A M atter O f Resistance
O n e o f the g reat problem s we face today is what we propose to call, by paraphrasing Lacan, the growing impasses o f the way out, or, m ore generally, th e p roblem o f resistance. This problem is all the m ore acute in the present c o n s te lla tio n c h a ra c te ris e d by th e worldwide victory o f the alliance o f capitalism an d liberal democracy, insofar as this alliance seems to discredit the very idea o f a “way o u t” as being ideological, utopian and, ultimately, irrational. In a rem arkable way, a m ajor shift that has b een taking place in co n tem po rary th o u g h t over the past two decades - namely, a drift away from an u n d e rsta n d in g o f the way o u t as em ancipation towards an account of the way o u t in term s o f resistance - signals that contem porary theorising about th e way o u t has reach ed an impasse.
To u n d e rsta n d how the shift towards resistance has come to perm eate th e very activity of th o u g h t itself, and how this in turn bears up on o u r sense o f the p rese n t deadlock o f th e way out, it may be helpful to turn to Lacan.
His succinct rem ark gives us a p en etratin g insight into the problem :
“In relatin g this misery / caused by capitalism / to the discourse of the capitalist, I d e n o u n c e the latter. Only here, I point out in all seriousness that I c a n n o t do this, because in d en o u n cin g it, I reinforce it - by norm alising it, th at is, im proving it.”1
This cryptic rem ark can be read in two ways. At first sight, it seems to convey L a c an ’s p rin c ip le d pessim ism with reg ard to possible resistance.
U n d e rsto o d in this way, L a c an ’s rem ark would seem to gesture towards the well-known p o stm o d ern ist o r poststructuralist critique o f Marxism, a series o f w hich a p p e a re d in the late 1960s and early 1970s.2 A ccording to this
1 See Jacques Lacan, Television, New York: W.W: N ordn & Co., 1990, pp. 13-14. Translated b y jeffrey M ehlm an. This p o in t has been fu rth e r elaborated in Jacques-Alain M iller’s excellent co m m en t on Television: “A Reading o f Some Details in Television in Dialogue with th e A u d ien c e”, Newsletter of the Freudian field, Spring/Fall 1990, Vol. 4, No. 1-2, pp.
4-30.
2 L yotard’s “lib id in al” w ritings in p articular provide a good exam ple of such a critique.
See, for instance, his Derive à partir de Marx et Freud, Economie libidinale an d Des dispositifs pulsionnels. F or a p e n e tra tin g account of L yotard’s early writings, see Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard. Art and Politics, L ondon an d New York: R outledge, 1991.
critique, the fault of Marxism lies in its b lin d faith in the in ex orable laws o f developm ent which will, eventually, b rin g ab o u t the collapse o f capitalism . Lyotard, for instance, convincingly shows how M arxism, by trying to find capitalism ’s weak link, the final stage o f its developm ent, in short, by waiting for capitalism to approach “a lim it w hich it c a n n o t overcom e”, develops a critique th at negates capitalism by m erely inverting it, thus, paradoxically, rem aining within the same framework as capitalism.3 T he lesson to be drawn from this account could be phrased as follows: all critique o f capitalism , far from surpassing capitalism, consolidates it. T hus, if capitalism refuses to collapse, to com e up against the lim it of its own grow th an d expansion, this is due to its structural “greediness”,4 as Lacan puts it, as capitalism is n o th in g b ut the drive for growth: the growth o f indifference as well as the indifference of growth.
W hat we have h e re , th en , is th e reversal o f th e usual “p ro g re ssist”
in terp retatio n o f M arx’s dictum , accord in g to which “the lim it o f capital is capital itself, i.e. the capitalist m ode o f p ro d u c tio n .” As is well know n, this definition o f capitalism in terms o f its in h e re n t lim itation is usually rea d as an an n o u n c em e n t of its inevitable collapse: once the capitalist relation s o f production become an obstacle to the developm ent o f the productive forces, capitalism will com e up against a lim it it c a n n o t overcom e an d th ere fo re face its own ruin. For L acan’s as well as fo r L yotard’s acco u n t o f capitalism , this structural deadlock, this growing impasse o f capitalism , is con sid ered as a stim ulus rath e r th an as an im p e d im e n t to its fu rth e r d ev elo p m en t.
A ccording to this account then, capitalism itself is n o th in g b u t the im passe o f growth. By misrecognising how every objection, every obstacle to this p u re drive for growth imm ediately simply provides m ore fuel for it, how such an attem pt at im peding growth, instead o f constituting a “way o u t” o f capitalism, comes to be its condition o f possibility, all critique o f capitalism , be it as radical as Marxism, signals its su rren d erin g , unbeknow n, o f course, to the impasses o f growth.
The preceding remarks seem to be pointing to the following conclusion:
all resistance to capitalism is vain, since capitalism is capable o f overcom ing n o t only its in h eren t deadlock b u t also any atte m p t at resistance or protest.
W hat then, would a way o u t of capitalist do m in atio n be if all solution seem s to becom e entangled in the growing impasses o f the capitalist’s drive for growth? Instead of a critique which is, by structural necessity, cau g h t in the vicious circle of the drive for growth, Lacan proposes the following solution:
3 S eejean-F rançois L yotard, Derive à partir de M arx et Freud, pp. 12-13.
4 See Jacques Lacan, Television, p. 28.
“T h e m ore saints, the m ore laughter; th a t’s my principle, to wit, the way out o f capitalist discourse - w hich will n o t constitute progress, if it happens only for so m e.”5
How is the position of the saint to be understood in terms of resistance?
As e v id e n c e th a t all resista n c e is illusory? This re a d in g a p p e ars to be co rro b o rate d by L acan’s rejection o f both a critical a n d an “ethical” “way o u t”: the M arxist a p p ro ach as well as the currently w idespread practice of self-accusation th a t tends to b u rd en th o u g h t itself with crim es it has n ot com m itted (Nazism, Stalinism, etc.), an idea that has been shared, as is well know n, by th e later A d o rn o an d the majority o f the leading postm odernist a n d / o r po ststructuralist thinkers (from Lyotard and Deleuze to Nancy and Lacoue-L abarthe). In response to those who would be taking “all the burdens o f the w orld’s misery on to their shoulders”, Lacan states emphatically: “O ne th ing is certain: to take the misery on to o n e ’s shoulders ... is to e n te r into a discourse th a t d eterm in es it, even if only in protest.” W hat Lacan proposes instead is the following advice: those who are “busying themselves at / th e / supposed b u rd en in g , o u g h tn ’t to be protesting, b ut collaborating. W hether they know it o r not, th a t’s w hat they’re doing.”6
Does it m ean th at Lacan preaches the “heroism ” o f renunciation and collaboration? In d ee d , if we are justified in using this term in connection with resistance, this is only on condition o f its radical recasting, which implies th e rejection o f bo th classical positions: that o f standing up against some im m ense power, on the o ne hand, and th at o f resignation, on the other.
T hough it may seem that there is no option left, Lacan puts forward a solution which consists, ultimately, in identification with what is left over, with the trash.
This heroism , which could be called “the heroism o f the trash” and by means o f which Lacan designates the position of the saint since, for Lacan, to act as trash m eans “to em body w hat the stru ctu re entails, nam ely allowing the subject, the subject o f the unconscious, to take him as the cause of the subject’s own desire. In fact, it is th ro u g h the abjection o f this cause that the subject in q u estio n has a c h an ce to be aware o f his position, at least within the stru c tu re .”7
W hat, th en , characterises the resistance o f the saint-trash, in particular, since for th e saint, says Lacan, this is n o t amusing? According to Lacan, the s a in t plays th e d o u b le ro le o f a r e m in d e r /r e m a in d e r : as “a cog in a m a c h in e ”, th e saint, n o d o u b t, “co llaborates” in p ro d u cin g an effect o f
5 Ibid., p. 16.
6 Ibid., op. cit., p. 13.
7 Ibid., p. 15.
enjoym ent, m ore precisely, the enjoyed-sense /joui-sens/, as Lacan calls it, on condition that the saint h erself/h im self does n o t a n d c a n n o t participate in this enjoym ent. O n the contrary, h e r/h is role is to rem ain a m u te witness to this enjoym ent; indeed, s /h e is th a t instance w hich resists en joym ent or, with Lacan, s /h e is “the refuse o f jo u issa n ce ”.8
L acan’s observations are im p o rta n t for o u r concerns h e re because by desig nating the saint as the site o f resistance h e clearly in d icates th a t a resistance to capitalism, defined as a drive for grow th th a t knows no limits, no beyond, can only be theorised in term s o f som e resistant instance which is, strictly speaking, n e ith e r exterior n o r interior, b u t ra th e r is situated at the p o in t of exteriority in the very intim acy o f interiority, th e p o in t at which the m ost intim ate encounters the outm ost. As is well known, th e Lacanian nam e for this paradoxical intim ate exteriority is “the extim acy”. C onceived in term s o f extim acy ra th e r th an in term s o f a p u re alterity, resista n c e therefore consists in the derivation, from within capitalism, o f an indigestible kernel, o f an otherness which has th e p o ten tial to d isru p t the circu it o f the drive for growth.
T h ere have been several attem pts to theorise resistance in term s o f the indigestible kernel within capitalism itself, th a t is, in term s o f th e real. A solution p u t forw ard by Lyotard consists in revealing “a n o th e r libidinal apparatus, still unclear, difficult to identify.... in a non-dialectical, non-critical relation, incom m ensurable with that of kapital.”9 In a typically deconstructive m ove, L y o tard ex h ib its w hat we m ay call th e “c o m p lic ity ” o f th e two apparatuses. This is evident in the capacity o f capitalism to m ain tain itself by drawing on the intensity o f the unconscious drives. O n the o th e r h an d , capitalism can never entirely subjugate the u nconscious drives because their p olym orphous perversity (i.e. th e ir in h e r e n t u n ru lin e ss) p re c lu d e s any a tte m p t to b ring this h ete ro g en e o u s m ultiplicity u n d e r th e ru le o f o n e principle, to subsume it u n d e r the law o f the O ne. O n this reading, then , the unconscious drives, while co nstituting a source u p o n which capitalism draws, an apparatus th at capitalism is fully capable o f “ex p loitin g”, rem ain an insurm ountable obstacle for the rule o f capital, an instance capable o f subverting it; or, in D erridian terms, the libidinal app aratu s rep resen ts for capitalism its condition o f possibility a n d impossibility.
Basically, what is problem atic ab o u t this “libidinal” d eco n stru ctio n of capitalism is precisely Lyotard’s valorisation of the libidinal ap p aratu s for its disruptive, destabilising capacity. As Bill R eadings rightly points out, the
8 Ibid., p. 17.
9 Ibid.
libidinal apparatus, in L yotard ’s reading, “produces a transgression for its own sake which is entirely indifferent to the structure it opposes.”10 The price to be p aid for this valorisation o f the libidinal intensities, is, ultimately, a fall back into a pure alterity between the rule of capitalism and the unruliness o f the drives: thus, the libidinal apparatus, instead o f being theorised in terms o f a rela tio n w hich subverts the in sid e /o u tsid e opposition, comes to be situated wholly “o utsid e”.
T h o u g h L yotard’s acco u n t is n o t w ithout its merits, the role that the drives play w ithin the rule o f capital, as we shall see, is far m ore com plex an d am biguous than Lyotard wants us to believe. By showing how capitalism, in o rd er to preserve itself, m ust draw on libidinal intensities, Lyotard presents o n e side o f th e ir com plicity with capitalism . W hat rem ain s com pletely unw orked o n in his acco u n t is the way in which the drives “parasitise” the a p p a ra tu s o f cap italism ; or, p u t differently, L yotard fails to show how capitalism itself constitutes the condition of possibility for the functioning of th e unconscious drives.
This brings us back to L acan’s som ewhat enigm atic expression “the growing impasses o f civilisation” by which he, in opposition to Lyotard, who insists on the structural incom patibility between the com m ensurable law of capital a n d the in com m ensurab le logic o f the drives, tries to expose the stru ctu ral hom ology betw een the logic o f capital and the logic of drives.
W hile Lyotard theorises the relationship between the two apparatuses in term s o f the repression o f the drives and resistance to this repression, Lacan, o n the o th e r han d , does it by dem onstrating how a satisfaction o f the drives is paradoxically p ro c u re d by repression, exhibiting a p e rfe c t ag reem ent betw een the two apparatuses.
In L a c an ’s readin g , the structural hom ology and, as a consequence, th e com plicity betw een capitalism an d the libidinal apparatus is therefore g ro u n d e d in the fact th at all obstacles - m ore precisely, the renunciation of enjoym ent, the blocking o f satisfaction - instead o f im peding the unconscious drive in its b lin d search for satisfaction o r the capitalist drive for growth, c o n s titu te th a t s e c re t “c a u s e ” th a t sets in m o tio n th e search fo r the
“s a tis fa c tio n ” o f b o th drives: th e c a p ita list drive fo r grow th a n d th e unconscious drive. In b o th cases we are dealing with som e surplus, surplus- enjoym ent in th e case o f the unconscious drives, surplus-value in the case of capitalist production, intimately tied to the lack or, rather, to the impossibility o f satisfaction. W hat has b een designated by Lacan as the growing impasses o f civilisation o r the greediness o f the superego, is precisely this satisfaction
See Bill R eadings, Introducing Lyotard. Art and Politics, p. 91.
in discontent, in dissatisfaction - th at is, in th e impossibility to satisfy.11 T h e growing impasses of civilisation therefore m ark a p o in t w here the greediness of the superego an d capitalist greed converge; m o re precisely, they m ark the conversion o f the growing impasses in to the impasses o f growth. In the light of this convergence it could be said th a t capitalism is simply a n o th e r nam e for the superego.
Once it is accepted that it is through the intervention o f an instance that dem ands a ren u n c iatio n th a t the drives, th e capitalist drive fo r grow th included, attain their satisfaction, it becom es clear th at L yotard’s solution ultimately consists in proposing, as a m eans o f the way o u t o f capitalism, an apparatus which is caught in the vicious circle o f growth, en ta n g led in its impasses, or, put another way, an apparatus th at is entirely d o m inated by the paradoxical dialectics of the renunciation o f enjoym ent and the pro du ction of surplus enjoyment.
In the language o f Lacan, it could be said th at by assimilating resistance to the drive for growth with what Lacan calls the im perative o f enjoym ent, Lyotard conflates two modes o f resistance: on the one hand, that which could be called the resistance o f the superego to being integrated in the subject’s symbolic universe, since the sup ereg o’s im perative, Enjoy! o r Produce! Be useful! is experienced by the subject as nonsensical, “m ad ”; and, on the o th e r hand, the resistance th at the subject offers to the su perego , this b e in g a resistance that has been elaborated by Lacan in term s o f the saint-trash. A nd it is precisely this confusion o f the two m odes o f resistance, a resistance o f the superego with a resistance to the superego, which com pelled Lyotard in his later writings to theorise resistance in term s o f the Law an d the call o f justice rather than in terms o f the Multiple. Before we move on to a consideration o f this shift, we must exam ine ano th er aspect o f resistance: the way it relates to thought.
A Sublime, Sentimental Mute
An intriguing account o f the transform ation o f the relationship between thought an d resistance as a direct consequence o f the ruin o f politics can be found in Jean-Claude M ilner’s recen t book, Constat}2 A ccording to Milner, politics maintains its pre-eminence so long as it is grounded in the conjunction of thought and resistance. W hat is m ean t by politics, in this reading, is the
11 See Jacques Lacan, Television, p. 28.
12 S eejean-C laude Milner, Constat. Paris: Verdier, 1992.
capacity o f th o u g h t to p ro d u ce m aterial effects in the social dom ain, the privileged figure o f these effects being the insurrection of the social body. Seen from this perspective, the defeat or retreat o f emancipationist politics (in this reading, identified with politics tout court) that we have been witnessing for the past two decades signals the incapacity of contemporary thought to translate its effects into resistance.
W hat is striking ab o u t M ilner’s account is the judiciousness with which the negative im plications o f the process of dis-union, of the drifting apart of th o u g h t a n d rebellion th at we are witness to today, are brought to the fore:
th o u g h t ceases to be politically subversive; indeed, thought is worth its nam e only by being conservative, hostile to all forms o f rebellion, while rebellion, on the o th e r h an d , is true to its n ature only by being “b ru te ”, unruly. Put a n o th e r way, th o u g h t m arks the dissociation from rebellion by its growing powerlessness to prod u ce m aterial effects in the political and the social field, whereas rebellion records its break with thought by turning into a resistance against thought.
T he presen t antinom ic relationship between thought and resistance can thus be accounted for in term s of a forced choice between “I am (n o t)” and
“I am (not) thinking”.13 Confronted with the disjunction, according to which I am th ere w here I am n o t thinking and vice versa, rebellion clearly opts for the “I am ” an d therefore for the “I am n o t thinking”, suggesting that what is lost in this forced choice in any case is precisely thought o f resistance - that is, th o u g h t which is ap pro priate to resistance. This is evident in postm odernist a n d /o r poststructuralist theorising about resistance, insofar as that which is, strictly speaking, a pro b lem (namely, the antinom y betw een th o ught and resistance), is proposed as a solution. It should be noted, however, that this idea, according to which resistance is identified by rebellion against thought, is one th at has already been announced by A dorno and later picked up and fu rth e r developed by the contem porary partisans o f resistance. Yet this shift o f resistance towards un th o u g h t is paradoxically accom panied by an almost obsessive concern about the “h o n o u r of thinking”.14 In what does this saving
13 For fu rth e r elaborations on th e forced choice, see Jacques Lacan, Logique du phantasme, u n p u b lish e d sem in ar (1966-67).
14 T he most concise definition o f the “saving of thought’s honour” we owe, o f course, to Lyotard. A ccording to Lyotard, this is one of the central stakes o f contemporary thought.
Consider the following presentation of the problem: “Given 1) the impossibility of avoiding conflicts (the impossibility o f indifference) and 2) the absence o f a universal genre of discourse to regulate them (or, if you prefer, the inevitable partiality o f the judge) : to find, if not what can legitimate ju d g e m en t (the “good” linkage), then at least how to save the honour of thinking.” Seejean-François Lyotard, TheDifferend. Phrases in Dispute, Minneapolis:
University o f M innesota Press 1988, p. xii. Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele.
of thought’s hono u r consist? And how does the saving o f h o n o u r connect with what it m eans to think and to resist?
A d o r n o ’s answ er, w hich will serve as a m o d e l fo r c o n te m p o ra r y postm odernists a n d /o r poststructuralist thinkers, consists in assigning to thought the task of bearing witness to that which resists. O n the one han d , this task poses an almost insurm ountable obstacle for thought, as it is in the n ature o f thought, says Adorno, to do violence to th at which is o th e r than th o u g h t - that is, in A dorno’s case, to things. O n the o th er hand, A dorno m aintains that thought is neither insensitive nor blind to the wrong do n e to its other: “While doing violence to the objects of its syntheses,” says Adorno, “our thinking heeds a potential that waits in the object, and it unconsciously obeys the idea of making am ends for what it has d on e.”15
In this reading, the capacity o f th o u g h t to b ear witness to “a potential that waits in the object” would reside in the very splitting o f th o u g h t betw een the victimising instance, on the one hand, a n d the instance which testifies to the inflicted wrong, on the other. W hat A dorno seems to suggest h e re is the idea that thought is unable to make “am ends for w hat it has d o n e ” to that which tries forever to evade it- the un thought, the ungraspable - unless thought turns against itself; or with Adorno, the resistant thought is, ultimately, “thought thinking against itself.”16. Only then can th o u g h t assume the task assigned to it: to bear witness to resistance already o p eratin g in the world, and, at the same time, to augm ent this resistance with a resistance o f its own. For A dorno, this resistance proper to thought consists essentially in its refusal to give in; in m aking it impossible for “a desperate consciousness to dep osit desp air as absolute,”17 in a positive m anner, the resistance o f th o u g h t is identified with
“the resistance of the eye that does n o t want the colours of the world to fade.”18 This means that thought must not only turn against itself, to reject its tem ptation to su rre n d e r; it m ust also “objectivise” itself. A d o rn o ’s m e ta p h o r o f th e
“lingering eye” provides a particularly good exam ple o f what is m ean t h ere by the objectivisation of thought: “If the th o u g h t really yielded to the object, if its attention were on the object and n o t on its category, the very objects would start talking u n der the lingering eye”.19
15 See T.W. A dorno, Negative Dialectics, New York: C o n tin u u m Publishing, 1973, p. 19.
T ranslated by E.B. A shton. For an in sp irin g ac c o u n t o f A d o rn o ’s c o n c e p tio n o f resistance, see David Toole, ‘O f L ingering Eyes an d Talking T hings. A d o rn o an d D eleuze on Philosophy since Auschwitz’, Philosophy Today, Fall 1993, Vol. 37, No. 3 /4 . 16 Negative Dialectics, p. 141.
17 Ibid., p. 404.
18 Ibid., p. 405.
19 Ibid., p. 28.
W hat strikes us first ab o u t A dorno’s rem ark is the very wording used to designate the way in which th o u g ht perceives the resistance of things: instead o f seeing, the eye is supposed to hear things, since A dorno states explicitly:
“things would start talking under the lingering eye”. Instead o f showing to the eye o r talking to the ear, as o n e would normally expect, we have “talking” to the eye.
A d o rn o ’s enigm atic rem ark thus seems to suggest th at the “objects do n o t go into th eir concepts w ithout rem ainder,”20 signalling in this way that th ere is an in su rm ou n table gap between the objects an d their conceptual
“envelopes” or, to p u t it in Lacanian terms, between the real and the symbolic.
Essential here, as A dorno him self convincingly argues, is that this “som ething m o re ” in the object which forever tries to evade all conceptualisation is no t accessible as such; rather, it is only thro ug h the cracks in the conceptual envelope o f things th at we get a glimpse of the “talking things”. It is at this p o in t that the lingering eye intervenes: for this eye is considered as being endow ed with a power to separate or, in Deleuze’s terms, with “a ‘dissociative force’ which would introduce a... ‘hole in appearances’... a fissure, a crack.”21 P u t bluntly, the cracks are n o t simply there, waiting to be discovered; rather, they testify to the intervention o f the eye. Only then can we say that by focusing on these cracks and fissures, the lingering eye not only exhibits the gap between things an d concepts, as that which ultimately belies the subjugating identity im posed by the concept, b u t also allows us to see the thing in its “becom ing”, as A dorno puts it. To use D eleuze’s no less fitting definition, it exhibits a thing
“in its excess o f h o rro r o r beauty, in its radical or unjustified character.”22 Instead o f staging som e fantasy scene o f the primal becom ing of things in their substantial fullness - a scene in which things expose themselves to our gaze as they “really” are - we will insist that A dorno’s theorisation of resistance can only be productive if the idea of such a fullness is discarded. It is true that it is only through cracks espied by the lingering eye in the conceptual envelope o f things th at we get a glimpse o f the “ab u ndance”, the reserve of possibilities o f w h a t th in g s c o u ld have b eco m e. Yet th ese possibilities, as A d o rn o convincingly points out, are always-already missed opportunities. Thus, to see a thing in its becom ing is to glimpse what A dorno calls “the possibility of which their reality has cheated objects and which is nonetheless visible in each one.”23
2® Ibid., p. 5.
21 See Gilles D eleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Minneapolis: M innesota University Press, 1989, p. 167.
22 Ibid., p. 20.
23 Negative Dialectics, p. 52.
This becom ing o f things that is, strictly speaking, given only in retrospect, through cracks and fissures in their symbolic envelope, is no d o u b t a fantasy, a utopia, says Adorno. Nonetheless, this u to p ia yields hope. This yielding o f hope is all the m ore paradoxical since it is g ro u n d e d in a fantasy, staging n ot what a thing could have becom e b u t ra th e r w hat it has failed to becom e;
in short, it is ground ed in the th in g ’s failure to becom e the thing, i.e. in the failed thing.
The evoked failure of the thing as exposed by the lingering eye indicates that the link between the excess of th e th in g a n d the dissociative pow er o f the lingering eye is m ore com plicated th an may ap p e ar at first glance. In A d o rno’s account, this relationship is rep re sen te d , en acted, by way o f an impossible e n co u n ter between the eye an d th e “talking” things. How are we to account for this “impossible” encounter, an e n c o u n te r which, because o f the incom m ensurability between the o rgan o f p e rc e p tio n an d th e object of perception, is doom ed to failure from the start, a n d in what way does it relate to resistance?
It is stunning how A dorno’s account abou t th o u g h t’s b earing witness to the resistance of things seems to anticipate w hat Lacan theorised in term s o f a chasm betw een the eye and the gaze. As is well known, Lacan, in his efforts to th eo rise the status o f the su b ject in the scopic field, starts w ith th e assum ption that th ere is a pre-existence o f a given-to-be-seen to th e seen. In a similar way, by in troducing the lingering eye into th e pictu re, A d o rn o also draws o u r attentio n to the fact that, in the scopic field, we are n o t only the seers who perceive things with our eyes, that is to say, who focus on the concept instead o f the thing since, even before th e things are looked at by us, they are gazing at us; or, to p u t it in L acan’s term s, they a re showing. Yet we are unaware o f this chasm because, normally, we perceive, instead o f the things, their “clichés”, to borrow D eleuze’s term , or, with A dorno, we see th em as subjugated, m ediated by language, enveloped in the con ceptual schem ata.
Put a n o th e r way, what we see is how they look; w hat we do n o t see is th at they also show.
W hen, then, do things start to show, to provoke o u r gaze? Only w hen th a t w hich is norm ally e x c lu d e d fro m th e p ic tu re , i.e. th e gaze, is r e introduced into it. This is precisely the function o f the lingerin g eye: the presence o f the lingering eye makes it possible for us to take o u r distance from “n o rm al” perception, to see things in a different light, or, with A dorno, to see them “talking”. Thus, strictly speaking, it can n o t be said th at the things are showing off for the lingering eye; rather, it is the presence o f the lingering eye which exposes the showing o f things. W hat A d o rn o urges us to trace, to
follow, to track is precisely the presence of the gaze in the picture, that which, u n d e r n o rm al circum stances, passes u n o b serv ed .24
But this is only possible if we consider the lingering eye, instead, as an organ o f p erc e p tio n , capable o f seeing things as they “really” are, as a snare which provokes o u r gaze. T he lingering eye is n o t there to look for the cracks in th e co n cep tu al envelope; rather, it is the cracks themselves, an anomaly in th e picture “w hich is th ere to be looked at, in order to catch,” says Lacan,
“to catch in its trap, the observer, th at is to say, us.”25 T h e lingering eye is th ere fo re the im agined gaze o f the things themselves, yet a gaze endow ed with the power to “call us in the picture”, to photograph us. And conversely, insofar as the lingerin g eye is identified with the “resistance of the eye that does n o t w ant the colours o f the world to fade”, as A dorno puts it, we could say th a t th e lin g e rin g eye is n o th in g o th e r than our gaze rep resen ted as caught, tu rn e d into a picture.
In w hat sense can it be said th at the lingering eye is con cerned with resistance if, as we have seen, the subject in the scopic field is defined as being u n d e r the gaze, as being photographed, in short, paralysed? To answer this questio n we m ust re tu rn to the relationship betw een the excess o f the things and the lingering eye. T he excess o f the thing exposed by the lingering eye appears to be am biguous to the extent that it evokes the cracks, the “hole in a p p e ara n ce s”, in short, the void, as it is only through such fissures in the co n cep tu al envelope o f things that this excess shows; yet at the same time, its blazing presence, “its excess o f h o rro r o r beauty”, seems to cover up, to d issim u la te this void. T his in d ecid ab ility o f the excess, o r r a th e r this c o n v e rg e n c e o f th e lack a n d th e excess, has im plications for o u r c o n ceptualisation o f th e way o u t an d o f the task o f thought.
R ather th an red u cin g it to bearing witness to the excess of the thing, to its resistance, the task o f th o u g h t consists in exhibiting the thing as a place
h o ld e r o f the void, since it is only in this way th at th o u g h t is capable, n o t only o f re n d e rin g the installation of things by the “law” o f a situation, its p articu lar m od e o f symbolisation, radically contin gent or, to use D eleuze’s term , unjustified, b u t also o f exploring a given situation from the p o in t o f view o f its i n h e r e n t void, th u s u n c o v e rin g new, u n til now u n k n o w n , possibilities. T his m eans th a t while A d o rn o m odels the way o u t on the
24 “In o u r relatio n to things, insofar as this relation is constituted byway o f vision and o rd e re d in th e figures o f rep resen tatio n , som ething slips, passes, is transm itted, from stage to stage, a n d is always to som e d egree eluded in it - that is what we call th e gaze.”
See Ja cq u e s Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, L ondon: Penguin, 1979, p. 73. T ranslated by Alan Sheridan.
25 Ibid., op. 92.
resistance o f the inexhaustible thing, we p rop o se to conceive o f it in term s of a double exposure, the exposure o f exposure, since it is n o t en o u g h to uncover in the conceptual envelope o f things cracks a n d fissures th ro u g h which things in th eir “excess o f h o r ro r o r b e a u ty ” e m a n a te , as A d o rn o p retends to claim. W hat is n eed ed in ad ditio n is “o n e m o re e ffo rt”, w hich consists in exhibiting the void b e h in d this fearful a n d /o r sublim e m ask o f the thing.
P u t a n o th e r way, inasm uch as th e way o u t im plies th e c re a tio n o f a new situ a tio n , it d e p e n d s u p o n a trav ersing , a sh ift fro m th e b lin d in g b la z e e m a n a tin g fro m th e th in g to w a rd s th e v o id t h a t h a s b e e n dissim ulated by this fearful or sublim e m ask o f th e thing. Yet it is precisely this second step th at A dorno, as well as th e co n te m p o ra ry po stm o d ern ists a n d / o r p o s ts tru c tu ra lis ts , fail to a c c o m p lis h : b lin d e d by th e b la z e em a n a tin g from the thing, they can only pow erlessly testify to th a t w hich has shocked them. Illum inating in this c o n te x t is the way in which D eleuze draws parallels betw een th e p o sitio n o f th o u g h t a n d th a t o f “a se er w ho finds him self struck by som ething into lerable in the world, a n d co n fro n ted by s o m e th in g u n th in k a b le in th o u g h t. B e tw e e n th e tw o, t h o u g h t u n d e rg o e s a strangle fossilisation w hich is, as it w ere, its pow erlessness to fu n ctio n , to be, its dispossession o f itse lf a n d th e w o rld .”26
T h e task th a t D eleuze assigns to th o u g h t consists essentially in its passively bearin g witness to the in to lera b le w orld. However, this passivity, this pow erlessness o f th o u g h t, ac co rd in g to D eleuze, is n o t to be se en as a sign o f in feriority, since this w ou ld still p o in t tow ard s all-p o w e rfu l th o u g h t as a lost paradise. Rather, it sh o u ld b eco m e o u r way o f th in k in g , insists Deleuze, a n d therefore a m eans to resto re th e belief, n o t in a b e tte r o r a tr u e r w orld, as a M arxist c r itiq u e w o u ld have it, b u t “in a lin k betw een m an an d th e w orld,”27 or, in A d o rn o ’s term s, a lin k b etw een th o u g h t a n d th in g s. W h at is q u e s tio n a b le a b o u t th is c o n c e p tio n o f resistance is n o t so m u ch the fact th a t th e saving o f th o u g h t’s h o n o u r converts th o u g h t in to a passive witness to suffering, as in th e converg en ce o f im p o ten c e and enjoym ent: evidence o f su ch a secret, illicit e n jo y m e n t th a t th o u g h t draws o n its im p o te n c e c a n p a ra d o x ic a lly b e f o u n d in L y o ta rd ’s e la b o r a tio n s o n th e d if f e r e n d , p e r h a p s o n e o f th e m o s t acco m p lish ed th eo ries o f resistance.
It is w ell know n th a t L yo tard is also c o n c e r n e d w ith r e m a in in g faithful to the rupture, the cleft, th ough he proposes to call it the differend.
26 Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 272.
27 Ibid., p. 170.
It is d efin ed as “a case o f conflict betw een (at least) two parties th at can n o t be e q u ita b ly resolved fo r th e lack o f a rule o f ju d g e m e n t applicable to b o th a rg u m e n ts .”28 As a resu lt, no trib u n a l can resolve the case, e ith e r way, w ith o u t v ictim isin g o n e side o r th e o th er, th u s r e n d e r in g th em
“m u te ”. In so far as th e v ictim ’s (in)capacity to prove a w rong inflicted u p o n h i m / h e r is con stitutiv e o f a d ifferen d , it could be said th a t a victim is, in d e e d , a d o u b le victim : s / h e has suffered a w rong, yet is u n a b le to p ro v e it, as it is in th e n a tu r e o f th e w ro ng d o n e to h i m / h e r to be
“a c c o m p a n ie d by th e loss o f th e m eans to prove the d a m a g e .”29
C ru c ia l to o u r c o n c e r n h e re is L y o ta rd ’s thesis th a t th a t w hich, ultim ately, testifies to th e d ifferen d , to th e dis-unity, is a feeling, ra th e r th an a co n c e p t o r a p h rase .30 Such feeling, which Lyotard, following Kant, calls th e fee lin g o f th e sublim e, arises w hen th o u g h t finds itself affected by som e overw helm ing event w ithout being able to seize u p o n it. Essential h e re is th a t su ch an e n c o u n te r w hich shocks th o u g h t’s pow er to grasp is a n n o u n c e d by a p a r a d o x ic a l c o m b in a tio n o f p le a s u r e a n d p a in , e x h ila r a tio n a n d f r u s tr a tio n . T h e c o -p re se n c e o f th e se v io le n t a n d a m b iv a le n t affects in itself evokes en jo y m en t, a p a ra d o x ic a l p lea su re p ro d u c e d by displeasu re. W hat concerns us h ere is this enjoym ent: m ore specifically, it is th e way in w hich th o u g h t secretly feeds on its im p o ten ce as m an ifested in th e p o stu re o f a passive sp ectator overw helm ed by the sp ectacle displayed b e fo re his eyes.
In w hat follows we will enq u ire into the im plications o f th o u g h t’s illicit enjoym ent as it m anifests itself at the level o f the constitution of the subject.
W hat is im p o rtan t h ere is th at the subject that concerns Lyotard is n o t simply given in advance; rather, the subject, as Lyotard is right in pointing out, can only em erge in the process o f phrasing the wrong d one to a victim or, m ore generally, in the process in which thought attem pts to account for that which has shocked it. A nd it is precisely at this level that L yotard’s valuation o f the feeling proves to be highly questionable: on the one hand, a differend is
28 The Differend, RD: Title.
29 Ibid., p. 5.
3^ T h e m ost persuasive illustration o f what it m ight m ean to testify to the w rong d o n e to the victims a n d to th e ir incapacity to prove it comes in Lyotard’s remarks on Auschwitz.
“Auschwitz” is p re se n te d as “a non-negatable negative”, an “indigestible rem a in d er”
w hich, p ara p h ra sin g Lacan, “rem ains stuck in the gullet” o f speculative logic. As a co n seq u e n ce, “it is n o t a co n c ep t th at results from “Auschwitz”, b u t a feeling, an im possible ph rase, o n e th a t w ould link the SS phrase on to th e d e p o rte e ’s phrase, o r vice versa” (D, §104). F eeling thus signals th a t the very capacity to phrase - this b eing th e capacity to speak an d to be silent - has been suspended.
d esig n ated as a state in w hich “so m e th in g ‘asks’ to b e p u t in to p h rase s, a n d suffers from the w rong o f n o t b e in g able to be p u t in to p h rases rig h t away,”31 th u s indicating th a t the p ro p e r way o f d e a lin g with d iffe re n d s is to find th e a p p ro p ria te p h rase for e x p re ssin g th e w rong in flic te d u p o n th e victim . A cco rdin g to Lyotard, th e re sp o n sib ility o f th o u g h t lies in
“d ete c tin g differends a n d in find in g th e (im possible) idiom fo r p h ra sin g th e m .”32 O n the o th e r h a n d , by d e sig n a tin g “A uschw itz” as a case o f a w ro n g b e y o n d re p a ir, a d if f e r e n d w h ic h , by d e f i n i ti o n , c a n n o t b e co n v erted in to a litig ation (th a t is, in to a re p a ira b le d a m a g e ), L y otard erects an in su rm o u n ta b le obstacle to th e in ju n c tio n th a t “every w ro n g o u g h t to be p u t into p h rases”. To m ake this p o in t cle a r it suffices to ask this naive question: w hich p h rase is c a p ab le o f e x p re ssin g th e d iffe re n d disclosed by the feeling w ithout b etraying it o r sm o th e rin g it in litigation?
T h e only possible answer, o f course, is n o n e , as n o p h ra se is c a p a b le o f tra n s la tin g th e w ro n g d o n e to th e v ictim w ith o u t d is to r tio n . T h u s , L yotard ’s am biguous co m m en t th a t th e feelin g is, in itself, th e im possible p hrase sh o u ld be rea d in b o th senses: as a p la c e -h o ld e r o f su ch a p h ra se an d , at th e sam e tim e, as th a t in stan ce w hose ro le is precisely to p re v e n t such a p h ra se from “h a p p e n in g ”.
It is precisely at this po int that th e question o f th e subject o f the w rong arises. F or Lyotard, as we have seen, th e fee lin g b e a rs w itness to th e fact th at “an ‘excess’ has ‘to u c h e d ’ the m ind , m o re th an it is able to h a n d le .”33 In a d d itio n , th e r e la tio n s h ip b e tw e e n th o u g h t a n d th a t w h ic h has
“sh o ck ed ” it, as Lyotard posits it, is an a n tin o m ic one: “W hen th e sublim e is ‘th e r e ’ (w here?), th e m in d is n o t th e re . As lo n g as th e m in d is th e re , th e re is n o su b lim e.”34 This “e i t h e r / o r ” a lte rn a tiv e clearly m arks th e splitting o f th e subject: betw een th e a ffe c te d e n tity - nam ely, th a t w hich receives th e “blow” - a n d a n o th e r e n tity w hich testifies to th e effects o f this “blow”. In d ee d , this se p ara tio n is alread y evoked in L y o ta rd ’s own enigm atic question: “W hat is a feeling th a t is n o t felt by anyone? ... if th ere is no witness?”35 To w hom sh o u ld we assign feeling, th en ? A n d w hat, on closer ex am in atio n , is the subject o f th e d ifferen d ?
31 Ibid., p. 13.
32 Ibid., p. 142.
33 See Jean -F ran ço is Lyotard, Heidegger and “the je w s”, M in n e ap o lis: U niversity o f M innesota Press, 1990, p. 32. T ranslated by A ndreas M ichel an d M ark R oberts.
34 Ibid., p. 32.
35 See Jean-François Lyotard, ‘H eidegger an d “th e jew s’” : A co n fe re n ce in V ien n a an d F re ib u rg ,” in Political Writings, M innesota: U niversity o f M in n e so ta Press, 1993.
T ranslated by Bill R eading an d Kevin G eim an.
I f th e f e e lin g “d o e s n o t a rise fro m an e x p e r ie n c e f e lt by th e s u b je c t,”36 as L y o tard m ain tain s, th en we m ig h t ask w here the d e m a n d fo r p h ra s in g com es fro m . W hile Lyotard is rig h t in linking this d e m a n d fo r p h ra s in g to th e e m e rg e n c e o f the subject, thus suggesting th a t the su b je c t is w h e re th e re is a n a tte m p t to p h rase the w rong, he appears to b e u n a b le to a c c o u n t fo r th e ir sim ultaneity. Basically, th e so lu tion p u t forw ard by L yotard can be p rese n ted in term s o f an irresolvable dilemm a:
to save th e singularity o f th e differend o r the universality of the injunction.
T h e first option, which insists on the idiosyncrasy o f the differend, seems n e c e ssa rily to c o n d e m n a victim to m u tism , as th e only a p p ro p ria te expression o f the wrong inflicted upon h im /h e r is incom m unicable feeling.
T h e pro b lem with this solution resides in the fact th at Lyotard, by taking the feeling, the affect, as a criterion of veracity (or, to p u t it in Lacanian term s, as “th a t which does n o t deceive”), Lyotard establishes the body, the suffering m atter, as a g u aran to r o f truth, as the O ther o f the Other. Once the feeling is posited as index s u i37, the injunction that all differends should be phrased is revealed to be an empty one, one which is impossible to satisfy.
It is im possible to satisfy, to the extent that a passage through “the defiles of the signifier” necessarily distorts the feeling. If, however, there is no phrasing w ithout the m isrepresentation, the “betrayal” of the feeling, this m eans that a d e sp era te search for th e p ro p e r phrase is thus revealed to be a barely dissim ulated refusal o f all attem pts at phrasing.
L yo tard ’s fear th at the feeling o f the wrong m ight be “translated” into an in a p p r o p r ia te p h ra s e ( th e re fo re s m o th e re d , d is to rte d - in sh o rt, betrayed) has radical consequences for the status of the subject: by refusing to assum e the distortion th a t the affect/feeling necessarily endures in the process o f p hrasing, by refusing to envelope the pain into a phrase, thus m aking it “speak” in the field o f the Other, accessible to others, this pain rem ains intim ate to th e victim. And conversely, insofar as Lyotard seems to be unwilling to accept the w rong’s alienation, the fact that it can only emerge in the field o f th e O th e r as rep resen ted by the signifier, the victim rem ains forever ch ain ed to h e r /h is pain. As a result, the only subject “ap p ro p riate”
to the differen d turns o u t to be a sentim ental, sublime m ute, condem ned to the role o f a “plaything” o f the wrong inflicted upon h e r/h im .
36 The Differend, § 93.
37 “T h e feelin g is, at th e sam e tim e, this state and th e signalling o f this state. T he sensus is index sui. ’’ See Jean-F rançois Lyotard, ‘Sensus com m unis’ in Judging Lyotard, ed.
A ndrew B enjam in, L o n d o n a n d New York: R outledge, 1992, p. 13. Translated by M arian H o b so n an d G eoff B ennington.
T h e se c o n d s o lu tio n p r o p o s e d by L y o ta rd se em s to b e n o less problem atic. The injunction according to w hich all differends sh o u ld be phrased, an d which is destined precisely to p rev en t the psychotic, solipsistic solution evoked in the first answer, is valid only on condition th at the feeling testifying to it is conceived as universal, transcendental. But this is only possible if there is some transcendental su p p o rt capable o f receiving the “blow”, to use L yotard’s m ore general term which later rep laced th a t o f the wrong;
that is to say, as som ething ready to be affected. T h a t is to say, the subject must, in a certain sense, already be th ere, if only as a m aterial, corpo real support: a suffering matter. Lyotard’s con cep tio n o f the affect thus im plies that before there is a subject of the cogito (“I th in k”) there is a p u re capacity o f being affected: a “pre-subject”, a “subject in statu n ascen d i”38 as Lyotard describes it.
The problem with this, unquestionably victim ising c o n cep tio n o f the subject, is th at by presupposing an original capacity o f b ein g affected, th at is, by presupposing an instance of a guarantee that the wrong will be received, th e subject o f the wrong, which em erges in th e process o f its p h rasin g , rem ain s ultim ately in d isc e rn ib le , c o n fla te d w ith th e su ffe rin g m atter.
Consequently, b oth options op en ed u p by L yotard’s dilem m a prove to be problem atic: though the first o p tio n preserves th e w rong in its radically u n rec o g n ised n atu re, this is only possible on c o n d itio n th a t th e w rong inflicted u p o n the victim rem ains “unverifiable”, intim ate to the victim; the supposition o f a universal, transcendental receptivity, o n the o th e r h an d , annuls the “blow” a n d /o r wrong as a p u re effect o f surprise.
From this it follows that there is no universal in junction d e m a n d in g that a wrong should be “treated ”, and consequently there is also n o original receptivity destined to be affected by th e “blow”. Thus, contrary to Lyotard, who attem pts to theorise the subject as divided betw een a p u re receptivity destined to receive the blow and the equally passive witness who registers the effects of the blow, we will m aintain th at the the em ergence o f the subject coincides with the phrasing o f the wrong. Seen from this perspective, th ere is a sim ultaneous “b irth ” of both - the subject an d the wrong. This co-birth rem ains radically c o n tin g e n t an d p rec a rio u s, as n o p re c e d in g d e m a n d universally imposes the task of han d lin g the wrong. This sim ultaneity can only be explained if we bear in m ind th a t th e crucial featu re o f the w rong is its non-recognition or m isrecognition. In o rd e r to be recognised, a w rong m ust be b ro u g h t to light. However, this can only h a p p e n retroactively, with the em ergence of an entity which no t only designates itself a victim o f a wrong, 38Ibid.,p. 21.
b u t is also capable o f giving voice to it; or, in Lyotard’s language, an entity which is capable o f inventing the “impossible” phrase to express the wrong.
T h e relationship betw een the wrong and the subject can thus be articulated as follows: while th e em erg en ce of the subject definitly presupposes the existence o f the wrong, this can be recognised, established as such, only once th e subject th a t designates itself as the subject o f the w rong em erges.39
W hat is lacking in Lyotard’s account is precisely the subject which would e m e rg e in th e process o f h a n d lin g the wrong. But this subject rem ains u n th o u g h t to the ex te n t th at Lyotard appears to be reluctant to accept such a solution, as it w ould p u t into question both his injunction that all wrongs sh ould be phrased, as well as the victimising conception of the subject and, consequently, th e division betw een a m ute suffering “h u m an anim al,” to borrow Alain B adiou’s term 40, and the com passionate gaze.
T h is fa s c in a tio n w ith v ictim isatio n , w ith su fferin g , in d icates the com plicity betw een the m uteness o f the suffering victim and the passivity of the w itnessing gaze. This brings us back to “the saving o f the h o n o u r of th in k in g ”. T h e “saving o f the h o n o u r o f thinking” evokes a division of the subject, b u t also a paradoxical division which renders the em ergence of the subject impossible, as the subject is divided between two objectified instances:
seen from the perspective o f the “blow”, the subject is reduced to its material support, to n o th in g b u t a rem in d er of the m ute, animal suffering; seen from the perspective o f the injunction o f the phrasing o f the differends, however, the subject is red u c e d to a p ure gaze witnessing the inflicted wrong. As a consequence, there can be, strictly speaking, no “it happens” for the subject;
o n th e contrary, the subject rem ains forever a subject to come, a subject “in abeyance”, whose em erg ence is forever differed.
W hat, we m ight ask, motivates the saving of the h o n o u r of thinking? As already ind icated by A dorno, it is the sense o f guilt, insofar as the “smallest trace o f senseless suffering in the empirical world” produces a sense of guilt (th at is, rem ind s th o u g h t of the wrong done to things). O n the one hand, th o u g h t seem s to be guilty in advance, as it is in its n a tu re to igno re, m isconceive o r m isrep resent the wrong d one to the victims; on the oth er h an d, the feeling o f guilt yields hope, since it testifies to the fact that thought
39 It is along th ese lines th a t we propose to read R an cière’s thesis, according to which political subjectivisation is “th e en actm en t o f equality - or th e h andling o f a w rong.”
S e e ja c q u e s R ancière, ‘Politics, Identification, an d Subjectivisation’ in The Identity in Question, ed. J o h n R ajchm an, L ondon and New York: R outledge 1995, p. 67.
40 F or a p en e tratin g (though biting) critique o f the victimising conception o f th e subject, see Alain B adiou, L ’éthique. Essai sur la conscience du Mal, Paris: Hatier, 1993.
is aware o f suffering, as guilt and “n o th in g else,” says A d o rn o , “is w hat compels us to philosophise.”41
W hat is concealed in this am biguous account, w hich sim ultaneously blames th o u g h t for its crimes and praises its feeling o f guilt, is th e way in which th o u g h t depen ds on suffering, since it is this shock w hich gives b irth to the feeling o f guilt and, consequently, to th o u g h t itself. From w hat has been said above, it follows that it is n o t the case th at th o u g h t can only testify to the victimisation, to the wrong d o n e to the victim, by converting itself into a passive spectator; rather, it is the “im p o te n t”, powerless th o u g h t which, by im potently gazing at the suffering, turns the subject in to a m u te rem ainder, a hu m an anim al that can only express its suffering by feeling, a sentim ental m ute - m ore precisely, it is reduced to n o th in g b u t a re m in d e r o f th e w rong inflicted u p o n it. The victimisation of the subject h ence appears to be a direct consequence of the “saving o f the h o n o u r o f th in k in g ”.
A d o rn o and L yotard co u ld th e n b e b la m e d fo r d is re g a rd in g th e complicity o f the powerlessness of th o u g h t with victim isation. P u t a n o th e r way, if the theorists o f resistance seem to be all too ready to incrim in ate thought for crimes it did no t commit, this is only to exculpate it for th e crim e it did com m it. In its modesty, which, in fact, is im m odest, c o n te m p o ra ry tho ugh t burd ens itself with all sorts o f h o rrib le, unspeakable crim es, only to conceal the real one: its unwillingness to abandon its posture o f a powerless gazer, which, paradoxically, proves to be yet a n o th e r disguise o f mastery, an other figure o f mastery. This m ight seem to be surprising, since it is the position o f all-powerful thought, as evidenced by D eleuze’s rem ark, th at has been categorically rejected by co ntem porary th o u g h t precisely because o f its pretensions to mastery. W here, th en , does th e m astery o f th o u g h t lie?
Insofar as testifying to the victim’s misery is considered to be th o u g h t’s raison d ’être, it could be said that tho ug h t n o t only reduces the subject to a victim;
in addition, by fixing the subject in th e role o f the e te rn al victim, th o u g h t also prevents the victim from overcom ing this state, thus preventing h e r / him precisely from becom ing the subject.
This implies that thought’s guilt lies n o t where A dorno or Lyotard locate it; rather, it lies in the very position th at the thinkers o f resistance prop ose as the “saving o f th e h o n o u r o f th in k in g ”. W hile th o u g h t, in its u rg e to hum iliate itself, is ready to sacrifice all its privileges, it is unwilling to sacrifice this position as the m ute, com passionate witness o f suffering. T h e p rob lem with this position lies in the way in which th o u g h t, by a d o p tin g the passive role, comes to constitute and to sustain th e victim isation. P ut a n o th e r way,
41 Negative Dialectics, p. 364.
fascinated by the h o rro rs o f victimisation, tho u g h t misconceives its own role in victim isation, a n d th e re fo re its responsibility for th a t situation. A nd conversely, it is only by ren o uncing such a position of a passive witness, which would, n o dou bt, strike a fatal blow to the “saving of the hon o u r of thinking”, th at th o u g h t could engage in a practice o f resistance whose goal is n o t to testify to th e suffering but, on the contrary, to p u t an e n d to it.
T he first attem pt to account for the shift from emancipation to resistance can thus be conceived in term s o f a double defeat: defeated politics is in retrea t, while th o u g h t, on the o th er hand, is reduced to being a paralysed witness to victimisation a n d /o r the resistance o f the unthought. At this point we m igh t raise a naive, yet obvious question: does the present dissociation preclud e all subversiveness o f thought, its efficacy in the dom ain o f politics?
C ould th o u g h t still be considered subversive once the site of resistance is located in th e u n th o u g h t? From what has b een said so far, it follows th at an answer to these questions requires a rethinking o f the relationship between th o u g h t a n d resistance, while taking into account the actual state of their dis-unity. Put this way, it appears that both solutions - m odernist emancipation a n d p o s tm o d e rn is t resista n c e - m ust be d iscard ed from th e start. T he m o d ern ist solution m ust be rejected because, by insisting on a fidelity to politics, conceived in term s o f the conjunction o f th o ught and resistance, p o litic s seem s to be c o n v e rte d in to a p recio u s tre a su re , an agalma\ it ultim ately suggests that, in the final analysis, “nothing has h a p p e n ed ”. As a resu lt o f this d e n ia l o f th e breakdow n o f the link betw een th o u g h t an d resistance, the actual “defeat” of politics is left un thought, unthem atised. The p o stm o d ern ist idolisation o f resistance, on the other h and , seems to be no less debatable: th o ugh it m arks the dissolution of th o ught and resistance, in the e n d it simply turns resistance against tho u gh t and, as a result, values the m o m e n t o f th e real for its intrinsic capacity for resistance, irrespective of the co n te x t in w hich it operates.
W hat, th e n , w ould c o u n t as a so lu tio n to the p ro b le m on ce b o th alternatives are rejected? Does this n ot leave us in an uncom fortable position o f the o n e “going against th e flow”? To this end, i.e. towards the goal of sketching o u r solution, we shall begin with a b rief exam ination o f the last figure o f resistance, nam ely th at of the rem ainder that has no p ro p er place.
“The Jews” and/or “The Saints”: Reminder - Remainder
O ne o f the parado x es o f the ascetic ethics in w hich th e “saving o f th o u g h t’s h o n o u r” is supposed to be g ro u n d e d lies in the fact th at such an ethics is far from im m u n e to e n jo y m e n t; ra th e r, th e c o n tra ry is tru e . Enjoyment, o r m ore precisely surplus-enjoym ent, is paradoxically p ro d u ce d by the program m ed failure o f the p h rasin g o f the wrong. In w hat follows, we propose to tie this extraction o f surplus-enjoym ent to L yotard’s radical m isconception of the affect. This req u ires a closer look at th e k n o t which links the subject, the O th e r and the affect, since it is precisely along these lines that Lyotard tries to account for th e relation ship betw een “the jew s”, as he puts it, and the Law.
Crucial in this respect is his rein terp re ta tio n o f th e Law. In co n trast to his earlier writings - where the instance o f the Law is conceived as a restriction which limits the free-floating libidinal intensities, the O n e w hich strives to subjugate to itself the Multiple - from Just Gaming onwards, Lyotard theorises the Law as the place-h old er o f the O th e r, i.e. th e Law th a t im po ses an obligation which is identified with the call o f justice. A ccording to Lyotard, this Law is always already there, yet we do n o t know w hat it says, n o t even from w here it comes to us. Yet in spite o f th at the Law plays the role o f the O th er th at has to be always presupposed a n d /o r invented by o u r d o in g a n d saying. In these terms, one is always in a position o f an addressee, o f being obliged. O n e is obliged to act in accordance with the Law, even th o u g h the Law does n o t state what or what n o t to do. Ultimately, it is u p to the subject to decide what the Law dem ands. T h e p a ra d o x o f this enigm atic Law, as Lyotard convincingly argues, resides in the fact th a t th e place o f the sender, of the subject o f the enunciation o f th e Law, is left vacant.42 W here, then , does this obligation com e from?
Using F reud’s idea of Nachträglichkeit, Lyotard offers an acco u n t o f how this obligation before the Law may have struck us originally with excessive, overw helm ing power, an d how it c o n tin u es to have a h o ld over us. This implies th at the obligation m ust be co nsidered as a fact, suggesting th a t the source o f this obligation calls to us from a “past” th at has never been present.
In sh o rt, th e source o f o b lig atio n re m a in s u n c o n scio u s. T h is o rig in a l encounter with the Law is unique am ong events in that it can never be known
42 “Only if / t h e position o f the s e n d e r / is n eu tralised will o n e becom e sensitive, n o t to what is, n o t even to the reason why it says w hat it says, n o t even to w hat it says, b u t to th e fact th a t it p rescribes o r o b lig es.” See Je an -F ran ç o is L yotard, Just Gaming, M inneapolis: The University o f M innesota Press, 1985, p. 71. (T ranslated by Wald Godzich.)
directly; we only know it from its effects-affects. It is a traum atic experience, o f w hich the subject sh a tte re d by it has no memory. A lthough the original e n co u n ter with the Law rem ains forgotten, the feeling o f being obliged points to it nevertheless.43 As a result, Lyotard urges us to m ark repeatedly the m em ory o f th a t w hich c a n n o t be rem em bered, to incessantly record the traces o f this traum atic e n c o u n te r with the Law. This testifying to that which c a n n o t be integrated into o u r memory, i.e. this preservation of the traum atic e x p e rie n c e in its very “im possibility”, is only possible by converting the subject h e rse lf/h im self into a living m onum ent of the Forgotten. According to Lyotard, this is precisely th e destiny of the “chosen” people, “the jew s”.
T he tradition of Western thought continually tried to deny this obligation before the Law, to forget the Forgotten. This is done by trying to convert, expel, integrate an d finally exterm inate those to whom that obligation is due.
These others are “thejew s”, the forgotten, marginalised people of the world.
“T hey are w hat c a n n o t be dom esticated in the procession to dom inate, in th e com pulsion to co n tro l dom ain, in the passion for em pire.”44
T h a t is to say, “T h e je w s ”, as elaborated by Lyotard, play the role of th e Vorstellungsrepräsentanz, the representative o f the lacking, “originally rep re sse d ” rep re sen ta tio n o f “the Law”. By filling o u t th e empty place of th e missing rep resen tatio n , the signifier (“th ejew s”) evokes this void and, at the sam e tim e, points beyond it to that which is supposed to fill it ou t and w hich Lyotard calls the “U n fo rg o tten ”. It is precisely this double role o f the evocation o f the void a n d its concealm ent th at converts “th ejew s” into a re m a in d e r which does n o t find its place within a given com m unity and its symbolic universe. Strictly speaking, their role is to bear witness to the original shock, a traum atic exp erien ce of the en co u n ter with the Law. In this sense,
“th e je w s ” are th at instance which em bodies the void of reference o f this traum atic ex perience. They are the rem ind er o f the “first blow” and, at the sam e tim e, th e place-holder o f the lacking representation o f this blow. As such, “thejew s” occupy the place of an instance whose very instance produces disruptive effects in a given community. “Thejew s” could then be called the im possible com m unity w ithin a com m unity - m ore precisely, the real of the com m unity or, quite simply, the real community.
Lyotard is rig h t in trying to tie the quantum of the affect which results from th e first, “fo rg o tte n ” blow to some instance whose role is to embody,
43 T hus, “th e F o rg o tten is n o t to be rem em bered for what it has been and w hat it is, because it has n o t been anything and is nothing, b u t must be rem em bered as som ething th a t never ceases to be fo rg o tte n .” Heidegger and “thejews”, p. 3.
44 Heidegger and “thejews”, p. 22.
to positivate, the vacuousness o f referen ce o f the affect. W hat Lyotard fails to see is the fact that “th ejew s” are n o t disturb in g in them selves, for they are a structural effect of specific, singular constellation. Thus, it could be said that “thejew s” become “thejew s” in Lyotard’s sense because they occupy the place o f a rem ainder that disturbs the co h eren ce o f a given situational regim e. F or Lyotard, on the contrary, “th e jew s” seem to play this ro le irrespective o f the situation, since th a t which constitutes th eir identity o f a rem inder-rem ainder is their specific relatio n sh ip with the Law: to be th e rem in der o f the call o f justice, the k e e p er o f the m ost precious treasure, the agalma. T hus, in the same way in which Lyotard chains the subject-victim to the wrong done to h im /h e r, he also rivets “th eje w s” to the Law: as a living m onu m en t, “thejew s” are com pelled to testify to th e sh atterin g e n c o u n te r with the Law. With respect to the u n fo rg o tten Forgotten, they play the sam e role as th e affects with respet to the wrong.
It is a t th is p o in t th a t we c a n show a d is tin c tio n b e tw e e n th e psychoanalytical elaboration o f the affect an d th a t provided by the theory o f resistance. Lacan as well as Lyotard are in terested in affects only to th e extent that they “touch the real”.45 The point of departure o f both approaches is the supposition in which the subject is affected by som eth in g indefinite, unanalysab le, in sh o rt, by so m e th in g th a t do es n o t w ork. H ow ever, in opposition to the theories o f resistance for w hom th e affect constitutes the beginning and the end of the process, thus en d in g u p in passage to act, in the conversion o f the subject h e rse lf/h im self in the re m in d e r o f th a t which has affected h e r/h im , Lacan requires th at th e passage o f the affect to the saying, in short, to the signifier. R ather th an taking the affect as a criterion of veracity, as we have seen with Lyotard, psychoanalysis puts it into question.
T hat is to say, we are dealing here with what we may call th e “im perative o f saying”, the injunction to grasp th at which, by definition, eludes it, i.e. the traumatic experience of the the “blow” (traum atic in the sense that it radically affects, shatters the subject, thus m aking it possible for th e em ergence o f a new subject). Yet L acan’s imperative o f “well-saying”, in o p p osition to the contem porary theorists o f resistance who strive to preserve th e unsayable, the unpresentable, at all costs, invites th e subject to seize o n a n d say th at which can n o t be said.
This “well-saying” definidy cann o t be conceived in terms o f a speculative dialectics, a p rocedure which “digests” everything th at com es its way. W hat
4 J Exem plary in this sense is L yotard’s elab o ratio n o f th e feeling o f th e sublim e, since it evokes th e failure o f th e power o f th o u g h t. W hat is a t stake h e re is th e failure, the impasse, to the ex ten t th a t it evokes th e real, th a t it p o ints to th a t w hich forever eludes thought, as Lyotard says, o r the symbolic, in L a c a n ’s term s.
