REVIEW: LETTRE À TRISTAN GARCIA by Terence Blake

Review of Mehdi Belhaj Kacem's "Lettre à Tristan Garcia"

(LA REVUE LITTERAIRE, number 52, February-March, 2012)

1) AN INCONSISTENT KANTIANISM

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem has published a long open letter to Tristan Garcia where he describes a “new conjecture” that is emerging as the rising generation of philosophers begin to free themselves from the conceptual space defined by the “hegemony” over the last decade of Badiou’s philosophy. For MBK a new conceptual configuration is forming, and his letter to Garcia is not so much an exhaustive analysis of his work as “an attempt to situate it in the contemporary configuration” (p112). This contemporary configuration includes, aside from Garcia, Quentin Meillassoux, Martin Fortier, Graham Harman, the other authors of the Speculative Realist movement, and of course himself, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem.

I will not try to give a full summary of this text, but shall limit my remarks to summarising and interpreting MBK’s discussion of Graham Harman, insofar as he finds his work and ideas typical of the contemporary conceptual configuration in philosophy. MBK cites Garcia’s distinction between “substantial” ontologies (which “carve reality up into 2 regimes of being, secondary qualities and reality in itself) and “vectorial” ontologies (ontologies of becoming). Whereas Garcia is at pains to distinguish himself from both of these ontologies, MBK argues that Harman’s ontology is “substantial”, positing a noumenal realm of objects. (MBK: Harman…remains in this sense a “substantialist”, p119).

(NB: This diagnostic concords totally with my own analysis of Harman’s OOO in my paper IS ONTOLOGY MAKING US STUPID? and in my review of Harman's book THE THIRD TABLE).

MBK argues that Harman, like the other “post-badousians” (Meillassoux, Garcia, et al.), while positing an in-itself remains stuck in a crucial ambiguity, an “amphibolic vacillation” over the status of this in-itself, oscillating between the idea of an absolutely unknowable, uncapturable (cf. THE THIRD TABLE, “Whatever we capture…is not the real table”, p12) noumenon and the idea that it can be captured in some very abstract and indirect way. MBK resumes this as an oscillation between a strict Kantian understanding of the in-itself and a “set-theoreticist” understanding, where something can be known about the in-itself.

This point is very interesting because Harman seems to think that MBK is claiming that he, Harman, was influenced by Badiou’s ideas and is reacting against them, and protests that this is just not true (cf Harman’s post). In Garcia’s case, and in his own, he claims this explicitly. But I think that MBK is making less a point about Harman’s intellectual biography, than about the conceptual configuration to which Harman’s theorising belongs whether he knows it or not, and of which Badiou gives the best, because most abstract and general, formulation. For MBK insofar as our thought was deep, intense, and contemporary, we were all “Badiousians” for a brief period (a “decade”, give or take a little) whether we were aware of it or not, and now we are leaving that period behind, with some difficulty, and becoming something else: post-Badiousian, Meillassousian or Garcian, or Harmanian. At the same time MBK finds that these ways out from Badiousian set-theoreticism are compromise formations, they do not go far enough.

Harman objects to several passages in the LETTER where MBK subsumes him with the post-Badiousians under the idea that you can know the noumena by set-theoreticist means. I think that this is another case where MBK would say that this is implicit in the conceptual form of Harman’s OOO, whether there was a biographical influence or not. When it comes to a more specific diagnosis of Harman’s relation to science MBK states:

“If Harman were consistent, he would say simply that science is nothing but one mode of objectal relation amongst others, and thus that finally it in no way distinguishes itself from any other type of “prehension”…This is probably what he thinks, anyhow” (p132).

(Note on this translation: I read “se singularise”, distinguishes itself, instead of just “singularise”, as otherwise the text makes no sense).

Far from accusing Harman of giving priority to the set-theoretic matheme in his explicit philosophy, MBK diagnoses a contradiction where Harman, in virtue of the (Kantian) unknowability of his objects is obliged to to place all types of prehension, including the scientific one on the same plane – this would mean Harman is obliged to have a flat epistemology, and at the same time presume that we can know something about these objects (that they exist, and that objects contain and are contained in other objects, which MBK brings back to the set-theoretic relation of belonging), thus implicitly having a set-theoreticist understanding of objects. This is an example of the shared conceptual configuration of hesitation between a Kantian understanding of the in-itself and a set-theoreticist understanding that MBK finds in what he calls the “post-Badiousians”. Do I need to repeat that this is a structural claim and not a biographical one?

2) AN UNEVENTFUL ONTOLOGY

MBK, as we have seen, accuses Harman of inconsistent Kantianism, wanting to have his unknowable in-itself and yet to know it. He argues further that to be consistent with his own (inconsistent) ideas he should treat science as indiscriminable from other truth procedures, or types of prehension, leaving to philosophy the role of knowing ontologically the real, on the basis of an unconscious set-theoreticism, which is best set forth explicitly by Badiou. We have seen in my analysis of THE THIRD TABLE that this prediction of MBK’s is verified in that Harman reduces the scientific object to the same status as the humanist object and the everyday object – that of “utter shams”. Science, the humanities, common sense are all equally types of prehension that do not attain the real object. Only Harmanian philosophy, and some “artistic” practices, do that.

MBK sees these two features (inconsistent Kantianism and flat epistemology) as convergent, indicating a problem in Harman’s OOO concerning the nature and status of science, and especially its historicity. Implicitly, we have seen, Harman’s ontology relies on the matheme (Badiou’s name for the type of truth-procedure to which the sciences belong) and so on the evental nature of science. Explicitly, science is demoted to the status of non-knowledge, as the real cannot be known. Consequently, Harman has no theory of the event nor of historicity, neither in science nor in any of the other truth-procedures or prehensions (except for some artistic practices, which embody “the attempt to establish objects deeper than the features through which they are announced, or allude to objects that cannot quite be made present”, THE THIRD TABLE, p14), more generally he has no theory of change.

The tension between the two theses (T1: the in-itself is unknowable; T2: something can be known about the in-itself, indirectly by artistic allusion or by philosophical intellection) leads to an inability to account for science, which has been demoted to a sham prehension. Strictly speaking Harman would need to re-elevate science to the status of a practice that can produce knowledge in historical time, “discover” things about the world. MBK argues that it is all very well putting human access on the same level as the cotton “encountering” the fire, “But what about the discovery of the genome, or of the quark?” Such discoveries involve a change in the horizon of scientific understanding, and Harman must deny such changes, as for him: “there is no such thing as a “horizon”", TOOL-BEING, p155). Such discoveries, argues MBK, “really suppose the existence of some in-itself which will have been hidden from us and that we “unearth” by means of science (and so: that there is still some in-itself that is inaccessible to us and that perhaps will not be inaccessible tomorrow: History)” (p134). In other words, if the in-itself is unknowable (TI) then science is flat and has no historicity, though it may have a simple history of a cumulative list of

discoveries added and mistakes subtracted. If on the other hand, the in-itself can come to be known over time (T2), then science is evental, it is a veritable truth-procedure and not a sham prehension.

The same can be said for the other truth-procedures, to the point that MBK thinks that for Harman (as for Garcia, but in a different way) not only “science does not exist”, science as a historical truth-procedure containing events that progressively “unearth” the in-itself and producing knowability out of unknowability, but his philosophy leads to the absence of any idea of truth., and to the demotion of all truth-procedures to sham prehensions. All that would remain would be artistic creations that “allude to objects that cannot quite be made present” and philosophical intellections that “establish objects deeper than the features through which they are announced” (THE THIRD TABLE, p14). But allusion and establishment as cognitive procedures, as ways of getting around the unknowability of the in-itself, are not obviously the exclusive possessions of art (excluding science, and also politics: “the word “politics” is the immense absence from your book. Isn’t this the price to pay for the “object-oriented philosophies”, as Harman calls them?”, p164). Harman needs to provide some sort of principle of demarcation here, and argue out its merits. But that would involve entering into a different conceptual configuration.

3) ON VARIABLE WIHDRAWAL

In my review of Harman's THE THIRD TABLE I have given a close analysis of the passages in the book where Harman talks about science in his own name, where he feels confident enough to contradict the Nobel prize-winning physicist Sir Arthur Eddington. He is right to do so, as I believe firmly in the necessity and utility of contributions by the ordinary citizen to debates between experts, on recondite subjects of all sorts, including that of the nature of reality, which can have an influence on the conduct of our lives. Unfortunately, as I have shown Harman fails to understand Eddington's views and proposes in their place a totally inadequate philosophy of science.

It is tempting for the defenders of Harman's OOO to try to supplement this inadequate discussion of science with material taken from his book on Bruno Latour PRINCE OF NETWORKS (re.press, 2009), importing the analyses of an expert in science studies to supplement a notable lack in Harman’s philosophy. However, this salvific supplementation comes at the price of ignoring Harman’s own explicit pronouncements on science (such as the reiterated claim that the scientific object is “not real”, is an “utter sham”).

My reconstruction here of MEHDI BELHAJ KACEM’s general analysis of post-badousian philosophy attempts to make explicit its ontological and epistemological argument as applied to Harman. An argument that I translate and summarize, but that I also endorse, as my own reading of THE THIRD TABLE confirms Kacem’s more general analysis. I think it is important to see that Kacem does not claim that Harman’s notion of the in-itself (not his concept of “withdrawal”, as the debate centers on degrees and types of withdrawal) necessitates relativism. He argues that Harman is caught in a two-pronged pragmatic contradiction, having to maintain both

1) the in-itself is unknowable, but OOO can nonetheless know something about it. Kacem argues that this thesis presupposes at an unconscious structural level a set theoretic type ontology, and thus the implicit primacy and historicity of science. (The primacy of set theory implies the historicity of science:”Copernicus then Galileo… reveal what will have been an in-itself previously inaccessible to human consciousness. This revelation itself of the in-itself will permit, three centuries later, the literalisation of the transfinite by Cantor”, Kacem, p134). Here Harman’s epistemology of science is vertical, enshrining, though unconsciously, the matheme as ultimate legitimation of the little that can be said philosophically.

2) the in-itself is knowable, but only by philosophical intellection and artistic allusion, all other truth-procedures, including science and politics, are relegated to the relativist status of equally illusory prehensions (this prong has as a consequence that there are no events in science that “reveal what will have been an in-itself previously inaccessible to human consciousness”, Kacem, p134, his italics. NB: this use by Kacem of the future perfect to denote a retroactive transformation of the

status of unknowability of the in-itself, is central to his understanding of the science-event, but forbidden by Harman’s system). Here Harman’s epistemology of science is flat, demoting it to an instance of the general relativism of prehensions. However, by fiat, some artistic procedures are partially excluded from this relativisation. Here his more general epistemology is flat, but not smooth, as it contains some artistic lumps. But no criterion of demarcation is offered.

Kacem thinks that this dilemma can be resolved by fully accepting that the in-itself is only relatively unknowable, that withdrawal is relative. This is better than the incoherent pirouette of making the real object utterly withdraw from science, the humanities, and common sense (their objects are “utter shams”), and only partially withdraw from some philosophical and artistic practices. Harman wants to have his (withdrawn) table and eat (on) it too. So we are left with a mysterious phenomenon of degrees of withdrawal and of de-withdrawal.

Harman claims that “objects can never be caught” (THE THIRD TABLE, p12), the real object can never be “captured”. Kacem disagrees:

“the in-itself is as infinite as all the rest, and thus inexhaustible. But one cannot then decree it to be totally uncapturable, on the contrary: science does suppose this in-itself to be capturable, by definition, without which there would not be any scientific historicity, that is any historicity at all” (Kacem, p135).

He draws some interesting conclusions from this historicity of science. One of the most important is that one you acknowledge the historicity of science, once you realise that it is not a mere series of encounters with the real, once you accept that it is composed of mutations and radical conceptual reconfigurations, then you must accept what he calls an “anthropological singularisation”. More generally, he argues that the more “object-oriented” you are, the less you are able to think any singularity, whether it be that of humanity, animality, life or anything else.

The encounter of the cotton with the fire may resemble my encounter with the table, but all that is anecdote, as it cannot resemble our scientific encounter with an Earth that we now know to be round, and not flat as it was formerly thought. The transfusion of the Latourian notion of turning a heterogeneous collective into a “cosmos” will not help here, unless we accept the historicity of this cosmos (“from closed world to infinite universe”, for example):

“It does not really seem that the other animals know about the accretion of the Earth, the Neolithic, or the fact that the sky is not a vault nor is the archi-Earth flat, as we ourselves believed for such a long time” (Kacem, p137).

In conclusion for this part of the argument, I think Kacem is right to highlight the tension between realism and historicity as a basic structural problem for the “post-badiousian” conceptual configuration, and include Harman in his analysis. The difficulty and the necessity of reconciling realism and the historicity of the sciences is an unresolved problem of contemporary philosophy. The philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, who I think is undeservedly neglected – especially in his last phase, was going in this direction in his article “REALISM AND THE HISTORICITY OF KNOWLEDGE” included as chapter in CONQUEST OF ABUNDANCE, p131-146. I think that Latour helps us think the “historicity” but is not so good on the “realism”, and the reverse is the case with Harman. So I must insist that the “compatibility” between Harman and Latour is not a given to be explored, but a hybrid to be created. This hybridisation is more at the level of good intentions for the moment, given their notable divergences on the questions of relations, reductionism, and withdrawal.

4) REPRESSED ANTHROPOLOGISM

I have been mining Mehdi Belhaj Kacem’s LETTRE À TRISTAN GARCIA for what it can tell us about the conceptual tensions in OOO in general, and in Graham Harman’s version in particular. I find confirmation of my thesis that much of OOO is a badly flawed epistemology masquerading as

an ontology. Kacem is not the only one who has noticed these tensions between an avowed manifest ontology and an unavowed latent epistemology. In particular, for this part of my argument I would cite David Berry at stunlaw and David Golumbia at uncomputing. They critique the contradictions in Harman’s OOO from the point of view of computationality, in much the same way as Kacem does from the point of view of post-Badiousism. They isolate two strands of tension:

1) the covert use of epistemology under the cover of ontology, and

2) the unanalysed pragmatic contradiction of relativising the human at the content level of the enunciation while addressing the enunciation uniquely to humans

without, it seems to me, establishing a link between them. It is my argument that Kacem permits us to establish that link, and to show that these two strands have a common root: the necessary but repressed “anthropologism” required to make sense of our singularity as bearers of and contributors to the practice of science:

“the in-itself comes to ex-ist because we singularise ourselves, in the whole realm of being, by the event of science” (Kacem, p135).

This is an important point in Mehdi Belhaj Kacem’s critique of OOO and SR (which he calls the “post-badiousists”). Kacem argues that there is a necessary “anthropologism” implied by the existence of truth-events, especially in science by the existence of scientific revolutions. We are the only beings that produce science and that knowingly pass through paradigm changes (e.g. from an Aristotelian earth-centered cosmos to a Galilean infinite universe). These scientific changes produce the possibility of philosophical changes by reconfiguring our conceptual space. So he places OOO clearly in the wake of the “Cantorian Revolution”, theorised explicitly by Badiou but implemented, even if sometimes unconsciously, by the post-Badiousian OOO-ers. Thus their philosophy addresses itself to the anthropological Subject of science, which is not you or I or Eddington (to use Harman’s example in THE THIRD TABLE), but a structural subject instantiated, as far as we know, only by human beings:

“through science man is the being which is in relation with that with which we no longer have materially any relation. I am ready to believe that ants have a relation to the accretion of the Earth, but there again to suppose that (legitimately) means to suppose the existence of an in-itself for the moment inaccessible to us, in their case as well…This is circular” (Kacem, p137).

This putative knowledge, by ants, of the accretion of the Earth does not resolve the contradiction in the OOO-ers account of our relation to the in-itself, but only increases the problem by adding a new in-itself: the ants’ knowledge, that would have to be made known to us by scientific progress:

“without deciding in advance, once again, what original cognitive processes they may comport, that are unknown to us: there again, there is really an in-itself which is manifestly inaccessible to us” (Kacem, p136-7).