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Kastritis: Lifes (Re)-emergence

Studies in Social and Political Thought Page 80Studies in Social and Political ThoughtPage 79

ferentiation, time is not a mere aggregate of measured moments, and evolu-tion is not a line of species succeeding each other. This proposed continuityof time and experience, however, is not a progression towards a pre-given

end, but rather a source of continuous unpredictable novelty. It is a philoso-phy not so much of Being as of Becoming. The French philosopher GillesDeleuze wrote on Bergson, as well as Hume, Nietzsche and Spinoza. In col-laboration with the psychoanalyst and political activist Flix Guattari, he

reworked several of Bergsons ideas towards a philosophy of difference and

the non-rational.

The day began with Bio-Aesthetics or the Memory of the Senses? Film-Philosophy Meets Vitalism2. John Mullarkey (Sunderland) attempted toreconstruct those elements of a Bergsonian approach to cinema that recon-

cile actualist [i.e. the immediate sensation of the cinematic experience] andvirtualist [i.e. the explanatory power of the continuity of experience in mem-ory] accounts of film. He developed Bergsons notion of refraction into anoptical metaphor: the virtual is associated with the indirectness of reflection

(change in direction of light and the resulting replication of an image) andthe actual with the directness of refraction (light passing through a differentmedium, resulting in the change of an image itself). Film, being a medium, is

seen in this framework as an object of refraction which is subjected to an actof virtualising, i.e. absorbing that which is different into a continuity, like thatof Memory. Mullarkeys paper, working on a theme of Life on film and filmas Life, was a well placed introduction for what was to follow, but left me

wishing for a tighter substantiation of his ideas.

In the same session but with a distinctively different tone, Howard Caygills

(Goldsmiths) presentation, Life and Energy, offered a captivating accountof the relation between these two concepts in nineteenth century philosophyand physics. Caygill spoke vividly about the different ways of conceptualising

Life at the beginning and the end of that century. At first, Life is understoodas energy: a vital force, a vis vita, which needs to be discovered. But as thecentury came to a close, and through the efforts of the physiological school,Life would come to be related to the consumption of energy. Linked to this

consumption is the difference in the treatment of heat in physics and physi-ology: physics treated heat, the product of friction, as loss of work that hadto be minimised. For physiology, on the other hand, heat was less associated

with loss of work and more with Life itself. Of the five conference offerings,this was my personal favourite, both for its accessible style and for the wealthof the researched material.

Lifes (Re)-emergencePhilosophy Culture, and Politics

Goldsmiths College

London

23 May 2003

Thanos Kastrit i s

Attending Lifes (re)-emergence was, for me, an act of self-indulgence. There

was no obvious connection to my academic work, yet the topics discussedand the way it was all woven together had an air of novelty about them. I did

not go to Goldsmiths college with the intention of writing about my experi-ences. More to the point, I can claim no expertise in the field whatsoever,

aside from a personal interest in Bergsons philosophy of time. Yet it was a

thought provoking experience, which aroused my interest on a number ofissues.

As one of the organisers would later tell me, for Cultural Studies at

Goldsmiths the conference reflected a shift away from popular culture and

towards an investigation of the origins of the field in the work of Deleuzeand, through him, Bergson. With Bergsons philosophy of life serving as a

point of departure for the exploration of lifes importance for mind, indi-viduality, and culture1, the organisers offered a platform from which to draw

connections among heterogeneous approaches to life. Each of the speakers

explored a different aspect of this key concept; the end result might at first

glance seem disjointed. But as the day progressed the connections becameclearer, as if the conference itself were an exercise in emergence.

Henri Bergsons work comes as an attempt to oppose the mechanistic viewof the world that prevailed in late 19th century science. A key idea, whichseems to traverse the various subjects he engaged with, is a firm denial of the

notion that we can construct the entirety of an object or experience out ofthe divisions that make up our perception. Hence, difference precedes dif-

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The last contribution to the conference was Jamie King and Matthew

Hylands An Inherited Agenda for Annihilating Nothingness. They contin-

ued on the theme of biopolitics, with a slideshow inspired by Giorgio

Agambens concept of Bare Life. With its origins in Benjamins Critique of

Violence, the term is defined as the statement life that may be killed but notsacrificed because it has no sacrificial value. In other words, Bare Life

defines a space of exclusion, designated by sovereign violence that may serve

to uphold the Law, or may simply break it. Several issues were raised in this

context, among them a comparison of the western workplace and the freetrade zones established by regional trade agreements, and the inability of

workers in the developing world to take over production when a factory is

shut down, due to Intellectual Property restrictions. But the overall style of

this presentation was more that of an educated exposition than of a genuine

critical engagement with the topics raised.

Looking back at these five presentations, one can trace several different incar-

nations of the central theme: the memory of life in art; the biology of life;

the lived experience; technology and the political control of life; and lifeagainst the backdrop of social exclusion. But what I leave with is a feeling of

convergence of focus. What seems to re-emerge is life as a point of reflec-tion across various disciplines. If this is the case and it is a case one can

argue for as well as against then why now?

One could point at the increased public focus on scientific achievement in

bio-informatics and genetic engineering, along with the social and politicalquestioning of the effects and scope of such research, and come to the rather

obvious conclusion that Life is in fashion these days. There is a degree of

truth in this claim, but to rely on it would to some extent identify the causewith the outcome of this development. Id rather think of it as the result of

a long-term change of practices in science and technology.

Where the logic of clockwork fails to satisfy the increased need for com-

plexity, science and technology incorporate the logic of growth and adapta-

tion, the logic of Life. From neural network based spell-checkers to the par-

adigm of network economies, we can see a fusion of the made with theborn and vice versa, resulting in hybrids which Kevin Kelly calls vivisys-

tems.5 Bergson saw life as a mode of organisation of matter. 6 This definition

works well in this context, especially since one of the characteristics of thismode of organisation is constant inventiveness and differentiation. 7 The

The key speaker of the Conference, however, was Brian Massumi (Montral).His paper Living Memory addressed Walter Benjamins notion that amimeticism based on nonsensuous similarity lies at the heart of the human

bodys capacity for expression. He set out to investigate how it is that wecome to experience such similarities, which do not correspond to any actualsense impression, but seem to emerge out of an indiscrete influx. Massumiexplored current psychological research into the mechanism of cross-modal

perception: the function by which the brain integrates sensory information

from more than one sensory modality into a unified percept. Of particularinterest to this approach was the case of Synaesthesia: a rare perceptual phe-

nomenon by which the activation of one sensory modality elicits an experi-ence perceived as arising from two or more modalities3 (for example experi-encing vivid sensations of colour while reading words or digits). The discus-

sion of the paper expanded to include reference to Massumis latest workParables for the V irtual: Movement, A ffect, Sensation, likened by one of the twoGoldsmiths respondents to Bergsons Matter and Memory written again.There was great enthusiasm surrounding Massumis work, such that, having

not read (or heard of) Parables myself, I couldnt help feeling slightly out ofplace.

Fortunately, Luciana Parisis (East London) Abstract Sex: Bio-DigitalMachines and Symbiotic Micropolitics, promised to be a much more famil-iar territory. The third and final session of the conference marked a focalshift from Bergsonian philosophy to the realm of biopolitics. Parisis presen-

tation combined a Deleuzian framework of analysis with an informed look atrecent developments in genetics and biology. In particular, she suggested thatSerial Endosymbiosis Theory4 provides a scientific framework that seems to

complement Bergsons, Deleuzes and Guattaris notions of Life. She expand-ed this symbiotic model beyond the limits of organic matter, arguing that therelationship between body and technology is one of adaptation by muta-tion: at the levels of the cell, the reproduction of bodies, and culture itself.

Abstract sex, then, represents capitalisms machinic conception of nature asrelations between parts. This relation is reflected in practices such as genet-ic engineering and cloning, where genetic material is arbitrarily moved from

one organism to another. Parisi offered a stream of exciting ideas, but thedensity of her paper made it hard to follow at times, especially in the absenceof a pre-circulated text. I am also slightly concerned that, while the paper

drew substantially on scientific research, its specialised language would haveprevented most scientists from verifying the proper employment of theseideas.

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If you would like to know more about the themes of the conference, you might find

these books interesting:

Agamben, Giorgio, 1998 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

, Heller-

Roazen, Daniel (trans.) Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Ansell Pearson, Keith 2002 Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson

and the Time of Life

, London, Routledge.

Bogue, Ronald, 1989 Deleuze and Guattari London, Routledge.

Capek, Milic 1971Bergson and Modern Physics

, New York, Humanities Press.

Kelly, Kevin 1995 Out of Control: the New Biology of Machines

, London, FourthEstate, [currently available online at: http:/ / www.kk.org ]

Kolakowski, Leszek 1958 Bergson

, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Massumi, Brian 2002 Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation

,

Durham, D uke University Press.

Mullarkey, John 1999 Bergson and Philosophy

, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University

Press.

Parisi, Luciana forthcoming Abstract Sex: the Emergence of an Intensive Body

from Bacteria to Nanotechnology

, Continuum Press.

Footnotes

1. From the conference website: http:/ / www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/ cultural-studies/ html/ life.html .

2. It is important to stress that Bergson rejected the docrine of vitalism, which

implied an internal finality inherent in each organism (Kolakowski, 1958:56-57).

Mullarkey intends vitalism in a sense that is particular to Bergson (Mullarkey,

1999:62-64); but I think using it in his title, where it cannot be explained properly,

was an unfortunate cho ice that may enforce the misapprehension that Bergson was

somehow a vitalist.

3. Both quotations from: A.D.Wilkerson, Sensis Communis: Perceptual Variance in

Conscious Experience abstract from Towards a Science of Consciousness, Tucson,

Arizona, 2000.

4. See: Margulis, Lynn, The Symbiotic Planet.

5. Kelly (1995:1-5).

6. Mullarkey (1999:64).

7. The term turbulent used by Luciana Parisi is also quite fitting.

price science pays for the added complexity and adaptability offered by

vivisystems is the loss of the absolute predictability of, and control over, theiroperation.

Where this process becomes interesting for the humanities and social sci-

ences is in the age-old practice of applying the made upon the born: in this

case, upon human forms of organisation such as cultural groups, societiesand political organisations. They too echo the actions of the living beings that

comprise them, by defying totalising explanations and resisting control andprescription. Technology becomes part of these organisations, either in an

attempt to ease life or in an effort to regulate it - a theoretical distinction

which is often hard to demonstrate in practice. Hence, it is not only theapparent triumphs of biology and genetics that bring life to the foreground.

I believe this is also an outcome of the profound degree of incorporation ofbiological strategies in technology. These strategies could potentially match

our ability to adapt and innovate beyond the limits of the infrastructure with

which we surround ourselves or find ourselves surrounded by. Life in thissense emerges as a challenge to reconsider disciplinary boundaries and incor-

porate the study of processes that were outside the scope of traditional aca-

demic divisions.

Life re-emerges, but not only in a historical sense. We can see life physicallyemerge, by sheer persistence, in the most hostile of environments. And we

then see it re-emerge, against all distractions, upon reflecting about our lives,our lived experiences, and those of others around us. It is this degree of

endurance and persistence that seems to establish the primacy of Life above

all other processes and considerations. Except in the case of that two-leggedpolitical animal, who may turn around and ask: whose life?

Thanos Kastritis ([email protected]), BA Sociology (Panteion University,

Athens), MA in Social and Political Thought (Sussex), is a part-time SPT Dphil stu-

dent working on the interaction of modes of behaviour and the emergence of inhi-

bitions. He has interests in the social aspects of knowledge, information and com-

munication; the effects and interpretation of the notions of space and time in social

life; and the impact of scientific developments on social theory.

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