To live a problem: Deleuze and existential politics

33 TO LIVE A PROBLEM: DELEUZE AND EXISTENTIAL POLITICS1 Jeffrey A. Bell In this article it is argued that the existential tradition can be understood to be sympathetic to many of the concerns of classical republicanism, and in particular to the classical republican view that freedom consists of securing the institutions that allow for freedom as nonis, for the ability on Marx, William Clare Roberts has argued that Marx should also be understood in light of the concerns of classical republicanism, and in this article that reading is extended to include the work of Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and Deleuze. In particular, by developing the Deleuzian concept of a problem, wherein a problem is a reality irreducible to the solutions it makes possible, and a reality that subsists within these solutions, the domination and arbitrary power the republicans challenge comes to be understood as a system, or ideology, that presents itself as a solution without a problem, or a forced solution in other words. This reading provides both a new way of engaging the existential tradition with political theory, and it highlights the overlapping concerns of Deleuze with the existentialists, most notably Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus. In his reading of as radicalizing the republican tradition for which freedom as non-domination is the 2 In particular, Roberts argues that the necessity of achieving our goals in life, if not the very conditions of life itself, by entering the 1 Many thanks to M nd Creativity conference in Prague in November 2019, and to the Leverhulme Trust for the Visiting Professorship at Royal Holloway, University of London. This professorship helped to make this work, and my ability to attend the conference, possible. 2 William Clare Roberts, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017) 231. Jeffrey A. Bell 34 3 This is because the impersonal and unpredictable nature of markets interferes with what Roberts sees as between the actions that will perfect one as a person and those that will achieve 4 In other words, when the market becomes the means necessary to do that which realizes our virtue, that which benefits ourselves and others, then the very task itself is at risk of being undermined by powers outside our control. It is for this reason that classical republicanism seeks political institutions where forms of domination and arbitrary power are resisted if not outright eliminated, and s account, can be seen to fall in line with this tradition. Life as a Problem It may seem to be a stretch to place some of the key figures of the existential tradition among classical republicanism, if it is not already a stretch to place Marx there. Two key components essential to the republican project are subject to severe criticisms from those identified with the existential tradition. First is the importance of predictability with respect to achiev the teleology connected with this predictability. In a letter to his friend Franz Overbeck, for instance, Nietzsche praises the philosophy of Spinoza, in whom he -order, the unegoistic, and 5 Nietzsche will also speak critically of the transformation, or better deformation, of human beings into that of a predictable, calculable being. As Nietzsche puts it in On the Genealogy of Morals, if human beings are to become the 6 become calculable, regular, necessary [if they are] to be able to stand security for [their] own fu 7 In other places, Nietzsche will criticize contemporary moral theories for th toward timidity masquerading behind an intellectual front with the goal being the dangers it once held and that each and every 3 Roberts 231. 4 Roberts 63. 5 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1954) 92. 6 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals; Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1969) 57. 7 Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals 58. To Live a Problem 35 .8 In short, the unpredictability of life, the dangers of living, are to be eliminated and a predictable, calculable, secure existence is to be sought from life sand Tiny, soft, round, endless grains of sand! 9 to negate 10 Similarly for Deleuze, who I would like to align with the existential tradition for reasons to be offered shortly, he too criticizes the notion of predictability and he arguably values the unpredictable over the predictable. In reference to what he y expect: predictable forms. 11 In contrast to the sought fo witness the endless stream of sequels, the Star Wars De unpredictably, with a slow turnover and progressive recognition [f] course be unlike B they may in fact go unnoticed. If there is a value, therefore, that Deleuze would call upon, predictability would not appear to be it. How, if at all, are we to reconcile the classical republican critique of arbitrary power, and its reliance on the predictability necessary to exercise our virtue arising from forcing human beings into predictable molds? Should we even bother attempting to reconcile these two approaches? I believe we should, and the key to doing so is to begin by unpacking what is meant by being forced into predictable 8 Friedrich Nietzsche, Dawn: Thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality (section 174), ed. Alan Schrift, Keith Ansell-Pearson and Duncan Large, trans. Brittain Smith, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 5 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011) 127. 9 Nietzsche, Dawn 127. 10 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (sections 22, 203, 259), ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 22, 91, 153. 11 Incorporations: Zone #6, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone Books, 1992) 287. Subsequent references to this source are given as page numbers in brackets in the text. Jeffrey A. Bell 36 modes, the emphasis here on the forced nature of this process. We get an indication of how Deleuze understands this process by returning to the same essay where he diagnoses the crisis in contemporary literature. In discussing television, and now on social media and the internet, Deleuze points out that to express th not provide us with a smorgasbord of choice from which we can freely choose the words, images, narratives, etc., that best suit us; to the contrary, for Deleuze this flood forces upon us a habit whereby silence is to be avoided, where words and l forced to ask our than usual. Freedom, therefore, or non-domination in the classical republican s into continually expressing ourselves, and for Deleuze this comes, for example, when might be wor For Deleuze, therefore, there is clearly a value being asserted concerning this freedom and right to say nothing, for the freedom from repressive forces, a Taking these points into consideration, the Deleuzian ethic I will be arguing for could be stated as follows: to live in good faith, or to live in to embrace life as a problem, and this is good faith precisely because it is affirmative and embraces the problematic as such and the implications this entails. This is also a faith for one is embracing and affirming a reality that gives us no determinate reasons or hopes upon which to justify our affirmations. One cannot even say just what it is that is being affirmed. By contrast, to live in bad faith is to reject or negate the problematic, to live life as expected, or in accordance with rules, customs, etc., that serve as solutions to the problems of life, solutions to how, when, where, and in what circumstances we should do what is expected of us, and which precisely predetermine what this should be. Such solutions serve, moreover, as solutions without a problem, and thus we have a faith here as well, but now this is a faith in a solution, and a faith that it may indeed be a solution without a problem, or if not so in this case then at least a faith that there is, somewhere, the possible salvation to be had in a final solution. What then are the implications of embracing and affirming life as a problem? First and foremost, it is inseparable from processes that enhance the life processes that are irreducible to that which is already determinately given. Secondly, and To Live a Problem 37 relatedly, this enhancement of life processes is not to be confused with being a quantitative enhancement. It was precisely the freedom from quantitative increase, from filling awkward silences with determinate words and images, that Deleuze encourages as resistance to those powers that force us to express ourselves. Echoing h congratulate ourselves on the quantitative increase in books, and larger print runs possibility of c comes with the affirmation of life as a problem is thus not a quantitative enhancement or increase; rather, it is nothing less than the process of making ory of sense, both the process of increasing determination (or the move to increased differentiation and determination) as well as the de-differentiating move that tends toward the undermining of identity. Stated differently, making sense involves a tendency both toward the universal, toward that which cannot be reduced to any determinate particular and yet which is the he particular, to differentiations that can be explicated ad infinitum. To affirm life as a problem, as a process of making sense, is thus to embrace a process that is neither universal nor particular, the universal and the particular being abstractions, but it is instead to affirm the provisional, problematic nature of the determinate ways in which things are done, the determinate ways in which things make sense. To clarify by way of contrast, the rejection or negation of the problematic, or bad faith as I have defined it, is to be characterized precisely by the fact that it does not affirm the provisional, problematic nature of the determinate ways in which things are done but rather rejects any moves which may problematize, moves that may reveal the problems inseparable from the determinate ways in which things are done, determinate ways that are simply solutions to problems they have not exhausted. Bad faith, moreover, is not to be characterized by the way it makes sense of things, but rather by the involuntary, knee-jerk rejection of the encounters ng effort to diagnose these points of resistance, to provoke the knee-jerk reactions which When one reads through the chapter titles of Ecce Homo es Jeffrey A. Bell 38 12 -jerk reaction may well be negative, an involuntary rejection, or at least that is how many of my students react. To the extent that this occurs, then this involuntary rejection is to be interpreted, for Nietzsche, as being symptomatic of a set of values that take being humble and selfeffacing, among other things, to be unproblematic and what makes sense of how This set of values is precisely what Nietzsche identifies titles thus expresses a reaction to values that cannot be affirmed by slave morality, and thus values that negatively determine the limits that establishes the very nature of what, from the perspective of slave morality, makes sense of how things ought to be. faith, as defined above, then good faith entails affirming the problematic nature of values. When one encounters something that provokes an automatic rejection or negation, and we all do at some point or another, then a good faith response is to unproblematic, or as solutions without a problem that is, the bad faith response. To flesh out these points further, and to clarify with the help of concrete examples, let us turn to three examples to illustrate what we take to be involved in cases of good and bad faith. We will turn first to discuss conspiracy theories to exemplify bad narratives, and contrast them with what a good faith narrative would entail; secondly, we will turn to Jeanreturn our discussion to the existential tradition; and finally we will examine the arguments in The Rebel where Camus calls upon what may be called a good faith rebellion to the shattering of the traditional political order that occurred in the wake of the French Revolution. Conspiracy Theories chest, shot and killed his mother, and then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he shot and killed twenty children, all between six and seven years of age, and six adult staff members of the school. He then shot and killed himself as police began to enter the school. Not lo narrative account of what happened came to be challenged by some who offered an alternative account. Most prominent among those who challenged the official 12 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals; Ecce Homo 222, 236, 259, 326. To Live a Problem 39 narrative was Alex Jones, a radio host and prominent conspiracy theorist, who staged in order to sway public opinion towards stricter gun control legislation. Jones has since recanted, in part no doubt due to defamation lawsuits that had been filed against him. Jones was not alone, however. James Fetzer, a former professor of philosophy of science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, has promoted his own version of the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory, among other ed Scholars for 9/11 Truth to further his 9/11 conspiracy theory, and he has also supported alternative theories of the Kennedy assassination and the Holocaust, among others. James Tracy, a former communications professor from Florida Atlantic University, has also claimed the opinion. Tracy would later harass parents of the children who were killed, insisting they prove their child was dead. Tracy was successfully sued for harassment and fired from his tenured position at Florida Atlantic University. The list of conspiracy theories could continue of course, for it is not a short list, but to focus on the Sandy Hook case for the time being, a point to be stressed is that the narratives conspiracy theorists put forward do attempt to make sense of a certain set of facts, or use some facts as key to their narrative. The supposed Obama backstage at a Newtown vigil in honor of the victims with a young blond girl sitting on his lap. This girl, the conspiracy narrative goes, is six-year-old Emilie Parker, one of the twenty are then quilted together to construct an alternative narrative, and Fetzer put together several such accounts in his edited collection, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, a book for which Fetzer and co-editor Mike Palacek recently lost a defamation case. In the case of the 9/11 attacks, the rapid pancake collapse of the towers is for they could not have collapsed as quickly as that without key structural weakening having taken place in advance of the attack (such as cutting a number of the reinforced steel frames of the buildings). In both cases, however, these because of the incredibly high temperatures of the fires caused by the jet fuel. The conspiracy theorists, however, will not hang their hat on just a single of facts together that make sense of the event, and they do so in a way that is at ly relevant to the distinction between good and bad faith that I am setting forth. First, Jeffrey A. Bell 40 in addition to the conspiracy narrative account there is often a self-affirmation narrative that further justifies accepting the conspiracy theory. As Claude M. Steel -affirmation theory implies, what is crucial is that there be a narrative -system, that essentially explains ourselves, and the world at large, to ;13 phenomenal experience of the self self-conceptions and images as adaptively and morally adequate, i.e., as competent, good, coherent, unitary, stable, capable 14 This selfsystem gets put to the test - 15 Sherman and Cohen found that in response to such threats people may engage in any number of strategies to reaffirm self-integrity via social judgment. These strategies include comparing the self with a clearly judging a political ingroup member who fails to demonstrate as much 16 Such strategies are deployed by conspiracy theorists, whose narrative account invites criticism and ridicule, to which they respond by citing the inferiority of the in a proud moment of self-affirmation and defiance, claim that they have not been see it. A consequence of this strategy, and this is the second, key point, is that many conspiracy theorists remain unperturbed by facts or evidence which debunk their narrative, for they refuse to relent on the self-affirmation narrative that paints - affirmative narrative is thus not a space of reasons, a space where formal and informal r It is at this point where we can begin to clarify the distinction between good and bad faith as we have been setting it forth. Although the conspiracy theorist may well act from a narrative of self-affirmation, their conspiracy narratives quickly encounter determinate facts and evidence that they must reject or exclude 13 The Psychology of Self affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 21 (1988): 261-62. 14 Steele 262. 15 -Defense: SelfAdvances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2006): 203. 16 Sherman and Cohen 203. To Live a Problem 41 from their account. If it is indeed true that nobody died at Sandy Hook, then they must reject the reasons why there were so many funerals, so many grieving conspiracy narrative must thus limit itself to a small constellation of facts from which it spins its narrative and reject those facts which may contest or challenge their account. It is for this reason that a conspiracy theory, understood as we have sketched it here, is to be thought of as being an example of bad faith. This is because such narratives presuppose the truth of their account, a truth that is in assumed to be the proper account, and one that rejects or excludes facts that may indeed problematize it. When the knee-jerk reaction to reject or deny kicks in, we see the tell-tale symptoms of bad faith, and yet it is disguised or hidden behind a veil of self-affirmation, but again a self-affirmation that rests on bad faith. Good inseparability of the problematic from the narratives that make sense of our life and world. As such, these narratives may well become undone or undermined by also come to draw in more facts, more relationships and details as part of the process of making sense. Both tendencies are affirmed when one embraces the problematic nature inseparable from our narratives, or when one is in good faith. Sartre and Bad Faith To unpack this a bit m faith. The problem with which Sartre begins is explaining how one can lie to oneself. Unlike a normal lie, where the deceiver knows the truth they intend to withhold from the deceived, in bad faith, 17 If we know the truth that we withhold from ourselves, then how can we be deceived regarding this truth? And if we are being deceived how can we simultaneously know the truth? After arguing that the psychoanalytic solution to this problem fails, Sartre turns to examples to diagnose what is going on in cases of bad faith. The most common strategy, Sartre claims, is to take is to be what which consciousness is conscious of, and thus our conscious projects in the world 17 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1956) 49. Subsequent references to this source are given as page numbers in brackets in the text.