subjectsdesire – objet (a)

foucault critique of Hegel

Butler, Judith. Subjects of Desire. 1987. 182-183

Indeed, for Foucault, domination is not a single stage in an historical narrative whose ultimate destination is decidedly beyond domination. …

For Foucault, domination is not, as it is for Hegel, an impossible or self-contradictory enterprise. On the contrary, the prohibitive or regulative law must find ways to implement itself, and the various strategies of that law’s self-implementation become the occasions for new historical configurations of force. Regulative or prohibitive laws, what Foucault will come to call “juridical” laws, are curiously generative. They create the phenomena they are meant to control: they delimit some range of phenomena as subordinate and thereby give potential identity and mobility to what they intend to subdue. They create inadvertent consequences, unintended results, a proliferation of repercussions precisely because there is no prior dialectical prefiguration of what form historical experience must take.

Without the assumption of prior ontological harmony, conflict can be seen to produce effects that exceed the bounds of dialectical unity and result in a multiplication of consequences.

From this perspective, conflict does not result in the restoration of metaphysical order, but becomes the condition for a complication and proliferation of historical experience, a creation of new historical forms.

This “non-place” of emergence, this conflictual moment to which produces historical innovation, must by understood as a nondialectical version of difference, not unlike the “difference” which, for Derrida, permanently ruptures the relation between sign and signified. For both Derrida and Foucault, the Hegelian theme of relational opposition is radically challenged through a formulation of difference as a primary and irrefutable linguistic/historical constant.

The inversion of Hegel’s prioritization of identity over difference is achieved through the postulation of certain kinds of “difference” as historically invariant and insuperable. In effect, the difference whereof Foucault and Derrida speak are differences that cannot be aufgehoben into more inclusive identities.

Any effort to posit an identity, whether the identity of the linguistic signified or the identity of some historical epoch, is necessarily undermined by the difference that conditions any such positing. Indeed, where identity is posited, difference is not aufgehoben, but concealed. In fact, it appears safe to conclude that for both Derrida and Foucault, Aufhebung is nothing other than a strategy of concealment, not the incorporation of difference into identity, but the denial of difference for the sake of positing a fictive identity. We shall see that for Lacan the role of difference functions similarly. For both Derrida and Foucault, difference displaces the metaphysical impulse from its totalizing goal. The Derridean moment of linguistic misfire where the conceit of referentiality debunks itself, undermines the Hegelian effort to establish sign and signified as internally related features of a unified reality.

Similarly, the Foucaultian moment of conflict seems capable of producing only ever greater complexity in its wake, proliferating opposition beyond its binary configurations into multiple and diffuse forms, thus undermining the possibility of an Hegelian synthesis of binary opposites.

It is clear that both Derrida and Foucault theorize from within the tradition of a dialectic deprived of the power of synthesis.

On the other hand, it becomes necessary to distinguish between kinds of difference, some of which are dialectical and always reinstate identity subsequent to any appearance of ontological difference and others of which are nondialectical and resist assimilation into any kind of synthetic unity. To find the latter sort of difference is to change the very meaning of the “labor of the negative,” for this “labor” consist of building relations where there seemed to be none, in the “magic power that converts the negative into being.” Nondialectical difference would convert the negative only and always into further negativity or reveal difference itself, not as the negative, but as a qualitative permutation of Being; in effect, nondialectical difference, despite its various forms, is the labor of the negative which has lost its “magic,” a labor that does not construct a higher-order being but either deconstructs the illusions of a restorative ontological immanence and posits nondialectical difference as irreducible, or rejects the primacy of difference of any kind and offers a theory of primary metaphysical plenitude which eludes Hegelian categories and entails a defense of affirmation on nondialectical grounds. (184)

May 25

🙂 logic and phenomenology, structure of thought = structure of being, structure of thought = structure of reality, structure of capital. And the role of the phenomenology in this thesis is ….

The quandary conditioning the struggle of life and death is that of having to choose between ecstatic and self-determining existence (49).

Self-consciousness’ predicament, that of having to choose between ecstatic and self-determining existence, is seen to be the predicament of the Other as well. This similarity between the two self-consciousnesses ultimately proves to be the basis of their harmonious interdependence … Recognition, once achieved, affirms the ambiguity of self-consciousness as both ecstatic and self-determining.

self-estrangement implicit in the experience of desire … As an intentional movement desire tends to eclipse the self that is its origin.

Desire must arrange for its satisfaction within the context of life, for death is the end of desire … Desire is coextensive with life, with the realm of otherness, and with Others.

Domination and and enslavement are thus defenses against life WITHIN the context of life; they emerge in the nostalgia over the failed effort to die. 54

The lord and bondsman turn against life in different ways, but both resist the synthesis of corporeality and freedom, a synthesis that alone is constitutive of human life; the lord lives in dread of his body, while the bondsman lives in dread of freedom.

desire and recognition 2

Hegel’s anthropocentric reorientation of Spinoza’s monism results in a reformulation of Spinoza’s notion of self-actualization. The journeying subject of the Phenomenology also seeks its own actualization, but finds that this does not happen without the paradoxical assistance of negativity.

The human subject does not exhibit greater potency through an unobstructed expression of selfhood, but requires obstruction, as it were, in order to gain reflection of itself in its environment, recognition of itself by Others.

Hence, actualization only occurs to the extent that the subject confronts what is different from itself, and therein discovers a more enhanced version of itself. The negative thus becomes essential to self-actualization, and the human subject must suffer its own loss of identity again and again in order to realize its fullest sense of self.

But once again, can this full self be found, and does Hegel’s introduction of essential negativity effectively preclude the possibility of achieving full selfhood consonant with completed metaphysical knowledge? Can the living human subject reconstitute every external relation as internal, and simultaneously achieve adequacy to itself and its world?

Is the ideal of substance recast as subject merely that, a regulative ideal which one longs for and suffers under but never appropriates existentially? If this is the case, has Hegel then created the notion of a subject as perpetual striving?

Although Hegel is often categorizd as the philosopher of totality, of systematic completeness and self-sufficient autonomy, it is not clear that the metaphysical totality he defends is a finite system. Indeed, the abiding paradox of Hegel’s metaphysics seems to consist in the openness of this ostensibly all-inclusive system (13).

desire and recognition 1

I am going to re-read these 40 torturous pages in Subjects of Desire

Butler defines Hegelian Desire thus on page 6:

… for DESIRE, according to Hegel, is the incessant human effort to overcome external differences, a project to become a self-sufficient subject for whom all things apparently different finally emerge as immanent feature of the subject itself.

… desire increasingly becomes a principle of the ontological displacement of the human subject, and in its latest stages, in the work of Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault, desire comes to signify the impossibility of the coherent subject itself (6).

How is it that desire, once conceived as the human instance of dialectical reason, becomes that which endangers dialectics, fractures the metaphysically integrated self, and disrupts the internal harmony of the subject and its ontological intimacy with the world? 7

[desire] is established early on in the text as a permanent principle of self-consciousness. Hegel claims that “self-consciousness in general is Desire” (Para 167), by which he means that desire signifies the reflexivity of consciousness, the necessity that it become other to itself in order to know itself. As desire, consciousness is outside itself, and as outside itself, consciousness is self-consciousness. 7

Clearly, the meaning of this “outside” is yet to be clarified, and becomes a crucial ambiguity in the section “Lordship and Bondage.” … The Hegelian subject cannot know itself instantaneously or immediately, but requires mediation to understand its own structure (7).

… the Hegelian subject expands in the course of its adventure through alterity; it internalizes the world that it desires, and expands to encompass, to be, what it initially confronts as other to itself. The final satisfaction of desire is the discovery of substance as subject, the experience of the world as everywhere confirming that subject’s sense of immanent metaphysical place (8-9).

Hyppolite suggests that desire is “the power of the negative in human life” … Conceived as lack, a being-without, desire initially signifies negativity; as the pursuit of substance, desire thus implicitly raises the question of whether human negativity, that which constitutes its ontological difference, can be resolved into an encompassing network of being. Human desire articulates the subject’s relationship to that which is not itself, that which is different, strange, novel, awaited, absent, lost. And the satisfaction of desire is the transformation of difference into identity: the discovery of the strange and novel as familiar, the arrival of the awaited, the reemergence of what has been absent or lost. Thus, human desire is a way of thematizing the problem of negativity; it is the negative principle of human life, its ontological status as a lack in pursuit of being — Plato’s vision in the Symposium.

🙂 Butler adds this:

But desire is also the mode in which consciousness makes its own negativity into an explicit object of reflection, something to be labored upon and worked through. In effect, we read our negativity in the objects and others we desire; as desirable, detestable, solicitous, or rejecting, these emotional facts of the world mirror our ontological insufficiency in Hegelian terms; they show us the negativity that we are, and engage us with the promise of plenitude or the threat of reaffirming our nothingness. Whatever the emotional permutation of desire, we are, in virtue of desire, posing the question of final destination. And for Hegel, in posing the question, we presume the possibility of an answer, a satisfaction, an ultimate arrival (9-10).

recognition

The struggle for recognition arises, then, not from a primary competitive attitude toward the other, but from the experience of desire for and by another. Specific desires for property, goods or positions of social dominance must be, according to Hegel’s framework, seen as derivative expressions of the desire for a community based on love. Desire is, thus, not originally an effort of acquisition or domination, but emerges in such forms only when a community based on the principles of reciprocal recognition has not yet been developed. note 18 page 242

butler self-loss

Here is JB commenting on the fact of recognition in Lordship and Bondage is really about self-loss.

Here is the JB quoting from Hegel’s Phenomenology:

Self-consciousness is faced by another self-consciousness; it has come out of itself. This has a two-fold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self. (para 178)

desire

The gradual yet insistent effort of Hegel’s journeying subject in the Phenomenology of Spirit never relinquishes this project to relate itself to externality in order to rediscover itself as more inclusive being. The insurpassability of externality implies the permancence of desire. In this sense, insofar as Hegel’s subject never achieves a static union with externality, it is hopelessly beyond its own grasp, although it retains as its highest aim the thorough comprehension of itself. This thoroughgoing self-determination is the ideal of integrity toward which self-consciousness strives, and this striving is denoted by desire (44).

After all, desire revealed an implicit intentional aim, namely, to disclose and enact a common ontological structure with the world. Hence, despite the alleged object of desire … “the consumption of this brute being which poses as other to me,” desire has at base a metaphysical project which, while requiring determinate objects, transcends them as well, i.e., to effect a unity with the realm of externality which both preserves that realm and renders it into a reflection of self-consciousness. (44)

Because desire is the principle of self-consciousness’ reflexivity or inner difference, and because it has as its highest aim the assimilation of all external relations into relations of inner difference, desire forms the experiential basis for the project of the Phenomenology at large … the gradual sophistication of desire —expanding inclusiveness of its intentional aims —is the principle of progress in the Phenomenology (45).

introduction summary

When the question of practical philosophy, that is, bringing philosophy in a practical relationship with living, then it has always delved into the question of desire. Why? Butler adds, to live a philosophical life, is to ask the question, is the human individual capable of living a philosophical, hence moral life? Does ‘ought’ imply ‘can’. And if desire were just seen to be an irrational component with no inherent competency, then the moral project would founder. But, on the contrary, moral philosophy has

On Spinoza

Hegel is sceptical of the notion of metaphysical closure, Butler adds that Hegel charges Spinoza with erecting a metaphysical system that “excludes the negativity of self-consciousness, that aspect of human life that precludes its final assimilation into Being …” (10) And it is in Hegel’s critique of Spinoza’s over-theistic mono-mania, that is Spinoza’s excluding of “consciousness’s own negativity” that we find hegel’s original contribution to the formulation of desire

A very nice summary of the Phenomenology

Spinoza’s metaphysics takes the point of view of the completed system as its starting point, but Hegel’s Phenomenology poses the question of how this system is known, and how the knower comes to know himeself as part of this system. In other words, Hegel wants to know how the movement of human knowledge, the negativity of self-consciousness, comes to be understood as necessary for the constitution of the system itself and further, how the necessity of human negativity confirms the impossiblity of that system’s completion and closure (12).

For Butler, no doubt heavily influenced by the French reading of Hegel, the negativity of self-consciousness is desire. Desire is the negative dialectic. Of which she poses the question to Hegel as to whether he is “guilty of silencing the power of the negative?” (14).

The deceptive pursuit of the Absolute is not a vain “running around in circles,” but a progressive cycle which reveals every deception as permitting some grander act of synthesis, an insight into yet more regions of interrelated reality (22).

Desire

Nothing just appears ex nihilo for Hegel, “‘Appearance’ is but one explicit or actual moment in the development of a phenomenon. In the Phenomenology, a given phenomenon appears in the context of a given configuration of the world. In the case of desire, we must ask, what kind of world makes desire possilbe? What must the world be like for desire to exist?” (24).

butler new preface to paperback edition of subjects of desire (1987) August 1998

In a sense all my work remains within the oribit of a certain set of Hegelian questions:

What is the relation between desire and recognition and how is it that the constitution of the subject entails a radical and constitutive relation to alterity?

… I am as much concerned with the way in which Antigone is consistently misread by Hegel as with his provocative way of understanding her criminal act as an eruption of an alternate legality within the sphere of public law. Whether Antigone functions as a subject for Hegel remains a compelling question for me, and raises the question of the political limit of the subject, that is, both the limitations imposed upon subjecthood (who qualifies as one), and the limits of the subject as the point of departure for politics. Hegel remains important here for his subject does not stay in its place displaying a critical mobility that may well be useful for further appropriations of Hegel to come. The emergent subject of Hegel’s phenomenology is an ek-static one, a subject who constantly finds itself outside itself, and whose periodic expropriations do not lead to a return to a former self. Indeed, the self who comes outside of itself, for whom ek-statis is a condition of existence, is one for whom no return to self is possible, for whom there is no final recovery from self-loss. The notion of “difference” is similarly misunderstood, I would suggest, when it is understood as contained within or by the subject: the Hegelian subject’s encounter with difference is not resolved into identity. Rather, the moment of its “resolutions” is finally indistinguishable from the moment of its dispersion; the thinking of this cross-vectored temporality ushers in the Hegelian understanding of infinity and offers a notion of the subject that cannot remain bounded in the face of the world. Misrecognition does not arrive as a distinctively Lacanian corrective to the Hegelian subject, for it is precisely by misrecognition that the Hegelian subject repeatedly suffers its self-loss. Indeed, this is a self constitutively at risk of self-loss. This subject neither has nor suffers its desire, but is the very action of desire as it perpetually displaces the subject. Thus, it is neither precisely a new theory of the subject nor a definitive displacement of the subject that Hegel provides but rather a definition in displacement, for which there is no final restoration. August 1998

butler lordship and bondage

Butler, Judith. Subjects of Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print.

We have seen that desire is a polyvalent structure, a movement to establish an identity coextensive with the world. Hegel’s discussion of labor begins to show us how the world of substance becomes recast as the world of the subject. Desire as a transformation of the natural world is simultaneously the transformation of its own natural self into an embodied freedom. And yet, these transformations cannot occur outside of an historically constituted intersubjectivity which mediates the relation to nature and to the self. True subjectivities come to flourish only in communities that provide for reciprocal recognition, for we do not come to ourselves through work alone, but through the acknowledging look of the Other who confirms us (58).

butler on kojeve anthropocentrism

Butler, Judith. Subjects of Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print.

Work that exemplifies human being as transcending the natural and which occasions the recognition of the Other is termed historical action. As the efficacious transformation of biological or natural givens, historical action is the mode through which the world of substance is recast as the world of the subject.

Confronting the natural world, the historical agent takes it up, marks it with the signature of consciousness and sets it forth in the social world to be seen. This process is evident in the creation of a material work, in the linguistic expression of a reality, in the opening up of dialogue with other human beings: historical action is possible within the spheres of interaction and production alike. 68

kojève

Butler, Judith. Subjects of Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print.

Desire is thus a kind of negation that is not resolved into a more inclusive conception of being; desire indicates an ontological difference between consciousness and its world, which, for Kojève, cannot be overcome.

Kojève’s formulation of desire as a permanent activity of negation permits a modern conception of desire freed from the implicit teleological claims of Hegel’s view in the Phenomenology. Kojève views desire as a … negative or negating intentionality without a preestablished teleological structure. … The dissolution of Hegel’s harmonious ontology, the scheme whereby negation is continuously superseded by a more encompassing version of being, allows for the formulation of desire as an expression of freedom. 69

Below is taken from Scott R. Stroud

Another important consideration that should lend credibility to Kojève’s externalist, social reading, although not to his ultimate materialist conclusions, is the issue of power in the master/slave dialectic. The important developments for the slave come in and through her reaction to the wielding of power by the master. Initially, however, one must recognize that the struggle was initiated over a desire for unilateral recognition by the other; in other words, each agent wanted power over the other to the extent that they could achieve unreciprocated recognition. This leads to the staking of lives qua transcending being, and to the life or death struggle for recognition. Kojève is accurate in his assessment of conflict relating to power; in this case, the power relates to external objects that a subject would like to exercise control over.

The other source of power in the struggle comes from the master, once the roles have been assigned. One agent becomes a slave because he yields to his natural instincts and desires; the master is able to risk his life long enough for the other’s desire to give way. In this regard, he earns the title of master because he was able to transcend his natural desires, such as those of self-preservation. The slave feels this external power exercised by the master and is forced to work and labor on the world to sate the master’s desires. Again, the externality of Hegel’s point is clear, in that the two self-consciousnesses are in a struggle that involves the status of both wills; the master’s will is that which ends up being sated with the unwilled action of the slave because of the massive power difference. The master is able to force the slave to serve him through the fear of death. It is through this experience, however, that the slave gains a realization of her being in the world; she realizes that she is a being-for-self and that the master’s power only goes so far. Indeed, in the later sections on stoicism and skepticism, the slave begins to exercise this putative freedom through mental activity.