarcely more than the name in common with the productivity of children. (... ) Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of remaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as a duty puts it among useful purposes

and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom

in it. i258Adorno,

elsewhere, draws a parallel between child's play and regressive music, Infantilistic music behaves toward its models like a child who takes apart a toy and puts it back together again faultily. Something not entirely domesticated, an untamed mimetism, nature itself is lodged in what

is contrary

to nature: Thus

in dance

may savages

have

portrayed a missionary prior to devouring him. But the impulse for this is due to the civilizing pressure that proscribes loving imitation and tolerates none that is not mutilated. 259


FCMRL, pp. 56-7. FCMRL, p. 58.

259Adorno, FCMRL, p. 57. 259Adorno, PNM, p. 137. For Hills, Adorno's essay, 'Toy shop, ' in Minima Moralia, shows how child's play - using the toy differently than was intended by the toy maker - may be understood Adorno, on Hills view, becomes childlike not, as a privileging of use-value over exchange-value. as Jenkins argues in Textual Poachers, the toy maker. The child embodies a non-corn modified, acapitalist order while situated in the heart of a marketplace dedicated to exchange precisely. See: Hills, FC, pp. 31-5. 95

Fans or enthusiasts, eager individuals and amateur experts, practice pseudoactivity rather than activity in taking culture and its commodities too seriously. They make play serious, transforming it into a duty. This dutifulness, their earnestness, is as misplaced as is their play. They have misunderstood the importance of being earnest. Regressive personality types in their childishness, precisely,

lose the childlike ability and productivity

of play.

Running alongside their disrespectful play is a `sadistic humour, Y260 where, `something so completely useless is carried on with all the visible signs of the strain of serious work. '261Such types are perversely serious, both too serious and too little serious. Sadistically, they take something seriously when it need not be and in the process, masochistically,

debase play itself - the only existent,

serious, claim to freedom. Playing at seriousness they seriously misunderstand the purpose

of play - that play is purpose free. Play is not altogether

serious

and only if it remains lighthearted, playful precisely, can it have a serious effect. Fans, if I may use this term as a catchall category, begin from co-option not from options. Fans negotiate with this reduced reality, whether its mode is caricature

or

purposiveness

parody, and in their

negotiations

lose something

of the

without purpose - freedom, in a word - necessary for, `the

liberation of things from the curse of being useful. '262Fans instrumentalise, reify and fetishise - they make the useless useful. Exchange is objectified. In order to negotiate fans presuppose the necessity of the existent and in so doing block the possible - dreaming new realities. Fans, according to this view, cock a

260Adorno, 26! Adorno,


262Adorno,

LWB, p. 110. 96

snook at both reality and possibility while they, unknowingly, remain alienated from each sphere. This is, for certain, an idiosyncratic and rigorously negative vision of the status of thought and culture, not to mention the position and mode of participation within it. Yet, before jumping to the conclusion reached by another commentator that Adorno is elitist, a `mandarin' and guardian of anachronistic culture and avant-garde

263 it is worth pointing out the immediate art,

historical context of this

essay. Benjamin had earlier argued that the èxpertise' of a sports fan and the `distraction'

undergone

epistemological

by a film spectator

disciplinarity

and

had a curious

264 Benjamin's participation.

effect

upon

affirmative

exaltation of popular art, whereby knowledge was not only the reserve of the educated educators, was, for Adorno, òut-and-out romanticization. '265Writing

263 In

an otherwise interesting essay on Adorno, Eagleton reverts to precisely this stereotype in his conclusion, 'it is ironic in its turn that this nostalgic haut bourgeois intellectual, with all his mandarin fastidiousness and remorseless tunnel vision, should join the ranks of Mikhail Bakhtin and Walter Benjamin as one of the most creative, original cultural theorists Marxism has yet produced. ' Eagleton, Terry [1990], The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 363-4. 264Benjamin writes of the sports fan's expertise, ìt is inherent in the technique of the film as well

is somewhat of an expert. as that of sports that everybody who witnesses its accomplishments This is obvious to anyone listening to a group of newspaper boys leaning on their bicycles and discussing the outcome of a bicycle race. ' Benjamin, I, p. 225. The section of interest on spectator distraction as a new mode of participation reads, 'The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation. The fact that the new mode of participation first appeared in a disreputable form must not confuse the spectator. Yet some people have launched spirited attacks against precisely this superficial aspect. (... ) Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. (... ) Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. (... ) In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. (... ) Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway (... ) The film [puts] the public in the position of the critic. (... ) The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one. ' Benjamin, I, pp. 232-4. 265Adorno, LWB, p. 123. Adorno's criticism reads as follows, 'I very much doubt the expertise of the newspaper boys who discuss sports; and despite its shock-like seduction I do not find your theory of distraction convincing - if only for the simple reason that in a communist society work will be organized in such a way that people will no longer be so tired and so stultified that they need distraction. ' Adorno, LWB, p. 123. Benjamin, it seems, was as guilty as the fans Adorno discusses in fetishising means over ends. Adorno makes his position upon the theoretical 97

`letters to the editor, ' Benjamin's initial image of readers gaining àccess to authorship, ' becoming writers in the process and blurring `the distinction between author and public, '266is dealt with in Adorno's own text. There, the letter writers - fans - never get beyond pseudo-activity. The right to write does not imply one will be read. The opportunity to write a letter - the possibility of participation - for Adorno, does not necessarily mean that everyone has the capacity and fortuity to realise this possibility - becoming an author - in much the same way as not everyone who participates in the lottery will finally win it. A crude analogy, there is little doubt, yet it does underline significant aspects in the equally eccentric positions of both Benjamin and Adorno. 26' Adorno's Benjamin's,

text is an attempt to redress the optimistic

exaggerations

however, in doing so, I would like to suggest,

of

he creates

eccentricities all of his own making. By opting either for or against mass culture, both men, touch on the inherent tensions of the dispute, yet in emphasising one side over the other and in pushing them too far, both men dissolve the very tension

each was aiming to articulate.

A dialectical

reading

that places

and

considers the two texts together, without measuring and thereby neutralising their exaggerations into a happy medium, may succeed in maintaining this tension. If Adorno's criticism of Benjamin's optimism is valid, then Adorno's negativity is equally open to further critical negation. If participation is not as open, possible and active, as Benjamin would wish then, equally, it may not possibilities of participation clear in the following, `the detached observer is as much entangled as the active participant; the only advantage of the former is insight into his entanglement, and the infinitesimal freedom that lies in knowledge as such. ' Adorno, MM, p. 26. 266Benjamin, /, p. 225. 267Crude but not without reason; 'Ideology hides itself in probability calculations. (... ) Only one can draw the winning lot, only one is prominent, and even though all have mathematically the same chance, it is so minimal for each individual that it is best to write it off at once and rejoice in the good fortune of someone else, who might just as well be oneself but never is. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 116. 9R

simply be as passive, impossible and closed, as Adorno's comments seem to imply. 268 Adorno's

next, most extensive albeit least interesting,

engagement

with

fandom takes place in his, 1938-41, Current of Music: Elements of a Radio Theory. 26' In the opening chapter entitled, `Radio Physiognomics, ' the reader may find a section sub-titled, Ùbiquity-Standardization

and Pseudo-Activity',

making it a relatively simple affair to predict Adorno's critical position. The èssence of radio itself' - ubiquity-standardization - is Adorno's real target and is defined as, `[t]he standardization which (... ) is the more or less authoritarian offer of identical material to a great number of people. 270`Fan mail, '27 though listed as one of a number of `[c]ountertendencies'272to ubiquity-standardization, is, again, one of Adorno's points of reference for the pseudo-activity and irrational psychology characteristic of the consumers of mass culture.

268To give Adorno his due there are at least two possible interpretations of the position of mass culture, its products and participation therein, present in his oeuvre. The former, which is most widely recognised and repeated is, perhaps, his `negative' vision as outlined in this essay. However, there exists a more 'positive' interpretation offered by Adorno in the concluding chapter of his book with Eisler. There Adorno writes, `[e]ven under the regime of the industry, the public has not become a mere machine recording facts and figures; behind the shell of behavior patterns, resistance and spontaneity still survive. To imagine that the conventionalized demands of the public are always `bad' and the views of the experts always 'good' is to indulge in dangerous oversimplification. It must not be forgotten that the notion of 'the expert' is part of the same machinery that has reduced art to an administrative and commercial matter. ' Adorno, Theodor W. and Eisler, Hanns [1947], Composing for the Films, London, Continuum, 1994, pp. 120-1. Motion picture music, the concern of Adorno's text, `must not take itself seriously, ' as, `[w]ith some exaggeration it may be said that essentially all motion-picture music contains an element of humor, speaks with its tongue in its cheek, as it were, and that it degenerates into a bad kind of naivete as soon as it forgets this element. Ibid, p. 130. 269Adorno, CMERT, pp. 145-73. 270Adorno, CMERT, p. 148. 'Culture today is infecting everything with sameness. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 94.

271Adorno, CMERT, p. 163. 272Adorno,

CMERT, p. 149. Other 'countertendencies' include; the 'selection' of radio programs, the various technical 'adjustments' to facilitate improved reception; 'interactive' programs and `switching off. '

99

`The listener's attempt to impress his will upon broadcasters usually takes the form of letter writing, '273and is framed as an attempt to further understand what, psychologically,

motivates the resistance or countertendency

of `the dial-

twirler. '274Without getting into a sticky debate on normativity, Adorno does concede that those writing letters, the fans, have a `different' `psychological make-up' from `the normal listener's, i275and their "spontaneous"

letters are,

here, differentiated from the `the extensive correspondence of radio-amateurs, ' àny sort of pressure-groups, ' and those, `letters inspired by an offer of reward. i276 It is left to Adorno's reader to speculate on the nature of this difference. Perhaps, I could conjecture that, for Adorno, fans are less passive than `normal' listeners, but their efforts to transform the whole remain essentially inactive. However, To call their `spontaneity' a sign of resistance or self-identification with the power resisted, of course, would be premature. But they contain positive clues allowing such an interpretation. These letters deal with more or less òbjective' phenomena, like bad reception, inconvenient programs, the ratio between different types of music, timing of programs, etc. (... ) They seem to justify their ['objective'] suggestions by considering their particular viewpoints as expressions 277 their of particular personalities. Notwithstanding the inadequacy of Adorno's delineation -I why,

`the extensive

273Adorno, 274Adorno, 275Adorno, 276Adorno, 277Adorno,

correspondence

CMERT, p. 163. CMERT, p. 163. CMERT, p. 164. CMERT, p. 164. CMERT, p. 164. ]no

see no reason

of radio-amateurs, ' should

not be

considered as fan mail - it is worth following his argument to understand how it is that fans, though promising, fail to get beyond pseudo-activity. Fans, as Adorno understands them, are equally `neurotic' and 'sensible, 9278 though (and not unsurprisingly), Apparently these letter-writers feel somewhat lost and neglected in the face of ùbiquity-standardization. ' Thus, even while they are criticizing the phenomenon, they compensate for this lost feeling by attempting to re-establish personal participation in the phenomenon and by trying to attract the attention of the institution from which it 279 originated. Fans do and do not understand whatever prompts them to write. Adorno confirms this view, in a note, `political speeches, meetings and news are really understood by the listeners. ' Fan letter-writers have a right to respond, in the manner in which they do ('bestial seriousness, ' `disrespectful play, ' `sadistic humour'), to such events, however, they are not in an àdequate situation, ' when they write of things they do not understand - Adorno's examples being, `the torturing discords of modern music, ' and the `sadistic mutilation in `jamming' our Adorno continues, precious folk-tunes. Y280 The fan-letter as a psychological indicator becomes more valid the more the subject matter of the broadcast lies beyond the writer's understanding and his sphere of rational thinking. This must be considered an interpretation of fan mail. 28'

278Adorno, CMERT, p. 164. 279Adorno, CMERT, p. 165. 280Adorno, CMERT, p. 165, n. 1. 281Adorno, CMERT, p. 165, n. 1.

101

Adorno's complaint is that in drawing on their personality to facilitate and their written requests and observations,

validate

and in recognising

the

overwhelming power of the institution, fans actually repress their own power in order to identify and ingratiate themselves - èstablish a bond' - with the powers that be. 282 The attraction stems from excessive attachment or develops at first sight;

it can emanate from great figures,

as in the case of

malcontents and murderers of presidents, or from the most wretched as in the pogrom itself. The objects of the fixation are replaceable like father figures in childhood. 283 The `positive' promise of spontaneous resistance is broken as soon as fans instrumentalise themselves in negotiating. Fans feel lost and embarrassed, and worst

of

all they

consciousness

exhibit

and

exchange

no longer means anything

this

impotence.

but reflection

`Today self-

on the ego as

embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing. ' 284Ìn other words, [the fan] overcompensates his feeling of being lost as an individual by making his cause common with the cause of the subjugating power. '285In wishing to eek out some place of resistance, a point of difference from where they may speak and be heard, fans give up too much too soon and capitulate. Under the auspices of ìndividual resistance, ' the fan, actually, `deserts to the other side of the fence. '286Fans start with co-option not options, they self-

282Adorno, 283Adorno

CMERT, p. 166. and Horkheimer, DE, p. 159. 284Adorno, MM, p. 50. 285Adorno, CMERT, p. 166. 286Adorno, CMERT, p. 166.

102

identify with the authority of the institution before attempting to revise and reform it. But, the existent whole is not an option. The fan is, then, not so `different, ' not as èxceptional, ' a personality as he 287 Adorno's bleak perspective refuses to acknowledge any real wish. would difference between consumer and producer, `tired business man' and fan, listener and broadcaster. 288 For, `the listener can really influence ubiquitystandardization only when the phenomenon no longer exists and he is no longer a listener. '289 This is an exaggerated

claim; logically, the dissolution

of

standardization and pseudo-activity would only emerge in concert with the end of radio (mass culture) itself. For Adorno, radio must be radicalised beyond recognition. Who is lost and lacking concretion; fans or Adorno? These inaugural and fragmentary encounters with fandom are greatly enriched by the wider critical scrutiny afforded the theme in the double-headed project first published in 1944, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. The phenomena of fandom are present even when absent by name. 29°`Fans' [fans], are in fact only mentioned once by name, and in the same breath as a discussion centring on the concordance between the advertising magnitude of the Nazi propagandist Goebbels and that of American cultural magazines such as, Life. 291The section of interest reads as follows, Advertising becomes simply the art with which Goebbels presciently equated it, I'art pour I'art, advertising for advertising's sake, the pure representation of social power. In the influential American magazines 297Adorno, 298Adorno,

CMERT, p. 166. CMERT, p. 167.

289Adorno, CMERT, p. 173. 290See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 99-100. 291Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 132-3. For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer, p. 186.

101

GS3,

Life and Fortune the images and texts of advertisements are, at a cursory glance, hardly distinguishable from the editorial section. The enthusiastic and unpaid picture story about the living habits and personal grooming of celebrities, which wins them new fans [neue fans], is editorial, while the advertising pages rely on photographs and data so factual and lifelike that they represent the ideal of information to which the editorial section only aspires. (... ) The montage character of the culture industry, the synthetic, controlled manner in which its products are assembled (... ) predisposes it to advertising: the individual moment, in being detachable, replaceable, estranged even technically from any coherence of meaning, lends itself to purposes outside the work. (... ) Advertising and the culture industry are merging technically no less than economically. This is the first, albeit not the last, twinning of fandom with fascism. The Fascist's

totalitarian

distribution

and

control over

consumption)

all cultural

axiomatically

manifestations confirms,

so

(production, Adorno

and

Horkheimer argue, the acceleration of the homogeneous and authoritarian `Culture

Industry'

and its barbaric

by-product,

`the advance

toward the

administered world. '292'Culture, `merges with the advertisement. '293Fans, here, do not resist the conflation of advertising and reality engendered in the culture industry, but actively propagate and perpetuate its fantasy. Fans are framed as consumers groomed by producers who engage in leader worship and who suffer from, `blind conformity. 7294Ìn contrast to the Kantian, the categorical

292Adorno and Horkheimer, 293Adorno and Horkheimer, 294Adorno, MM, p. 36.

DE, p. xii. DE, p. 131.

104

imperative of the culture industry no longer has anything in common with freedom. It proclaims: you shall conform, without instruction as to what; conform to that which exists anyway, and to that which everyone thinks anyway as a reflex of its power and omnipresence. The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness. '295`The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. 7296H. G. Wells puts this mundus vult decipi tendency and the fan aporia succinctly, `The newspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the reception of the idea. '297Fans swallow the falseness of the whole - ideology wholesale, as it were. `Fanaticism' [Fanatismus], 298'fanatic(s)' [Schwärmerei]299 and, 'fanatical(ly)' [Fanatisch]3oobehaviour are more common expressions, here synonymous with the

multifaceted

psychological

make-up

and

mode

of

participation

or

comportment of fans. I will now perform a close reading of each of these various expressions, which, when considered together, should provide a more nuanced understanding of the phenomena that constitute fandom. `Because faith, ' so Adorno and Horkheimer argue in their opening chapter,

295Adorno, CIR, p. 104. 296Adorno, CIR, p. 103. 297 Wells, H. G. [1897],

The War of the Worlds, London, Penguin, 1946, p. 19. Adorno's variation on this theme runs as follows, `Things have come to pass where lying sounds like truth, truth like lying. Each statement, each piece of news, each thought has been preformed by the centres of the culture industry. (... ) Lies have long legs: they are ahead of their time. ' Adorno, MM, pp. 108-9. (Note the congruence of Adorno's simile and Wells' description of the Martian `Handling' and 'Fighting Machine's' in the latter's chapter of the aforementioned book entitled, What We Saw from the Ruined House. ) The likenesses do not end here, `from the Ruined House, ' 'from Damaged Life. ' 298Adorno For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer, and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 14,73,214. GS3, pp. 36,112,296. 299 Adorno DE, pp. 112,144,177. For the German see: Adorno and and Horkheimer, Horkheimer, GS3, pp. 162,200,242. 300 Adorno For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer, and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 74,144. GS3, pp. 114,201

109

(... ) is unavoidably tied to knowledge as its friend or its foe, faith perpetuates the split in the struggle to overcome knowledge: its fanaticism [Fanatismus] is the mark of its untruth, the objective admission that anyone who only believes for that reason no longer believes. Bad conscience is second nature to it.301 Fanaticism or `militant religiosity, '302here, blocks any reconciliation between faith and knowledge. By pushing faith to its limit point, fanaticism makes faith faithless. `The paradox of faith' know faith to is, in fact, faithless be to `degenerates finally into fraud, the myth of the twentieth century and faith's irrationality into rational organization in the hands of the utterly enlightened as they steer society toward barbarism. '303Fanaticism is a crude exaggeration of faith that exposes the impossibility of the latter's overcoming

knowledge.

Fanaticism is the, `dread of the fetish. '304Faith is the fetish of fanaticism. Fanaticism is faith turned false. Yet, in becoming the untruth of faith fanaticism does not make faith impossible, rather its untruth becomes its truth. An extension of this argument, to be found in the text's second Excursus, sees fanaticism

explicitly

appended to the conjunction

of Enlightenment

and

radicalism. 305 From the disgust aroused by excrement and human flesh to the contempt for fanaticism [Fanatismus], idleness, and poverty, both spiritual and material, a line connects behavioral forms which were once adequate and necessary to those which are abominated. This 301 Adorno

and Horkheimer,

DE, p. 14. For the German

36. 302Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 303Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 304Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 305See: Adorno and Horkheimer,

p. 14. p. 15. p. 17. DE, p. 72. 106

see: Adorno

and Horkheimer,

GS3, p.

line is at once that of destruction and of civilization. (... ) in the glare of enlightened reason any devotion which believed itself objective, grounded in the matter at hand, was dispelled as mythological. 306 Enlightened reason in demythologizing devotional behaviour and practices, liquidating them in effect, is - following Adorno and Horkheimer's argument no less guilty of practising a radicalism with which it charges faith, `militant religiosity' or fanaticism. The two are linked and the contradictions, entirely necessary,

must be rigorously analysed not passed over in silence. The

outcome of thinking fanaticism immanently may well be a fanatical thought, but not of necessity? Rather, it may be read as an interruption or disruption of the former, Ènlightened' thinking, which is enriched and renewed through its contact with its contagious other. Stupidity is a scar. (... ) Such scars lead to deformations. They can produce "characters, " hard and capable; they can breed stupidity, in the form of deficiency symptoms, blindness, or impotence, if they merely stagnate, or in the form of malice, spite, and fanaticism [Fanatismus], if they turn cancerous within. Goodwill is turned ill will by the violence it suffers. And not only the forbidden question but the suppressed

imitation, the forbidden

weeping

or the forbidden

reckless game, can give rise to such scars. "' The above citation, drawn from the concluding paragraph of Dialectic of Enlightenment, provides the final expression of fanaticism in this text. Before proceeding to an analysis of this last fragment it is worth noting the title of the 306Adorno

and Horkheimer,

DE, p. 73. For the German

see: Adorno and Horkheimer,

GS3, p.

112. 30' Adorno

and Horkheimer,

DE, p. 214. For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer,

GS3, p.

296. 107

opening one, Àgainst Knowingness, ' which begins the paralipomena collected 308 This title is ambiguous; it is both excusatory and the this text. at end of accusatory. Knowingness is clearly the aim of Enlightened reason critiqued by Adorno and Horkheimer throughout their text. Accepting that one does not know would then be a positive outcome of their criticism, relinquishing reason as tool and power of domination. This title, however, also supports stupidity, the blindness Adorno and Horkheimer criticise with equal force. Indeed, being clever - "in the know, " as the popular expression renders it - often proves to be nothing short of stupidity and, `[t]hat this turns clever people all at once into dunces

convicts

reason of its own unreason. '309 As

Enlightenment

and

mythology dialectically embrace then so too must cleverness and stupidity be entangled. `The contradiction of the stupidity of cleverness is necessary. i310The tension must not be allowed to lapse, the impossibility of detaching one from the other renews the imperative, the drive, to overcome the situation. Stupidity is the occasion of blocked experience, it is the untruth of cleverness, whether it is the

scar

of

fear,

of fanaticism

or,

`the exaggerations

of

speculative

metaphysics. '31 Like its bedfellow cleverness, `(... ) stupidity is not a natural 312 Cleverness is not the ' but and reinforced. quality, one socially produced unblocking of these blockages for they are necessary, but it is distraction and diversion from such. Cleverness does not dwell on the blockages and in this, its, omission - its failure to look these blockages in the eye - lies the difference between it and understanding. Adorno, elsewhere, puts the problem succinctly, 308Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 173. 309Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 173-4. 310Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 174. 311 The full sentence reads, `The exaggerations reflecting reason. ' Adorno, MM, p. 128. 312Adorno, MM, pp. 105-6.

108

of speculative

metaphysics

are scars

of

`To understand understanding,

that one does not understand but

not

understanding

is the first step towards itself. '313

This

Adornian

(non)understanding, itself, recalls a verse from Corinthians, `He who thinks he knows something, does not yet know as he ought to know. '314Cleverness, then, is constrained and not as free as it would wish or appear. In turning its attention away from the blockage, in turning a blind eye, cleverness

verifies its

cleverness while simultaneously acknowledging its dependence on stupidity. Following a minor diversion of my own, I will now trace the argumentation that considers the individuation of fanaticism, in three expressions that refer to 'fanatics. '315The stem of the German word Adorno and Horkheimer use is Schwärmerei, and a brief note on its history is perhaps overdue. Schwärmerei is a term distinguished in Kant's critical philosophy. In the latter's, 1790, Critique of Judgement,

Kant

clearly

differentiates

ènthusiasm'

[Enthusiasmus,

Begeisterung], from `fanaticism' [Schwärmerei]. The latter, according to Kant, is a, `delusion [Wahn] of wanting to SEE something beyond all bounds of sensibility, i.e., of dreaming according to principles (raving with reason). (... ) If enthusiasm is comparable to madness [Wahnsinn], fanaticism is comparable to mania [Wahnwitz]. (... ) [I]n enthusiasm, an affect, the imagination is unbridled, 313Adorno,

Theodor W. [1993], Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, E. F. N. Jephcott, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998, p. 150. 314Corinthians I, Chapter 8, Verse, 2. 315Jephcott, throughout his translation of Dialectic of Enlightenment, chooses the English

Tr.

word `zealots' for variations on the German word Schwärmerei. Adorno does not write Zelot, the closest German word to `zealot. ' With this in mind Jephcott's translation seems somewhat at odds with Adorno's own language. It should also be noted that the Zealots were a historical community of people, an ancient Jewish sect, who resisted Roman rule in the first century AD. Zealot, so the Oxford English Dictionary informs, surfaces in the mid sixteenth century in the Latin from Greek zelotes, from zeloun, aforementioned sense and comes via ecclesiastical whose sense is to `be jealous. ' Cumming, in his earlier translation of this text, translates Schwärmerei and its derivatives as both 'fanaticism' and 'fanatic, ' which, I believe, is closer to Adorno's words. Of course Schwärmerei cannot be done into English without remainder and other terms could just as well be substituted for it; enthusiast, mystic, dreamer, romantic, visionary, sentimentalist, gusher. I will continue to include the German in my citations and footnote the variations by which Jephcott and Cumming respectively translate the phrase in question.

109

but in fanaticism, a deep-seated and brooding passion, it is ruleless. Madness is a passing accident that presumably strikes even the soundest understanding on occasion; mania is a disease that deranges it. i316This relation between an idea and an affect inextricably links passion to fanaticism - Adorno and Horkheimer's cancer - and affect to enthusiasm - Adorno and Horkheimer's blindness and impotence. Whereas the latter is very much located in the world, the former cannot claim such worldliness. 3' The first use Adorno and Horkheimer make of this term is located in the chapter or Fragment entitled, `The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, ' which most poignantly brings together the major motifs and arguments of the aforementioned texts. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that beneath the sign of the dollar, under the authority of business, 31' mass culture shamelessly

transforms

itself into the culture

industry as efficiently

and

316 Kant, Immanuel [1790], Critique of Judgement, Tr. Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1987, pp. 135-6. It is also worth noting, due to the contestation over translating Schwärmerei, that both Bernard and Meredith translate Schwärmerei as `fanaticism. ' See: Kant, Immanuel [1790], Critique of Judgement, Tr. J. H. Bernard, London, Macmillan and Co, 1914, pp. 144-5. See also: Kant, Immanuel [1790], The Critique of Judgement, Tr. James Creed Meredith, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952, p. 128. 317 'Enthusiasm is an extreme mode of the [feeling of the] sublime. (... ) That extremely painful joy that is enthusiasm is an Affekt, a strong affection, and as such it is blind and cannot therefore, according to Kant, "deserve the approval of reason" (KUK, General Remark Upon the Exposition of the Aesthetical Reflective Judgement). It is even a dementia, a Wahnsinn, where the imagination is "without bridle. " As such, it is certainly preferable to Schwärmerei, to the uproar of exaltation. The latter is a Wahnwitz, an "insanitas, " a going "without rule" of the imagination, a deeply rooted illness, " (... ) The Schwärmerei is accompanied by an illusion: (... ) that is, believing that there is a direct presentation when there isn't any. It proceeds to a illusion (cognizing something beyond the noncritical passage, comparable to transcendental limits of all cognition). (... ) Historical-political enthusiasm is thus on the edge of dementia, it is a pathological outburst, and as such it has no ethical validity, since ethics requires one's freedom from any motivating pathos; ethics allows only that apathetic pathos accompanying obligation that is respect. In its periodic unbridling, however, enthusiastic pathos conserves an aesthetic validity, it is an energetic sign, a tensor of Wunsch [wish]. The infinity of the Idea draws to itself all the other capacities, that is, all the other faculties, and produces an Affekt "of the vigorous kind, " characteristic of the sublime. As can be seen, the "passage" does not take place, it is a "passage" in the course of coming to pass. Its course, its movement, is a kind of agitation in and above the abyss, a "vibration, " as place, one within the impasse of incommensurability, Kant writes, that is, "a quickly alternating attraction toward, and repulsion from, the same object" (KUK: § 27). Such is the state of Gemüt for the spectators of the French Revolution. ' Lyotard, D, pp. 166-7. 318`Their ideology is business. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 109.

11n

transparently as one-time participants metamorphose into 'dependants. 1319 The ideological underbelly of Enlightenment is here exposed in all its candour, and supports the text's major dialectical thesis; `[m]yth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology. '320`[T]he total power of capital, )321like the Charybdis, integrates, organises and instrumentalises, cultures as it encounters them. Both producers and consumers are firmly inside its remit, `The producers no more function as subjects than do their workers and consumers, but merely as components in a self-regulating machinery. '322`Need' has become the name of a factory. Difference and particularity, sustained thought and spontaneity, are no longer permitted. `The spectator must need no thoughts of his own: the product prescribes each reaction. '323 Perhaps, in order to account for this catastrophe it would be advantageous to adapt Marx's dictum accordingly; All that is solid melts into hot air,324to account for the achievement of, `the false identity of universal and particular'325whereby the former can replace the latter at

any

time. 326 Deception

and delusion

are the

achievements

of the

Enlightenment and the fanatics of the culture industry assist in prolonging this maniacal lie. (... ) the secret of aesthetic sublimation [is] to present fulfilment in its brokenness. The culture industry does not sublimate: it suppresses. (... ) Works of art are ascetic and shameless; the culture industry is pornographic and prudish. It reduces love to romance. (... ) The mass 319Adorno, 320Adorno

MM, p. 133. and Horkheimer,

DE, p. xviii. DE, p. 94.

321Adorno and Horkheimer, 322Adorno, MM, p. 205. 323Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 109. 324 Marx, Karl Manifesto, and Engels, Friedrich [1872], The Communist London, Penguin, 1967, p. 83. See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 96. 325Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 95. 326See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 102.

Tr. Samuel

Moore,

production of sexuality automatically brings about its repression. Because of his ubiquity, the film star with whom one is supposed to fall in love is, from the start, a copy of himself. Every tenor now sounds like a Caruso record, and the natural faces of Texas girls already resemble those of the established models by which they would be typecast in Hollywood. The mechanical reproduction of beauty - which, admittedly, is made only more inescapable by the reactionary culture fanatics [reaktionäre Kulturschwärmerei] with their methodical idolization of individuality - no longer leaves any room for the unconscious idolatry with which the experience of beauty has 327 been linked. always The broken promise of the culture industry differs from that of art inasmuch as the former is never entirely broken. To rephrase this, the culture industry's promise is forever broken but gives the illusion of prolonging the moment of rupture. Fulfilment is outlawed. The promissory note'328is flawed, the culture industry's promise is not worth the paper it is printed on. Art's promise is not broken by itself, the culture industry's is - though it would tell it otherwise. Art sublimates its desire, channelling it productively into opposition to the same society from whence it came, thereby holding true to its promise of happiness no matter how broken - in the satisfaction of desire. Art's promise, ìs as 327 Adorno

modified). Jephcott translates the and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 111-2. (Translation phrase as, 'reactionary culture zealots. ' For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer, GS3, p. 162. See also: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, Cumming, p. 140. Cumming translates the phrase as, `reactionary cultural fanaticism. ' It is worth noting that Jenkins values this `romance, ' in stark insofar as Jenkins does not This is interesting to Adorno and Horkheimer. opposition differentiate levels of affective intensity, qualities he consistently claims are specific to fandom. Fandom simply becomes a 'romance, ' rather than asking, crucially as I see it, whether this relation is erotic, passionate or loving? Jenkins perpetuates the confusion surrounding the between èmotions' in not tackling this question of defining or elucidating the differences affective states, i. e., eros, agape, friendship etc. See: Jenkins, TP, pp. 122-38.

328Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 111. 117.

necessary as it is hypocritical. '329The brokenness of its promise consists, ìn the necessary failure of the passionate striving for identity, ' `by which it transcends reality. '330The culture industry, like an old publican, represses and suppresses both dream and desire and with downcast eyes rests content with a reduced reality, `the surrogate of identity, '33' devoid of transcendence.

Extending this

metaphor I might be tempted to consider the culture industry in relation to St. Luke's description of the publican's encounter with Christ, Ànd the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. '332The culture industry's, `supreme law is that its consumers shall at no price be given what they desire. '333 `Castration, ' is certainly not the culture industry's mode of operation - it does not say, "No. " The latter attempts to fuse the division between `light' and `serious' art, subsuming and uniting their irreconcilability ùnder a single false denominator. '334The true, the mythical element, is the subsumption of art to life, but art's broken promise - its claim to seriousness - lies precisely in exposing, ìts opposition to existence. '335 The `producing, controlling, disciplining, '336of pleasure and amusement the culture industry practices, ìs indeed escape, but not, as it claims, escape from bad reality but from the last thought of resisting that reality. '337Resistance is

329Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 330Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 331Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 332St. Luke, Chapter 18, Verse, 333Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 334Adorno and Horkheimer, 335Adorno and Horkheimer, 336Adorno and Horkheimer, 337Adorno and Horkheimer,

p. 103. p. 103. p. 103. 13.

pp. 112-3. DE, p. 108.

DE, p. 113. DE, p. 115. DE, p. 116.

III

never activated when work and leisure march to the same drum roll. `Where the culture industry still invites naive identification, it immediately denies it. It is no longer possible to lose oneself in others. (... ) Everyone amounts only to those fungible, he by are mere else: all everyone replace or she can which qualities specimens. '338 In its reproducibility

of `types recurring cyclically

invariants7339the culture industry is essentially

as rigid

reactionary, ideological and

irrational. Fanatics, here, fail to penetrate the heart of the matter - the ùnconscious idolatry' Adorno writes of. Fanatics are discussed, for the second time, in the section entitled, Èlements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment. ' Adorno and Horkheimer write, Religion has been incorporated as cultural heritage, not abolished. (... ) Both circumstances finally benefit fascism: the unchanneled longing

is

descendants

into

guided

of

Schwarmgeister]

the are

rebellion,

racial-nationalist

evangelistic converted

fanatics into

while

the

[evangelistischen

conspirators

of

blood

knights Wagnerian the the model of on communities and elite guards, of the Grail. In this way religion as an institution is partly meshed directly into the system and partly transposed into the pomp of mass 340 culture and parades. In this chapter, which `deals with the reversion of enlightened civilization to barbarism, '341one-time religious fanatics become the stuff of the SS. The obscure

impulse which was always more congenial

to them than reason takes

338Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 116-7. 339Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 125. ... Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 144. (Translation modified). Jephcott translates the phrase as, èvangelistic zealots. ' Cumming translates the phrase as, 'evangelistic fanatics, ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, Cumming, p. 176. For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer, GS3, p. 200. 341Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. xix. 114

them over completely. '342The obscure or `forbidden impulse'343 animating fanatics is prohibited or irrational mimesis. Self-hatred and self-destruction, `through projection, )344culminate in the `bad conscience'345 and 'paranoiac646 character of anti-Semitism and testify to this irrationality. Rationality, it has been shown throughout Dialectic of Enlightenment, is not free of irrationality. Irrational processes such as, `[a]ll distraction, indeed, all devotion [have] an element of mimicry. '347Fanatics imitate, but their `genuine mimesis'348 - along with their rituals and devotion - has become transformed and tabooed. Tabooed and transformed by who or what exactly? Civilization replaced the organic adaptation to otherness, mimetic behavior proper, firstly, in the magical phase, with the organized manipulation of mimesis, and finally, in the historical phase, with rational praxis, work. Uncontrolled mimesis is proscribed. 349 Enlightenment

civilization

acts as the great oppressor,

suppressor

and

repressor forbidding the mimicry, tears and rashness, of play. This lighthearted and `[u]ndisciplined mimicry (... ) [contagious] gestures of touching, nestling, soothing, coaxing, ' unconsciously imitated through generations, actually contain the seeds of domination and may eventuate in negative affects. 350Fascism is without doubt irrational, `based on false projection, '351but it is a rationally calculated

irrationality, it gives the illusion of opening up access to this

342Adorno and Horkheimer, 343Adorno and Horkheimer, 344Adorno and Horkheimer, 345Adorno and Horkheimer, 346Adorno and Horkheimer, 347Adorno and Horkheimer, 348Adorno and Horkheimer, 349Adorno and Horkheimer, 350Adorno and Horkheimer, 351Adorno and Horkheimer,

DE, p. 140. DE, p. 151. DE, p. 153. DE, p. 144. DE, p. 154 DE, p. 148. DE, p. 154. DE, p. 148. DE, p. 149. DE, p. 149. 115

unconscious, uncontrolled and prohibited mimesis. Fascism is that paranoiac magician whom has learnt the rudiments of deception; how to control and 352 The anti-Semites hatred of for behaviour certain effect. organise prohibited the Jew, their false projection, paranoia and bad conscience, leads, `to a castration wish expressed as a universal urge to destroy. The sick subject regresses to an archaic confusion between love and dominance. It is concerned with physical closeness, with taking possession, finally with relationship at any price. '353 The

anti-Semite

controls mimesis

and in this gesture of self-

preservation the, `half-educated, ' attempt, `violently to give meaning to a world which makes them meaningless. '3' If mimesis makes itself resemble its surroundings, false projection makes its surroundings resemble itself. If, for the former, the outward becomes the model to which the inward clings, so that the alien becomes the intimately known, the latter displaces the volatile inward into the outer world, branding the intimate as friend or foe. 355 Uncontrolled mimesis proceeds centrifugally; radiating out from its core it disperses. Genuine mimesis is diasporic in contrast to the imperialism that characterises the centripetal movement of false projection. In the condition of the latter, `[t]he individual no longer has to decide what he or she is supposed to do in a given situation in a painful inner dialogue between conscience, selfpreservation, and drives. (... ) The committees and stars function as ego and super-ego, and the masses, stripped of even the semblance of personality, are molded far more compliantly by the catchwords and models than ever the 352See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 6-7. 353Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 159. 354Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 161. 355Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 154.

116

instincts were by the internal censor. '356The properly mimetic subject, through reflection - `the self-conscious work of thought'357-

'has

the external world within

its own consciousness and yet recognizes it as other. '358The mimic recognises an internal and external world. False projection has no faculty, no capacity for 'self -reflection, i359and in lacking `conscious projection, '36°ìt is yet cut off by its lack of reflection'361collapsing the difference between inner and outer worlds. `(... ) the individual identifies himself or herself promptly and directly with the stereotyped scales of values. '362Fanatics and anti-Semites alike are impatient, and their inability to wait, in 'expectation, '363is illustrated in the next expression given to fanatics, Asceticism and materialism, those opposites, are ambiguous in the same way. Asceticism as a refusal to participate in the bad existing order coincides, in face of oppression, with the material demands of the masses, just as, conversely, asceticism as an agent of discipline, imposed by cliques, aims at adaptation to injustice. The materialistic acceptance of the status quo, individual egoism, has always been linked to renunciation, while the gaze of the unworldly fanatics [unbürgerlichen Schwarmgeists] roving beyond the existing order,

356Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 168. 357Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 160. 358Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 156. 359Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 163. 360Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 156. 36' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 158. 362Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 164. 363 `Reconciliation its whole meaning. The is Judaism's highest concept, and expectation paranoid reaction stems from the incapacity for expectation. ' Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 165.

117

rests materialistically on the land of milk and honey. Asceticism is sublated in true materialism, and materialism in true asceticism. " The

fanatic

is,

[Kompromißlosen]365

here,

one

or

of

those

rare

ùncompromising

ùncompromising 311 spirits,

armed

figures' with,

ùncompromising ideas, '367who certainly does not toe the line. 368The fanatic's 6gaze' is not downcast but fixes on the utopian image of exodus and is directed toward a promised land.36' `The gaze that rises above what is closest at hand leaves it behind as something bad and hindered in its functioning. '370Fanatics are convinced,

òf [their] youthful radicalism

[and of their]

revolutionary

opposition to the dominant reality. '37 In a much later paper, written and broadcast in the year of his death, Adorno reaffirmed the potential of a certain type of individual whom shares many qualities

with

this

fanatic,

`(... )

the

uncompromisingly

critical

thinker

[kompromißlos kritisch Denkende], who neither signs over his consciousness nor lets himself be terrorized into action, is in truth the one who does not give

ssa Adorno

DE, pp. 177-8. (Translation and Horkheimer, modified). Jephcott translates the fanatic, ' phrase as, ùnworldly zealot. ' Cumming translates the phrase as, 'non-bourgeois Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, Cumming, p. 214. For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer, GS3, p. 242. 365Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 176. For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer: GS3, p. 240. 366Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 177. 367Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 175. 368See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 175-8. St. John the Baptist and the Cynics represent, for Adorno and Horkheimer, such uncompromising figures. Nietzsche, rather unsurprisingly, may be included too, as I will show. Perhaps, however, Adorno has the wrong man if the right Badiou cites the life and faith (not works) of Paul, both saint and militant, as the philosophers? condition for a, ùniversal singularity, ' in his revisionist text: Badiou, SP, p. 13. Nietzsche, so Badiou argues, shares with Paul, `(... ) the same - sometimes brutal - combination of to the vehemence and saintly gentleness. (... ) The truth is that both brought antiphilosophy point where it no longer consists in a "critique, " however radical, of the whims and pettiness of the metaphysician and sage. A much more serious matter is at issue: that of bringing about through the event an unqualified affirmation of life against the reign of death and the negative. ' Badiou, SP, p. 72. 369See: Exodus, Chapter 3, Verse 8. 370Adorno, RB, p. 131. 371Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 176. 11X

up. i372I could append the names of Beethoven and Balzac to this list of uncompromising figures, `Balzac attacks the world all the more the farther he moves away from it by creating it. There is an anecdote according to which Balzac turned his back on the political events of the March Revolution and went to his desk, saying, "Let's get back to reality"; this anecdote describes him faithfully, even if it is apocryphal. His demeanour is that of the late Beethoven, dressed in a nightshirt, muttering furiously and painting giant-sized notes from his C-sharp minor quartet on the wall of his room. As in paranoia, love and rage are intertwined. '373Perhaps, a particular pathology is supported by Adorno, one which comprises uncompromising love and art? This is the first, marginally, positive interpretation of the possibilities allotted to fandom. `But the theoretical and practical systems of such historical outsiders were unstructured, without a center, and differed from the successful systems by a streak of anarchy. The idea and the individual mean more to them than administration

and the collective. They therefore

provoke

anger. '374 The

deficiency of these `historical outsiders, ' these fanatics, is that `they themselves [do not] reflect the world as it actually was, )375and both their theories and ideas could not be transformed, cohesively, into domination and power. 376Their intolerance for the status quo makes the latter spiteful and fearful. In the light of Adorno's comments on the wrongness of the world this militant and radical, fanatical opposition to the false whole still seems slightly to its

372Adorno, R, p. 292. For the German see: Adorno, ; 'j Adorno, RB, p. 125. 374Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 176-7. 375Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 177. 376See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 178. 119

GS10.2, p. 798.

favour. If it is true that, `life no longer lives, )377then living a different type of life, creating

a new comportment,

is urgently required. Whereas,

before, the

deficiency of fans and fanatics lay in their willed or passive subsumption beneath the false whole - their resignation to the reduced reality offered by the culture industry - it now appears as though these figures are being criticised for positioning themselves outside the whole. The principle of their reality and reflection is neither in nor on the untrue world but so very far, `from Damaged Life. ' With this distance it may be possible for fanatics to raise, `the question for, as Adorno himself claims, Ònly at a about the right and the wrong life, %378 remove from life can the mental life exist, and truly engage the empirical. (... ) Distance is not a safety-zone but a field of tension. '379But, this possibility is not open to the fanatic, as the tension between being a part of and apart from life is, by privileging extremes, allowed to collapse. Fanatics are, here at least, too fanatical, too uncompromising - fanatics neither tolerate nor face up to concrete social antagonism, idealism and utopianism are the events of their untruth. But, can Adorno have it both ways? Can fans be criticised for both their co-option and their optioning, their resignation and their refusal? Comporting oneself `fanatically, ' is twice investigated by name in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Its first appearance illumines what fanatical comportment is not, The work of the Marquis de Sade exhibits "understanding without direction from another" - that is to say, the bourgeois subject freed from all tutelage. (... ) Juliette does not proceed fanatically [fanatisch] (... ) In psychological terms Juliette, not unlike Merteuil in Les Liaisons

37' Adorno, AT, p. 301. 378Düttmann, AR, p. 182. 379Adorno, MM, pp. 126-7.

i7.n

Dangereuses, embodies neither unsublimated nor regressive libido but intellectual pleasure in regression, amor inte/%ctua/is diabo/i, the joy of defeating civilization with its own weapons. She loves systems 380 logic. and Fanatical comportment, if the above rendering is to be trusted and inferred upon, is both ìmmature' and heteronomous - bound to tutelage. The second Excursus from whence the above quote is taken opens by paraphrasing Kant's understanding of Enlightenment. 381For the latter thinker, Enlightenment is the slow and arduous progression from the bonds of immature barbarism toward civilised

maturity

understanding

and autonomy

where the

cultivation

and exercise

of

and the use of reason in public is paramount. Freethinking

learned individuals are independent and mature, fanatical behaviour, so Adorno and Horkheimer insist, is immature and dependent on the guidance of others. Yet, for Kant - as is equally true today immaturity is a given and maturity remains a dream, an ideal image. Adorno and Horkheimer, I assume, would accept this statement before extending it. Enlightenment has not been realised but is still a possibility, as Kant makes categorical, If it is now asked whether we at present live in an enlightened age, the answer is: No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things are at present, we still have a long way to go before men as a whole can be in a position (or can even be put into a position) of

Sao Adorno

Cumming translates the phrase as, 'fanatical, ' and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 68,74. Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, Cumming, p. 94. For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer, GS3, p. 114. 38' Kant, WE, pp. 54-60. 121

using their own understanding confidently and well (... ) without outside guidance. 382 Freedom, therefore, far from being actualised, is more spirit than a concrete reality, more image than age - retained as both a categorical imperative and 383 idea. For the authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment this idea, regulative freedom,

has

become

yet

more

impossible.

Their

critique

brings

this

impossibility to light but does not abandon the claim. The impossibility of happiness

and freedom is necessary, thought renews itself in its broken

promise. De Sade's Juliette, returning to Adorno and Horkheimer's

argument, is

ènlightened. '384Às a good philosopher she remains cool and reflective. 685 Juliette's detached and objective, pure and formal, maturity, however, comes at a price - ends are replaced by means, 386and love is exchanged for coldness and cruelty, The lethal love on which Sade's work is constantly focused (... ) together with the biting cold it emits toward human beings misused as things, (... ) also radiates the perverted love which in the world of things, takes the place of love in its immediacy. (... ) It is not just romantic

sexual love which has been condemned

as metaphysics

by

science and industry but love of any kind, for no love can withstand reason.

387

382Kant, WE, p. 58. 383See: Kant, WE, p. 59. 384Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 385Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, 386See: Adorno and Horkheimer, 387Adorno and Horkheimer, DE,

p. 74. p. 81. DE, p. 82. p. 89, p. 91. I 22.

Reason's

unreasonableness

is exposed

but,

`dispelling

rationalizations

becomes itself rationalization. '388`Magic passes into mere activity, into the means - in short, into industry. '389Juliette's hard won maturity slides back into immaturity when she puts love to work, giving it a useful purpose - that is to say, when

she makes of it an equivalence.

The

`mimetic behavior

proper, '

antecedent to both the magical phase and industrial phase is subsumed beneath the instrumentalisation of domination. `The over-maturity of society lives on the immaturity of the ruled. )390Love for Juliette is nothing but an instrument, a tool with which she can whip her master. No matter how far Juliette highlights thought's cruelty and injustice her own thought remains dependent on the suffering of others. This `love-cum-hatred' or 'love-hate""

is confirmed as the modus operandi of

fanatical comportment in the second expression given to this term, which brings my commentary on fandom's topology in Dialectic of Enlightenment to its finale, The fanatical [fanatische] faith on which leader and followers pride themselves is no other than the grim doctrine which was earlier used to discipline the desperate, except that its content has gone astray. That content lives on only as hatred of those who do not share the faith. Among the "German Christians, " all that remained of the 392 love religion of was anti-Semitism.

In, The Schema of Mass Culture, ' an essay that was penned in 1942 but which remained unpublished for many years, written, therefore, at the same 388Adorno, MM, p. 65. 389Adorno and Horkheimer, 390Adorno and Horkheimer, 391Adorno and Horkheimer, Cumming's translation. 392Adorno and Horkheimer, GS3, p. 201.

DE, p. 81. DE, p. 28. (Translation DE, Cumming,

modified). p. 234. Adorno and Horkheimer,

DE, p. 194. I prefer

DE, pp. 144-5. For the German see: Adorno and Horkheimer,

123

time as Dialectic of Enlightenment but which did not find its way into the project it was intended for, Adorno draws on and extends the integral link between fandom and mimesis and furthers his investigations into the oblique relations between pupil and teacher, between maturity and immaturity. For Adorno, `the borderline between culture and empirical reality becomes more and more indistinct, ' as the `commercial character' gains distinction. 393The ideological condition of culture is repeated and thus confirmed. Ideal images, such as working toward a `good life, ' become broken promises, not to be `taken seriously, ' or, alternatively,

leading

a practical,

relinquishment

yet equally broken and serious

economically

useful,

life does

of 'dreams. '394 `With every gesture

is the promise that

not necessitate

the

the pupil is given to

understand that what is most important is understanding the demands of `real life' and fitting oneself properly for the competitive realm, and that the ideals themselves were either to be taken as a confirmation of this life or were to be immediately placed in its service. 3395 `Real life' is wrong life. Real wrong life is intolerant of dreamers and idealists, grow up is its imperative. Grow up into what? Damaged life? Emerging from this strange integration of worlds comes deception and technological instrumentality at the price of imagination and objectivity. The affair of Orson Welles' broadcast Ìnvasion from Mars' was a test performed by the positivistic spirit to determine its zone of influence and one which showed that the elimination of the distinction between

393Adorno, SMC, p. 61. 394 Adorno,

SMC, p. 62. This anticipates the content of the 'Dedication' to Adorno's later work, Minima Moralia. There, 'the teaching of the good life, ' can only be approached negatively, via a 'melancholy science, ' for, 'our perspective of life has passed into an ideology which conceals the fact that there is life no longer. ' Adorno, MM, p. 15. 395Adorno, SMC, p. 62.

124

image and reality has already advanced to the point of a collective sickness, that the reduction of the work of art to empirical reason is already capable of turning into overt lunacy [Wahnsinn]

at any

moment, a lunacy which the fans [Fans] who send trousers to the Lone Ranger and saddles to his horse already half affect. 396 Lunatic fans level the tensions between the two spheres; image and reality, into a single conflict free, playful and ideal, fantasy world of mad and deranged ideology. Comportment in this world does not escape for, `the schema of mass culture

now

prevails

as a canon

of synthetically

produced

modes of

behaviour. '397Mass culture is both childish and regressive, ìt is baby-food: permanent self-reflection based upon the infantile compulsion

towards the

repetition of needs which it creates in the first place, '398it, `simply identifies with the curse of predetermination and joyfully fulfils

it. '399

Fans, no matter how

`curious' and àctive' they may appear, have the wrong reality and their dreams and ideals are tainted accordingly - the tension between the two is nowhere existent, The curious individual who falls victim here, the raving autographchaser at the film studio, the child under fascism who suffers under the new-fangled disease of compulsive reading, is simply the citizen who has come to terms with reality and whose apparent insanity merely confirms the objective

insanity which men have finally

succeeded in catching up with. 400

396Adorno, SMC, p. 64. For the German see: Adorno, GS3, p. 302. ; `" Adorno, SMC, p. 91. 398Adorno, 399Adorno,

SMC, p. 67. SMC, p. 72.

400Adorno, SMC, p. 86.

125

The fan or victim is the individual who, under pressure, has capitulated and been liquidated by reality. The fan's levelling of empirical reality and image, their fantasy world, is tantamount to the falseness of the existent. The two are in fact the same. Fan's fantasy is nothing more than reality, as reality has become so perverted - it almost seems lunacy itself to call it thus. The fan's `lunacy' [Wahnsinn] or ìnsanity' is symptomatic of the pathological deficiency of society at large, its particular untruth testifies to the truth of the whole untruth. Kant's aforementioned distinction between enthusiasm and fanaticism helps to clarify Adorno's position. Fans are enthusiasts, Adorno does not differentiate on this point. They share with fanatics a delusional

character.

Fans suffer both

`madness' and ìnsanity, ' yet they are not, ä /a fanaticism, infected by delusions more extreme disease; `cancerous' `mania. ' The fan's insanity dissolves into blind obeisance if insanity conditions the whole situation. Adorno repeats his charge in the following lines, Mimesis explains the enigmatically empty ecstasy of the fans [fans] in mass culture. Ecstasy is the motor of imitation. It is this rather than self-expression

and

individuality

which

forcibly

produces

the

behaviour of the victims which recalls St Vitus's dance or the motor reflex spasms of the maimed animal. (... ) under the force of immense pressure the identity of the personality gives way, and since this identity itself already originates in pressure, this is felt as a liberation. (... ) They fasten on the culture-masks proffered to them and practise themselves

the magic which is already worked upon them. (... )

Participation in mass culture itself stands under the sign of terror. 401

401Adorno, SMC, pp. 95-6. For the German see: Adorno,

126

GS3, p. 334.

Fans are here pathologized in no uncertain manner. Suffering symptoms similar to a certain neurological disorder prevalent in children form of chorea, which -a causes the body to jerk involuntarily - fans empty themselves of individuation. Fans, here, do little more than imitate, mimic mimesis reflecting the emptiness of the existent. The next essay which references fandom explicitly, also originally written in English and in collaboration with Horkheimer, is the 1951 text entitled, `Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda. '402The section of interest reads, Hitler shunned the traditional role of the loving father and replaced it entirely by the negative one of threatening authority. The concept of love was relegated to the abstract notion of Germany and seldom mentioned without the epithet of `fanatical' through which even this love obtained a ring of hostility and aggressiveness against those not encompassed by it. It is one of the basic tenets of fascist leadership to keep primary libidinal energy on an unconscious level so as to divert its manifestations in a way suitable to political ends. 403 Love-cum-hatred,

the

fountain

of

paranoia

and

pool

of

authoritarian

personality, is once again the pattern `fanatical' comportment traces. Adorno defines the àuthoritarian' personality as one, `who even in the realm of aesthetic sublimation cries out for the strong man and cannot bear to be autonomous; who praises bonds for their own sake (... ) from the fear of loneliness. '404Adorno argues that the èmotional ties, ' love attachments or libidinal `bonds' Freud searches for in group (or mass) psychology, in order to

402Adorno and Horkheimer, 403Adorno and Horkheimer, 404Adorno, SF, pp. 175-6.

FT, p. 132-57. FT, p. 137.

177

account for the transformation of the individual in mass society, are precisely the same destructive psychological forces as those instrumentalised for political ends by the Fascists. The latter, `by artificially creating the bond Freud is looking for, ' manipulate the mass into passively accepting,

àims largely

incompatible with their own rational self-interest. '405Fascist bonds, like the culture industry producer's trash commodities, supply manufactured needs. Fascists

and

authoritarian

personality

types,

so Adorno

argues,

are,

`the

product of an internalization of the irrational aspects of modern society. '406Both appeal to and take conscious control of the archaic, of mimesis, in order to rationalise their irrationality. This argument is put summarily in the following sentence,

`The rationalized

world, which

is actually

still the irrational

world,

disguises its true nature by cultivating the realm of the unconscious. '407 Leader worship, witnessed earlier in Dialectic of Enlightenment, is once more both the fanatics and fascists lot. Group psychology,

so Adorno argues,

exposes the psychological affliction of the individual whom has been weakened by society. 408 The individual, close to complete

liquidation,

is forced into

obeisance - first by an archaic identification with a father figure and then, later, by identification

with a group

leader. The

apparently

àll-powerful

and

threatening' super-ego terrorizes the all-too yielding ego and substitutes for the latter a group ego. 4o9The unificatory power of ùninhibited love'410is, in Fascism and authoritarian personality types in general, transformed into hatred and fear love-cum-hatred. intended Transformation, here, to the exclusion of equates 405Adorno and Horkheimer, FT, p. 135. 406Adorno and Horkheimer, FT, p. 150. 407Adorno, SF, p. 3. See: Adorno and Horkheimer, 408See: Adorno and Horkheimer, FT, p. 134. 409Adorno and Horkheimer, FT, p. 139. 410Adorno and Horkheimer, FT, p. 138. 12R

FT, pp. 149-50.

love. The formers `bond' is closer to Juliette's bondage. `Personalization, ' the, ìncessant plugging of names and supposedly great men, ' serves the formers machine. 4 ' An analysis of the psychological

propaganda

phenomenon of

ìdentification' is urgently called for, as Adorno claims that it may well shed light on the otherwise obscure area of `fascist propaganda and fascist mentality. W2 The narcissistic ìdealization' of identification, a `caricature of true, conscious solidarity, ' is particular to fascist groups - ìt is precisely this idealization of himself which the fascist leader tries to promote in his followers, and which is helped by the Führer ideology. (... ) by making the leader his ideal [the follower] loves himself, as it were, but gets rid of the stains of frustration and discontent The group leader - simply which mar his picture of his own empirical self. 7413 "one of the guys, " as the popular saying renders it need not love for he is loved, his narcissism knows no bounds. His narcissism assures him that his own psychology is that of his lost followers too, making manipulation - `rational use of his irrationality'414-a relatively simple operation. Individual narcissism is replaced by identification with the not too distant. Self-awareness and toleration of difference are not things to be spoken of. The followers identify in the leader their own impotence, meaninglessness and love-cum-hatred. 415 Freud's theory sheds light on the all-pervasive, between

the

beloved

in-group

and

the

rigid distinction

rejected

out-group.

Throughout our culture this way of thinking and behaving has come to be regarded as self-evident to such a degree that the question of

41 Adorno and 412Adorno and 413Adorno and 414Adorno and 415See: Adorno

Horkheimer, Horkheimer, Horkheimer, Horkheimer,

FT, p. 139. FT, p. 139. FT, p. 140. FT, p. 148.

and Horkheimer,

FT, p. 142. 129

why people love what is like themselves and hate what is different, is rarely asked seriously enough. a,s Individuals, fanatics and fascists alike, are either for or against - others are encountered only as friend or foe. Groups are defined, negatively, in opposition to what they are not. The division is divisive, however, as Adorno's essay makes plain. The intolerance for that which is other exhibited in fascist and fanatical behaviour underlines the fact that, `this negative integration feeds on the instinct of destructiveness. '417Total domination, exercised by the leaders over the masses, is the aim of the `rationally calculated techniques'

of

psychological manipulation. 41' Rather than becoming conscious of their own unconscious the collective unconscious of the masses is put into the service of social control, the followers become less free and more dependent. (... )

the

super-ego,

postpsychological

anticipates

de-individualized

almost

with

clairvoyance

the

social atoms which form the

fascist collectivities. (... ) The category of `phoniness' applies to the leaders as well as to the act of identification on the part of the masses and their supposed frenzy and hysteria. (... ) They do not really identify themselves with him but act this identification, perform their

own

enthusiasm,

and thus

participate

in their

leader's

performance. (... ) If they would stop to reason for a second, the whole performance would go to pieces, and they would be left to "' panic.

416Adorno and Horkheimer, 41 Adorno and Horkheimer, 418Adorno and Horkheimer, 419Adorno and Horkheimer,

ý1..:,,.. ý

FT, p. 143. FT, p. 145. FT, pp. 150-1. FT, p. 152. 1 ,30

r,

ý,,,,

Q, -ý,,,e,lý ,

Identification, itself, is lacking in reality. In the empty ecstasy and enthusiasm of fascists, fanatics and fans the super-ego is externalised, values are no longer internalised - conscience has turned bad. Such personality types, `fail to develop an independent autonomous conscience

and substitute for it an

identification with collective authority which is irrational (... ), heteronomous, rigidly oppressive, largely alien to the individuals' own thinking and, therefore, easily exchangeable in spite of its structural rigidity. '420A `spell' has been cast on leaders and followers alike, though the possibility of their awakening is by no 421 Adorno. to ruled according means out `Fanatical'

behaviour

makes a single appearance

in Adorno's,

1951, magnum

opus - Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. In the ninety-first paragraph or aphorism entitled, `Vandals, ' Adorno writes, In the fanatical love [fanatischen Liebe] of cars the feeling of physical homelessness plays a part. It is at the bottom of what the bourgeois were wont to call, mistakenly, the flight from oneself, from the inner 422 void. Repeating his earlier recognition of the transformation of free, leisure, time into the empty and standardised, work-like pseudo-activity peddled by the culture industry propagandists and the concomitant liquidation of the individual Adorno quips, `the whole of life must look like a job. '423The `spell' of the bewitched is, here, exaggerated into a `drug' for the 'addict. '424The culture industry, not religion, now deals the opium to the addicted vandals.

420Adorno and Horkheimer, FT, p. 155, note 11. 421Adorno and Horkheimer, FT, p. 153. 422Adorno, MM, p. 139. For the German see: Adorno, 423Adorno, MM, p. 138. 424Adorno, MM, pp. 139-40. fli

GS4, p. 158.

Individual reflection is mistrusted and viewed anachronistic, suspicion is cast over every gesture and every act that is free of purpose and which cannot be instrumentalised for collective gain. Indeed, individuals attempt to òutdo the danger' of this `threatening collectivization, ' by looking elsewhere (cars, drugs, entertainment, vacations). 425Yet, `(... ) the blind conformity of car-owners and radio-listeners, ' dominates. 426Together, these distractions are mere ìnsurance, the expression of a readiness for self-surrender, in which one senses the only guarantee of self-preservation. '42' Being fanatical,

here, is to act cunningly and to love intolerantly. The

cleverness of cunning is quite simply the trick, learnt from the proto-bourgeois Odysseus, of preserving the self by sacrificing it.428However, `sacrifices are as irrational as in mythology. '429 Loving intolerantly,

elsewhere connected to

fanatical comportment, 430 is an invested theme in Minima Mora/ia and its pertinence to my inquiry necessitates, at this point, an extended theoretical consideration of its conditions of possibility. Not only hatred and resentment, but intolerance and possessiveness in love are reminiscent of those gestures performed by excluded figures43' and the eponymous character; the `tired businessman. ' In the latter a kind of resignation and apathy, 'life's-like-that, 9432 attitude paves the way for full capitulation before reality. Something


sinister has washed over their love, delibidinalising

it. `He has

MM, p. 139. MM, p. 36.

427Adorno, MM, p. 139. 428See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, pp. 35-62. 429Adorno, ISM, p. 114. 430 `Precisely because society does not actually tolerate love but rather subordinates it to the realm of its ends, it keeps a fanatical eye out to make sure that love has nothing to do with it, that it is nature pure immediacy. ' Adorno, SCP, p. 180. 431See: Adorno, MM, pp. 52-3. 432Adorno, MM, p. 73.

1'7.

rid himself of the habit of getting excited. '433The tired businessman does not wish harm on others, as might the bourgeois lover Juliette, but for this, his, gesture of goodwill he does not in fact live serenely - his conscience is bad, his love remains intolerant. The businessman and the excluded, together with Juliette, have not learned to love, rather they have learned to live for themselves only. Ìf I did not fear, ' Adorno comments, `being mistaken for a sentimentalist, then I would say that culture requires love: what is lacking is probably the ability to love. '434Adorno, elsewhere, puts the problem in the following way, Understand me correctly. I do not want to preach love. I consider it futile to preach it; no one has the right to preach it since the lack of love (... ), is a lack belonging to a// people without exception

as they

435 today. exist The tired businessman - emptied of desire, affects and passions, unable to love

and

unexcited

by the world

- reflects

only

this

discontentment,

disenchantment and delibidinalisation. Such figures have, à deficient libidinal relationship to other persons. '436Empty enthusiasm and ecstasy are their lot. What they believe to be abnegation of the external metamorphoses into selfabnegation.

Indifference to the world becomes self-indifference

the tired -

businessman is untouchable. Love, now impossible, is transformed into hatred. `Lacking appropriate objects, his love can scarcely express itself except by

433Adorno, MM, p. 24. 434 Adorno, Theodor W. [1962], Critical Models: University Press, 435Adorno, EAA, 436Adorno, EAA,

Interventions 2005, p. 28. p. 202.

Philosophy and Teachers, in: Adorno, Theodor W. [1969], and Catchwords, Tr. Henry W. Pickford, New York, Columbia

p. 200.

1fl

hatred for the inappropriate, in which admittedly he comes to resemble what he hates. i" The so-called `tolerance' and `maturity' of the Bourgeoisie fares no better in 438 less free hate. Rather than hating is, love of matters of and accordingly, no the lack, be it with the external or internal, this latter class of love hates the potential freedom of individuality - that which individuals may become, i.e., free from exploitation and domination, the capitalist principle of exchange. `Total determinism, which no longer tolerates the confrontation with any independent individual entity, is also a ban on becoming. '439Such a love desires the impossibility of the possible, the status quo must remain as it is. Passion is not permitted. 44o Love, like memory, `seeks to preserve what yet must pass away. '44' This type of love `wants to restore love, ' yet, ìt can do so only at the price of the loved Not accepting this temporal transience, finitude in a word, one's individuation. 7442 love becomes `frail, confused'443possessive and intolerant, it does not wait to hear the echo of love's approaching footsteps, (... ) the desire to possess reflects time as a fear of losing, of the irrecoverable. Whatever is, is experienced in relation to its possible non-being. This alone makes it fully a possession and, thus petrified, something functional that can be exchanged for other, equivalent possessions.

Once wholly a possession, the loved person is no

43' Adorno, MM, p. 25. 438See: Adorno, MM, p. 25. 439Adorno, ISM, p. 182. 440See: Adorno, RB, p. 127. 44' Adorno, MM, p. 122. 442Adorno, SCP, p. 182. 443Adorno, SCP, p. 183. 134

longer really looked at. (... ) such possessiveness loses its hold on its object precisely through turning it into an object, and forfeits the person

whom it debases to `mine'. If people were no longer

possessions, they could no longer be exchanged. True affection would be one that speaks specifically to the other, and becomes attached to beloved features and not to the id reflected image of possession. 444 Intolerant lovers reify their beloved, turning them into a thing rather than attending to their specificity. Love, like childish fandom, is conditioned by its exchangeability. Intolerant and possessive love has love and precisely for that 445 ' is is love is Adorno. longer love. `There that an echo, no writes no not reason Intolerant lovers have forsaken the ability both to hear the call of love and to return it. Fans, understood as those figures who conform to the idolisation of personality, suffer this form of love. A strictly one-way, solipsistic love where reciprocity is forcefully tabooed. However, this is not to suggest that there is and is not a `genuine' form of love. Fan love is not false love, rather, It is precisely undeviating self-reflection - the practice of which Nietzsche called psychology, that is, insistence on the truth about oneself, that shows again and again, even in the first conscious experiences of childhood, that the impulses reflected upon are not quite `genuine. ' They always contain an element of imitation, play, wanting to be different. The desire, through submergence in one's own individuality, instead of social insight into it, to touch something utterly solid, ultimate being, leads to precisely the false infinity which 444Adorno, MM, p. 79. 445Adorno, MM, p. 217. 11S

since Kierkegaard the concept of authenticity has been supposed to exorcise. (... ) the pure self (... ) is an abstraction. What presents itself as an original entity, a monad, is only the result of a social division of the social process. 446 The self is, according to Adorno, both ènriched' and ìmpoverished' by social entanglement.

The existential ìnwardness' Kierkegaard posits (which I will

discuss in detail below), the technique of attaining `genuine' or àuthentic' selfhood whereby the further the self is from society the nearer it is to itself, is too abstract for Adorno and ultimately ends in self-sacrifice.

`The whole

philosophy of inwardness, with its professed contempt for the world, is the last first has the brutal, barbaric lore he there the who was whereby sublimation of greatest rights; and the priority of the self is as untrue as that of all who feel at home where they live. 447Being uncompromising is to exit, all too expeditiously, the battlefield. Inauthenticity, so Adorno avers, `lives on the mimetic heritage. The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings. In such behaviour, the primal form of love, the priests of authenticity scent traces of the utopia which could shake the structure of domination. '448Love in its primal form is `play-acting, ' mimesis, neither tolerant nor intolerant, neither first nor last. This type of love cannot be exchanged but it can be mutilated - priests beware! `The things which through their difference and uniqueness cannot be absorbed into the prevalent exchange relationships - take refuge under capitalism in the traits of

446Adorno, MM, p. 153. 44' Adorno, MM, p. 155. 448Adorno, MM, p. 154.

136

fetishism. '449Intolerant love, if this advice is to be heeded, must be located accordingly. Fans, who certainly follow the ritual of fetishism in a certain way stand outside the first principle of capitalism (exchange). Opposing this human, all too human understanding, `[t]he self should not be spoken of as the ontological ground, but at the most theologically, in the name of its likeness to God. 9450 Mimesis must be rescued from its second and third orders (magic and industry). The situation is catastrophic, the extremes touch. Love must insist upon its religiosity, its uncompromising element - perhaps even it's fanaticism or, fall foul both of the illusionist trick and the corruption of economy, Proust gave an allergic account of what was about to befall all love. The exchange relationship that love partially withstood throughout the bourgeois age has completely absorbed it; the last immediacy falls victim to the distance of all the contracting parties from all others. Love is chilled by the value that the ego places on itself. Loving at all seems to it like loving more, and he who loves more puts himself in the wrong. (... ) his emotion, thrown back on itself, grows sick with possessive cruelty and self-destructive imagining. (... ) really,

they

no longer want

ecstasy

at all,

but merely

compensation for an outlay that, best of all, they would like to save 45' superfluous. as Proust's magnum opus is elsewhere described by Adorno as a, `fanatically individuated work, '452wherein a constellation is construed out of a necessary contingency. `(... ) [O]nly someone who has succumbed to social relationships in 449Adorno, 450Adorno,

MM, p. 120. MM, p. 154.

a5' Adorno, MM, pp. 167-9. 452Adorno, SCP, p. 181.

117

his own way instead of denying them with the resentment of one who has been excluded can reflect them back. What Proust came to see in these allegedly superfluous lives of luxury, however, vindicates his infatuation. '453 Proust's affective relationships are, again elsewhere, described as being in contrast to those of either an èxpert' or a `producer. ' Proust, Adorno comments, ìs first of all an admiring consumer, an amateur, inclined to that effusive and for artists highly suspect awe before works that characterizes only those separated from them as though by an abyss. 9454 Proust's way, `the impossibility of love, ' is legitimated for, `(... ) his regression is utopian. He is defeated by it [society], as is love, but in his defeat he denounces the society that decrees that it shall not be. '455If, for Adorno following Proust, love is now impossible must fans be dissociated from even the broken promise of love? Fans, it appears, cannot rid themselves of the resentment tainting their experience. Their way, self-preservation and egoism, brings any talk of love firmly to a halt. Yet, the malady's apparent cure-all - the cunning of selfsacrifice - turns out to be little more than disguised self-preservation. These empty ecstasy chasers, fans and intolerant lovers, have become the principium individuationis of the capitalist epoch, elsewhere described as those who caveat experience with the demand, `what do I get out of it? '456Love is perverted when it is exchanged. If love's truth cannot be anything other than its corruptibility by the untruth of the whole what is to be done with love?

ass Adorno, 44 Adorno, 45,5Adorno,

SCP, p. 180. P, p. 180.

SCP, p. 180. 456Adorno, AT, p. 310.

1IX

Everywhere bourgeois society insists on the exertion of will; only love is supposed to be involuntary, pure immediacy of feeling. In its longing

for this, which means a dispensation

from work, the

bourgeois idea of love transcends bourgeois society. But in erecting truth directly amid the general untruth, it perverts the former into the latter. (... ) If love in society is to represent a better one, it cannot do so as a peaceful enclave, but only by conscious opposition. (... ) Loving

means

not letting immediacy

wither under the omnipresent

weight of mediation and economics, and in such fidelity it becomes itself mediated, as a stubborn counter-pressure. He alone loves who has the strength to hold fast to love. (... ) It is the test of feeling whether it goes beyond feeling through permanence, even though it be as obsession. 457 Love, here at least, must remain uncompromising and exaggerated - perhaps a touch fanatical? It must revoke its involuntariness and exercise its power of Love is both opposition. `Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar. 9458 unconditional and conditional, its paradox lies between these two halves, as does its freedom from the merely existent. `Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength. '459Learning to love is imperative. Adorno's investigations into `fanatical' comportmeni do not end here. In his text, Sound Figures, written in 1959 and comprising a dozen essays on music, Adorno clears the way for an analysis of his fan perspective by drawing an


MM, p. 172. MM, p. 191.

459Adorno,

MM, p. 192. 139

analogy

between fanatical

behaviour and the rise of the conductor

as

"' In a chapter entitled, `The Mastery of the Maestro, ' Adorno describes virtuoso. the virtuosity attributed to Toscanini, As a conducting virtuoso famed for his accuracy and lightness of touch, he made a fanatical [fanatisch] onslaught on virtuosity itself and so provided

members of the younger

generation

with a

confirmation of their own ideas. At the same time, he won over the and the culturally

older generation

conservative

public by his

devotion to the tradition, which he subjected to an unremitting purification.

461

This seems to be a spirited, indeed positive, evaluation of Toscanini's conducting, if it were not for the fact that Adorno is writing about Toscanini - not a man in Adorno's favour. 462Toscanini's fanaticism appears to be both valorised and pilloried, he practices the pseudo-activity, `disrespectful play' and `bestial seriousness, ' Adorno earlier apportioned to fans. `(... ) musically he was a demon without the demonic. '463`He became one of the people who used their art to ratify the supremacy of the existing world over any alternatives, over utopian possibility. 464However, this is only an aside for the real object of Adorno's critique is not Toscanini but the `personalization' of devotion, `the anonymous authoritarian

hierarchy belief

in

the administered the

name,

world, ' affords

`Toscanini, '

him.465 It is the

`to which

the

460 `Fanatic' is also referred to, by name, once more in this text and in conjunction style. See: Adorno, SF, p. 114. This occasion does not warrant further inquiry. 461Adorno, SF, p. 42. For the German see: Adorno, GS16, p. 54. 462See: Adorno, MM, pp. 50-1. 463Adorno, SF, p. 50. 464Adorno, SF, p. 53. 465Adorno, SF, p. 43. 140

impotent

with romantic

consciousness of countless admirers desperately clings, ' that Adorno fulminates "' over.

Admiration, here understood ä /a Freud, as blind namechecking by

devotees, is an impediment to ìndependent judgment. 9467 In another essay in the same volume, the more favoured figure Anton von Webern is described as behaving fanatically. Webern is in good company as his other, equally fanatical, counterpart is Benjamin, In

Hegel's

disconcerting

Phenomenology phrase

"fury

we

encounter

at

one

point

of disappearance. " Webern's

the work

converted this into his angel. The formal law presiding over his composing, in all its stages, is that of shrinkage: his pieces appear from their very first day to have the same sort of substance that one usually finds at the end of a historical process. Webern shares with Walter Benjamin a penchant for the micrological and the confidence that the concrete concentration of a fulfilled moment is worth more than any amount of development that is merely ordained abstractly from outside. The signatures of the two men, the philosopher and the musician who was fanatically [fanatisch] tied to his material, two men who did not know each other or even very much about each other, were nevertheless

very similar. Both were like letters received from a

kingdom of dwarfs, in miniature format, which always looked as if they had been reduced from something of vast dimensions. 468 Webern's

obsession,

his fanatical comportment,

is also linked with the

painterly gesture of Paul Klee (painter of angels). `Scribbling' is the name


SF, p. 43. SF, p. 43.

468Adorno, SF, p. 94. For the German see: Adorno, 141

GS16, p. 113.

Adorno,

following

Kafka, bestows upon this childlike forming of fanatical

obsessions. `The spirit of scribbling, ' Adorno writes proceeds, `just as children's drawings feed on the delight that springs from the paper they have colored. The oeuvres of the two men [Webern and Klee] in their respective media migrate from the established genres into this twilight world. They project a fragile, transcendental

ideal type that cannot be assigned

to any recognisable

location. 1469 Webern and Klee's childlike, not childish, fanatical gesture positions their work in a `no-man's-land of art. 1470 Their `twilight world, ' remarkably similar to the fans fantasy world, is privileged not undermined. Comporting oneself fanatically, here at least, is fully capable of connecting with the childlike in a fantastical sphere of ideal images. A paradoxical and quasi-religious silent expression emerges that is rendered, in one of the most beautiful passages I have read of Adorno's (done into English), into the following words, The absolute voice of the soul, which enables it to become conscious of itself as mere nature, is a simile in his music for the moment of death. His music presents this moment in accordance

with the

tradition in which the soul, fleeting and ephemeral, flutters out of the body

like a butterfly.

It is a tombstone

inscription.

Webern's

expressivity is his obsession with the imitation of the sound made by something

disembodied. The absolutely transitory,

the toneless

beating of wings, as it were, becomes in his music the faintest, but most persistent, seal of hope. Disappearance, an ephemerality that


SF, p. 104. SF, p. 104. 149,

fixes on nothing that exists anymore, or even that objectifies itself, becomes the refuge of a defenceless eternity. 4 ' Webern's

fanaticism,

his fanatical obsession with imitation and mimesis,

hovers somewhere outside the love and memory I evoked earlier. Perhaps, homages or followings sit more comfortably here? 472The relation to death is of critical importance to an understanding of fandom and I will further investigate this dimension in my discussion, below, of Adorno's reading of Kierkegaardian love. The task of musicians such as Webern, Schönberg, Berg et al., and artists more generally, so Adorno cryptically claims, ìs to import the predetermined into free creativity. '473 Continuing and extending this musical theme, Adorno's next expression on fandom is to be found in his, 1962, text, Introduction to the Sociology of Music. 474In a chapter entitled, `Popular Music, ' Adorno writes, In an imaginary but psychologically

emotion-laden

domain, the

listener who remembers a hit song will turn into the song's ideal subject, into the person for whom the song ideally speaks. At the same time, as one of many who identify with that fictitious subject, that musical I, he will feel his isolation ease as he himself feels integrated into the community of "fans" [fans]. In whistling such a song

he bows to a ritual of socialization,

although

beyond

this

47 Adorno, SF, pp. 104-5. 472 1 am thinking of the 'homages and tombs, ' by Mallarme, to such figures as; Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlain, Richard Wagner, Puvis de Chavannes. See: Mallarme, Stephane [1994], Collected Poems, Tr. Henry Weinfield, Berkeley, University of California Press, pp. 70-7. 473Adorno, SF, p. 213. 474 Beyond the two extracts, to be mentioned in the body of my text, which deal with fandom, 'fans' make a further appearance in this text, in 'Chapter 11. ' Adorno, there, discusses fans in relation to their fetishisation of technologies of reception, reminiscent of his comments encountered above in his, Current of Music. The closeness of the readings precludes any extended analysis here. See: Adorno, ISM, p. 183. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 382. 143

unarticulated subjective stirring of the moment his isolation continues unchanged. 475 The fan exists in an ideal and imaginary order. This locates fandom in a specific sphere and adds a new perspective beyond those already encountered. What is not new, here, is Adorno's standardised,

administered,

integrated,

view that popular, arranged,

light, music is;

exchanged,

immature,

schematised, impotent, pseudo-individualization, banal and vulgar. Passivity is invested as a particular `personality' trait, The passivity that has been furthered fits into the culture industry's entire system of progressive stultification. The stultifying effect does not issue directly from particular pieces; but for the fan [fan] - whose need for what is argued upon him may rise to the point of dull euphoria, a sorry relic of the old intoxication - for the fan the total system of popular music is a training course in a passivity that will probably spread to his thought and social conduct. "' Yet another new aspect is the fan's àmbivalence. ' Fans, Adorno writes, `not only balk at seriousness in music; they secretly resist their own favourites. Their resistance is discharged in laughter with which the fans [fans] greet whatever they find dated. '47 But, their infidelity is, Adorno goes on to remark, as predetermined by the industry as was their initial commitment. Need must be manufactured. In the seventh essay of the same volume, another critical appraisal of the relation between conductor and orchestra, Adorno argues that the conductor

475Adorno, 476Adorno, 477Adorno,

ISM, p. 27. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 206. ISM, p. 30. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 209. ISM, p. 37. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 217. 144

serves the same ends as that of the `leader imago, '47S`the conductor acts as though he were taming the orchestra, but his real target is the audience -a trick not unknown to political demagogues. '479Again, the imaginary dimension is highlighted. The conductor manufactures the need of the audience as much as he estranges his own person from theirs in, `that loveless detachment from his devotees"'

peculiar to the group leader,

The segregation

spawned

of the esthetic

is turned

back into the ritual that

it. The exaggeration, the fanaticism

bursts forth as needed, the exhibition

[Fanatismus]

of an allegedly

that

purely

introverted passion - all of this recalls the demeanor of leaders trumpeting their own unselfishness. 48' The conductor is a star, an authoritarian personality, tutoring not touching his orchestra -a figure of synthesis. His fanaticism is little more than a parody or caricature, mere manipulation. On the contrary the unknown, `musicians who had striven for an absolute, however dimly, are all but inevitably broken in punishment, by a society that will add up their insufficiencies. (... ) To make up for it, they sometimes take up hobbies such as fanatical [fanatische] reading or compulsive

collecting. 7482These

beleaguered

musicians,

whom

Adorno

compares to Kafka's, Hunger Artist, and which might be considered fan-like are, `socially maimed eccentrics who perish by the infamies of normal society. '483 Keeping faith with ideal images and dreams does not go rewarded.


ISM, p. 106. ISM, p. 105.

480Adorno, 48' Adorno,

ISM, p. 106. ISM, p. 106. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 295. ISM, pp. 114-5. For the German see: Adorno, GS14, p. 305. ISM, p. 115.


145

A derivative of fandom makes an appearance in Adorno's, 1966, text, Negative Dialectics. This treatment harks back to two problems, previously encountered albeit in slightly different terms. The first problem is related to fan's judgement, their faculties of orientation and taste, and, secondly, that the fan or fanatic's gaze is too readily averted from reality, If a man rates all the phenomena alike because he knows of no essence that would allow him to discriminate, he will in a fanaticized [fanatisierter] love of truth make common cause with untruth. 484 `Fanaticized

love, ' which

Nietzsche

suffered

apparently

(and

Proust? ),

perpetuates the wrongness of the given insofar as essence is no longer held to be in the right, nor to have any claims to being right. Sameness stamps its mark of nothingness

on everything.

If essence has become a dirty word, as

ideological as ideology then to side with the latter does nothing to amend the former. Siding with appearance and belittling the claims of essence only confirms, `the total ideology which existence has since become. i485Covering essence up simply leads to more appearance, more standardisation, greater identity. Fanaticized love, in rejecting essence rejects possibility itself, that things could become otherwise. The

theoretical

levelling of essence

and appearance

will be

paralleled by subjective losses. Along with their faculty of suffering and happiness, the knowers lose the primary capacity to separate essentials and unessentials, without anyone really knowing what is cause and what is effect. The stubborn urge to check the accuracy of irrelevancies rather than to reflect on relevancy at the risk of error is 484Adorno, 485Adorno,

ND, p. 169. For the German see: Adorno, ND, p. 169.

146

GS6, p. 171.

one

of

the

most

widespread

symptoms

of

a

regressive

consciousness.486 Fans, as those armed with `regressive consciousness' and `fanaticized love, ' side with existing appearance, read ideology or image, and then worry over its relevancy, rather than side with essence, read reality, that would necessitate a consideration, critical and sustained reflection, on the whole irrelevancy of their experience. Fanaticized love, here, makes no difference to real love if the latter is becoming indistinguishable from that orchestrated love seen in the movies. 48' This, purported, imbalance between appearance and essence, as witnessed in fandom, is underlined by Adorno in an essay published in 1967 dedicated to discussing his betes noire - the 'phoniness'488 and `contagious enthusiasm' of jazz. 489What is important in a popular `fashion' such as jazz is, `not the thing itself, ' i.e., the content, but what is performed, i.e., what is on `show. i490`Jazz fans [fans], short for fanatics [Fanatikerj, i491so Adorno informs his reader, do to a certain extent see through the spectacle yet passively accept it regardless. The population

is so accustomed

to the drivel it gets that it cannot

renounce it, even when it sees through it halfway. On the contrary, it

486Adorno, ND, p. 170. 487Adorno, DE, p. 99. 488 'Phoniness' actually

describes

the, aforementioned, 'organized manipulation of mimesis' encountered 'in the magical phase' of civilisation. See: Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 148. To my knowledge, Adorno's first published use of, 'phoniness, ' is in 1943, and accounts for the seriously dubious 'psychological atmosphere' promoted by fascist agitators and propagandists such as Martin Luther Thomas. See: Adorno, GS9.1, p. 88. Although Adorno does not discuss fanaticism in this text, it nevertheless makes three appearances on a single page; two are in a citation from a Thomas radio address and another is attributed to Hitler. 'Hitler often spoke about his own "fanatical love for Germany. "' See: Adorno, GS9.1, p. 17, note 2. 489Adorno, P, p. 121. 490Adorno, P, p. 122. 491Adorno, P, p. 123. For the German see: Adorno, GS1O. 1, p. 125. 147

feels itself impelled to intensify its enthusiasm [Begeisterung] in order to convince itself that its ignominy is its good fortune. 492 Adorno's

use of language and his conceptualisation

are, in this essay,

confusing (as is the English translation). Fans and fanatics, jazz enthusiasts and jazz fanatics, and followers of jazz more generally are here made synonymous, similar if not identical. Differences between positions are blurred if not entirely dispensed with. The followers of jazz [Die Anhänger des Jazz], Adorno suggests, may be divided into two groups. On the one hand there are the èxperts, ' or fanatics [Fanatiker] as Adorno also describes them. 493These fanatical experts of jazz are, then, described, in the very same paragraph as jazz enthusiasts - collapsing the difference between the two types, which Adorno had maintained in earlier essays. There is a striking similarity between this type of jazz enthusiast [Jazzenthusiasten]

and many of the young disciples of logical

positivism, who throw off philosophical culture with the same zeal [Eifer] as jazz fans dispense with the tradition of serious music. 494 Fans, if I may use this expression as an umbrella term, of both jazz and philosophy suffer an, ìntolerant hatred'495 in too readily identifying with such vanguard `perennial' fashions. On the other hand are, `the vague, inarticulate followers [Anhänger], ' of jazz. In opposition to the experts and fanatics, the elements privileged in this type are

492Adorno, P, p. 126. For the German see: Adorno, GS10.1, p. 130. 493Adorno, P, p. 127. For the German see: Adorno, GS10.1, p. 130. 494 Adorno, P, p. 128. For the German see: Adorno, GS10.1, p. 131. 'Fans, ' it must be noted, are nowhere mentioned in this sentence. 495Adorno, P, p. 128. 149

intoxication, belonging and identification. 496Adorno also repeats his charge, made previously against enthusiasts, 497that this type refer to themselves as 'jitter-bugs. )498 This inconsistent delineation is perhaps unimportant as, What is common to the jazz enthusiast [Jazzbegeisterten] however, is the moment of compliance,

countries,

of all

in parodistic

exaggeration. In this respect their play recalls the brutal seriousness of the masses of followers in totalitarian states, even though the difference between play and seriousness amounts to that between life and death. 499 The single most important claim Adorno makes against these variations on fandom is the lack of radicality particular to them all. They act as a halfway house, without contradiction and tension, far removed from the uncompromising protest and opposition Adorno, and I, are interested in, Teenagers

are

psychological

not entirely

correlative,

the

stifled reality

by economic principle.

life and

Their

its

aesthetic

impulses are not simply extinguished by suppression but are rather diverted. Jazz is the preferred medium of such diversion. To the masses of young people who, year after year, chase the perennial fashion,

presumably to forget it after a few years, it offers a

compromise [Kompromiß] between aesthetic sublimation and social adjustment. "'

496See: Adorno, P, p. 128. 497See: Adorno, FCMRL, p. 53. 498Adorno, P, p. 128. 499Adorno, P, pp. 128-9. For the German see: Adorno, GS1O. 1, p. 132. 500Adorno, P, pp. 131. For the German see: Adorno, GS10.1, p. 135. 149

Adorno's posthumous text, Aesthetic Theory, published in 1970, supports a more involved relation to fandom albeit in an extended form. On first reflection, Flaubert's, Madame Bovary, is described as a work of, `fanatic [Fanatismus] linguistic perfection. 7501 Jazz `fans' [Jazzfans] in rejecting something as òut of date, ' or àrchaic, ' do not trumpet the falseness of the whole is the as case with certain artworks - but, in point of fact, perpetuate its untruth. 502Other artworks fare as miserably as jazz fans, `[a]s soon as the artwork fears for its purity so fanatically [fanatisch] that it loses faith in its possibility and begins to display outwardly what cannot become art it tones canvas and mere becomes

its own enemy, the direct and false continuation

of purposeful

rationality. '503And in returning to a favourite theme of his, `the products of the culture industry, ' Adorno writes, `more shallow and standardized than any of its fans [Liebhaber] can ever be, may simultaneously impede the identification that is their goal. '504Bringing to conclusion Adorno's many encounters with fandom in mass culture with a not negative interpretation of fans or lovers coupled to a speculation, not without hope, that the culture industry, itself, may provide the means for its own overcoming, that it may implode of its own volition.

501Adorno, AT, p. 7. For the German see: Adorno, GS7, p. 18. 502Adorno, AT, p. 59, p. 217. For the German see: Adorno, GS7, p. 93. 503Adorno, AT, p. 103. For the German see: Adorno, GS7, p. 158. 5"4 Adorno, AT,

p. 246. For the German see: Adorno, GS7, p. 365.

1SO

A Positively Productive Fandom

Such is the case for fandom in Adorno's work! 5o5It is superfluous to confess, at this juncture,

that I am groping my way through Adorno's

oeuvre for a

productive fandom. Adorno does not make things easy, his thought is as fleeting and ephemeral and as uncompromising as those fanatics and `historical outsiders' he directly or indirectly castigates. I believe, however, that I may have located such productivity in uncontrolled mimesis and the fanaticism of the ùncompromising

figure. 'SOSMy task, below, is to dissociate fandom from

controlled or rationalised mimesis, be it second or third order (magic or industry),

and

to

argue

the

case

for,

ùncompromising

figures'

and

ùncompromising spirits. ' The danger (the situation is this catastrophic), is that I may be charged with attempting, whether knowingly or not it matters little, to 505To my knowledge, the only references to fandom I have consciously and wilfully omitted from discussion, as they add little or nothing to what has been stated in other contexts, are the following. Adorno, SEESA, p. 224 (`jazz fans'), p. 228-9 ('radio fans'). Also, in the same volume, Critical Models, though in a separate part entitled, Interventions, one may find other general references; p. 10, p. 51, p. 78, p. 118. Auguste Comte's 'fanaticism' for scientific method does not, Adorno speculates, explain the errors in his thought. See: Adorno, Theodor W. [1956], "Static" and `Dynamic" as Sociological Categories, Tr. H. Kaal, Ed. Roger Caillois, Diogenes 33, New York, 1961, p. 37. The translator of Adorno's essay renders the German 'Fanatiker' and 'Fanatismus' as 'zealotry' and 'zealous' respectively. For the German see: Adorno, Theodor W. [1972], Soziologische Schriften 1, Gesammelte Schriften: Band 8, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, with Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, p. 225. 'Astrology fans' are mentioned in: Adorno, Theodor W. [1957], The Stars Down to Earth: The Los Angeles Times Astrology Column, in: Adorno, Theodor W. [1957], The Stars Down to Earth and other essays on the irrational in culture, Ed. Stephen Crook, London, Routledge, 1994, p. 82 (see also, p. 62). 'Fanatic proponents of clarity' are criticised by Adorno and distinguished from those philosophers who experience, 'sudden flashes of illumination. ' See: Adorno, Theodor W. [1963], Hegel: Three Studies, Tr. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 1993, p. 108. 'Fanaticism was foreign' to Alban Berg, so Adorno argues in a text on his friend and teacher. See: Adorno, Theodor W. [1968], A/ban Berg: Master of the smallest link, Tr. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 27. Finally, in a late (1968) and short text, Adorno writes of another friend and one time colleague, Herbert Marcuse, accordingly, 'I have always known him to be a man of great integrity and civil sense, with a talent for irony, an irony that kept his radicalism of the mind from turning into fanaticism. ' Adorno, Theodor W. [1986], Vermischte Schriften II: Aesthetica, Miscellanea, Gesammelte Schriften: Band 20.2, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, with Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, p. 768 (Translation mine with assistance from Düttmann). 506Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 176. 151

revise and reform, for greater effect, authoritarian structures, personalities and practices. Let it be said that I am no apologist for authoritarianism and that I do not, consciously or unconsciously, wish to do well on any F-scale or will this ili.50' Prejudice is not my project. I do, however, intend to challenge certain of Adorno's views; that fandom rationalises irrationality, that fans are lunatics, that fanatics - at once - exist too near and too far from reality, that fandom's untruth lies in promising only that brokenness proffered by the existent whole and, finally, that fans seek to devour and possess otherness in manipulating and corrupting `mimetic behavior proper. '508Fans, uncompromising figures in my view, far from instrumentalising mimesis keep undisciplined and uncontrolled mimesis vital, playful and productive.

The Art of Fandom

Remaining, then, within the frame of the text presently under consideration, it can be said, following St. John's Gospel somewhat, that art, for Adorno, is both 507 The F-scale

was the name given to a questionnaire and interview process devised by a group of researchers at Berkeley (with the assistance of Adorno), which determined and evaluated - from a psycho-analytical point of view - the psychological conditions of and potential for fascism and prejudice in its participants. See: Adorno, SEESA, pp. 231-7. See also: Adorno, AP. Both `fanaticism' and `fanatical prejudice' are mentioned in this work. The former is twice referred to, the latter only once. Adorno speculates, here, that the 'traditional equation' between the two 'no longer holds good. ' However, `fanaticism' remains a, 'syndrome found among high scorers, ' on the F-scale, which Adorno describes as, 'The Crank. ' `(... ) [T]here seems to be a pattern in which frustration plays a much more specific role. This pattern is found in those people who did not succeed in adjusting themselves to the world, in accepting the "reality principle" - who failed, as it were, to strike a balance between renunciations and gratifications, and whose inner life is determined by the denials imposed upon them from outside, not only during childhood but also during their adult life. These people are driven into isolation. They have to build up a spurious inner world, often approaching delusion, emphatically set against outer reality. (... ) An affinity to psychosis cannot be overlooked: they are "paranoid. " (... ) The term "lunatic fringe" has a certain validity often-abused with regard to them: their has reached the stage of fanaticism. ' See: Adorno, Theodor W. [1975], compulsiveness Soziologische Schriften //. /, Gesammelte Schriften: Band 9.1, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, with Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, p. 431, pp. 483-4. See also: Adorno, AP, p. 355 for a summary of 'The Crank' and p. 367 for the quote. Incidentally, the two Editions are, here, not identical. 508Adorno and Horkheimer, DE, p. 148. 152

in the world but not of it.5o9To give breath to Adorno's own speech, `what is essential to art is that which in it is not the case, that which is incommensurable with the empirical measure of all things. '510Art has a touch of the alien, the it is not only a cultural object. 51 The

uncompromising,

the fanatical -

incommensurable

and 'incomprehensible 1512in art is the element of non-

existence, ìn each genuine artwork something appears that does not exist. It is not dreamt up out of disparate elements of the existing, 513but emerges from, `what does not fit into this world. '514What is not the case, i.e., the nonexistent, is the case in artworks.

Yet, art is, in its emphasis

on the nonexistent,

neither

wholly irrational, `childish' nor 'infantile. '515 Àrt is rationality that criticizes rationality without withdrawing from it; art is not something prerational or irrational. 9516 `(... ) art itself thinks. )517 To suppose art to be merely irrational is to submit to the `philistine' and 'artalien'518 element prevalent in the culture industry's tolerant view of art. The `hatred' or ìndifference' exposed in the behaviour of the `philistine, ' or `tired businessman, `counterconcept to aesthetic comportment, '519who do not àdmire' or `love' art but, rather, wish to possess, irrationality,

`devour' and rationalise, this

is no way to enter into a relation with an artwork (nor is it the way a

509See: St. John, Chapter 17, Verses 13-16. 510Adorno, AT, p. 335. 511See: Lyotard, Jean-Francois [1991], 'Critical Reflections, ' in: Artforum, 3. See also: O'Sullivan, AE, pp. 39-40. 512Adorno, AT, p. 347. 513Adorno, AT, p. 82. See also: Adorno, AT, pp. 109,131. 514Adorno, AT, p. 59. 5j5 Adorno, AT, p. 337. 516Adorno, AT, p. 55. 51 Adorno, AT, p. 99. 518Adorno, AT, p. 347. 519Adorno, AT, p. 241.

153

Vol. 29, No. 8, pp. 92-

fan enters into relation with the object of fandom, I would add). Rather, love52o and admiration

are integral `to lose [onese/1, forget [onese/l,

extinguish

[onese/I in the artwork. The identification carried out by the subject was ideally not that of making the artwork like [onese/1, but rather that of making [onese/lj like the artwork. This identification constituted aesthetic sublimation; Hegel named this comportment freedom to the object. He thus paid homage to the subject

that

becomes

subject

in

spiritual

experience

through

self-

relinquishment, the opposite of the philistine demand that the artwork give something, '52' Adorno, seemingly, supports the quasi-spiritual identification of the subject and the artwork, which is also valued by both Foucault and Deleuze (about which I will have more to say in Chapter Three). This act of identification is a spiritual event inasmuch as the artwork (and by extension the subject) must be entered, `(... ) - in keeping with Goethe's maxim - as a chapel would be entered. '522One does not possess a chapel in much the same way as one does not possess an other. This borders on the identification I wish to attribute to fans as I understand them, for what else is Adorno's aesthetic comportment other than an emotional tie? Formerly, even the traditional attitude to the artwork, if it was to be absolutely relevant to the work, was that of admiration that the works exist as they do in themselves and not for the sake of the observer. (... ) The relation to art was not that of its physical devouring; on the contrary, the beholder disappeared into the material. (... ) For him who has a genuine relation to art, in which he himself vanishes, art is 520 Òne

who reacts preartistically, who loves various passages of a composition or painting without considering the form, perhaps without noticing it, perceives something that is rightfully driven out by aesthetic cultivation yet remains essential to it. ' Adorno, AT, p. 187. 521Adorno, AT, p. 17. S22Adorno, AT, p. 357. 194

not an object. (... ) The false relation to art is akin to anxiety over possession. 523 Art's

enemy, precisely,

is the `progressively

rationalized

and integrated

society, ' and its ally is, accordingly, `repressed and dominated nature. '524Art, here, childlike but not childish sides with the productive fandom I wish to invoke, it, `refuses to relinquish the impulse against the ossification of life and is thus truly naive. 'S25 Àrt,' so Adorno informs his reader, ìs actually the world once over, as like it as unlike it. '526If it is true that, èven in the most sublimated work of art there is a hidden ìt should be otherwise, s527precisely what is this elusive and enigmatic, ideal and prophetic, `world once over? ' A few pages on Adorno supplies an answer, `[t]he pure mimetic impulse - the happiness of producing the world once over. '528The world once over, that which in art is not the case, is the mimetic impulse. Àrt exists in the real world and has a function in it, and the two are connected by a large number of mediating links. Nevertheless, as art it remains the antithesis of that which is the case. '529The latter antithesis is art's spirituality, `(... ) for the spiritual element of art is not what idealist aesthetics calls spirit, rather, it is the mimetic impulse fixated as totality, '530and it should be added that it is also its critical element, too. Art's impulse - mimesis - promises,

523Adorno, AT, p. 13. 524Adorno, AT, p. 336. 525Adorno, AT, p. 336.

526Adorno, AT, p. 336. 527Adorno, C, p. 194.

528Adorno, AT, p. 339. 529Adorno, RUD, p. 159. 530Adorno, AT, p. 90. 155

`that in the redeemed world everything would be as it is and yet wholly other. '53' Art promises happiness, but this is a broken gesture, Aesthetic experience is that of something that spirit may find neither in the world nor in itself; it is possibility promised by its impossibility. Art is the ever broken promise of happiness. 532 The impossibility of happiness, the world once over or the redeemed world, is a necessary impossibility - it is this failure, disruption and interruption, that makes art distinct from other modes or comportments of being in the world. `By emphatically

separating themselves from the empirical

world, their other,

[artworks] bear witness that that world itself should be other than it is; they are the unconscious schemata of the world's transformation. 1533 The mimetic impulse, art's broken promise of happiness, is at once confirmed 534 its its in being by taken awaiting mimetic comportment. up and expressed Mimetic comportment precedes, `the superstition of direct magical influence, ' and is, `the assimilation of the self to its other, ' not the other's assimilation by the self. 535The self, in mimetic comportment, neither devours nor possesses the other. Adorno is here talking of the `mimetic behavior proper, ' not the second, magical, or third, industrial, corruption of mimetic comportment. If its mimetic impulse is not bitterly repressed, by the untrue world, one assumes the 536 Metamorphose into what precisely? The self may achieve metamorphosis. other is the self's model, its prototype and the latter's openness to the other, its identification or touching moves centrifugally. `By wanting to make itself like the 531Adorno, AT, p. 6. 532Adorno, AT, pp. 135-6. 533Adorno, AT, p. 177. 534See: Adorno, AT, p. 125. 5,35Adorno, AT, p. 329. 536Adorno, AT, p. 331. 156

objectivated other, the artwork becomes unlike that other. But it is only by way of its self-alienation through imitation that the subject so strengthens itself that it is able to shake off the spell of imitation. (... ) There would have been no Joyce without Proust, or Proust without Flaubert, on whom Proust looked down. It was by way of imitation, not by avoiding it, that art achieved its autonomy; in it art acquired imitation.

the means to its freedom. '537 Imitation Mimesis

metamorphoses

takes

on

an

aesthetic

overcomes element,

imitation the

through

mimetic

self

into the aesthetic self - the self as a work of art. Àrt is

imitation, but not of something material; rather, it is mimetic behavior. (... ) Art is an imitation not of what has been created but of the act of creation itself. (... ) art might be the imitation of creative love itself. 7538 The opposite of this mimetic impulse and comportment, which I have traced in Adorno's

interpretation of fandom, is both, `the system of total functional

rationality, '539and, `dominant instrumental rationality. '' entirely

without

reason, art and aesthetics,

The latter suspects, not

mimesis

and happiness,

òf

infantilism, '54' and of, 'fetishism. '5'2Yet, as Adorno argues, it is, `[o]nly through fetishism, the blinding of the artwork vis-ä-vis the reality of which it is part, does the work transcend the spell of the reality principle as something spiritual. 9543 Art's

near-sighted

obsessive

blindness

makes

it possible

for clear far-

sightedness. 544Art's untruth; fetishism, regression and infantilism, is also its truth. How, then, is it possible that art escapes the admonitions afforded 53' Adorno, AT, p. 285. 538Adorno, VD, pp. 170-1. 539Adorno, AT, p. 339. 510Adorno, AT, p. 347. 541Adorno, AT, p. 339. 542Adorno, AT, p. 341.

543Adorno, AT, p. 341. 544

See: Adorno,

VD, p. 171. 157

fanatics

and uncompromising

characteristics

fans

figures?

and fanatics

are

If art is equally guilty of all the criticised

for;

imitation,

mimesis,

immaturity, regression, fetishisation et al., how is it possible that art is valorised by Adorno while fandom is dismissed as non-productive? If fans, like art, inhabit an imaginary sphere èmphatically separate' from the world why do the former not escape Adorno's critical eye? The tension between the two - art and fandom - is, seemingly, loosened by Adorno. Why this discrepancy? Adorno, by way of an answer writes that, `[a]rt brings to light what is infantile in the ideal of being grown up. Immaturity via maturity is the prototype of play. 9545 Art, an allegedly mature point of view, immanently undoes itself by showing its own reliance upon immaturity. Play coolly waits in the shadow of seriousness. Repeating, here, his distinction between art and fandom that art is a respectful play thereby reconfirming the `disrespectful play 546of fandom. Does fandom truly transform play into a duty? Is fandom's productivity really that childish? Why should fandom forever resign itself to being art's unruly relation especially when it shares so much? Art's playfulness, nothing other than childlike mimetic comportment, has little difficulty in continuously separating from and attaching to reality, no matter how èmphatic' this detachment. Playfulness in art lies in its being both a part of and apart from the world, Something on the order of belief in real transformation is of course equally part of the phenomenon in just the same way that children

i45 Adorno, AT, p. 43. 546Adorno, FCMRL, p. 58. 1SR

playing do not distinguish sharply between themselves and the role played yet can at any moment be called back to reality. 547 The question, or rather my question to Adorno would be; Is playing a role a mimetic comportment, is it an imitation or is it something other? Is it not a cunning ruse, a parody and a caricature, two charges made against the mimesis practiced by fans? If, for arguments sake, playing a role is a mimetic comportment, then, surely fans, as followers, are equally childlike and playful? Precisely, how seriously must I take play? Do fans really disrespect play and mimesis, are they really that serious? Adorno, might offer the following distinction; art is a `crystallization' of the 548 between processual movement material and spirit, fandom is one or the other pushed to its extreme. Art is spirit but does not have spirit. Fandom is or has neither. The crystallization uncompromising crystallization,

figures

Adorno

pursues

encountered

repeats

previously.

his criticism For

Adorno,

of the art's

its `binding force, ' 9 reciprocity or 'semblance 1550sustains the

tension between, `the spiritual and social. '55'Artworks are, àt once a force field and a thing. 3552Ùltimately, however, even in the most extreme refusal of society, art is essentially social and not understood when this essence is misunderstood. '553 Fanatics fail to understand

this essential,

antagonistic,

paradox. Like art the former go `too far, ' èxpose themselves to every risk, ' but unlike art they do not remain faitnful to the situation, `Because there is nothing

4' Adorno, AT, p. 328. 548See: Adorno, AT, p. 344. 549Adorno, AT, p. 334. 55" See: Adorno, AT, p. 103. 1151' Adorno, AT, p. 349.

552Adorno, AT, p. 179. 5-53Adorno, AT, p. 349.

159

that can avoid the experience of the situation, nothing counts that purports to have escaped it. ' 554For Adorno the great refusal of reality by uncompromising figures and spirits actually blocks possibility. They either do not have enough of the world in them or they do not have enough spirit. By turning away from reality fanatics forgo the possibility of changing it. Artists, like playful children, do not make this mistake, for within them, `(... ) the sharpest sense of reality [is] joined with estrangement

from reality. 7555Artists and their works, then, surely parody

and caricature? `(... ) the fact that artworks exist signals the possibility of the nonexisting. The reality of artworks testifies to the possibility of the possible. '556 Why strip fandom of possibility? According to Adorno the, `psychological posture' of philistines (fanatics and fans), ìs that of an "intolerance to ambiguity, " an impatience with what is It is important to note that Adorno does ambivalent and not strictly definable. 7557 not mention, by name, either fanatics or fans here, but I may infer their allotment - for Adorno, himself, has shown how àmbivalent' fans may be. Such individuals

are regressive insofar as they do not undergo

`sublimation, '

understood as the, `full experience of external life returning inwardly. '558The 'inwardness'559 of these uncompromising figures, fanatics and fans, is, although sharing imaginary elements, not the same as the àesthetic cultivation' Adorno privileges, whereby, `(... ) artworks correspond to the objective need for a

55` Adorno, AT, pp. 33-4. 555Adorno, AT, p. 9. 556Adorno, AT, p. 132. 557Adorno, AT, pp. 115-6. 558Adorno, AT, p. 116. 559Adorno, AT, p. 116. 160

transformation

of consciousness

that could become

a transformation

of

reality. '560What such individuals lack is èxternalization, ' (... ) it is an illusion sharply criticized by Goethe and Hegel that the process of humanization and cultivation necessarily and continually proceeds from the inside outward. It is accomplished

also and

precisely through "externalization, " as Hegel called it. We become free human beings not by each of us realizing ourselves

as

individuals, according to the hideous phrase, but rather in that we go out of ourselves, enter into relation with others, and in a certain 561 to them. sense relinquish ourselves Such a process of subjectivation

is also described as a `shock' and a

'shudder. '562`(... ) this shock is the moment in which recipients forget themselves Àrt holds true and disappear into the work; it is the moment of being shaken. 'SS3 to the shudder, but not by regression to it. Rather, art is its legacy. The spirit of artworks produces the shudder by externalizing its objects. '564A moment, event or ènigmaticalness, '565Adorno describes as, `two lost in one another. '566`The The taboo on aesthetic shudder (... ) cancels the distance held by the subject. 7567 mimesis, on the `moist' as opposed to the dry, is what the `hygienic' philistines 568 Fanatics may have a `mimetic comportment' but they do not have perpetuate. an àesthetic cultivation, ' or `comportment. ' Is there any real, concrete,

560Adorno, AT, p. 243. 561Adorno, SEESA, p. 240.

562Adorno, AT, pp. 244-5. 563Adorno, AT, p. 244. 5`" Adorno, AT, p. 118. 565Adorno, AT, p. 286. 566Adorno, AT, p. 247. 567Adorno, AT, p. 269. 568Adorno, AT, p. 116. 161

difference between the two comportments? Why, if the imaginary sphere has been used against fandom does Adorno deny them the aesthetic sphere? Aesthetic comportment is, `the capacity to perceive more in things than they are; it is the gaze under which the given is transformed into an image. '569Did not, `the gaze of the unworldly fanatics rov[e] beyond the existing order? ' Adorno's language and argumentation appears inconsistent and confused in abstraction. Adorno outlines what he understands of aesthetic comportment in the following lines, Aesthetic comportment, however, is neither immediately mimesis nor its repression but rather the process that mimesis sets in motion and in which, modified, mimesis is preserved. (... ) Ultimately, aesthetic comportment is to be defined as the capacity to shudder, as if goose bumps were the first aesthetic image. What later came to be called subjectivity, freeing itself from the blind anxiety of the shudder, is at the same time the shudder's own development; life in the subject is nothing but what shudders, the reaction to the total spell that transcends

the spell. Consciousness

without shudder is reified

consciousness. That shudder in which subjectivity stirs without yet being subjectivity is the act of being touched by the other. Aesthetic comportment assimilates itself to that other rather than subordinating it. Such a constitutive relation of the subject to objectivity in aesthetic comportment joins eros and knowledge. 570 Aesthetic comportment is the condition of possibility for the love of thought, which, I claim, is fore-grounded in fandom. It is opposed to the, `hatred of 56' Adorno, AT, p. 330. 570Adorno, AT, p. 331.

167

thought, ' reminiscent of both the disenchantment and `debunking, ' symptomatic 57' Enlightened Between love and businessman the thinker. the tired of and knowledge is where aesthetic comportment and by extension fandom must be sited.

`[I]t is in the intermediary

realm between

eros and disinterested

contemplation of the work that the images whose essence is art crystallize. '572 Adorno, himself, confesses loving the thought of Balzac and produces an essay testifying to his love. 573Adorno as fan, or, `the theoretician of love? '574How, then, is it possible for Adorno to refuse the mimesis,

inwardness

and

comportment, of uncompromising figures and fanatical fans? How is it that fans are incapable of feeling the shudder and playing the role?

Second Reflection: The Love of Fandom

To approach an answer to these questions or to better understand the problem it is necessary to look into a lasting fascination of Adorno's; Kierkegaard. Both Kierkegaard's work and Adorno's work on Kierkegaard will be worked through. In particular, my second reflection will consist in presenting and interpreting the competing claims made by these two thinkers on behalf of the following concepts; love and admiration, passion and seriousness, imitation and mimesis. This latter constellation, it will become clear to my reader, feeds back into my initial exposition.

57 See: Adorno, 572Adorno, 0/F,

P, p. 91. p. 34.

573 'I do not know whether Adorno, 0/F, p. 36. 574Adorno, LFW, p. 277.

I have succeeded

in saying clearly enough why I love these pages. '

16

In an essay published in 1940 and entitled, Òn Kierkegaard's Doctrine of Love, '575Adorno takes as his point of departure the Danish philosopher's, 1847, deliberations on Christian and non-Christian love: Works of Love. 576Adorno, quite rightly, observes of Kierkegaard's collected writings that they can be divided into two types: `philosophical writings and religious sermons. '57 The latter, exegesis of scripture and texts Kierkegaard `held to be holy, '578benefits from publicising the Dane's given name whereas the former, in greater need of calculated concealment I suppose, encompasses a wide and witty compendium of pseudonyms (when the works are not simply authored anonymously). The cunning

and ironic ruse of the pseudonym,

as used by Kierkegaard

in

concealing and revealing philosophy as an aesthetic or poetic project, is not accepted by Adorno, who chooses to take him and his aesthetics seriously - to the letter. 57' Parody and caricature are not to be taken seriously. Works of Love in bearing the Christian name of the author finds its logic, according to Adorno, in the irony-free and sacrosanct second form of composition, i.e., religious sermon. This, then, is Kierkegaard at his most exegetically serious. Why does Kierkegaard make use of pseudonyms for the more polemical of his philosophical writings? According to Adorno, `[h]e was guided in this procedure by the basic idea that one ought to lure man into Truth. Y580Kierkegaard, following Adorno's reading, understood truth to be processual, existing, ìn the living process of Faith, theologically speaking, in the imitation of Christ. '581For

575 Adorno,

KDL.

576Kierkegaard,

WL.

57 Adorno, KDL, p. 413. 578Adorno, KCA, p. 12. 57`'See: Adorno, KCA, pp. 11-2. 580Adorno, KDL, p. 413. 591Adorno, KDL, p. 413. 164

Kierkegaard truth is not a 'result, '582but a becoming truthful, witnessed in the event of following, which is to say through imitation and mimetic comportment. Kierkegaard writes, elsewhere and pseudonymously, that it is impossible for Christ to be either òbserved' or `served, ' either `worshiped' or àdmired. ' The only way to the event of truth, if it can even be called an event, is to `follow' or ìmitate, ' `the Way and the Life' of Christ. 583Imitators not admirers is what Christ requires of his followers, and for Kierkegaard the difference between the two is as follows, An imitator is or strives to be what he admires, and an admirer keeps himself personally detached, consciously or unconsciously does not discover that what is admired involves a claim upon him, to be or at least to strive to be what is admired. 584 Kierkegaard valorises mimetic comportment not aesthetic comportment. Christ's way is the way, the one and only truthful life, to be followed and imitated not admired or learnt. Christ is, as St. John was informed and this holds true for Kierkegaard, `the way, the truth, and the life. '585Ònly the imitator is the true Christian. The admirer really assumes a pagan relation to Christianity. '586Love must be imitated not admired. 587Love is sober, admiration is intoxication. 588The imitator or mimic, in imitating and mimicking precisely, humbly and gracefully589

582Adorno, KDL, p. 413. 583Kierkegaard, PC, p. 232. 584Kierkegaard, PC, p. 241. 585St. John, Chapter 14, Verse, 6. 586Kierkegaard, PC, p. 254. 58' See: Kierkegaard, WL, p. 16. sax Kierkegaard, WL, p. 56. 599See: Kierkegaard, PC, p. 7.

165

deny their own selfhood `forget oneself' are `completely blind'590 which for the pagan admirer would be tantamount to lunacy, "A romantic visionary is a romantic visionary, that is all right; but to become [Christ's] follower in seriousness is the greatest possible lunacy. There is always only one possibility of becoming more lunatic than a lunatic: the higher lunacy, in seriousness to join the madman and regard him as wise. "591 The cited Adorno's

de-mythologisation

Kierkegaard's Quotation Adorno, The

must

marks

romantic

be taken

Adorno aesthetic

for

as an ironic

figure who comports Kierkegaard,

himself or herself aesthetically. the romantic admirer?

with quotation

is the

it with

states,

lunatic,

for

him or herself mimetically. admiring

the mimetic

individual

who

the lunatic and

lover, Adorno

Yet, love is not entirely sober and admiration

Is it true, as Kierkegaard

but as

concretion. 'S92

device. 693 The

Is, then, Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard

visionary?

marks,

mark, word and voice, of

`comparing

seriously,

must be `rejected

visionary,

is replete

insists every punctuation

is the uncompromising

comports

moist.

in the original,

section,

the

is not entirely

that one is either a lunatic

or an

impostor?...

It follows from all this that, for Kierkegaard, truth is neither something external to nor strictly objective for the truth-seeker, it cannot be said to exist in the absence of the truth-seeker or at a remove from the truth-seeker. There is no truth independent of the truth-seeker's laborious and ongoing seeking, i.e.,

590Kierkegaard, s`" Kierkegaard,

PC, p. 13. PC, p. 52 (Translation

592Adorno, KCA, p. 11. 593Adorno, PM, p. 94. 594See: Kierkegaard, PC, p. 198.

modified).

166

stages on life's way. And this seeking or striving, labour or work, is both strenuous and serious, `Truth must essentially be regarded as struggling in this world. 'ss5Truth is living in inner turmoil awaiting revelation from elsewhere. It is a way of life, a truthful and revealed life that moves from the aesthetic stage or sphere, through the ethical toward the religious. It takes a lunatic to get this far. Adorno would agree. To believe, with Kierkegaard, that subjectivity is truth is to 596 to casuistry, magic, myth. revert The `theological truth, '597 abstract and absolute

Christianity,

Kierkegaard

invokes remains out of the reach of speculative thought, for as Adorno writes no, `pure movement of thought could possibly lead up to Christianity, but only, in Kierkegaard's language, to the border of Christianity. 7598 This is not to say one must not repeatedly try, or make an effort toward this border - get working by taking truth seriously. Rather, hope may be sought either in the failure or impossibility of reason attaining the absolute truth or in transcendent revelation. In truth, the absolute cannot be manufactured. Truth is therefore a work of love, it is neither a philosophy nor an art of love, the distinction is crucially important. Artists, in Kierkegaard's understanding, fall into the category of individuals Adorno refers to as those who demand, `what do I get out of it? ' Artists and poets - so many admirers - cannot praise love, the major work of Christians

-

so many imitators

- and sole purpose of

Kierkegaards edifying text, for the formers chief ambition is to make, for private

595Kierkegaard, WL, p. 366. 596Adorno, KCA, p. 13. 59' Adorno, KDL, p. 414. 198Adorno, KDL, p. 414. 167

gain, something of this love. 599This depreciation of the arts will become, in Adorno's hands, an axis of social critique, which I will attend to shortly. Returning to truth, Adorno avers, `[I)f the philosophical writings wish to "cheat" the reader into truth, the theological ones, in turn, wish to make it as difficult, as uninteresting, as insipid to him as possible. '60°Seduction is the modus operandi of Kierkegaard's philosophical writings while boredom is at the bottom of his religious sermons. Works of Love, in translation, runs to nearly four hundred pages - it is certainly neither a hasty nor a cursory attempt at taking the subject seriously. Adorno, not missing this fact, argues that Kierkegaard's 'verbosity 601 is

a

calculated

acting

out

deliberate

-a

mythification'602 of this very problematic

performance

position.

or

`demonic

It is as if Kierkegaard

rigorously writes and performs all perspectives in an eccentric and exaggerated effort aimed at bringing this abstract event of love to expression and language, or to push language to its border, as far as possible and no matter how impossible. rigour

It is the work of a lunatic, a fanatical

must

`rigorousness' proposed

be understood

ironically,

as Adorno

cannot veil the `totally abstract'

in Works of Love. 601`Kierkegaard

and obsessive proves,

for

and `metaphorical' never concretely

striving. This Kierkegaard's view of love

states what this

love means. '604The phrase; laborare est orare, motto of the Benedictine monks, holds true for Kierkegaard's

method.

order of

In any event this belief in truth or

this love of truth gets things moving, it works like for, prayer on and through, -

599See: Kierkegaard, WL, pp. 359-374 60° Adorno, KDL, p. 415. 601Adorno, KDL, p. 414. 602Adorno, KDL, p. 418. 603Adorno, KDL, p. 418. 604Adorno, KDL, p. 415. 16R

the subject. The path or way, no matter how hidden305and whose destination is signposted "Truth, " is the journey of Faith - an active `living process' not a complete contemplation - which, in turn, is defined as a 'genuine'606 Godrelationship or, in Adorno's words as an, ìmitation of Christ. '607To comport oneself

mimetically

is to engage in works of love, to comport

oneself

aesthetically is something else entirely. According to Adorno, `natural' or ìmmediate' love between subjects, `the choice of inclination and of passion, '608holds no sway for Kierkegaard. 609A reading of Kierkegaard's text itself makes it possible to rename the love passed over in favour of the eternal Christian love, as the, ìmmature and deceitful love, '610`the beautiful dizziness of infinity' evoked by the èrotic love' and friendship of the artists and poets, who secretly celebrate `self-love, ' abusing love by getting something out of it (art and poetry - so many beautiful riddles). 61 Admirers, here, are the narcissists. Admiration and devotion, immediate and erotic love - controlled

mimesis - is what the poet or artist practice. Contrary to

the selfish pursuits and productions of the artists and poets, the truth-seeker (read Christian) must, according to Kierkegaard's logic, practice self-denial inwardly and `self-sacrificing unselfishness outwardly. i612`(... ) [E]quality appears in love's humbly turning outward, embracing everyone, and yet loving each one individually but no one exceptionally. '613Christians must forget themselves,

605See: Kierkegaard, WL, pp. 5-16. 606Kierkegaard, WL, p. 120. 607Adorno, KDL, p. 413. 608Kierkegaard, WL, p. 373. 609Adorno, KDL, p. 415. See: Kierkegaard, 610Kierkegaard, WL, p. 12. `'" Kierkegaard, WL, p. 19. 612Kierkegaard, WL, p. 374. 613Kierkegaard, WL, p. 67.

WL, p. 25.

169

practice relinquishing any belief in sureness of se/f,614being in possession of a fixed self and offer to the world a self of expropriation. Believing in and praising eternal love, at the expense of momentary or immediate love, is a duty to be accomplished by the Christian. Love is not something one can recognise, know and express - rationalise - but rather love must be experienced through the deed of loving; the event or work of love. Kierkegaard's

mimicry neither

rationalises the irrational nor devours and possesses otherness. The love of which the Danish philosopher speaks is a commandment first and foremost -

`You Shall Lovei615- which, then, becomes

reflective without

possession, that is to say it is a self-denying, selfless or unselfish, love that cannot paradoxically be love without a self required for its sacrifice. However, Adorno

does not agree that Kierkegaard

speaks

effectively,

the latter's

language is all too abstract - dependent on metaphor and analogy. 616The tension continues, for love according to Kierkegaard cannot be commanded. The command makes love à matter of mere law, '61 commanding that which cannot be commanded - an absurdity, which is negatively understood Adorno.

Kierkegaard's

by

love, for Adorno, is ascetic, cold and cruel, `[t]he

command to love is commanded because of its impossibility. '618 Another paradox emerges. The object of Kierkegaard's love is not a specific object at all. Erotic love has an object; the beloved, friendship has an object; the friend, Kierkegaardian love has love only. 619It is, if it is a thing, subjectivity itself

614See: Rose, LW, pp. 125-6. 615Kierkegaard, WL, p. 17. (1( Adorno, KDL, p. 415. 617Adorno, KDL, p. 418. 618Adorno, KDL, p. 418. 619Kierkegaard, WL, p. 66.

170

620 Adorno, following inwardness. ' Adorno's Kierkegaard, `pure terms what observation, here, recalls his criticism of fandom's empty ecstasy and isolation. Ìn Kierkegaard there is so little of a subject/object in the Hegelian sense as there are given objects; there is only an isolated subjectivity, surrounded by a dark otherness. '621This objectless subject is, then, nothing more or less than a loving subject, a subject who praises love via works of love, the love of God. There is no object of love or no discernible and preferential object properly speaking, for this Christian love is without exception, without differentiation, without particularisation,

without judgement.

Love is that `dark otherness. '

However, this is not an exercise in reflective or reflexive narcissistic love, witnessed in fascism's `bonds, ' for the Christian love being deliberated over, here, is an eternal love without particular preference and without product. This mimetic comportment opens itself up to the other, touching it. The paradoxical figure of such an impossibly commanded love, recall that this love is both subjective ìnwardness' and something òutwardly, ' a near yet distant personage, is the (ugly) neighbour. 622The neighbour is Kierkegaard's dark other. `Kierkegaardian love applies to the farthest as well as the nearest. '623 It is with this eponymous and dutiful fellow, referred to as the, ùniversal human'


KDL, p. 415. See: Kierkegaard, KCA, p. 29.

CA, p. 146, p. 151, p. 210.

622 Kierkegaard

writes of the neighbour (and Adorno cites parts of this passage in his essay), 'The concept "neighbor" is actually the redoubling of your own self; "the neighbor" is what thinkers call "the other, " that by which the selfishness in self-love is to be tested. As far as thought is concerned, the neighbor does not even need to exist. If someone living on a desert island mentally conformed to this commandment, by renouncing self-love he could be said to love the neighbor. To be sure, "neighbor" in itself is a multiplicity, since "the neighbor" means "all people, " and yet in another sense one person is enough in order for you to be able to practice the Law. In the selfish sense, in being a self it is impossible consciously to be two; self-love must be by itself. ' Kierkegaard, WL, p. 21. Erotic love cannot know this process of redoubling the self. 'Inwardness' is to be found on p. 44. 'Outwardly' is to be found on p. 374. 'Ugliness' is to be found on p. 373. 623Adorno, KDL, p. 416. 171

by Kierkegaard, that Christian love may be discerned. 624The neighbour may be anyone, individual differences are unimportant, and the relation itself between Choice over the subject and neighbour is, according to Adorno, 'accidental. 7625 neighbours is a luxury few have. Yet, the apparent privilege all have is to love, `the individual particularities of each man, but regardless of the differences between men. Any "preference" is excluded, '626as is the need to be loved in return. The love of the neighbour and the neighbour's love is a strange economy indeed, sharing similarities and dissimilarities with the love of fandom, I would add. The former is a love without the familiar coupling; lover and beloved, as it may be argued is the case in certain types of fandom. But fandom makes distinctions,

no matter how belittled these distinctions are by Adorno. It is

impossible to admire the neighbour, one must imitate the neighbour, one must love. 62' It is possible to admire the object of fandom, if it actually has an object. This neighbour is, `the sign of the One, ' and this one, ìs the "for all, " or the "without exception. " (... ) The One is only insofar as it is for all. 3628`[T]he neighbor is all people. '629For Adorno, Kierkegaard reduces the power of the neighbour by making of him, `the general principle of the otherness or of the universal human, ' that is to say by transforming a concrete neighbour into an abstract

and `given' neighbour. 63o `For the concept of the "neighbor, " the

foundation of Kierkegaard's ethics, is a fiction. The concept is valid only in a society of direct human relations, from which Kierkegaard well knows that he is

624Kierkegaard, EO//, p. 328. 625Adorno, KDL, p. 419. 626Adorno, KDL, p. 416.

627See: Kierkegaard, WL, p. 54. 628Badiou, SP, p. 76. 629Kierkegaard, WL, p. 55. 630Adorno, KDL, p. 419. 172

separated.

Fleeing precisely from reification,

Adorno charges philosophy world.

is essentially

A familiar

figures.

Kierkegaard

with a certain type of absolutising

if one thinks

inwardness,

being in the world. '632The neighbour inwardness a provincial

of his treatment

èxcludes

from

abstraction,

this

that fails, by being

practice

the specific

Kierkegaardian

of a narrow private life, '633

reality. '634`[A]bsolute inwardness, ' Adorno remarks is merely, à romantic the individual

flood.

But it is at this point that Kierkegaard's

supposes

himself

undertakes

protected

to shelter

on the island

of the

shut in on itself, to reach

where

his

of uncompromising

is by no means specific.

is little more than the, `noisy earnestness `loneliness'

into "inwardness. ))7631

impractical - too detached from the concreteness

criticism

Kierkegaard's

he withdraws

his "meaning" thought

`bad island

from the historical breaks

off, and he

from the flood. '635 No amount

of

inwardness, for Adorno, can circumnavigate the maelstrom of the false whole. This criticism finds an echo in Adorno's criticism of the uncompromising figure, the fanatic who lacked worldliness. Who, precisely, is the romantic? Kierkegaardian love cannot be tested and verified externally, for testing love would be to exit the work or event of love itself - recall that this love is given. To attempt to test this love would, for Kierkegaard, be to transform something eternal into mere possibility, whereas Adorno needs this love - if it is to be real love - to be powerful and active, to be open to questioning, to critical scrutiny, to possibility. One must believe and have faith in this stranger the neighbour, love 631Adorno,

KCA, p. 50. On this point Rose takes Adorno to task, `[h]e offers a weak, secondorder argument according to which Kierkegaard's apparent neglect of the external world or of social reality should be interpreted as a rejection of society as a whole, due to the development of early capitalism and to the effect which this development was having on the individual. ' Rose, MS, p. 64. 632Adorno, KDL, p. 420. 631Adorno, KCA, p. 10. 634Adorno, KCA, p. 8. 635Adorno, KCA, p. 37. 171

them unconditionally, in the absence of àny rational justification. '636One must practice unselfish love indeed one must love in this manner without ìmmediate inclination, '637without judgement, without reserve and without equivalent. Such a love is, as I have elicited, an inward love lacking determined externality. Kierkegaard admits as much, and Adorno will not let him forget it, `Christianity turns our attention completely away from the external, turns it inward, and makes

every

one

of your

to other

relationships

people

into a God-

relationship. '638Kierkegaardian love lacks an object and fills this vacuum (if one can readily say there is such a thing) with a fold or double of itself, i.e., subjective inwardness. But is this inwardness not externality internalised? Is not Kierkegaard's

antinomy

necessary?

Love is love for love's sake, ìt is practiced

for the sake of God's command to Love,

'639

its purpose and validity is to be

found in itself. Such a radical and exaggerated view of love is a step too far for Adorno who sees in it only impotence and isolation, `[I]t is of no concern, to the Christian beloved one, whether or not he is loved. He has no power over this love. "° Adorno

cites

Goethe

to expose

the

callous,

`death-like'

quality,

and

òppression' of Kierkegaard's love, ìf I love you, what concern is it of yours? '64' Perhaps, there are remnants in this of the one-way love? However, this inhuman, death-like, aspect of Kierkegaard's love supplies Adorno with the ground for his own thesis; Kierkegaard's cold and cruel love, rather than being

636Adorno, KDL, p. 416. 637Adorno, KDL, p. 416. 638 Kierkegaard, WL, p. 376. 639Adorno, (A0 Adorno,

KDL, p. 416. KDL, p. 416.

64' For, 'death-like'

see, Adorno,

KDL, p. 417; for 'oppressive,

see, p. 416. 174

' see, p. 423; for Goethe's

quote

mourned, must be considered a `social critique, ' exposing what has become of intersubjective relations under capitalism. 642 Kierkegaard's

misanthropy,

the

paradoxical

callousness

of his

doctrine of love enables him, like few other writers, to perceive decisive

character features of the typical

individual of modern

society. Even if one goes so far as to admit that Kierkegaard's love is actually demonic hatred, one may well imagine certain situations where hatred contains more of love that than the latter's immediate 643 manifestations. Love-cum-hatred, in Adorno's hands, may provide the conditions of possibility for productive resistance to the administered world. Ìt may well be, ' Adorno writes elsewhere, `that our society has developed itself to an extreme where the reality of love can actually be expressed only by the hatred of the existent, whereas any direct evidence of love serves only at confirming the very same conditions

which

breed

hatred. 7644But do

we

really

need

to

extend

Kierkegaardian love this far? At whose expense and at what cost does this transformation

of love occur? Kierkegaard, himself, of course, rules out this

transformation, no doubt angering Adorno or making him laugh, Spontaneous love can be changed within itself; it can be changed into its opposite, into hate. Hate is a love that has become its opposite,

a love that has perished. (... ) True love, which has

undergone the change of eternity by becoming duty, is never 642Adorno, 643Adorno,

KDL, p. 423. KDL, p. 423.

644Adorno, Theodor W. [1946], Social Science and Sociological Tendencies in Psychoanalysis, Unpublished, pp. 22-3; quoted in: Jay, D/, p. 105. This text is not, as Jay's reference infers, part of Lowenthal's papers now kept in the Houghton Library of Harvard University. The essay's location is presently unknown. 175

changed; it is simple, it loves and never hates, never hates - the beloved. It might seem as if that spontaneous love were the stronger because it can do two things, because it can both love and hate. It might seem as if it had an entirely different power over its object when it says, "If you will not love me, then I will hate you: - but this is only an illusion. Is changingness indeed a stronger power than changelessness, and who is the stronger, the one who says, "If you will not love me, then I will hate you, " or the one who says, "If you hate me, I will still continue to love you"? 645 The external and concrete world of human relations, according to Adorno, is almost entirely reified - meaning that immediate, spontaneous and natural, acts can rarely be accomplished `denies reification' `providence'

is

neighbour Kierkegaard's

impossible

rules

man,

etc. ), the neighbour and to import reifies

Kierkegaard

in

both

Adorno's

producers,

and,

as

neighbour

i. e., `fishermen

Such

his

a mythical

him into his own historical the

Gospels.

is guilty of practicing

The

and peasants'

situation,

historical

essay

and

shows,

of the Gospels

is dead. 649To invoke the Christian neighbour

`publicans'

of the Gospels

Kierkegaard, social

-

so Adorno

non-specificity

both denies modern man of a love with the

645Kierkegaard,

ÀSAdorno, À9 Adorno,

it is his fate.?

epoch (that is to say the specific

`simple' and ìmmediate'


who

the whole sphere as given 646The eternality of .

in considering

or `governance'

This is not so for Kierkegaard

leads Adorno to conclude that, `The neighbor no longer exists. '64"The

worldview

argues,

in experience.

WL, p. 34. KDL, p. 420. KDL, p. 419. KDL, p. 420. KDL, p. 421.

176

ability and possibility to become active and, as has previously been mentioned, reduces the vitality of the concept neighbour.

No matter how practical

Kierkegaardian love claims to be, possibility is made impossible when it is, `severed from social insight. '650Adorno argues, àcceptance of the given (... ) acknowledges the very same reification of man against which Kierkegaard's doctrine of love is directed. '65'Adorno goes further, Kierkegaard's doctrine of love keeps itself within the existent. Its content is oppression: the oppression of the drive which is not to be fulfilled and the oppression of the mind which is not allowed to question. Kierkegaard's love is a love that takes away instead of 652 giving. However, in death the concept of the neighbour is, in part, salvaged. The pure love Kierkegaard is searching for, the love without need, without want for either reciprocity or possession may be hoped for in death - that is to say in one's comportment to death. Adorno attaches great significance to `Chapter IX of Works of Love, which deals exactly with the question of how one should relate to dead others through works of love. In fact, Adorno goes so far as to say, `[t]here is good reason to regard this speech as one of the most important pieces he ever wrote. '653What is the significance of death and the death-like quality of love? Why is this `death-like aspect of Kierkegaard's love (... ) the best and worst of his philosophy'? 654


KDL, p. 421. KDL, p. 421.


KDL, pp. 422-3. KDL, p. 417.

6-. 54Adorno,

KDL, p. 417.

177

Adorno,

in answering,

that the

speculates

impossibility

of love being

experienced in actuality - love is dead - feeds the hope that an, ùnmutilated' love may after all be possible. 655That is to say the `freest' and most ùnselfish, ' non-reified and non-fetishised, love may be possible. 656No matter that death does not answer back, reciprocate one's demands as does the beloved, one can still hold onto death's silence - comport oneself to death's non-reified relationlessness recollecting

adequately

love, contrary

thereby -

avoiding

to Kierkegaard's

total

love,

despair

which

acts.

through

a

Love as

recollection has power. `The paradox that the only true love is love for the dead is the perfect expression of our situation. '657For in the absence of the eternal, death delivers hope for love; a hope for àwakening, ' for redemption from our CATASTROPHIC situation. 658The world once over. It is with such deathly love that Adorno unravels another of the `cunning theologian's'65s paradoxes. The `social critique'660 Adorno identifies in Kierkegaard's philosophy is the latter's turning away from the reified world of capital, of possession and exchange especially - notable in the criticism of the use of love made by artists and poets. Adorno

quite rightly observes

(following

`Gottsched, one of

Kierkegaard's translators'), 661that Kierkegaard, throughout Works of Love et at., categorically refuses to take this world seriously. 662That is to say, Kierkegaard's irony and play uncovers the false seriousness operating in thought. Thought itself, serious thought, i.e., sustained reflective critical thought, for Kierkegaard 655Adorno, KDL, p. 427. 656See: Kierkegaard, WL,

p. 358.

657Adorno, KDL, p. 427. 658Kierkegaard, WL, p. 353. 659Adorno, KDL, p. 415. 660Adorno, KDL, p. 423. 661Adorno, KCA, p. 4. 662 See: Kierkegaard, WL, pp. 48-9, p. 83, p. 320. 179

has become lighthearted, conditioned,

mere information easily consumed.

Capital is taken seriously thought is not, love even less so. `The seriousness rejected

by Kierkegaard

is the bourgeois

seriousness

of business.

(... )

Kierkegaard's doctrine of hope protests against the seriousness of a mere reproduction of life which mutilates man. It protests against a world which is determined by barter and gives nothing without an equivalent. '663Kierkegaard summons and praises Christian love, takes this love seriously and in doing so turns away from taking capital and its concomitant culture industry seriously. `Kierkegaard recognized the distress of incipient high-capitalism. He opposed its privations in the name of a lost immediacy that he sheltered in subjectivity. 1664 Inwardness becomes Kierkegaard's romantic desert island or `fortress' against this bad reality. 665It takes asceticism, a cold fanatical love, to combat the apathy and all too easy domination of individuals who incorrectly consider themselves to be individuated in a society conditioned by `business and competition. 5666 Kierkegaard's love, love-cum-hatred in Adorno's interpretation, delivers hope, a possible world, the world once over, In the name of hope, he becomes the foe of seriousness itself, of the absorption by practical aims which is not suspended by the thought of what is possible. [Contra Heidegger]. Nothing serves to better differentiate

between Kierkegaard and his heirs than his turning

against "seriousness. "66'


KDL, pp. 426-7. KCA, p. 39.


KCA, p. 43. KDL, p. 426.

667Adorno,

KDL, pp. 426. 179

Kierkegaardian love turns against seriousness, there is little doubt. I entirely support Adorno on this point and wish to extend this serious resistance to productive

fandom

more generally. Yet, for Adorno

this turning

against

seriousness - the `bestial seriousness' of the false whole and the `disrespectful play' within it - is exaggerated, exposed, pushed too far, in both Kierkegaardian inwardness

and fandom's uncompromising figures. Adorno does not take

Kierkegaard's seriousness too seriously, or, rather, he takes it very seriously and finds its claim to being taken seriously eccentric if not outright lunacy. Seriousness is all too lighthearted. The same is true in fandom. Who, one must ask, is the most serious; Kierkegaard or Adorno? According to the latter, inwardness lacking externality denies itself access to the possible, the world once over of aesthetic comportment.

Uncompromising

figures lack

precisely this externality. Mimetic comportment resigns itself to a twilight world of fantasy and ideal images, wherein it actually makes no difference. According to the former, inwardness is a fortress, a romantic desert island, against externality, opposing the false whole. Inwardness is seriousness and must be guarded at all costs. Shudders are experienced connecting it to the external. Mimetic comportment Kierkegaard sociological

does not need the possible for it is the eternal.

may well overshoot his claims for inwardness, but, Adorno's critique may very well overshoot

its target.

Who, one must ask, takes the aesthetic most seriously; Kierkegaard or Adorno? outlaws

The former, imitator extraordinaire, admiration,

champions

imitation

castigates

and mimetic

poets and artists,

comportment

in what

appears to be a devaluation of the aesthetic sphere and a valuation of the

190

ethical. 668The latter, romantic visionary, values poets, artists and artworks, and seems partial to both admiration and mimesis. Aesthetics, as witnessed in the epigraph chosen for this chapter, must be freed from the non-admiring `false superiority, ' and arid `polish, ' of the academy: Àcademic (... ) works are dry, which is in general what results when mimesis withers. '669Adorno's distrust of images seems more deeply set than Kierkegaard's, but, then, how seriously should one take his shudder, moistness and aesthetic comportment? Who, one must ask, takes love most seriously; Kierkegaard or Adorno? The latter resigns himself, concretely, to the worldly transformation of love into lovecum-hatred, which, the former, uncompromisingly, does not give up. Who, one must ask, takes fandom most seriously; Kierkegaard or Adorno? Both deny fandom (and its derivatives) of any real, serious, productivity. 670 Participation is not permitted, though it is not for this reason impossible. Perhaps, in the jitterbug or fan's St. Vitus-like dance there exists the gesture of shuddering? Perhaps, the uncompromising figure feels it too, like a `tombstone inscription? ' Fandom's participation, I claim, stands under the sign: `being-within an outside. ' This is how I understand the shudder. If there is any bad conscience and `false superiority, ' love-cum-hatred, maybe it does not lie within fans but with those who, intolerantly,

fail to take it seriously

as a productive

67 ? participation Who, one must ask, do I take seriously; Kierkegaard or Adorno? I choose them both. My reader, however, no doubt offended and irritated in equal

66 See: Kierkegaard, WL, p. 422. 669Adorno, AT, p. 188. 670 See: Kierkegaard, WL, p. 190. 6" 'Genuine participation is indeed also found on earth, but wherever hated and persecuted by the world. ' Kierkegaard, WL, p. 122. 191

you find it, you will find it

measure by my perfidious fidelity, my `disrespectful play, ' may prefer to choose for themselves. In which case I could prescribe their choice. Either one takes seriously the impostor; Adorno's love-cum-hatred, his admiration & aesthetic comportment. Or one takes seriously the lunatic; Kierkegaard's love, imitation and mimetic comportment. I leave this choice open, as a problem, giving Kierkegaard (who has both image and shudder) the last word (on fandom), Now back to the youth. So this image of perfection is his love. His appearance shows it; his eyes see nothing of what lies closest around him, they seek only that image; he walks like a dreamer, and yet one can see by the fire and flame in his eyes that he is wide awake; he walks like a stranger, and yet he seems to be at home, for through the imagination he is always at home with this image, which he desires to resemble. And just as it so beautifully happens with lovers that they begin to resemble each other, so the young man is transformed in likeness to this image, which imprints or impresses itself on all his thought and on every utterance by him, while he, to repeat, with his eyes directed to this image - has not watched his step, has not paid attention to where he is. He wants to resemble this

image; he is already beginning to resemble it - and now he suddenly discovers the surrounding world of actuality in which he is standing and the relation of this surrounding world to himself. If the power that governs human life were a seductive power, then at this moment it would mockingly say of this youth: Look, now he is trapped - somewhat as the surrounding world says of him: Look, 1R?.

there is a youth who has let himself be enticed by his imagination to go out too far, so he has become overwrought and ridiculous and does not fit into the actual world. But the power that governs human life is love, and if there could be any question

of its having

preference, then it has a preference for this youth, as we do in fact read Jesus took delight in that rich young man, not because he became worldly wise and turned away but because he had gone out so far that Christ had begun to hope for him. Loving Governance does not judge this youth unlovingly, as the world judges, but says: Good for you! Now the seriousness of life is beginning for you; now you have come out so far that it will become a matter of seriousness for you that to live is to be examined. The seriousness of life is not all this pressure of finitude and busyness with livelihood, job, office, and procreation, but the seriousness of life is to will to be, to will to express the perfection (ideality) in the dailyness of actuality, to will it, so that one does not to one's own ruin once and for all busily abandon it or conceitedly take it in vain as a dream - what a tragic lack of seriousness in both cases! but humbly wills it in actuality. (... ) The imagination has deceived the youth, has by means of that image of perfection made him forget that he is, after all, in actuality, and now he is standing there - in exactly the right position. A shudder, it is true, may go through him for a moment as he now considers the matter, but abandon the image - no, that he cannot persuade himself to do. On the other hand, if he cannot persuade himself to abandon the image, he cannot escape the suffering either, 191

because, since the image he wants to resemble is the image of perfection and since the actuality in which he is and wants to express the resemblance is anything but perfection, suffering is in store and is not to be avoided. (... ) [L]et us never forget that it is love - however tight it will turn the screws on him, if I may put it this way, and however hot it will heat the oven, if I may put it this way, in which the youth must be tested like gold. (... ) To be a child and to be a youth when one is a child or a youth is easy enough, but a second time - the second time is what is decisive. To become a child again, to become nothing, without any selfishness, to become a youth again (although one has become sagacious,

sagacious from experience,

worldly-wise),

to disdain

acting sagaciously, to will to be the youth, to will to preserve youth's enthusiasm, rescued in all its original character, to will to struggle to the end, more uneasy and ashamed about haggling and bargaining and, what amounts to the same thing, about acquiring earthly advantage than the modest girl is uneasy about an impropriety - yes, that is the task. 672

672Kierkegaard,

PC, pp. 189-92 (Translation

modified). 1R4

Chapter Three: A Philosophy

First you have to know how to admire; his particular

poses,

The

you have to rediscover

It is through

machinery.

of Fandom

admiration

critique.

anything:

either they're "against, " or they situate everything

they chit-chat

mania

and scrutinize.

of people

he

that you will come

is not knowing

today

genuine

the problem

to

how to admire

at their own level while

That's no way to go about it. You have to work your

way back to the those problems which an author of genius has posed, all the way back to that which he does not say in what he says, in order to extract something that still belongs

to him, though you also turn it against

him. You have to be

inspired, visited by the geniuses you denounce. "'

If you don't admire something, word

about

it. Spinoza

and

if you don't love it, you have no reason to write a Nietzsche

are

destructive

powers

affirmation,

from joy, from a cult of affirmation

are

without

equal,

but

philosophers this

power

whose always

critical springs

and joy, from the exigency

against those who would mutilate and mortify it. For me this is philosophy

and from of life

itself. 674

Introduction

Deleuze's oeuvre, as the above epigraphs make plain, has something to say of affective, amorous and affirmative, relations or constellations between him and those he writes of. Indeed, as I will argue in this chapter, one ought to, and without burden, take Deleuze's admiration and affect, love and passion, very seriously - for these concepts and powers appear to be the condition of possibility for both `genuine critique' and `philosophy itself. '

673Deleuze, 674Deleuze,

D/, p. 139. D/, p. 144.

IRS

If it is fair to claim, as I do, that the Deleuze way the mode of existence or style of life favoured by Deleuze - has a certain applicability to fandom, 675as active comportment, affirmative critique and affective relation, it will be the task of this chapter to argue this point, following a line of thought which primarily attempts to determine the significance of the concepts àffect' and `love,' most notable in Deleuze's manifold encounters with the philosophy of Spinoza, before accelerating

toward a detailed conceptual

admiration,

love

and

passion

-

schemata of affective states -

integral

to

Deleuze's

own,

wider,

investigations. 676The aim of this chapter is, therefore, to reconstruct Deleuze's philosophy on the basis of the aforementioned concepts, whilst emphasising their relation to my own conception of fandom.

675 Deleuze

has written little explicitly addressing this theme and that which he has written is critical. What follows is, to my knowledge, all the occasions where Deleuze mentions fandom. 'Idolaters are people of "artificial lives, " the ones who make an essence out of the extraordinary, the ones who look for "an immediate service of the Supreme Being. " They are the mystics, the fanatics, and the superstitious. ' Deleuze, ES, p. 74. 'Sabatti Zwi is a cabbalist and fanatic given to self-mortification. ' Deleuze, SM, p. 98. 'Life becomes difficult for [Spinoza] in Amsterdam. Perhaps following an assassination attempt by a fanatic (... ) It is said that Spinoza kept his coat with a hole pierced by a knife thrust as a reminder that thought is not always loved by men. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 6. 'I'm not a big fan of the small movie theater where you find a great many films, with each showing only once at a particular hour. (... ) I'm what you call a naive moviegoer. ' Deleuze, TR, p. 215. 676 1 am not alone in identifying and emphasising the affective dimension of Deleuze's thought. 'The truly extraordinary thing about Deleuze is precisely the quality of love that his philosophy expresses; it is active in everything he has written. ' See Hurley's, 'Preface, ' in: Deleuze, SP, p. iii. Protevi recognises this misrecognition and conjectures, '(... ) Derrida and Deleuze think about nothing but love? What have they written that isn't linked rather directly to desire, to alterity, to getting outside oneself, even if 'love' isn't among their most widely recognised concepts? ' Protevi, John [2003], 'Love, ' in: Patton, Paul and Protevi, John (Eds. ) [2003], Between Derrida and Deleuze, London, Continuum, p. 183. Hallward also identifies this 'inspirational' aspect of Deleuze's thought in his lucid commentary and critique, À philosophy unworthy of admiration is unworthy of critique. (... ) Few philosophers have been as inspiring as Deleuze. But those of us who still seek to change our world and to empower its inhabitants will need to look for our inspiration elsewhere. ' Hallward, OW, p. 159, p. 164. See also: 'Pleasures of Philosophy, ' in: Massumi, UG, pp. 1-9. Yet, to my knowledge, I am the only reader to give this quality any serious and comprehensive attention. A recently published dictionary of Deleuze's major concepts wilfully and regrettably omits any entry for each of the following concepts, 'love, ' 'passion' and 'admiration. ' See: Parr, Adrian (Ed. ) [2005], The Deleuze Dictionary, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. 186

The method of this chapter is to explicate Deleuze in precisely the way he explicates others, 67 with admiration and love, immanently and affectively following

creatively

with his thought as an enamoured

and enthusiastic

apprentice would, not doing like Deleuze's thought. 678Adorno's imperative for critical readers of Hegel holds true for my reading of Deleuze, `He becomes Hegel's

critic by following

him. )679 1 am a fascinated

fan, a lover and

impassioned admirer of Deleuze's thought, I have been both inspired and encouraged yet, as Deleuze himself declares, for the seed of inspiration to germinate

into a philosophy,

a critique,

it must

have

evolved

into a

denouncement: perfidious fidelity. `What, ' then, ìs the best way to follow the great philosophers? '6801claim, it is by undergoing participating

and practicing the love of thought

(fandom),

rather than

in what Deleuze pejoratively refers to as, `the conspiracy of

imitatorsi681(fanaticism). The latter reading strategy or mutilating and mortifying `chit-chat' may, perhaps, dovetail with the burden felt both by that strictly

677 1 am, then, practicing an immanent critique of Deleuze's philosophy which is neither dissimilar nor identical with Deleuze (and Guattari's) own slippery methodology of turning philosophy, `back against itself so as to summon forth a new earth, a new people. (... ) It is therefore closer to what Adorno called "negative dialectic" and to what the Frankfurt School called "utopian. " Actually, utopia is what links philosophy with its own epoch, with European Capitalism, but also already with the Greek city. In each case it is with utopia that philosophy becomes political and takes the criticism of its own time to its highest point. ' Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 99. 678 `We never learn by doing like someone, but by doing with someone. ' Deleuze, PS, p. 22. `This liberation, this embodiment of cosmic memory in creative emotions, undoubtedly only takes place in privileged souls. It leaps from one soul to another, "every now and then, " crossing closed deserts. But to each member of a closed society, if he opens himself to it, it communicates a kind of reminiscence, an excitement that allows him to follow. And from soul to soul, it traces the design of an open society, a society of creators, where we pass from one genius to another, through the intermediary of disciples or spectators or hearers. ' Deleuze, B, p. 111. See also: Deleuze, PS, p. 163. `(... ) following is not at all the same as reproducing, and TP, p. 372. Both Michel one never follows in order to reproduce. ' Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz suffered such `creative followers. ' See: Deleuze, N, p. 85, p. 86, p. 155. 679Adorno, H, p. 146. 680Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 28. 68! Deleuze, N, p. 128. 197

`serious beast'682 Deleuze names, 'Zarathustra's Ass, '683and by those grave men Nietzsche christens, `Higher.i684 Both figures or conceptual

personae

(falsely) affirm thought by claiming to take it seriously and in so doing really suffer an, 'inability to admire, respect or love, '685thought - subsumed as they are beneath the overbearing weight of some kind of ascetic ideal whereby the only modes of existence open to them are ressentiment and bad conscience. "' `There are things one can only do or say through mean-spiritedness,

a life

based on hatred, or bitterness toward life. '687Such a `capacity' for life merely testifies

to, `the vitality of love [being] transmuted

into an enterprise of

revenge. '688 In contrast to affirm serious thought, to take thought seriously, which is I claim a vital necessity, is simultaneously and necessarily to undergo and practice a love of thought. 689This is, therefore, to oppose a philosophy both practical

and contemplative -

conditioned

by love to a philosophy

grounded in love-cum-hatred. For philosophy to emerge, as Deleuze's second epigraph testifies, one must first admire and love that which one is to encounter. To be creative, `critical and destructive, ' presupposes an initial affirmation, a singular `yes, ' from which a certain joy may be extracted. I aim to investigate the quality specific to this affect. 682See: Nietzsche, GS, pp. 182-3 (aphorism 327). 683See: Deleuze, DR, p. 53, p. 311 note 16. See also: Nietzsche, TSZ, pp. 319-26. 684See: Nietzsche, TSZ, pp. 296-306. See also: Deleuze, CC, p. 196 note 5. 685 Deleuze, NP, p. 117. See also: Nietzsche, BGE, pp. 107-8 (aphorism 213), where those thinkers and scholars that take something seriously, 'hardly ever admire, ' 'hardly ever love. ' 686 Ressentiment, bad conscience and the ascetic ideal are 'reactive forces' and, 'the principal forms of nihilism, ' according to Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche's philosophy. See: Deleuze, NP, itself, is not the problem as Deleuze writes, '[t]he philosopher appropriates p. 34. Asceticism, the ascetic virtues - humility, poverty, chastity - and makes them serve ends completely his own, extraordinary ends that are not very ascetic at all. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 3. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, AO, pp. 268-9. 687Deleuze, N, p. 100. 688Deleuze, CC, p. 50. 689 '(... ) the less people take thought seriously, the more they think in conformity with what the State wants. ' Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 376.

199

To affirm is still to evaluate, but to evaluate from the perspective of a will which enjoys its own difference in life instead of suffering the pains of opposition to this life that it has itself inspired. To affirm is not to take responsibility for, to take on the burden of what is, but to release, to set free what lives. To affirm is to unburden: not to load life with the weight of higher values, but to create new values which are those of life, which make life light and active. There is creation, properly speaking, only insofar as we make use of excess in order to invent new forms of life rather than separating life from what it can do. 69°

In short, making use of excess (the affirmation of an intellectual love: the love of thought created and practiced by the artisanal-philosopher-fan),

by actively

gathering those amorous arrows Deleuze fires, trimming them anew, and attempting to send them in entirely different directions is the task of this "' chapter. If, as Deleuze proposes in an early work on Hume, à philosophical theory is an elaborately developed question, and nothing else, '692and, moreover, if, `[t]rue freedom lies in a power to decide, to constitute problems themselves, '693as Deleuze avers in his book on Bergson, and, finally, if thinking, `means to experiment and to problematize'694- precisely what is this Baroque question or problem I am attempting to constitute, develop and experiment with? What is Deleuze's question or problem? Has the latter's questionable

problematic

69° Deleuze, NP, p. 187. 691This is an oft-repeated image in Deleuze. See: Deleuze, NP, p. ix. See: Deleuze, DR, p. xv. See: Deleuze, F, p. 116. See: Deleuze, CC, p. 37, p. 44. See: Deleuze, N, p. 154. 692Deleuze, ES, p. 106. 693Deleuze, B, p. 15. `The art of constructing a problem is very important: you invent a problem, before finding a solution. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 1. a problem-position, 694Deleuze, F, p. 116.

199

something

to do either with judgements

pertaining

to, `the level of the

interference, ' of philosophy as, à practice of concepts, '695or of, `problems of interference, ' between bodies of knowledge, which so haunt Deleuze and Guattari in the concluding pages of their final co-authored

text,

What is

Philosophy? fi96How am I to interfere with Deleuze and his philosophy? If, again, Deleuze is well founded in speculating that, `[i]t is not a question of judging other existing beings, but of sensing whether they agree or disagree with us (... ) As Spinoza had said, it is a problem of love and hate and not judgement, '697then, surely, my interference must take place on an affective register? This is, therefore, to understand Deleuzian interference as a strategic use of the affect in relation to thought itself (interdisciplinary

destructuring

device). Àffect as immanent evaluation, instead of judgement as transcendent value: Ì love or I hate' instead of Ì judge'.

'698

Between the two position

statements there is little difference, yet this minor inconsistency assumes a great significance. On the one hand either I love or hate, while on the other I both love and hate - therein lies the difference, which Deleuze glosses, and to which I will return. Peter Hallward, quite correctly in my view, thinks that this remains an act or power of judgement, and is attentive to the order of importance integral to this movement of criticism: `Before you disagree with a work that is worthy of disagreement, you have to admire it and rediscover the

695 'For then too is something which is made, no less than its object. philosophical theory is itself a practice, just as much as its object. (... ) It is a practice of concepts, and it must be judged in the light of the other practices with which it interferes. (... ) It is at the level of the interference of many practices that things happen, beings, images, concepts, all the kinds of events. ' Deleuze, C2, p. 280. 696See: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, pp. 216-8. 697 Deleuze, CC, p. 135. "Must we not first hate each other if we are to love each other? ' Nietzsche cited in: Deleuze, CC, p. 99. 698Deleuze, C2, p. 141. 190

problems that it poses. '699First one must love and hate, admire and affirm, in order to formulate either the question or the problem, before something more sinister - evaluation and/or judgement - emerges. Accordingly, my question could read: How can I decide if I either love or hate, either agree or disagree with the thought of Deleuze? However, before I may even hazard an answer to this question I must first ask: Is this question itself adequately phrased? As the first epigraph to this chapter seems to suggest that the proper course of action does not follow the formula, either/or.

Either, I love

the thought of Deleuze and I sense his friendship for Deleuze. Or, I hate am -I Deleuze's thought and I sense him as foe Deleuze. The formula am against -I excludes choice, impoverishes choice, or at the very least conditions my choice. There must be more to (a) life than this false alternative? Deleuze proposes a renewal of this formula in the nonlogical event of the disjunction,

`(difference, divergence,

decentring)'. 70° The

renewed formula

expresses both a break and syntheses of breaks, èverything divides, but into itself. '701It is, at once, a disjunction, a conjunction and a connection. In a certain sense it is closest to the both / and than the either / or. Both love and hate rather than either love or hate. `Whereas the "either/or" claims to mark decisive choices

between

immutable

schizophrenic "either

terms

(the alternative:

either

this or that), the

to the system of possible permutations or... or" refers ...

between differences that always amount to the same as they shift and slide about. '702A (schizophrenic) lover's discourse emerges, which is comprised of

699Hallward,

OW, p. 159. 70° See: Deleuze, LS, pp. 296-7. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 12, pp. 69-70, pp. 76-7, p. 160. 701Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 76. See also: Deleuze, CC, p. 186, note 5. 702Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 12. 191

either love or hate or something altogether different. The initial formula forces upon its decisive subject, èxclusive, restrictive, and negative, '703alternatives, whereas the renewed formula is, `fully affirmative, nonrestrictive, inclusive, ''o4 and seems to provide, `combinations and permutations where the differences amount to the same without ceasing to be differences. '705'Either ... or... or' is a very strange formula whereby differences are registered yet neither subsumed beneath nor effaced by the same, A disjunction

that remains disjunctive,

and that still affirms the

disjointed terms, that affirms them throughout their entire distance, without restricting one by the other or excluding the other from the one, is perhaps the greatest paradox. 706 Through the inclusive and affirmative disjunction, the disjunctive synthesis more properly speaking, it appears possible to both love and hate someone, something, a thought while remaining faithful to each side! Perfidious fidelity. Acknowledging

the existence

of difference

between

love and hate yet

simultaneously maintaining this double potential (both /and - either... or... or), would,

therefore,

constitute the power

specific

to Deleuze's

disjunctive

synthesis. To remain faithful to each side, both loving and hating in equal measure, may well amount to admiration - about which I will have more to say below. What really matters in Deleuze's recasting of the problem is that the terms (love / hate) are subordinated to the modes of existence (lover / hater) of the one who chooses - if it can be said that one actually makes a choice. 703Deleuze and Guattari, 704Deleuze and Guattari, 705Deleuze and Guattari, 706Deleuze and Guattari,

AO, p. 76. AO, p. 76. AO, p. 70. AO, p. 76 197.

Interference is what counts. This, so Deleuze argues, is a, `fascinating idea (... ) developed from Pascal to Kierkegaard, ' whereby choices and/or decisions, (... ) can only be made on condition that one persuades oneself that one has no choice, sometimes by virtue of a moral necessity (good, right), sometimes by virtue of a physical necessity (the state of things,

the situation),

sometimes

by virtue of a psychological

necessity (the desire that one has for something). The spiritual choice is made between the mode of existence of him who chooses on the condition of not knowing it, and the mode of existence of him who knows that it is a matter of choosing. It is as if there was a choice of choice or non-choice. If I am conscious of choice, there are therefore already choices that I can no longer make, and modes of existence that I can no longer follow - all those I followed on the condition of persuading myself that `there was no choice'. This is all that Pascal's wager says: the alternation of terms is indeed the affirmation of the existence of God, its negation, and its suspension (doubt, uncertainty); but the spiritual alternative is elsewhere, it is between the mode of existence of him who `wagers' that God exists and the mode of existence of him who wagers for non-existence or who

does

not want

to wager.

(... ) In short,

choice

as spiritual

determination has no other object than itself: I choose to choose, and by that I exclude all choice made on the mode of not having the choice. (... ) It is a choice which is not defined by what it chooses, but by the power that it possesses to be able to start afresh at every instant, of starting afresh itself, and in this way confirming itself by 19I

itself, by putting the whole stake back into play each time. (... ) true choice raises the affect to its pure power of potentiality. 7' So called `true' choice: the consciousness of choice and the choosing of choice is, perhaps, akin to the mode of existence particular to the admirer, to the lover, to the impassioned - paradoxical

(trans) positional

subjects of

708 Theirs is `decision' for love judgement love. These possibility. a not a of subjects wager all of the possible, they risk everything in a, `pure "decision to love. "709Ì choose to choose' may be transposed

into / love to love, necessarily

excluding all love conditioned by not having love. This is, then, a spiritual or schizophrenic

love which is not defined by what it loves -a

depersonal

possessionless love, an intellectual love. The question is whether or not these subjects make a decision rather than allowing a decision to make them. 710 Between, say, choosing to agree either with Genet's assertion,

àll decisions are

made blindly, '"' or, by contrast, siding with Deleuze's aforementioned claim, `true freedom lies in a power to decide. ' As Hallward comments, `fidelity to love implies attestation before justification. The only serious question to be asked of love, as with Proust's Swann, is always a question about the existence of love Turning, ìnto ourselves, upon ourselves, ever more itself: "Is it still there? " 9712 rapidly, ' witnessing love in a strange spiritual- or schizophrenic-like manner is therefore the Deleuzian way to arrive at `true' choice and `true decision. 9713 claim that it is not too great a leap to make a case for the fan's mode of 707Deleuze, Cl, pp. 114-5. See also: Deleuze, C2, pp. 177-8. 708See: Deleuze, CC, p. 51, p. 134. 709Hallward,

B, p. 385 note 11. 710 See: Saramago, AN, p. 27, P. 30, p. 31, p. 221. I must acknowledge my indebtedness Hallward for alerting me to this wonderful text. See: Hallward, B, p. 385 note 11. 711Genet, PL, p. 53. 712 Hallward, B, p. 187. 713Deleuze, CC, p. 49. 194

to

existence to be understood in such terms. In Saramago's novel All The Names his protagonist, Senhor Jose, makes just such a decision to love while being an impassioned fan - Ì wasn't myself, ' Senhor Jose avers, Ì was in the grip of a decision. '74 Trans-positional subjectivity illumined. Being in the grip of a decision, I would argue, is precisely to restore admiration,

affirmation

and affect, love and passion

as the ground for

philosophy and critique. Such a claim prompts the following question: Is it agreeable to speak of learning to love, of passionate pedagogy, of affective and affirmative admiration in relation to thought itself? I claim Deleuze's `problem' may be sought, immanently, in `that which he does not say in what he says, ' and I will attempt to show that this incalculable blind spot - that which passes necessarily unsaid, that which Deleuze remains silent about - is intimately connected with admiration and affect, love and passion - ultimately with a certain idea of fandom. If accepted my task, thus, becomes: How to find Deleuze's question / problem, `through his admiration, 7715 through his love and passion? For, as I will make visible in this essay, there is a difference - no matter how elusive and invisible - between these concepts, a disjunction if you like.

714 Saramago,

AN, p. 32. '(... ) he realised that he had made a decision, and it wasn't just his usual decision to follow up an obsession, it really was a decision, although he couldn't explain how he came to make it. He said almost out loud, What has to happen, will happen, fear doesn't solve anything. ' Saramago, AN, p. 221. For Senhor Jose the fan witness the following, 'there are people like Senhor Jose everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sports shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty drinks cans, little angels, cacti, opera lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, programmes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world. ' Saramago, AN, p. 13. 715Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 165.

195

To approach answers to both my questions and problem I have chosen, in the first instance, to offer a textual commentary on Spinoza's understanding of affect and love as they are presented in his Ethics, coupled to a close reading of Deleuze's own àffective reading' of these particular concepts. 76 Supplementing this pairing are sections on Deleuze's Kierkegaard, Deleuze's Proust, and Deleuze's

Masoch all, I claim, relevant to fandom, which are themselves

succeeded by a critical survey - arranged chronologically, by date of original publication - of the concepts, `love, ' `passion, ' and àdmiration, ' as they are presented in Deleuze's oeuvre. I aim to be exhaustive in my mapping of these concepts so as to substantiate my earlier claim of reconstruction in an effort to draw ever nearer to answering my over-arching question: Is it possible to love thought?

`Will we ever be mature enough for a Spinozist inspiration? '"'

Deleuze's philosophy is saturated with references to the thought of Spinoza. "' The latter is variously described by the former as childlike, 7' as a, `true visionary, '720as, à rebel, '721as, `the Christ of philosophers, '722and as, `the

716 `(

) the affective reading, without an idea of the whole, where one is carried along or set down, put in motion or at rest, shaken or calmed according to the velocity of this or that part. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 129. 717Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 48. 718 Texts and essays, by Deleuze, dedicated to Spinoza are to be found in the following: Deleuze, EP. Deleuze, Gilles [1969], 'Gueroult's General Method for Spinoza, ' in: Deleuze, D/, pp. 146-55. Deleuze and Parnet, D, pp. 59-62. Deleuze, SP. Deleuze and Guattari [1980], 'Memories of a Spinozist, I& ll, ' in: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, pp. 253-60. Deleuze, Gilles [1989], 'Letter to Reda Bensmaia, on Spinoza, ' in: Deleuze, N, pp. 164-6. Deleuze, Gilles [1993], 'Spinoza and the Three "Ethics, "' in: Deleuze, CC, pp. 138-51. Deleuze, Gilles [2003], 'The Three Kinds of Knowledge, ' in: Spinoza: Desire and Power, P/i: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Ed. and Tr. Jon Rubin, Volume 14,2003, pp. 1-20. 719 See: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 256, 'Children are Spinozists. (... ) Spinozism is the becoming-child of the philosopher. '

720Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 28. 196

prince of philosophers. '723Spinoza, certainly, assumes an elevated position in relation to Deleuze's own thought. Can it, then, be said that Deleuze is a fan of Spinoza, an apostle (follower), an admirer in love passionately with the thought of the Dutch philosopher? I would, of course, affirm this assertion and I will show how this can be thought. If one accepts Deleuze's earlier statement that to be inspired necessitates denouncement then one may also infer from the subtitle heading this section that becoming a denouncer means at the same time to find oneself on the path toward maturity. Is Deleuze mature enough when it comes to Spinoza? Who is a Spinozist? Sometimes, certainly, the individual who works "on" Spinoza, on Spinoza's concepts, provided this is done with enough gratitude and admiration. But also the individual who, without being a philosopher, receives from Spinoza an affect, a set of affects, a kinetic

determination,

an impulse,

and

makes

Spinoza

an

encounter, a passion. (... ) Many commentators have loved Spinoza sufficiently to invoke a Wind when speaking of him. 724 Both the professional impassioned

amateur

philosopher armed with his/her admiration and the (an artisanal-philosopher-fan)

may

be

considered

Spinozist. Deleuze, by his own estimate, is truly a Spinozist. To begin to understand

Deleuze's love for the thought of Spinoza it is necessary to

understand a little about Spinoza, for the love of thought of which I write is 721Deleuze, SP, p. 7. 722Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 60. 723 Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 48. See also: Deleuze, EP, p. 11, where (if it needed saying) Deleuze outs himself as a Spinozist. 724 Deleuze, SP, pp. 129-30. 'It was on Spinoza that I worked the most seriously according to the norms of the history of philosophy - but he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time you read him, of a witch's broom which he makes you mount. We have not yet begun to understand Spinoza, and I myself no more than others. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 15. 197

neither anti-understanding, nor anti-thought, nor anti-philosophy - it is merely thought, thought of in a new arrangement, in a new combination. What, then, does Spinoza have to tell us of affects and love and their relation to thought? What is the `set of affects' Spinoza's philosophy produces? By what means can a reading or an encounter become affective, passionate, and kinetic? How does Deleuze interfere with Spinoza's philosophy? What does Deleuze take from Spinoza and what, if anything, does he give back? Spinoza's Ethics is, in equal measure, a rare, difficult and excellent text. 725In his `Preface' to the `Third Part' of the Ethics Spinoza lays bare his intention to determine, `men's way of living, ' ('modes of existence' in Deleuze's vocabulary), `the nature and powers of the Affects, ' and, `the power of the Mind over them. '726 Spinoza defines the affect accordingly, By affect I understand affections of the Body by which the Body's power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections. Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, / understand by the Affect an action; otherwise, a passion. 72' Affects (affectus) interfere, they are between ideas and affections (affectio), 728 mind and body - not at all everyday emotions, they increase activity only on the

725 Spinoza,

E, VP32COR

is in accordance with Curley's own - such standard abbreviation practice and refers to Ethics, Part V, proposition 32, corollary. ) In my reading of Spinoza I have greatly benefited from the following texts: Donagan, S. Hampshire, S. Nadler, S. Düttmann, MLD. 726Spinoza, E, IIIPREFACE. 727Spinoza, E, IIIDEF3. 72RÌt has been remarked that as a general rule body, while the affect (affectus) refers to the mind. It is between the body's affection and idea, which the affect, which involves an increase or decrease mind alike. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 49. 199

the affection (affectio) is said directly to the But the real difference does not reside here. involves the nature of the external body, and of the power of acting, for the body and the

729 Affects are between them. that in condition modes are a sense worthy of thought and feeling, striking and disrupting each other in turn. Human beings, `modes' in Spinoza's terminology, are far more likely to undergo passions and inadequate ideas than affects and adequate ideas. In order for the affect to emerge the mind/body must do something. It, the mind/body, cannot remain passive (affected by externals), if we are to talk of affects, strictly speaking. Adequate,

clear and distinct, ideas arise only when the mind is active.

Inadequate, `mutilated and confused, ' ideas surface when the mind is passive, 730 Spinoza's ideal would be that the former replace the latter, things. undergoing adequate ideas and affects replace inadequate ideas and passions, as a mode progresses through the three kinds of knowledge (which I will discuss below), on their way toward freedom. `Joy and sadness, ' alone, constitute passions yet Spinoza also speaks of `the affect of joy, ' and, `the affect of sadness, ' which when related to the mind/body transform

into, `Pleasure or Cheerfulness, ' and,

`Pain or Melancholy. )731

Pleasure, as the affect of joy, increases and aids the mind's power of thinking and the body's power of acting even if this only takes place via love and in the imagination -a

passage toward a greater perfection is its ideal not necessarily

its reality. 732Pain decreases and diminishes a modes powers. Spinoza admits one further `primary affect, ' the affect of desire, which he defines as, àppetite

729 Hampshire

will rename the affect, 'active emotion. ' 'The word affectus, although it comes the nearest to the word 'emotion' in the familiar sense represents the whole modification of the person, mental and physical. The 'affection' is a passion (in Spinoza's technical sense) in so far as the cause of the modification or àffection' does not lie within myself, and it is an 'action' or active emotion in so far as the cause does lie within myself. ' See: Hampshire, S, pp. 106-7. 730See: Spinoza, E, IIIP1 DEM. 731Spinoza, E, IIIP11SCHOL. 732 'Insofar

as it can, the Mind strives to imagine those things that increase power of acting i. e., those it loves. ' Spinoza, E, IIIP19DEM. 199

or aid the Body's

together with consciousness of the appetite, i733as, `man's very essence, '734and as, `nothing but the striving to act itself. '735The three primary affects, according to Spinoza, are, therefore, Pleasure (Joy), Pain (Sadness) and Desire. Love, Hate and Wonder, which Descartes admitted in his own system, are here jettisoned. 736Spinoza's argument for doing this is that the latter triad can be shown to follow, directly or indirectly, from his primary triumvirate of affects. For example joy is the essence of love for, Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause, and Hate is nothing but Sadness with the accompanying idea of an external cause. We see, then, that one who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the thing he loves; and on the other hand, one who hates strives to remove or destroy the thing he hates. 73' The cause of love remains external to the lover, presumably the cause of love is to be sought in the beloved `thing. ' This thing is kept alive by love in a gesture of attestation. Spinoza rejects Platonic love, às a will of the lover to join himself to the thing loved expresses a property of Love, not its essence. '738Spinoza's love is not connective, a kind of, `romantic fusion, of two become one'739- it is disjunctive. To talk of love's connectivity is to substitute a property of love for its essence. The essence of love, apparently, does not come from the lover's will it comes from elsewhere. I will return to this elusive elsewhere.

733Spinoza, E, IIIP9SCHOL. 734Spinoza, 735Spinoza,

E, IIIP57DEM

and Definitions of the Affects.

E, IVP59DEM.

736See Curley's note (18) in: Spinoza, E, IIIP11SCHOL. 737Spinoza, E, IIIP13SCHOL. 738Spinoza, E, III Definitions of the Affects VIEXP. 739Hallward, B, p. 186.

200

If the cause of love remains undecidable, then, `Sympathy' or 'Antipathy, )740 describe this love for Spinoza. It is, therefore, possible to love a thing without an, àccompanying idea of an external cause, ' but this love is neither, à deliberation of the mind, ' nor, à free decision. '741Spinoza also rejects eros, à purely sensual love, ' as madness. This type of love, èasily passes into hate, ' and, like its cousin `sympathy, ' is not in the service of, `freedom of mind. '742It is also possible to love a thing and hate it at the same time, though, `those who are torn by contrary affects do not know what they want, ' and struggle to decide between alternatives. 743I might, to anticipate

my argument

somewhat,

say they

are in the grip of a decision - precisely in decision and thus indecisive. This unsteady and contested site, which arises when two contrary affects are entertained simultaneously, Spinoza terms, `vacillation of mind. '744If an excess of love or desire takes place, if a single affect is fixed upon at the expense of others, Spinoza suggests that the lover is, `mad or insane, ' (if they are not asleep).

Such

an excessive,

burning,

love

provokes

laughter,

without

745 Laughter being, for Spinoza, `pure Joy, ' not, 'Mockery. ''46 If love, resentment. then, is not to be understood as a certain kind of bondage, forever determined by an external cause, what is it capable of? Love (likewise hate) is contagious or infectious in Spinoza's system, for, ìf we imagine someone to affect with Joy a thing we love, we shall be affected with

740Spinoza, 741Spinoza, 742Spinoza, 743 'For each

E, IIIP15SCHOL. E, III Definitions

of the Affects VIEXP. E, IVAPPENDIX, XIX.

one governs everything from his affect; those who are torn by contrary affects do not know what they want, and those who are not moved by any affect are very easily driven here and there. ' Spinoza, E, IIIP2SCHOL. '`'`' Spinoza, E, IlIP17DEM & SCHOL. Jealousy is a combination of love and hatred, a vacillation of the mind. See: Spinoza, E, IIIP35SCHOL. 745See: Spinoza, E, IVP44SCHOL. 746Spinoza, E, IVP45SCHOL. 70 1

Love toward him. -747 A community of affect in statu nascendi, without -I may only hope - echoes of the Orwellian, `Ministry of Love. '748Thus, if it is true that, `Deleuze maximizes Spinoza, '749this must be because the former has somehow made the latter more joyful, Deleuze's reading must - of necessity - be both an affected and an affective reading, almost a love-letter, which only enhances one's own love for Deleuze, èach sentence inspiring love. '750But why should this be the case? Spinoza supplies the following answer, `we strive to affirm, concerning ourselves and what we love, whatever we imagine to affect with Joy ourselves

or what we love. '75' Negation

and denial

are reserved

for those

inflicted with sadness and melancholy (those `burdensome' asses and higher 752 ). But these latter `modes' need not live in eternal sadness, for although men? it is true that, `Hate is increased by being returned, [it] can be destroyed by Love. '753

747Spinoza, E, IIIP22. 748 Orwell, George [1949], Nineteen Eighty-Four, in: George Orwell: The Complete Novels, London, Penguin, 1983. The windowless 'Ministry of Love' is by far the most cruel state apparatus, which together with the 'Ministry of Truth, ' the 'Ministry of Peace, ' and the, 'Ministry of Plenty, ' constitute Big Brother's dystopian and totalitarian government. The aims of the socalled 'Anti-Sex League' and 'Hate Week' (Ministry of Love initiatives) are multiple: 'It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship' p. 822. And as O'Brien (Ministry of Love operative) informs the protagonist Winston, 'the old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and selfabasement. (... ) We shall abolish the orgasm. (... ) There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother' p. 898. 'But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. [Winston] had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother' p. 916. A concise example of the mutilation of life Deleuze talks of. 749Deleuze, SP, p. iii. 75" Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 126. 751Spinoza, E, IIIP25. 752'The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach them virtues, and they strive, not to guide men by reason, but to restrain them by Fear, so that they flee the evil rather than love virtues. Such people aim only to make others as wretched as they themselves are, so it is no wonder that they are generally burdensome and hateful to men. ' Spinoza, E, IVP63SCHOL. 753Spinoza, E, IIIP43. This is a step too far for Russell, 'I wish I could believe this, but I cannot, except in exceptional cases where the person hating is completely who refuses to hate in return. ' Russell, HWP, p. 530.

2m

in the power of the person

Such confidence in the destructive and creative power of love, `the glory and innocence of Spinoza, ''' which is here privileged in no uncertain manner! 755If I, or the thing which I love, are affected with joy (how can they not be so affected? ), I will `strive' to affirm this affect because I am aiming for a greater perfection (not, it ought to be added, a greater reality! ). By and through striving (conatus75b), I evaluate, affect and affirm. I do not first judge something to be either right or wrong, either good or bad, affirm either / or alternative, orientate myself accordingly and, only then, commence striving -I

am always already

affirming, always already desiring, always already in the choosing of choice (being in the grip of a decision). It is, therefore, through the affect that modes of existence may be evaluated and affirmed. 757As Deleuze writes, The Ethics judges feelings [affects], conduct and intentions by relating them, not to transcendent values, but to modes of existence

'5A Ìn the reproach that Hegel will make to Spinoza, that he ignored the negative and its power, lies the glory and innocence of Spinoza, his own discovery. In a world consumed by the in life, in the power of life, to challenge death, the negative, he has enough confidence murderous appetite of men, the rules of good and evil, of the just and the unjust. (... ) In his view, all the ways of humiliating and breaking life, all the forms of the negative have two sources, one turned outward and the other inward, resentment and bad conscience, hatred and guilt. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 13. 755 `So he who lives according to the guidance of reason will strive, as far as he can, to bring it about that he is not troubled with affects of Hate, and consequently, will strive that the other also should not undergo those affects. Now Hate is increased by being returned, and on the other hand, can be destroyed by Love, so that Hate passes into Love. Therefore, one who lives according to the guidance of reason will strive to repay the other's Hate, etc., with Love, i. e., with Nobility. ' Spinoza, E, IVP46DEM. 756 Donagan is succinct on Spinoza's use of this term: `Spinoza also transforms the customary sense of the verb 'conarn ('to strive'). As a rule, it means to try; and it suggests effort, especially persistent and even intelligent effort. ' Donagan, S, p. 152. For Deleuze, `the feeling-affect is the conatus itself insofar as it is determined to do this or that by a given idea of affection. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 101. Nussbaum finds striving to be the 'most complete as an ideal' of `how love might triumph over hatred. ' 'By seeing that our striving is itself an end, and by standing forth in the integrity of our worldly commitments, to be. ' we defeat hatred by our very willingness Nussbaum, UT, p. 711. 757 'From all this, then, it is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it. ' Spinoza, E, IIIP9SCHOL. 'So each one, from his own affect, judges, orevaluates, what is good and what is bad. (... ) So the Greedy man judges abundance of money best, and poverty worst. (... ) each one, from his own affect, judges a thing good or bad, useful or useless. ' Spinoza, E, IIIP39SCHOL.

ýýý

they presuppose or imply: there are things one cannot do or even say, believe, feel, think, unless one is weak, enslaved, impotent; and other things one cannot do, feel and so on, unless one is free and strong. A method of explanation by immanent modes of existence thus replaces the recourse to transcendent values. The question is in each case: Does, say, this feeling [affect], increase our power of action or not? Does it help us come into full possession of that power?

'5S

Joyous encounters are clearly judged higher than sad ones: I affirm what I love and that which affects me with joy, that which affects me with joy I love and affirm. `For love is a Joy which the man, as far as he can, strives to preserve. '759 Love is, declares the lover as attestor - be they Spinozist or Proustian. But what of all those other joy filled modes whom in the process of self-preservation act from their own desire? Would there not be a calamitous clash of pleasure 760 (drives) in loved-up Does Spinozism require a Ministry this principles world? of Love? No, for difference is nowhere subsumed beneath the same, as Spinoza categorically states, `the human body is affected in a great many ways by external bodies. Therefore, two men can be differently affected at the same time, and so they can be affected differently by one and the same object. (... ) We see, then, that it can happen that what the one loves, the other hates (... ) 758 Deleuze,

EP, p. 269. Deleuze's translator prefers, `feeling, ' to, àffect, ' in doing, into English, which forces my bracketed intervention. 's' Spinoza, E, IlIP38DEM. 760 Hampshire draws an interesting parallel between Spinoza's striving or conatus determinism. drive or libido, which is not founded upon each man's assumed philosophers conceive emotional life as based on a universal unconscious drive or both maintain that any frustration of this drive must manifest self-preservation; life as some painful disturbance. (... ) consequently both Spinoza conscious represent moral problems as essentially clinical problems. ' Hampshire, S, pp. 110-1, 204

`sentiment,

and Freud's `(... ) both tendency to itself in our and Freud pp. 194-7.

'

and that one and the same man may now love what before he hated. )761It is all a question of evaluating, differently, immanently and from one's affect with the guidance of reason, one's mode of existence - am Ia lover and/or a hater at any given moment. What is open and useful to modes and what is closed and harmful to modes? 762Which affect increases striving, activity, and essence, which decreases and diminishes? 763What power makes modes capable of being affected by, and of affecting, other bodies and minds? `For the more the body is capable of affecting, and being affected by, external bodies in a great many ways,

the

more the Mind is capable

of thinking. '764 What

new

configurations, new potentialities, new `proportions of motion and rest, '765and `new possibilities of life, 7766 can be identified for bodies and minds? For one still, `do[es] not know what the Body can do. '767Importantly, both affect and reason are not made mutually exclusive. Spinoza certainly seems to draw near to that `fascinating idea' witnessed above in both Pascal and Kierkegaard. So much earnest striving toward an ideal of greater perfection but just what is Spinoza's summum bonum? `Knowledge of God is the Mind's greatest good; its greatest virtue is to know God. '768As `God' is strictly substitutable for `Nature' in Spinoza's system (Deus, sive Natura), 769then, it may be preferable to say that to know Nature is the ultimate aim of his philosophy. How is it possible to 761Spinoza, E, IlIP51 DEM & SCHOL. 762See: Spinoza, E, IVP38.

763See: Spinoza, E, IIIP54. 7(A Spinoza,

E, IVAPPENDIX, XXVII.

765Spinoza, E, IVP39SCHOL. 766This is an oft-repeated image in Deleuze, which he takes from Nietzsche. See: Deleuze, NP, p. 101, p. 103. See: Deleuze, N, p. 91, p. 95, p. 98, p. 118. See: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, pp. 72-4. See: Deleuze, CC, p. 4. 767Spinoza, E, IIIP2SCHOL. 768Spinoza, E, IVP28. 769 `That

and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists. ' Spinoza, E, IVPREFACE. Nadler notes that this phrase only occurs in the Latin edition of the Ethics, not in the Dutch. See: Nadler, S, p. 231. eternal

20S

attain this, now naturalized, divine understanding?

Spinoza's answer is by

progressing through stages (stages on life's way! ), striving, as it were. Knowledge, for Spinoza, is of three kinds. 70 The first kind of knowledge is, òpinion or imagination, ' drawn from, `random experience. ' 771This kind of knowledge is comprised of, ìnadequate and confused, 772ideas and passive affections and is, thus, open to falsity. `[A] man who is led only by an affect, or opinion, ' lives in ignorance and is a slave. 773The second kind of knowledge, `the better part of us, '74 is, `reason, ' which is the faculty of, `common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things. '75 Such knowledge, or `certain ideas, ' is open to all, general and in common. 776This kind of knowledge is, `necessarily true, '"' and, `teaches us to distinguish the true from the false. "' The man who lives by the second kind of knowledge is both a `wise' and, à free man, ' whom, `complies with no one's wishes but his own, and does only those things he knows to be the most important in life, and therefore desires very greatly. '79 The third and final kind of knowledge is, ìntuitive knowledge, ' which, `proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things. 7110 To achieve, `blessedness, ' through perfecting one's reason, ìs nothing but that satisfaction 770This is a step too far for Hampshire who considers both the eternality of the mind and the, 'distinctions between different grades of knowledge, ' to be indefensible doctrines - mere speculation not knowledge. Hampshire, S, p. viii. 771Spinoza, E, IIP40SCHOL2. 772Spinoza, E, IIP41 DEM. 773Spinoza, 74 Spinoza,

E, IVP66SCHOL. E, IVAPPENDIX, XXXII.

75 Spinoza, E, IIP40SCHOL2III. "`' Spinoza, E, IIP38COR. IIP40SCHOL2111. 7" Spinoza, E, IIP41. 778Spinoza, E, IIP42. "`' Spinoza, E, IVP66SCHOL. see: Spinoza, E, VPREFACE. 780Spinoza, E, IIP40SCHOL2IV.

See

also:

For Spinoza's

Spinoza,

E,

opposition

706

IIP40SCHOL1.

between

And:

the ignorant

Spinoza,

and wise

E,

man

of mind that stems from the intuitive knowledge of God. i78' Like the second, the third kind of knowledge proceeds without doubt and is, thus, assured of its truthfulness and certainty. Unlike the second, the third kind of knowledge is from time and place and, accordingly,

abstracted

knows the

adequately

essence of things under the aspect of eternity. 782The major difference between the second and third kinds of knowledge is that ideas are generated and understood in the former whereas essences take the place of ideas in the latter. Now, it ought to be noted that modes spend a far greater percentage of their existence they,

subjected

`live

to the first and the second to

according

overwhelmingly

the

guidance

to the bondage

subject

of

kinds of knowledge,

rarely do

reason, '

too,

of their

passions

human. 783`But that men do not have so clear a knowledge

they,

as -

human,

are

all too

of God as they do of

the common notions comes from the fact that they cannot imagine God, as they can bodies, and that they have joined the name God to the images of things which they are used to seeing. Men can hardly avoid this, because continually

affected

knowledge,

to reason God,

understands understanding challenge,

by

'784The problem is that

ultimately, Nature

or

an interruption,

it labours

anthropomorphically

Spinoza's

essence.

peculiar

third

kind

of

78' Spinoza, 782Spinoza,

E, IIP47SCHOL.

783Spinoza,

E, IVP35P35SCHOL.

E, IVAPPENDIX,

to the second an

rather

than

knowledge

kind of

illusion

under

it

-

intuitively

stands

a liberation of oneself from the shackles

ways of doing (action) and thinking (contemplation)

they are

as

a

of habitual

toward an altogether

more

IV.

Nadler is good on this, explaining that the Ethics, `consists in showing that our happiness and well-being lie, not in a life enslaved to the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue, nor in the related unreflective to the attachment superstitions that pass as religion, but rather in the life of reason. ' Nadler, S, p. 227.

784Spinoza, E, IIP47SCHOL.

21)7

radical comportment, which is the focus for discussion in the fifth and final part of his Ethics. Spinoza prefaces `Part Five' of his Ethics by stating that no matter how often the, `power of the Mind, or of reason, ' tries to moderate and restrain the affects, this attempted guidance is ultimately in vain as, ìt does not have an absolute dominion over them. '7851 can never detach myself entirely from nature, 786thus while I endure I can never absolutely put an end to being influenced and affected by that which is external to me yet in nature, ä /a Thoreau. The first and second kind of knowledge cannot be adequately disentangled from one another; they remain knotted together. However, this human fallibility does not halt the 787 knowledge ' in à to true the at, affects. of, mind's striving, part, arrive The best thing, then, that we can do, so long as we do not have perfect knowledge of our affects, is to conceive a correct principle of living, or sure maxims of life, to commit them to memory, and to apply them constantly to the particular cases frequently encountered in life. 788 Spinoza's first example of such a life maxim, conduct, or `rule of reason, ' is that

love will destroy

hate.789 This

consistent

favouring

of love seems

inextricably linked to Spinoza's view that, `He who understands himself and his affects clearly and distinctly loves God, and does so the more, the more he

7x5Spinoza,

E, VPREFACE.

786 Therefore,

I can never be absolutely free: `human freedom must be a matter of degree. ' Hampshire, S, p. 108. 'Freedom is at best only intermittent and partial. ' Hampshire, S, p. 197. 787Spinoza, E, VP4SCHOL. 788Spinoza, E, VP1 OSCHOL. Nadler renders this imperative succinctly, `Since we cannot control the objects that we tend to value and allow to influence our well-being, we ought instead to try to control our evaluations themselves and thereby minimize the sway that external objects and the passions have over us. ' Nadler, S, p. 240. 789Spinoza, E, VP10SCHOL. 20X

understands himself and his affects. i790Loving God, which for Spinoza is incorruptible, is the `highest good' of reason. 79' Pursuing knowledge is virtuous conduct. However, reasons lucid understanding of and power over affects seemingly comes at the cost of yet another affect - the love of God, God's affect? But, Spinoza strictly denies God affects, affections and passions, of any kind, for God can - of necessity - `pass neither to a greater nor a lesser perfection. i792`God loves no one, and hates no one. '793God is not human and to treat him in analogous fashion would be to fall prey to anthropomorphism. What, then, is the nature of Spinoza's love of God? From the third kind of knowledge, there necessarily arises an intellectual Love of God. For from this kind of knowledge there arises Joy, accompanied by the idea of God as its cause, i.e. Love of God, not insofar as we imagine him as present, but insofar as we understand God to be eternal. And this is what I call intellectual love 794 God. of Here one receives the answer to the questionable èlusive elsewhere' of love: God, or Nature. Spinoza's love of God is intellectual, thoughtful and meditative, that much is certain. Yet, as Russell observes, this intellectual love of God is more than, `mere intellect. '795Spinoza, here, in no way draws the common philosophical distinction between love and knowledge, between feeling and thought. `The more we understand singular things, the more we understand 790Spinoza, 791Spinoza, 792Spinoza, 793Spinoza,

E, VP15. E, VP20DEM. E, VP17DEM. E, VP17COR.

'94 Spinoza, E, VP32COR. 795 `The intellectual love

of God is a union of thought and emotion: it consists, I think one may say, in true thought combined with joy in the apprehension of truth. (... ) I think, nevertheless, that there is something in 'intellectual love' which is not mere intellect; perhaps the joy involved is considered as something superior to pleasure. ' Russell, HWP, p. 526.

209

God. 1796 Yet, this love does not appear to share much with the òrdinary Love, '797 witnessed thus far. Love is transformed at this point but not dispensed with. If, as Deleuze's Spinoza claims, `God is the cause of all things, '798then only an intellectual love adequately understands its cause, is non-temporal, that is to say only intellectual love is eternal as, Spinoza argues, bodily sensual love cannot endure beyond its finite determination. The Mind's intellectual Love of God is the very Love of God by which God loves himself, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he can be explained by the human Mind's essence, considered under a species of eternity; i. e., the Mind's intellectual Love of God is part of the infinite Love by which God loves himself. 799 For Spinoza, then, the mind's intellectual love of God shares in the constancy and eternity of God's love. This is not an argument in favour of the immortality of a personal soul. It is not the soul that lives on beyond the body, but the mind inasmuch as it consists of adequate ideas and partakes of the intellectual love 800 God. This God is intellectual love freedom, blessedness. `The of of virtue and best kind of knowledge is a purely intellectual intuition of the essences of things. This "third kind of knowledge" [is] beyond both random experience

and

ratiocination. 780'And as Nadler continues, `the third kind of knowledge generates a love for its object, and in this love consists not joy, a passion, but blessedness itself. '802Blessedness is not a property of love, it does not have an elsewhere,

796Spinoza, 797Spinoza,

E, VP24. E, VP20SCHOLV

798Deleuze, SP, p. 53.

'`" Spinoza, E, VP36. 80° See: Spinoza, E, VP36CHOL. 801Nadler, S, p. 240. 902Nadler, S, p. 242. 710

an external cause, inasmuch as God's, or Nature's love is - in a certain sense always already in one as essence and may only be revealed or expressed at the appropriate juncture. Spinoza's intellectual love of God is, then, the love of thought - as intuitively understanding the eternality of true and adequate ideas is precisely what this generative love puts into motion. 803Ìt was Spinoza's intention to prove that to be rational is necessarily to love God, and that to love God is to be rational. '804It is, for Spinoza, possible to love a thought, to live an intellectual love, to experience what he calls blessedness. 805

`Memories of a Spinozist'8o6

I opened the preceding section by claiming that Deleuze loves the thought of Spinoza; why? I would, proleptically, argue that Deleuze's encounters with Spinoza's philosophy (which I will deal with in this section), either encourages or inspires one's own understanding of Spinoza's system - intellectual love is infectious - inasmuch as Spinoza becomes for Deleuze a certain kind of god. This is an exaggerated claim, but one I wish to entertain. As is the case in fandom, one must have a favourite with which one is fascinated, and I would argue that Spinoza is Deleuze's favourite, although this of course does not transform him into a god (epithets such as, `visionary, ' `Christ' and `prince' notwithstanding).

I note here the aporia of falling foul of Spinoza's charge of

803 `(... ) on such occasions we feel and know ourselves to be mentally united or identified with the eternal order of Nature. ' Hampshire, S, p. 133. 804Hampshire, S, p. 130. 805`(... ) there certainly have always been scientists and artists who, to a greater or less degree, have been sustained by a passionate curiosity and delight in the infinite complexities of Nature. (... ) and many men have been sustained by this absorbed desire to know and to understand who would never give such a name [the intellectual love of God] to their curiosity. ' Hampshire, S, p. 129. 806See: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, pp. 253-60.

211

anthropomorphism

(seeing

bodies

and

images,

rather

than

gods

and

essences). Yet, if Spinoza's system is followed, then, it is possible to make illuminating associations with Deleuze's àffective reading, ' which further aids one's understanding of the latter's philosophy. For instance, if it were supposed that Deleuze generates an affect from his encounters with Spinoza, one would expect this affect to increase Deleuze's own power of action. If Spinoza is, as I claim he is, the adequate cause of Deleuze's own philosophy, Deleuze would attest to this love by striving to present and preserve the `thing' he loves. This `thing' is Spinoza's philosophy, his thought. Accordingly,

Deleuze's love of

Spinoza's thought would then be an affect of joy, replete with adequate ideas. To intuitively know Spinoza would be the ultimate aim of Deleuze's philosophy (will he ever be mature enough? ). Spinoza would be the cause of this affect of

joy, this love, and this pleasure, therefore, I am able to frame Deleuze's relation with Spinoza in this way. Deleuze, like Spinoza before him, made a decision to love. Whether or not Deleuze's love attains the dizzying heights of Spinoza's intellectual love is yet to be decided. The question I wish to pursue in this section is: Does Deleuze privilege and propagate an extraordinary intellectual love, or does he resign himself to a more worldly, ordinary and contradictory, love and hate, which for Spinoza - as I have shown - constitutes, `vacillation of mind? ' Deleuze's first detailed text dedicated to Spinoza is his, 1968, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. It is rather obvious that, as the title suggests, Deleuze identifies Spinoza's philosophy with a concept of èxpression, ' which I have hitherto ignored. Also, of considerable importance to Deleuze's text is yet another concept, which I have passed over, of ìmmanence. ' Together, these 7.1?.

concepts

-

according to Deleuze -

have something

to say about the,

'composition of finite modes, ' that is to say both the essence and comportment 807 human beings. However important these particular concepts of

are to

Deleuze, I am primarily interested in explicating Deleuze's interference, if any exists, with Spinoza's understanding of àffect, ' `love, ' and, ìntellectual love, ' which I have already introduced - writing `that which he does not say in what he says. ' In `Chapter Fourteen' of Expressionism in Philosophy, subtitled, `What Can a Body Do? ' Deleuze argues that the singular essence of a mode, às a degree of power, ' (conatus), directly corresponds to the relations it participates in and expresses, parts of which are then subsumed by it (duration). 808The essence of modes, of bodies, can thus be defined by their affects. 809Thus, it appears possible to define Deleuze's philosophy by the set of affects particular to him, i.e., Spinoza as external cause of Deleuze's love, Spinoza as Deleuze's god, Deleuze as fan(atic). Relations are neither more nor less than a certain capacity, a certain (bio)power a body has to affect and to be affected (interference), therefore, essences are essentially relational. The structure and function of the body are made alike, In short, relations are inseparable from the capacity to be affected. So that

Spinoza

can consider

two fundamental

questions

as

equivalent: What is the structure (fabrica) of a body? And: What can

80' Deleuze,

EP, p. 11. To anticipate

Deleuze's

argument: Ànd Leibniz by monad, no less than center. ' other than an individual as an expressive

Spinoza by mode, understands nothing Deleuze, EP, p. 327. 808Deleuze, EP, p. 217. See: Deleuze, EP, p. 233. See also: Deleuze, SP, p. 27. sog '[B]eings will be defined by their capacity for being affected, by the affections of which they are capable, the excitations to which they react, those by which they are unaffected, and those which exceed their capacity and make them ill or cause them to die. In this way, one will obtain a classification of beings by their power. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 45. x. 13

a body do? A body's structure is the composition of its relation. What a body can do corresponds to the nature and limits of its capacity to be affected. 81° Deleuze, here, follows Spinoza's practice of differentiating the affect (affectus) from affections (affectio). $" Though, in his 1968 text at least, Deleuze uses the French word, sentiment, to designate it, which his translator

renders as

'feeling. '812`Such feelings [affects] are themselves affections, or rather a new kind of idea of an affection. '813Regardless of this terminological nightmare, what is of the utmost importance is that the composition of modes takes place, first and foremost, on an affective register. The affections (affectio) are the modes themselves. (... ) At a second level, the affections designate that which happens to the mode, the modifications of the mode. (... ) Therefore, from one state to another, from one image or idea to another, there are transitions, passages that are experienced, durations through which we pass to a greater or lesser perfection. (... ) These continual durations or variations of 814 "affects, " feelings (affectus). perfection are called or

810Deleuze, EP, p. 218. 811 But not elsewhere as Daniel W. Smith observes, `We might note here a shift that seems to take place in Deleuze's terminology. In Spinoza, an "affection" (affectio) indicates the state of a body insofar as it is affected by another body, while an "affect" (affectus) marks the passage from one state to another as an increase or decrease in the body's power as a function of its in Philosophy: affections. This terminology, which Deleuze analyzes in detail in Expressionism Spinoza, is retained throughout A Thousand Plateaus. In The Movement-Image and What is Philosophy?, however, Deleuze replaces these terms with perception and affection respectively, reserving the word affect for the pure qualities or powers that are extracted from affections and achieve an autonomous status. ' See: Deleuze, CC, p. 181 note 77. On this point, I have also greatly benefited from the following: Ansell Pearson, Keith [1999], Germinal Life: The difference and repetition of Deleuze, London, Routledge, pp. 225-6 note 3. 812Deleuze, EP, p. 220. See also the following translator's note: Deleuze, EP, p. 413 note b. 813Deleuze, EP, p. 220. 914Deleuze, SP, pp. 48-9. 214

Here Deleuze seems to be in agreement with Spinoza, affects are between ideas and affections, thoughts and feelings. Affects, according to Deleuze, specifically, ìnvolve the changes of an existing mode, ' (as Spinoza intimated with his maximization (increase) or minimization (decrease) in our power to act / think), not the actual `states' the mode finds itself in. 815One can really only talk of states of affection. Affects pass between states, `the affectus refers to the passage from one state to another, '816linking them and transforming them as they do. Affects interfere with the composition of modes. The affect, as Deleuze understands it, may well be related to either an image or an idea, yet, ìt is of another nature, being purely transitive, and not indicative or representative, since it is experienced in a lived duration that involves the difference between two states. '$" Joy is not an affect, understood as a sedentary state, but, rather, `the passage to a greater perfection, or the increase of the power of acting, is called an affect, or feeling, of joy. '818Thus Deleuze's love of Spinoza's thought, which is itself an affect of joy, inevitably increases Deleuze's own power of acting. In effect Deleuze's decision to love increases his potential - `true choice raises the affect to its pure power of potentiality. ' Affects, as degrees or `variations of power, '819change modes, modify modes. Deleuze further qualifies these modifications as, èxistential changes, ' or, èxpressive changes. 1820 Such changes, whether imperceptible or abrupt, in the relation that characterizes a body, may also be seen in its capacity of being

815Deleuze,

EP, p. 220. 816Deleuze, SP, p. 49. 817Deleuze, SP, p. 49. 818 Deleuze, SP, p. 50. 818)Deleuze, CC, p. 141. 820Deleuze, EP, p. 221. 715

affected, as though the capacity and the relation enjoy a margin, a limit, within which they take form and are deformed. 821 Natures change, or differ while remaining the same inasmuch as the change undergone by modes may be removed from the field of visibility (becomingimperceptible), or at least the latter does not condition the change822- perhaps nearing the disjunctive synthesis encountered above? Affects, as `ties,' are at the limit and on the margin. 823Recalling to mind both Freud's èmotional ties' and Agamben's

phrase, `being-within an outside, ' I may well speculate that

within this limit affects experience determination and indetermination in equal measure. Elsewhere,

Deleuze claims that, `[a]ffects are becomings, '824which is, in

contradistinction to Freud's perspective, `not to imitate or identify with something 825 `For the affect is not a personal feeling, nor is it a characteristic, ' or someone. it is, rather, `the incredible feeling of an unknown Nature. 3826 There is something excessive and inhuman in the affect, which escapes total determination. Àffects aren't feelings, they're becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them. '827`(... ) love or hate, they are no longer feelings but affects. '828This is important: love, according to Deleuze, is not a feeling but an affect. Becomings or affects, then, are instances of love or hate, somewhat betraying Spinoza's conception of affect. Deleuze takes things further, `the affect goes beyond

821Deleuze, EP, pp. 222-3. 822À greater or lesser perfection never implies, for Spinoza, a change of form. ' Deleuze, EP, p. 332. 823Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 250. 824Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 256. See also: Deleuze, CC, p. 139. And: Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 60. 825Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 272. See also: Deleuze and Parnet, D, pp. 2-3. 826Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 240. 827Deleuze, N, p. 137. 828Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 356.

216

affections (... ) [and] is not the passage from one lived state to another but man's nonhuman becoming. (... ) this is not the transformation of one into the other, [Andre Dhotel says], but something passing from one to the other. This something can be specified only as a sensation. '829Whereas affects under Spinoza's watchful eye were a, `passage from one state to another, ' Deleuze makes of them a `passing, ' thereby privileging the affects interstitial and oscillating characteristics. This interference on Deleuze's part extends the affect, which is `purely transitive, ' èxperienced in a lived duration, ' a sensation ultimately that now renders one 'unrecognizable. 1830`[T]his `between-two' of solitudes, '831 this,

`middle' or 'no-man's-land, "'

which

characterises

the

Deleuzian affect is a, `becoming-imperceptible. '833Between self and other there is, according to Deleuze's perspective, àlways an affective constellation, '834 which is forever revolving, always on the move - shifting and sliding about. For Deleuze the affect of love is such a sensation, which renders, ìmperceptible, not ourselves,

but what

makes

us act, feel,

and think. 835 `(... ) [I]t's

depersonalization through love rather than subjection. '836In Louis Malle's, 1958, film, Les Amants (The Lovers), the main protagonist Jeanne's Paris society friend observes of her, "love agrees with you, you're unrecognisable. " When in the grip of a decision, a decision to love, one is not oneself.

829Deleuze

and Guattari, WP, p. 173. 83" Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 3. 831Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 9. Deleuze takes 'between-two' from Heidegger. See: Deleuze, p. 112. 832 Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 293. À becoming is always in the middle. (... ) A becoming neither one nor two, nor the relation of the two; it is the in-between, the border. ' 833Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 252. 834Deleuze, CC, p. 64. 835Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 3. 836Deleuze, N, p. 7. 217

F, is

This imperceptible movement or change, Deleuze warns, ought not to be 837 becoming Becomings or affects are / thing. confused with another person 838 imitation identification to, neither a resemblance an of, nor an with, states, but ° '839 ' 'sympathy, `symbiosis, ùnnatural ' are either a, or a, or an, participation. Either

Why ought this changing nature be deemed unnatural? It is all a or. or... ...

question of choice and selection, `there is a sinister choice since there is a "favorite" (... ) with which a kind of contract of alliance, a hideous pact, is 1 would argue that both the fan's comportment and participation may made. 7841 be understood as ùnnatural, ' and that the fan's `favourite' prompts just such a hideous alliance. A contract is made, ìnspiring illicit unions or abominable loves. 1842 The favoured beloved, the object of choice and selection also goes by the name, 'the exceptional individual, ' with whom one composes, à kind of alliance of love, then hate. )843For Deleuze, then, the affect of love marks the beginning of a becoming which subsequently transforms

into hatred. The

aforementioned little difference is here made manifest. Deleuze wishes to retain the dual power of both love and hate - the affect's potentiality, according to this reading of Deleuze's philosophy. Melville's

Moby-Dick

is Captain Ahab's

exceptional individual, Àhab chooses Moby-Dick, in a choosing that exceeds him and comes from elsewhere (... ) [an] anomalous choice. 9844 Ahab's choice is, `monstrous, ' monomaniacal

and demonic, `[i[t is a case of metaphysical

837 'For if becoming animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clear that the human being does not "really" become an animal any more than the animal "really" becomes something else. Becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. ' Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 238. 838See: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 237. S39Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 69. 840Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 258. See also: Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 75. 841Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 233. 842Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 246. 843Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 243. See also: Deleuze, CC, p. 57. x44 Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 244. 7 1R

perversion that consists in choosing one's prey, preferring a chosen victim with a kind of love. '5

Perhaps, Deleuze's love of Spinoza's thought may be

understood in such a way, as à kind of love, ' which both creates (love) and destroys (hate), both inspires (affirms) and denounces (negation) - abominable love as a critical weapon? The monstrous

or anomalous

is not really

individuated but is a borderline, a threshold, for, à fascinated self (Mol): ' Ahab. 846Beyond this borderline, by way of, `[a] fascination for the outside, 0347 " natures change. Spinoza's examples of such anomalous and imperceptible changes (Deleuze's becomings / affects), are illuminating: an anonymous Spanish poet suffering "49 between immaturity the maturity. apparent split states of and amnesia and `When this [change] happens, it can be difficult to ascertain whether a human being is still the same being we have encountered before. '850The change is imperceptible. The encounter, then, has something to say of recognising and regulating change. In `Chapter Fifteen' of Expressionism in Philosophy

Deleuze turns to a

discussion of love. Love, here, can be said to condition what Deleuze refers to as the, `first sort' of èncounter. '851This sort of encounter, a joyous encounter, is one of composition and combination, whereby relations between bodies are agreeable, useful and good. This encounter does, however, remain passive as it can be, èxplained by the external body, ' its cause remains outside its own

845Deleuze, CC, p. 79. 840 Deleuze

and Guattari, TP, p. 245. See also: Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 42. 847Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 240. 848See: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 245. 849See: Spinoza, E, IVP39SCHOL. 850Düttmann, MLD, pp. 1-2. 85` Deleuze, EP, p. 239. 219

852 Yet, for all that, it does increase a modes power of action, its nature. potentiality, whereby a mode may àpproach' modification, which for Deleuze is the point to be underlined. 853 The second sort of encounter is both decompositional and decombinatorial. This kind of encounter, a sad encounter, is disagreeable, harmful and bad. 854 Deleuze likens it to, àn intoxication, a poisoning, an indigestion. 855 This encounter does not even possess the potentiality of the first sort of encounter, and can most readily be aligned with the affect of hate. The power of this 856 is diminished. second sort of encounter Deleuze recognises that he oversimplifies things, as I have shown Spinoza 857 however it love hate defective is to that states at once. and possible Deleuze's two encounters interrupt one another frequently and it may well be all a mode is capable of to arrange a good and joyous encounter. There is certainly no guarantee as such an encounter, `remains altogether hypothetical. (... ) Thus man should in principle agree perfectly with man. But in reality men agree very little in their natures, one with another; this because they are determined to such a degree by their passions, by objects which affect them in various ways,

852Deleuze, EP, p. 239. 853 `We do not cease to be passive, to be cut off from our power of action, but we tend to become less cut off, we come nearer to this power. ' Deleuze, EP, p. 240. `This power of acting increased proportionally; we "approach" the point of conversion, the point of is nonetheless transmutation that will establish our dominion, that will make us worthy of action, of active joys. ' Deleuze, SP, p. 28. 854Deleuze, EP, p. 241. 81SDeleuze, SP, p. 31. 856Deleuze, EP, p. 243. 857 'We have proceeded thus far as though two chains of affections, joyful and sad, correspond to the two sorts of encounter, good and bad. But this is still an abstract view. ' Deleuze, EP, p. 243.

770

that they do not naturally meet in relations that can in principle be combined. (... ) There is, then, very little chance of our naturally having good encounters. '858 But, for Deleuze, it is not at all a question of living, àt the mercy of encounters, ' in the

state of nature,

but of,

`striving to

organize

(.. )

encounters. i859This does not mean, for instance, that, àll bad encounters, ' and, 860 On the contrary, (a be death that significant change) can avoided. ultimately, (... ) we can strive to unite with what agrees with our nature, to combine our relation with those that are compatible with it, to associate our acts and thoughts with the images of things that agree with us. From such an effort we have a right, by definition, to expect a maximum of joyful affections. Our capacity to be affected will be exercised in such conditions that our power of action will increase. And if it be asked what is most useful to us, this will be seen to be man. For man in principle agrees in nature with man; man is absolutely or truly useful to man. Everyone, then, in seeking what is truly useful to him, also seeks what is useful to man. The effort to organize

encounters

is thus first of all the effort to form an

861 in be that can combined. association of men relations Organising joyous or agreeable encounters is a gesture toward the state of reason from the state of nature, or rather organising joyous or agreeable encounters is the, `striving of reason, ' fallible for certain but not to be given up lightly. 862 For this striving of reason, `consists in denouncing all myths, all

858Deleuze, EP, pp. 244-5. 859Deleuze, EP, pp. 260-1. 860Deleuze, EP, p. 261. 861Deleuze, EP, p. 261. 962Deleuze, EP, p. 265.

221

mystifications, all "superstitions, " whatever their origin, ' which is, `the practical task of philosophy. '863Organising inspiring natural not supernatural encounters, Deleuze states, is the task of reason, which involves an element of 'selection, ' a choice or decision between alternatives (joyous / sad) - yet precisely how this 864 The problem being, as system of selection operates remains abstract. discussed above, that selection is collapsed back into composition and seems always already to have taken place. The difficulty I have with this perspective lies in there being neither a selection of nor a decision for organising sad encounters because one is always already 865 love, It joy, toward the perfection maximising one's etc. on striving side of appears as though choice is prescribed. According to Spinoza it is not a question of either selecting or deciding to avoid sad encounters, rather one must liberate oneself from the first kind of knowledge - that this act is not a necessity but, merely, a regulative ideal is important. Deleuze wishes to import an element of volition into Spinoza's system, he wants there to be a selection, a decision for organising joyous encounters - which is seemingly at odds with Spinoza's innocent (and more radical) belief in the power of love. It appears as though Deleuze prefers existence to essence. In Spinoza one cannot really talk 863Deleuze,

EP, p" 270. 'I believe that this tradition always involves a naturalist philosophy. (... ) Like Lucretius [Spinoza] sets the image of a positive Nature against the uncertainty of gods: what is opposed to Nature is not Culture, nor the state of reason, nor even the civil state, but only the superstition that threatens all human endeavour. (... ) The devaluation of sad passions, and the denunciation of those who cultivate and depend on them, form the practical object of philosophy. ' 864See: Deleuze, EP, pp. 310,330. See: Deleuze, SP, pp. 55,125. See: Deleuze, CC, pp. 1445. Caygill limpidly critiques this aspect of Deleuze's 'biophilosophy, ' or, 'ethology, ' and by extension his, 'bio-ethics' and politics, arguing that in shying away from Darwin's 'inhuman' and 'radically immanent' 'law' of natural selection in favour of a topology of distribution based on the theory (pre-Darwinian) of "mode ambianf as the cause of change of an organism, ' proposed by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire, Deleuze effectively, 'sentimentalizes selection. ' For Caygill, as for Darwin, distribution does not condition selection but vice-versa. In reducing the philosophical to the biological Deleuze brutalizes both. See: Caygill, TS, pp. 149-162. 865 I have greatly benefited from Düttmann's lucid discussion of the problem (or lack) of decision in Spinoza. See: Düttmann, MLD, p. 7.

222

of decision at all - Spinoza is a thinker without decision and by extension a thinker without indecision. All of which amounts to saying that freedom, for Spinoza, does not lie in decision-making (as it does for Deleuze), but, rather, that freedom lies in understanding necessity: that things could not be otherwise. Again the question is whether Deleuze has made a decision to love or whether love has decided him. Perhaps, Deleuze is gripped by the decision, a decision to love, precisely because he has always already decided? `Common notions are one of the fundamental discoveries of the Ethics, ' according to Deleuze, and are precisely an adequate understanding of this agreement or composition between modes as introduced by the first sort of encounter. 86' Their organised artistry, their composition is the result of this shadowy system of `biological' selection and distribution (1aws'). 868 The common notions are an Art, the art of the Ethics itself: organizing good

encounters,

composing

actual relations,

forming

powers,

experimenting. (... ) A common notion is the idea of something in common between two or more bodies that agree with each other, i.e., that compound their respective relations according to laws, and affect one another in keeping with this intrinsic agreement or composition. Thus a common notion expresses our capacity for being affected and is explained by our power of comprehending. 86' Deleuze further informs his reader that, `Common notions are general rather than abstract ideas. And as such they are necessarily "adequate. " (... ) common 866Deleuze, 867Deleuze,

EP, p. 292. EP, p. 275.

868 'Spinoza's ideas. ' common notions are biological, rather than physical or mathematical, Deleuze, EP, p. 278. See also, Deleuze, SP, p. 54, p. 57, p. 115. Hampshire disagrees, 'Mathematics in general, and geometry in particular, is the science which Spinoza had chiefly in mind as entirely founded on common notions. ' Hampshire, S, p. 80. 869Deleuze, SP, p. 119, p. 44-5. 723

1

notions are ideas that are formally explained by our power of thinking and that, Abstract ideas materially, express the idea of God as their efficient cause. 9870 W1 fictitious, instead Common `with imagining are content, of comprehending. notions are, on Deleuze's reading, ìn us as they are in God. '872Atthis juncture, my earlier exaggerated claim for Spinoza as Deleuze's god, a comportment particular (but not exclusive) to fan(atic)s, loses much of its ostentatiousness. In emphasising the common notions, then, Deleuze himself anthropomorphises Spinoza's system - preferring practical bodies and images to mystical gods and essences. `[Cjommon notions, ' Deleuze argues, much like the affect, òscillate between two thresholds. '873God possesses common notions and modes have them, too, if they can form them out of their agreeable encounters and joyful affections874 for, idea is à 7875 Èvery the of something common positive. notion always common notion leads us to the idea of God. (... ) The idea of God is thus the limiting point of the second kind of knowledge. '876It can be said, then, that common notions are incredibly important to Spinoza's philosophy, as Deleuze shows they are truly the, ònly possible way of reaching and forming an adequate idea. 2877

870Deleuze, 871Deleuze, 872Deleuze, 873Deleuze,

EP, pp. 278-9. SP, p. 45. EP, p. 279. SP, p. 114.

874 Àmong

the ideas we have, the only ones capable of expressing God's essence, or of involving knowledge of this essence, are thus ideas that are in us as they are in God: in short, common notions. ' Deleuze, EP, p. 279. See also: Deleuze, EP, pp. 281-2. 875Deleuze, EP, p. 285. 876Deleuze, EP, p. 299. 877Deleuze, EP, pp. 279-80. 2?.4

To arrive at adequate ideas and active affects, to fully possess them, for Deleuze, requires, à genuine "leap, "' from the domain of, `joyful passions. '$'$ Common notions take on the guise of mediator between the passions, òf love, '879et al., and the active affect. Common notions are critical as without them, without organising encounters, passive affects are all that is possible. Modes require agreeable encounters in order to form an idea, or common notion. `From this flows an idea of the affection, a feeling [affect], which is no longer passive, but active. '880Only if an affect is attached to a common notion as its cause can it begin, `becoming active, ' and in the process cease being a passion (passive affect). 881 From all this I may conclude that Spinoza is Deleuze's, ànomalous choice, ' his favourite, his fascination, his love from elsewhere, and that Deleuze's various èncounters' with Spinoza's philosophy are, themselves, attempted formations of common notions. Deleuze's encounter with Spinoza is of the `first sort, ' the cause of his love remains external, elsewhere, he attests to this love, wishing to preserve it and its concomitant power of potentiality. Deleuze gets round the problems of passivity and externality by privileging the common notions. For if the common notions are ìn us as they are in God, ' then they can be said to lose much of their externality and temporal determination (once they have revealed themselves).

It is almost as if Deleuze's affective reading performs its own

ascension through Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge. Deleuze is firstly governed or `led only by an affect, ' his affect of joy, his ordinary love for the thought of Spinoza. This `first sort' of encounter is, then, liminally organised 87XDeleuze, EP, p. 283. 879Deleuze, EP, p. 283. xso Deleuze, EP, pp. 284. 881See: Deleuze, EP, p. 284, p. 288. 275

creating common notions, adequate ideas and active affects, which can be read as either a passage to a greater perfection or a passing of sensation (naturalised) divinity or blessedness by proximity, by association? Deleuze's love of Spinoza's thought would - in the language of the former - be a becoming-Spinozist,

as if he himself underwent, `the incredible feeling of an

unknown Nature, ' as if the overwhelming quality of the Spinoza `sensation' that Deleuze attempts to relate to imperceptibly modified Deleuze himself - toward a mature literature. It must now be asked: What does Deleuze have to say of the, ìntellectual love (of God), ' witnessed in Spinoza's third kind of knowledge? To start, Deleuze claims that the different kinds of knowledge are not the reserve of knowledge only as they, àre also different ways of living, different modes of existing'8S2 `because knowing embraces the types of consciousness

and the types of

affects that correspond to it, so that the whole capacity for being affected is filled. '883This is to position Spinoza in a lineage running from Pascal to Kierkegaard, as I have shown. If the second kind of knowledge, through common notions and adequate ideas, brings one to an idea of God, puts the idea of God in one's reach, then, the third kind of knowledge, which, òperates in the "undecidable, "' surpassing, as Deleuze speculates, àll demonstration, ' 884requires an even greater leap, `like lightning across gaps7885- for, in this knowledge one is not dealing with ideas only (God is not a common notion) but with essences. 886Èverything

882Deleuze, EP, p. 289. 883Deleuze, SP, p. 82. 884Deleuze, CC, p. 149. 885Deleuze, N, p. 165.

886See: Deleuze, EP, p. 309. 2.261

Deleuze's language is here reminiscent changes( ... ) we go beyond Reason. 3887 of Genet's, whose own attempt at describing the movement and modification of love reads thus, `(... ) my body passes through thine, and thine, from afar, through mine. We create the world. Everything changes ...

and we know it

does !7888In a certain way the mind of a mode in the third kind of knowledge takes on a divine quality ('we think as God thinks'), 889it intuitively understands things and essences under the aspect of eternity, `from the point of view of God, '89° which only further fuels its affective

intellectual

curiosity and/or

fascination. Myself, things and God are the three ideas of the third kind. (... ) From the joy that flows from an adequate idea of ourselves is born a desire, a desire to know ever more things in their essence or sub 891 And is born, /ove. there specie aeternitatis. above all, a Deleuze,

then,

far

from

rejecting

Spinoza's

(Ahab-like),

`metaphysical

perversion, ' his, ìntellectual love (of God), ' in fact embraces it, immanently, as, This is certainly an occasion of `preferring a `the creative telos of thought. 3892 chosen victim with a kind of love. ' Two quotes are instructive on this point, ìn the last book of the Ethics he produced the movement of the infinite and gave infinite speeds to thought in the third kind of knowledge. There he attains incredible speeds, with such lightning compressions that one can only speak of

887Deleuze, SP, pp. 57-8. 888Genet, OLF, p. 33. 889Deleuze, EP, p. 308. 890Donagan, 891Deleuze, 892 Hallward,

S, p. 204. EP, pp. 304-5.

OW, p. 2. 'Deleuze's work tends to proceed broadly in line with a theophanic conception of things, whereby every individual process or thing is conceived as a manifestation or expression of God or a conceptual equivalent of God (pure creative potential, force, energy, life... ). ' Hallward, OW, p. 4. "The telos of Deleuze's philosophy will be a version of what Spinoza called a perfectly sufficient or ìntuitive knowledge' of singular things. ' Hallward, OW, p. 12.

227

music, of tornadoes, of wind and strings. '893Spinoza's immanence, apparently, produces the `movement of the infinite, ' which I will show Deleuze takes from Kierkegaard and gives to Spinoza. `Whatever the theoretical compromises, something in the proliferations of immanence tends to overtake the vertical world, to reverse it, as if the hierarchy bred a particular anarchy, and the love of God, an internal atheism proper to it. Heresy is flirted with every time. '894 Atheism, for Deleuze, is the truth of Spinoza's intellectual love inasmuch as it is Nature not God that is at issue (rationality presupposes the love of God, or Nature and vice-versa), coupled to the desire - on Deleuze's part - to anthropomorphise and thus betray Spinoza's system (expressionism, common notions, immanence). This breath of God895- or, in less theologically determined language, which Deleuze himself favours: a 'wind'896- is expressed and/or explicated through the essence of modes in the third kind of knowledge. 89'The intellectual love of God, for Deleuze, is in a certain sense musical: `To express is always to sing the Glory of God. '898This divine breath, creative wind, and intellectual love makes it possible to form adequate ideas and active affects of essence, effecting increased self-knowledge, which was strictly impossible in the second kind of knowledge. Thinking with God is not the only capacity open to the third kind of

893Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 48. 894Deleuze, TR, p. 262. 895 The plane of immanence, ìs the breath that suffuses the separate parts. ' Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 36. 896See: Deleuze, SP, p. 1, p. 130. See: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 242, p. 261. See: Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 75 (p. 69 also). See: Deleuze, PS, pp. 101-2. See: Deleuze, C2, p. 178. See: Deleuze, N, p. 94, p. 115. See: Deleuze, CC, p. 71. 897See: Deleuze, EP, p. 305. 898 Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 43. `Music (... ) is at once the intellectual love of an order and measure beyond the senses, and an affective pleasure that derives from bodily vibrations. ' Deleuze, Gilles [1988], The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Tr. Tom Conley, London, The Athlone Press, 1993, p. 127. 27. R

knowledge, `we experience the very feelings [affects] of God, ' between the two there is no difference. 89' `Not only must these affects or feelings be joys or loves, they must be quite special joys and loves since they are no longer defined by an increase of our perfection or power of acting but by the full, formal possession of that power or perfection. (... ) they no longer imply transitions and passages. i900To know and love, feel and express, then, as God does, would be the aim of the third kind of knowledge - what Deleuze calls, `beatitude. '901 Deleuze, therefore, is faithful to Spinoza's conception of love. On the one hand there exist ordinary loves and on the other hand there exists above all an extraordinary, special love. The love we feel for God is the love God feels for himself insofar as he is explicated through our own essence, and so the love he feels for our essence itself. Beatitude designates the possession not only of an active joy as it is in God, but of an active love as it is in God "' also. Expression or explication, then, is of the utmost importance as this is the condition of possibility for the third kind of knowledge, which is not what one readily refers to as knowledge. An analogy with Dantean hierarchy is instructive, Ìn Dante's Divine Comedy St Bernard is to be found at a higher terrace in Paradise than St Thomas Aquinas; for, to Dante, St Bernard expresses the love of God, while St Thomas expresses the knowledge of God. '903`We know things

899 Deleuze, EP, p. 308. 900Deleuze, SP, p. 51. This, perhaps, answers Daniel W. Smith's observation referenced above. In the third kind of knowledge, affects do, in a certain way, become autonomous. 901 `Beatitude' Latin, `beatitudo, ' which Curley translates to Spinoza's corresponds as, 'blessedness. ' See: Deleuze, EP, pp. 411-2 translators note a. 902Deleuze, EP, p. 309. 903Rose, P, p. 15.

7.29

better through love than through knowledge. 7904Dante's St Bernard, perhaps, attained

something

like Spinoza's third kind of knowledge,

which would

absolutely require a semblance of saintliness! Deleuze's concept of expression makes the infamous single substance (God, or Nature), which incidentally he fully affirms, turn around the modes. 905Herein lies the heresy Deleuze locates in Spinoza's intellectual love. Modes inhabiting this realm of knowledge, or this way of life are conduits and expressions of God (St Bernard). "' Salvation, itself, depends on expression. 907But, expressionism in philosophy

is problematic: à matter of life and death ;7908as Deleuze

conjectures it is on the occasion of our corporeal death and upon entrance into the third kind of knowledge that, `we become completely

expressive. '909

Deleuze's variant on Spinoza's intellectual love of God is, à love of life which can say yes to death. '910From the passages (in a life) of love Deleuze moves toward the passing (away) of Love. An equally uncompromising and fanatical life that affirms love, that makes a decision to love, a mode of existence which is more than capable of risking everything, staking and waging all of the possible.

904Eco, Umberto

[1980],

The Name of the Rose, Tr. William Weaver,

280. 905 'Deleuze

London, Vintage, 2004, p.

idea of God. Nevertheless, certainly doesn't acknowledge any transcendent in a number of important ways his work is consistent with the general logic of cosmic pantheism, i.e. the notion that the universe and all it contains is a facet of a singular and absolute creative power. (... ) there is only one reality, one substance (or God), and everything that is is or rather acts as a modifying of this one substance. ' Hallward, OW, pp. 4,10. 906 'This final form of expression is the identity of speculative and practical affirmation, the identity of Being and Joy, of Substance and Joy, of God and Joy. ' Deleuze, EP, p. 310. 907Deleuze, EP, p. 320. 909 See: Düttmann, MLD. Düttmann's title, I presume, comes jointly from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1946 film of the same name and from a sentence of Derrida's both of which are referred to in his paper. This is, then, a happy coincidence as Deleuze, himself, uses this phrase twice. Once while discussing ways of existing, processes of subjectivation, new possibilities of life in relation to the late work of Foucault. And again in conversation with Parnet on the 'line' and the work of Foucault. 'Bending the line so we manage to live upon it, with it: a matter of life and death. ' See: Deleuze, N, pp. 99,111. 909Deleuze, EP, p. 315. 910Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 65.

2M)

The problem of Spinozism par excellence is: `What is the use of existing if we in any case rejoin our essence after death? '91 Why live at all if expression after death is attainable, why not accelerate death? To answer this problem Deleuze makes of existence, àn experimentation, i912à physical or chemical test, ' not, à moral one, '913whereby eternal punishments or rewards are imposed by a 914 Judge. It is toward this ordeal of existence that I will now turn divine presiding in order to further define the excessive avatar required by Spinoza's third kind of knowledge. In this section I have shown how Deleuze extends Spinoza's affect, it's being a passing not a passage - movement matters. I have shown how Deleuze wishes to retain the double potential of both love and hate in ordinary love and that he does not refute the possibility of there existing an extraordinary intellectual

love.

91 Deleuze, EP, p. 317. 912Deleuze, SP, p. 40. 913 Deleuze, EP, p. 317. It is worth noting, here, that Adorno severely criticises such tests. In, 'Gold assay, ' Adorno argues against immediate and unreflective use of such words as, 'authentic, ' 'genuine, ' and, original, ' which can lead, 'to the denunciation of anything that is not of sufficiently sterling worth, sound to the core, that is, the Jews. ' See: Adorno, MM, pp. 152-5. It should also be noted that Plato uses the metaphor of testing gold for his concept of division distinguishing authenticity from inauthenticity. See: Deleuze, LS, p. 254. 914 'Whence the importance of this "test" that is existence: while existing we must select joyful passions, for they alone introduce us to common notions and to the active joys that flow from them; and we must make use of common notions as the principle that introduces us while still existing to ideas and joys of the third kind. Then, after death, our essence will have all the affections of which it is capable; and these will all be of the third kind. Such is the difficult path of salvation. ' Deleuze, EP, pp. 319-20. I have to admit that I remain concerned over Deleuze's ethology. If it is true that, 'the ultimate difference between the good man and the bad man [is that] the good or strong individual is the one who exists so fully or so intensely that he has gained eternity in his lifetime, so that death, always extensive, always external, is of little significance to him' (Deleuze, SP, p. 41. ), then, Caygill is not wrong to say that, '[i]n an earlier version of biophilosophy these conceptions were those of race and fitness. ' Caygill, TS, p. 161.

?.Ii

J

Knights of Faith

Following the daybreak of parts I through IV of Spinoza's Ethics comes the twilight of part V. One may well wish to ask `the question of all questions, '915with Deleuze (and Guattari): What happened in this movement from life to death, at midnight and by the light of the moon when the owl takes flight, where nothing really happened but everything changed? 916What imperceptible agency is at work? `How have we arrived at this point? '91 Encounters,

becomings

or

affects

are

the

names

Deleuze

(AND... Parnet... AND... Guattari) bestow upon this impersonal transformation (depersonalization), this modification of modes, this passage between states, this passing, and this unnatural change of nature. 918 The figure of these movements of imperceptibility and indiscernibility919 - `the one who resists his death

sentence, ' 920 or, `the man of becoming, '921 par

excellence

is -

Kierkegaard's 'clandestine, "" `knight of faith, '923whose test so Deleuze avers is, To become like everybody else; but this, precisely, is a becoming only for one who knows how to be nobody, to no longer be anybody. To paint oneself gray on gray. (... ) To go unnoticed is by no means 915Deleuze,

C2, p. 50. 916See: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 197. See also: Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 127. 917Deleuze, C2, p. 50. 918Àn encounter is perhaps the same thing as a becoming, or nuptials. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 6. 919 `.(. imperceptibility, indiscernibility, impersonality the three virtues. ' Deleuze and and .) Guattari, TP, p. 280. 920 Düttmann, DP, p. 173. I am in total agreement with Düttmann's view that becomingimperceptible in ought to be understood in similar terms to the problem of expressionism philosophy. Düttmann, DP, p. 176 note 10. 921Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 279. 922Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 280. 923 See: Kierkegaard, FT. Incidentally, `Fear and Trembling seems to us to be Kierkegaard's greatest book because of the way it formulates the problem of movement and speed, not only in its content, but also in its style and composition. ' Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 543 note 66.

232

easy. To be a stranger, even to one's doorman or neighbors. (... ) This

requires

much asceticism,

much sobriety,

much creative

involution: an English elegance, an English fabric, blend in with the walls. 924 A chameleon-like comportment and eccentric - almost nihilistic - test, which is particular to the amor fati that conditions the mode of existence of both the lover and of the faithful. The test the lover faces is, `[t]o become imperceptible oneself, to have dismantled love in order to become capable of loving. 3925 Depersonalization

through love. Between the lover and the faithful there is much

that is in common. Both, ìnfinitely renounce the love [and faith] that is the substance of [their lives, they are] reconciled in pain. But then the marvel happens;

[they] make one more movement

even more wonderful

than all the

others, for [they] say: Nevertheless I have faith that I will get [love] - that is by virtue of the absurd, by virtue of the fact that for God all things are possible. '926 Becoming-indiscernible

to oneself, to have undone faith in order to become

capable of faith is the test of the faithful. Depersonalization

through faith. A

becoming-everyone for no one. Blend in with the third kind of knowledge, `look the impossibility in the eye. '927 The knight of faith is, `the sublime in the pedestrian, '928both visible and invisible, who `knows when to pass unnoticed and when to act, ' who knows when to remain silent and when to speak: a great paradox and also a great

924Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 197, p. 279. 925 Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 197. `How to shatter even our love in order to become finally capable of loving? How to become imperceptible? ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 46. 926Kierkegaard, FT, p. 46. 927Kierkegaard, FT, p. 47. 928Kierkegaard, FT, p. 41.

?X3

detective. 92' Abraham is Kierkegaard's or, rather, Johannes de Silentio's knight of faith. 930The paradox that is Abraham, which so fires Kierkegaard's curiosity and/or fascination, enthusiasm and admiration, 931consists of a man chosen, tempted and tested by God to perform an unspeakable and absurd act whereby thought stops and faith begins - to sacrifice his only and beloved son Isaac. 932 Abraham is, of course, worthy of the event, the ordeal of sacrifice, which God puts him through. This being worthy of the event - either the `divine madness'933 of the lover or the movement of faith - is what so fascinates Kierkegaard who, repeatedly, confesses to being incapable of making this movement (he is after 935), both dialectician all a poet934and a nonetheless he does affirm the leap and 936 ÒNLY MOVEMENTS CONCERN' the knight of faith, like therein. possibility

929See: Rose, P, p. 32. `Miss Marple is what Kierkegaard calls a knight of faith, as distinct from what we mostly are most of the time - knights of resignation. The knight of resignation is recognisable: she cherishes her misfortunes, remaining loyal and dedicated to the mists of by ghosts: family, friends, loves and lovers. The memories. She clearly lives companioned knight of faith, by contrast, moves behind this all-too-human stoicism: she lets her lost ones go, whether injured or injurious, and turns her attention to the astonishing nature of what is normally expected until she becomes both invisible, hidden, and quite ordinarily visible. As the sublime in the pedestrian, the knight of faith simply appears as whatever she is: she returns to her vocation beyond the endless anxiety of the test of salvation. ' Rose, P, p. 18. 930Fear and Trembling is pseudonymously authored. 931 `This is why I (... ) cannot understand Abraham, even though in a certain demented sense I admire him more than all others. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 57. See also, Kierkegaard, FT, p. 112.

932See: Genesis, Chapter 22. See also: Kierkegaard, FT, p. 53. 933 Kierkegaard,

FT, p. 23. "False is the tale' that when a lover is at hand favor ought rather to be accorded to one who does not love, on the ground that the former is mad, and the latter sound of mind. That would be right if it were an invariable truth that madness is an evil, but in reality, the greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed of madness that is heavensent. ' Plato, CD, Phaedrus, 244,265 (p. 491, p. 511). 934 `(... ) there is an adventure of faith, according to which one is always the clown of one's own faith, the comedian of one's ideal. (... ) Indeed, Kierkegaard said that he was a poet of the faith rather than a knight - in short, a `humorist'. ' Deleuze, DR, p. 95. 935 In contrast to what Deleuze claims on behalf of Kierkegaard, it must also be noted that the latter self-describes Ì am not a poet, and I go at things only dialectically. ' accordingly, Kierkegaard, FT, p. 90. And to complicate matters, 'The present author is by no means a philosopher. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 7. 936 Ì am constantly aware of the prodigious paradox that is the content of Abraham's life. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 33. "'By no means do I have faith. By nature I am a shrewd fellow, and shrewd people always have great difficulty in making the movement of faith. "' Kierkegaard, FT p. 32. Ì cannot make the movement of faith, I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd; it is for me an impossibility, but I do not praise myself for that. I am convinced that God is love; for me this thought has a primal lyrical validity. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 34. Ì can make 214

Deleuze's affects / becomings / encounters it is all a question of movement of passing - not a question of really becoming another / thing. 937 Abraham's movement, his faith, is neither for another world nor another life, he does not `botch' his movement. 938As Kierkegaard explains, Àbraham had faith, and had faith for this life. '939Abraham believed in this world uncompromisingly. Indeed, Abraham `got no further than faith. 940Faith was test enough for this particular knight. Abraham had no doubt or he, `scarcely doubts; '941he had no freedom to decide, for if he did things would be otherwise. 942Abraham's achievement was in equal measure that he, `learned to love, 's43and that, `he remained true to his love. i944`Good destruction requires love. '945Love, as I have shown, is a weapon that may be wielded in perverse and absurd (demonic and divine) ways (i.e., suspension of the ethical). Deleuze's Abraham would break the silence to say, Ì have become capable of loving, not with an abstract, universal love, but a love I shall choose, and that shall choose me, blindly, my double, just as selfless as I. One has been saved by and for love, by abandoning love and self. i946It is as if, with Abraham, the spiritual choice -I

choose to choose - becomes the schizo-

the mighty trampoline leap whereby I cross over into infinity. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 36.1 pay attention only to the movements. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 38. 937 Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 127. The knight of faith, 'feels no inclination to become another person. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 43. `The question `What are you becoming? ' is particularly stupid. For as someone becomes, what he is changes as much as he does himself. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 2. See: Deleuze, OR, p. 9. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 281. 938Kierkegaard, FT, p. 46. 93' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 20. See also: Kierkegaard, FT, p. 36. 940Kierkegaard, FT, p. 23. 941Kierkegaard, FT, p. 100. 942 Kierkegaard, echoing Deleuze's concerns, imagines an event which would have exactly the but which would be entirely different, changed. 'If Abraham had doubted same consequences as he stood there on Mount Moriah, if irresolute he had looked around, if he had happened to spot the ram before drawing the knife, if God had allowed him to sacrifice it instead of Isaac then he would have gone home, everything would have been the same, he would have had Sarah, he would have kept Isaac, and yet how changed! ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 22. 943Kierkegaard, FT, p. 121. 944Kierkegaard, FT, p. 120. 945Deleuze, D/, p. 139. 946Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 199.

?,IS

spiritual love choice -I love to love - paradoxically confirming Genet's view that all decisions are made blindly while at the same time supporting Deleuze's power to decide. This mode of existence or way of life is precisely what Deleuze, elsewhere, refers to - with a knowing nod to Spinoza's ethics - as the, `Stoical way, which consists in being worthy of what happens, extracting something gay and loving in what happens. 947`There is a dignity of the event that has always been inseparable from philosophy as amor fati: being equal to the event. '948Being worthy949of events, affects and movements, becomings and encounters, which one always already finds oneself within - in the middle, among, gripped by, as it were - is both the paradoxical comportment and test of a knight of faith. They have made a decision to love and love has decided them. Being gripped by a decision, knights of faith abandon themselves in order to salvage the power of decision-making. Affirming either an intellectual love or a life of love love to -I love - operates between two poles: (1) a decision to love; (2) love decides. This

947 Deleuze

and Parnet, D, p. 66. Deleuze continues, 'For my pathetic wish to be loved I will substitute a power to love: not an absurd will to love anyone or anything, not identifying myself with the universe, but extracting the pure event which unites me with those whom I love, who await me no more than I await them, since the event alone awaits us, Eventum tantum. Making an event - however small - is the most delicate thing in the world: the opposite of making a drama or making a story. Loving those who are like this: when they enter a room they are not but an atmospheric persons, characters or subjects, variation, a change of hue, an imperceptible molecule, a discrete population, a fog or a cloud of droplets. Everything has really changed. Great events, too, are made in this way: battle, revolution, life and death True ... Entities are events, not concepts. It is not easy to think in terms of the event. All the harder since thought itself then becomes an event. Scarcely anyone other than the Stoics and the English have thought in this way. ENTITY = EVENT, it is terror, but also great joy. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 66. See also: Deleuze, LS, p. 151, p. 176. 948Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 159. 949'Either ethics makes no sense at all, or this is what it means and has nothing else to say: not to be unworthy of what happens to us. ' Deleuze, LS, p. 149. 'In line with the Stoic ethic of the Logic of Sense, Caesar's only real task is to become worthy of the events he has been created to embody. Amor fati. What Caesar actually does adds nothing to what he virtually is. When Caesar actually crosses the Rubicon this involves no deliberation or choice since it is simply part of the entire, immediate expression of Caesarness (... ) and a world in which Caesar did not cross the Rubicon would thus have to be an entirely different world. Hallward, OW, p. 54.

716

is the absurdity and the paradox of the schizo-spiritual formula: I love to love. `Strange words, ' Green correctly observes, `speak of lovers in love with love. '950 The test is, `not to find rest in the pain of resignation but to find joy by virtue of the absurd - this is wonderful. '95' Knights of faith, then, are not burdened by ressentiment, bad conscience and any kind of ascetic ideal - three vices that Nietzsche holds in such contempt. The knight's force is to be sought precisely in the creative,

`critical and destructive

powers'

of affirmation

and joy, of

admiration and love, which Deleuze values in the second epigraph heading this chapter.

Kierkegaard

opts for the not unrelated,

èndearing earnestness

belonging to play. '952 Saturated with necessity, (... ) the knight no longer has segments of resignation, but neither does he have the suppleness of a poet or a dancer, he does not make himself obvious, he resembles rather a bourgeois, a taxcollector,

a tradesman,

he dances with so much precision that they

say that he is only walking or even staying still, he blends into the wall but the wall has become alive, he is painted grey on grey, or like the Pink Panther he has painted the world his own colour, acquired

something

invulnerable,

he has

and he knows that by loving, even

by loving and for loving, one must be self-contained,

abandon

love

s53 and the ego ..

950Green, GF, 39. p.

951Kierkegaard,

FT, p. 50. FT, p. 122.

952Kierkegaard, 953 Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 127. See: Kierkegaard, FT, pp. 38-9, p. 41, p. 44. Ì shall not review here the human distinction, either to love or to hate, not because I have so much against it, for at least it is passionate, but because it is egoistic and does not fit here. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 73. See also: Deleuze, NP, p. xiv.

217

Things could not have been otherwise for those, `chosen ones: ''

the fanatic,

the lover, Abraham, the knight of faith, the Stoic, the Spinozist or the Deleuzian. 955For, ònly he who is chosen chooses well or effectively. '956Love and/or faith decides them before they decide to love or, to put it differently, one has to be gripped by a decision (not oneself in order to decide (for oneself. For there to be a Deleuzian choice, a power to decide, one must already be chosen, decided - in effect one must be powerless. The chosen ones, being either necessarily determined or necessarily deceived, do all that they are capable of, all that they can do, all of the time. They are uncompromising individuals, risking everything.

They have absurdly and fanatically gone further than infinite

resignation that, `last stage before faith. '957"'One must go further, one must go further. "'958Toward, à new happiness. '959This movement is performed through, `counter-actualisation, ' dismantling and undoing - the disjunctive synthesis. 960 There is no free choice, decision or deliberation,

properly speaking, as,

`choosing chooses itself through [them]. '96' The decision to love cannot be satisfactorily disentangled from finding oneself in the grip of a decision, the two are not mutually exclusive. Peter Hallward finds this problematic, `Deleuze obliges us, in other words, to make an absolute distinction between what a subject does or decides and what is done or decided through the subject. By 954Kierkegaard,

FT, p. 99. 955Ìt is odd that the word "faith" should be used to designate a plane that works by immanerce. But if the knight is the man of becoming, then there are all kinds of knights. Are there not even knights of narcotics, in the sense that faith is a drug (in a way very different from the sense in which religion is an opiate)? ' Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 282. 956Deleuze, C2, p. 178. 957Kierkegaard, FT, p. 46. 958Kierkegaard,

FT, p. 123. 959 Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 207. 960Deleuze, LS, pp. 150-3,178-9. `6, Hallward, OW, p. 138. `Conventional notions of free will or free choice have no place in a Deleuzian universe. ' Ìf freedom means anything for Deleuze is isn't a matter of human liberty but of liberty from the human. ' Hallward, OW, p. 139.

23R

J

rendering this distinction absolute he abandons the category of the subject altogether. He abandons the decisive subject in favour of our more immediate subjection to the imperatives of creative life or thought. '962It must, however, be remembered that for Spinoza as for Deleuze a mode does not know what it can do, it does not know all that is possible, which for Eric Alliez signals, `the affirmative irruption of affective contingency. '963A mode is not certain of its powers, potentialities and capabilities ahead of time, as it were. Deleuze is not interested in subjection but in processes of subjectivation,

as I will show.

Hallward's Deleuze may well be òut' of this world (i. e., lacking agency and mediation), but this is not the same as being `beyond' this world. 964 For Rose, Kierkegaard's knight of faith is, à figure not assimilable either to a world-denying piety, or to a world-immersed coercive power. Only she who is truly hidden can truly enhance: only the powerless can wield power, power transcended by powerlessness. '965Kierkegaard describes both the poet and Abraham as powerless. 966This is, then, the power particular to both love and faith and by extension Deleuzian decision. Indeed, Rose's description of Kierkegaard's knight of faith, it appears to me, fits Deleuze's project perfectly Deleuze's

becoming-Abraham,

or Deleuze as a knight of faith in love?

Deleuze's thought is neither out of this world, nor is it of or for this world. Perhaps,

like Adorno's

view of art, Deleuze's

962Hallward,

paradoxical

philosophy

is

OW, p. 163. 963Alliez, SW, pp. 25-6. 964`Philosophy will lead from actual to virtual; from the world, it must lead out of the world. Does this mean a return to transcendence, a leap into an otherworldly beyond? Not at all: 'out' doesn't doesn't mean other-worldly. ' Hallward, OW, p. 57. See also: Extra-worldly mean 'beyond'. Hallward, OW, p. 3. 965Rose, P, p. 36. 966Kierkegaard, FT, p. 16.

?"19

J

rendered succinctly in the phrase, ìn the world but not of it? '967Regardless, Hallward's Deleuze seems to share a great deal with Kierkegaard's Abraham both, albeit to a different degree, believe in this world, both absolutise choice, both decide to love and are gripped by this decision. As Deleuze himself says, A possibility of life is evaluated through itself in the movements it lays out and the intensities it creates on a plane of immanence: what is not laid out or created is rejected. A mode of existence is good or bad, noble or vulgar, complete or empty, independently of Good and Evil or any transcendent value: there are never any criteria other than the tenor of existence, the intensification of life. (... ) Kierkegaard's "knight of faith, " he who makes the leap, or Pascal's gambler, he who throws the dice, are men of transcendence or a faith. But they constantly recharge immanence: they are philosophers, or, rather, intercessors,

conceptual personae who stand in for these two

philosophers and who are concerned no longer with the transcendent existence of God but only with the infinite immanent possibilities brought by the one who believes that God exists. (... ) It may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today. 968

96' Miller, TC, p. 152. '(... ) rational life in the a world, but neither of nor for it. ' Weber, Max [19045], The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, Ed. and Tr. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells, London, Penguin, 2002, p. 105. See also: St. John, Chapter 17 Verses 13-16. It is worth noting that Massumi echoes both Weber's and Miller's variation on a biblical theme without, it his source. Àlthough the realm of intensity that Deleuze's philosophy seems acknowledging is transcendental in the sense that it is not directly accessible to strives to conceptualize experience, it is not transcendent, it is not exactly outside experience either. It is immanent to it but in it it. ' Massumi, PV, 33. always p. not of 968 Deleuze and Guattari, WP, in essence, are not values but ways of pp. 74-5. 'Evaluations, being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate, serving as principles for the values

240

The knight of faith as conceptual persona is both a focused and excessive individual, `who does not lack the courage to attempt and to risk everything. '969 Uncompromising and fanatical in equal measure, the only `criteria' for modes of existence - as Deleuze writes - is the, `tenor of existence, the intensification of life. ' The test, for Deleuze, is always one of creating movement - of going further, of passing. Is this not entirely irrational (the nonlogical event of the disjunction), presupposing as it does an act of blind faith? Much like Spinoza's third kind of knowledge, rationality is not as rational as it would first appear. Spinozism destructures rationality through intellectual love, Kierkegaard makes use of faith for similar ends. The knight of faith, as I have shown, is certainly worthy of the following test, which Deleuze himself obviously values, To believe, not in a different world, but in a link between man and the world, in love or life, to believe in this as in the impossible, the unthinkable, which none the less cannot but be thought: `something possible, otherwise I will suffocate'. It is this belief that makes the unthought the specific power of thought, through the absurd, by virtue of the absurd. Artaud never understood powerlessness to think as a simple inferiority which would strike us in relation to thought. It is part of thought, so that we should make our way of thinking from it, without claiming to be restoring an all-powerful thought. We should rather make use of this powerlessness to believe in life. (... ) The modern fact is that we no longer believe in this world. We do not

on the basis of which they judge. This is why we always have the beliefs, feelings that we deserve given our way of being or our style of life. ' Deleuze, NP, p. 1. 969 Kierkegaard, FT, p. 42. 241

and thoughts

even believe in the events which happen to us, love, death, as if they 9'o half only concerned us. To believe in love, in a life of love, in the unthinkable, in the absurd, in the impossible, in the irrational, and in the outside while making use of this excess, this powerlessness - this is the task of the knight of faith. 9' Love is the (emotional) tie knotting together the world and the individual, which one ought to believe in, feel and think through. A `special' love that decides one, grips one, and which one must make a decision for -I

love to love. `The old idiot wanted

truth, but the new idiot wants to turn the absurd into the highest power of truth in other words, to create. '972The powerlessness Rose interprets, Deleuze (the new idiot? ) recognises, too. I would further argue that the fan `makes use of this powerlessness to believe in' a life of love, though their fidelity - as will be shown love faith is less fanatical. is less Powerlessness to the either or excessive, power of love and faith. Weakness as strength is the knight of faith's strategy. À creator who isn't grabbed around the throat by a set of impossibilities is no creator. A creator's someone who creates their own impossibilities, and thereby creates possibilities. '973All of the possible is in the balance, so to speak. As Kierkegaard writes, Fools and young people say that everything is possible for a human being. But that is a gross error. Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible. The

970Deleuze, C2, pp. 170-1. 97 See: Deleuze, C2, pp. 181-2. 972Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 62. 973Deleuze, N, p. 133. 24?.

knight, however, makes this impossibility possible by expressing it 974 but it. he it by spiritually, expresses spiritually renouncing It takes both an exceptional and excessive, a fanatical and uncompromising, individual to counter-actualise themselves in the midnight hour so as to bear 'witnessi975to the possibility of the impossible, which is precisely the art of what Deleuze calls, `the plane of immanence. ' If possibility is for the stupid and the immature, then making the impossible possible would be equivalent to the becoming-immature of the mature. A childlike not childish comportment - an imperceptible change perhaps. The knight of faith makes active use of excess and who may well say (if they were to speak), Ìt is up to us to go to extreme places, to extreme times, where the highest and the deepest truths live and rise up. The places of thought are the tropical zones frequented by the tropical man, not temperate

zones or the moral, methodical or moderate

man. '976The

intemperate knight of faith by means of love, faith and fanaticism certainly reaches, `the hyperborean zone, '97 otherwise known as Spinoza's third kind of knowledge. I have shown that a subterranean connection exists between Deleuze and Abraham, but there also exists, à broken line, explosive, totally volcanic'978 97' Spinoza Christ. links Deleuze, and which We will say that THE plane of immanence is, at the same time, that which must be thought and that which cannot be thought. It is the nonthought 974Kierkegaard, 975Kierkegaard, 976Deleuze, "' Deleuze,

within thought.

(... ) It is the most intimate within thought

FT, p. 44. FT, p. 80.

NP, p. 110. CC, p. 82.

978Deleuze, D/, p. 138. 979Deleuze, CC, p. 36. ? 43

and yet the absolute outside (... ) infinite movement. Perhaps this is the supreme act of philosophy: not so much to think THE plane of immanence as to show that it is there (... ) as Christ was incarnated once, in order to show, that one time, the possibility

of the

impossible. Thus Spinoza is the Christ of philosophers, and the greatest philosophers are hardly more than apostles who distance themselves from or draw near to this mystery. 98° This uncompromising

and apostolic attitude retains a strong, unnatural,

alliance to the bourgeois English elegance981of the knight of faith, which Virginia Woolf's determinist imperatives so suitably render into prose, "'put everything into it"' and, "`saturate every atom. " 9132One must go further, to repeat Kierkegaard's dictum. All of the possible is risked or gambled; nothing is kept in reserve in this infinite movement of faith, which, I claim, is tantamount to being fanatical. Exhausting or emptying the possible by being prepared to wager it all in the face of a limit is an adequate definition of fanaticism, equally irrational and 983 Being worthy, which I have shown to be Deleuze's ethical test, absurd. requires either a joyous fanatic or a mode of existence far removed from the ordinary. For, I would argue, it takes a fanatic to make use of excess, to go this far, to sacrifice,

to make the leap, to create

infinite

immanent

possibilities.

Those unable to either paint the world pink, blend in with the wall, or lacking in an eccentric

and apostolic

fanaticism,

in, `the power to concentrate

the whole

substance of [their] life and the meaning of actuality into one single desire, ' find

980 Deleuze

and Guattari, WP, pp. 59-60. Another word for the plane of immanence is desire, '(desire is "what remains always unthought at the heart of thought")' Deleuze, D/, p. 92. 98' Deleuze, CC, pp. 41-2. 982Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 280. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 172. 983Deleuze, Cl, p. 108. See: Deleuze, CC, p. 152-174. 9 44 ,

themselves, `dissipated in multiplicity, '9"4which is a capital plus for financiers but a significant minus for knights. Knights of faith share this much in common with monomaniacs like Ahab. Being worthy of the infinite and of the eternal, having faith in an extraordinary love, is the greatest test of all. The tenor, intensity and movement - possibility, in a word - that the uncompromising, fanatical, knight `creates' or `lays out' is what is of the utmost importance and, in a note, Kierkegaard situates this movement in an affective register, Every movement of infinity is carried out through passion, and no reflection can produce a movement. This is the continual leap in existence

that explains

the movement,

whereas

mediation

is a

chimera, which in Hegel is supposed to explain everything and which is also the only thing he never has tried to explain. Just to make the celebrated Socratic distinction between what one understands and what one does not understand requires passion; and even more, of course, [passion is necessary in order] to make the authentic Socratic generation

movement,

the

movement

of

ignorance.

lacks is not reflection but passion.

What

our

In one sense,

therefore, our age is actually too tenacious of life to die, for dying is one of the most remarkable leaps, and a little poem has always appealed to me very much because the poet, after beautifully and simply expressing his desire for the good things of life in five or six lines, ends thus: a blessed leap into eternity. 985

984 Kierkegaard,

FT, p. 43. 985 Kierkegaard, FT p. 42. '(... ) he who walks the narrow road of faith has no one to advise him it; for him. Faith human being is from is one excluded no a marvel, and yet no understands that which unites all human life is passion, and faith is a passion. ' Kierkegaard, FT p. 67. 'The of passion are the only dependable ones - that is, the only convincing ones. ' conclusions Kierkegaard, FT, p. 100. 'Anyone who does not have an infinite passion is not ideal, and anyone 745

This lament sounds familiar, Kierkegaard's `what our generation lacks, ' recalls to my mind Deleuze's the `mania of people today, ' both men share almost identical anxieties.

Both thinkers express their discontent

with either the

devaluation afforded to, or the disavowal of, affective states - admiration, love and passion. Green no less mourns this oversight, `we have lost the essential thing, which is the enthusiasm we call fanaticism. '986As Spinoza had done before them, both Kierkegaard and Deleuze refuse to detach love from knowledge,

feeling from thought -

intellectual

love does not draw this

distinction. Both Kierkegaard and Deleuze argue for a renewal of enthusiasm, all argue for a re-evaluation of affectivity, and it is this that makes it possible for me to position their thought in alignment with fandom. For fans, in my view, certainly privilege what has hitherto been underprivileged (the love of thought). For Deleuze these, `movements, becomings, in other words, pure relations of speed and slowness, pure affects, are below and above the threshold of perception. (... ) [Kierkegaard] has all the more reason to say that there is no movement that is not infinite; that the movement of the infinite can occur only by means of affect, passion, love, in a becoming (... ) [which] eludes any mediating perception because it is already effectuated at every moment, and the dancer or lover finds him- or herself already "awake and walking" the second he or she Things could not have been falls down, and even the instant he or she leaps. Y987 otherwise -a shares

paradoxical affective and passionate refrain or `tension, ' which

a great

Kierkegaard's

deal with Spinoza's

intuitive

knowledge

(blessedness).

knight of faith, as with Spinoza's mode amid the third kind of

who has an infinite passion has long since saved his soul from such rubbish. He remains silent in order to sacrifice himself - or he speaks in the awareness that he will throw everything into disorder. ' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 110

986Green, GF, p. 152. 987 Deleuze

and Guattari,

TP, p. 281. 246

knowledge,

attains,

`this

passionate

this

concentration,

intense

consciousness.7988 Mediation cannot come into being for this movement

is always already

effectuated, always already taking place. As Kierkegaard states, Àbraham does not have the middle term, '989he, the knight of faith, `cannot speak, '990`he remains silent, he takes a responsibility upon himself as the single individual, inasmuch as he disregards any argument that may come from outside. '991The knight of faith, `speaks no human language (... ) he speaks in a divine language, he speaks in tongues. '992The knight of faith stammers. Therefore, one must really think in terms of either the èxcluded middle, '993or the `broken middle. 7994 Broken, for although the movement of faith is without mediation it is not immediate. Likewise, Spinoza's third kind of knowledge is intuitive but, for all that, it is not lacking reflection. Faith, for Kierkegaard, is a `later immediacy, 's95 as the intellectual love of God, for Spinoza, is either a blessed or beatific not an ordinary love. Everything remains the same but changed. Paradox. Kierkegaard warns philosophers against cheapening faith with such easy alternatives -

988Kierkegaard, 989Kierkegaard,

FT, p. 79. 'the knight of faith is constantly FT, p. 57.

990 Kierkegaard,

kept in tension. '

FT, p. 60. It ought to be recalled that Fear and Trembling is authored by one Johannes de Silentio. 991Kierkegaard, FT, p. 87. See also: Kierkegaard, FT, p. 113. 992 Kierkegaard, FT, p. 114. 'There are many passions in passion, all manner of voices in a voice, murmurings, speaking in tongues: that is why all discourse is indirect. ' 'It was Proust who said that masterpieces are written in a kind of foreign language. " That is the same as stammering, making language stammer rather than stammering in speech. To be a foreigner, but in one's own tongue, not only when speaking a language other than one's own. To be but in one and the same language, without even a dialect or patois. ' bilingual, multilingual, Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 77, p. 98. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 55. 93 See: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 22. 994 'This is the middle, broken indeed, between the two gates to Heaven and to Hell, the mount of purgation. ' Rose, P, p. 50. See also: Rose, Gillian [1992], The Broken Middle: Out of our Ancient Society, Oxford, Blackwell. In my reading of Kierkegaard I have greatly benefited from Rose's text, especially 'Chapter V, Love and the State. ' 995Kierkegaard, FT, p. 82. 247

mediate / immediate. 996Abraham's sole duty or the paradox of faith is, `that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal and as the Abraham is, single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute. 7997 `without any connections and complications. '998If one wished to talk of relations one can really mention a single one only - the God-relation.

`The absolute duty

can lead one to do what ethics would forbid [murdering / sacrificing Isaac], but it can never lead the knight of faith to stop loving. '999 It is the quality of love, the tenor of existence, the intensification and/or `the sphere of life, '1000 which are the determining factors - the test. As Kierkegaard makes plain there is both a divine and a demonic love, and Deleuze makes it clear that there is a good and bad mode of existence. Needless to say, the love of both Kierkegaard's knight of faith and the intellectual love of Spinoza's mode that has attained the third kind of knowledge are divine - albeit immanent or 1001 love Perhaps, fan's is, demonic? the naturalised. accordingly, This would certainly help explain the etymology of the noun `fandom' and its abbreviated form `fan,' which is a late nineteenth century import from the US, and is, itself, a derivative of the adjective `fanatic. ' `Fanatic' first appeared in Latin as the adjective `fanaticus, ' circa. sixteenth century, from 'fanum'meaning à temple, ' and denoted òf a temple, inspired by a god' and òriginally described behaviour or speech that might result from possession by a god or demon, ' The OED also informs one that a fan is, à person who has a strong interest in or 996On this point Kierkegaard has Hegel in mind. See: Kierkegaard, FT, p. 69. 997 Kierkegaard, FT, p. 81. See also: Kierkegaard, FT, p. 62, p. 70. 998Kierkegaard, FT, p. 79. 999Kierkegaard, FT, p. 74. """' Kierkegaard, FT, p. 116. 1101Deleuze writes of the 'prophet, ' Abraham, 'behind their paternal mask, they have a kind of double identification: with the innocent, toward whom they feel genuine love, but also with the demon, since they break their pact with the innocent they love, each in his own manner. ' Deleuze, CC, pp. 80-1.

? 4R

admiration for a particular sport, art form, or famous person. ' (My emphasis). Moreover, the OED defines a fanatic as, à person filled with excessive and rigidly single-minded zeal or enthusiasm, especially for an extreme religious or political cause. ' The bad (neo) religiosity or false idolatry connotations, with emphasis on `negative' possession by something external to oneself, exist to this day. I agree that fans are scandalous, roguish, demonic followers - but not 1002 1003 Either divine loss? demonic only. paradox of salvation or a a paradox of The demonic has the same quality as the divine, namely, that the single individual is able to enter into an absolute relation to it. '1004Choice chooses through both. This distinction may also clarify both Deleuze's and Kierkegaard's methodology as, à poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power Both thinkers practice a devilish following, this is, therefore, how of the devil. '1005 to follow great philosophers. As with both the lover and the faithful the test of fandom - always immanent - would then be to turn the fanaticism of the fanatic, the intensification of life, against them so as to extract the maximum quantity and quality of potential from such an uncompromising

comportment - fans

against fanatics: perfidious fidelity. This is what it means to make the most of excess, of powerlessness. Such a movement can only be adequately phrased and understood once a detailed and exhaustive exegesis of the position and

10112 Oxford English Dictionary. `The Bacchic ritual produced what was called ènthusiasm', which having the god enter into the worshipper, who believed that he became means, etymologically, involves some element of one with the god. Much of what is greatest in human achievement intoxication, some sweeping away of prudence by passion. Without the Bacchic element, life would be uninteresting; with it, it is dangerous. Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly with either party. ' Russell, HWP, p. 26. 1003See: Kierkegaard, FT, p. 106. 1004Kierkegaard, FT, p. 97. 1005Kierkegaard,

FT, p. 61. 249

significance of love and passion, admiration and affect, in Deleuze's oeuvre, has been performed. It is to this task that I will now turn.

`The Tenor of Existence'1006

Love, for Deleuze, together with birth, death and language constitute, `the principle human realities. '1007Incredulity toward such realities, according to Deleuze, is the reality that requires reversing. Learning and knowing how to, `give back to an author a little of the joy, the energy, the life of love and politics that he knew how to give and invent, '1008èven those manias and bizarre behaviours which bear witness to combinations of idea and feeling (... ) real 101° Fandom, Deleuze in life, '1009 is by terms. no uncertain championed ways of as a bizarre and maniacal comportment, which combines idea and feeling, thought and affect, knowledge and love in ever-new configurations comfortably

here. Learning

to love or a passionate

pedagogy

- sits

`love of a, -

key life, '101which, ìs a kind of declaration of faith in life31012 is to any attempt at understanding Deleuze. One must believe in love, be gripped by it and decide to love by becoming worthy of this schizo-spiritual choice. An amorous search is

1006Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 74 1007Deleuze,

Gilles [1946], `Mathesis,

Science and Philosophy, ' Tr. David Reggio, unpublished

mss. 1008Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 119. 1009Deleuze, D/, p. 54. 101' When Jerry Lewis or Tati "criticize" modern life, they don't have the complacency, the vulgarity to show us ugly things. What they criticize, they show as beautiful, as magnificent they love what they criticize and give it a new beauty. Their critique is only the more forceful. In every modernity and every novelty, you find conformity and creativity; an insipid conformity, but also "a little new music"; something in conformity with the time, but also something untimely separating the one from the other is the task of those who know how to love, the real destroyers and creators of our day. ' Deleuze, D/, p. 139. '0 Deleuze, FB, p. 56. 1012Deleuze, FB, p. 61. 251)

always already underway and the test is to resonate with or to become worthy of this affective movement, risking everything. "" The idea of emphasising the pedagogical aspect of love, its being at once a search in process and an apprenticeship of signs, Deleuze takes from Proust. What is crucial to Deleuze's Proust is neither memory nor time, be it either voluntary or involuntary, be it either lost or regained, but strictly the search itself i. `the for '1014 Learning (love), by truth. through e., search experimentation not 1015 (memory), is in Motivating this search is, the essential search. remembering à kind of violence, ' in thought - one form of which is that human reality: love. 1016 In a certain way, Proust's search is very close to a mode's ascension through Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge or, even, Kierkegaard's stages on life's way 1017 finally, Plato's love, of or, creative ascent Proust constantly insists on this: at one moment or another, the hero does not yet know this or that; he will learn it later on. He is under a certain illusion, which he will ultimately discard. 1018 In Spinoza the illusions of choice and decision-making are only discarded, dismantled, upon reaching the ultimate stage of blessedness in the third kind of knowledge (the problem or aporia of this achievement has been circumscribed: death). Illusions are, therefore, necessary for both Spinoza and Proust - and in

1013Ìt is the search for the past in present situations, the repetition of the past that inspires our most violent passions and temptations. We always love in the past, and passions are first and foremost an illness proper to memory. ' Deleuze, D/, p. 54. 1014Deleuze, PS, p. 15. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 167. 1015Deleuze, PS, p. 89. 1016Deleuze, PS, p. 16. `(... ) truth is never the product of a prior disposition but the result of a violence of thought. (... ) Truth depends on an encounter with something which forces us to think, and to seek the truth. ' Deleuze, PS, p. 16. 'On the contrary, "to reverse Platonism" must mean to bring this motivation out into the light of the day, to "track it down" - the way Plato tracks down the Sophist. ' Deleuze, LS, p. 253. 1017For the Plato-Spinoza-Proust connection, see: Nussbaum, UT, pp. 455-526. 1018Deleuze, PS, p. 4. 251

extension, for Kierkegaard and Deleuze. Abraham's leap, i.e., the suspension of the ethical - his capacity or potential for murdering Isaac - can only be understood, if it can be understood at all, after the fact, as it were - through appeal to another world (for want of a better expression). Deleuze extracts four `worlds' in his reading of Proust; `worldliness, ' `love, ' `sensuous impressions or qualities' and, àrt.' To these worlds Deleuze appends four signs; èmpty signs, ' `deceptive signs, ' `true signs' and, ùltimate signs. ' 1019 The first three signs, àre the signs of a "lost" time, of time wasted. (... ) But it is an essential result of apprenticeship to reveal to us at the end that there are Lost time or wasted time is necessarily lost certain truths of this wasted time. 91020 or wasted, `we grasp it only when it has ceased to interest us, '1021and may be thought of in terms of illusion, delusion, deception

Spinoza's notably echoing -

view. These three signs àre material, ' whereas the fourth sign, only, is, 'immaterial. '1022In contradistinction to the former triumvirate,

arts meaning

cannot be discovered in anything other than itself, it is spiritualised, transversal 1023 in but it. the world not of -

The first world is one of milieus and groups, friends and families. This world is (paradoxically) empty as it is free of all referents; the sign is simply a sign -a dropped vowel here, a faux pas there. Stupidity and forgetfulness, ignorance and arrogance loom large. `The worldly sign does not refer to something, it "stands for" it, claims to be equivalent to its meaning. It anticipates action as it does thought, annuls thought as it does action, and declares itself adequate: 1019See: Deleuze, PS, pp. 5-14. 1020Deleuze, PS, pp. 20-1. 1021Deleuze, PS, p. 86. 1022Deleuze, PS, p. 39. 1023See: Deleuze, PS, pp. 40-1. `(... ) in a world reduced to a multiplicity of chaos, it is only the formal structure of the work of art, insofar as it does not refer to anything else, which can serve as unity - afterwards. ' Deleuze, PS, p. 149.

252

whence its stereotyped aspect, and its vacuity. '1024Although an empty and cliched, fashionable and frivolous, world whose signs, ìmply chiefly a time wasted, '1025it is, Deleuze claims, necessary to pass through it. Even stupidity 1026 Its meaning as a stage can only be read retrospectively, offers something. after the event, when the apprenticeship reaches its ultimate stage. `What does it mean to love somebody? '1027Of the movement of seizure and extraction witnessed in the second world Deleuze writes, To fall in love is to individualize someone by the signs he bears or emits. It is to become sensitive to these signs, to undergo an apprenticeship to them. (... ) The beloved appears as a sign, a "soul": the beloved expresses a possible world unknown to us, implying, enveloping, imprisoning a world which must be deciphered, that is, interpreted. (... ) To love is to try to explicate, to develop these unknown worlds which remain enveloped within the beloved. 1028 Two laws exist for Deleuze's Proust's world of love. The first is that, `jealousy is deeper than love, it contains love's truth, '1029and the second is that heterosexual

loves,

`find

their

truth

in

homosexuality, '1030 indeed,

The jealous lover excessively interprets `[h]omosexuality is the truth of love. '1031 signs, overdetermines events, a gesture, a word, a silence in this world. The lies

1024Deleuze, PS, pp. 6-7. 1025Deleuze, PS, p. 24. 1026 "'The stupidest beings,

by their gestures, their remarks, their involuntarily expressed sentiments, manifest laws which they do not perceive, but which the artist surprises in them. "' Proust cited here in: Deleuze, PS, p. 79. 1027Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 35. 1028Deleuze, PS, p. 7. `There is no love which does not begin with the revelation of a possible world as such, enwound in the other which expresses it. ' Deleuze, OR, p. 261. 1029Deleuze, PS, p. 9. 1030Deleuze, PS, p. 10. 1031Deleuze, PS, p. 78.

75 3

of the beloved provoke, àmateur detective activity. '1032Like the knight of faith the jealous lover is a proficient sleuth. `The truth-seeker is the jealous man who If, as Deleuze claims, `literature is catches a lying sign on the beloved's face. '1033 delirium,

'1034

This type of love, in then, `jealousy is the very delirium of signs. '1035

a certain way, has commonalities with both the fanatical emptying of the possible, witnessed above, and the intolerant love encountered in Chapter Two of this thesis. `For the narrator-interpreter,

loving and jealous, will imprison the

beloved, immure her, sequester her in order to "explicate" her, that is, to empty her of all the worlds she contains. ''o36 Only fugitives and captives can be explicated, unfolded. Is the quality of love in the love of thought, which I claim Deleuze practices (Spinoza as Deleuze's beloved), and that I partake of as a fan and apprentice of Deleuze, necessarily of this type? The signs particular to this world and law, ènvelop especially time lost, '1037 are `deceptive signs which make us suffer'1038and the fate or destiny of such a mode of existence is, `to love without being loved,

'1039

i.e., `the loss of love. '1040

Love, here, is certainly harsh and severe, cold and cruel. 1041 Jealous lovers live under a great illusion: the unknown and possible worlds of the beloved remain incalculable, blind spots, even though they are addressed to and are visible for

1032Deleuze and Guattari, 1033Deleuze, PS, p. 163. 1034Deleuze, CC, p. 4. 1035Deleuze, PS, p. 122.

TP, p. 271.

1036Deleuze, PS, p. 107. See also: Deleuze, PS, p. 124. 1037Deleuze, PS, p. 24. 1038Deleuze, PS, p. 12. 1039Deleuze, PS, p. 9. 1040Deleuze, PS, p. 126 1041Plato is influential for both Proust and Masoch's concept of love: `But the primary influence is that of Plato. While Sade is spinozistic and employs demonstrative reason, Masoch is platonic and proceeds by dialectical imagination. One of Masoch's stories is entitled The Love he of Plato. (... ) Plato showed that Socrates appeared to be the lover but that fundamentally was the loved one. ' Deleuze, SM, p. 22. ? 54

the lover. `(... ) [L]ove unceasingly prepares its own disappearance, acts out its own dissolution. '1042The truth or truths of love are only evident after the disappearance of the lover, ìn love, the truth always comes too late. '1043There is something demonic in the late jealous lover, `which is precisely the amorous form of homage to the object (to restore to the beloved what one believes belongs to it). '1044What one believes: does thought stop precisely with this act of restoration, or does it begin anew? Surely it `starts afresh, ' as Deleuze has said the task of the critical philosopher - and I might substitute for this figure the artisanal-philosopher-fan or the jealous lover - is to work their way back to `that which he does not say in what he says. ' The obvious parallel to fanatical demonic love hardly needs further marking, but is this not also the case with love more generally understood as attestation?

Spinoza and Kierkegaard

certainly both believe in the existence and importance of love in relation to thinking. Again, might I not make the case that this harnessing of devilish force is not altogether

different

from a making

use of excess,

utilising the

power(lessness) of the demonic only under the condition that this drives out the demonic. (Jealous) love becomes a weapon which turns the fanaticism of the fanatic against them, leaving in its wake something resembling a fan. This is why Proust sets in opposition to the traditional pairing of friendship and philosophy a more obscure pairing formed by love and art. A mediocre love is worth more than a great friendship: because love is rich in signs and is fed by silent interpretation. A work of art is worth more than a philosophical work; for what is enveloped in the

1042Deleuze, 104.3 Deleuze,

PS, p. 18. PS, p. 86.

10'4 Deleuze,

PS, p. 27. 255

sign is more profound than all the explicit significations. What does violence to us is richer than all the fruits of our good will or of our conscious work; and more important than thought is "what is food for thought. "'1045 Deleuze reiterates, here, a belief that I have already exposed, whereby thought

requires,

`dark regions'

not `temperate zones, '1046 extreme

and

uncompromising thinkers and, `determinations which force us to think; a friend is not enough for us to approach the truth. '1047Even a lousy lover trumps a faithful friend. Thought alone is not enough, neither can one rely on goodwill, a certain violence is required to get thought thinking. Knights of faith or Spinozists would not be out of step in this dance. The violence that forces one to think 1048 (love? ). It is never enough to from from elsewhere, an outside always comes be a friend of thought, one must - like Kierkegaard - go further - with Plato (and Spinoza) - becoming worthy of either the divine or demonic madness of a lover 104' intellectual love. Àre we not already on another plane, for love thought: an of is like the violence that compels thinking - "Socrates the lover" - whereas friendship

asks only for a little goodwill? '105°This ill will is an excessive,

metaphysically

perverse, abominable love in harmony with that which was

earlier referred to as an intensification of life or tenor of existence. It borders on 1045Deleuze, PS, p. 29. `For nothing gives more food for thought than what goes on in the head of a fool. ' Deleuze, PS, p. 80. Ànd it is no longer a matter of saying: to create is to think - but rather, to think is to create, and primarily to create the act of thinking within thought. To think, then, is to provide food for thought. ' Deleuze, PS, p. 99. 1046Deleuze, PS, p. 165. 1047Deleuze, PS, p. 160. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, pp. 2-12. 1048See: Deleuze, PS, p. 161. 1049Plato, CD, Phaedrus, 278 (p. 524). 'Proust

is a Platonist (... ) Plato offers us an image of thought under the sign of encounters and violences. (... ) Socrates can rightly say: I am Love more than the friend, I am the lover. ' Deleuze, PS, pp. 165-6. See also: Deleuze, DR, pp. 59-61. 'Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'. It is not purely intellectual; it is not merely wisdom, but love of wisdom, Spinoza's ìntellectual love of God' is much the same intimate union of thought and feeling. ' Russell, HWP, p. 124. 1050Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 71. 256

fanaticism, on the demoniacal and serves as the violence that compels thinking. For Deleuze, this divine or demonic madness is, `the well-founded delirium or true love. '1051So-called true love is absurd and delirious, it risks, gambles and wages. This madness is the so-called, `higher lunacy, ' of that "private thinker" Kierkegaard. 1052In order to seriously approach the truth, to think in thought, one must undergo and practice a love of thought, one must - with Kierkegaard - be lead or lured into thought, 1053 one must - with Proust - become an apprentice to thought. A, `strange, ' `prodigious' and, ìntense' joy emerges in the third world along with an, 'imperative, '1" to think this joy through. Signs in this world are, `true (... ) fulfilled,

affirmative

and joyous. '1055Spinoza's

common

notions are,

perhaps, not entirely dissimilar to the signs particular to this world? Proust's are, `material signs, ' which incarnate, àn ideal essence, ''o56and, àfford us the Spinoza's common means of regaining time, '1057i.e., `time rediscovered. 71058 notions are very much available to worldly modes, they are in nature and can be thought of as material signs, yet - as Deleuze emphasises - they are also in 1051Deleuze,

LS, p. 254. 'To be delirious [de/ire, ] is exactly to go off the rails (as in deconnerto say absurd things, etc. ). There is something demonaical or demonic in a line of flight. Demons are different from gods, because gods have fixed attributes, properties and functions, territories and codes: they have to do with rails, boundaries and surveys. What demons do is jump across intervals, and from one interval to another. `Which demon has leapt the longest leap? ' asks Oedipus. There is always betrayal (... ). Betrayal is like theft, it is always double. (... ). The creative theft of the traitor, as against the plagiarisms of the trickster. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, pp. 40-1. 1052(... ) counterthoughts, which are violent in their acts and discontinuous in their appearances, and whose existence is mobile in history. These are the acts of a "private thinker, " as opposed to the public professor: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or even Shestov. (... ) They destroy images. (... ) "Private thinker, " however, is not a satisfactory expression, because it exaggerates interiority, when it is a question of outside thought. To place thought in an immediate relation with the outside, with the forces of the outside. ' Deleuze and Guattari, TP, pp. 376-7. 1053See: Deleuze, PS, p. 161. 1054Deleuze, PS, pp. 11-2. 1055Deleuze, 1056Deleuze,

PS, p. 12. PS, pp. 12-3.


PS, p. 24. PS, p. 86. 257

God, thus, they may be thought of as incarnating, embodying or expressing ideal essence. Common notions, too, depend on agreeable encounters (first sort of encounter adequate

ideas -

according to Deleuze's Spinoza), joyful affections forever conditioned

by positivity

(affirmation)

-

and which

mysteriously become organised, therahv following through an imperative or obligation somewhat. Both are nece:

riental effort. '1059

Proust's third world shares much with Spinoza's second kind of knowledge, and the resemblance does not end here. Deleuze writes, `thus experienced, the [sensuous] quality no longer appears as a property of the object which now possesses it, but as the sign of an altogether different object which we must try to decipher, at the cost of an effort which always risks failure. ''oso Perhaps, for Deleuze at least, there exists a common tie linking Spinoza, Kierkegaard and Proust: the `fascinating idea' of risk, of waging everything without the comfort and security of the usual prerequisite determination, where everything

remains the same but changed.

According

to Deleuze

both

Spinoza's intellectual love (of God) and Kierkegaard's passionate faith in love (movement of the infinite) require a leap. Kierkegaard's movement of the infinite is radical, appealing to an elusive elsewhere, to an external altogether different thing, to an outside. Spinoza's movement from the second to the third kind of knowledge operates differently, as if this outside is and was always already inside. Something

must await its revelation, which marks a rupture with

Spinoza's second kind of knowledge inasmuch as Proust's signs in his third world are not fully 'adequate'1061their cause remains external, `we are not ready

1059Deleuze, PS, p. 11. 1060Deleuze, PS, p. 11. 1061Deleuze, PS, p. 12. 'SR

to understand what this ideal essence is, nor why we feel so much joy. '1062 Another world is needed. Art, for Deleuze's Proust, caps this movement by providing, `dematerialized, ' virtual or immaterial signs for the ideal essence first referred to in the third world. The third world approaches ideal essence, but the art world expresses it! Deleuze, often, cites a formula of Proust's to signal his meaning, "'Real without being present [actual], ideal without being abstract. " )1063Art, then, may be thought of as a certain type of ecstatic, experimental experience - an epiphany (the sublime in the pedestrian). 1064Artis necessary for this ideal essence to be fully regained, experienced and expressed. `The signs of art, finally, give us Again, time regained, an original absolute time which includes all the others. '1065 a final (absolute) stage or world is required to give the system structure, and this

can

only

be revealed

once a mode

has ascended

through

the

stages/knowledge, performed their search, and/or made their leap. `This is why all the signs converge upon art; all apprenticeships, by the most diverse paths, are already unconscious apprenticeships to art itself. At the deepest level, the This is salvation through art by renouncing essential is in the signs of art. '1066 love. 1067 In both love and art, indeed in all apprenticeships,

disappointment

is

constituent and a compensatory remedy is cast over this lacunae. 1068The disappointment,

once more, necessarily exists, as the sign, according to

1062Deleuze, PS, p. 13. 106,3 Deleuze, PS, p. 57. See: Deleuze, B, p. 96. See: Deleuze, 1064See: Deleuze, PS, p. 138. 1065Deleuze, PS, p. 24. 1066Deleuze, PS, p. 13. 1067See: Deleuze and Guattari, 1068See: Deleuze,

TP, p. 186.

PS, p. 33. ?,59

DR, p. 208.

Deleuze, is both, `more profound, 1069and in excess of either the object or subject. There is something which is, `too great, too unbearable also, ' in the 107° perhaps echoing, `the incredible feeling of an unknown Nature, ' which is sign, the Deleuzian affect - itself influenced by Spinoza. Something always escapes determination, there exists an indeterminate excess that Deleuze makes sure to note. Ìt is the essence which constitutes the sign insofar as it is irreducible to the object emitting it; it is the essence which constitutes the meaning insofar as it is irreducible to the subject apprehending it. It is the essence which is the last word of the apprenticeship or the final revelation. '107 Love approaches ideal essence, yet never quite makes the grade, it never quite makes the absolute movement reserved, purely, for art - according to Deleuze's Proust. One must go further, one must go further than love. Art is required as either the final stage or `the extreme point'1072of revelation, whereupon the apprentice learns that ideal essences were really in the first three worlds all along (real without being actual, ideal without being abstract). Loves, however, do undergo a movement specific to their world. Loves always happen in a generic series, `they are organizedi1073- they remain the same but As Deleuze notes, Swann's love for Odette inspires, doubles or is changed. 1074 repeated in Marcel's love for Gilberte, Mme. de Guermantes and Albertine. 1075 The (masochistic? ) sufferings of each love are repeated in each successive love giving the lie or illusion of either a continuity or a unity of love, and from 1069Deleuze, PS, p. 34. 1070Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 171. 107 Deleuze, PS, p. 36. See: Deleuze, PS, p. 89. 1072Deleuze, PS, p. 63. 1073Deleuze, PS, p. 79. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, pp. 438-9. "° '(... ) this double which is at once the same and altogether different. ' Deleuze, PS, p. 105. 175 See: Deleuze, PS, p. 69. This shares a great deal with women in Masoch, 'she is always the same woman. ' Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, p. 47.

260

The affirmation of these movements, leaps, `transversals, ' a joy is extracted. 1076 love as an intensification of life, its being repeated, is itself a source of joy. Such is the operation of the intelligence: under a constraint of 107 joy. into it transmutes sensibility, our suffering A familiar refrain, recalling Spinoza's optimistic imperative: Hate is destroyed by love. Deleuze also argues that it is neither through memory nor imagination that signs of love are deciphered, but rather, ìntelligence is the only faculty capable of interpreting the signs and explicating the series of loves. (... ) Not that the truths of love belong to those abstract truths which a thinker might discover by the effort of a method or of a free reflection. Intelligence must be forced, must undergo a constraint which leaves it no choice. '1078Intelligence is always constrained by the sign it interprets, thought "'comes after"' the violent 1079 love. Thought, apparently, is without choice when undergoing the event of violent event of love(s), `for we have no choice. '108°Things could not have been otherwise. For a decision to love has always already taken place, forcing and motivating, gripping and constraining thought. A violent reality such as love positions one in the grip of a decision, compelling thinking toward a thought, which can only be understood retrospectively.

1076,,What we suppose our love infinity of successive loves, of uninterrupted multitude give the Deleuze, PS, p. 112. 1077Deleuze, PS, p. 72. 1078Deleuze, PS, p. 71. 179 See: Deleuze, PS, p. 132, p.

or our jealousy to be is not a single continuous passion, but an different jealousies, which are ephemeral but which by their impression of continuity, the illusion of unity. "' Proust cited in:

163.

10801Now I understand Manon Lescaut and the unhappy Chevalier who even in the pillory still adored his faithless mistress. Love knows neither virtue nor merit; when we love, we forgive and forget everything, for we have no choice. It is not our judgment that leads us, it is not the qualities or faults that we discover in the loved one that inflame our passion or cause us to draw back in horror. We are driven by a gentle and mysterious power that deprives us of all will and reason, and we are swept along with no thought for the morrow. ' Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, p. 198.

261

But, this is not the whole truth about love - Albertine was chosen, extracted, òrganized' and/or ìndividualised, ' by Marcel from the cloud-like, indiscernible and homogeneous group of girls she first appears with at the beach in Proust's novel. For Deleuze the narrator's selection is a selection albeit an accidental or anomalous

one,

`this

choice

is

not

made

without

uncertainty

and

1081 ' A kind of (s)elective affinity is in operation, which clearly recalls contingency. Ahab's (Marcel's) `sinister choice' for that èxceptional individual' Moby-Dick (Albertine) -'a

choosing that exceeds him and comes from elsewhere (... ) [an]

anomalous choice, ' `that consists in choosing one's prey, preferring a chosen victim with a kind of love. ' Albertine is certainly Marcel's victim, and the latter's weapon of choice is (jealous) love. An alliance of love ensues, which for both Proust's narrator and Melville's protagonist transforms into hate. `For I hate you, The choice is lovingly, ' is the tenor of existence expressed in such a choice. 1082 both, "'fortuitous and inevitable, " "0"3 `what has to happen, will happen )1084 Amor fati. The great paradox of love is that one only has a choice in questions of love when one is constrained. The lover is excluded (echoing Abraham, once more), as, `the lover can never be sufficiently involved in [the beloved's] worlds, Variation on a theme: In without being thereby excluded from them as well. i1085 the world of the lover, but not of it. So-called `free will' is entirely foreign to the One has no choice (illusion) in order to have choice lover's 'pseudo-will. 71086 (ideal), or one must renounce choice for choice to be restored. Constraint is a 1081Deleuze, PS, p. 75. See also: Deleuze, PS, p. 30. 1082Genet, OLF, p. 112. 1083Deleuze, PS, p. 167. 1°84Saramago, AN, p. 221. 1085Deleuze, PS, p. 123. 1086`The narrator's activity then consists in electing, in choosing; at least this is his apparent activity, for many various forces, themselves complicated within him, are at work to determine his pseudo-will, to make him select a certain part of the complex composition, a certain aspect of the unstable opposition, a certain prize in the circling shadows. ' Deleuze, PS, p. 104.

767,

necessary condition of choice or, to put it another way, choice is never as free as it appears. 1087Choice

is a complicated

business,

it is,

the activity

corresponding to complication. 31088 We shall not ask who chooses. Certainly no self, since we ourselves are chosen, since a certain self is chosen each time that "we" choose a person to love, a suffering to experience, and each time that this self is no less surprised

to live or to relive, and to answer the call,

1089 delay. the whatever Such is the experience of awakening from sleep, when one feels in the world but not of it: "one foot in the grave, " as the common colloquialism has it. A strange sensation that was earlier referred to as a becoming-imperceptible, wherein

unrecognisability,

counter-actualisation

and

experimental

depersonalisation, matter (I'll be impassioned, I'll be jealous, I'll be fanatical, I'll be faithful, I'll be duplicitous etc.) - an excessive affect particular to those aforementioned `chosen ones. ' An experiencing of the outside of thought, the necessary violence of love undergone by thought, which is capable - so Proust avers in almost total congruence with Spinoza - òf leading the mind to a greater perfection. ''oso

1017,/ was not free to choose them, ' Proust cited in: Deleuze, PS, p. 161. 1088Deleuze, PS, p. 113. See: Deleuze, PS, pp. 44-5. See also: Deleuze, LS, p. 260. 1099Deleuze, PS, pp. 113-4. 1090Proust cited in: Deleuze, PS, p. 162. 26'

The Art of Ideal Love

If Deleuze's Proust provides a pedagogy of passion, which educates lovers to, `be harsh, cruel, and deceptive, '1091then Deleuze's book on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

goes one step further by offering an even more intense

Cold, cruel and expression of these particular practices and qualities of love. 1092 contractual, love must be learnt - the letter of love must be followed, 1093 In Masoch's life as well as his fiction, love affairs are always set in motion by anonymous letters, by the use of pseudonyms or by advertisements in newspapers. They must be regulated by contracts that formalize and verbalize the behaviour of the partners. Everything must be stated, promised, announced and carefully described before being accomplished. "" Art, for Proust, is a privileged world to be reached after much struggle whereupon ideal essences are revealed, whereas, for Masoch, there is an art of 1095 Deleuze's Masoch, `finds in works of art the source ideal itself. the realizing The art of ideal love. and inspiration of his loves. '1096 The way in which Masoch defines his idealism or "supersensualism" seems at first sight rather trivial. Why believe in the idea of a perfect world? (... ) What we need to do is to "put on wings" and escape into the world of dreams. He does not believe in negating or destroying

'09' Deleuze, PS, p. 77. 1092 Ìn every respect (... ) the sadistic "instructor" stands in contrast "educator. "' Deleuze, SM, p. 19. 1093Coldness and Cruelty is the title of Deleuze's essay on Masoch. 1094Deleuze, SM, p. 18.

to the

masochistic

1095'The ascent from the human body to the work of art and from the work of art to the Idea must take place under the shadow of the whip. ' Deleuze, SM, p. 22. 1096Deleuze, SM, p. 69. 264

the world nor in idealizing it: what he does is to disavow and thus to suspend it, in order to secure an ideal which is itself suspended in fantasy. He questions the validity of existing reality in order to create a pure ideal reality. '1097 Reality in masochism is disavowed and suspended in an ideal fantasy, which is a suitable synonym for Proust's formula: real without being actual, ideal 1098 being The only way in which the masochist can believe in without abstract. this world is to believe in it as a promise, `(... ) the art of masochism is the art of fantasy. ""' `The masochist needs to believe that he is dreaming even when he is not, '100 therein lays the art peculiar to masochism. A `delirious formation. '101 The artifice, illusion or fantasy is entirely necessary. The masochistic ideal is a and statuesque ideal, promised and thus postponed, perhaps,

suspended

bordering the fantastical world inhabited by a fan? Like the fan (AND Proust ... AND

the knight of faith), the masochist is an, àmateur, ' a stammerer in ...

life and love. The truth is that I am an amateur in life. (... ) In love, too, I am an amateur who never gets beyond the first brushstrokes, the first act of the play. But why talk in superlatives, as though beauty could ever be surpassed? It is enough to say that she is beautiful and that I love her madly, passionately, with feverish intensity, as one can only love

"'`" Deleuze, SM, pp. 32-3. 1098See: Deleuze, SM, p. 72 1099Deleuze, SM, p. 66. 1100Deleuze, 101 Deleuze,

SM, p. 72. CC, p. 54. ?.(5

a woman who responds to one with a petrified smile, ever calm and ' 102 I her unchanging. adore absolutely. Masoch's, `characters often serve their amorous apprenticeship with a cold statue, by the light of the moon. 1103Twilight of the Idols? And the objects (artworks, marble statues, furs, boots etc. ), populating such a masochistic and fantastical world are fetishes, which, itself, is reminiscent of the demonic, jealous, Proustian love - `the amorous form of homage to the object. ' Jealous and masochistic lovers restore to the chosen object whatever it is they believe the object lacks: perfidious fidelity (articulating `that which he does not say in what he says'). Fetishism is the art par excellence of an ideal love. Masoch writes beautifully of such an ideal love (echoing Spinoza, perhaps), "(... ) You modern men, you children of reason, cannot begin to appreciate love as pure bliss and divine serenity; indeed this kind of love is disastrous for men like you, for as soon as you try to be natural you become vulgar. To you Nature is an enemy. You have made devils of the smiling gods of Greece and you have turned me into a creature of evil. You may cast anathema on me, curse me or offer yourself in sacrifice like frenzied bacchantes at my altar, but if one of you so much as dares to kiss my crimson lips, he must make a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in sackcloth and ashes, and pray until the cursed staff grows green again, while around me roses, violets and myrtle bloom everlastingly. Their fragrance is not for you. Stay in your northern mists and Christian incense and leave our pagan world 1102Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, pp. 152-3 (See also: p. 154, P. 157, P. 158, P. 161, P. 206). Masoch shares this fascination for amateurism with Proust, see: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 185. 1103Deleuze, SM, p. 53. `They danced by the light of the moon, ' is the concluding line from Edward Lear's, 1871, poem, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

766

to rest under the lava and rubble. Do not dig us up; Pompeii was not built for you, nor were our villas, our baths and our temples. You do not need the gods - they would freeze to death in your climate!

"1104

Love as `bliss, ' beatitude and/or blessedness, is not for everyone! Demonic or `pagan' idealism is frozen, suspended or interrupted to put it another way. This is source of both the coldness and of, `the cruelty of the Ideal, ' specific to masochism. ' 105 Deleuze, likens masochistic

love, to the àscesis'1°6 and

'chasteness'107 of, `courtly love, ' `the exchange of hearts, the test or "assay. "" 108 It shares the knight of faith's sobriety. It is an òrdeal' (Abraham? ). 109One must be worthy of it (Stoics? ). It also helps one understand why a masochistic love is both an art and a pedagogy, which is due in no small part to its being a 110 for love. laws `(... ) the contract represents i. generating contractual matter, e., the ideal form of the love-relationship and its necessary precondition. '""

How

so?

Masochists,

Deleuze informs his reader, are neither possessors

of nor

possessed by a god or demon, but live in a contractual alliance with them. `Possession is the sadist's particular form of madness just as the pact is the

1104Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, p. 145. 1105See: Deleuze, SM, p. 55. 1106`Now, it is well known that courtly love implies tests which postpone pleasure, or at least postpone the ending of coitus. This is certainly not a method of deprivation [lack]. (... ) The process of desire is called `joy', not lack or demand. (... ) Ascesis, why not? Ascesis has always been the condition of desire, not its disciplining or prohibition. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, pp. 1001. 107 The philosopher, according to Deleuze, 'is also supremely sober and chaste. ' Deleuze, LS, p. 130. 110"Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 156. 1109Deleuze, CC, p. 54. ""' Àccording to Masoch, it is essentially the work of art and the contract the transition from a lower nature to the great Nature, which is sentimental Deleuze, SM, p. 76. 1" Deleuze, SM, p. 75. 767

that makes possible and self-conscious. '

0112 The pact is altogether different, unnatural. The madness or masochist's. sensation specific to masochists is analogous to Ahab's becoming or affect, wherein, à kind of contract of alliance, a hideous pact, is made, ' ìnspiring illicit unions or abominable loves. ' Beyond Ahab's monomania, then, is Ahab's masochism. If this is true, then, and in light of my earlier definition, I ought to ask: What becomes of the relation between masochist and fan(atic)? Can it be said that masochists are not fanatical? Categorically no! For Masoch's text, Venus in Furs, is littered with references to the protagonist's fanaticism. 113 There exists a line connecting masochists and fan(atic)s. Rather than reducing fanaticism - and fandom by association to possession by a god or demon only, one ought to increase its definition to incorporate contracts, alliances and encounters - both a sadistic fanaticism and a masochistic fanaticism. A transition is thus performed from a reactive or ordinary account of fanaticism, whose essence is tied to a possessed thing and by extension an external cause (a property of fanaticism not its essence, properly speaking with Spinoza), toward a more active and extraordinary variant, whose essence is to be sought elsewhere, outside itself yet precisely in itself (real without being actual, ideal without being abstract). Masochistic fanaticism actively pursues education, in contrast to sadistic fanaticism, which passively undergoes instruction. This is, therefore, to claim masochism - and its delirious or excessive art of ideal love - as being in the world but not of it.

1112Deleuze, SM, pp. 20-1. 1113 (... ) he gazed up at her with the fanatical, burning eyes of a martyr. ' Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, p. 148. "'I am more in love with you than ever. Even if you abuse my devotion I shall only adore you the more fanatically. "' Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, p. 213. "'Look at me, " she says, "with your deep fanatical look. "' Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, p. 241.

26R

Deleuze, himself, speaks of, `zealously embracing, ' the law and of an, èxcess of zeal, ' which twists the law. ' 114One must go further, one must go further. ' 115 Masochists no less attend to details than Proust's jealous lovers interpret signs. `The masochist is obsessed, '116 a single affect is fixed upon at the expense of others - the madness of monomania. Masochistic fanaticism or zeal is comic, à humorous acceleration'""

and provocation. The art is one of caricature. ' 118The

fan hides behind the mask of the fanatic.

`What we call humor -

in

contradistinction to the upward movement of irony toward a transcendent higher ""9 The from its is downward law the to consequences. a principle movement absurdity of the law is both revealed and subverted by attending to it fanatically, obsessively,

' 120 Masochists and fan(atic)s, and masochistically.

`humorist[s]

[and] logician[s] of consequences, ' here at least, laugh a great deal. 1" This excessive and ideal love is what Spinoza refers to as, `mad or insane, ' which provokes `pure joy' and laughter, not sadness and derision (resentment). It is contagious. Deleuze, as must have become clear to my reader, consistently privileges this tropical perversion, this demoniacal madness, `the well-founded delirium or true love. '

1114Deleuze,

SM, p. 88. See also: Deleuze, SM, p. 92. `The pervert is someone who takes the artifice seriously and plays the game to the hilt. ' Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 35. 1115 `( ) the downward movement of humor which seeks to reduce the law to its furthest consequences. ' Deleuze, SM, p. 88. 1116Deleuze, SM, p. 94. "" Deleuze, SM, p. 92. "18 'One could even say, as a general rule, that in masochism the contract is caricatured in order to emphasize its ambiguous destination. ' Deleuze, SM, p. 92.

1119Deleuze, SM, p. 88. 120 'A close examination of masochistic fantasies or rites reveals that while they bring into play the very strictest application of the law, the result in every case is the opposite of what might be expected (thus whipping, far from punishing or preventing an erection, provokes and ensures it). It is a demonstration of the law's absurdity. ' Deleuze, SM, p. 88. 1121Deleuze, SM, p. 89. 'Interpreting a text, I think, always comes back to evaluating its humor. A great author is someone who laughs a lot. ' Deleuze, TR, p. 41. 769

The masochistic ideal is, then, a fantasy that suspends love and desexualizes the libido. According to Deleuze, this masochistic desexualization operates as, à process of idealization, which can perhaps constitute the power of the imagination of the ego, ' not as a process of, ìdentification, which would constitute the power of thought in the superego. '122 Deleuze emphasizes the idealising side of the ego-ideal, which I, too, have done in Chapter One of this thesis. The masochistic ego, Deleuze argues against Freud, ìs only apparently crushed

by the superego. What insolence and humor, what irrepressible

defiance and ultimate triumph lie hidden behind an ego that claims to be so 123 " The masochist has this much is The the ego a strategy. weak. weakness of in common with both the powerless but powerful knight of faith, as interpreted by Rose, and the figure of the fan as I understand it. The weakness of the masochist's (fan's) ego is a cover, and the (fanatical) superego exists only in caricature. idealization,

The ego-ideal of identification is replaced by an ideal-ego of 124 freed from In a certain the superego. now

sense, love

overcomes hate - though one must not forget that masochistic love is an interrupted

love. ' 125The desexualization

suspension

of the libido, interrupted

particular to masochism, pleasure,

becomes

the,

i.e., the òbject of

sexualization, ' and is, in a certain sense, `resexualized. i126 Chasteness and ascetic sobriety are, in Masochism, taken to a new level of intensity, twisted toward extraordinary ends, making use of both excess and powerlessness. Fantasy or the art of ideal love, themselves suspended or interrupted, are 1122Deleuze, SM, p. 116. 1123Deleuze, SM, p. 124. `Humor is the triumph of the ego over the superego. ' Deleuze, SM, p. 125. 1124See: Deleuze, SM, pp. 126-7. 1125See: Deleuze, SM, pp. 93-4. "2'' See: Deleuze,

SM, pp. 116-7.

270

resexualized.

Masochistic idealisation is resexualization, which, `takes place

instantaneously,

in a sort of leap. 91127 The art of ideal love is, in conclusion,

perverse and uncompromising - both violent and extreme: `taste the whip. '128 Knights of filth? Beyond introducing my reader to both Spinoza's and Deleuze's understanding of affect (about which I will have more to say later), I have critically surveyed four different loves, which Deleuze himself investigates; intellectual love, faith in love, jealous love, and ideal love - genealogically mapping their multiple lines of descent and tying them to specific individuals; Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Proust and Masoch. Similarities and differences between these four loves and fandom, as I understand

it, have also been inquired into. The connections

and

disjunctions of the latter triumvirate of loves to Spinoza's various loves have also been discussed. I have exposed the simple manner by which so-called `divine' love - as witnessed in both Spinoza and Kierkegaard - may pass into `demonic' love - as witnessed in both Proust and Masoch. Indeed, Deleuze, in a double gesture

of overturning and displacing,

consistently

privileges this

movement of sinister paganisation and/or profanation enacted by this excessive affect and/or sensation. It appears to me as though Deleuze overturns divine love into demonic

love, and displaces

its goodwill to ill will. Deleuze

wants to

retain the services of both love and hate. Deleuze, then, has `made devils of the smiling gods. ' Deleuze the artisanal-philosopher-fan

or Deleuze as Spinoza's

devil rather than Deleuze the fanatical philosopher or Spinoza as Deleuze's god describes this shift of registers. The truth of intellectual love or faith in love, I believe, is that it easily passes into (if it isn't irredeemably tainted by) fanaticism, 127 Deleuze, SM, p. 118. 1128Masoch cited in: Deleuze, SM, p. 223. ?.71

madness, absurdity, delirium and/or perversion. Jealous love, ideal love, and fanatical love, therefore, are the truths of intellectual love. In short, Deleuze falls short of Spinoza's intellectual love, betraying it by preferring the dichotomy: love and hate (vacillation of mind). That which I have so far rendered visible stands as a testament to the importance of love to Deleuze's own philosophy and cannot, then, be underestimated. Love, for Deleuze, comes from elsewhere, and is both extreme and violent (demonic rather than divine, "that ole devil called love"), though this force and constraint is entirely necessary if one is to get thought thinking. Yet again, this is not the whole truth about (Deleuzian) love. The five shorter sections that follow provide extensive and exhaustive conceptual commentary, invocation and exegesis of all the remaining occasions wherein Deleuze discusses

love, passion and admiration. The five sections are arranged

chronologically, by date of original publication. The final part serves to conclude this essay.

4apassion to think, 0129"'the Passion of thought"7130

Deleuze's, 1968, magnum opus, Difference and Repetition, brings together many of the heterogeneous themes I have thus far introduced only, it will be shown, to further complicate matters. To begin at the end, Deleuze claims in his `Conclusion' that the agency which forces one to think, the violence undergone by thought, is, `stupidity. ' As I have 1129Deleuze, DR, p. 139. 1130'Paradoxes are recreational only when they are considered as initiatives of thought. They are not recreational when they are considered as "the Passion of thought, " or as discovering what can only be thought, what can only be spoken, despite the fact that it is both ineffable and unthinkable. ' Deleuze, LS, p. 74. 2.7?.

love both force is the this of and nonthought. preserve shown also already Thus, one must conclude that for Deleuze love is equivalent to stupidity, or love is synonymous with nonthought. If so, the love of thought would translate into the nonthought of thought, or worse the stupidity of thought. That force or violence which is overlooked, passed over and/or left out. Love, now understood as a certain type of either stupidity or nonthought, would be the truth of thought, that which is `the most intimate within thought and yet the absolute outside. ' For if thought thinks only when constrained or forced to do so, if it remains stupid so long as nothing forces it to think, is it not also the existence of stupidity which forces it to think, precisely the fact that it does not think so long as nothing forces it to do so? Recall Heidegger's statement: `What gives us most cause for thought is the fact that we do not yet think. ' Thought is the highest determination, confronting stupidity as though face to face with the indeterminate adequate to it. Stupidity (not error) constitutes the greatest weakness of thought, but also the source of its highest power in that which forces it to think. ' 131 Thoughts weakness is also its strength (the power of powerlessness - the love of thought -

intellectual love), inasmuch as the tension of, or constraint

undergone by, thought remains entirely necessary. I have already shown how the productive paradox of love lies in the fact that one only has a choice in questions of love when one is constrained. Thinking, for Deleuze, is less to do with thought than nonthought, stupidity, and love - that which interferes with it. Thinking, much like love, is both forced and constrained. If either force or 113' Deleuze,

DR, p. 275. `(... ) the mechanism Deleuze, DR, p. 155.

of stupidity

77 3

is the highest finality

of thought. '

constraint are lacking then thought does not think. Thought, therefore, is stupid according

to Deleuze's

logic. However, the mere existence

of stupidity

(Deleuze's, `food for thought, ' Heidegger's, `cause for thought') forces thought to think, therefore, stupidity (love, nonthought) is a necessary condition of thinking. A thought, thing or being, `transmits a shock to the other faculties, shaking them from their torpor,

stirring the memory and constraining

thought. " 132 For

Deleuze's Spinoza the violence undergone by thought is intellectual love (of God). For Deleuze's

Kierkegaard the violence

undergone

by thought

is

passionate faith in love (movement of the infinite). For Deleuze's Proust the violence undergone by thought is jealous, delirious, love. For Deleuze's Masoch the violence undergone by thought is ideal love. For Hirschhorn, as I have argued in Chapter One, the violence undergone by thought is stupidity (and art, of course). Yet, according to Deleuze there exists another form of violence, another, `shock to thought, 1133 which wrests it from dogmatic slumber and sets it on a course, and it is to this form - revealed in the sub-title of this section - that I will now turn. In Chapter III of Difference and Repetition, entitled, The Image of Thought, ' Deleuze talks of, à passion to think. '134What is meant by this aphoristic phrase is, I think, that thought only thinks when it is compelled and thus constrained, that thinking

(and here Deleuze's language owes a debt of gratitude to

Proust's), is only àbsolutely necessary, ' when it is 'fortuitous. '135 As is all too often the case, Deleuze merely uses yet another new term to write the same old

1132Deleuze, DR, p. 236. 1133Deleuze, C2, p. 156. 1134Deleuze, DR, p. 139. 1135Deleuze, DR, p. 139. `(... ) it is the fortuitousness or the contingency of the encounter guarantees the necessity of that which it forces to be thought. ' Deleuze, DR, p. 145. 274

which

idea, for there seems to be little separating the function of love understood as both force and constraint from the function of passion. Passion, Deleuze argues, understood as, àn original violence inflicted upon thought, " 136puts movement

into thought, forcing it to think.

Is passion,

thus, somehow

structurally primary (òriginal'), does it precede love in his hierarchy, or is Deleuze guilty of merely recasting the terms of the debate without changing the debate itself? Thought is primarily trespass and violence, the enemy, and nothing presupposes philosophy: everything begins with misosophy. Do not count upon thought to ensure the relative necessity of what it thinks. Rather, count upon the contingency of the encounter with that which forces thought to raise up and educate the absolute necessity of an act of thought or a passion to think. (... ) Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter. What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon. It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder,

love, hatred, suffering.

In whichever

tone, its primary

137ý'`ý' is it be that characteristic can only sensed. Stupid thought, for Deleuze, is the foe, and one must hate, not befriend, it. One must drive out the devil by the power of the devil. A perfectly reasonable request! A mediocre love that has the potential to transform

into hate, as I have

shown in the Proust section, is more powerful in relation to thought than a great friendship. One must go further than philosophy. One cannot rely on either thought's

goodwill


DR, p. 139. DR, p. 139.

or

its

necessity.

775

Rather

than

naively

suffering

this

presupposition, Deleuze opts for his own, devilish, variation on the theme of stupidity preferring something akin to Alliez's aforementioned, `the affirmative irruption of affective contingency, ' coupled to love and passion, stupidity and nonthought - fortuity and force - which in turn puts into motion something like a pedagogy of passion, an amorous apprenticeship. Passion forces one to think, but cannot in itself be thought. The encounter evades determination for, much like the affect, ìt may be grasped, ' but, ìt can only be sensed. ' Passion is imperceptible, i.e., not an object of recognition / Passion is such an affective tone, which, either stupidly or

representation.

138 uncompromisingly, runs counter to the presuppositions of given opinion, i.e., common sense. 739The latter sense is the, `pre-philosophical and natural Image of

thought, '

à

ready-made

thought, 1140 presupposed

by,

`conceptual

" 14' Deleuze's enemy here at least. Passion, albeit a thought: philosophical sensation,

is not a common

sense. Passion,

so to speak, forces the hand of

this, `dogmatic, orthodox or moral, '142 image of thought, in much the same way as a masochistic,

demonic or fanatical

embracing

of the

law and its

consequences twists it. Passion engenders thinking in thought. ' 143Passion is, à compulsion to think. '"" Deleuze's fundamental effort is, therefore, `(... ) of giving èmotional fullness' or `passion' back to the intellectual

1138 ,

(... ) passionate,

since they deny that which,

process, )1145 or, as Alliez

it is said, nobody can deny. ' Deleuze,

OR, p.

130. 1139Or, 'a ratio, a Cogitatio natura universalis. ' Deleuze, OR, p. 144. 1140Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 51. 1141Deleuze, OR, p. 131. 1142Deleuze, OR, p. 131. 1143'To think is to create - there is no other creation - but to create is first of all to engender 'thinking' in thought. ' Deleuze, OR, p. 147. 1144Deleuze, OR, p. 147. 145Deleuze, C2, p. 158. 776

phrases it, `to think sensation as the universal passion of thought. '146This is, then, to reconstruct Deleuze's philosophy through passion. Philosophy (thought), for Deleuze, needs a nonphilosophy (nonthought): 147the violence of passion = the outside of thought or, à thought without Image. 71148 `Thought is like the Vampire; it has no image. '149Or, without the gothic horror, ìt is an image which takes as its object, relations, symbolic acts, intellectual feelings. ' Intellectual feelings, `which have their own existence outside of thought. '1150This is how Deleuze restores passion to the intellectual process, under the guise of ìntellectual feelings. ' The two: feeling and intellect, meet in a disjunctive

synthesis -

they are neither identical nor mutually exclusive.

Passionate thought or thinking passionately is just such an intellectual feeling, which seemingly runs counter to my earlier assertion that passion could not be thought. Borrowing from Spinoza's lexicon, one may speculate that passion can be intuited (third kind of knowledge), this feeling or sensation is intellectual, intelligible, yet its own essence lies elsewhere. Deleuze's aim, here at least, is to destructure thought via passion. In its extremity, precisely, in its, `claws of absolute necessity, 11151 passion both provokes and undermines the common sense moral presupposition that there exists both, `good will on the part of thinker and an upright nature on the part of thought. '152 1 have already shown displacement

in

Deleuze's

how love, identically,

philosophy.

146 Alliez, SW, p. 69. 147 See: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 41, p. 218. 148 Deleuze, DR, p. 132. 1149Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 377. 150 Deleuze, Cl, p. 198. "s' Deleuze, DR, p. 139. 1152Deleuze, DR, p. 131. 277

The

impassioned

performs this individual

is,

`[s]omeone who neither allows himself to be represented

nor wishes to

represent anything. Not an individual endowed with good will and a natural capacity for thought, but an individual full of ill will who does not manage to think, either naturally or conceptually. 7153The impassioned individual, at the mercy of encounters imperceptible

and in the grip of decisions,

is -

for Deleuze -

inasmuch as they are neither an object nor a subject of

recognition / representation only. For Deleuze, then, thought does not begin with a lovers (phi/ia) goodwill or friendly love but, rather, with a haters (misia) ill will or unfriendly love (one must learn to love, it ought to be recalled). Violence and passion rather than harmony and love. Thoughts `dark regions, ' which I have shown Deleuze privileges, are here referred to as, `the dark precursor. '""

Passion is the dark precursor of

thinking, the forerunner - passion comes before thinking. This is the type of excessive force or 'intensity'155 necessary to get thought thinking. The encountered object that may only be grasped as sensation, be it Socrates, a temple or a demon, is what Deleuze calls, `the being of the sensible, ' and is, ìn a certain sense the imperceptible. '156 It is true that on the path which leads to that which is to be thought, all begins

with sensibility.

Between

the intensive

and thought,

it is

always by means of an intensity that thought comes to us. The privilege of sensibility as origin appears in the fact that, in an encounter, what forces sensation and that which can only be sensed are one and the same thing. (... ) It is not the gods which we 1153Deleuze, OR, p. 130. 1154Deleuze, OR, p. 145. 155 Deleuze, OR, p. 144. 156 Deleuze, OR, p. 140. 278

encounter.

(... ) What we encounter are the demons, the sign-

bearers: powers of the leap, the interval, the intensive and the instant.

71157

Spinoza's system depends on a mode ascending three kinds of knowledge, Kierkegaard had argued that one must be lead or lured into truthful thought, Proust privileges a search, Masoch values contractual obligations, and Deleuze, too, argues that one must follow an education. The name of this way or path is passion. Deleuze makes of passion both an intensive force and a sensation. Deleuze's philosophy gives rise to a pedagogy of passion. It gets thought thinking (force, violence, intensity) but it also thinks - no matter how stupidly (constraint,

intellectual

feeling, intuition). Deleuzian

passion appears to be little

more than the demonisation of the Spinozist affect ('it is not the gods'), both may be understood as sensations and forces (passages or passings). Passion marks the beginning of an apprenticeship (the sensibility way). Sensation gives rise to an, èducation of the senses, ' from which dark region emerges a ' 1513 sensibility. `We never know in advance how someone will learn: by means of what loves someone becomes good at Latin, what encounters make them a philosopher, or in what dictionaries they learn to think. 159 Learning Latin with love - `the affirmative irruption of affective contingency. ' On the one hand love is once more aligned with a pedagogy, with a work, with the necessary role of temperate

educator for this dark precursor. Passion, on the other hand,

describes the genesis of thought. Passion gets us to ideas but love is still

1157Deleuze, OR, pp. 144-5. "ss Deleuze, OR, p. 165. 1159Deleuze, OR, p. 165. 279

required to do something with them. It is as if Deleuze, here at least, grounds love in passion. Passion must come first, as a force from the outside of thought. This violence or intensity gives rise to a sensation (affect), which may be grasped (intellectual feeling). Once harnessed this affect requires direction, undergoes an apprenticeship, one must make use of this powerlessness educate the excess. It is only when this point is reached that one may speak of

love. Being in the grip of a decision, being in love, would then rely on a decision to love, itself conditioned

by passion. Rather than position Spinoza as Deleuze's

god (Deleuze's fanaticism for Spinoza), it would, following this excursus, seem more appropriate to repeat and thus confirm my view that Deleuze is Spinoza's devil (Deleuze as artisanal-philosopher-fan

of Spinoza). For coupled to this

ascension of passion is a descension of love.

Technicians of Desire

The next extended theoretical engagement with love, passion and affect takes place

in

Deleuze's

co-authored,

1972,

first

volume

of

Capitalism

and

Schizophrenia entitled, Anti-Oedipus. Early in the text one learns that schizophrenia

(here understood

as a joyful

process to be affirmed not as a clinical entity to be negated160) is synonymous with love, `schizophrenia is like love, '161and later one witnesses a reaffirmation or confirmation of this conjunction, `[i]t is not the neurotic stretched out on the couch who speaks to us of love, of its force and its despair, but the mute stroll

1160Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 113. 1161Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 5. 2.Rn

The schizophrenic's catatonia (a rift on Spinoza's amnesiac of the schizo. 91162 Spanish poet? ), "'This affect is too strong for me, "'"63 is like the power of love, witnessed in Deleuze's Proust and the incredible feeling of an unknown nature witnessed in Deleuze's Ahab. It is evident, then, that for Deleuze and Guattari the relation between love and schizophrenia, as apprenticeships or processes, is an invested not a cynical one. Cynicism has said, or claimed to have said, everything there is to say about love: that it is a matter of a copulation of social and organic machines

on a large scale (at bottom,

love is in the organs;

bottom, love is a matter of economic determinations,

at

money). But

what is properly cynical is to claim a scandal where there is none to be found, and to pass for bold while lacking boldness. (... ) For the prime evidence points to the fact that desire does not take as its object persons or things, but the entire surroundings that it traverses, the vibrations and flows of every sort to which it is joined, introducing therein breaks and captures. (... ) The truth is that sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the bourgeoisie fucks the proletariat; and so on. (... ) The persons to whom our loves are dedicated, including the parental persons, intervene only as points of connection, of disjunction, of conjunction of flows whose libidinal tenor of a properly unconscious investment they translate. (... ) we always make love with worlds. And

1162Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 292. 1163Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 356. 29 1

our love addresses itself to this libidinal property of our lover, to either close himself off or open up to more spacious worlds. "' Love, for Deleuze and Guattari, is not reducible to an either/or

formula. Either

love is to do with biology, with `vitalism, ' `proteins' and òrgans. ' Or love is to do with sociology, with `mechanism, ' `money' and 'society. '165 Love is to be sought elsewhere, in connective, disjunctive or conjunctive flows and vibrations. Loves, apparently, are translations of unconscious investments, forces that have the potential to be both, `coercive, ' and, `revolutionary. ' Love can be coerced, which Yet, it may also offer explains how, `Hitler got the fascists sexually aroused. 91166 ' 167 What confidence in the power of love, analogous to something revolutionary. that witnessed in Spinoza. The task of these technicians of desire is to qualify this libidinal tenor (not terror). As I have already shown, loves are - for Deleuze following Proust - both `fortuitous and inevitable, ' a necessary contingency and, `[w]hat we love is always a certain mulatto - male or female. ' 1168Love is always hybrid, a complex, knot or bloc and, `[m]aking love is not just becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand. '169 Making love with worlds is what counts, not making love with subjects. Also in the Proustian manner is the 1164Deleuze and Guattari, AD, 1165See: Deleuze and Guattari, "66 Deleuze and Guattari, AD, 116' Ìt is merely a question

pp. 292-4. AD, p. 291. p. 293.

of ascertaining that our choices in matters of love are at the crossroads of "vibrations, " (... ) of flows that cross through a society, entering and leaving it. (... ) A love is not reactionary or revolutionary, but it is the index of the reactionary or revolutionary character of the social investments of the libido. ' Deleuze and Guattari, AD, p. 352. 'There are no revolutionary or reactionary loves, which is to say that loves are not defined by their objects, any more than by the sources and aims of the desires and the drives. But there are forms of love that are the indices of the reactionary or the revolutionary character of the investment made by the libido of a sociohistorical or geographical field, from which the loved and desired beings receive their definition. ' Deleuze and Guattari, AD, pp. 365-6. 1168Deleuze and Guattari, AD, p. 316. `(... ) it is certain that neither men nor women are clearly defined personalities, but rather vibrations, flows, schizzes, and "knots. "' Deleuze and Guattari, AD, p. 362. 1169Deleuze and Guattari, AD, p. 296.

2X2

following, `(... ) the unconscious libidinal investment is what causes us to look for our interest in one place rather than another, to fix our aims on a given path, convinced that this is where our chances lie - since love drives us on. '17° Love opens up worlds and closes off worlds. Love both directs and is directed: à multiple connectedness. '"" Love drives

us on - one must go further, one must go further -

"'accelerate[s]

the

process"" 172 and

orientates

the

unconscious

it,

libidinal

investment that constitutes desire. Love is the path of desire, the way of desire and, again, love can only be read after the event, in the unnatural alliances it has formed (be they Hitler or Deleuze). Desire is force, or this ùnconscious libidinal investment. ' Desire is, therefore, equivalent to that dark precursor: passion. For, love is not desire, `[d]esire is in itself not a desire to love, but a force to love, a virtue that gives and produces, that engineers. '173 Desire requires mechanics and amateur `handymen, '"'' `the

ability

to

rearrange

fragments

practicing bricolage, which is,

continually

in

new

patterns

or

configurations. '175 The function of desire (passion) is to create connections, disjunctions

and conjunctions (new possibilities of life? ). The analysts or

technicians of such a desire are, likewise, handymen, `[t]he schizoanalyst is a mechanic. '176

1170Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 345. 117' Deleuze, N, p. 155. 1172Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 240. (Deleuze and Guattari take this from Nietzsche. ) 1173Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 333. `The unconscious does not speak, it engineers. It is not but productive. (... ) How it works is the sole question. ' Deleuze expressive or representative, and Guattari, AO, p. 180. 1174Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 1. 175 Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 7. `This drawing together, this reweaving is what Joyce called re-embodying. ' Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 43. 1176Deleuze is not an interpreter, even less a and Guattari, AO, p. 322. `The schizoanalyst theatre director; he is a mechanic. ' Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 338.

7.RI

The reason Deleuze and Guattari give for relying on such technological jargon is that what is at issue in matters of love and desire is neither meaning nor signification but use and function. Deleuze and Guattari are enthusiasts but not of the signifier. ""

Their enthusiasm' 178is for an, ìntensive way of reading, in

contact with what's outside the book, (... ) [which] is reading with love. '179 The question posed by desire is not "What does it mean? " but rather "How

does

it

work? ' How

do

these

machines,

these

desiring

machines, work - yours and mine? (... ) What are the connections, what are the disjunctions, the conjunctions, what use is made of the syntheses? It represents nothing, but it produces. It means nothing, but it works. ' 180 As this text is, resolutely, written from the side of schizophrenia against both the church Oedipal man built, i.e., psychoanalysis, and the state Oedipal man engendered, i.e., fascism, it is not altogether surprising to learn that this desire is potentially,

`revolutionary.

And that does

not at all mean

that desire

is

something other than sexuality, but that sexuality and love do not live in the bedroom of Oedipus. (... ) Desire does not "want" revolution, it is revolutionary in its own right, as though involuntarily, by wanting what it wants. '"$' Anti-Oedipus works, apparently, in precisely this way - against imperialism, Òedipus is always colonization pursued by other means, it is the interior colony. '182 The

1177See: Deleuze and Guattari, TP, 66. p.

1178On the relation between enthusiasm and revolution, which is taken from Kant, see: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, pp. 100-1. See also: Deleuze, CC, p. 120. Enthusiasm is also considered to be at the heart of Nietzsche's overabundance, see: Deleuze, Gilles [1965], `Nietzsche, ' in: Deleuze, Gilles [2001], Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, Tr. Anne Boyman, New York, Zone Books, p. 60. 1179Deleuze, N, pp. 8-9. See also: Deleuze, CC, p. 68. 118"Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 109. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 290-1. "x' Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 116.

1182Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 170. 2X4

militancy

or uncompromising

character

of enthusiasts,

lovers,

admirers,

impassioned fans and desirous schizos consists in resisting, ìmperial command in a creative way. '"3 `(... ) [Y]ou can't fight oedipal secretions except by fighting yourself, by experimenting on yourself, by opening yourself up to love and desire (rather than the whining need to be loved that leads everyone to the psychoanalyst). Non-oedipal love is pretty hard work. " 184This is the same call to turn ìnto ourselves, upon ourselves, ' in effect to decide to and be gripped by love while simultaneously learning to love. What other way is there for creative resistance than the way, life or labour of love? 185 So many instances of powerlessness

both overturning and displacing power. `Resistance fighters, '

Deleuze stoically speculates, àre usually in love with life. '186 There is a whole world of difference between the schizo and the revolutionary: the difference between the one who escapes, and the one who knows how to make what he is escaping escape. (... ) The schizo is not revolutionary,

but the schizophrenic

process - in terms

of which the schizo is merely the interruption, or the continuation in the void - is the potential for revolution. To those who say that escaping is not courageous, we answer: what is not escape and social investment at the same time? The choice is between one of two poles, the paranoiac counterescape

that motivates

all the

1183Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio [2000], Empire, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, p. 364. 1184Deleuze, N, p. 10. 1185In an interview about the importance of Godard's films on Deleuze's own work, the latter says, `the very notion of labour arbitrarily sets one area of activity apart, cuts work off from its relation to love, to creativity, to production even. ' Deleuze, N, p. 40. Of relevance, here, is the opening proposition from Godard's, 1982, film, Passion, "we love to work or work to love. " 1186Deleuze, TR, p. 145. 725

conformist,

reactionary,

and

fascisizing

investments,

and

the

schizophrenic escape convertible into a revolutionary investment. "$' Love, like schizophrenia, is just such creative potential, `since love drives us on. ' But, what is the tenor of this love? Love is obviously a touch fanatical, obsessive and jealous, paradoxical (necessarily contingent) and masochistic. Loves are interrupted and broken no less than schizos. One learns here that love is also celibate and disinterested (courtly). Desire, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is not eros but agape. 188 Deleuze, singing in tune with the song of songs, is sick with eros. 189 There is a schizophrenic experience of intensive quantities in their pure state, to a point that is almost unbearable -a

celibate misery

and glory experienced to the fullest, like a cry suspended between life and death, an intense feeling of transition, states of pure, naked intensity stripped of all shape and form. These are often described as hallucinations

and

delirium,

but

the

basic

phenomenon

of

hallucination (/ see, / hear) and the basic phenomenon of delirium (/ think

) presuppose an / fee/ at an even deeper level, which gives ...

hallucinations their object and thought delirium its content an "I feel that I am becoming woman, " "that I am becoming a god, " and so on, which is neither delirious nor hallucinatory,

but will project the

hallucination or internalize the delirium. Delirium and hallucination are secondary in relation to the really primary emotion, which in the beginning

only experiences

intensities,

118' Deleuze

becomings,

transitions.

and Guattari, AO, p. 341. See: Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 277. 1188See: Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 347, p. 21. 1189'(we are sick with Eros, because Eros is himself objectively sick: what has love become that a man or woman should emerge from it so disabled, pitiful and suffering, and act and react as badly at the beginning as at the end, in a corrupt society? )' Deleuze, C2, p. 6. 2R6

Where do these pure intensities come from? They come from the two preceding forces, repulsion and attraction, and from the opposition of these two forces. 119° But just what is this `pure, ' `really primary emotion? ' What else are love and hate than affects of joy and sadness, i.e., forces of attraction and repulsion? On this point, `(... ) masochists, schizophrenics, lovers - all (... ) pay homage to Spinoza. '191 One must learn to love, one must learn delirium, and one must learn idealisation. `For the problem is not to go beyond the bounds of reason, it is to cross the bounds of unreason as a victor: then one can speak of "good mental health, " even if everything ends badly. )1192Such, ìntensive emotion, ' Deleuze and Guattari term, `the affect. 11193 The affect is equivalent

both are imperceptible

movements, minglings and sensations

to the Ì feel, '

resulting in

'affective critical entities. 11194 Again, desire (and/or passion), ìs an affect, as The affect is the joyful, `stammer, tremble, cry, or even opposed to a feeling. 11195 [song], ' of the celibate (knights of faith / filth). ' 196A cry `suspended between life and death, ' an interrupted song, in the world but not of it. Nijinsky was in love when he felt that he was becoming a god, in much the same way as Schreber felt he was becoming woman. ' 197Both men decided to love and felt the full force of being gripped by a decision.

1190Deleuze and Guattari, AO, pp. 18-9. 19' Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 154. 1192Deleuze, CC, p. 20. 1193Deleuze and Guattari, AO, p. 84. 1194Deleuze, CC, p. 124. 1195Deleuze, TR, p. 130. 1196Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 176. 1197See: Deleuze and Guattari, AO, pp. 76-7, pp. 84-5. `Love is an intermingling of bodies that can be represented by a heart with an arrow through it, by a union of souls etc. ' Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 81.

2X7

The Letter of Love: A Minor Excursus I

In `Chapter Four' of their 1975 book on Kafka Deleuze and Guattari turn their The way in which attention to love-letters as a, `component of expression. 11198 these letters function

is both, `perverse, ' and, `diabolical, ' as the letters

themselves become a `substitute for love. ' This is, therefore, a bookish love in equal measure both post(poned), interrupted and fantastic. As the poet Donne once wrote, `more than kisses, letters mingle souls. '199 I have already noted the

importance (anonymous) letters have in motivating and maintaining masochistic love affairs. Indeed, I claim that the letter of love - be it Masoch's or Kafka's borders

on fan-mail.

For fan-mail

may

well

draw

near

to the

power

of

powerlessness, the engineering, twisting or caricaturing of a lovers discourse. Kafka's love-letters, `substitute for the feared conjugal contract a pact with the devil, ' and as such are certainly cold and cruel, distanced and celibate. 1200 (... ) each letter is a letter of love, whether real or superficial. Love letters

can

be

attractive,

repulsive,

or

filled

with

reproach,

compromise, or proposition, without any of that changing anything about their nature; they are part of a pact with the devil that wishes away the contract with God, with the family, or with the loved one. 1201 Kafka, for Deleuze and Guattari, is gothic, vampiric -a

Dracula figure - in the

world but not of it. 1202Kafka's Faustian pact with the devil is an, ùnnatural

1198Deleuze and Guattari, K, p. 28. 1199 Donne cited here in: Stubbs, John [2006], John Donne: The Reformed Soul, London, Penguin, p. 110. 120"See: Deleuze and Guattari, K, p. 29. See also: Deleuze, CC, p. 132. 1201Deleuze and Guattari, K, p. 33. 1202See: Deleuze and Guattari, K, pp. 29-30. Proust is diabolical, too. See: Deleuze and Guattari, K, pp. 33-4. For Kafka's relation to masochism, see: Deleuze and Guattari, K, pp. 667. ?.RR

participation, ' a demonic alliance or abominable love, which I have shown Deleuze valorises. `The letters must bring him blood, and the blood will give him the force to create. He is not looking for a feminine inspiration or for a maternal protection but for a physical force that will enable him to write. He says that literary creation is "payment for the devil's services. " )1203 What else is this `force' if not love, the outside of thought, food for thought? Indeed, elsewhere, Deleuze claims that, òne only writes through love, all writing is a love-letter. '1204Lacan

says something very similar, `the only thing one can write that is a bit serious a love letter. 1205Again, elsewhere,

Deleuze writes,

All words recount a story of love, a story of life and knowledge, but this story is neither designated nor signified by words, nor translated from one word into another. Rather, the story concerns what is "impossible" in language, and thus what belongs to language alone: its outside. 1 " The (blood)letter of love delivers the primary component of expression. The letter of love is, `truly, the talk of lunatics. '1207

The Book of Love: A Minor Excursus II

In a short, 1976, book-review entitled, Àlain Roger's Le Misogyne, ' Deleuze discusses a radical renewal of the Joycean epiphany, 1208

1203See: Deleuze and Guattari, K, 30. p.

1204Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 51. I attribute this statement to Parnet! See also: Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 121. This is somewhat opposed in the following, `To write is not to recount one's memories and travels, one's loves and griefs, one's dreams and fantasies. ' Deleuze, CC, p. 2. 1205Lacan, SXX, p. 84.

1206Deleuze, CC, p. 19.

1207Deleuze and Guattari, 1208Deleuze, TR, p. 74.

TP, p. 36.

2R9

Up until now, the epiphany had merely oscillated between two poles: 1) passion, or the sudden revelation of objective contemplation; and 2) action, or the crafted form of subjective experimentation.

In any

event, an epiphany would happen to a character, or the character would make it come about. (... ) But when a person becomes an epiphany, at that moment he or she ceases to be a person. A person undergoes this change not to become a transcendent entity, a god or goddess, but to become an Event, a multiplicity of events each folded in the other, an event of the order of love. 1209 The epiphany, here, is akin to the choosing of choice or the movement of choice choosing itself through the person within an epiphany. It is an, ìmmanent atheist election, '121°an, ìmperceptible or unconscious, ' ` flash of intensity, ' in the 'everyday. '121 Like the lightning witnessed earlier the, `flash is equivalent to the phrase: "The power of this affect sweeps me away. "'1212Swept away on the wind, which is too much - overwhelming. The `chosen people""'

who are no

longer people: Spinoza's mode amid the third kind of knowledge, the sublime in the pedestrian

or Kierkegaard's

leaping knight of faith, Proust's art and

Masoch's weakness, are, on this evidence, àn event of the order of love. '

`Don't take away my power to 16ve. Y1214


TR, p. 75. TR, p. 74.

1211Deleuze, TR, p. 73. 1212Deleuze and Guattari, TP, flashes of lightning ) of life: what Resnais P. 356. ' ()(... what ... calls 'feeling' or 'love', as mental function. ' Deleuze, C2, p. 209. See also: Deleuze and Guattari, WP, p. 38, p. 55. 1213Deleuze, TR, p. 73. 1214Deleuze and Guattari, TP, p. 187. 290

Everybody

knows

Deleuze admires

Foucault,

nobody

can

deny

it. 12'5

According to Deleuze, prior to judging a work, a thing, an individual one must know how to admire, how to love and hate, and how to follow. 1216 But, just what tenor of existence, what quality of affect, is implied in both these multiple and consistent

confessions

of admiration

and in the 1986 book or `tombeau'

by

Deleuze that bears Foucault's name ?1217 Beyond admiration Deleuze also describes the tenor of his relation to Foucault in Foucauldian terms, `by his definition, my relation to him was some sort of passion. '1218By Foucault's definition not by Deleuze's own, therefore, one must be wary of this attribution. Inasmuch as I have set myself the task of extracting and presenting, `that which he does not say in what he says, ' is there something between admiration, love and passion, which remains unspoken in Deleuze's philosophy? Thus far, Deleuze's understanding and use of love and passion has been somewhat elusive, equivocal and enigmatic - if not confused and confusing. Deleuze's terminological inconsistency recalls to my mind Dr. Krokowski's use of the word love in his series of lectures entitled, `Love as a force contributory to disease, ' as seen from the perspective of Mann's protagonist Hans Castorp, ìn particular the speaker [Dr. Krokowski

Dr. Deleuze] employed the word love in a .

somewhat ambiguous sense, so that you were never quite sure where you were with it, or whether he had reference to its sacred or its passionate and fleshly 1215See: Deleuze, N, p. 4, p. 85, p. 94, p. 102, p. 150. See: Deleuze, OR, pp. 129-30. 1216`How could I feel rivalry or jealousy, since I admired [Foucault]? When you admire someone you don't pick and choose. (... ) You have to take the work as a whole, to try and follow rather than judge it. (... ) Otherwise you just won't understand it all. ' Deleuze, N, p. 85. 12" Deleuze, N, p. 150. In Chapter One of this thesis, I claim, Hirschhorn's Monuments, ought to be understood in such a way. 1218Deleuze, N, p. 85.

291

aspect - and this doubt gave one a slightly seasick feeling. '1219Deleuze has claimed similar if not identical uses and powers for each concept, most notably their being both something like the outside of thought and something akin to Spinoza's affect. It does seem as though, for Deleuze, passion somehow underpins love, hierarchically preceding and conditioning it. Passion is `primary' and òriginal, ' love - to infer or interfere - is secondary and derivative. This appears to be the Deleuzian equation. Deleuze

often cites a minor text by Foucault,

Schroeter,

on passion. 1220In this text Foucault

a conversation clearly

with Werner

distinguishes

passion

from love, and, according to Deleuze, `presents himself as a creature of passion Might the distinction rather than love. 31221

proffered

solid, dry land (a desert island? ), remedying

in this text provide

Deleuze's

seasickness?

some

Passion,

for Foucault, is, not desire but,

(... ) a state, something that falls on you out of the blue, that takes hold of you, that grips you for no reason, that has no origin. One doesn't know where it comes from. Passion arrives like that, a state that is always mobile but never moves toward a given point. There are

strong

and weak

moments,

moments

when

it becomes

incandescent. It floats, it evens out. It's a kind of unstable time that is pursued

for obscure

reasons, perhaps

through

inertia.

In the

extreme, it tries to maintain itself and to disappear. Passion gives itself all the conditions necessary to continue, and, at the same time, it destroys itself. In a state of passion one is not blind, one is simply 1219See:

Mann,

Thomas

[1924],

The Magic

Mountain,

Vintage, 1999, p. 114, p. 124 1220Foucault, P, pp. 313-21. 1221Deleuze, N, p. 115.

792

Tr. Helen

T. Lowe-Porter,

London,

not oneself. To be oneself no longer makes sense. One sees things differently. (... ) In each one of the characters, there is great suffering. (... ) All that is different from love. In love, there is, in some way or another, a beloved, whereas passion circulates between partners. 1222 Notwithstanding its being neither a desire nor a `state, ' passion, here, an t223 opaque communication, seems to draw very near to both the becomingimperceptible (passion, movement of the infinite) of the knight of faith, and of Deleuze's Spinoza's affect (love, becomings). It, too, has clear connections with the violent outside of thought, that necessary contingency, which Deleuze argues forces and constrains thought ('something that falls on you out of the blue (... ) that grips you'). Movement, continual duration, mobility, and passing are the names Deleuze gives to this interstitial quality, this sensation betweentwo, ' whereupon the ego is dispensed with and modes become modified ('always mobile but never moves'). Depersonalization,

unrecognisability and

indiscernibility all fit well, as do becomings and encounters. Fanaticism and delirium, masochism and jealousy - as I have attempted to show in the preceding sections - may have something meaningful to say here, too. What does it mean to undergo and practice an intellectual love other than to see things differently, ecstatically, under the aspect of eternity? What does it mean to be a knight of faith other than to not be oneself by blending in with the walls,

ultimately

to

maintain

oneself while

disappearing

(the epiphanic

experience or lightning leap of `the sublime in the pedestrian')? What does it mean to risk opening oneself up to an elusive elsewhere if not to experience the creative potential, suffering or art of Proust's formula, `real without being actual, 1222Foucault, P, pp. 313-4. 1223`(... ) this state of communication

without transparency 791

that is passion. ' Foucault,

P, p. 316.

ideal without being abstract? ' What do Deleuze's various unnatural contracts, alliances and pacts, with demons mean other than undergoing a delirious joy and `suffering, ' which gives rise to vital and experimental

productions of

subjectivity, against the demonic, by turning, ìnto ourselves, upon ourselves, ever more rapidly? ' What, finally, does it mean to be a fan if not to make use of the excessive

fanaticism

of the fanatic, turning

it against

them and/or

denouncing them? Passion, for Foucault, is an intensive creativity it is an, àrt of the self which would be the complete contrary of oneself. To make one's being an object of A form of àesthetic experience, '1225which art, that's what is worth the effort. 71224

shares a great deal with both Proust's aforementioned salvation through art by renouncing

love and the depersonalisation

experienced,

`when a person

becomes an epiphany. ' Deleuze understands the Foucauldian art of passion as both a fight with and a flight from oneself, as an experimental process of subjectivation, which resists subjection i.e., èxisting not as a subject but as a work of art. '1226The art or aesthetic is to be sought in the `production of a new subjectivity. '1227The expression

lifestyle (Spinoza's,

`men's way of living, '

Deleuze's, `mode' or `tenor of existence'), would work if it had not, in its proximity to and co-option by the advertising industry, become so vacuous. Foucault, elsewhere, writes of the art of passion, It was curiosity - the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to

1224Foucault, P, p. 318. 1225Deleuze, F, p. 101. See also: Foucault, UP, pp. 89-91. 1226Deleuze, N, p. 92. 1227Deleuze, F, p. 115. On this point, I have greatly benefited from the following: pp. 87-8, pp. 105-10. 294

O'Sullivan,

AE,

assimilate what is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower's straying afield of himself? There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go looking and reflecting at all. 122$ Foucault's `curiosity' - `the value of the passion for knowledge, ' à passion to think' - is analogous to Deleuze's `fascination. ' By making use of excess ('one must go further, ' `straying afield'), both `release, ' thinking and `set free what lives, ' as opposed to burdening and stifling them with either dogmatism or orthodoxy. If love is the condition of possibility for Deleuzian fascination, then, how, in turn, does one escape becoming a prisoner of this type of love if indeed it is a certain kind of love and not a passion as Foucault maintains against Deleuze? `Betrayal is made up of both curiosity and fascination. 71229 Genet's aphorism, perhaps, offers an insight into the critical movement of such an affective comportment. Like Ahab's, like Marcel's et al. fascination and/or curiosity - both affects of love - the blind spot particular to Foucauldian curiosity and Deleuzian fascination is an affect of hate: perfidious fidelity. Notably opposing Spinoza's view, it is this transformation of love into hatred, or their mutual and playful interdependence,

which releases one.

Fascination

for

Deleuze leads to

intellectual feelings, intuition, and anomalous or demented thinking - which, 1228Foucault, UP, p. 8. 1229Genet, PL, p. 32. 295

incidentally,

he affirms. Curiosity for Foucault leads to a different form of

reflection, and an opaque communication. Both attest to new combinations of idea and feeling, thought and affect, knowledge and love. But, precisely what is the quality of affect specific to this curiosity and/or fascination: is it passion as Foucault claims or love as Deleuze maintains? Yet, Deleuze's example of a fascinated self, Ahab, who was earlier spoken of in terms of love and hate, is now described by Deleuze as a, `passionate, ' 1230 Ahab's uncompromising comportment exhibits a certain, `delire and man. madness, '

an

unreserved

fascination

and

fanaticism,

ultimately

a,

"'monomania, "' which ends in death: passion not love, for Deleuze, is all a Which one, then, am I to believe: Deleuze the lover matter of life and death. 1231 or the passionate Deleuze? `To get free of oneself' via passionate curiosity - an àrt of the self' - is valued by Foucault. This is the ecstatic doubleness of self, the loss and return of the self, which Cavell values in Thoreau. Proust says something very similar, `by art 1232 Saramago, too, offers a variation on ' alone, we can get outside ourselves. this theme, Ìf you don't step outside yourself, you'll never discover who you are (... ) you have to leave the island in order to see the island, (... ) we can't see

ourselves unless we become free of ourselves. '1233Seasickness, therefore, is seemingly an inevitable condition of subjectivity experimentally destructured like

1230Deleuze, N, p. 111. 1231Deleuze, N, p. 111. 'In Billy Budd, Melville defines monomaniacs as the Masters of reason, which is why they are so difficult to surprise; but this is because theirs is a delirium of action, because they make use of reason, make it serve their own sovereign ends, which in truth are highly unreasonable. ' Deleuze, CC, p. 82. 1232Proust cited in: Deleuze, PS, p. 156 note 100. 1233Saramago, Jose [1997], The Tale of the Unknown Island, Tr. Margaret Jull Costa, London, The Harvill Press, 1999, p. 27.

296

an affect - be it through the maelstrom of love and/or passion. Byron's lines adequately express this condition, I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling. 1234 As Deleuze has asserted passion is a `dark precursor, ' of thought. It violently forces thought, which in turn constrains thinking it is far from the removed presupposed goodwill and uprightness of thought (what Foucault pejoratively refers to as `proper' knowledge). Can one substitute art for passion without remainder? Art would then be a movement from or toward extreme places and extreme times, high mountains and dark regions - this all sounds familiar. For Deleuze, subjectivation, ìs an artistic activity distinct from, and lying outside, knowledge and power. '1235 Beyond the explicit relation to Deleuze's Proust, this, perhaps, comes close to the art of idealisation witnessed in Deleuze's Masoch whereby weakness is considered a strength, powerlessness transcends power in a strategic use of the affect. It is also, perhaps, what Deleuze understands as the ùnthought, ' the `nonthought, ' and the òutside' of thought. Or, rather, as Deleuze's Foucault renders it, `the inside of the outside. '1236Passion, in line with the masochist's strategic fanaticism, `twists' or `folds' the outside inside. 123' One may call to mind the example of a möbius strip in connection with such a paradoxical figure. 1238The passionate or artistic encounter would, then, be

1234Byron, Lord, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III, lxxii, Arthur [1819], as cited in: Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Tr. E. F. J. Payne, New York, Dover Publications, 1969, p. 251. 1235Deleuze, N, p. 114. 1236Deleuze, F, p. 97. 1237Deleuze, F, p. 98. 123i A möbius strip is a continuous surface with a single side only, though in appearance it seems to have two sides - an inside and outside. Lacan makes use of it, during his topological 297

something of the order of: Ì do not encounter myself on the outside, I find the other in me. '1239I feel compelled to give a name to this unnameable, resolutely silent, other. Agamben's phrase, `being-within an outside, ' suitably renders this problem into prose. The problem of passion or `the coloured thickness of a problem, '1240 (... ) is to create precisely something that happens between ideas, and to which one can't give a name. At every instant, therefore, it's trying to give a coloration, a form and intensity to something that never says what it is. That's the art of living. The art of living is to eliminate

psychology,

to

create,

with

oneself

and

others,

individualities, beings, relations, unnameable qualities. If one fails to do that in one's life it isn't worth living. 1241

On the one hand this life of passion, this artistry, and this unnameable circulating betweeness would not be entirely congruent with the stoical ethic of either a life of love or a love of life, both phrases used by Deleuze to describe this being worthy of the event of love. On the other hand love, according to Foucault, is, àn affair of solitude, ' and the `weakness' of love lies, precisely, in its need for another and the `demands' it makes of the beloved. 1242`Love can become passion, ' but to do so it must renounce its `distance, ' its, `grace, ' and its, 'isolation. )1243

period, to problematise the inside/outside dichotomy et al. The inside cannot be thought without the outside, they are not discrete rather, 'its outside continues its inside. ' Lacan, SXI, p. 156. For Deleuze, the 'twist' or 'untwisting' of the Möbius strip results in, 'its outer surface [being] continuous with its inner surface. ' Deleuze, LS, p. 11. The Möbius strip is the inside of the outside, what Deleuze elsewhere refers to as the fold. See: Deleuze, LS, p. 20, p. 123. 1239Deleuze, F, p. 98. 1240Deleuze, DR, p. 165. 1241Foucault, P, p. 317. 1242See: Foucault, 1243See: Foucault,

P, 314. P, 314. ?.9R

Perhaps, Foucault like Artaud misrecognises the power of powerlessness, which I understand Deleuze to mean when he talks of a power to love ('as a simple inferiority which would strike us in relation to thought'). Deleuze's plea, his love-letter to Foucault, which reads, `don't take away my power to love, ' might read thus, don't take away my power to powerlessness. Deleuze does not understand love in the same way as Foucault. Rather than viewing the lover as either a supplicant or a claimant Deleuze's philosophy insists that one must go further than these all too human demands in questions of love (`For my pathetic wish to be loved ['the whining need to be loved'] I will substitute a power to love'1244).The question is whether or not powerlessness

has any power,

whether or not this saintly strategy works ('a love I shall choose, and that shall choose me: ' I love to love). Does powerlessness enable one to actually make decisions (say between love and passion) or, does this powerlessness only ever allow decisions to make one? Deleuze writes of Foucault's distinction between love and passion, It's a distinction

between two kinds of individuation: one, love,

through persons, and the other through intensity, as though passion dissolved persons not into something undifferentiated but into various persisting and mutually interdependent intensities. (... ) Love's a state of, and a relation between, persons, subjects. But passion is a subpersonal event that may last as long as a lifetime. (... ) Tristan and Isolde, that may be love. (... ) Catherine and Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, is passion, pure passion, not love. A fearsome kinship of souls, in fact, something not altogether human. (... ) It's

1244See: Deleuze and Parnet, D, p. 66. Deleuze, N, p. 10. 299

new distinction between

very difficult to express, to convey -a

affective states. (... ) And perhaps passion, the state of passion, is actually what folding the line outside, making it endurable, knowing how to breathe, is about. 1245 Foucault's processes of subjectivation or life as a work of art require passion, curiosity

and/or

intensity.

Deleuze's

modes

of

existence

or

`kinds

of

individuation, ' it seems to me, work in precisely the same way only that Deleuze ' `curiosity. àffect' `passion, `fascination' ' the to the terms to on whole prefers Herein lies THE problem: Deleuze's problem (ìt's very difficult to express a new distinction between affective states'). Foucauldian passion reads as a synonym for the Deleuzian affect, which is now far from being Spinozist (Spinoza, as I have attempted to show, draws a clear distinction between an affect and a passion).

It is the affect, according to Deleuze, that is `subpersonal' or

`nonhuman, ' much as Foucault's passion comes from elsewhere, from outside ('one doesn't know where it comes from'). Deleuze, elsewhere, confirms this conjunction, A burning passion deeper than love, since it no longer has either substance or qualities, but traces a zone of indiscernibility in which it passes through all intensities in every direction. (... ) This is the most mysterious relation, (... ) the one that draws Heathcliff and Catherine along in Wuthering Heights, each one becoming Ahab and MobyDick by turns: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.... My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath a source of little visible delight, but necessary.... I am Heathcliff - he's

1245Deleuze,

N, p. 116. See also: Deleuze and Guattari,

inn

WP, p. 175.

always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being... "11246 This `mysterious relation' that is not really a relation but a `subpersonal event, ' is all well and good, but, as I have shown, Deleuze draws his own conjunction between affect and love: `love or hate, they are no longer feelings but affects. ' If love is an affect, and passion is also an affect that mysteriously comes before it, which affect conditions Deleuze's admiration? It strikes me, however, that what Foucault decides is passion, Deleuze indecisively

reads as, `love as passion,

passionately"). '1248 Deleuze

glosses

their

love-passion. '1247 `("I love you difference,

he considers

them

inextricably bound to one another not mutually exclusive as Foucault maintains. Passion would, then, be a part of love - but neither the whole nor the truth of love.

If one wanted to think of this `burning' and èxcessive, ' mad and delirious, lovepassion as a Spinozist, one would have to laugh (and without resentment). If one considers this love-passion in either alignment to or as a substitute for admiration, a certain kind of love and hate, again as a Spinozist, one would have to be critical. As I have shown, following Spinoza, there are but three affects - joy, sadness,

and desire. The etymological

root of admiration

is to

`wonder' at, which - taken together with love and hate - Spinoza rejects as essentially derivative affects. Perhaps, Deleuzian admiration is a less extreme form of intellectual love or is situated between this extraordinary love and a powerless love - acting, somewhat, as an emotional bridge (varying degrees of

1246Deleuze, CC, pp. 85-6. 1247Deleuze and Guattari, 1248Deleuze, CC, p. 110.

TP, p. 131.

301

connection, conjunction and disjunction) between these two rather excessive states. Spinoza's intellectual love would, therefore, stand as a regulative ideal, which Deleuze affirms but does not attain. For Deleuze cannot relinquish the power(lessness) of love: admiration. If admiration is comprised of both passion and love-passion, both love and hate, both fascination and betrayal, then surely this cure-all affect - an affect, to paraphrase Nietzsche, for everyone and no one - makes it difficult if not impossible for `genuine critique' and `philosophy itself' to emerge? Regardless, I believe that Deleuze either falls far short of, or goes far beyond Spinoza on both these points. One certainly does undergo the violence of passion, the love-passion of thought understood as the outside of thought, the excessive affect which makes it permissible to talk of, `being-within an outside. '1249I wish to affirm this movement of fascination and/or curiosity not deny it. I wish to affirm this necessary contingency - both force and constraint - an emotional tie, and conjecture that fanatics, perhaps, feel its pull more than others. Yet, one must also make use of this excess, one must put this passion and/or love-passion to work, direct and educate it. In short, passion and/or love-passion get one to ideas but love is still required to do something with them. One must learn to love, one must serve an apprenticeship to love - and in so doing transform either passion or love-passion into a work of love or love's work: the love of thought

as an intellectual

love. In affirming

this labour of love I would like to

point out that it is with this second movement that I see a relation to fandom. I am not making a grand claim whereby fans attain something as exceptional as

1249 Heathcliff

love is, perhaps, repeated in Marcel and Albertine's love: and Catherine's Àlbertine is both outside of [Marcel], impossibly distant, unpossessable, and inside of [Marcel], an internal object that disturbs what is deepest in [Marcel's] sense of life. ' Nussbaum, UT p. 458.

307

Spinoza's third kind of knowledge, but I do wish to argue that fans make use of this excess, this powerlessness - they do something with it, giving sensation a duration, which attests to their decision to love. As I understand the problem, it matters little whether or not fans actually attain Spinoza's

third kind of

knowledge, it exists as a regulative ideal - what really matters is whether or not it is possible to attain or entertain this exceptional condition without being a fan. I think not. Passion (curiosity) and love-passion (fascination) get both thought thinking and life living but both, I claim, come too quickly, passings pass - one must go further. I might, therefore, be tempted to speculate that although either passion or love-passion are both necessary and contingent, in the final analysis they cannot endure like love. Or rather, if passion and/or love-passion endure they open themselves up to government, organisation - transforming into a love ('my love resembles the eternal rocks beneath'). Bronte's bedevilled lovers, to my knowledge, make scarce mention of either passion or love-passion - though, of course, that is not the same as saying they are not present. 1250Love, and I do not consider this too great an assumption, contains an eternality, which passion and/or love-passion do not. The love in question, then, the standard of love is neither the òrdinary Love' Foucault has in mind, nor Deleuze's unhappy couple `love-passion, ' but the extraordinary intellectual love extracted from Spinoza. It is Spinoza's Love that somewhat betrays love, which intuits essence under the aspect of eternity and that makes use of excess, properly speaking. One must go further, one must go further than both Foucault's passion and Deleuze's

125" Ì love [Heathcliff]: and myself than I am. Whatever [1847], Wuthering Heights, after the event of love] don't

that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. ' Bronte, Emily London, The Folio Society, 1964, p. 70. But I [Heathcliff speaking care who knows that the passion was wholly on one side' p. 127.

103

love-passion. One must embrace the `fascinating idea' of risk, one must make them, 'endurable. 71251 No matter, then, how inspirational and seductive

Deleuze's

philosophy

happens to be, regardless of his exemplary efforts to evade being either theoretically tied down or captured by concepts - what remains to diagnose in Deleuze's philosophy is an infuriating inability to decide between alternatives. Deleuze may well make use of the affect, together with love and passion, to destructure philosophy thereby bearing witness to new combinations of idea and feeling, yet this destruction continues apace - dismantling his own thought. In short, the excessive affect makes more use of Deleuze than vice-versa. That said, there are at least two approaches in Deleuze. On the one hand Deleuze is indecisive. Love and passion, as I have shown in this essay, are not for least differentiated by Deleuze. me, at adequately and conceptually Deleuze categorically fails to choose between them, in effect he has a surplus of syntheses yet lacks his own disjunction! One really has little way of knowing whether the Deleuzian affect is a passion or a love, for he claims it is both. In a certain

sense

Deleuze suffers `vacillation of mind, ' inasmuch

as he is

overwhelmingly torn by contrary affects (speaking with Spinoza). Glossing their difference only further illumines Deleuze's indecision. It is only by means of an intellectual love, not through passion or love-passion, that one attains Spinoza's third kind of knowledge and with it an intuitive knowledge of essences under the aspect of eternity (blessedness, beatitude). Deleuze's indecision in this respect is a case of immaturity, a mystification both a falling short of Spinoza's radical thesis and a reluctance to risk it all (that

125 ' Deleuze, N, p. 111.

104

`fascinating idea' is betrayed). Deleuze is gripped by a decision, the affect's disruptive

capacity

is necessarily so and whether

knowingly or not this

interference is maintained by Deleuze. It is, thus, all a question of strategy, of how one makes use of the affect. Is Deleuze's indecision - when it comes to differentiating or deciding between affective states, relations and events - necessary or not? My own frustration with Deleuze's apparent mystification would be entirely unfounded if one accepted that the affect, and by extension love and passion, is `something that never says what it is, ' something

remains

incalculable,

resistant to determination

through

a necessary

knowledge.

blind spot, which

According

to this

perspective, remaining faithful to the affect would amount to resigning onese/fto the fact that it passes unsaid: "a love that dare not speak its name. " I recognise this difficulty, yet I cannot accept it. If one is to make use of this excess, if one is to make use of the affect, of love, of passion and powerlessness, then this making use of presupposes that one has a semblance of knowledge for that which one is making use of. Handymen - to borrow an image from Deleuze and Guattari - would not make use of a tool they could not fathom. In effect, Deleuze's hesitation over making a clear distinction between love and passion which are affects - means that he is overwhelmed by a decision that he does not make. To propose a clear distinction between the two, to be decisive like Foucault, would be to liberate oneself from the grip of the affect and its decision. On the other hand Deleuze's wider philosophical project - on this point I am indebted to Hallward's critical observation - makes an absolute distinction between decision-making

(things could be otherwise) and being made by

decisions (things could not be otherwise). I have shown that the determinism

los

prevalent in the latter view - understanding necessity - is particularly Spinozist. My thesis is that Deleuze's indecision - over the affect and by extension love and passion; the confusion over these two being, precisely, `that which he does not say in what he says' - undermines his absolutising of decision and/or choice: either I make decisions or decisions make me. I wish, therefore, to argue for a complication of Hallward's critique of Deleuze. Things are far worse for Deleuze. I wish to affirm the existence of this absolutising in Deleuze's philosophy and argue that both poles of decision capture it - equally. It would seem as though Deleuze is a mystic of daylight and darkness (I make decisions or decisions make me), but I believe he is more a mystic of twilight, really a mystification (indecision over affective states, relations and events). 1252Deleuze patiently awaits choice, but is he a chosen one, is he beloved? This constitutes interference, betrayal and treachery, my powerless denouncement of Deleuze. In conclusion, I wish to become demoniacal, fanatical and monomaniacal, for a short duration, in order to put a question to Deleuze (driving out this devil only by the power of the devil): Is the leap (to intellectual love) really a leap or, rather, a, `strange leap on the spot (... ) a vicious circle'?

1253

I mean: Is there

really a decision to love, a power, a capability, a `metabulia, ' or is there - as Deleuze's philosophy seemingly implies - merely a sympathetic, 1 '

abulic

1252I am indebted to the following text for this image: Chesterton, G. K. [1924], St. Francis of Assisi, Foreword by Joseph F. Girzone, New York, Doubleday, 2001 Edition, p. 80. 1253Deleuze, DR, p. 161. 1254`Sympathy s bodies who love or hate each other. () There is no judgement in sympathy, i but agreements of convenience between bodies of all kinds. (... ) Sympathy is something to be reckoned with, it is a bodily struggle, hating what threatens and infects life, loving where it proliferates. (... ) I hear the objection: with your puny sympathy you make use of lunatics, you sing the praises of madness, then you drop them, you only go so far ... That is not true. We are trying to extract from love all possession, all identification to become capable of loving. We are trying to extract from madness the life which it contains, while hating the lunatics who constantly kill life, turn it against itself. ' Deleuze and Parnet, D, pp. 52-3. 306

1255 (True decisions, freedom for Deleuze, a in love? undecidability questions of power of powerlessness, pass through sympathy, which is always a compound of love, love-passion and hate - the affect's, `pure power of potentiality, ' i.e., admiration.

This

is, doubly,

at odds with Spinoza.

Firstly

in terms

of

emphasising decision-making and secondly in terms of privileging sympathy, which Spinoza criticises for its being a love whose cause remains undecidable. ) My question

repeats and thus confirms

my belief that there exist two

approaches or `forms of life' invented by Deleuze (at least). (1) Deleuze the fanatical philosopher (Spinoza is Deleuze's god), whereby both the Deleuzian affect remains faithful to Spinoza's own conception and a decision or a leap to intellectual love is made on the basis of this fidelity (undecidability is rejected). (2) Deleuze the artisanal-philosopher-fan (Deleuze is Spinoza's devil), whereby both the Spinozist affect is betrayed, blurred into the unnatural world of admiration (love-passion, love and hate, sympathy), and one always already finds oneself in the grip of a decision (undecidability is incorporated). But, then, I'd probably be addressing my question to a disembodied,

vanishing and

whirling, `grin, '1256so what would be the point? I have, in this essay, constituted

my problem with Deleuze's

philosophy.

I will

leave it to my reader to exercise their freedom, their power to decide which Deleuze they love and admire, which Deleuze they hate and denounce.

1255 See:

CC, p. 30, p. 172. The following definition of `metabulia, ' is given by Deleuze's translators, "'Metabulia" is a neologism coined by Beckett in his French translation of Murphy. meta combined with abu/ia, an abnormal lack of ability to act or make decisions. ' Deleuze, CC, p. 187 note 8. 1256 It vanished quite slowly ... ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. " Lewis Carroll cited in: Deleuze, FB, p. 177 note 3. See also: Deleuze, LS, pp. 2356. Deleuze,

'm

The Love of Thought

Conclusion:

And what

if it is love one is trying

to understand,

that strange

unmanageable

phenomenon

or form of life, source at once of illumination

and confusion,

and beauty?

Love, in its many varieties,

relations

human

life, to aspiration,

and their tangled

to general social concern?

agony

to the good

What parts of oneself,

what

method, what writing, should one choose then? What is, in short, love's knowledge 125' does it dictate in heart? the what writing - and

Our actual relation to the books we love is already "read

for

life, " bringing

philosophical)

to the

our pressing

literary

questions

texts

we

messy, complex, love

and perplexities,

erotic. We do

(as to texts searching

admittedly

for images

of

what we might do and be, and holding these up against the images we derive from our knowledge

of other conceptions,

literary, philosophical,

and religious. 1258

I do not intend to repeat, here, the conclusions drawn in each of the preceding chapters. It is enough to say that in and against each thinker I have discovered a richer entanglement of love and thought. There is, at least, one contemporary philosopher whose concerns border that which I have been arguing throughout this thesis, and it is with her work and the questions that her project raises that I will conclude my own investigation. Martha C. Nussbaum has, perhaps, done most to argue, `that practical reasoning unaccompanied by emotion is not sufficient for practical wisdom; that emotions

are not only more unreliable than intellectual calculations,

frequently

are more reliable, and less deceptively

but

seductive. '1259Love's work or

the love of thought, therefore, would be a practical philosophy, which locates in 1257Nussbaum, 1258Nussbaum,

LK, p. 4. LK, p. 29.

1259Nussbaum,

LK, p. 40.

ins

the emotions a `cognitive dimension, ' a form of thinking. 1260Emotions, for Nussbaum, are neither ìrrational, ' nor, `non-cognitive, ' nor are they mere instances

of `false reasoning, ' because

the agent

is not fully mature,

1261 loves. love thinks, thinking autonomous Nussbaum's effort of rehabilitating the emotions is dissimilar to Plato's, the Stoics, and Spinoza inasmuch as she does not desire to, `banish emotions from philosophy, ' but,

rather,

to reinstate

them

and

by so doing

valuing

the,

ùncontrolled things outside the agent. '1262 The emotions ought not to be seen as reducing

or tarnishing

thought, but that thought

only thinks when it is

constrained, when it ìs cut through by the unexpected, ' when it is `surprised, ' bewondered, shocked (by the emotions or ùncontrolled events, ' precisely). 1263 The intelligence

of emotions lies in creating

and resonating

with upheavals

of

thought - in getting thought thinking. 1264Thisis the same claim made by Adorno, Deleuze and Cavell et al - the power to philosophise comes from being interested in, from being beside oneself, from `being-within an outside. ' This 1260Nussbaum, 1261Nussbaum,

LK, p. 42. LK, p. 42.

1262Nussbaum, 1263Nussbaum,

LK, p. 42. LK, p. 43. 'Emotions are composites of belief and feeling, shaped by developing in their reactions. (... ) In short, Aristotle does not make a thought and highly discriminating sharp split between the cognitive and the emotive. Emotion can play a cognitive role, and cognition, if it is to be properly informed, must draw on the work of the emotive elements. It is no surprise that choice is defined as an ability that lies on the borderline between the intellectual and the passional, partaking of both natures. (... ) we might say that a person of practical insight in approaching emotional openness a new situation. and responsiveness will cultivate Frequently, it will be her passional response, rather than detached thinking, that will guide her to the appropriate recognitions. (... ) The emotions are themselves modes of vision, or recognition. Their responses are part of what knowing, that is truly recognizing or acknowledging, consists in. (... ) Aristotle tells us in no uncertain terms that people of practical wisdom, both in public and in private life, will cultivate emotion and imagination in themselves and others, and will be very careful not to rely too heavily on a technical or purely intellectual theory that might stifle or impede these responses. They will promote an education that cultivates fancy and feeling through works of literature and history, teaching appropriate occasions for and degrees of response. They will consider it childish and immature not to cry or be angry or otherwise to experience and display passion where the situation calls for it. In looking for private models and public leaders, we should desire to be assured of their sensitivity and emotional depth, as well as of their intellectual competence. ' Nussbaum, LK, pp. 78-9, p. 82. 12(4See: Nussbaum, UT, pp. 1-16.

309

affirmation of human potentiality from a position of weakness - the experience of self-examination and self-experimentation - is specific to fans yet, as I hope to have argued, it is also particular to lovers, admirers, affected and affecting artisanal-philosopher-fans. Nussbaum

argues that it is through suffering that we come to love's

knowledge, `we find that knowledge of our love is not the fruit of the impression of suffering, a fruit that might in principle have been had apart from the suffering. The suffering itself is a piece of self-knowing. In responding to a loss with anguish [Marcel's loss of Albertine], we are grasping our love. (... ) Love is not a structure in the heart waiting to be discovered; it is embodied in, made up One must be wounded, violently shocked, in out of, experiences of suffering. '1265 order to acknowledge love and its intelligence. 1266Ànd most of us have had such experiences, in which the self-protective tissue of rationalization is in a moment cut through, as by a surgeon's knife. '126' But, this is not the whole story about love. Nussbaum asks, `why must they be feelings of suffering? (... ) Why not feelings of joy? i1268 Opposing the `solipsism' 1269 `skeptical' love's knowledge, Nussbaum attempts to argue and suffering as for a more `relational, '1270 `knowledge of love [which] is not a state or function of the solitary person at all, but a complex way of being, feeling, and interacting with

another

127' This person.

joyous,

affirmative,

love's

knowledge

acknowledges the necessity of permitting oneself to be exposed, vulnerable to 1265Nussbaum, LK, p. 267. 1266`tn is a way of not suffering, ( ) ry[i g] to grasp love intellectually yiyg, .. a stratagem of flight. ' Nussbaum, LK, pp. 268-9. 1267Nussbaum, LK, p. 269. 126XNussbaum, LK, p. 269. 1269Nussbaum, LK, p. 274. 1270Nussbaum, 1271Nussbaum,

LK, p. 269. LK, p. 274.

II

not loving -a

practical rival,

the wound,

trusting the shock, deliberately

losing control. 1272This

is a

knowledge of love, therefore, `that resides in the other and in the space between. '1273 This is the powerless wielding power, which both Gillian Rose and Nussbaum - not to mention Deleuze and Hirschhorn - value. `We are to see persons as centers of choice and freedom, but also as needy and demanding of There exists, therefore, two types care, as both independent and dependent. '1274 of affect in the love of thought, one self-destroying (fanatical, dependent, without choice, destructuring) and one self-enhancing (fan, independent, with choice, structured destructuring). The two, perhaps, cannot be made exclusive. Nussbaum is not attempting to privilege some kind of anti-philosophical position, nor does she wish to control, possess and cognize love through writing it. 1275Rather, her effort - like my own - is merely to reconfigure the relation between thought and love - to expose philosophy's dependence on love, their 1276 ' Her aim is, then, to recognise and acknowledge àlliance, it mutual as were. thoughts dependence on and immersion in the emotions, to argue for a tainted knowledge not a tainted love, to bring philosophy down from its highness, its detached and disinterested empyrean - only to allow it to fly more freely. 127`For the Phaedrus shows, precisely, that a certain type of philosophical activity may be called into being by, and in turn express and nourish, the energy and 1272'(... ) the difficulty of allowing oneself to be exposed, the fear of being criticized, deceived, and mocked. ' Nussbaum, LK, p. 276 note 21. `This knowledge (... ) unfolds, evolves, in human time. It is no one thing at all, but a complex way of being with another person, a deliberate yielding to uncontrollable external influences. ' Nussbaum, LK, p. 281. 1273Nussbaum, LK, p. 277. 1274Nussbaum, UT, p. 580. 1275`Could it be that to write about love, even to write humbly and responsively, is itself a device to control the topic (... ) so, of necessity, an unloving act? (... ) What I am after, it seems, is a noncontrolling art of writing that will leave the writer more receptive to love than before. ' Nussbaum, LK, p. 321. 1276Nussbaum, LK, p. 284. 1277`How clear it is to me that there is no neutral posture of reflection from which one can survey and catalogue the intuitions of one's heart on the subject of love. ' Nussbaum, LK, p. 329.

Iii

beneficence and subtle insight of happy love. And the insights gained in passion can be best pursued collaboratively, in the context of love. )1278 If Adorno's conjecture is correct, that what culture lacks ìs probably the ability to love, ' then, my thesis is that both the amorous process of subjectivation and relationality particular to my artisanal-philosopher-fan

might offer a way of

rectifying this inability. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Adorno and Deleuze argue that love, like knowledge, must be learnt and this thesis attempts just that. The love of thought

is, therefore,

a becoming-immature

of the mature, a second

childhood or childlike comportment, `power transcended

by powerlessness, '

weakness as strength - all of which I attribute to the artisanal-philosopher-fan. This invention, this strange new form of life, I feel, might just pass Rose's test for lovers, for thinkers, To grow in love-ability is to accept the boundaries of oneself and others, while remaining vulnerable, woundable, around the bounds. (... ) No human being possesses sureness of self.- this can only mean being bounded and unbounded, selved and unselved, `sure' only of this untiring exercise. (... ) This is not love of suffering, but the work, the power of love, which may curse, but abides. It is power to be able to attend, powerful or powerless. 1279

1278Nussbaum, 1279Rose, LW,

LK, p. 329. p. 98, pp. 125-6. Ì12

Acknowledgments

If, like Dante's Comedy, all writing is the writing of a love within oneself, then this thesis is no exception to that rule. Perhaps, however, I have written a tragedy not a comedy and it is with this in mind that I dedicate my text to two failed loves: E. A. E. (Beatrice), and I. G. R. (Albertine). Another love - less passionate but more enduring - Gillian Rose, was there in the beginning so there she shall be in the end, Ì will stay in the fray, in the revel of ideas and risk; learning, failing, wooing, grieving, trusting, working, reposing - in this sin of language and lips. '1280

1280Rose, L W, p. 135.

III

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The Love of Thought: Essays on Freud, Adorno and Deleuze

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Essays on the Pleasures of Death: From Freud to Lacan

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