joff the possibility of an anti-humanist anarchism a4

7/28/2019 Joff the Possibility of an Anti-Humanist Anarchism a4

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e Possibility of an Anti-Humanist Anarism

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Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

e Concept of Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Dialectical Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Rhizomatic Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Rhizome, dualism and supersession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

C(ha)osmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Postmodern Nihilism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Poststructuralist Anarchism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

e Concept of Humanism and the Promise of Enlightenment . . 24Transhuman(t)ism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

e Domination of Nature and Marxs Concept of Nature . . . . . 30

e Concept of Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Heidegger and Anti-Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Systematising the Fragments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40


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Introduction

My writing not only contributes to environmental philosophy for it isa work ofenvironmental philosophy. Such a work unashamedly operates

out of a radical philosophical tradition. e tradition is Enlightenmentbound and humanist in emphasis.

is tradition begins, for the purposes of this thesis, with Feuerbachand Marx. Yet, the feers of the tradition of critical criticism are freeenough not to lead to a constriction of ideas. us, the position of mywork is at once experimental and yet rooted in the Enlightenmenttradition.

It is this curious in-between or interstitial zone that will be explored.

e equivocation nestles in-between two apparently irreconcilable struc-tures of thought, namely, the philosophy of the totality and the philos-ophy of otherness or difference.

In questioning the in-between of the totality and poststructuralisms(PS) emphasis upon positive difference and the confrontation betweena defence of Enlightenment humanism and its contemporary erstwhiledetractors, an experimental and monstrous thinking emerges. In the

juxtaposition of the totality and the different, what is sought aer is

not a forced synthesis or reconciliation of difference, but a possibilisingand a playfulness. In chartering unknown seas, new territories uncovergenerous spaces ofexperimentation and thought. is is perhaps thedangerous taskofpost-human philosophy: the manufacture ofmaterialsto harness forces, to think the unthinkable.

In thinking this peculiar in-between, the metaphor of a force-fieldof ideas is employed. A force field of ideas abandons the search foran extorted reconciliation ofoppositions (Hegels will-to-system) but

instead brings into the foreground the relationality of ideas which atonce both aract and repel. Such a structure is dynamic, fluid and lessrigid than a staid system which demands the unification ofopposites atany cost.

A defence ofEnlightenment ideals that is historically situated requiresthe examination of the concepts ofhumanism and naturalism, in order to


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demonstrate that the gay abandonment ofsuch principles by postmod-ern nihilism is never fully extricable from the tradition that is rebelledagainst.

e following points hope to illuminate the possibility ofa transhu-

man(t) anarchism which is ecologically sensitive, tolerant ofdiversity,yet which sees the role ofstewardship as essential for guiding the planetaway from imminent collapse. Deleuze, Guaari, and Foucault are takenas representatives of the canon of PS and Bookchins thinking is takenas representative of green (anarchist) political philosophy which rootsitself in the humanist and naturalist tradition of the Enlightenment.

First and foremost, by demonstrating the interrelationship betweenPS and Bookchins social ecology, it will be shown that the incommen-

surability argument Bookchin employs is unwarranted and ungenerous.e incommensurability Bookchin sees between classical and dialecticallogic renders Bookchins own observations contradictory. Incommen-surability implies that rational standards are relative or internal to atradition or culture or paradigm in which they are articulated. In thissense incommensurability implies relativism. us, Bookchin is on slip-pery ground when he contends that: Brute facts are distortions ofreality in dialectical reason because for dialectical reason Being is not an

agglomeration of fixed entities and phenomena.His defensive claim that analytic logic has no validity in testing therationality of dialectical logic can be turned on his own conjecturesand therefore his argument warrants further reflection. It is arguablewhether such a defensive claim is a serious defect of social ecology.Furthermore, this form of argument is now disintegrating given thefact that the once opposed traditions of continental and analyticalphilosophy are engaging with and merging into one another. Derrida

and Rorty are thinkers who aempt to bridge the gap between these twoapproaches to philosophy.erefore, notwithstanding Bookchins protests, the question of ra-

tional dialogue, for those who have ears to listen, between PS, socialand deep ecology and anarchism ought to be posed. In order to dis-close the interconnections and affinities between PS, anarchist politicalphilosophy and the possible fruitful co-optation of them by ecological


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thought demands that several centripetal concepts receive close aen-tion. e concepts of the rhizome and arborescence, hierarchy, dualism,and becoming will be assessed in order to think the possibility for acommensurable discourse between two apparently intransigent rivals.

At first glance, it is surprising that anarchism has demonstrated sucha lack of tolerance towards PS theory. PS explores indeterminacy, therealm of appearances, freakish becomings, fragmentation, and positiveotherness. In summa: the celebration of chaos. Anarchism, etymologi-cally, is a state without order, a stateless and chaotic state without theState. In celebrating the social order that emerges in the absence of theordering principle of the State, anarchism thus emphasises creativity andspontaneity.

e Concept of Naturalism

Naturalism is a p hilosophical positionwhich is open to a m ultiplicity ofpossible variations. From a general perspective a naturalist contends thatwhatever exists exists as natural phenomena. Naturalism thus rejectsseeking explanation at the level of the super-natural. Yet, naturalism is

not necessarily synonymous with materialism. Materialism is logicallydistinct from naturalism because naturalism is compatible with varyingontological positions. e chief tenets of naturalism are as follows:

1. Knowledge of the universe is gained by analysis of natural objectswhich are conditioned by the impact ofnatural causes. e universeof natural objects is knowable since it is governed by a causal andspatio-temporal order.

2. Changes in the nature of natural objects are primarily explainedthrough the operations and impacts of natural causes.

3. A natural cause or system of natural causes which impacts upon anatural object is explainable as a natural process.


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4. e natural order is graspedasasystem ofnatural processes. Natureis in principle intelligible in all its parts, but it cannot be explainedas whole.

5. A natural methodology discloses the workings of the natural worldin terms ofnatural causes and is testable through examination of theconsequences of natural causes.

6. e natural is intelligible, ifand only if, natural processes are regular.As a consequence a natural methodology seeks to disclose naturallaws which govern the universe of natural objects. Human beingsas natural objects are in principle governed by the same naturalprocesses which account for the change of vegetation and animals.

e natural method is thus applicable to the domain of social andmental life. Humans, on this account, are immanent, they are naturalobjects.

7. Recourse to nonnatural methodology occurs only in moments ofdespair. For the most part, all humans naturally apply the naturalmethod since they intrinsically possess natural properties as naturalobjects.

8. e practice of reason is consistent with the applicability of thenatural method and science is the paradigm of reasons application.

9. Scientific rationality is not infallible and theories as such are subjectto revisions and even abandonment if beer theories (more true?)manifest themselves. Sciences fallibility implies that there can be noultimate certitude for any scientific theory. eories are rigorously

tested against rival theories and there is nothing contradictory inbelieving a theory to be true and recognising that it may well be falseby future standards.

10. Mathematics and geometry do not point toward a transcendent Pla-tonic ontology in which timeless numerical essences resideasdistinctfrom the natural order. As such, numerical entities, according to nat-uralism, do not necessarily imply nonnatural objects.


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11. Naturalism recognises that are other ways ofexperiencing thenaturalworld but contends that the only cognitive mode ofexperience fiingfor rigorous explanation is the scientific mode.

12. Naturalism defends an ontological pluralism which rejects the claimthat all natural objects are reducible to one form ofnatural object. Allnatural objects share a fixed level of reality. No exceptional naturalobject is more real than another.

13. Naturalism recognises that humans are unique in their capacity tohold and pursue values but instead ofelevating the species above therest of natures inhabitants, naturalism perceives the human speciesas a natural phenomenon subject to natural laws which can be un-covered by a natural methodology. Naturalism contends that moraldisputes are resolvable through the rigorous practice of the naturalmethod. Contra a morally irrefragable intuitionism, naturalism de-fends the testing of moral arguments and scientific theories alikethrough the examination of testable consequences. And lastly,

14. Naturalism is adamantly this-worldly to the extent that it consid-ers philosophical problems as natural problems. Philosophy thus

enquires aer the human, natural object and speculation concerningtranscendent entities is rigorously avoided.

Dialectical Naturalism

Central to the project ofdialectical naturalism is the transcendence of

the dualism subject/object. Such a project thinks that each conjunct isnot immune to the residue of the other. e philosophy ofsocial ecologythus incorporates an ontology of nature which is at once material andsubjective.

Subjectivity resides in nature in various degrees and is not exclusiveto the mental processes humans possess. Ifwe concede that subjectivityinheres within every element ofnature then the hierarchically structuredsubject/object dualism is rendered questionable by a way of thinking


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that examines the relationship between entities in terms of what is heldin common rather than what is radically other.

e question arises however: from a humanist viewpoint, how canwe maintain the uniqueness of the human subject?

Traditionally, the subject is considered as unique precisely because ofits capacity to transcend nature through its capacity for self-conscious-ness. If the transcendence ofnature into the realm ofculture is rejectedasdualistic then it is difficult not to fall into the trap ofcreating an egalitar-ian biosphere in which every entity deserves equal respect. Furthermore,is not the introduction of subjectivity within nonhuman nature itself ananthropomorphic gesture?

But a more interesting question is to inquire as to whether one can

ever fully extricate a perspective from an anthropomorphic position. Isan other-regarding perspective irredeemably contaminated with anthro-pomorphic remains? However, Bookchin is guilty more than most onthis point in the sense that he is blind to his own anthropomorphizingand yet excessively critical of deep ecologys biocentric conception ofnature. Dialectical (naturalistic) reason opposes itself to intuitionismand mysticism precisely because of the unreasoned, cloudy and arbitrarynature of visceral feelings. Bookchin is an ardent defender of Enlighten-

ment reason (in the form ofHegels philosophy ofoptimism) and thinksthat deviation from a commitment to reason is one step nearer to Na-tional Socialism whose perverted ecologism was based upon intuitionand anti-rationalism. Dialectical reason as well as opposing itself tomysticism also critically questions instrumental (conventional) reasonwhich it perceives as one-dimensional and coldly analytical.

e form of reason Bookchin subscribes to then is a dialectical rea-son which is organic, critical, developmental yet analytical and ethical.

Dialectical reason conceives the interrelationships between particularentities as mediated through the totality. Entities within the totality areforever unfolding in a perpetual process of coming into being and pass-ing away. is process is a process ofbecoming which Bookchin derivesfrom Heraclitus and later in Hegel. Nature is then in a process ofcontin-ual development and each entity has boundaries which are continuallybeing redefined. Bookchins philosophy of nature then perceives theworking of dialectics in the sphere of nature, society and consciousness.


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It is at this point that we begin to see the questionable omnipres-ence of dialectics. It is her draws out those contradictory aspects of athing and thus renders them explicit. In this way, implicit potentialityis given its full actuality or realisation. Bookchin is aware that one of

the assumptions necessary for this perception is that there is teleolog-ical development towards greater complexity or differentiation withinthe universe. Dialectical naturalism celebrates the process of naturalbecoming and advances a vision ofwholeness, fullness, and richness ofdifferentiation and subjectivity. Reason is defended here as the meansthrough which latent potentialities are identified. us, the unleashingof latent potentialities by the articulation of reason, for Bookchin, is themeans through which social development occurs. A rational society

emerges out of the unfolding process of reasons development.In a clear sense then, the abandonment of reason which Bookchinperceives in several areas ofsocial life signals the combined obsolescenceof social development and the excrescence of the irrational. A socialecology is thus considered ethical given the prescriptive ethical importin the statement that being must ripen into the fullness of its being. epolitical question which arises is: who is to decide what constitutes thefullness ofa beings being? Who is to decide what a being is to become?

And furthermore, what are the means for disclosing the constitution ofa beings being?It is also legitimate to ask whether the warping of the development of

an entity within nature by another entity constitutes an unethical act?If this were so, then animals, plant and insects, would be humorouslyconsidered to live unethically. In the human sphere, the political impli-cations would necessarily encourage passivity in a global agreement tolet all being be in order for them to fulfil their latent potentiality.

But perhaps these questions are unwarranted. Perhaps we are tryingto extract a confession from Bookchin under duress. Bookchin replies tothe question concerning ethical acts by maintaining a strict incommen-surability between process-orientated dialectical philosophy and ana-lytical philosophy which directs its aentions to brute facts. Bookchinconsiders that answers to dialectical questions can only be answered bydialectics and hence dialectical reason. A logic premised on the principle


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of identity A equals A, can hardly be used to test the validity ofa logicpremised on A equals A and not-A.

It is here that the dispute with antihumanism, mysticism and post-modernism appears in bold relief. Bookchin iscontesting the dominance

of other forms of nondialectical reason. Other forms of consciousnessand different ways of conceiving the workings of things are consideredas a betrayal ofsocial development, a betrayal ofEnlightenment idealsand their overt quest for liberation. In more ordinary terms one could saythat this is sheer intolerance (ofdiversity, ofother voices) on Bookchinspart. Professor Kovel in examining the invective in Bookchins prosecontends: Dialectic, instead of unfolding, becomes static, frozen in anendless series of vendeas. In less personalistic terms, we could argue

that the reconstructed Hegelian logic Bookchin employs renders theexistence of positive differences problematic.

Rhizomatic Naturalism

e potential incommensurability between the naturalist ontologiesof Deleuze and Bookchin will now be assessed. But firstly the organic

metaphor or image of the rhizome will receive aention.

Rhizome, dualism and supersession

We shall concern ourselves here with an alternative image of thoughtwhose alternative perspective is anarchistic (for it essentially opposesitself to an image of thought which is State-orientated). One possible

objection is that the reading here is too literal.e objection is taken on board but what is significant is the tracingof potential affinities between the perception of thought as nomadicand experimental and the traditional political philosophy of anarchism.Deleuze and Guaari are principally interested in lines of flight andmoments of deterritorialisation that escape the binary coding of theState apparatus. Deleuze and Guaari think becomings, multiplicities,and proliferation as a form ofcounter-praxis to binary oppositions. ey


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are interested in what escapes from social cleavages. Instead of East-West they look for the ruptures and breakthroughs that are occurringelsewhere. inking otherwise than molarity (the molar), they seek todisclose rebellions in the North and the South.

Molecularity is discerned as a potential site ofcreativity and refusal.Normal identities, binary-molar apparatuses (male/female, culture/na-ture) are contrasted with provisional identities ofbecoming. e rhizomeis an image of thought which aempts to account for thoughts trajec-tory and speed. It is contrasted to the traditional image of Occidentalthought, the tree and the root. e rhizome is different from roots andradicles. Rats which swarm over each other are invoked as an instance ofa rhizome. Rhizome contains both lines of segmentarity (recuperation)

and lines of deterritorialisation (escape). Rhizomes are compared witharborescent structures. e rhizome contains elements which resist thesedentary structures of hierarchy and centralised organs.

Deleuze and Guaari do not merely affirm one component of the du-alism in favour of the other. is point is argued by Tomlinson: AllDeleuzes systems can be regarded as temporary strategic construc-tions, as the transitory fortifications of an advancing nomadic war ma-chine. For Deleuze and Guaari, there are knots of arborescence in

rhizomes and rhizomatic offshoots in roots. In summa: rhizomes areacentred, nonhierarchical and are best defined as permiing the circula-tion of evasive states of intensity.

e model of the rhizome examines what flees and what is producedby fleeing. Couchgrass is a wonderful image Deleuze and Guaari pro-vide in order to distinguish the growth of grass as distinct from thegrowth of trees. Couchgrass grows between paving stones, it springs upeverywhere. Couchgrass is a weed, it is rhizomatic.

e production of desire, for Deleuze and Guaari, is looked upon asa rhizomatic process. e rhizome is above all a way ofgrasping connec-tion and coupling, a way of understanding extra-textual relationships(the effect of a book on the readers intensity outside of a book). Inthe case of writing, Deleuze and Guaari maintain: Writing webs awar machine and lines of flight, abandoning the strata, segmentarities,sedantarity, the State apparatus.


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e question arises: towhat extent are the concepts of the rhizome andhorizontality useful as tools for social ecology and anarchism? Kropotkinelaborated, contra Darwin, a conception ofevolution that emphasised therole ofmutual aid insocial evolution. e rhizome shares similar features

with Kropotkins notion of the affinity group which is a collectivity thatspontaneously emerges for specific needs or ends.In thinking the relationship between Deleuzian PS and ecological

politics, Patrick Hayden contends that Deleuze expounds a naturalisticontology. Hayden reworks the concept ofnaturalism in order to accountfor Deleuzes critique of the verticality of Occidental thought.

Two troubling lacunas are present in Haydens analysis. e firstis that Hayden fails to expose Deleuzes employment of machinic

metaphors which are the bedrock ofDeleuzes rhizomatic philosophy.e second is that there is dearth of analysis concerning the impact ofNietzsches lebensphilosophie upon Deleuzes philosophical trajectory.

On Haydens interpretation, Deleuzes naturalism celebrates the in-terrelationships between human and nonhuman life without recourseto metaphysically static binary oppositions (essence/appearance). epragmatics ofDeleuzian naturalism asks for the effects a way of think-ing have upon us. us, Hayden is right to note the search for different

ways of living and thinking by Deleuze and Guaari which are sensitiveto and in tune with the environment.Hayden fails to note the effect ofNietzsches philosophy of innocent

becoming and this-worldly atheism upon Deleuzes own thinking. Inlooking for a way of thinking which escapes Platonisms positing ofpure transcendent Being (the real of Ideas), Deleuze seeks to re-unitethe (bio)-diversity of the natural world with the natural worlds realconditions of material difference and process of becoming.

Deleuze develops a pluralistic naturalism through a reading of Lu-cretius and Spinoza. In thinking through the concept ofnature, Deleuzereads Lucretius as refusing to succumb to the temptation to totalise. Inrefusing to seek a final unification of the different elements of nature,what is celebrated is precisely the diversity and difference which inhereswithin nature. is refusal connects up with tenet (naturalism) 4 out-lined above. e realm of Ideas is jeisoned for it supports the idea thatnature is an imperfect copy of transcendent Being. Individuals, species,


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environments are considered as non-totalisable sums. e multiple is cel-ebrated over the One. Deleuze reads nature distributively, that is to say,as an open ended interplay of the various plurality ofelements whichcompose it. Nature is a continuous process ofbecoming, a process of

formation and deformation.Deleuze searches for a way of thinking that can align itselfwith thefluctuations of reality. If nature fluctuates because it is continuallybecoming then a rigid dichotomy (humanity and nature) is an unsuitabletool for describing such a reality. is is precisely the point that needsto be underscored.

Deleuze and his collaborator, Guaari, call for a way of thinking thatcelebrates the different and the singular which counters the urge to to-

talise or unify. e plane of immanence is the concept employed tocelebrate difference and singularities. Deleuze and Guaaris model ofevolution rejects the arborescent image of thought based upon descent(genealogy) in favour ofa rhizomatic conception ofspecies developmentin which the traversality of species combined with a continuous inter-action with the external environment is given greater weight.

e political dimension to Deleuzes naturalism takes the form, ac-cording to Hayden, of a creativity of concepts, practices, and values

which best promote the collective life and interests ofdiverse modesof existence inhabiting the planet. Deleuzes micropolitical analysisthus examines local, oen temporary ecological situations. In doing so,ecological activism, as one struggle amongst many , steers clear of uni-versal abstractions (the ideal of equality for all) and thus concentrateson the particular and the singular.

Furthermore, Guaari stresses micropolitical processes with respectto the workings of molecular revolutions. us spoke Guaari: For the

last decade [1970s] bale lines widely different from those which previ-ously characterised the traditional workers movement have not ceasedto multiply (immigrant workers, skilled workers unhappy with the kindofwork imposed on them, the unemployed, over exploited women, ecol-ogists, nationalists, mental patients, homosexuals, the elderly, the youngetc.).. But will their objectives become just another demand acceptableto the system or will vectors ofmolecular revolution begin to proliferatebehind them.


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e rejection of universal abstractions does not necessarily entail theoutright refusal to examine macropolitical phenomena. As Deleuze says:every politics is simultaneously a macropolitics and a micropolitics.Deleuze perceives ecological problems in terms of the translation be-

tween local and global ecosystems. Deleuze analyses the construction ofthe planetary ecosystem beginning with the combination and intersec-tion of local phenomena which together compose the global ecosystem.

For the purposes of the central contention of this thesis, we ought tomake a comparison between the rhizomatic-thinking ofDeleuze and thesocial ecology of Bookchin. Bookchins social ecology argues that thedomination ofnature stems from a deeply entrenched historical domina-tion of human by human. Reason and domination, on this account, are

mutually exclusive. Integrated World Capitalism infects reason witha contaminated conception of reason which desires production for thesake of production (instrumental means/end reason).

e message is clear: it is only by reconfiguring a radical (uprooting)revolutionary politics that reasons struggle will be victorious. Bookchindefends such an uprooting of thought, praxis and values by enunciat-ing the value of decentralised communities which practice locally baseddemocracy. Furthermore, Bookchins dialectical naturalism re-situates

human and nonhuman life within bioregions which are sensitive tocomplex evolutionary phenomena. Human and nonhuman are inter-twined and function according to the ecological principle ofmutualismor symbiosis. Other noteworthy precepts of social ecology include theimplementation of environmentally friendly (alternative) technologies(solar power, wind power and so on) and the celebration of cultural(ethnic, local) and biophysical diversity.

Hayden claims that there are points of intersection here between so-

cial ecology and rhizomatic thinking. However, Bookchin has aackedDeleuze regarding the explicit anti-humanism which pervades his work.PS, in general, is rejected given its decentring of Man. On the otherhand, Deleuze wishes to transcend what he sees as a one-dimensionalEnlightenment rationality and more particularly the unchallenged marchtoward a rational society by Marxist theoreticians. e presuppositionsunderlying the idea of progress and the teleological belief in the mes-sianic ending ofhistory with the arrival ofheaven on earth is further


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aacked by Deleuze who wishes to think free from systems of closure.Deleuzes philosophy seeks to leap over the deterministic presupposi-tions of traditional essentialism and humanism which are evident inBookchins paean to Hegelian dialectics.

Haydens point is that Bookchin examines only one surface of eco-logical phenomena namely its inner dialectical development withoutseeing phenomena as entwined with an outside. Haydens analysisis fundamentally weakened given the fact that one of Deleuzes maininfluences was Nietzsche who inaugurated a deconstructive practicethat sought to chiefly expose the hidden motivations lurking in Occiden-tal thought, namely philosophys hidden desire or will-to-power. econcept of becoming is centripetal to Nietzsches philosophy of the eter-

nal recurrence and the Will-to-Power. Yet, a grasping of the critique ofthe transcendent world of essences, the beyond or Nirvana by an imma-nent rhizomatic naturalism is blunted without recourse to the becoming-Nietzsche of Deleuze.

Nietzsche set in train one of the most hostile critiques of Christianityand of Occidental culture and Nietzsche was one of the main spurs forDeleuzes philosophy of affirmation. To grasp the meaning of Deleuzesplane of immanence thus requires foregrounding Spinozas and Niet-

zsches philosophies ofpower and affectivity. Hayden fails to providesuch an analysis.In contrast to Hayden, Gare notes the impacts of Nietzsche and Berg-

son upon Deleuzes thinking and contends that Deleuze constructs aNietzschean philosophy of nature out of philosophy, mathematics andscientific advances. More importantly, several of Deleuzes chief con-cepts are omied from Haydens otherwise thought-provoking essay.e machinic assemblage, the Body-without-Organs (BwO), and the

mechanosphere receive no mention whatsoever. Such a selective readingcannot but give the impression that Deleuze and Guaari enunciated aso and woolly passivity. On the contrary, Guaari calls for ever greatercontrol and manipulation of the mechanosphere given the constanthuman abuse of fragile ecosystems.

Furthermore, it can be argued that Deleuze and Guaaris collabo-rative Anti-Oedipus enterprise was directed toward a rethinking andreconstruction ofontology itself. e a naturalistic ontology ought to


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be put into parentheses here. e traditional tools of ontology (being,object, qualities, pairs) are replaced by Deleuze and Guaari with theconcepts ofplanes, intensities, flows, becomings, and couplings. Rigidbinary oppositions (a chief example is the man/woman dualism) are

avoided and in their place we find a continuum of interacting embodiedsubjectivities.Yet, it is legitimate to inquire as to whether a machinic ontology

is necessarily gender neutral or nature oppressive. Grosz and othershave been quick off the mark to note the potentially sexist metaphorsemployed by Deleuze and Guaari. e use ofmachinic metaphors maywell express a phallic drive whose obvious desire is to plug into, coupleup and oppressively connect up with everything it can dominate.

C(ha)osmos

Guaaris later work unequivocally aligns itself with thinking of agreen hue. Guaaris Les Trois Ecologieswill receive examination here.

A triadicecology problematises the subject/object dualism. esubjectis decentralised and configured from an exteriority of components (the

unconscious, the body). Guaari names these as components ofsubjecti-fication. e hermetic self-certain interiority articulated by Descartes isquestioned by Guaari for its one-dimensional emphasis. ere are otherways of existing which would seem to be irreducible to the realm ofconsciousness.

Guaari is principally interested in the possible emergence ofnew par-adigms of ethico-aesthetic thinking and praxis. Such paradigms rethinkthe relationship between human subjectivity and the context (environ-

ment) within which it engages. Subjectivity seems to imply the role ofthe unconscious in relation to the human and natural environment. Incomparison, Bookchins analysis of the unconscious is conspicuouslyabsent in his philosophy.

With emphasis upon the creative potentiality of subjectivity or newways ofexisting, Guaari looks toward the future. He is in effect offeringa futurist agenda. Such a futurist agenda aempts to think the intersec-tion of the human with cybernetics and more particularly with computer-


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aided subjectivity. In schizoanalysing the ecological, a cartography ofsubjectivity transcends predefined territorial limits (the orthodoxy ofOedipus for example) with the formation of new perspectives withoutprior recourse to assured theoretical foundations or the authority ofa

group, school, conservatory, or academy.New perspectives emerge from the intersection of social, mental, andenvironmental ecologies. e triadic intersection of the socius, the psy-che, and nature, Guaari believes, is an essential nodal point for de-coding the general degradation of social relationships, the mind, andthe environment. Guaari refuses to separate the elements of the triad.In schizoanalytic language, they form an assemblage. Schizoanalyti-cal social ecology challenges the dualism between nature and culture

with the perception that nature and culture are inseparable. Neitherhuman work or the natural habitat are legitimate either/or choices.A transversal understanding of the interactions between ecosystems,the mechanosphere and social and individual universes of referenceis encouraged by Guaari in order to rethink the possible detrimentaleffects of isolated social, psychological and environmental ecologies.

It should be noted Guaari is arguing from an anthropocentric asopposed to biocentric viewpoint. Guaari and Negri claim that com-

munisms call to life celebrates the slender hope of a reconfiguredhuman solidarity. However, this observation needs to be balanced forthe argument presupposes the very dualism which is brought into ques-tion. Guaari does not wish to rehearse traditional debates. In a veryimportant sense he is calling for a new eco-logic.

is eco-logic is a logic of intensities which examines the move-ment and intensity of evolutive processes. What Guaari is seeking todescribe are processual lines of flight that are secreted from entrenched

totalities and identities. In other words Guaari is aempting to thinkofone-offevents which once combined with subjective assemblages pro-vide examples ofnew existential configurations in which social, psychicand natural elements function in a nondestructive milieu. e politicalproject of triadic ecological praxes is the affirmation ofnew forms ofsub-

jectivity (new forms of knowledge, culture, sensibility, and sociability).e social ecologies ofBookchin and Guaari both see capitalism as

a system ofeconomics hostile to the life of ecosystems. Yet, Guaari


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is innovative from the viewpoint of capitalisms tactic of intension,that is to say, the way capitalism nestles into unconscious levels ofsubjectivity. Guaari drives the point home:

It has become imperative to confront the effects ofcapitalistpower on the mental ecology of daily life, whether individ-ual, domestic, conjugal, neighbourly, creative, or personal-ethical.

Processes of re-singularisation and the practice of the art ofdissensusrather than a mind-numbing or levelling consensus are defended byGuaari as tactics to de-stabilise capitalist subjectivity. It must be bornein mind that Guaari is advancing a generalised ecology which incor-porates the whole ofsubjectivity and capitalist power formations. Ageneralised ecology eschews a sole concern for the welfare of animalsor trees. Yet, it also refuses to rigidly demarcate the three ecologies. eart of the eco endeavours to formulate this kind of praxis openness.

On the subject ofmental ecology and the ambivalence ofdesire, Guat-tari makes the interesting point that violence is the consequence ofcomplex subjective assemblages and not an essential aribute of thehuman species. Guaari maintains that violence is not intrinsically in-scribed in the essence of the human species. is would seem to troubleBookchins alignment of Deleuze and Guaari with an anti-humanism.

Bookchin is eager to denounce those he sees as condemning the hu-man species (or what he calls humanity) for its apparently disastrouseffects upon the environment. If capitalism or Integrated World Capital-ism (Guaaris concept) is to be challenged then new values, and newecological praxes must be invented.

Guaari believes that an environmental ecology of the future oughtto be much more than a mere defence ofnature. It is worth quotingGuaari in full here:

Increasingly in future, the maintenance ofnatural equilibriawill be dependent upon human intervention; the time willcome, for example, when massive programmes will have tobe set in train to regulate the relationship between oxygen,


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ozone, and carbon dioxide in the earths atmosphere. Inthis perspective, environmental ecology could equally bere-named machinic ecology, since both cosmic and humanpractice are nothing if not machinic indeed they are ma-

chines of war, in so far as Nature has always been at warwith life!

What Guaari means by the comment that Nature hasalwaysbeenatwar with life is far from clear. Furthermore, the meaning ofGuaaris de-mand for an ethics and politics fiing for the technological developmentswhich are under way in respect of the general destiny ofhumanity iseven less clear. Yet, Guaaris continual reference to humanity oughtto repel the designation of Guaari as a vulgar anti-humanist. More-over, Guaaris open call for a return of the practice of resingularisationand his affirmation of the art ofdissensus rather than neo-liberal con-sensus does not necessarily imply that Guaari was anti-universalist.Contra Ferrys reading ofdifferential thinking, resingularisation (processof becoming and mode of experimentation) does not necessarily implyuniversalism (legal rights for the whole of humanity). What Guaaripoints toward are the technological developments (data-processing, ge-netic engineering) which mean that the definitions of the human beingare increasingly subject to forces ofan alien and exterior nature. Such asubjection requires a rethinking of the human subject in relation to itsenvironment and its future(s).

Postmodern Nihilism

A hindered and bleak perspective regarding postmodernism inevitablyreads postmodernism as nihilistic. Such an ungenerous perspective isevident in the work of Bookchin. Hardly alien to idiosyncrasy itself,anarchism ought to find it fruitful to listen openly to the (dark) theoristsof the postmodern. Instead ofoutlawing the apparently idiosyncraticphilosophical tendencies of Foucault, Deleuze et al, it is beer to seekcommon ground than to secrete a theoretical xenophobia of sorts.


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Bookchin is correct in noting the post-modern question mark nextto an unreflective affirmation of economic, market-driven progress.Bookchins perspective is however myopic with respect to postmod-ernisms disillusionment in progress (progress for the sake of progress)

for a disillusionment is also convalescence, a time for reflection, and ispreparatory for an affirmation ofhuman identity and destiny upon albeitradically renewed lines.

For the purposes of this thesis, Foucault and Deleuze will be defendedagainst Bookchins reading of postmodern nihilism, though Bookchinis obviously correct in noting Deleuze and Guaaris questioning ofgrand narratives. Obviously if we reject all grand narratives then socialecologys grand narrative of human liberation must also be rejected.

e May-June evenements of 1968 are ofutmost importance ifwe areto understand the impetus behind leist postmodernism. At times,Bookchin seems to echo Jamesons conclusions concerning the phenom-ena of postmodernism. Bookchin in chartering the tendencies of post-modernism contends: Postmodern is not only a nihilistic reaction to thefailures imputed to Enlightenment ideals of reason, science, and progressbut more proximately a cultural reaction to the failures of various so-cialisms to achieve a rational society in France and elsewhere in our

country.From Bookchins Hegelian perspective, it is consistent to view a phi-losophy which reads otherness and difference to be positive, as hostile toHegels grand narrative of the unfolding and omnivorous Spirit. Oneof the chief problems of Bookchins rejection of postmodernism is itsfailure to critique the very ideas which are densely articulated. Instead,a sociology of knowledge is provided which is blandly Marxist in thecorrelation of a fragmentary economic system and ideas which express

that fragmentation. e content ofpostmodern ideas is not under themicroscope of analysis. Bookchin instead connects the social functionof philosophy with the prevailing economic system. Postmodernismfrom this perspective is merely an ideological support for the febrility ofcontemporary civilisation. But let us remember that Bookchin is writingfrom a political and anarchist point of view.

Basically, Bookchins rejection of postmodernism is anchored in itsquestioning of the intellectual value of truth, objectivity (as opposed to


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relativism), rationality (as opposed to mysticism), progress (as opposedto romanticism), and universality (as opposed to the particular and irrecu-perable). Such values ground anarchist philosophy in the Enlightenmenttradition. us, from Bookchin evanescent, local and individual occur-

rences and thus fail to answer the wider social questions which explorethe potentiality for liberation of populations and societies (free fromdomination and hierarchy).

is reading of desiring-machines as essentially insular and hermeticmachinic assemblages is rejected by Massumi who contends that:

Becomings are everywhere in capitalism, but they are al-ways separated from their full potential, from the thing theyneed most to run their course: a population free for themutating.

Massumi demonstrates a concern for the destruction of nature whenhe makes the telling point that:

e absolute limit ofcapitalism must be shied back fromplanetary death to becoming-other.

What is of significance for Massumi and others are the lines of flightrather than the lines ofdeath that both equally are secreted out from themachinic workings of Capital.

To drive the point home: e equilibrium of the physical environmentmust be established, so that cultures may go on living and learn to livemore intensely at a state far from equilibrium. Depletion must end,that we may devote ourselves to our true destiny: dissipation. evalue, celebration and examination of local upsurges and ephemeral

confrontations is precisely a lacuna which dilutes the impact Bookchinsanalysis.

Bookchin is also inconsistent in two significant places. Firstly, in orderto affirm the fertility ofDeleuzes affirmative philosophy we will lookat the relationship between PS and anarchism more closely. It will beargued that Bookchins social ecology was pre-programmed to forsakea potential ally primarily because of the presuppositions derived from


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a Hegelian heritage. Secondly, the nomadological politics ofDeleuzeand Guaari and the insurrectionary politics ofFoucault offer a tacticaland political methodology for confronting congealed power relationsand for understanding the cancerous birth of micro-fascism.

Bookchin fails to assess the possible productive relationship betweenthe affinity group (classical anarchisms model of social organisation)and the local and temporal coalitions of nomadological revolutionar-ies. If anarchism cannot function in the absence of overarching andtranscendent principles then anarchism runs the risk of abandoningfruitful tactical coalitions along ecological, racial, class and gender lines.Ironically, Bookchin in his celebration of 1968 endorses the very mol-ecular revolutions Deleuze and Guaari sought to theorise concretely.

Bookchin spoke thus: It is clear that a molecular process was going onin France, completely invisible to the most conscious revolutionaries, aprocess that the barricades precipitated into revolutionary action.

Poststructuralist Anarism

Todd May formulates the relationship between anarchism and PS polit-

ical philosophy in terms ofPS thought forming a framework for thinkingthe concrete and particular without recourse to universal transcendentideals. May constructs a triadic ethical schema which distinguishesformal, strategic and tactical political philosophies. Formal politicalphilosophy would include the abstract formulations of Rawls or Nozick.Formal philosophy would thus defend one pole of the is-ought dichotomy.A strategic political philosophy approaches the is-ought dichotomy interms of the tension in-between the two. e in-between neither sup-

ports one nor the other disjunct but thinks the relationship in terms ofapplication and real political programmes. us, Lenin in asking whatis to be done? is exploring the abstract formalism of political philoso-phy in connection with the pragmatic utilitarian sphere of politics. Astrategic analysis is therefore encompassing and unitary in the sensethat it tends toward single goals, for example, the dictatorship of theproletariat.


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Tactical political philosophy is more akin to the uprisings of 1968.Rejecting representation in the form ofa vanguard party whose goal isthe articulation ofworkers interests (for the people cannot formulatetheir own interests!), a tactical analysis is bound to the particular and the

multiple. Concern with universal interests emanating from a particulargroup or class are absent from tactical PS philosophy.In this sense, May contends, anarchism, at least in the classical anar-

chism ofKropotkinandProudhon, is a precursor ofFrench PS. Contra thecoercion endemic in the coldest ofall cold monsters, classical anarchismdesires maximum freedom beyond the realm of domination. PSs de-nunciation of the domination of marginal groups (homosexuals, ethnic)clearly has principles compatible with an orthodox anarchist position.

e differences and similarities between classical anarchism and PSpolitical philosophy are identifiable with respect to the constitution ofpower. Tactical thinking perceives power as dispersed throughout thesocius whereas traditional conceptions ofpower consider power as ema-nating from a central source (the State). Kropotkin believes that powerstifles chaotic-order and voluntary mutual aid organisations such as thelifeboat association (one could call this self-organisation or autopoiesisin modern terms). And this is precisely the point that philosophers like

Deleuze and Foucault contest.Deleuze disputes the a priori assumption that power necessarily sup-presses and as such power is not necessarily the negation of humanity.ere is nothing lurking primordially or existing pre-formed behind thealienated worker and no true knowledge waiting to be appear from theveil of ideological manipulation. In anarchist terms, there is a definite, al-beit ahistorical and abstract, human essence waiting to emerge from theinhumanity of life under Capital. e paradox, ofcourse, of the anarchist

view of the human animal is as follows: if the human animal is naturallysocial then why is the States existence such a widespread phenomena?If the State presumably acts contrary to humanitys true nature thenwhy have humans implemented the most ruthless and predatory eco-nomic system human history has ever seen? us, anarchism from theperspective of PS philosophy is staid if it retains the assumptions of abenign human essence and the suppression assumption regarding theeffects of power.


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e negation of humanist naturalism affirms instead the creativityof power as a process of constitution-constituted between the subjectand object ofpower. e subject is simultaneously a produced-producerrather than merely a producer from forces ofan altogether alien nature.

It ought to be noted that classical anarchism is not a homogeneousmovement. Emma Goldmans thinking is difficult to incorporate into ahumanist naturalism mould, for she adopted a Nietzschean philosophyof affirmation which in principle is prospective, that is to say, it con-cerns itself with the future as a possibilising of experimental (inhuman)becomings and practices.

Furthermore, a more contemporary anarchist, Colin Ward explicitlyabandons humanist essentialism which perceives human consciousness

as the centre of the universe and the ordering principle which orderseverything around it. Ward in his discussion of the interaction ofcom-plexity, order, and harmony maintains that: Anarchy is a function, not ofa societys simplicity and lackofsocial organisation, but of its complexityand multiplicity of social organisations.

Cybernetics, the science of control and communication throws valu-able light on the anarchist conception of the complex self-organisingprocess. . . e anarchist alternative is that of fragmentation, fission

rather than fusion, diversity rather than unity, a mass ofsocieties ratherthan a mass society. Ifconsciousness is both product and producer thena theoretical resistance to a de-centring of consciousness is in dangerof producing its own anthropocentric arrogance. A PS anarchism thusexamines the positivity ofpower and also must search for a paradigm ofthought which transcends a narrow humanist essentialism.

e Concept of Humanism and the Promise ofEnlightenment

What is humanism? As a philosophical worldview humanism cele-brates what it claims to be the highest and most distinct qualities ofthe human being. Several standard interpretations of humanism argue


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axiologically that human beings possess superior value over other en-tities. Humans are seen as dignified creatures worthy of the highestconsideration. e rational, autonomous self free from the dictates ofunconscious animality is cherished as the site of humanitys unique po-

tentiality. e soul or mind is a centripetal concept. e universe, ina sense, revolves around the soul or mind.e Renaissance humanist Vico supports this point when he says:

[it is] a truth beyond all question that the world ofcivil soci-ety has certainly been made by man and that its principlesare therefore to be rediscovered within the modifications ofour own human mind.

Humanism in the Renaissance returns to Greece and Rome to re-birththe concept of paideia. Humanism in this sense celebrates education inthe humanities. From another perspective pleasure and toleration areforegrounded as responses to a debilitating religious dogmatism, zealous-ness and asceticism of the Medieval Age. To add a further distinction weought to note the role the concept ofGod plays in humanist formulations.Humanism is by no means inconsistent with nor is it incompatible witha religious point-of-view. In fact, humanism, on the whole, defends andis tolerant of the right to express religious convictions.

Yet, the twentieth century has witnessed the growth in what we couldcall a godless humanism. e laer is a much stronger form of human-ism for it jeisons the concept of God as the overarching valuer. ehuman subject, for example, in Sartres aggressive existential humanism,is unique with regard to its capacity for self-determination and is thesource and creator of all (moral) value. Renaissance humanism com-pared with its twentieth century form stuers as an inchoate adventureto openly expressatheistic tendencies. In summa: humanism once tracedto a truly human seing in which God is expelled from the universe, con-fers human beings with the responsibility as the ultimate demiurge andsole intrinsic value bearer and bestower. Man le to himself fulfils hispotentialities as a free, creative and rational social being.

Bookchins insights into the predicament of modernity are illumi-nating. If Enlightenment is the bursting asunder of humanitys self-


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imposed tutelage (Kant) then anti-Enlightenment is the return of the cul-tural dark ages ofsuperstition, mysticism, and the irrational. Bookchinssearch for a re-enchantment ofhumanity traces the tendencies whichdesired the cold and manipulating instrumentalism that led to the gas

chambers. What Bookchins thesis, in effect, boils down to is a defenceofecological subjectivity and the role it plays in the unfolding ofself-con-sciousness. Malthusianism, sociobiology and deep ecology are chastisedfor their apparent antihumanism.

Yet, Bookchin criticises the employment of an abstract conceptionof Man or Humanity but baulks at a way of thinking that decen-tres subjectivity such as sociobiology which notes the impact geneticsand the environment have on the constitution ofhuman beings. Man

is more than a white-male-middle-class entity. Man unifies the com-posite of ethnic, gendered, sexual differences. Bookchin is cautious toinvoke a one-sided biological emphasis which exists at the expense ofunderemphasising the role consciousness plays in human affairs. Simi-larly he aacks deep ecology for its anti-anthropocentric impulses whichBookchin contorts into misanthropic statements. Contra biocentrism,Bookchin defends what is essentially unique in the human species.From a social ecological perspective, humanity registers a unique po-

tentiality for rationality. At its best, a socio-ecological awareness isa lived rationality which fosters cooperation, empathy, a sense of re-sponsibility for the biosphere, together with new ideas of communityand consociation. Bookchins Hegelian social ecology claims that it isa transcendence of philanthropos and misanthropos. e quintessenceof the nature of each conjunct is preserved in a more complex whole.Social ecology thus aims to transcend the anthropo-centric and the bio-centric for Bookchins organic dialectic implies no centricity. Bookchin

conceives first nature and second nature in terms of organic flowfrom one to the next which contravenes classical logics demand forstable identities. Bookchin re-configured humanism is thus an ethics ofcomplementarity. e culmination ofan ethics ofcomplementarity islocated in the utopos ofa free, nonhierarchical, nature. Free natureis thus the synthesis of first and second nature.

e Enlightenment is read by Bookchin largely in terms of a libera-tion movement away from superstition and domination. Historically,


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anarchism is derived from the Enlightenment belief in the powers ofreason to rationally re-order society (revolution) and its placing of valuein humanity as a unique species with unique capacities. Classical human-ism is perceived by Bookchin as a largely regressive movement looking

backwards historically towards ancient Greek society and their positivevalues concerning education and civilisation. Enlightenment humanism,on other hand, moved away from the classical viewpoint towards a moreprospective position. It is here that anarchism and the Enlightenmentshare a common thread. Liberation from superstition also meant theprospective reconstruction of society along communistic lines. usspoke Bookchin: Enlightened humanism is a hopeful message that soci-ety can be rendered not only rational but wise and not only ethical but

passionately visionary.

Transhuman(t)ism

In thinking the outside of Hegels confinement of reason, Deleuzeavoids the necessity of firmly establishing identities and concludingthe resolution of opposites. Resistance to the infernal machine can

thus entertain practices which are not subsumed under the bannersof grand Ideals and class antagonisms crying out for supersession.Nodal points ofopposition in the form ofdesires, experiences and eventsthus assume an autonomy that is not easily recuperable in terms of theSystem. Temporary autonomous zones (TAZ) of experimentation arethus perceived as troublesome for they as such go uncoded.

Dialectical reason in a sense therefore sacrifices difference for thesake of unity and codification. PS political philosophy, as enunciated by

Deleuze and Guaari, moves away from conventional political strategiesand thinks instead that revolution is possible when particular configu-rations of desires are allowed to freely congregate. A nomadic politicsis thus tactical, experimental and exploratory. New aesthetic, moral,political and ecological codes are engendered by such tactical praxes.

However, one must guard against the unthinking acceptance that anomadic politics is a universal panacea for the maladies ofwhat one isopposing. Plant rightly notes that codification and stability are valuable


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in countering the movements of the State apparatus, though generally,tactical politics shuns the urge to make dogmatic universal judgements.Tactical manoeuvres thus protect themselves against impulses that con-geal a fluid tactical alliance into a prescriptive strategy applicable to

every social, political, and ecological situation. Molecular revolutionsare best considered as local, heterogenous and ephemeral phenomenacapable of reflecting global issues, even though they function by subter-ranean (transversal) connections. In fact, it could be argued that localactions are effective if they thought about on a global level.

Rosi Braidoi in her book Nomadic Subjectshas noted that a differentkind of nonparty eco-politics is possible if we think coalitions in termsof the temporary and mobile (nomadic). Ecological and feminist affinity

groups, for example, synchronise and congregate for the purposes of lim-ited and local upsurges. is point again affirms the possible coalitionsor mutant machines to be made between anarchism and politicallyinformed PS philosophy.

e issues are rendered even more complex by Perez. Perez sets out todemonstrate the conjunction between desiring-production, schizoanaly-sis and an an(archical) and nonhier(archical) way of life (a Nietzscheaninnocence of becoming). Brackets are employed by Perez to make a dis-

tinction between a specific and new kind of micro-politics and a relapseinto old models of the party-vanguard.Central to Deleuze and Guaaris theory of desire is the perception

that desire is both active and reactive. Desire offers the double possi-bility of desiring its own repression (fascism and Reich) and liberation(futural possibilities). What is of importance for ecopolitics is the claimby Deleuze and Guaari that Capital is itselfpropelled towards its ownlimit of collapse and exhaustion by an immanent logic of deterritoriali-

sation-reterritorialisation.According to this form of analysis, the unconscious of the employer/employee alike are both bound up with Capitals schizophrenic desireto channel (recode) and experiment with the flows of the universe (cap-ital, desire). It could be argued then that the wreaking of ecologicaldestruction is desired by desiring-machines desiring-production giventhat hierarchical structures (the collusion between Oedipus and Capital)disseminate schizophrenic desire deep into the heart of the socius.


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e schizophrenic deliberately sets out the very limit ofcap-italism: he is its inherent tendency brought to its fulfilment;its surplus product, its proletariat, and its exterminating an-gel. He scrambles all the codes and is the transmier of the

decoded flows of desire.

An(archical) machines are precisely those machines that experimentin confounding the codes and liberating the flux of revolutionary de-sire. e point to be made is that PS anarchism is constructed here byrethinking an(archism) as no longer definable as the abolition of theState. An(archism) and non(hierarchical) modes oforganisation are thenexperimental ways of living, feeling and thinking. An(archy) is thus anethics of nonfascist living.

One of the problems ofPerezs reading ofPS and anarchism is that hereads an(archism) with rose coloured spectacles. Deleuze and Guaarisconception of lines of flight and experimentation as emiing a dangerof their own is underexplored by Perez. Too-rapid deterritorialisationengenders its own kind ofdespair. e outcome from lines ofexperimen-tal flight are not necessarily positive. You dont reach the BwO, and itsplane of consistency, by wildly destratifying.

Yet, Deleuze and Guaari are ambivalent on the maer of an(archic)deterritorialisation for they also claim that one can never go too farenough in the direction ofdeterritorialisation: you havent seen anythingyet. Hegel was the arch-enemy of Deleuze. In this respect, the PS ofDeleuze clearly objects to the absolute demand for inclusiveness by Hegel.For Deleuze, there are forces and dynamics which are alien to the smoothfunctioning of the Hegelian totality.

e other qua otherness disrupts the closure ofsystems. e otheris not necessarily external to the system for it is conceivable that alienbecomings reside in the interstices. A discordant otherness is not neces-sarily negative. Deleuze is not content to formulate a negative philoso-phy like the dissonant atonal thought of Adorno. e other does notoppose itself to the Same in order to affirm itself. It does not contradictcontradiction in order to derive a positive moment. Above all, discordantotherness is potentially a creative and essentially positive enterprise..Singularities or one off events are precisely those flashes which disrupt


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the smooth incorporation and workings of the system. Deleuze describesthe flashes of intensity as singularities or lines of flight which have anomadic trajectory.

What is celebrated by Deleuze is a process ofcreativity which exists

in its own right and is thus not under the sway of the unfolding ofnegativity. e schizophrenic process is the model for the scramblingof the codes and the uerance of an alien language which confoundsthe system of Freudian psychoanalysis (a stuering within ones ownlanguage). Desire on this account is positive, it does not lack fulfilmentfor it is essentially productive.

e Domination of Nature and Marxs Conceptof Nature

Utopia has no-place now, not even in our everyday lives, not evenin our collective imaginations. Communism is the now anachronisticno-place ofpast adventures. Yet those adept in theoretical maers stillsay that communism is a humanism regardless of concrete evidenceto the contrary. e young, bold, and more interesting Marx desiredthe revolution that would supersede all hitherto known revolutions.He desired the advent of a truly human society, a humanist society.What germinates under communism, for the Red Terrorist Doctor, is apractical humanism demanding the abolition of private property.

However, given that practical humanism limits itself to the media-tion of private property, it cannot introduce a positive humanism foras such it concerns itself with a negative relation to private property.Positive humanism returns mans alienated self to itself. Furthermore,such a positive moment inherent in humanism dialectically abolishesthe alienation between man and nature, man and his species being, andman and his fellow comrades. Positive humanism, in essence, is thus thepositive transcendence ofprivate property (mediation) and self-estrange-ment. e proletarian once lost in the desert ofunjust dessert returns tohis unique (human) social essence.


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It is difficult not to read the early Marx as propounding an anthro-pocentric standpoint regarding nature. Indeed, the Paris Manuscripts of1844 in this sense can be read as a document of theoretical anthropol-ogy. Nature is examined as the stuffor material ofhuman activity. A

nonartefactual nature, for a disciple ofHegel, is strictly nothing for man.Marx thus accepts the idealists view that the world is mediatedthrough the Subject. Without this mediation nature is no thing. Na-tures value is posited if there is a valuer behind the valuation. Natureon this account is not intrinsically valuable. In Hegelian terminology,first nature lacks a concept. e first nature of natural evolution iscontrasted with the second nature of human society (law, society, econ-omy). On Marxs account, pre-history (that is non-communist history) is

subject to the blind dictates of natural evolution. us, Marx makes noabsolute distinction between nature and human society. ey constitutea differentiated unity and as such are dialectically intertwined.

Marxs complex dialectical prose are oen difficult to unpack. How-ever, we can read the sentence

Society is therefore the perfected unity in essence of manwith nature, the true resurrection of nature, the realizednaturalism of man and the realized humanism of nature

as a refusal to divorce the human and nonhuman spheres into a rigiddualism. What is noted is natures blind and undomesticated residuethat still remains within human society. Human self-consciousness isdifferentiated from cyclical natural history.

e revenge of nature: Adorno and Horkheimer offer insights intothe effects of the dialectic of Enlightenment upon human society andnature. Nature (as internal psychological nature) seeks to exact revengeagainst those who reduced her to mere material for human purposes.Adorno and Horkheimer consider the phenomena of German fascismas a specific instance of the revenge of nature upon history, a revoltof nature against the domination it has suffered. e domination ofnature at the heart of the Enlightenment project has a human cost whichis that man purchases domination at the expense of their own natures.e nature of concrete humans must be suppressed in order that it may


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dominate others. e suppression of nature for human ends is a merenatural relationship. e consequence is a denial of pleasure and awarped psychological development.

Adorno makes the point beer: All the contrived machinery of mod-

ern industrial society is merely nature tearing itself to pieces. Reason isin a sense still too natural. us, the Enlightenment spawns an antithesisdeleterious to the nature of the human and the nonhuman. Barbarism isspawned by modernitys drive for technological and social progress.

Adorno and Horkheimer follow Nietzsche in thinking the Enlighten-ment as a complex unity of reason and domination. By the use ofmoderntechniques of control, barbarism nestles itself deeper into modernityssocial and psychological fabric. e domination of nature ensures that

mans once primal station in nature is transcended and then forgoen.us modernitys radical humanism, which celebrates humans as uniqueand deserving especial consideration, carries with it the latent threat ofspecies imperialism which ultimately returns to haunt human relationsthemselves. us, the domination ofnature intertwines itselfwith socialhierarchy and control. e resolution of the antagonistic predicament ofcivilisation and barbarism, Adorno maintains, does not lie in the domi-nation of the object by the imperialising Cartesian subject. ere is no

final reconciliation of the dialectic ofEnlightenment in a perfect unityof subject and object or in a return to an original, primordial state.On a more positive reading of Adorno we can see the flight of man

from nature as ultimately progressive though Adornos Marxism wouldview the reconciliation ofman and world in a future utopia as at best mis-guided and at worst pernicious. Adorno steadfastly refused to succumbto any nostalgia for a prehistorical era of plenitude and harmony. ForAdorno the problem must address the issue of remembrance. One of the

preconditions of scientific control is the obliteration of the memory of apast, or of a nature that was free from instrumental reason. As Adornoand Horkheimer say: All reification is a forgeing. In summary, theorigin of the domination of nature is found as a contradiction withinnature itself. e domination of nature is a consequence of nature inso far as it is the result of an inability of self-reflection on the part ofhuman beings. On a rare positive note, the memory of suffering that


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results from the domination of nature may yet animate the project ofliberation.

In tracing modernitys ambiguous transformation of reason intorationalism, the cold logic for the sophisticated manipulation ofhuman

beings and nature, Bookchin rethinks the domination ofnature with a re-newed emphasis upon the structural social causes ofdomination, namelyhierarchy. Contra the Frankfurt School, Bookchins thesis perceives thedomination ofnature as emerging from the hierarchical domination ofman by man. e conceived limited perspective oforthodox Marxismsanalysis of the class composition of Capital is transcended by a philoso-phy which discloses the structural undergirdings of other pre-capitalistformations and possible formations yet to come (anarchist utopia).

Bookchin, to remind ourselves, is a defender of the uniqueness ofhu-man beings capacity for self-consciousness and hence rationality. Yet,reasons objective pursuit is transformed into an instrumental, subjectivereason. What Bookchin is intent on demonstrating is the dissolutionof objective reason (a reason that incorporates ends as well as means)through the practice of reason as instrumental reason. Whilst AdornosVictorian reading ofEnlightenment progress claims that progress ne-cessitates increasing control over internal and external nature, Bookchin

believes that the desire for control and domination stems in part fromthe unconscious of reason itselfwhich retains a residue from pre-ratio-nal times. Subjectivity for Bookchin is not synonymous with reason.Reason, from a socio-ecological perspective, is subsumed under a muchwider evolution of subjectivity within nature. e failure to incorporaterationality within the development of subjectivity, Bookchin contends,lies at the heart of Critical eory. A resituated rationality would intro-duce nature within the compass ofsensibilite. is project, Bookchin

contends, lies outside Critical eorys intellectual tradition.However one of the problems in thinking about an (objective) ethicsin which nature is the matrix ofethical substance is found in Bookchinsreference to a requisite ecological wholeness of human beings whichis founded upon unity in diversity. Presumably an ecological unity indiversity implies nonhierarchical relationships.

Yet Adorno contends that a reconciliation of opposites negates thepreservation of difference in the quest for identity. Adorno shows that


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unity in the Hegelian system (identity-in-difference) implies domination:subject over the object, mind over maer, universal over particular, his-tory over nature. Adorno claims that a negative philosophy is requiredwhich forsakes the final positive moment or reconciliation of identity.

Negative philosophy is thus the philosophy of nonidentity in which thereconciliation ofdifference evades domination. On this reading, identitythinking is animated by a hostility to the other. e domination ofall thatis deemed other is thus implicit in Hegelian positive-identity thinking.

Bookchin recognises that the other is never fully allowed to be otherbut finds no quarrels with the incorporation of otherness into his ownanarcho-Hegelianism.

Hegels concept of transcendence (auebung) never ad-vances a notion ofoutright annihilation. Its negativity con-sists of annulling the other in order to absorb it into themovement toward a richly variegated completeness .

But variegated completeness misses the point. e other qua otheris not recognised as pure positive difference for the others alterity isreduced or transformed by the very act of incorporation. e otherlike Heideggers being is never let be. us, the complex expressionunity-in-diversity conceals a potential structure of domination and hier-archy.

One of the central counter-arguments regarding the claim that evolu-tion evolves towards ever greater degrees of subjectivity, differentiationand complexity is the conspicuous absence of historical evidence of lin-ear social progress. By omiing a final teleological drive in evolutionit is difficult to see how we are progressing towards greater ecologicalsensibility.

Bookchins anarchist free-floating (Mannheim) position apparentlyis able to decode or extrapolate potentialities that reside in the hereand now and posit their actuality in the future. But lacking a teleologi-cal structure Bookchins analysis is substantially weakened. Bookchinsimply cannot account for humanitys warped development withoutpositing transcendent ethical ideals. Nor for that maer is the elicitingofa free nature inhering objectively in first and second nature instantly


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discernible. Bookchin claims that a transcendent free nature woulddiminish the pain and suffering that now exists in first and secondnature. Free nature, in effect, would be a conscious and moral nature,an ecological society. But, to what extent is such objectivity a ques-

tion of mere subjective preference and personal proclivity? How wouldBookchin diminish the pain and suffering that exists on first natureif we mean by first nature the animal kingdom? Is it desirable thatone should interfere in such a nature? Aer all, pain and suffering arenecessary consequences from the perception ofnature as red in toothand claw. It seem that Bookchin does not have a mandate for suchproclamations.

e Concept of Hierary

Hierarchy is examinedby Bookchin fromaquasi-historical perspective.To repeat: the domination of nature stems from the domination of manby man. e domination of man by man precedes the domination ofnature by man. e idea of dominating nature germinated historicallythrough the implementation of rigid social hierarchies which congealed

fluid social life into vertical command and obedience structures.Of course, for Bookchin, the State is clearly the paragon nemesis of a

free, sensitive and nonhierarchical ecological community. e State isan effect of authoritarian practices rather than their cause. Obediencebreeds obeisance.

However, instead of thinking the State within the parameters of thebase-superstructure model of economic development, Bookchin looksfurther into cultural forms of domination. Hierarchy on this account

is not simply limited to class exploitation but incorporates also famil-ial, gerontocratic, gendered, ethnic, political and social (organisational)forms of domination. One of Bookchins strong theses is that nonhier-archical social formations form nonhierarchical images of relationshipswith nature. Bookchin gives the example ofaboriginal ceremonies whichexpress and situate humans as part of the larger cosmos in nonhierarchi-cal terms.


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e image of or relationships with nature in a future nonhierarchicalanarchist society are as yet rendered negative. We can only say whatthey are not. An anarchist society is by definition free from structural(molar) hierarchies such as the State (police, bureaucracy). Furthermore,

anarchism actively encourages noncoercive, nondominating everydayrelationships which extend themselves to personal, family and workplacespheres. An ecological society works toward the dismantling ofcoerciverelationships that exist in

generations and genders, churches and schools, friendshipsand lovers, exploiters and exploited, and hierarchical sensi-bilities toward the entire world of life.

Hierarchy and domination thus warp humanitys development.e difference between Deleuzes horizontalilty of thought and

Bookchins anarchism comes into clear light when we grasp the central-ity of the notion of the human. Hierarchical structures are opposed to theconstruction of a humanist and ecological society. e question arises:if we jeison the question of humanity how can we think nonhierarchi-cal becomings? How can we advocate the praxis ofdeterritorialisationwithout implicitly supporting a teleological drive in history?

Bookchin writes in very much the same spirit as the Le Hegelianswho rethought Hegel in 1840s Germany. Bookchins militant atheismis inextricably linked to his defence of Enlightenment ideals of socialprogress, rationality and the negation of superstition. Contemporaryirrationality/anti-humanism in the form of the quasi-theologic of deepecological thinking and the post-humanism of neo-Heideggerians areinstances of reversion to pre-modern times. Such phenomena articulate,according to Bookchin, a contemporary rejection of the cold demandsof secularity and intellectual clarity.

According to Bookchins observations, deep ecology, especially thedeep ecology ofDevall and Sessions, delights itself in mythopoiesis andmystery. Bookchin again shows his determination to uncover contem-porary aempts to de-align the Enlightenment project. Deep ecology,on this account, re-introduces a religious essence with its concept ofself-realisation. e self here seeks self-effacement or incorporation of an


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isolated ego into a larger totality namely the self-in-Self. rough thedesire for organic wholeness the ideal of an autonomous rational selfof the Enlightenment disappears in the mystical fog ofbeing one withnature. Deep ecology, from this reading, debases hard won intellectual

skills, tool-making capabilities and the capacity for symbolic languageby humans. Deep ecology introduces an egalitarian ontology which per-ceives no ontological divide between human and nonhuman. Bookchinis suspicious of Devall and Sessions keenness to promote deep ecologi-cal thinking. For Bookchin, deep ecology is a symptom of social decayeven more than it is one of its causes. Bookchin thinks that the EarthFirst movement is opposed to a people first movement. Deep ecology,Bookchin believes, has been seduced by the wild side ofmysticism and as

such it needs to return to a period of coldness, of analytic sobriety. Innoting Devall and Sessions two ultimate norms for true deep ecologicalthinking (self-realisation and biocentric equality), Bookchin notes thesense of intuition as unreasoned reflection, not as self-evident truths buta sense or feeling.

Devall and Sessions maintain that the norms are beyond the reachof critical analysis and beyond reasoned argument and it is here thatBookchin mounts his diatribe. From where are they derivable? Bookchin

defends the methodology of science as essential for experiential proof.Bookchin stands opposed to divinations spun out by mystical guruswithout or without Ph.D.s.

Devall and Sessions retort that such intuitions cannot be challengedgiven that scientific methodology is too narrow. Self-realisation is ashedding of thenarrow modern Western self whichDevall and Sessionsclaim is isolated, hedonistic, and materially egoistic. Self-realisation is aprocess of self-effacement, effacement of the self in the Self (as totality).

e human self (the traditional rational autonomous self) thus loses itshard won identity, its uniqueness, because it merges with the whole.Bookchins objection to this form of reasoning is that the inscription

of the self onto inorganic phenomena is in fact an anthropomorphicgesture. On this account the Self is construed as a human imperialisingself. Devall and Session desire the transformation of an isolated selfinto an interrelated self-in-Self. But Devall and Session imputes ananthropomorphism inadvertently into nature. e earth is endowed


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with wisdom, wilderness equates with freedom, and life forms aresaid to emit moral qualities.

e desire for a biocentric democracy is questioned by Bookchin bythe following argument: ifhumans are nothing but plain citizens in

the ecosphere then humans may do as they please in fulfilling their(we could say primitive, natural) anthropocentric desires and natures.He would say what else could we do. In such a scenario we should beexclusively occupied with our own brute survival, comfort and safetysince nature seems to exhibit the ingrained values of self-preservationand protection ofones own. Ifman becomes a mere part ofnature basedon an egalitarian principle with every other species, then mans actionsare morally neutral. But what is (morally or ecologically?) wrong with

extinguishing whole species in the interests of human survival?

Heidegger and Anti-Humanism

Another significant aack upon the humanist tradition is located inHeideggers Leer on Humanism. Heidegger responds to Sartres Existen-tialism is a Humanism with a distinct anti-humanist accent.

An interesting perspective to address the reception ofSartres Exis-tentialism by Heidegger is from the thought of Lacoue-Labarthe. eHeidegger of the 1930s, according to Lacoue-Labarthe, still operatedwithin a metaphysical tradition. Humanism, from this point of view, isgrounded in a metaphysics which emerges with Plato and ends (prema-turely) with Nietzsche. us, the Dasein in Being and Time cannot fullydecentre the traditional subject of philosophy for it is still entrenchedwithin an anthropocentric tradition.

Heideggers notorious Nazi affiliation is thus a consequence of retain-ing a trace ofmetaphysical humanism. Heideggers Nazism is ironicallya humanism of sorts: hence Lacoue-Labarthes pronouncement thatNazism is a Humanism.

e elimination of humanism from Heideggers thought occurs by arethinking of thinking itself (the praxis ofpoetising) aer 1935 witnessedin the Leer on Humanism. Humanism leads to Nazism due to an excessofmetaphysical philosophy. From this perspective reason for a French


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Heideggerian like Lacoue-Labarthe, retains a residue of nihilistic onto-theology and productivist metaphysics. What is implicit is the defini-tion ofhumanism as a celebration ofabstract Man as a self-consciousautonomous, self-legislating being.

e Leer on Humanism thus makes a plea not for the constructionof yet another system of anthropocentric ethics but for a new ethos,a new way of dwelling. e critique of Sartre takes a similar form tothat ofHeideggers critique ofNietzsche which questions the centripetalconcept of value and its relationship to the Will to Power.

What Heidegger is trying to stress is that if we centralise the conceptof value we run the risk of becoming oblivious to the meaning of Being.By making the distinction between thinking which is more sensitive to

Being and philosophy which is homesick (for it has lost its way towardBeing), Heidegger ismaking thepoint that a more primordial relationshiptowards Being must be sought. For Heidegger, ek-sistence is proper toDasein (being-there). Human realitys ek-static existence which standsout in the truth of Being distinguishes human reality from other livingcreatures. To use Heideggers words: In any case living creatures areas they are without standing outside their Being as such and within thetruth of Being, preserving in such standing the essential nature of their

Being.Heidegger thinks that humans do not think their essence if they seethemselves as animale rationale or as a spiritually-endowed being. ehumanitas ofhuman beings baulks at the true dignity ofman which is notto assume lordship over Beingbut to shepherd Being in a m ore primordialand less technologically arrogant non-dominating relationship. To drivethe point home thoroughly we need to read Heidegger as questioningthe role ofevaluation itself. Sartre is situated within a paradigm of value-

positing connected to the Will to Power as domination. Heidegger saysit beer: Here as elsewhere thinking in values is the greatest blasphemyimaginable against Being.

Lest we revel in the animus to irrationality and mysticism we can sym-pathise with the general thrust of Bookchins reception of Heideggerssoil science ifwe put into brackets the element ofdiatribe that inheres inBookchins prose. While bearing in mind the need to keep in check (Ni-etzsche would call him a rabid anarchist dog full of ressentiment and


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loathing) Bookchins virulent and ungenerous reading of Heideggersthought, it must be admied that he does locate the parts in Heideggersoeuvre which border on the quasi-mystical and the apocalyptic.

e question arises: ifwe become Heideggerian are we then forced

to dispense with the achievements hard won in overcoming mysticism,superstition, and dogmatism during the Renaissance and the eighteenthcentury? Are we forced to return to a pre-conscious way of life in thevain hope of capturing a more profound and less ruthless relationshipwith Being or more concretely with voelkish culture? Are our choicesbetween a postmodern nihilism or a reactionary belief in parochialism?Should we reject the concept of humanism altogether? And if we dowhat new concepts will be thought and what consequences will they

have?

Systematising the Fragments

In order to shed light on the possibility ofa PS ecopolitics, the ramifica-tions of the May-June events of 1968 that precipitated new directions forFrench philosophy will now be addressed. Baudrillard, Virilio, Deleuze

and Guaari, Irigaray and others are thinkers which produced and arestill producing commanding changes in the way we think about theworld.

Verena Conley points out that poststructuralism is concerned withthe construction of ecological subjectivities that are machined by differ-ential processes. Levi-Strauss is evinced as a thinker who initiated toa degree the displacement of Cartesian metaphysics and Sartrean (hu-manist) existentialism which both emphasised the ontological priority

ofconsciousness. Conley maintains that the shi to a structural logicencouraged the growth of ecological awareness. In aempting to de-centre the universal

joff the possibility of an anti-humanist anarchism a4

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