Anti-humanist Anarchism : by "Joff" (part two)
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Central to the project of dialectical naturalism is the transcendence
of the dualism subject/object. Such a project thinks that each
conjunct is not immune to the residue of the other. The philosophy of
social ecology thus incorporates an ontology of nature which is at
once material and subjective. Subjectivity resides in nature in
various degrees and is not exclusive to the mental processes humans
possess. If we concede that subjectivity inheres within every element
of nature then the hierarchically structured subject/object dualism
is rendered questionable by a way of thinking that examines the
relationship between entities in terms of what is held in common
rather than what is radically other. The question arises however:
from a humanist viewpoint, how can we maintain the uniqueness of the
human subject? Traditionally, the subject is considered as unique
precisely because of its capacity to transcend nature through its
capacity for self-consciousness. If the transcendence of nature into
the realm of culture is rejected as dualistic then it is difficult
not to fall into the trap of creating an egalitarian biosphere in
which every entity deserves equal respect. Furthermore, is not the
introduction of subjectivity within nonhuman nature itself an
anthropomorphic gesture? But a more interesting question is to
inquire as to whether one can ever fully extricate a perspective from
an anthropomorphic position. Is an other-regarding perspective
irredeemably contaminated with anthropomorphic remains? However,
Bookchin is guilty more than most on this point in the sense that he
is blind to his own anthropomorphizing and yet excessively critical
of deep ecology's `biocentric' conception of nature. Dialectical
(naturalistic) reason opposes itself to intuitionism and mysticism
precisely because of the unreasoned, cloudy and arbitrary nature of
visceral feelings. Bookchin is an ardent defender of Enlightenment
reason (in the form of Hegel's philosophy of optimism) and thinks
that deviation from a commitment to reason is one step nearer to
National Socialism whose perverted `ecologism' was based upon
intuition and anti-rationalism. Dialectical reason as well as
opposing itself to mysticism also critically questions instrumental
(conventional) reason which it perceives as one-dimensional and
`coldly analytical'. The form of reason Bookchin subscribes to then
is a dialectical reason which is organic, critical, developmental yet
analytical and ethical. Dialectical reason conceives the
interrelationships between particular entities as mediated through
the `totality'. Entities within the totality are forever unfolding in
a perpetual process of coming into being and passing away. This
process is a process of becoming which Bookchin derives from
Heraclitus and later in Hegel. Nature is then in a process of
continual development and each entity has boundaries which are
continually being redefined. Bookchin's philosophy of nature then
perceives the working of dialectics in the sphere of nature, society
and consciousness. It is at this point that we begin to see the
questionable omnipresence of dialectics. It is here that the
dialectical method finds its limit of application, for if we follow
Lukacs we should note that the dialectical method was misapplied by
Engels. Dialectical materialism is formulated on a fundamental
misunderstanding of the nature of the dialectical method. Lukacs
claims that the dialectical method explicates the realm of society
and history (human realms). The otherness of nature is external to
the application of the dialectical method. `The misunderstandings
that arise from Engels's dialectics can in the main be put down to
the fact that Engels - following Hegel's mistaken lead - extended the
method to apply also to nature'. In Anti-Duehring, Engels applies the
dialectical law of the negation of the negation to the natural realm
and claims that such a law can be established with reference to the
biology of a butterfly.
Butterflies, for example, spring from the egg by a negation of the
egg, pass through certain transformations until they reach sexual
maturity, pair and are in turn negated, dying as soon as the pairing
process has been completed and the female has laid its numerous eggs.
The three ultimate laws of dialectical materialism (law of the
negation of the negation, the transformation of quantity into
quality, the unity of opposites) challenge classical logic's laws of
identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle. The obvious
objection to Engels' theory of (dialectical) nature is to note what
the concept of contradiction is really doing. Contradiction, Engels
claims, is universally applicable to every form of life. But to what
extent is it meaningful to say that an egg exists in contradiction to
a butterfly? It sounds very odd. Furthermore, if dialectics is
perceived as referring to the activity of human (teleological)
purposive entities we need to ask if the natural realm is composed of
similar teleological entities. We also need to establish if the terms
`teleological' and `purposive' are derivable from human activities
exclusively. In asking the question we can then pose the problem as
to whether nature's teleological structure is, in effect, a mapping
of human constructs onto an essentially nonteleological structure.
Furthermore, it seems fair to ask whether nature lacks a concept of
supersession. Natural processes are either cyclical and quantitative
or gyrational and qualitative (which implies that nature does indeed
possess the possibility of supersession). Bookchin claims that he
avoids a mechanistic theory of nature by incorporating natural
(evolutionary) science into dialectical philosophy. Change, on this
account, is subject to internal and external factors and the question
of the emergence of qualitative differences is answered by thinking
the environment as an essentially chaotic and unpredictable milieu
propelled towards ever increasing differentiation. Contra Engels,
dialectical naturalism thinks evolution as organic and plastic rather
than mechanistic and cyclical. A dialectical naturalism attempts to
collapse the distinction between the is and the ought. Developmental
thinking seeks to overcome the is-based, factual-centred (rational)
emphasis of conventional reason and the ought-based, value-centred
(emotional) emphasis of ethical reason through thinking the is and
the ought as mediated by the totality and therefore reconcilable.
`What is needed... is to free this form of reason [dialectical] from
both the quasi-mystical and narrowly scientific worldviews that have
made it so remote from the living world'. A dialectical theory
replaces the old categories of materialism and idealism with an
emphasis upon the naturalistic and the ecological. The collapse of
the is-ought distinction is better grasped if we understand that
Bookchin borrows Hegelian logic to disclose the latent potentiality
inherent in `natural objects'. The dialectic of unfolding
potentiality is central to understanding the dialectic of social
ecology. The dialectic of social ecology is a speculative dialectic.
In uncovering what is implicit within every thing, consciousness
draws out those contradictory aspects of a thing and thus renders
them explicit. In this way, implicit potentiality is given its full
actuality or realisation. Bookchin is aware that one of the
assumptions necessary for this perception is that there is
teleological development towards greater complexity or
differentiation within the universe. Dialectical naturalism
celebrates the process of `natural' becoming and advances a `vision
of wholeness, fullness, and richness of differentiation and
subjectivity'. Reason is defended here as the means through which
latent potentialities are identified. Thus, the unleashing of latent
potentialities by the articulation of reason, for Bookchin, is the
means through which social development occurs. A `rational society'
emerges out of the unfolding process of reason's development. In a
clear sense then, the abandonment of reason which Bookchin perceives
in several areas of social life signals the combined obsolescence of
social development and the excrescence of the irrational. A social
ecology is thus considered ethical given the prescriptive ethical
import in the statement that being `must ripen into the fullness of
its being'. The political question which arises is: who is to decide
what constitutes the fullness of a being's being? Who is to decide
what a being is to become? And furthermore, what are the means for
disclosing the constitution of a being's 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 humorously considered
to live unethically. In the human sphere, the political implications
would necessarily encourage passivity in a global agreement to let
all being be in order for them to fulfil their latent potentiality.
But perhaps these questions are unwarranted. Perhaps we are trying to
extract a confession from Bookchin under duress. Bookchin replies to
the question concerning ethical acts by maintaining a strict
incommensurability between process-orientated dialectical philosophy
and `analytical' philosophy which directs its attentions to `brute
facts'. Bookchin considers that answers to dialectical questions can
only be answered by dialectics and hence dialectical reason.
A logic premised on the principle of identity A equals A, can hardly
be used to test the validity of a logic premised on A equals A and
not-A.
It is here that the dispute with antihumanism, mysticism and
`postmodernism' appears in bold relief. Bookchin is contesting the
dominance of other forms of nondialectical reason. Other forms of
consciousness and different ways of conceiving the workings of things
are considered as a betrayal of social development, a betrayal of
Enlightenment ideals and their overt quest for liberation. In more
ordinary terms one could say that this is sheer intolerance (of
diversity, of other voices) on Bookchin's part. Professor Kovel in
examining the invective in Bookchin `s prose contends: `Dialectic,
instead of unfolding, becomes static, frozen in an endless series of
vendettas'. In less personalistic terms, we could argue that the
reconstructed Hegelian logic Bookchin employs renders the existence
of positive differences problematic.
Rhizomatic Naturalism
The potential incommensurability between the naturalist ontologies of
Deleuze and Bookchin will now be assessed. But firstly the organic
metaphor or `image' of the rhizome will receive attention. Rhizome,
dualism and supersession: We shall concern ourselves here with an
alternative image of thought whose alternative perspective is
anarchistic (for it essentially opposes itself to an image of thought
which is State-orientated). One possible objection is that the
reading here is too literal. The objection is taken on board but what
is significant is the tracing of potential affinities between the
perception of thought as nomadic and experimental and the traditional
political philosophy of anarchism. Deleuze and Guattari are
principally interested in lines of flight and moments of
deterritorialisation that escape the binary coding of the State
apparatus. Deleuze and Guattari think becomings, multiplicities, and
proliferation as a form of counter-praxis to binary oppositions. They
are interested in what escapes from social cleavages. Instead of
East-West they look for the ruptures and breakthroughs that are
occurring elsewhere. Thinking otherwise than molarity (the molar),
they seek to disclose rebellions in the North and the South.
Molecularity is discerned as a potential site of creativity and
refusal. Normal identities, binary-molar apparatuses (male/female,
culture/nature) are contrasted with provisional identities of
becoming. The rhizome is an image of thought which attempts to
account for thought's trajectory and speed. It is contrasted to the
traditional image of Occidental thought, the tree and the root. The
rhizome is different from roots and radicles. Rats which swarm over
each other are invoked as an instance of a rhizome. Rhizome contains
both lines of segmentarity (recuperation) and lines of
deterritorialisation (escape). Rhizomes are compared with arborescent
structures. The rhizome contains elements which resist the sedentary
structures of hierarchy and centralised organs. Deleuze and Guattari
do not merely affirm one component of the dualism in favour of the
other. This point is argued by Tomlinson: `All Deleuze's `systems'
can be regarded as temporary strategic constructions, as the
transitory fortifications of an advancing nomadic war machine'. For
Deleuze and Guattari, there are knots of arborescence in rhizomes and
rhizomatic offshoots in roots. In summa: rhizomes are acentred,
nonhierarchical and are best defined as permitting the circulation of
evasive states of intensity. The model of the rhizome examines what
flees and what is produced by fleeing. Couchgrass is a wonderful
image Deleuze and Guattari provide in order to distinguish the growth
of grass as distinct from the growth of trees. Couchgrass grows
between paving stones, it springs up everywhere. Couchgrass is a
weed, it is rhizomatic. The production of desire, for Deleuze and
Guattari, is looked upon as a rhizomatic process. The rhizome is
above all a way of grasping connection and coupling, a way of
understanding extra-textual relationships (the effect of a book on
the reader's intensity `outside' of a book). In the case of writing,
Deleuze and Guattari maintain: `Writing webs a war machine and lines
of flight, abandoning the strata, segmentarities, sedantarity, the
State apparatus'. The question arises: to what extent are the
concepts of the rhizome and horizontality useful as tools for social
ecology and anarchism? Kropotkin elaborated, contra Darwin, a
conception of evolution that emphasised the role of mutual aid in
social evolution. The rhizome shares similar features with
Kropotkin's notion of the affinity group which is a collectivity that
spontaneously emerges for specific needs or ends. In thinking the
relationship between Deleuzian PS and ecological politics, Patrick
Hayden contends that Deleuze expounds a naturalistic ontology. Hayden
reworks the concept of naturalism in order to account for Deleuze's
critique of the `verticality' of Occidental thought. Two troubling
lacunas are present in Hayden's analysis. The first is that Hayden
fails to expose Deleuze's employment of `machinic' metaphors which
are the bedrock of Deleuze's rhizomatic philosophy. The second is
that there is dearth of analysis concerning the impact of Nietzsche's
lebensphilosophie upon Deleuze's philosophical trajectory. On
Hayden's interpretation, Deleuze's naturalism celebrates the
interrelationships between human and nonhuman life without recourse
to metaphysically static binary oppositions (essence/appearance). The
pragmatics of Deleuzian naturalism asks for the `effects' a way of
thinking have upon us. Thus, Hayden is right to note the search for
different ways of living and thinking by Deleuze and Guattari which
are sensitive to and in tune with the environment. Hayden fails to
note the effect of Nietzsche's philosophy of innocent becoming and
this-worldly atheism upon Deleuze's own thinking. In looking for a
way of thinking which escapes Platonism's positing of pure
transcendent Being (the real of Ideas), Deleuze seeks to re-unite the
(bio)-diversity of the natural world with the natural world's `real
conditions of material difference and process of becoming'. Deleuze
develops a pluralistic naturalism through a reading of Lucretius and
Spinoza. In thinking through the concept of nature, Deleuze reads
Lucretius as refusing to succumb to the temptation to totalise. In
refusing to seek a final unification of the different elements of
nature, what is celebrated is precisely the diversity and difference
which inheres within nature. This refusal connects up with tenet
(naturalism) 4 outlined above. The realm of Ideas is jettisoned for
it supports the idea that nature is an imperfect copy of transcendent
Being. Individuals, species, environments are considered as
non-totalisable sums. The multiple is celebrated over the One.
Deleuze reads nature distributively, that is to say, as an open ended
interplay of the various plurality of elements which compose it.
Nature is a continuous process of becoming, a process of formation
and deformation. Deleuze searches for a way of thinking that can
align itself with the fluctuations of `reality'. If nature fluctuates
because it is continually becoming then a rigid dichotomy (humanity
and nature) is an unsuitable tool for describing such a reality. This
is precisely the point that needs to be underscored. Deleuze and his
collaborator, Guattari, call for a way of thinking that celebrates
the different and the singular which counters the urge to totalise or
unify. The plane of immanence is the concept employed to celebrate
difference and singularities. Deleuze and Guattari's model of
evolution rejects the arborescent image of thought based upon descent
(genealogy) in favour of a rhizomatic conception of species
development in which the `traversality' of species combined with a
continuous interaction with the external environment is given greater
weight. The political dimension to Deleuze's naturalism takes the
form, according to Hayden, of a creativity of concepts, practices,
and values which `best promote the collective life and interests of
diverse modes of existence inhabiting the planet'. Deleuze's
micropolitical analysis thus examines local, often temporary
ecological situations. In doing so, ecological activism, as one
struggle amongst many , steers clear of `universal abstractions' (the
ideal of equality for all) and thus concentrates on the particular
and the singular. Furthermore, Guattari stresses micropolitical
processes with respect to the workings of molecular revolutions. Thus
spoke Guattari:
For the last decade [1970s] battle lines widely different from those
which previously characterised the traditional workers movement have
not ceased to multiply (immigrant workers, skilled workers unhappy
with the kind of work imposed on them, the unemployed, over exploited
women, ecologists, nationalists, mental patients, homosexuals, the
elderly, the young etc.).. But will their objectives become just
another "demand acceptable to the system" or will vectors of molecular
revolution begin to proliferate behind them.
The rejection of universal abstractions does not necessarily entail
the outright 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 between local and global ecosystems. Deleuze analyses
the construction of the planetary ecosystem beginning with the
combination and intersection of local phenomena which together
compose the global ecosystem. For the purposes of the central
contention of this thesis, we ought to make a comparison between the
rhizomatic-thinking of Deleuze and the social ecology of Bookchin.
Bookchin's social ecology argues that the domination of nature stems
from a deeply entrenched historical domination of human by human.
Reason and domination, on this account, are mutually exclusive.
Integrated World Capitalism infects `reason' with a contaminated
conception of reason which desires production for the sake of
production (instrumental means/end reason). The message is clear: it
is only by reconfiguring a radical (uprooting) revolutionary politics
that reason's struggle will be victorious. Bookchin defends such an
uprooting of thought, praxis and values by enunciating the value of
decentralised communities which practice locally based democracy.
Furthermore, Bookchin's dialectical naturalism re-situates human and
nonhuman life within bioregions which are sensitive to complex
evolutionary phenomena. Human and nonhuman are intertwined and
function according to the ecological principle of mutualism or
symbiosis. Other noteworthy precepts of social ecology include the
implementation 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 social ecology and rhizomatic
thinking. However, Bookchin has attacked Deleuze regarding the
explicit anti-humanism which pervades his work. PS, in general, is
rejected given its decentring of `Man'. On the other hand, Deleuze
wishes to transcend what he sees as a one-dimensional Enlightenment
rationality and more particularly the unchallenged march toward a
rational society by Marxist theoreticians. The presuppositions
underlying the idea of progress and the teleological belief in the
messianic ending of history with the arrival of heaven on earth is
further attacked by Deleuze who wishes to think free from systems of
closure. Deleuze's philosophy seeks to leap over the `deterministic
presuppositions of traditional essentialism and humanism' which are
evident in Bookchin's paean to Hegelian dialectics. Hayden's point is
that Bookchin examines only one surface of ecological phenomena
namely its `inner' dialectical development without seeing phenomena
as entwined with an `outside'. Hayden's analysis is fundamentally
weakened given the fact that one of Deleuze's main influences was
Nietzsche who inaugurated a `deconstructive' practice that sought to
chiefly expose the hidden motivations lurking in Occidental thought,
namely philosophy's hidden desire or will-to-power. The concept of
becoming is centripetal to Nietzsche's philosophy of the eternal
recurrence and the Will-to-Power. Yet, a grasping of the critique of
the transcendent world of essences, the beyond or Nirvana by an
immanent rhizomatic naturalism is blunted without recourse to the
becoming-Nietzsche of Deleuze. Nietzsche set in train one of the most
hostile critiques of Christianity and of Occidental culture and
Nietzsche was one of the main spurs for Deleuze's philosophy of
affirmation. To grasp the meaning of Deleuze's plane of immanence
thus requires foregrounding Spinoza's and Nietzsche's philosophies of
power and affectivity. Hayden fails to provide such an analysis. In
contrast to Hayden, Gare notes the impacts of Nietzsche and Bergson
upon Deleuze's thinking and contends that Deleuze constructs a
Nietzschean philosophy of nature out of philosophy, mathematics and
scientific advances. More importantly, several of Deleuze's chief
concepts are omitted from Hayden's otherwise thought-provoking essay.
The machinic assemblage, the Body-without-Organs (BwO), and the
mechanosphere receive no mention whatsoever. Such a selective
reading cannot but give the impression that Deleuze and Guattari
enunciated a soft and woolly passivity. On the contrary, Guattari
calls for ever greater control and manipulation of the
`mechanosphere' given the constant human abuse of fragile ecosystems.
Furthermore, it can be argued that Deleuze and Guattari's
collaborative anti-Oedipus enterprise was directed toward a
rethinking and reconstruction of ontology itself. The a naturalistic
ontology ought to be put into parentheses here. The traditional tools
of ontology (being, object, qualities, pairs) are replaced by Deleuze
and Guattari with the concepts of planes, intensities, flows,
becomings, and couplings. Rigid binary oppositions (a chief example
is the man/woman dualism) are avoided and in their place we find `a
continuum of interacting embodied subjectivities'. Yet, it is
legitimate to inquire as to whether a machinic ontology is
necessarily gender neutral or nature oppressive. Grosz and others
have been quick off the mark to note the potentially sexist metaphors
employed by Deleuze and Guattari. The use of machinic metaphors may
well express a phallic drive whose obvious desire is to plug into,
couple up and oppressively connect up with everything it can
dominate.
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