There is an odd temporality to academic work. If you are lucky, if someone finds anything you say interesting, or relevant, people will ask you to talk more about it. The problem with this is that the "it" they want to hear more about is often a book or an article that you wrote a long time ago, possibly years, and since then you (hopefully) have moved onto something else. Some years ago I published a book on transindividuality, a book that was the product of years of reflection, reading, and procrastination. The book marked my interest in (and hopefully contribution to) the interest in the concept of transindividuality. This year, years after it came out, I was asked to talk about the concept at an amazing conference (see the flyer above). As the conference neared I found myself wondering what I was going to talk about, I wrote and quickly deleted multiple drafts, considered multiple angles to the problem, but also found myself wondering if I had already said all that I had on the topic.
Part of my struggle has to do with the fact that transindividuality as a concept, or orientation, is in some sense a transformation of thought, one that dispenses with some problems, that of the individual versus society, and introduces new ones, but thinking with, through, or after a concept, is not the same as always naming it, or thinking about it. I would like to think that what I have written since that book has continued to work in a transindividual manner, even if the concept is not named. I think it is mentioned twice in The Double Shift, yet I would consider the whole book, the way that it deals with work, ideology, and politics to be in a transindividual manner.
I did manage to put something together, but it was, in some sense, very undercooked. In part because I was going in lots of different directions, part of it was on the connection between Bourdieu, some on Generally, I am one to post conference papers here on my blog, but in this case I am going to only post a portion of the text, the part that at least sort of works (although that it fits so well on a blog is further proof that it still needed some work).
First, it seems to me that some of the merit of the concept of transindividuality is that it draws the question of social relations, of politics, away from individuals and their interests or desires, and collectives, nations, races, classes, and their conflicts, towards the practices and relations which shape both. It takes what is taken as given, individuals or collective belonging, and moves towards the site of its production. This move reflects a basic problem. Every institution endeavors to produce individuals of that institution, individuals that embody its goals, norms, and structures, but this endeavor runs up against all sorts of resistances, and differences. Some of these are just given, to think in terms of transindividuality is to think in terms of relations, a relational ontology as Balibar would put it, and relations always exceed what is dictated by this or that institution. The tendency for institutions and collectives to produce the individuals of those institutions comes up against resistances.
One way to overcome at least some of these resistances is to align political power with the spontaneous ideology of the masses, namely superstition. It is, as Spinoza argues, the most powerful ruler of multitude, but it is inherently unruly. It is rooted in the fundamental finitude of human beings, the inability to control their fortune and thus to be subject to hope and fear. “So men’s readiness to fall victim to any kind of superstition makes it correspondingly difficult to persuade them to adhere to one and the same kind.” One response to this, is to control superstition since the affects and conditions that give rise to it are themselves uncontrollable. As Spinoza writes,
"To counteract this unfortunate tendency, immense efforts have been made to invest religion, true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it can sustain any shock and constantly evoke the deepest reverence in all of its worshippers. In this the Turks have achieved the greatest measure of success. They hold even discussion of religion to be sinful and with their mass of dogma they gain such thorough hold on the individual’s judgement that they leave no room in the mind for the exercise of reason or even the capacity to doubt."
I should mention that on this point I am making sense of Spinoza from Spinoza, I am not concerned with the truth of the Ottoman Empire, or what Spinoza knows of it, but reading this figure for how it functions in Spinoza's argument. The Turks function as a kind of limit case. It is what Spinoza is arguing against politically, arguing for the “freedom of philosophizing.” It is also to some extent an impossibility. As Spinoza will later argue such tyranny presupposes the impossible transfer of right, which as coextensive with power, cannot be separated from the body. Spinoza draws particular attention to the irreducible right to think.
"If minds could be as easily controlled as tongues, every government would be secure in its rule, and need not resort to force; for every man would conduct himself as his rulers wished, and his views as to what is true or false, good or bad, fair or unfair, would be governed by their decision alone. But as we have already explained at the beginning of chapter 17 that it is impossible for the mind to be completely under another's control; for no one is able to able to transfer to another his natural right or faculty to reason freely and to form his own judgements on any matters whatsoever, no can he be compelled to do so."
Turning briefly to the Ethics reminds us that this right or freedom equally needs to be thought of as determination. When confronted with the same image of hoofprints in the mud, the soldier and farmer come to different conclusions, not because of a free decision of a mind, but because the way that they have been affected, by their histories of war and farming. As a determination it is a singular one, framed by different histories. What makes the project of the Turks, that of a total control of superstition impossible is not so much the freedom of the mind, but the different determinations of the mind, the different ways it has been affected and determined by histories, habits, and The Turks then can only be a limit case, a project doomed to fail and all the more dangerous precisely because it is doomed to fail.
The singularity of different interpretations and irreducibility of different associations and connections is not the same as a celebration of the supposed freedom of the mind and dignity of the individual. In part because, as I have already noted, this singularity is as much an effect as a cause, it is a product of the associations and history that lead one to associate hoof prints with war and another with plowing. The defining characteristics of this determination are the connection of images, the intensity of the repetition, and the scope of the collective. People will make the same associations if they have been affected by the same image, or the same connection of images, in the same way. Farmers and soldiers each have their own associations of with the hoof print in the mud, but the association of the word “pomum” with the fruit apple encompass a larger collective not defined by job or task, but all of those speakers of Latin in the Roman empire. The associations and connections and shape our perceptions are sometimes unique to us, the associations that define our particular and idiosyncratic imagination, sometimes they traverse a common experience, farmer and soldier as two different vocations with their shared actions and practices, as well as collectives defined by a shared language. Moreover, Spinoza makes a distinction between those things that are retained more strongly because of their repetition and frequency and those that are more fleeting and more uncertain because of their inconsistency and infrequency. The different ways that humans have been affected define not only the singular memory of an individual, but also a memory that defines a shared sense of associations and meanings. How forcefully something is retained is not determined by whether it pertains to the individual or the collective, but the repetition and intenstity of its impression. This is why, in Spinoza’s famous example of the Spanish poet who has forgotten his poems but not his language, we see the way in which the collective traces of a memory outlast the singular creations of an individual. As Jacques Louis Lantoine writes, “The social cultural environment can affect us more durability than the poetic personal creations.” These two elements, the personal and the collective define part of the specific temperament, or ingenium of an individual.
This temperament is not just a passive effect, produced by other encounters and relations in various degrees of generality, from the most unique to the general. It also includes its own causality, its own determination, a determination to increase its own particular power. This striving, or conatus, is both an action and a way of thinking. As Spinoza writes, “The mind as far as It can, strives to imagine those things that increase aid the bodies power of acting (EIIIP12). Striving, conatus, defines not just the body but the mind, the imagination. It is possible to think of these three determinations, the singular events from the outside that define a particular history, the collective, the shared associations that define a general belonging, and the activity, the striving of a thing, as defining its particular ingenium. Ingenium has to be understood as precisely the way in which a particular determination, a way of being affected, becomes a particular striving.
It is at this point that we can return to the question of politics. It is the singularity of the ingenium, both in terms of its specific passivity, and its particular striving, that functions as a limit to the Turkish situation and all such projects of control. As Spinoza writes,
"If minds could be as easily controlled as tongues, every government would be secure in its rule and need not to resort to force; for every man would conduct himself as his rulers wished, and his views as to what is true or false, good or bad, fair or unfair, would be governed by their decision alone.”
Spinoza combines the irreducibly of right, “which no man can surrender even if he so wish,” an irreducibility that stems from the particular nature of power, with the recognition that the this singular right, is as Pierre Macherey argues, is always already determined by the fact that such a right exists in a particular body and mind, which cannot but be acted on by bodies and minds surrounding it. As Macherey writes,” The identity that ingenium claims in the name of the natural right granted to everyone to judge things from their own point of view is constitutionally impure, subject to all sorts of distortions and appropriations.” Thus, we could say at the level of politics everyone is conscious of their right to interpret, but ignorant of the causes that have shaped that interpretation.
It is at this point that we can approach the other singular case that Spinoza draws from in the TTP, that of the ancient Hebrew State. As Spinoza writes, the practices of the ancient Hebrew state were one long practice of obedience.
"A man might not plough when he pleased, but only at fixed times and seasons, and then with only one kind of animal at a time; likewise he might sow and reap only in a certain way and at a certain time. To sum up, their life was one long schooling in obedience…Therefore to men so habituated to it obedience must have appeared no longer as bondage, but freedom.”
Once again I am not posting this as a statement of what things were like at the time of Moses, but the way that this historical figure produces a different concept of how power and control work. At first glance this would seem to be similar to the Turks, only what was first presented as a project doomed to failure is now presented as a success. However, this overlooks an important difference. The Turks as Spinoza represented them focused on religious devotion itself, directly dictating what should be believed and thought. Such authority comes up against the irreducible singularity of temperaments and habits. In contrast to this the Ancient Hebrew state does not act directly on the symbols and practices of religion, not initially, but on the disparate practices of daily life, from farming to the comportment of clothes and hair. It is by acting on these practices, shaping behavior and character, that it is possible to produce obedience. It is for this reason that Macherey sees in Spinoza a precursor to Foucault’s famous line, “the soul is the prison of the body.” The conditions of belief, of political authority, are to be found upstream from politics in the social relations that produce and reproduce particular characters, particular ingenium. This is the difference between the two cases, the two particular historical formations that function as limit cases for Spinoza: the first, that of the Turks tries to control the right to interpret, to think, and to act, dictating what can and cannot be believed, while the second, that of the Ancient Hebrews does not dictate belief, but shapes the ingenium, the character of individuals, and how they make sense of things. Bondage can only appear as freedom if it takes control of the habits that determine striving.
Morning in Milan
This strategy of moving upstream, into the habits and practices, can be understood as a solution to what Pierre Macherey refers to as the double bind of the ingenium. The ingenium, the singular constitution of a particular set of associations and relations, is something that the community, the state, can neither repress nor openly tolerate it. On the one hand, any attempt to repress it, to control the minds and opinions of individuals, will stimulate indignation and eventually lead to revolt. On the other hand, to allow for the freedom to interpret and act, is to undermine the very existence of the state as a common way of life. Thus the irreducible ingenium of the people, of the different people, cannot be ignored or affirmed. The only solution to this double bind is to displace it, by indirectly acting on the conditions of interpretation, acting on the habits and practices that shape and determine interpretations. Thus, to use Spinoza’s example, it would be folly to tell a group of soldiers that they should think only of plowing and planting when they see hoof prints in the mud, but, to put it crudely, if everyone spent some time on farms, sharing the burden of the harvest, then such an association would be seemingly spontaneously produced. What cannot be produced by forced, can easily become habit. It is necessary to program the spiritual automatons. Macherey goes as far as to suggest that we think of this double bind as being reflected in a division of the very ingenium, or character, of the individual. A division between the right it claims for itself, a right to interpret and think as it sees fit, and the practices that have shaped or determined how it interprets or makes sense of the world. We are aware of ourselves as free to make up our own minds, but ignorant of the way in which practices have shaped our interpretations. This leads to a kind of split in subject. As Macherey writes,
"Under these conditions, people themselves become hybrid beings that present two distinct faces: on the one hand, that of the “subject” as it is in itself and for itself naturally let us call it the subjectus modal entity, as such virtual, determined and limited by its quantum in se est (certo ac determinato modo), supposedly located within (in) and below (sub) which manifests itself by pushing from the rear “by the sole laws of its nature” and triggers by manifesting itself an identificatory process; and, on the other hand, that of this other “subject” of a completely different type who coexists with others within the framework of the City of which he has become a citizen, namely the subditus who, whatever he may think otherwise, conforms to the laws of the City, even when what these prescribe seems to him to go against his personal aspirations: “It is not the motive for obedience, but the fact of obedience that constitutes a subject”
There is what we our conscious of, our loves and hate, our strivings and passions, in some sense these ideas are not only what we are conscious of, but they define consciousness itself; there is also what we do not grasp, the history of the affects and conditions that determine and shape our loves and hates. These two different ways of seeing ingenium, as chosen and as determined, relate to the two different perspectives on obedience that Spinoza outlines in Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen of the Theological-Political Treatise. In the first, “the reason for action must enter in account,” in other words, the things we do out of obedience for the law may be things that we do in our own interest, for our own self-preservation. While in the second, in Chapter Seventeen, “It is not the motive for obedience, but the fact of obedience that constitutes a subject. Whatever be the motives that prompt a man to carry out the commands of the sovereign power, whether it be fear of punishment, hope of reward, love of country or any other emotion, while it is he who makes the decision, he is nevertheless acting under the control of the sovereign power.” If the first description of obedience leaves room for a rational choice that both justifies and exceeds obedience, the second works in the opposite direction, arguing that there is obedience even in those actions which we appear to freely choose. At this point we can see the maximum difference between Hobbes and Spinoza, at least at the level of their respective political anthropologies: whereas Hobbes insisted that we find freedom even in those things done out of fear, Spinoza argues that we must look for obedience even in those things done even according to one’s desires. This second sense of obedience is not so much obedience to a ruler, is not predicated on a vertical rule, but is a product of the immanent relations of determination, imitation, and affection that define finite life. The apparent contradiction between these two concepts is resolved by returning to the fundamental axiom of Spinoza’s anthropology. As Spinoza writes, "So experience itself, no less clearly than reason, teaches that men believe themselves to be free because they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined, that the decision of the mind are nothing but the appetites vary as the disposition of the body varies." We see ourselves as kingdom within a kingdom even as we but a part of a kingdom, and this illusion, this inadequate idea is a necessary condition of our subjection.
What Spinoza posits as a general condition, conscious of desires and ignorance of causes, becomes a way of thinking the intersection of political subjectification and subjection. The consciousness of desires is the constitution of the subject, the one that is not only aware of what they think, their opinions, interests, and drives, but believes like the fly in the coach, that it is the cause of these ideas, while the second is in some sense the “hidden abode” of this subjectification, it is the forgotten determinations, that habits and relations, that produce and sustain these opinions and desires. Following Pierre Bourdieu it is possible to frame this as a kind of “twofold vision.” There is how the subject sees itself, as necessarily self-caused, as being the source of its various valuations of practices, activities, and goals, and there is how it can be understood as an effect, as produced by histories, practices, and relations that exceed it. These two different sides of the subject can be considered as inadequate and adequate ideas in Spinoza’s terms, but, and this is why the Bourdieu reference is necessary, what is inadequate is necessary not only in its causal conditions (inadequate ideas are just as necessary as adequate ideas), but also in its effects. This necessity is a political one, not a physical one. It is necessary for individuals to see themselves as free, to believe that they are the sources of their opinions and ideas, especially when those ideas are the ideas that sustain obedience.
These two sides of subjectivity, that which is conscious of its desires and that which is unconscious of its determinations, are in some sense the anthropological ground for politics, but that does not mean that they are always articulated in the same way. Different regimes, different institutions of politics, either emphasize the consciousness of individual desires, the spontaneous ideology of independence, or the causes and determinations that shape it, imaginary agreement or the real conditions of dependence and relation.
Following this reading I wonder if we can think of the difference that Spinoza makes with respect to these two figures, that of the Turks and Ancient Hebrews, as two different types of control, two different articulations of power. The one, the Turks, acts directly on beliefs, restricting the right, which is to say, the power, to interpret and think, and that is what makes it intolerable, while the second, that of the Ancient Hebrews, acts on the conditions of interpretation, and that is what makes it invisible, and tolerable. In my presentation I was very rushed to connect this to the critique of political economy, I am going to substitute that section with a few links here. It seems to me that the what these two figures make it possible to think about is why the rule of capital is so readily tolerated, even as wages decline and prices rise, and the dictates of politicians are seen as so intolerable that we are constantly inventing new things to be angry at (litterboxes in classrooms, furries flying planes, and so on). In other words, it answers the question why we fight for exploitation as if it were liberation.
Here is a picture of all of the lovely people that were in Milan
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