The Dust Machines Deleuze Studies Conference 2014

Memories of a Speculative Realist Eckardt Lindner, University of Vienna

I// The Newton of a blade of grass

Hegel used to make a joke about the very appropriate death of Spinoza. Dying of consumption.

Dissipating from the inside towards an ubiques outside. Slowly dissolving from the particular

to the universal – from modus to substance. To see or to be from the viewpoint of substance is

total resolution and dissolution at the same time. Sub specie aeternitatis as the organon of

extinction.

This seems not so dissimilar to the scenario of solar catastrophe, that Ray Brassiere invokes in

Nihil Unbound – that in In 4,5 billion years the sun will cease to exist and will take the earth -

in a marvellous, but not unique spectacle of light, heat and intense pressure – with it into non-

existence. A pure steril event. The special thing about this, as Lyotard notes in his text about

solar apocalypse, is that, there will have been organisms on this earth that would have been able

to think this death of the universe – but are not anymore, because under the immense heat, not

even the protons in the atoms there are made of, will persist. All machines broken – all

memories wiped – absolute restart.

But why do we consider since Heidegger our personal death constuitive for Dasein and not the

more threatening death of the earth?

This new arguments bring (back) to mind a time before and after us – but more relevant before

and after every organic life – the abyssus intellectualis of an unknowable time – resonating with

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Freuds Death-Drive (Todestrieb), Nietzsches Infiniti of time backwards (Zeitunendlichkeit

nach hinten), Schellings Unfathomable time before us (Vor-Zeit) or Meillassoux’ Time of the

Archefossil. A reminder of the transcendental ground as unground – an almost Derridian sign,

that everything important happens before us, in our absence – creating wounds and holes, we

then just incorporate.

It is rightfully Spinoza who reminds us, that we should think more cosmic, as we are to centered

on the human and forget the intelligence of the animals. But with Nietzsches becoming-cosmic,

we should also weiden our gaze to see the intelligence of the inorganic, not just animals. Which

leads us to the problematic horizon Deleuze poses in the latter periodes of his work, but remains

a fragment never to be thought out; the problem of inorganic vitality.

In the light of a possible Deleuzian Naturephilosophy yet to come, Inorganic vitality will for

sure be a fundamental building block, if not ground for this speculative project. In recent

philosophical development the vibrancy of the inanimate has come forth as the key concept in

Object-Oriented-Ontology as well in diverse versions of Neo-Vitalism. So it deserves to be

discussed – and some snares addressed.

2// The absolute oxigenist

Even the notion of inorganic vitality might sound strange to our all too Kantian ears. Building

on the Aristotelian tradition, Kant sets course to justify the gulf between the two realms of

mechanical and living things, ultimately pinning down the criteria (like Spontaneity,

Autopoesis, teleological causation). Seperation physis from bios, ripping nature apart in

declaring the impossibility of a Newton of a blade of grass. Following this, Fichte will

consolidate this incommsumerability, as he picks up Kants teleological causality from the

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“Antinomies of Teleological Judgement” and refines it, until “life” does not extend beyond the

animal. Hence the pointless contemporary debates on whether bacteria are alive or not. Using

this momentum Heidegger tells us in his lecture “The fundamental concepts of metaphysics”

that the stone is worldless, for he has no power to project (entwerfen) and in general no inside

– and therefore can't ek-sist (be out-of-itself), like the animal and or the human.

In a way Deleuze would say, that Kant is completely right in his rigorous deduction, but the

grounds upon which he builds are unsteady. Taking over the concept of “somatism” from

Aristotle [physika panta pragmata] Kant declares, that nature is “the sum total of all things”,

which is actually opposed to Platos “Physics of the All” [pantos phuseos]. This is why Kant

never seriously sets food in the realm of naturephilosophy and why Fichte rejects nature in itself

completely.

This Kantian specter is what still haunts metaphysics, most notably Object-Oriented-

Philosophy today. As diverse as the philosophies of Harman, Bogost, Morton or Johnston (to

name a few) the common denominator seems to be the attempt to give things their vibrancy

back, declaring their autonomy (also from the human mind) and (auto-)poetic powers. Things

have been under and/or overmined, deeming them irrelevant for philosophy, as Harman

stipulates. This subversive maneuver against Kant gets trapped again in his framework.

Accepting that the world is only made up of actual things, only the content – that not only plants

on animals have autonomy – but not the form, not the framework changes. Therefore they have

to struggle with the same problems as Kant [for example what is the common ground of nature

and freedom, are things connected in-them-selfs].

But also on the neo-vitalist side Kant still stands strong, as for example Bennett or Delanda

want to show, that even stones have spontaneity, when they crack in unpredictable ways or that

gloves can have the power to act and affect us. This just takes the Kantian organic categories

and subsumes the inorganic under it – leaving the framework intact.

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Spinoza is the ambivalent figure behind this – he is, I argue, the philosopher between the organic

and the inorganic. One the one hand he insists that bodies have a conative drive that leads them

to persist over time, sometimes repairing themselves by contracting particles to hold their form.

Many scholars – but most recently Levy Bryant – have claimed that this is also the essence of

Deleuze, calling it the ongoing endo-consistency of things – the reproduction before production.

But I would argue, that this is – although understandable – a misreading.

One the other, and more productive hand, Spinoza tells us that the substance is only insofar it

produces and manifests in modi. But is does not produce its modi harmoniously, because every-

body can only be destroyed by another body of a different nature. So, if there is destruction at

all, it is because the substance does not harmonize the modi – it is a whole that does not keep

its form, because modi are constantly changing and thus changing substance itself. The

Spinozian substance is a pure body without organs – pure productivity and in the end – not a

body at all. This twist might already point us in the direction of a Deleuzian reversal of the

question in exposing the problematic horizon.

As Schelling already puts it in a strikingly Deleuzian manner: “Things are not the principles of

organisms, but organisms are the principles of things”, which actually already contests the

cliché picture of Schellingian Nature as one giant organism – not at all – Schelling is in pursuit

of the unthinged – hence the nonorganic – in nature (which turns out is nature itself).

Completely in line with this proposal, Deleuze confirms that Organisms are not problem of

things or bodies and their properties, but of dynamics – of a certain form of organization.

Organisms in the Deleuzian sense are hierarchical, self-directing and self-sufficient and

centralised organisations, which strive to hold a state of normality. Every non-average intensity

(below a certain threshold) must therefore be compensated and homogenized due to the powers

of slowing flows of energy down. While every-body is ordered, the organism is organized,

meaning that is has formed habitual patterns, which actualize a certain possibility of the virtual

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body without organs again and again, folding it. “The Body without organs howls: They’ve

made me an organism! They’ve folded me wrongfully! They’ve stolen my body!” The body

without organs cries out, exactly because the creative power of life is deadened for the simple

goal of self-proliferation. The inorganic life Deleuze talks about is therefore the life that is not

beyond or before the organism, but a life, that is between the organs, constantly threatening the

stability of the organization. Tying oneself on to the mast – hearing the dangerous siren song,

without getting destroyed by it – as Adorno had it – is the principle of the organism. Not

canceling out the external forces, but utilizing and normalizing them, pretending to be

autonomous, miming Kantian auto-poesis. Cuvies dream an efficient organism. But already in

the folds and flows learks the “will of the deep”. The howl of the Body without organs makes

the transcendental depth felt, out of which every organism, every-body emerged, without

shaking its genesis. It reveals his face as it rises to the sur-face “without assuming any form,

but, rather insinuating itself between the forms; a formless base, an autonomous and faceless

existence.” Grounglessness or as Schelling puts it Unground [Ungrund] that haunts every

strategy of grounding. Deleuze the hantologist.

As we have already found substance to be nothing else but productivity it follows that no

product never exhausts its production, no organism the body without organs, no surface ever

the unfathomable depth. The somatic world of Object-Oriented-Ontology only consisting of

selfsutaining, autopoetic and creative actual things only works on a certain strata – on a frozen

and dead crust of the earth – an postapocalyptic planet – a world that has reached

thermodynamic equilibrium – heat death. As long as there are differences in intensities, as long

as the folds which are the organism are the folds of a body without organs, actuality will always

involve virtual genesis and deformation. The Product-Process Identity from AntiOedipus

therefore already contains a constructive asymmetry of production exceeding products –

actuality always building on but at the same time constructing virtuality. How this double bind

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actually works has fulled especially DeLandas work, who has come up with a number of

solutions, but non satisfying to date.

With depth rising up, we get reminded, that every ground is already conditioned not containing

its own conditions for existing. As ponies, feverdreams and even the earth exist, it is not only

evolution, consciousness or geogony that condition them, but forces that are the natural history

of this things, but do not belong to this things. The same forces, which bring forth the earth

might also crate thunderstorms, screams or my left retina. The Weak-nuclear force holding

together my corporal existence does not belong to my, but it constitutes me, creates my body

anew in every instant. These conditions are impersonal forces, pre-individual singularities,

which are creative, but cannot be thought without its products. Things, organisms and we

happen as events. This germinal life of the event – as Keith Ansell Pearson calls it – entails a

before us and after us in which everything important happens – an event is always too late and

too soon.

The inorganic life is the life of the event, always working through imperceptible differences of

intensities. Life is ubiques and invisible – the nightmare of phenomenology as it is obvious in

the works of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty or Henry.

One of the most interesting consequences of deleuzian Ontology – at least for me – waits here.

Because, as and insofar all grounds are the product of grounding on an unground even the

unground itself as ground is a product of grounding, therefore even the unground itself is

manufactured. This is why the body without organs is not before the organism. This striking

consequence I want to invoke is the most productive for a coming philosophy of nature although

the most speculative. Nature/Life neither as chaotic destructive force (like Bataille) nor as

creative force of proliferation (like Spinoza) but as abstract machine, lobster god – twofold.

One claw always manufacturing the other and thereby manufacturing itself.

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It is though important to mention that Deleuze himself is not always consistent on this. Really

not. Badiou therefore has leveled – although for the wrong reasons – the accusation of organo-

vitalism agaist Deleuze.

3// The transcendental geologist

Meillassoux, provoking a storm, has identified – not without reason – a blockade in our

thinking, which is at the heart of what makes thinking possible at all. In the Kantian and

postkantian tradition thinking always means relating to the world, and therefore only enables

us to think thinking and being in correlation – hence Meillassoux’ term “correlationism”.

Although it is true that Kant struggled with this itself, he never the less gives up on speculation

whatsoever – meaning either thinking being and thinking seperatly or thinking them as unity,

so also not in correlation, but as one. As Meillassoux is ok with the correlate, but trys to subvert

its finitude (reinstation Fichtian Intellektuelle Anschaung) and Brassier trys to tear being from

the contingent instances of thinking – with Deleuze and Grant there might be another option to

“solve” the correlation.

In exactly the before mentioned sense I would say that Deleuze is a realist, NOT because

Deleuze believes in an hidden real existence beyond all representation, but in exactly the sense

that he shows that any given representation is a product of a process, that is not exhausted by

its product (thought), but that every thought is a product of nature and life – therefore thinking

is always thinking of the real, but does not exhaust the real, therefore it cannot capture

productivity itself. Or as Schelling says “thinking is always only approximation to

productivity”. Nature-thinking!

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The big question that bothers me about all this is precisely this: In a letter to Badiou Deleuze

writes: “Immanence=Life” but in his later texts he then goes on stipulation “Immanence: a life

…”

Thank you for your attention.