2021, issue 2
70 Years Minima Moralia
2021, issue 2
70 Years
Minima Moralia
Articles
Index
Editorial
Rising Sea Levels and the Right
Wave: An Analysis of the Climate
Change Com mu nication that Enables
‘the Fascist Creep’
Harriet Bergman
The Enthusiasm of Political
Sequences: Notes on Sylvain
Lazarus’s Anthropology of the Name
Bryan Doniger
Sanctuary Politics and the Borders of
the Demos: A Comparison of Human
and Nonhuman Animal Sanctuaries
Eva Meijer
Introduction
Thijs Lijster
From Downton Abbey to Minneapolis:
Aesthetic Form and Black Lives Matter
Tom Huhn
Truthful Hope
Ruth Sonderegger
The Idea of Tolerance and The
Perspective of The Individual
Arthur Cools
The Possibility of a “Felt Contact with
Objects”
Sudeep Dasgupta
The Fragile Strength of a Dissolving
Subjectivity
José A. Zamora
Unity in Suffering
Nicholaes Baer
Politics of Solitude
Johan Hartle
1
2-18
19-34
35-48
Editorial
49-50
51-52
53-54
55-56
57-59
60-62
63-64
65-66
70 Years Minima Moralia
2021, issue 2
Intellectual Bad Conscience and
Solidarity with the Underdogs
Titus Stahl
To Be Recognized by the Dog
Vladimir Safatle
New Labor
Martin Shuster
Dwarf Fruit, or: The Impertinent Self
Josef Früchtl
Fanon Pulls Out a Knife and Cuts
Adorno’s Throat
Willem Schinkel & Rogier van Reekum
After All, It Is Only an Animal...
Guilel Treiber
Bad Innity, and Beyond
Thijs Lijster
Transparency and its Schematism
Sjoerd van Tuinen
Normality Proper to the Time is
Sickness
Fabian Freyenhagen
This Side of the Pleasure Principle
Peter E. Gordon
Thought’s Last Chances: On Being
Bound and Free
Cecilia Sjöholm
Malignant Normality and the
Dilemma of Resistance: Honoring
Minima Moralia
Shierry Weber Nicholsen
The Wound and the Flower
Surti Singh
Mammoth, or: The Dialectic of Human
Afterlife
Stefan Niklas
The Eyes of the Ape
Matthew Noble-Olson
70-71
72-73
74-75
76-78
79-80
81-82
83-86
87-88
89-90
91-92
93-94
95-97
98-101
102-103
67-69
2021, issue 2
Either Or
Oshrat C. Silberbusch
Knock Knock
Henry W. Pickford
Conciliation ‘Out of Sheer Egoism’
Ronaldo Vitali
Adorno on the Dialectics of Love
and Sex
Stefano Marino
For Felicitas
Jelle P. Baan
Rattled
Samir Gandesha
Almost
Vivian Liska
J’accuse
Antonia Hofstätter
Democracy Beyond the Human
Jamie van der Klaauw
The Dark Underbelly of Capitalism:
Exploring the Capitalism-War
Connection
Marius Nijenhuis
Enough with the Caricatures: Now is
the Time for Solidarity
Janneke Toonders
Rejecting Animal Exploitation: A Case
for Interspecies Solidarity
Yvette Wijnandts
112-115
116-119
120-122
123-124
125-126
Book
Reviews
127-137
138-142
143-147
148-151
104-105
106-108
109-111
Cover drawing by Youngjin Park
Graphic design by Yuri Sato
12021, issue 2
Editorial
This issue of Krisis brings together a dossier of short essays as well as a number of stand-
alone contributions to mark the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of Theodor
Adorno’s Minima Moralia. The latter’s reections on a damaged life, however, could be
regarded as a model for all the materials collected in this issue; to paraphrase Adorno, it
could be said that any contribution to Krisis aims to magnify certain splinters in the eye
so as to catalyze social critique.
Adorno’s aphorisms also remind us that the academic article is anything but
the sole vehicle for philosophical reection. As with our 2018 issue on “Marx from
the Margins”, our dossier on Minima Moralia consists of several dozen short essays that
follow a looser, or even aphoristic, form. Together they form a constellation which, we
hope, also underlines the need for more experimental modes of writing and publishing,
within and beyond the form of the peer-reviewed article.
Harriet Bergman’s article “Rising Sea Levels and the Right Wave” examines
how the climate catastrophe might invoke further damage if we do not account for the
“fascist creep” that lingers behind activist tropes which do not take into account the
dierent responsibilities for, and implications of, climate breakdown. Bryan Doniger’s
“The Enthusiasm of Political Sequences” opens up pathways towards challenging the
damaged life by proposing Sylvain Lazarus’ notion of enthusiasm as the disposition to
accompany transformational politics. Finally, in the article “Sanctuary Politics and the
Borders of the Demos”, Eva Meijer explicates the changing meaning of the sanctuary,
for human and nonhuman animals, to shed light on underlying patterns of political
inclusion and exclusion.
Lastly, four book reviews reect on recent contributions to critical political
and social theory. In his review-essay, Jamie van der Klaauw discusses the recent works
of Willem Schinkel and Rogier van Reekum; in his review of Maurizio Lazzarato’s
Capital Hates Everyone (2021), Marius Nijenhuis situates this new work within
Lazzarato’s oeuvre; Janneke Toonders reviews Ashley J. Bohrer’s Marxism and Intersec-
tionality (2020); and Yvette Wijnandts engages with Katerina Kolozova’s Capitalism’s
Holocaust of Animals (2020).
2021, issue 2
Rising Sea Levels and the Right Wave:
An Analysis of the Climate Change Communication
that Enables “the Fascist Creep.”
Harriet Bergman
Abstract
Climate change communication can create space for a “fascist creep” by playing into fear
and not communicating the dierent responsibilities for, and impacts of, climate break-
down. This paper gives a brief overview of past and current of eco-fascists and points
towards tropes and ways of communicating that might give space for a fascist creep.
These include the Anthropocene concept, the Extinction symbol, and calls for purity.
Keywords Licence
10.21827/krisis.41.2.37164
Krisis 41 (2): 2-18.
Anthropocene, Climate Breakdown, Eco-Fascism,
Privilege, Fear, Climate Change This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
DOI
22021, issue 2
Rising Sea Levels and the Right Wave:
An Analysis of the Climate Change Communication
that Enables “the Fascist Creep.”
Harriet Bergman
Introduction
The sea levels are rising, and so is the far right. In 2019, two terrorists, worried that
environmental and racial degradation would threaten their way of life, planned and
executed terrorist attacks in El Paso and Christchurch. They claimed to be eco-fascists.
Eco-fascism refers to the ideology and style of politics that advocates ethnic nationalism
as a response to environmental breakdown. The terrorists’ concern about climate break-
down is well-founded: for many years, people have known about the consequences of
climate change (Wallace-Wells 2019, 2; Oreskes and Conway 2010, chap. 1). Scientists
warn that global warming will not stay below two degrees Celsius (Gasser et al. 2015,
2), and there is broad agreement that humankind’s collective actions do not reect
this understanding (United Nations Environment Programme 2019). Especially among
people and within countries with the most historical responsibility for CO2 emis-
sions, responses fall short (Tokar 2014, 16; Parks and Timmons Roberts 2009, 387;
Williams 2021, 4). Meanwhile, the climate crisis is represented as a burden to be borne
by everyone equally, one with a unique ability to inspire cooperation (Zetkin 2021,
xvii; Swyngedouw 2013, 13). In reality, however, climate change will exacerbate existing
inequalities, as it is marginalised and poor people who suer rst and most. Fossil-fuelled
modernity constitutes a racialised and unequal class system, and the history of climate
change and capitalism are tightly connected in ways that benet a select group of white
men (Yuso 2018, 39; Szeman and Diamanti 2020, 138; Sealey-Huggins 2017, 101).
Mainstream Western climate change communication often leaves these topics
– with their links to colonialism, imperialism, and privilege – out of the conversa-
tion. Moreover, insights from privilege theory are relatively rarely applied for analysing
responses to climate change and environmental breakdown (Pellow and Park 2017,
143; Williams 2021, 98). According to privilege theories, people are privileged in so far
as they measure up to the “mythical norm” that assumes that the standard person is a
white, heterosexual, cis-gender, able-bodied, middle-class male (Lorde 2017, 96). In this
paper, privilege refers to the idea that some aspects of one’s identity make life easier,
and that the experiences of others who lack these advantages are dicult for those
with privilege to recognise. Although there have been discussions within the climate
movement about how privilege inuences the choice of tactics for activism – most
notably from the Wretched of the Earth Collective critiquing Extinction Rebellion
(2019) – the role of privilege in shielding oneself from dierent perspectives remains
under-researched in relation to climate breakdown.
This paper aims to redirect academic attention to the revival of eco-fascism
by analysing how unacknowledged privilege and its eect on climate change com-
munication make it vulnerable to fascist co-optation. For the purposes of this paper, I
describe instances of eco-fascism and point to some strains of thought or invocations
of emotion that can facilitate the “fascist creep.” This refers to the space the left creates
32021, issue 2
for fascism to “creep” into both radical political groups and subcultures as well as into
mainstream discourse. The right wave, the metaphor chosen for the special issue on the
New Right, emphasizes “aspects of the new rights’ eective organizational and com-
municative practices” (2021, 2). A fascist wave is an accumulation of many tiny droplets
which together form a movement capable of travelling in an unintended direction.
Some of these droplets consist of appeals to victimhood and innocence; some droplets
are declarations of emergency and threat. I argue that ethnic nationalists prot from
appropriating fearful narratives about crisis and victimhood due to climate breakdown.
This appropriation is likely to be expedited if climate communication obfuscates the
unequal responsibilities for, and impact of, climate breakdown.
The Fascism in Eco-Fascism: the “Fascist Creep”
Eco-fascism is an understudied subject within both fascism studies and environmental
studies. For example, in the global survey The Far Right Today,the only allusion to the
inuence climate breakdown and ecology could have on fascism is the mention of
“eco-terrorism” (Mudde 2019, 132). Nor is it mentioned in The Oxford Handbook of the
Radical Right(Rydgren 2018). Similarly, in The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and
Society, mention of fascism is limited to three sentences on “enviro-fascism” as one of
the possible political responses to climate change (Gilman et al. 2011, 9). The recently
published book by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel – on
the danger of fossil Fascism, aimed to bridge this research gap (2021). This paper delves
into the ways in which climate activists might strengthen an eco-fascist wave.
Most scholars agree that fascism is a form of ultranationalist ideology and prac-
tice (Passmore 2002, 25). Ultranationalism is the strain of nationalism that promotes the
interests of one people or state above those of everyone else. There seems to be a con-
sensus that fascism employs specic techniques to inspire ultranationalism, namely the
retreat to a past and appeals to threats of victimhood (Stanley 2019, chap. 6; Passmore
2002, 25). With fascism, I refer to both a political style and its aims: invoking fear,
wishing for purity, harking back to a mythical past where all was good, a call for strong
leadership to protect the innocent, and the promise of a better future. Eco-fascism, like
fascism, is both contradictory and overdetermined. It would be beyond the scope of
this article to give an exhaustive overview of its history and present state. However,
ignoring eco-fascism in times of environmental collapse is a mistake. One way in which
fascism can grow is by “seizing the popular narrative and public discourse” (Ross 2017,
259). Alexander Reid Ross argues that material conditions motivate both sides of the
political spectrum; individuals who suer material disenfranchisement can turn either
to the left or the right for answers (2017, 258). Fascism can grow through absorbing
and encouraging existing sentiments within society. However, just as material disen-
franchisement can politicise someone, so can environmental degradation and extreme
weather events.
Ross would argue that being alarmist about the climate, without analysing why
and how it is breaking down, may result in some of those who became radicalised or
politically active on the left of the political spectrum moving towards the extreme right
(2017, 2). Following Ross, I call the little entry points that allow fascists to inltrate or
42021, issue 2
co-opt a discourse, the “fascist creep.” The fascist creep encompasses both the porous
borders between the radical right and fascism and the “crossover space between right
and left” (2017, 3). Ross analyses how fascism has used the space created by the left
to creep into both mainstream and radical subcultures (2). The connection between
ecology, nature, climate, and right-wing politics is not inherent, nor is it inevitable
(Staudenmaier 2011, 25). However, neither are ecological issues by denition the terrain
of social progressives. Contemplating fascism, Michael Zimmerman asks whether,
“under mounting and political stress”, ecology movements in advanced societies will
be able to “avoid the risk of aligning themselves with these dark forces” (1995, 211).
“Enviro-fascism” is a possible response to climate change that hard-right environmen-
talist parties might engage in, with the aim of protecting one’s own ethnic group by
restricting immigration and hoarding resources (Gilmann et al. 2012, 9). Claudia Card
argues that ecological holism and ideas that emphasise the interconnectedness between
humans and nature can and often are combined with “blood and soil” fascism, as well as
sentiments like racism, xenophobia, and hatred for refugees (1996, 203).
With these denitions of fascism in mind, a movement or an individual can
be called eco-fascist if they consider environmental destruction, or climate change, as a
threat to “the racial integrity of the people” and demand a reorganisation of society in
“terms of [an] authoritarian, collectivist leadership principle based on masculinist-martial
values” (Zimmerman 1995, 209). Eco-fascistic describes those ways of commu nicating
and invoking tropes that many scholars call fascistic: invoking fear and the need for pro-
tection, appealing to a united innocent “us” that needs protection from “them”. Eco-
fascism is the ideology that, instead of seeking a global approach to mitigate climate
breakdown, aims to install a racially pure nation, protected from alien inuences.
I Did Nazi that Coming: Eco-Fascism Past and Present
Around the turn of the last century, the German Boy Scout group die Wandervögel
organised hikes into the woods, retreating into the wild to defy German bourgeois
norms and enjoy the unadulterated purity of nature. Whilst they considered themselves
apolitical, they realigned their practices and ideas some decades later when members
of the group joined the Nazis (Staudenmaier 1996, 10). If, like the Weimar youth,
people “were to think of their commitments only as matters of personal improvement
and ignore the political contexts,” they could be more easily exploited and co-opted
(Card 1996, 203). The German biologist Walther Schoenichen was one of those who
exploited a love of nature for fascistic ends. After a successful career in nature conserva-
tion, and many publications on the necessity of protecting German forests, he revealed
his conservationism to be rmly aligned with his Nazism. The protection of nature and
National socialism were tightly connected for Schoenichen because the Volksgemeinschaft
to which Hitler aspired had its foundation in “blood and soil” (Zimmerman 1995, 216).
“Blood and soil” refer to two things that must be pure: the blood of the gemeinschaft, and
the soil that sustains it. The slogan “Blut und Boden” means that those born on the land
must preserve it – especially against those who do not belong there.Schoenichen saw
a link between being in nature and feeling part of a community. His work teaches that
nature provides a place to contemplate a volkischessence and forms the grounds for a
52021, issue 2
powerful connection with Heimat (Zimmerman, 220). Within Germany, there has thus
been a history of nature-lovers who, either by ignoring political context or by seeing
their love for nature in part as a love of purity, became fascistic.
Around the same time, on another continent, American conservationist Madison
Grant founded the Bronx Zoo and several national parks and was lauded for his ded-
ication to endangered ora and fauna. He also wroteThe Passing of the Great Race, a
book that Adolf Hitler considered “his bible” (Spiro 2009, xi). Grant dedicated his life to
saving nature, to preserving endangered ora and fauna. This dedication to endangered
species also extended to his own white race (Spiro, xii). For him, eugenics and conser-
vation were two sides of the same coin, both preserving as much of the old America as
possible (Spiro 2009, xii). Skipping forward to the 1980s, Karlo Pentii Linkola expressed
admiration for the Nazis while he spoke to the Green Party in Finland about the need
to get organised. The Finnish Forest conservationists argued that the solution to envi-
ronmental degradation lies in stopping overpopulation (Tammilehto 2004). He argued
that a Green Party member - if concerned about the environment - should:
learn to harden his own heart when necessary. He will have to learn to ignore
minor interests for the sake of bigger interests. He will have to learn to be
feared and hated. (Linkola quoted by Tammilehto 2004).
Linkola is a proponent of “life-boat ethics,” an ethics that prefers to save a few lives
rather than trying to get everyone on board because there are only limited resources. In
the same decade as Linkola’s speech, the wilderness movement Earth First! adopted deep
ecology and was accused of propagating eco-fascism (Reid Ross 2017, 124). According
to deep ecology, postponing dicult political decisions now means that more drastic
interventions will be required later in order to save humankind and the biosphere
(Zimmerman 1995, 209). This should not be controversial in itself: the more CO2 is
emitted, the more likely it becomes that we will pass a point of no return. However, deep
ecologists’ focus on population control makes them susceptible to fascist appropriation
(Zimmerman 1995, 215; Schrader-Frechette 2002, 5). Although it is possible to inter-
pret deep ecology progressively, many accuse the philosophy of “indulging in the same
kind of anti-humanistic and anti-individualist nature mysticism that paved the way for
Nazi victory in a period of social, political, and ‘ecological emergency’” (Zimmerman
1995, 226). Deep ecologist and Earth First! founder David Foreman claimed to see
famine as a welcome means of depopulation. Similarly, Christopher Manes, a deep
ecologist under the pseudonym Miss Ann Trophy, lauded the AIDS crisis (Zakin 2002,
312). This view can be summarised as welcoming the AIDS crisis as an opportunity to
let nature seek its balance, thereby preventing further ecological destruction (Bookchin
1991, 148-149). It is beyond the scope of this paper to argue whether Earth First! was
fascistic or not, but deep ecologists used language that did little to prevent accusations
of misanthropy and fascism.
Some eco-fascists actively claim the label. For example, on popular online dis-
cussion forum Reddit, a user wrote:
62021, issue 2
What really pisses me o is how everyone associates deep ecology with
Communism and far-left ideologies, which are deeply rooted in industrialisa-
tion. It was Nazi Germany that was environmentally aware not Soviet Russia,
with the rabid industrialisation. (Reddit thread quoted by Manavis 2018).
Outside of Reddit, on other social media, eco-fascists often use tree, mountain, and
earth emojis in their name and a symbol associated with neo-Nazism, the “life” rune,
which Heinrich Himmler used to signal Lebensraum (Manavis 2018). A self-identied
eco-fascist claimed in a recent interview that the use of the word Lebensraum did not
mean conquest for him. Instead, it meant maintaining and caring for the land passed on
by our forefathers (Manavis 2018). Caring and maintaining the land implies a defence
against those elements and people that supposedly threaten to make it less pure or drain
its limited resources. Similar sentiments about overpopulation and the faulty trope of
“the tragedy of the commons” are still echoed in the current environmental movement.
Sentiments concerning racial purity and the destruction of nature continue to
ourish today. They were used to justify two recent terrorist attacks. In El Paso, Texas,
on August 3 2019, a shooter killed twenty people and injured even more. In New
Zealand, on March 15 2019, a white supremacist terrorist shot 51 people at a mosque.
He explained his terrorist attack as a wish for “ethnic autonomy for all peoples with
a focus on the preservation of nature and the natural order” (Tarrant 2019). These
white-nationalist terrorists self-identied as “eco-fascist” and used environmental
arguments to bolster their white nationalism (Achenbach 2019). They expressed their
worries about, amongst other things, the feminisation of society, illegal immigrants, and
climate breakdown. The terrorist from the latter attack wrote:
There is no Conservatism without nature, there is no nationalism without
environmentalism, the natural environment of our lands shaped us just as we
shaped it. (Tarrant 2019).
Nationalism and environmentalism are intrinsically linked for Tarrant, building on the
environmental determinist idea that climate and environment are a determining factor
for peoples’ and nations’ development. Protecting and preserving the land is therefore
equal in importance to protecting and preserving his ideals and beliefs. His ideology
and his adoption of the label “eco-fascist” are inspired by a growing community of
self-proclaimed eco-fascists online who share memes with texts like “Save Trees, not
Refugees” and discuss how to prevent further ecological collapse.According to this
community, the rational response to climate breakdown is making sure the worthy can
continue their way of living:
the American lifestyle aords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However,
our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. So the next logical
step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. (Tarrant
2019).
This assumption, based on the idea that population growth is the true driver of climate
change, and that resources will always be misused, leads him to commit mass murder in
72021, issue 2
the name of preserving land. Rather than seeking ways to mitigate the eects of climate
breakdown, his ideas are xated on purity, committed to ‘business as usual’, and focused
on himself.
One could object that some of these examples relate to the environment
and nature rather than climate and that climate change poses dierent challenges to
nature preservation. However, I believe there is a connection between the nature pres-
ervation movement and the mainstream climate movement. Those concerned with
climate change are often also worried about nature, and vice versa (Lertzman 2015,
20). Furthermore, the naïveté that made the Wandervögel easier for the Nazi party to
co-opt applies to both nature- and climate-minded groups. Lastly, when climate change
causes more mass migration, concerns about a “right to the land” and racial purity are
likely to grow (Shah 2020, chap. 1). From the examples above, ranging from concerns
about purity to overpopulation, we can discern how a right wave might benet from
concerns about climate breakdown.
Riding the Wave: Movement Communication
Extinction Rebellion is one of the fastest-growing climate movements of today. Since
their launch in 2018 they have become active in 81 countries, with more than a thou-
sand local chapters (Extinction Rebellion 2021). It seems fair to conclude that they
appeal to a broad audience and are skilled in bringing new people onboard. Part of their
communication strategy is precisely this: appealing to as many people as possible (Glynn
and Farrell 2019, 124). Below, I will analyse their adopted logo, the Extinction Symbol
as a “oating signier.”
Finding a slogan or theme everybody can rally behind is the holy grail of social
movement communication, according to activist and writer Jonathan Schmucker (2017,
41). He uses the oating signier concept to explain the success of the term “we are the
99%.” The Occupy Wallstreet movement used a slogan that refers to no actual object
and has no agreed-upon meaning; as a result, almost everybody can align themselves
with it. Schmucker states that the perfect oating signier can make or break a social
movement or campaign (2017, 52). What makes a signier attractive is that it has no
single accepted meaning, so people can project onto it whatever meaning they wish.
This was also partly the goal of Extinction Rebellion when they chose the extinction
logo to represent their movement.
Climate justice activists make an analysis that stresses the need to take dierent
impacts and contributions to climate breakdown into account when discussing global
warming (Tokar 2014, 19). However, the broader climate movement does not nec-
essarily do so (Taylor 2016; Heglar 2019) and has been criticised for lacking BAME
representation (Climate Reframe 2021), even being described as a “white middle-class
ghetto” (Bawden 2015). A painful example of whitewashing the climate movement
was the cropping of Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate from a picture with Greta
Thunberg and other white climate activists (Woodyatt 2020). After a press conference
of ve climate activists at the World Economic Conference in Davos in 2020, Associated
Press sent out a picture from which Nakate, founder of the Rise Up Movement, had
been cropped. They later apologised and stated there was “no bad intention.” Nakate
82021, issue 2
did not consider the erasure as incidental and proclaimed that the people losing their
homes need to be able to bring their message across. (Nakate as quoted in Tinsley 2021,
2). In removing a young black woman from a picture of white female climate activists
and citing the other activists, but not the woman from Africa, the existence of black
voices within the climate youth movement was negated. This makes climate change
more of a “white” issue and does not remind an assumed white audience of the victims
of climate change with other skin colours. When campaigning to stop climate change,
the movement does not necessarily recognise the role of imperialism and colonialism in
creating climate change (Tinsley 2021, 11). The neglect of dierent forms of privilege,
and the overlooking of race, are common in the broader climate movement (Taylor
2014). There are however many exceptions to this. For example, climate activist groups
such as Shell Must Fall, Reclaim the Power, and Code Rood have made explicit con-
nections between colonialism, migration policies, and climate breakdown (Code Rood
2020, Reclaim the Power 2018). NGOs like Friends of the Earth, and organisers such
as Suzanne Dhaliwal from the No Tar Sands Campaign, have spoken out about the lack
of diversity and have criticized campaigns mainly targeting white people (Gayle 2019).
Extinction Rebellion has so far mobilised thousands of new people for the climate
cause. People from all ages and walks of life demonstrate, petition, lobby, blockade,
block, and glue themselves onto buildings under the banner of XR. Many within
these movements are committed to climate justice, which some recognise is required to
make the Paris Agreement work (Thunberg 2019, 9). Within the Extinction Rebellion
handbook many contributors also express this commitment (2019). Furthermore, the
group is learning and evolving, and many local groups have dierent opinions to those
expressed by the people I will refer to. However, since the reasoning behind Extinction
Rebellion’s communication is also used by other elements of the climate movement, it
is apt to take the XR logo as an object of analysis.
Extinction Rebellion’s analysis of “time running out” is similar to that of the
school strikers. Fridays4Future, the movement of high school students on strike to
protest politicians’ apathy concerning climate change, are clear in their analysis: their
future is being robbed from them. However, some people are not only robbed of their
future but also of their present (Thunberg 2019, 39). The need for intervention and the
profound loss people in the West will likely experience is clearly communicated. The
stories of climate change already happening, and analyses of the vastly diering power
structures that have enabled climate breakdown and ecological destruction both in the
past and present, could counter the possibility of fascistic co-optation of climate break-
down. However, movements do not always portray these dierent causes and impacts,
and sometimes even deliberately choose to stay away from politics. Below I will argue
that communicating about climate change in a neutral way both results from and results
in an unawareness of privilege.
The Extinction logo consists of an hourglass in a circle, representing time
running out for the earth. London artist ESP created this logo in 2011 as “an ecological
symbol of peaceful resistance” (Extinctionsymbol, 2020). Since the non-violent civil
disobedience platform for climate activism adopted this catalysing symbol in 2018,
many local XR chapters have used the logo. In a newspaper article, the observation was
92021, issue 2
made that “it is not often that a single symbol emerges to represent a global, decentral-
ised activist movement, but the ER symbol is now ubiquitous” (Brown 2019). Another
popular news article compares the Extinction symbol to the peace sign (Rose 2019).
The Extinction Rebellion logo communicates a message that is relatively open to
interpretation. It conveys that time is running out but does not suggest how to act on
that fact. In a talk about the XR logo, one of the founders of the art and design section
of the activist group stated that the design of the logo is undogmatic, not prescriptive,
but uid and open to interpretation (Farrell 2020). This echoes the sentiment portrayed
in the Extinction Rebellion handbook, that because “we are rebelling for a cause that
aects us all,” aggressive colours and connotations to any specic political agenda should
be prevented (Glynn and Farrell 2019, 125). Instead, the style of XR must be dynamic
rather than alienating or dividing (Glynn and Farrell, 126).
The idea that climate change aects us all is widespread. It is a trope of climate
breakdown communication: that we are all in this together and that, therefore, climate
breakdown has the unique ability to bring everyone together. The wish to be actively
inclusive is also widely shared. However, as in this case, it is often presented in a manner
that aims to be non-aggressive and politically neutral. By not recognising the dierences
between people, the idea of “colour-blindness” can actively exclude people who expe-
rience that neutral often means “white” (Mills 1997, 19; Delmas 2019, 204). Extinction
Rebellion has had many conversations about inclusivity, and many local branches are
actively committed to be welcoming to people from all walks of life and backgrounds.
However, their communication about their logo does not reect this. The inclusivity
that is actively discussed and reected in the logo is that the hourglass does its best not
to scare away dierent political opinions.
Whose Sea-Levels? Neutrality Is a Privilege
Reaching as many people as possible through the active inclusion of dierent
political backgrounds stems not only from the wish to reach a wider audience, but also
from being in a position that enables one to conceptualise inclusivity as “including
dierent political opinions.” It is a form of privilege to be able to frame inclusivity as
concerned with political opinions. The question to be asked is: Who is actively wel-
comed by this inclusivity? Are these the people Extinction Rebellion, or any climate
movement, should prioritise to build alliances with? What is the eect of this active
inclusivity? Active inclusivity is framed here as not discriminating between dierent
political ideologies, whereas it could also be the commitment to explicitly welcoming
dierent genders, skin colours, economic and educational backgrounds, and abilities.
Whether building a broad political alliance is a successful movement strategy is beyond
the scope of this paper. However, the eect of not explicitly putting race and other axes
of privilege on the agenda is that people can consider it irrelevant.
Privilege prevents people from recognising the unfair starting point from
which conversations begin (Delmas 2019, 204). Only when acceptance on the grounds
of gender, race, class, and able-bodiedness is guaranteed, can those who do not t the
white middle-class mould worry about the lack of inclusion of political conservatives.
Only when there are no more direct and apparent barriers to participation – like
102021, issue 2
having a meeting space accessible for those in wheelchairs, or being sure you will not
face harsh police brutality when you join a protest – can inclusivity based on political
opinion be prioritised. Privilege prevents people from seeing their privilege (Sullivan
2019, chap 1.; Delmas 2019, 204).
Acknowledging one’s privilege is a rst step towards understanding that your
specic position in society or on the planet might shield you from harsher experiences
(Sullivan 2019, chap 2.; MacMullan 2015 650). I consider privilege to be a morally
neutral term to describe the other side of oppression: when there is injustice, there
is also privilege. This is in line with the observation that any system of dierentiation
shapes not only those who benet from it, but also those who are oppressed by it
(Frankenberg 1994, 1). Your position within a system of dierentiation thus inuences
your viewpoint, and thus your point of view. Points of view, then, inuence what you
recognise as just and unjust – for you need to view something before you recognise
it. White privilege can be conceptualised as the advantages of being white, the easier
access to upward mobility and the easier movement throughout a white world (Sullivan
2019 chap 1.), but also as the thing that prevents you from recognising these and other
injustices or inequalities (Mills 1997, 18). Privilege in this paper is thus understood as
having real, material impacts on the world, as well as resulting from structural racism
and personal prejudices (Zack 2015, chap. 1). Ignorance about one’s privilege – be it
male, white, able-bodied, straight, or thin privilege – makes one less likely to understand
those who deviate from the “mythical norm” (Lorde 2017, 96).
Not coming across as too aggressive and promoting active inclusivity might be
part of a strategy to reach as many people as possible. “Not aggressive” turns into “not
starting uncomfortable discussions”, making it possible to conceptualise inclusivity as
reaching people from dierent political backgrounds. Many climate movements are in
an ongoing discussion about representation to the outside world, and what their key
messages should be. One could imagine calling the people partaking in actions “con-
cerned citizens,” “earth defenders,” or “grannies for climate” in order to circumvent
calling them “activists”, and therefore not to come across as too aggressive. However,
when one is not actively aware of the implications of one’s pursuit of inclusivity, the
result may be a sacricing of part of the content so as to reach more people.
One might question how “we are all in this together” could be divisive and
enabling of fascist creep, rather than inspiring cooperation and empathy. An analogy
can be made with the slogan #blacklivesmatter. The Black Lives Matter movement
introduced this hashtag to call attention to the fact that black people were much more
likely to face police violence than white people. The claim that their lives mattered was
a radical one in a society that did not always treat them that way. A response to this call
was to claim that “all lives matter”: police violence is wrong regardless of the victim’s
race. This take on the issue diminishes the suering of black people, for “the slogan
‘black lives matter’ is meant to underscore the qualitatively distinct experiences of
African-Americans with racist police violence in the US” (Pellow 2018, 44). While “All
lives matter” sounds more pluralistic, it erases the experiences and realities of people of
colour (Pellow 2018, 44.). The same goes for climate breakdown. The threat or event of
ecosystem collapse does not discriminate; neither does a police bullet. Whether it will
112021, issue 2
hit you, and to what eect, and whether there will be outrage about that fact, sadly, does
seem to be inuenced by skin colour, socio-economic background, and where on the
earth you were born.
The neutral standpoint is that of the dominant group – and a typical response
to being confronted with the subjectivity of that standpoint is anger (Stanley 2018,
chap. 6). It is privilege that makes it possible to ignore the unequal eect of climate
breakdown on dierent groups of people, and it is privilege that ignores the unequal
contribution those people make to climate breakdown. Not acknowledging that priv-
ilege makes it easier for people to rally behind the logo. However, just like the oating
signier of Occupy or the non-political stance of the Wandervögel, if potentially 99% of
the world can rally behind a slogan, it might also attract or emancipate people who have
very dierent ideas about social change than its initiators had. Sara Ahmed’s work on
diversity and complaint reects that sentiment. She argues that it is the uncomfortable,
too-aggressive, words that might not reach as many people but do more work. Diversity
is one of the terms she recognises as less threatening than other terms (2017, 101).
Broad support can be gained by using words that do less, analyse less, threaten less: “the
words that travel more are the words that do less (diversity), while the words that travel
less do more (racism)” (Ahmed 2017, 101).
There are many concepts within climate change communication that travel far
but do less work. The Occupy movement shows this can be dangerous: the movement’s
broad support not only consisted of anti-capitalists, hippies, and communists, but also of
people who believed the banking system to be run by lizard people or Jewish people.
Some of these people later turned to the far-right for answers (Lagalisse 2019, 76). “We
are the 99%” leaves it open to the imagination what the 1% might look like. Therefore,
it attracted more people – but at the same time also exposed those newly politicised
people open to messages that the original Occupiers did not intend. This is where the
“fascist creep” might happen (Reid Ross 2017, 5). A watered-down message might
keep people comfortable and attract more people to the movement but might not do
enough to push them forward. The climate movement thus should be careful with
oating signiers or unspecied slogans that attract and gather more people – especially
when their inviting message could be susceptible to co-option by eco-fascists.
Anthropo-Who: the “Equally Innocent” Trope
It is not only the wish to be neutral and nd the perfect oating signier that leaves the
climate movement vulnerable to fascist creep. Both the “equally innocent” and the “fear
of crisis” trope create space in climate discourse that, rstly, obscures the responsibility
for causing climate change, and secondly, hints towards fascistic solutions of decisionism
and circumventing democratic deliberation. Below, I will analyse the concept of the
Anthropocene and show how critiques of the diering responsibilities for our “new
geological epoch” also hold for other obfuscating narratives about climate breakdown.
The “equally innocent” trope is likely best exemplied by the term
“Anthropocene.” This is the proposed name for a new geological epoch – one that is
“dened by overwhelming human inuence upon the earth” (Grusin 2017, vii). The
term was coined in the 1980s by Eugene Stoermer and popularised around 2000 by
122021, issue 2
Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen. Both recognised signs that the planet was entering a new
geological period: humankind’s impact on the earth was visible and pointed to the end
of the Holocene. Anthropocene emphasised the magnitude of the problems that fossil
fuel combustion has created. Anthropos means “human” in ancient Greek: humanity
was now so powerful that it could change the course of planetary history. Although the
Anthropocene working group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is still
working to identify precisely when the period began, the term is already widely used
both within and outside of academia to discuss the seriousness of climate change.
However, the term Anthropocene is not uncontroversial for people who accept
climate science. Amongst other criticisms, it argued that the term obfuscates the respon-
sibility for, and thus possible solutions to, the crisis in which we nd ourselves (Haraway
2016, 37; Bonneuil and Fressoz 2017; 84), that it gives humankind a “compensatory
charge” of at least having made an impact (Dean 2016, 2), and that it is too determin-
istic to motivate a struggle for change (Malm 2014, 17).
Kathryn Yuso argued that the formulation of the Anthropocene entails a
turning away from race in A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, a history of the relation
between geology and subjectivity (2018, 3). If “Anthropos” means human it is essential
to consider what “human” means, and where the borders around who counts as a
person, and who does not, have been drawn, both in the past and in the present. Clear
in her analysis is that for a long time the term did not refer to black people. Geology
lets whiteness o the hook by failing to acknowledge the dispossessing practices of
subject-making (Yuso, xiii). What geologists nd to be traces of the Anthropocene
are also traces of the “slave mode of production”: “to address this silence would be to
understand geology as a regime for producing both subject and material worlds, where
race is established as an eect of power within the language of geology’s objects” (Yuso
2018, 4). The Anthropocene is understood as a future, rather than the past extinctions
of black and indigenous peoples. Geographical place, and the place of the human, are
important aspects of the story of environmental breakdown, and both are overlooked in
Anthropocene discourse. Thus Anthropocene is an inadequate name for what has taken
place and is now going on.
Others had already proposed the terms Anthroposphere, Homogenocene,
and Noocene before Crutzen’s popularisation of the term Anthropocene to denote
the eect of humankind’s interference with the climate (Schneiderman 2017, 169).
Among the more than 80 proposed names for this epoch (Chwalczyk 2020, 1), Donna
Haraway has proposed the name Chtulucene (2016, 35) and James Moore “the ugly
word” Capitalocene (2016, 5). Dierent names for this moment locate both speaker
and crisis in “dierent temporal and spatial locations,” writes Tinsley (2021, 2). When
we talk about the Anthropocene, we do not adequately address the dierent locations
from which one can speak. Many scholars thus doubt whether calling “the Anthropos”
responsible for this new geological epoch accurately describes a crisis caused by the fossil
combustion of a select group of people (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2017, 68; Tinsley 2021,
5). Words have real material impacts, discourse has extra-discursive eects, even if it is
not always – or ever – possible to determine how an event was created. Anthropocene
is a word that overlooks diering responsibilities for the rising CO2 concentration in
132021, issue 2
our atmosphere, and therefore also occludes some of the possibilities to ameliorate and
mitigate climate breakdown. It is thus not a politically neutral word, but a word that
protects those who made the most impact from realising their heightened responsibility
in causing, and thus also potentially ameliorating, climate breakdown.
“The Anthropocene” is a potent mobiliser for the climate movement because
it clearly indicates the immensity of the crisis — a whole new time-scale - caused by
humans. However, the term is contested. “What do we obscure, and what do we priv-
ilege with such a choice?” (Schneiderman 2017, 176). She does not deny the necessity
of naming this new geological era but recognises that our words are not without eect.
A term like Anthropocene can pose as being politically neutral, whereas Capitalocene
cannot (Moore 2016, 5). The assumption that “future generations” need protection
ignores and discards black and brown lives already lost or being lost (Bonneil and
Fressoz 2017, 71). Whereas the Anthropocene discussion is an academic one, similar
terms and slogans do the same work outside the ivory tower. For example, on Amazon,
a notebook with “The dinosaurs thought they had time too” is on sale, conveying the
message that, indeed, time is running out, but also obscuring the fact that the dinosaurs
went out with a bang, whereas humanity loses people every year. By taking a shortcut,
these words imply that human existence, rather than a way of existing, is the problem.
Also, actions, like solemn funeral processions where people carry a casket with the
words “our future,” convey that something is taken from innocent people. The “equally
innocent” trope frames climate breakdown as being caused by humans rather than a
specic set of prot-seeking fossil-fuel-combusting people.
This has two detrimental eects. Firstly, the trope makes it possible for white
climate activists in the global North to portray themselves as victims, obscuring how
they benet from the current geopolitical structure in which they nd themselves. It
makes climate change communication vulnerable to the fascistic rhetoric of victim-
hood. “Equally innocent” blames all people equally - not just in terms of historical
contribution, but also in terms of who is currently responsible. Ignoring these dier-
ences in (historical) fossil-fuel emission portrays the people who currently enjoy the
many privileges that this has brought them as purely victims, rather than as the complex
subject position of both having benetted and prospectively suering from the same
thing (Dean 2016, 2). Furthermore, those who will suer in the future are portrayed as
the victims, rather than those suering already. Extinction Rebellion writes that they
“refuse to bequeath a dying planet to future generations by failing to act now” (2019, 2),
with this sentence claiming a ght for future generations, rather than the ones currently
dying. By combining victimhood with political neutrality, the climate movement might
nd itself in a similar position to that of the Wandervögel.
Secondly, by obscuring blame, it makes population control, rather than, for
example, the supervision of transnational companies, a spearhead for climate change
prevention (Bonneuil and Fressez 2017, 72). Depicting the climate crisis as caused by
humans results in the notion that getting rid of some of them – it does not matter who
- might benet the climate. If people are contributing to climate breakdown, fewer
people mean less climate breakdown. When Paul Ehrlich starts his book Population
Bomb with an image of people, he describes poverty (1988, 1). On the other side of
142021, issue 2
his taxi window, the people he sees eating, washing, sleeping, arguing, defecating, and
begging are not middle-class white men, but poor people with skin a dierent colour
to his. Lots of research points to the profound discomfort privileged people experience
when reminded of their unfair starting points (Stanley 2018, chap. 6). Not mentioning
the eects of colonialism, imperialism, and extractivism on the climate, and how these
impact on global warming, keeps the conversation going smoothly. Not making the priv-
ileged white audience in the global North uncomfortable might mean communicating
that it is human existence rather than a way of existing that is the problem. Whether
academics, social movements, individuals, or mainstream media do this, the eect is that
the message is made more palpable by painting the assumed audience as less complicit.
This is an Emergency: the “Fear of Crisis” Trope
By obscuring the dierent contributions to and causes of climate change, one also
obscures the various possible solutions. This is doubly dangerous if it obfuscates the
dierence between victims of climate breakdown and stresses the importance of purity
and preservation of what is. The “fear of crisis” trope is hazardous because of the work
of the “equally innocent” trope. Invoking “fear of crisis” is an appealing strategy for
movements. After all, there is a real threat that will cost many lives. Appealing to fear,
stressing the immensity of the eects of the combustion of fossil fuels, might motivate
people to act (Reser and Bradley 2017, 2). Furthermore, acting sooner rather than later
might still mitigate some eects of climate breakdown (Wallace-Wells 2019, 34).
Focussing on the limited time left might convince people that it is now or
never and spur them into action. However, two eects of the “fear of crisis” trope
make it attractive to eco-fascists. These rely on rhetorical tricks that have been labelled
as fascistic in the past (Manavis 2018). First, the urgency to act now downplays the
fact that many people have already suered from climate breakdown. It is only from a
privileged position that one can frame the destruction of fossil fuel use as a problem
concerning the future (Williams 2021, 98). A call for panic because the house is on re
is disrespectful: it has been burning for quite some time now, and the servants living
in the attic have already lost their lives. Ignoring that truth about climate breakdown
allows for the claim “there are no grey areas when it comes to survival” (Thunberg
2019, 8). There is no grey area between living or dying on an individual level, but for
humankind there is. Horrible consequences will follow for both non-white and white
people if no action is taken; however, horrible things are already happening and have
already cost millions of lives. The apocalypse is not in the future; the apocalypse is now
(Swyngedouw 2013, 10).
Second, the call to act now and the fear that motivates it encourages decisionism,
whereby the crisis narrative might circumvent democratic decision-making, preserving
what is, rather than creating what could be by rethinking the system that resulted in
climate breakdown in the rst place. One could think either of techno-xes or border
control here to keep a specic place liveable. Fascism, writes Jason Stanley, thrives on
anxiety (2018, chap. 10). In times of anxiety, there is little motivation to think about
justice, fairness, and systemic causes. Fear can keep existing power structures in place
(Ahmed 2004, 64). When fear designates something as under threat in the present, “that
152021, issue 2
very thing becomes installed as that which we must ght for in the future” (Ahmed 2004,
77). Claire Colebrook warns that crisis narratives create a space where it is acceptable
to act without taking everyone into account (2017, 10). The climate crisis is considered
to be such an emergency that there is no time to wait for deliberation. She writes that
“just as the 2008 global nancial crisis allowed the immediate bailout of banks without
questions of justice or blame being allowed to delay what was declared to be a necessary
response, so the severity of the Anthropocene presents itself as a justication in advance
for executive actions” (Colebrook 2017, 11). Conveying that something is a crisis is not
in and of itself a wrong approach or fascistic. However, if it conveys the idea that a strong
leader should intervene or that there is not time to hear everyone, it starts to resemble
decisionism. Decisionism, the state of emergency that Carl Schmitt describes, is that
state in which there is so much trouble that it must be up to one strong leader to make
bold interventions to save the nation (Hirst 1999, 5). A constant state of emergency in
which there is no space for communication is not only fascistic in and of itself but also
provides dangerous grounds for decision-making if there is no clear consensus on a just
and fair way to tackle the problem.
The climate movement should be careful to use language that acknowledges
the dierent impacts of and contributors to climate breakdown. This way, the fear and
feelings of loss that climate change inherently brings about will not be as easily co-opted
for ethnic nationalist purposes.
Conclusion
The sea levels will rise, and preventing the worst and mitigating the inevitable is crucial.
However, at the same time as the sea levels are rising, there is a fascist wave emerging. It
might be a good idea, as Zimmerman suggests, to actively minimise the risk of aligning
oneself with this wave (1995, 211). This paper aimed to add to the understanding of
eco-fascism by analysing one of the ways in which ethnic nationalists potentially prot
from the growing concern about climate breakdown. Such an understanding can guard
against the alignment or “fascist creep”. Within this paper, I argued against a tactic of
appeasement and undierentiated inclusivity in climate breakdown communication.
I have not argued for a specic course of action. Nor did I see the onus as being
on me to put forward an account of how narratives and emotional appeals inuence
people’s behaviour. Letting ethnic nationalists prot from one’s communication is both
morally and strategically wrong, whether it is intentional or unintentional, for reasons
beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, I argued that an (unconscious) wish to assuage
privileged people, or a lack of knowl edge of one’s privileged position, might explain the
use of language that ts within a white nationalist discourse. I explored why it might
be that little is done to actively ward o fascists and the themes that might be inviting
them in. I claimed that some of the messages of the climate movement do not do
enough to prevent a rise of right-wing shock doctrine policies or to curb anti-immi-
grant sentiments. Material disenfranchisement can be politicised in dierent ways, so
it is possible that rising sea levels will give rise to a fascist wave. An awareness of how
privilege inuences the climate movement’s communication strategy could stop it from
contributing to this wave.
162021, issue 2
Notes
The term “fascist creep” was introduced by
Alexander Reid Ross, who contrasts the ‘creep’
to the ‘fascist drift’ as first introduced by Philippe
Burin (Reid Ross 2017, 1).
Claude Levi Strauss first introduced this
concept in his discussion of Marcel Mauss (1987,
63), Ernesto Laclau further analysed signifiers in his
exploration of popular identities (2018, chap 5.).
BAME stands for Black, Asian and Ethnic
Minority representation.
The El Paso terrorist, for example, argues that
“the aftershock from my actions will ripple for
years to come, driving political and social discourse,
creating the atmosphere or fear and change that
is required” and that he represents “Millions of
European and other ethno-nationalist peoples that
wish to live in peace amongst their own people,
living in their own lands, practicing their own
traditions and deciding the future of their own kind”
(Tarrant 2019).
If a movement were actively obscuring blame
and not explicitly making the caveats that would
prevent one from inferring that it is population
growth that is to blame, this would create space for a
‘fascist drift.’ I do not claim Extinction Rebellion is
doing this.
I would like to thank the anonymous peer
reviewers for encouraging me to more sharply
define my own position in the debate, which is
indeed poles apart from a tactic of appeasement.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Achenbach, Joel. 2019. “Two Mass Killings a World
Apart Share a Common Theme: ‘Ecofascism’.”
The Washington Post, August 19, 2019. https://
www.washingtonpost.com/science/two-mass-
murders-a-world-apart-share-a-common-
theme-ecofascism/2019/08/18/0079a676-
bec4-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html
Ahmed, Sara. 2017. Living a Feminist Life. Durham &
London: Duke University Press.
Ahmed, Sara, 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotions.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Biehl, Janet, and Pieter Staudenmaier. 1996. “Fascist
Ecology: The “Green Wing” of the Nazi Party
and Its Historical Antecedents.” In Ecofascism:
Lessons from the German Experience. The Anarchist
Library. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/
janet-biehl-and-peter-staudenmaier-ecofascism-
lessons-from-the-german-experience.
Bookchin, Murray. 1991. “Where I Stand Now.” In
Defending the Earth: A Debate - Murray Bookchin
and Dave Foreman. Montreal/New York: Black
Rose Books.
Bawden, Tom. 2015. “Green movement must escape
its ‘white, middle-class ghetto’, says Friends
of the Earth chief Craig Bennett” accessed
November 10, 2019. https://www.independent.
co.uk/climate-change/news/green-movement-
must-escape-its-white-middleclass-ghetto-
says-friends-of-the-earth-chief-craig-
bennett-10366564.html
Brown, Evan Nicole. 2019. “How the Extinction
Rebellion Got Its Powerful, Unsettling Logo.”
Fast Company, November 10, 2019. https://
www.fastcompany.com/90414932/how-
the-extinction-rebellion-got-its-powerful-
unsettling-logo.
Card, Claudia. 1996. “Eco-Fascism: Lessons by
the German Experience by Janet Biehl and
Peter Staudenmaier Review.” Ethics and the
Environment 1 (2): 201–4.
Chwałczyk, Franciszek. 2020. “Around the
Anthropocene in Eighty Names—Considering
the Urbanocene Proposition.” Sustainability
12: 1–33.
Climate Reframe. “Climate Reframe - About.”
Accessed 1 July 2021. https://climatereframe.
co.uk.
Code Rood. 2020. “Whose Lives, Whose Profits?
Why Climate Activism and Anti-Racism
Go Hand in Hand.” https://code-rood.org/
en/2020/04/08/whose-lives-whose-profits-
why-climate-activism-and-anti-racism-go-
hand-in-hand/.
Colebrook, Clare. 2017. “We Have Always Been
Post-Anthropocene: The Anthropocene
Counterfactual.” In Anthropocene Feminism,
edited by Richard Grusin. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
David, Pellow, and Park Lisa Sun Hee. 2017. “Nativist
Politics and Environmental Privilege.” In
Environmental History of Modern Migrations,
143–56. New York: Routledge.
Dean, Jodi. 2016. “The Anamorphic Politics of
Climate Change.” e-flux 69. https://www.e-
flux.com/journal/69/60586/the-anamorphic-
politics-of-climate-change/
Diamanti, Jeff, and Imre Szeman. 2020. “Nine
Principles for a Critical Theory of Energy.”
Polygraph: An International Journal of Culture &
Politics 28: 138–59.
References
172021, issue 2
Ehrlich, Paul, and Anne Ehrlich. 1988. The Population
Bomb. New York: Ballantine Books.
Extinction Rebellion. “Find Your Group.” Extinction
Rebellion Global. Accessed 20 August 2021.
https://rebellion.global/groups/#countries.
Extinction Rebellion. “The Symbol above
Represents Extinction.” Extinction Symbol.
Accessed 19 December 2020. https://www.
extinctionsymbol.info.
Frankenberg, Ruth. 1993. White Women, Race
Matters: The Social Construction of Race. London:
Routledge.
Gasser, T, C. Guivarch, K. Tachiiri, C.D. Jones, and
P. Cias. 2015. “Negative Emissions Physically
Needed to Keep Global Warming below 2° C.”
Nature Communications 6 (7958): 2–7.
Gayle, Damien. 2020. “Does Extinction Rebellion
Have a Race Problem?” The Guardian,
October 4, 2020. https://www.theguardian.
com/environment/2019/oct/04/extinction-
rebellion-race-climate-crisis-inequality.
Gilman, Nils, D. Randall, and P. Schwarts. 2012.
“Climate Change and ‘Security’.” In The Oxford
Handbook of Climate Change and Society, edited
by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and
David Schlosberg. New York: Oxford University
Press Inc.
Glyn, Miles, and Clare Farrell. 2019. “Arts Factory.”
In This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion
Handbook, 120–25. London: Penguin Random
House.
Grusin, Richard. 2017. ‘Anthropocene Feminism:
An Experiment in Collaborative Theorizing’.
In Anthropocene Feminism, vii–xix. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Haraway, Donna. 2016. “Staying with the Trouble:
Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene.” In
Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and
the Crisis of Capitalism, edited by Jason Moore,
34–76. Oakland: PM Press.
Heglar, Mary Annaïse. 2019. “Climate Change Isn’t
the First Existential Threat.” Zora. https://zora.
medium.com/sorry-yall-but-climate-change-ain-t-
the-first-existential-threat-b3c999267aa0.
Hirst, Paul. 1991. The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. New
York: Verso Books.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2018. On Populist Reason. London:
Verso Books.
Lagalisse, Erica. 2019. Occult Features of Anarchism:
With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the
Conspiracy of the Peoples. Oakland: PM Press.
Lertzman, Renee. 2015. Environmental Melancholia -
Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement. London
and New York: Routledge.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1987. Introduction to Marcel
Mauss. London: Routledge.
Lorde, Audre. 2017. “Age, Race, Class and Sex.”
In Your Silence Will Not Protect You, 94–106.
London: Silver Press.
MacMullan, Terrance. 2015. “Facing Up to
Ignorance and Privilege: Philosophy of
Whiteness as Public Intellectualism.” Philosophy
Compass 10 (9): 646–60.
Manavis, Sarah. 2018. “Eco-Fascism: The Ideology
Marrying Environmentalism and White
Supremacy Thriving Online.” New Statesman, 21
September 2018. https://www.newstatesman.
com/science-tech/social-media/2018/09/eco-
fascism-ideology-marrying-environmentalism-
and-white-supremacy.
Mills, Charles. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press.
Moore, Jason. 2016. Anthropocene or Capitalocene?
Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism.
Oakland: PM Press.
Mudde, Cas. 2019. The Far Right Today. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2011.
Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury
Press.
Pellow, David. 2018. What Is Critical Environmental
Justice? Cambridge: Polity Press,.
Reclaim the Power. 2021. “Who Are We?” Accessed
19 December 2021. https://reclaimthepower.
org.uk/who-we-are/.
Reid Ross, Alexander. 2017. Against the Fascist Creep.
Oakland: AK Press, 2017.
Reser, Joseph, and Graham Bradley. 2018.
“Fear Appeals in Climate Change
Communication.”In The Oxford Encyclopedia of
Climate Change Communication, 2018. New York:
Oxford University Press, n.d.
Rose, Steve. 2019. “How the Symbol for Extinction
Became This Generation’s Peace Sign.”
The Guardian, 16 April 2019. https://www.
theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2019/
apr/16/how-the-symbol-for-extinction-
became-this-generations-peace-sign.
Schrader-Frechette, Kristin. 2002. Environmental
Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sealey-Huggins, Leon.2018.”The Climate Crisis Is
a Racist Crisis: Structural Racism, Inequality
and Climate Change”.In The Fire Now: Anti-
Racist Scholarship in Times of Explicit Racial
Violence, edited by AzeezatJohnson, Remi
Joseph-Salisbury, and Beth Kamunge, 99-113.
London: Zed Books.
Shah, Sonia. 2020. ‘Exodus’. The Next Great
Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the
Move. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.
e-pub.
182021, issue 2
Shell Must Fall. 2020. “Whose Lives, Whose Profits?
Why Climate Activism and Anti-Racism Go
Hand in Hand’. Code Rood, April 8, 2020.
https://code-rood.org/en/2020/04/08/whose-
lives-whose-profits-why-climate-activism-and-
anti-racism-go-hand-in-hand/.
Spiro, Jonathan Peter. 2008. Defending the Master Race:
Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison
Grant. Lebanon: University of Vermont Press.
Stanley, Jason. 2018. How Fascism Works: The Politics of
Us and Them. New York: Random House.
Sullivan, Shannon. 2019. White Privilege. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Swyngedouw, Eric. 2013. “Apocalypse Now! Fear
and Doomsday Pleasures.” Capitalism Nature
Socialism 24 (1): 9–18.
Tammilehto, Olli. 2004. “The Blind Spots of Eco-
Fascist Linkola.” http://www.tammilehto.info/
english/linkolablind.php
Tarrant, Brenton. 2019. “The Great Replacement.”
https://img-prod.ilfoglio.it/userUpload/The_
Great_Replacementconvertito.pdf.
Taylor, Dorceta E. 2014. “The State of Diversity
in Environmental Organizations.” Ann Arbor,
Michigan: Green 2.0. https://vaipl.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/ExecutiveSummary-
Diverse-Green.pdf.
Taylor, Dorceta E. 2016. The Rise of the American
Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and
Environmental Protection. Durham & London:
Duke University Press.
The Zetkin Collective and Andreas Malm. 2021.
White Skin, Black Fuels: On the Danger of Fossil
Fascism. London: Verso Books.
Thunberg, Greta. 2019. No One Is Too Small to Make
a Difference. London: Penguin.
Roberts, J. Timmons, and Bradley C. Parks. 2009.
“Ecologically Unequal Exchange, Ecological
Debt, and Climate Justice: The History and
Implications of Three Related Ideas for a
New Social Movement.”International Journal of
Comparative Sociology50, no. 3–4 (June): 385–409.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0020715209105147.
Tinsley, Meghan. 2021. “ Towards a Postcolonial
Critical Realism.” Critical Sociology, online first,
1–16.
Tokar, Brian. 2014. Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives
on the Climate Crisis and Social Change.
Porsgrunn: New Compass Press.
United Nations Environment Program. 2019.
‘Emissions Gap Report’. Nairobi: UNEP.
Wallace-Wells, David. 2019. The Uninhabitable Earth.
New York: Tim Duggan Books.
Williams, Jeremy. 2021. Climate Change Is Racist -
Race, Privilege, and the Struggle for Climate Justice.
London: Icon Books.
Woodyatt, Amy. 2020. “Ugandan Climate Activist
Cropped out of Photo Taken with Her White
Peers.” CNN, 29 January 2020. https://edition.
cnn.com/2020/01/25/world/vanessa-nakate-
cropped-intl-scli/index.html.
Wretched of The Earth Collective. 2019. “An Open
Letter to Extinction Rebellion.” Red Pepper, 3
May 2019. https://www.redpepper.org.uk/an-
open-letter-to-extinction-rebellion/.
Yusoff, Kathryn. 2018. A Billion Black Anthropocenes
Or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Zack, Naomi. 2015. White Privilege and Black Rights.
London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Zakin, Susan. 2002. Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth
First! And the Environmental Movement. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press. e-pub.
Zimmerman, Michael E. 1995. “The Threat of
Ecofascism.” Social Theory and Practice 21 (2):
207–38.
Harriët Bergman pursues a PhD at the Centre for
European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp,
researching whether feminist philosophy and
critical race theory can help discussions on climate
breakdown concerning privilege, guilt, denial, power
and social change.
Biography
2021, issue 2
The Enthusiasm of Political Sequences:
Notes on Sylvain Lazarus’s Anthropology of the Name
Bryan Doniger
Abstract
In Anthropology of the Name, Sylvain Lazarus warns us against subordinating radical
political thinking to its relationship with extant social reality. When we attribute
thought to historical or social prerequisites which supposedly ‘determine’ it, we deny
that thinking can challenge what already is. By contrast, radical politics contest the
extant and create new social possibilities. For Lazarus, ‘enthusiasm’ is the disposition
that accompanies transformational politics. This essay distinguishes Lazarus’ ‘enthusiasm’
from Alain Badiou’s ‘delity.’ I argue, contra most English-speaking interpreters, that
Lazarus’ theory of politics is a) distinct from Badiou’s and b) better suited for thinking
through moments of political resistance.
Keywords Licence
DOI
Krisis 41 (2): 19-34.
Sylvain Lazarus, Alain Badiou, Political Emotions,
Communism, Workers’ Inquiry This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
10.21827/krisis.41.2.36966
192021, issue 2
The Enthusiasm of Political Sequences:
Notes on Sylvain Lazarus’s Anthropology of the Name
Bryan Doniger
Introduction
In Anthropology of the Name, the French anthropologist Sylvain Lazarus levels a far-reach-
ing critique against the “scientistic” methodologies adopted by many contemporary
historians and political theorists (Lazarus 2015, 78). More specically, Lazarus worries
that social scientists tend to subordinate political thinking to its relationship with our
extant social reality. As he puts it, they demand that thought “hold forth on its requi-
sites” (2015, 52). In other words, social scientists presuppose that thought necessarily has
requisites that determine what it is; they assume that thinking is merely an expression
of a set of pre-given historical or social circumstances that they endeavor to study. But,
for Lazarus, the social scientists’ methodological assumption that thought has requisites
leaves them with a limited ability to adequately study and understand the thinking that
happens during moments of direct contestation against “the existing social and political
order of things” (Lazarus 2016, 113). For example, amidst workers’ strikes and uprisings,
people often refuse to remain beholden to the way in which bosses, policemen, politi-
cians, and capitalists have already dened their social position. During the strike, people
think otherwise. Their relationship with the existing historical and social order is one
of direct challenge and antagonism. The social scientists’ mistake is to wrongly assume
that our thinking in moments of strike, uprising, or revolt remains subordinate to our
current social arrangement.
Lazarus’ method of inquiry, which he opposes to the methodology of social
scientists, is rooted in the thesis that moments of political contestation are also moments
when people think. For him, the word “people” is a “certain indistinct” (Lazarus 2015,
61). The statement ‘people think’ asserts that there is a group that partakes in the act of
thinking, but it doesn’t determine any necessary prerequisites for their thinking. We can
assert that people think, without dening in advance who these people are, how many
they are, what social and historical situations dictate their thinking, and so on.1 People
think is therefore a radically non-conditional statement. Put dierently, “in people’s
thought, the possible is that by which the real is identied” (Lazarus 2019). As I will
go on to show, enthusiasm is Lazarus’ name for the courageous, militant disposition that
helps us identify those contestational political sequences where people think, and where
their thinking leads them to ght on behalf of the possibility of another world. Lazarus
maintains that a moment of enthusiastic politics is also a moment where we can see
how people’s thought opens up a conict with the social order that already exists.
Although interest in Lazarus’ work is quickly growing in the English-speaking
world, most of his essays are not yet widely available in English.2 Thus far, only four
texts by Lazarus have been translated: Anthropology of the Name, “Can Politics be Thought
in Interiority?”, “Worker’s Anthropology and Factory Inquiry”, and “Lenin and the
Party”. Three of these four works were translated in the past seven years. The scarcity of
available resources for understanding Lazarus has led to a problem in the secondary lit-
erature. Namely, most of the interpretations of Lazarus published in English are heavily
202021, issue 2
reliant upon Alain Badiou’s understanding of his project.3 In Metapolitics, Badiou argues
that “Lazarus‘ thought does for politics what Lacan has done for love: he organises its
disjunctive encounter with history” (Badiou 2005, 54). In this passage, and throughout
Metapolitics, Badiou implies that Lazarus’ theory of politics is essentially parallel to his
own (just as Badiou’s thinking on love apparently runs parallel with Lacan). Most of
Lazarus’ English-speaking interpreters have followed Badiou’s lead. They read Lazarus
primarily as a critical interlocutor who helps clarify and bolster Badiou’s views on
politics. Granted, it certainly makes sense to draw at least some parallels between Badiou
and Lazarus. The pair are frequent political collaborators, and they both intend for
their work to throw a “monkey wrench...in the machinery of capital” (Badiou 2012,
xxx).4 Put less metaphorically, both Lazarus’ and Badiou’s political writings contest the
necessity of our current social reality.
However, Badiou’s interpretation of Lazarus fails to note a crucial point of
contention: the pair have very dierent understandings of the ‘aect’ or ‘disposition’
that accompanies a militant commitment to ghting the existing social order. Whereas
Lazarus writes of people’s enthusiasm during political sequences, Badiou instead evokes
the delity of political subjects. Lazarus’ enthusiasm and Badiou’s delity diverge from
one another in two key respects:
Dierence One: Badiou emphasizes that delity is a courageous commitment
to something “absolutely detached” from our current situation (Badiou 2001,
68). Fidelity is the feeling that allows a political subject to rupture with a given
nite situation and to instead live “as an immortal” (Badiou 2009, 505). By con-
trast, Lazarus links enthusiasm not with immortality, but with possibility. When
‘People think’ their thinking isn’t always dened by an essential disinterested-
ness or ‘detachment’ from the extant. To the contrary, political sequences entail
an active, real contestation. Put dierently, moments of enthusiastic politics happen
when people open up a conict with the ruling social order that attests to this
order’s non-necessity: “another subjectivation is possible” (Lazarus 2016, 119).
Dierence Two: when a moment of political resistance ends, Badiou argues that
this indicates a ‘betrayal’ of the subject’s delity (the end of their commitment to
live as an immortal and detach from what already is). Put dierently, the end of a
political sequence is a moment of failure. By contrast, Lazarus writes that even after
politics ends, the site where politics took place can remain “an enthusiastic site” –
a site saturated with evidence that thinking happened here (Lazarus, 2015, ix).
My argument is that Lazarus’ distinctive concept of ‘enthusiasm’ both justies and clar-
ies the most unique aspect of his work: his invention of a rigorous methodology for
studying the past sites where politics took place.5 In order to study the thinking that
took place amidst various past political sequences (workers’ movements, revolutions,
and so on), Lazarus proposes that we conduct anthropological inquiries into the places
where politics happened. Lazarus’ inquiry is only possible because political enthusiasm
isn’t characterized by ‘detachment’ from the extent (per Badiou), but rather by real,
active contestation. Put succinctly, Lazarus thinks that politics happens at real sites and
212021, issue 2
that these sites remain saturated with enthusiasm even after a given political sequence has
ended. Thus, if English-speaking readers remain overly beholden to Badiou’s interpre-
tation of Lazarus, we run the risk of ironing over precisely the theoretical divergences
that lead to Lazarus’ commitment to anthropological inquiry (rather than, for instance,
to philosophy).
My paper is divided into three sections. I began by summarizing Lazarus’ theory
of how political sequences work before honing in on Lazarus’ unique method and
eshing out my precise disagreement with Badiou’s interpretation.
Section One discusses the danger of the methodological supposition that
‘People do not think.’ Lazarus traces out the dangers of this supposition by outlining
the specic problems and paradoxes it has caused for prior theories of Marxism.
Section Two demonstrates that Lazarus’ concept of enthusiasm allows him to
identify moments when radical politics happen without attributing the emergence of
politics to an individual, a vanguard party, or a social class. At its root, enthusiasm is always
people’s enthusiasm, rather than the enthusiasm of some specic, determinate group. Of
course, Lazarus acknowledges that certain groups, (i.e. workers, peasants, armies, and
political organizations) can help nourish political enthusiasm. However, they are never
enthusiasm’s requisite cause. Thus, in Lazarus’ theory of politics, politics does not require
a state, a ‘vanguard party’ or a ‘revolutionary class’; although such groups have helped to
build enthusiasm in specic political sequences.
Section Three summarizes Lazarus’ notion of ‘political investigation’ or ‘inquiry.’
It also demonstrates how Lazarus’ concept of investigation puts him at odds with Badiou’s
claim that the end of a political sequence is a moment of failure. Here, and throughout
my paper, my aim is not to oer a systematic critique of Badiou’s work.6 Rather, I
point out a signicant problem with his interpretation of Lazarus. Again, by conating
Lazarus’ theory of politics with his own, Badiou does not give us sucient resources
for understanding why Lazarus studies people’s thought via an anthropological method
of inquiry. A discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of Lazarus’ anthropology will
require us to return to some of Lazarus’ political concepts (for instance, ‘enthusiasm’,
‘the prescription’, ‘saturation,’ and ‘the site of politics’) and to study these concepts on
their own terms.
Section One: To Refute the Statement “People Do Not Think”
The supposition that “people do not think” (a supposition that, for Lazarus, has deep
roots in the social sciences) is not just cruel or condescending; more dangerously, this
notion denies the possibility that people can wage a real ght against the extant (Lazarus
2015, 54). The scientists and social scientists who maintain that “people do not think”
don’t always state this claim outright. Instead, Lazarus demonstrates that the statement
“people do not think” is implicit in other claims about the determinate conditions
that supposedly make thought possible. For example, we should be wary of claims that
‘scientists think,’ or that ‘party leaders think,’ or that ‘workers think, under conditions of
class struggle.’ These claims aren’t necessarily untrue. However, each of them asserts the
existence of thinking only under certain, predetermined conditions (for instance, the
222021, issue 2
conditions of scientic rationality, or the conditions of political oppression). And yet,
again, if thought is rooted in the specic conditions of our current social reality, then it
can’t open up a conict with this reality without undermining its own basis.
Let’s turn to one example of a situation where social scientists have wrongly
and disastrously tried to subordinate people’s thinking to the social arrangement that
their thinking fought against. As early as 1935, Black American Marxists like W.E.B. Du
Bois were already worried that prevailing social scientic methods produced accounts
of the ght for Black emancipation that rendered Black workers almost entirely agen-
cy-less.7 In Black Reconstruction, Du Bois argued that Black workers won the civil war
via a general strike. For him the strike “was not merely the desire to stop work. It was
a strike on a wide basis against the conditions of work” (Du Bois 1992, 67). In other
words, this strike not only ended slavery but also posited a very dierent economic
and social order. Rather than continuing to work for the prot of slave owners, the
strikers put forth the possibility of a new, “fateful experiment in democracy” (ibid.,
715). They wanted a world where they owned land and cultivated it on their own
terms. This new organization of work, founded on land-ownership for all, could have
led to a worker-centered economy where Black people labor without having the fruits
of their labor taken by bosses or capitalists. But virtually all historians of reconstruction
failed to account for the Black workers’ general strike, even supposedly ‘progressive’
historians like Charles and Mary Beard. Of course, many of these historians operated
under the assumption that Black people were biologically inferior to whites. But many
other historians (including the Beards), justied their racist oversight of Black workers’
power on historical or sociological grounds. They began from the supposition that Black
people were ignorant and weak due to their abject position in the pre-existing social
and economic order.
Lazarus thinks that a set of problematic methodological assumptions very similar
to the ones that Du Bois wrote against in 1935 (for example, assumptions that ‘people
do not think’ or, more specically, ‘Black workers do not think’) have been endemic
to the work of many past Marxist historians and political thinkers. In “Thinking After
Classism,” Lazarus demonstrates that many of the most prominent European revolu-
tionary theorists of the last two centuries oered conceptualizations of thinking in
which thinking is fundamentally rooted in the extant.8 Lazarus goes on to identify two
dierent problematic procedures through which previous Marxists have attempted to
subordinate people’s thinking to the extant social order–determination and operation:
Determination, or, the dialectic of the objective and the subjective, was Marx’s mistake
when it came to conceptualizing the agency of political revolutionaries. Lazarus
claims that this mistake begins “with the Communist Manifesto, published in
1848” (Lazarus 2016, 119). In the Manifesto, and throughout many of his later
texts, Marx argues that revolutionary consciousness is directly determined by
people’s social positioning.9 As Lazarus puts it, Marx often maintains that “the
totality is the means for a nomination of the subjective” (Lazarus 2015, 93). To
rephrase this, Marx attributes the thinking of working people to objective con-
ditions outside of their own subjectivity (for instance, the conditions of their
1.
232021, issue 2
subjugation and exploitation within factories). Workers are revolutionary because
of their social class: “The central operator” that determines their consciousness
“is clearly class” (2015, 80). However, if we accept that class positioning neces-
sarily determines workers’ capacity for revolutionary thought, then we will not
be able to meaningfully come to grips with moments when workers refute their
class positioning. If class subjugation is necessary for revolutionary thinking,
then how can workers problematize their subjugation without undermining
the determinate condition that enables their own thinking? Furthermore, we
cannot deny that workers often contest the extant reality that dominates them.
This contestation doesn’t undermine workers – in fact, it can lead to empow-
ering sequences of sustained political action. Thus, Marx’s deterministic view of
class consciousness will not even suce for conceptualizing the revolutionary
agency of the industrial workers whose political aims he intends to bolster.
Although I nd Lazarus’ critique of Marx to be perhaps a bit embryonic, we can none-
theless see the aspects of Marx’s theory of resistance that Lazarus worries about if we
turn, for example, to Marx’s remarks from “The Documents of the First International”
on why workers should strike for an eight-hour working day. The purpose of the
eight-hour legal limit, Marx writes, is to restore “health,” “physical energies,” and “the
possibility of intellectual development, social intercourse . . . and political action” to
workers (1993, 78-79). Marx thinks that capitalism (or, at least, the capitalist social order
of his own historical period) sows the seeds for its own destruction by concentrating
hundreds of thousands of laborers in industrial cities which can serve as centers for
strategy and resistance. However, when the law enables a normal working day of 15,
12, or even 10 hours, the working classes lack the time and health to fully organize.
Each reduction in the length of the working day is therefore hugely benecial. In his
“Inaugural Address” to the International Workers, Marx writes in praise of the ten-hour
work limit enacted by the Factory Bill of 1847. This bill was the product of “30 years’
struggle” by workers in England. In the decade after its passing, English workers saw
“immense physical, moral, and intellectual benets” (ibid.) By ghting for legal reforms
like the Factory Bill, workers’ associations can shorten working days, which in turn will
bring about a smarter, stronger, and more organized working class. And yet, for Lazarus,
Marx’s problematic claim is that workers’ strength and capacity for revolution is directly
tied to their social circumstances. First, it was apparently necessary for workers to be
proletarianized, so that these workers could arrive at the thought of striking en masse.
Then, it will be necessary for workers’ conditions to somewhat improve, so as to allow
for ‘the possibility of intellectual development.’ At every step of this process, Marx seems
to be suggesting that the workers’ social class determines how they think.
Operation, or, the dialectic of the subjective and the objective was, in turn, Lenin’s
mistake when it came to identifying the political power of people’s thought.
Lazarus distinguishes operation from determination by claiming that operation
“raises not so much the question of determinations of consciousness as the
issue of the possible eects of consciousness on the order of the real” (Lazarus
2015, 92). In contrast with Marx, Lenin refuses to subordinate thinking by stud-
ying its supposed “determination” within our current social reality. He refutes
2.
242021, issue 2
Marx’s claim that industrial workers are the ‘revolutionary class’ par excellence:
“In contrast to the Marxist thesis that can be stated as ‘Where there are pro-
letarians, there are Communists,’ Lenin opposed spontaneous consciousness”
(Lazarus 2007, 259). In other words, by shifting from Marx’s class consciousness
to his own concept of ‘spontaneous consciousness,’ Lenin is able to maintain
that people’s thinking does not depend on deterministic conditions outside
of thought. Thus, according to Lazarus’ interpretation, Lenin’s early writings
open up the possibility that thinking does not need to hold forth on its requi-
sites.10 However, although Lenin’s concept of spontaneous consciousness marks
a signicant step toward arming the thesis that people think, Lenin goes on
to cast doubt upon spontaneous consciousness’ political ecacy. In his view,
spontaneous consciousness cannot truly problematize ‘the order of the real.’
Put dierently, Lenin maintains that spontaneous consciousness only becomes
capable of resisting our social order once it is organized into a party. For him,
“there is no politics that is not organizational, and the word party denotes this”
(2007, 255). Thinking is spontaneous, but political thinking is organized.
Lazarus’ objection to Lenin’s ‘operational’ thinking is that the organized
consciousness of the party – just like the consciousness of Marx’s industrial
workers – is necessarily determined via social positioning. If we wish to attain
a count of who does and doesn’t qualify for organized consciousness, we will
have to resort to an assessment of the conditions that dene thinking in our
current social order. Who has had the chance to develop organized consciousness
through the proper ‘political education’? Who is equipped to lead political movements,
and who is not well-positioned for this task? Questions like these end up smuggling
back in the very same demand that thought hold forth on its requisites.
In summary, the problem with both “determination” and “operation” is that both
attempt to directly map “intellectuality onto an exterior reality” (Lazarus 2015, 78). To
subordinate “intellectuality” to the reality that supposedly determines it is the crux of
what Lazarus calls “the pair ideology/science” (Lazarus, 2019). The ideology/science
pairing presents us with a false dichotomy that severely inhibits our political thinking.
Either we are scientists who dene thinking in terms of already-existing reality, or else
we have succumbed to ‘ideology,’ understood here as an irrational ight of fancy away
from the real. However, if we assume that our thinking is undenable except via what
already is, then we are forced into accepting that the desire for social transformation
stands at odds with thinking.
Rather than resigning ourselves to the procedures of determination and opera-
tion, we should instead ask, “Is there room for a real that pertains to a non-objectal and
non-nominalist thought?” (Lazarus 2015, 63). If naming a revolutionary social class (as
Marx does) or a political party (as Lenin does) is both “objectal” and “nominalist,” do
we have any other options for identifying “real” moments of political contestation? This
question leads Lazarus to invent a procedure for naming and understanding political
opposition that stands completely at odds with the “denitions” employed by Marx,
Lenin, and other social scientists. There are “two approaches to words:” the denitional
252021, issue 2
approach, and “the other, where there isn’t polysemy but opposition of prescriptions”
(Lazarus, 2019). In section two, I argue a) that political prescriptions, rather than deni-
tions, are Lazarus’ object of study – that is, his tool for naming and understanding the
new possibilities opened up by political opposition – and b) that “enthusiasm” is the
disposition that accompanies our successful deployment of prescriptions.
Section Two: Lazarus’ Enthusiastic Prescriptions
Because political sequences cannot be identied by a requisite condition that explains
their existence (i.e. party organization or class consciousness), Lazarus proposes an alter-
native method for identifying politics: we know that politics is taking place when we
encounter “an enthusiastic site” (Lazarus 2015, ix).11 In “Can Politics Be Thought In
Interiority?”, Lazarus argues that Mao Zedong’s unique insight into politics was that
we can identify political transformations without relying upon operation or determination.
Rather than naming a revolutionary class or a vanguard party, Mao wrote that revolution
in China was identiable via widespread “enthusiasm for socialism”:
this strictly Maoist category...makes history disappear... Enthusiasm for social-
ism is not (only) that of a “radiant future,” but a singular theory of development
(here, a term that is in no way economic), registered from now on in the
forms taken by the army: not only military force, but practicing the work of
the masses, which is obligatory…. The most general principle which interests
us, having to do with development, is the following: “the new is created in the
struggle against the old.” (Lazarus 2016, 124).
In this passage, Lazarus counterposes “enthusiasm for socialism” with “history.” History
is a “theory of development” in which any conceivable “radiant future” must depend
upon the old. Mao, by contrast, puts forth a theory of development via contestation,
where “the new is created in the struggle against the old.” Put dierently, enthusiastic
moments are times when we oppose what already is with “what could be” (Lazarus
2019).12 Because Maoism is characterized by this struggle, Lazarus describes Maoist
politics as a “dialectical” sequence of politics (Lazarus 2016, 119). On Lazarus’ terms,
“enthusiasm for socialism” is the name for a mode of politics where people challenge
the extant and, in so doing, hypothesize that “another subjectivation is possible” (2016,
119). Furthermore, enthusiasm (understood as a Maoist category) reverses the Leninist
understanding of a vanguard party that leads the masses’ revolution and dictates their
politics. The army does not politicize the masses; rather it carries out work on their
behalf: “The army practices the work of the masses, it nourishes enthusiasm for social-
ism” (2016, 125). This is why Lazarus goes on to describe the dialectical mode of poli-
tics as a “people’s war” (2016, 126-127). Enthusiasm predates the army: it is people who
are enthusiastic, and the people’s army simply nourishes this enthusiasm. Thus, a close
reading of Lazarus’ discussion of Maoism in “Can Politics be Thought in Interiority?”
reveals two claims not only about the nature of “enthusiasm for socialism,” but also
about the nature of enthusiasm, more generally:
Claim One: Enthusiasm is always enthusiasm for possibility – it emerges in mo -
ments when the possible struggles against the extant. Put dierently, enthusiasm
262021, issue 2
is linked with prescriptions, rather than denitions.
Claim Two: Enthusiasm is always the enthusiasm of people. Determinate groups
(i.e. armies, classes, and parties) can sometimes “nourish” enthusiasm, but they
are never enthusiasm’s sole source.13
To expand on these claims, enthusiasm is nourished via prescriptions precisely because
prescriptions allow people to challenge the existing social order on behalf of possibility
(Lazarus 2015, 7). Whereas denitions rely on what already is, prescriptions identify
real possibilities for challenging what is in favor of what could be. As Lazarus puts it,
prescriptions name the possibility of “a real other than the objectal, one that could be
constituted through inquiry, forming a new eld of knowledge and not a scientic
system” (Lazarus 2015, 62). Prescriptions don’t ‘get us away’ from the real. Rather, they
allow us to challenge one “order of the real” and evoke another possible subjectivation
– “a new eld of knowledge.” In “Worker’s Anthropology,” Lazarus turns to an analysis
of the French auto worker strikes of the early 1980s in order to provide an example
of how political prescriptions can help us enthusiastically oppose the denitions that
are circulated by bosses, politicians, journalists, policemen, and other functionaries
of the ruling order.14 Lazarus describes the early ‘80s as a time of massive layos in
the French auto industry. Amidst these layos, workers at various factories rose up to
dispute both the “amount of severance pay” that they were receiving and “the logic
of its calculation” (Lazarus 2019). The workers knew that the “calculation” of their
severance package was problematic: bosses and government ocials insisted that many
of the individuals working in the factory were not workers, but ‘foreigners.’ By using
terms like “Shi’ite” and “immigrant” to describe the people laboring in the factories,
the bosses and politicians “made the gure of the worker completely disappear” (ibid.).
This reduced the number of workers who were eligible for severance package. On
Lazarus’ terms, the bosses and politicians used the words ‘worker’ and ‘foreigner’ in a
denitional manner. These names purported merely to describe extant social reality. Their
usage legitimated the decision-making processes of the current ruling order – namely,
the bosses’ approach to counting workers. The workers struck back against their bosses
with a radically dierent naming procedure: “It is the worker who counts the worker, it is not
the boss, severance for all” (ibid.). In other words, the bosses’ approach to counting workers
is an illegitimate procedure, and so we must oppose it. “Severance for all” is a call for
material improvements in the lives of workers, but it is also a hypothesis concerning the
possibility of a dierent social order, one where “it is the worker who counts the worker.”
By deploying enthusiastic prescriptions, the workers’ aim is not to replace their
bosses as the ones who exclude and include particular individuals from the denition
of ‘worker.’ The workers’ account of who does and doesn’t count as a worker is inten-
tionally broad and indeterminate: “severance for all.” As Lazarus puts it, an enthusiastic
prescription is less like “a demand,” and more like “a thesis, a principle” (Lazarus 2019).
The workers, in issuing their prescription, do not demand to be the ones who deter-
mine who does and does not count as a worker (otherwise, they would need to issue
specic, denitional criteria for what a worker is). Instead, the workers’ prescriptions are
aimed at disputing the legitimacy of the “worker/boss” relation: the workers challenge
272021, issue 2
the process whereby the status and value of the workers is counted by an external group
of bosses. In order to carry out this dispute, they oer the “thesis” of another “order
of the real” – one where workers can refuse to be counted and valued by an external
authority.
If denitions subordinate thinking to “an exterior reality,” prescriptions com-
pletely reverse the relationship between the real and thought: thought acts upon the
real, and not vice versa. As Lazarus puts it:
In the discursive [viz. denitional] process, the real, understood starting from
what is, is unique. In our process of an anthropology of thought, the possible
opens a conict of prescriptions (there are many possibles) and every prescrip-
tion supports a distinct order of the real (Lazarus 2019).
Denitions subjugate the singularity of people’s thought – they make it seem as though
a multiplicity of thoughts can be explained via a single, unimpeachable reality. By
contrast, prescriptions only work in moments when thought is singular and irreducible,
and when it opens up a multitude of dierent possible realities. Thus, enthusiastic pre-
scriptions are both political and oppositional, insofar as they refuse to conate “the real”
with whatever current social order supposedly ‘governs’ our thinking.
My claim is that Lazarus’ notions of ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘the prescription’ break
with Badiou’s seemingly similar notion of delity to a greater extent than Badiou’s
interpretation of Lazarus acknowledges. Indeed, Badiou fails to note the distinctive
character of the ‘enthusiastic prescriptions’ that Lazarus views as necessary for politics.
On the one hand, Badiou uses the concept of ‘enthusiasm’ in some of his more recent
work on politics, and one could argue that he inherits this concept from Lazarus. For
example, in both Logic of Worlds and Métaphysique du bonheur réel, Badiou writes that
political subjects who maintain delity are rewarded with a feeling of enthusiasm (See
Badiou 2015, 40 and 2009, 76). However, on the other hand, these descriptions make
it sound like enthusiasm is simply one component of the experience of what Badiou
calls ‘political delity,’ as though these political dispositions are entirely commensurable
with one another.
Badiou denes delity thusly: “delity...amounts to a sustained investigation of
the situation, under the imperative of the event itself; it is an imminent and continuing
break” (Badiou 2001, 67). The ‘event itself,’ for Badiou, is a “hazardous” brief moment
where something ashes before our eyes that allows us to distance ourselves from the
situation in which we nd ourselves (2001, 67). The political subject has a continuing
delity to this event, even once it has vanished; just as a delitous Christian harbors a
continuous commitment to a God beyond this world, so too the delitous subject tries
to distance itself from its “ephemeral” situation (2001, 70). Put dierently, because the
event breaks with a given social situation, the delitous subject must become essentially
“disinterested” in this situation (2001, 69). Our disinterestedness in the situation, paired
with our spirited commitment to the hazardous event, allows us to punch “a ‘hole’ in
knowledges” and produce “new knowledges” (2001, 70).
Badiou mistakenly conates Lazarus’ idea that politics happens via political
enthusiasm with his own notion of politics via delity. We can see this mistake clearly
282021, issue 2
in a passage from Metapolitics where Badiou claims that Lazarus’ statement ‘people think’
is intended to ascribe to people’s political thinking a certain ‘immortality’ or ‘eternity.’
[People’s thought, as dened by Lazarus] is thinkable, as a precarious singularity
restricted by dates… and as indierent to time. To think a singularity does
indeed determine it, in the words of Thucydides, in the guise of an ‚eternal
acquisition‘ (Badiou 2005, 38).
Here, Badiou acknowledges that people’s thought is situated within time. After all, peo-
ple’s thought is “a precarious singularity restricted by dates” – we can accurately speak
of people’s thinking during Maoism, or people’s thinking amidst the autostikes. However,
Badiou tries to argue that people’s thought is, in a far more important sense, also “indif-
ferent to time.” Remember: Badiou thinks that the delitous subject no longer desires
to live within their nite, ephemeral, social situation. This is what Badiou means when
he writes that the delitous subject lives “as an immortal” (Badiou 2009, 505). Under
Badiou’s interpretation of Lazarus, when people think, their delitous thinking is indif-
ferent to time. Because something matters more to people than the ruling social order,
they can challenge the legitimacy of this order, even if this puts their prior way of life
at risk. Badiou argues that Lazarus’ statement ‘people think’ is simply another way of
theorizing the immortality of the political subject.
In order to conate Lazarus’ theory of politics with his own, Badiou makes
two strong interpretative claims about Lazarus’ statement that people think. The rst of
these claims is true, but I argue that the second one is clearly false:
Badiou’s First Claim: Badiou correctly claims that “at the heart of [Lazarus’]
thought one nds a de-temporalization of the possible.” Put dierently, to assert
that people think is to claim that thought is sometimes in excess of temporaliza-
tion – we can’t necessarily understand thinking by reducing it to the time when
it took place. If possibilities could always be identied via time, then the real
possibilities opened up by people’s thinking would be restricted to the deter-
mination of their time period. Badiou is absolutely correct that this is precisely
the form of ‘determination’ that Lazarus’ theory of politics tries to avoid.
Badiou’s Second Claim: However, Badiou subsequently claims that, because
people’s thinking can’t necessarily be reduced to the time when it took place, this
means that people’s thought is necessarily indierent to time: “to think singu-
larity does indeed determine it...in the guise of an eternal acquisition” (Badiou
2005, 38, emphasis mine). In Badiou’s interpretation of Lazarus, people can
only think if they are disinterested in their temporalized social situation, and
interested in something entirely outside of time. This interpretation would
unify Lazarus’ enthusiastic people with Badiou’s subject – both ‘people’ and
the delitous subject strive to live as an immortal. However, this second claim
must be a misunderstanding of Lazarus, because it demands that we place a
requisite condition on people’s thought (namely, thought must be eternal, and
not temporal).
292021, issue 2
In summary, Badiou’s rst claim is true, for people’s thought is not necessarily temporal.
However, Badiou’s second claim is false, for people’s thought is also not necessarily eternal.
Again, what is truly unique about Lazarus’ theory of politics is his rigorous refusal to
name a requisite condition for thinking. Badiou’s interpretation of Lazarus misses this
essential point.
We can see the distinction between Badiou’s delity and Lazarus’ enthusiasm
even more clearly if we try to actually apply the concept of delity to the enthusiastic
factory strikes that Lazarus studies in “Worker’s Anthropology.” The striking factory
workers do not seem to be acting as a delitous subject. When these workers opposed
their bosses, they were clearly very concerned with their own material interests within
the immediate social order (‘severance for all’). Of course, the workers’ interest was not
limited to questions about the “amount of severance pay and the logic of its calculation.”
Again, their strike also poses fundamental challenges to the “boss/worker relation in this
kind of situation” (Lazarus 2019). But to deny that these workers are quite directly and
importantly concerned with improving their well-being within their immediate social
situation would be absurd.
If delity is characterized by a “disinterested interest,” the factory workers’
enthusiasm is by contrast a form of dual interestedness (Badiou 2001, 49). As Lazarus puts
it, “prescription, while not excluding that it can be factualized, materialized, or put to
work, identies itself essentially as an intellectuality, that is to say, as a thesis” (Lazarus
2019). When we are enthusiastic, our interest is always double. We are interested in
contesting material reality, but we are also interested in how this contestation helps us
arm the thesis of another possible subjectivation. Thus, enthusiasm does not allow us
to subordinate people’s thinking to either temporal phenomena or to the eternal. This
means that, on Lazarus’ terms, it is not wrong to describe enthusiasm as ‘enthusiasm for
socialism,’ ‘enthusiasm for severance,’ or ‘enthusiasm for the army’. These phrases each
describe dierent procedures through which enthusiastic prescriptions are “factualized,
materialized, or put to work.” As Lazarus goes on to write, “A mode in interiority can
be identied (we can know its nature) by looking for what thought has been opened
up in the world” (Lazarus 2016, 112). As I will elaborate in Section Three, we can nd
evidence of the thought that “has been opened up in the world” by looking to the
particular sites where past political sequences happened.
Section Three: Lazarus’ Inquiry
Lazarus’ notions of ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘the prescription’ give him the conceptual resources
to consistently identify and understand past moments of political opposition. Put dier-
ently, these concepts justify and clarify his decision to create a rigorous methodology for
studying political sequences. Lazarus has a number of dierent names for the method
that he develops: “anthropology of the name,” “inquiry,” and “political investigation” are
three of the most common ones (Lazarus 2019). I want to conclude by underscoring
that Lazarus’ conception of inquiry is one of the most unique and crucial dimensions of
his project.15 In the “Preface to the English Edition” of Anthropology of the Name, Lazarus
writes that he intends to nourish enthusiasm “about thought when it is possible to say
302021, issue 2
how it is at work when it is at work” (Lazarus 2015, 9). The inquirer’s primary task is to
identify sites where political contestation took place, and to show how thought was “at
work” in these sites. By identifying these places, the inquirer herself becomes a gure
of contestation. She opposes herself to those historians and social scientists who, when
they maintain that ‘People do not think,’ make thought itself disappear. As Lazarus puts
it, “deciding as to the existence of the word – thus forbidding its disappearance, subjec-
tivating it as what permits a transformation in consciousness of those who pronounce
it – is exactly what I mean by people think” (Lazarus 2016, 111). The inquirer, who does
not live amidst a political sequence, may not be in a position to eect a transforma-
tion in consciousness. Nonetheless, by returning to sites where politics happened, the
inquirer forbids the “disappearance” of the prescriptions that took place at that site.
Political Sequences
Inquiry is an anthropological procedure (rather than a philosophical one) because it
studies a given political sequence by returning to the real sites where politics happened.
Sites are necessary for politics because “thought is a relation of the real” (Lazarus 2015,
53). If thought were not at work in some actual site, then it would not be capable of
supporting the real possibility of a what can be that stands opposed to a what already is. For
instance, factory strikes are eective because “there is circulation followed by evacuation
of the word ‘worker’ if it is not paired with the category of the factory” (2015, 153)
Here, Lazarus does not mean to suggest that the factory dictates the workers’ think-
ing, but rather that the workers use the factory as a site of opposition. The workers
make the factory into a place where they can problematize the state’s “circulation” and
“evacuation” of the word “worker.” When she studies the factory, the inquirer opposes
the subordination of thought to the real by identifying the specic location where a
“singular thought” had real eects on the world (Lazarus 2019).
In studying a site of politics, the inquirer arms the possible by locating evi-
dence of what Lazarus calls “saturation” (Lazarus 2015, ix). The word ‘saturated’ has a
double meaning: it means both ‘to be used up’ and ‘to leave behind evidence.’ During
a political sequence, a site becomes saturated with new, real, possibilities for what can
be (i.e. socialism, severance for all, the prospect that “it is the workers who count the
workers,” and so on). Once this sequence of politics ends, the particular objects and
names that were at play in this sequence can become “worn out or saturated.” A ‘worn
out’ word is one that is no longer adequate for forcefully pushing back against the exist-
ing social and political order of things. Put dierently, past prescriptions like ‘socialism’
and ‘severance for all’ are not always useful for future political sequences. Nonetheless,
when we inquire into how thinking happened in past political sequences, this proves that
people’s thought is capable of refuting the domination of bosses and politicians, and
thereby transforming a given social order.
Lazarus contrasts the task of the inquirer with the task of the social scientist
and historian. Historians and scientists attempt to dene the requisites that supposedly
determine a moment of political contestation, and to explain why this contestation
ultimately failed. For instance, “the prevailing explanations for the collapse of socialism
have commanded the establishment of a revivied and purged historicism” (Lazarus
312021, issue 2
2015, 175). Lazarus, who wrote Anthropology of the Name in the years following the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union, knows all too well that historicism thrives in moments when
resistance to capitalism is lethargic and depressed. In such moments, the ruling order’s
dominion over thinking begins to seem inevitable, and so the conclusion of histori-
cism (namely, that thought cannot challenge the extant) starts to sound like common
sense. By contrast, inquiry is an ongoing refutation of the historicist/scientic paradigm:
“There are...unnamable names. The anthropology of the name maintains that the only
possible enterprise of naming consists in the naming of the sites of the name and the
identication of the category” (2015, 166). When people think, they assert that they
are “unnamable,” refuting the authority of any boss, politician, or party who attempts
to dene or count their existence (Lazarus 2019). For this reason, people’s thought
is doubly endangered. First it is endangered by the naming procedures of politicians,
bosses, and state authorities. Then, it is challenged again by the social historians and
scientists who revive the “enterprise of naming.” Rather than stage yet another siege
upon the “unnamable,” Lazarus’ inquirer returns to the site where political contestation
took place, and asks “what does thought think when it thinks?” (Lazarus 2015, x). The
inquirer’s task is therefore to resuscitate enthusiasm – identifying our past, present, and
future capacity to refute the necessity of what already is.
Put dierently, the inquirer reverses the historian’s description of the rela-
tionship between thought and the real. Politics has sites, but the sites themselves are
determined by people’s thinking, and not vice versa. The most we can say about the
relationship between the worker and the factory is that, “At the factory is the worker”
(Lazarus 2015, 154). The factory doesn’t determine the worker; it is instead one of the
places where the worker’s thought and action can potentially take place. Lazarus argues
that this reversal is essential for “postclassist” political analysis (Lazarus, 2019). A classist
analysis would attempt to dene workers’ thinking by way of their ‘real’ or ‘material’
social position. For example, because the Paris auto factory strikers’ demands were
“factualized, materialized,” and “put to work” as the demands of auto workers, we could
easily conclude that ‘Here People did not think, only workers thought.’ This would pave the
way for an interpretation of the strikes in which we would name a particular radical
or revolutionary social group, and explain the conditions that led to their resistance.
However, Lazarus would point out that once a site becomes a political site, we can no
longer make sense of people’s intellectuality by studying their social position. Although
the workers are still subjugated by their bosses, they begin to insist that The boss does not
determine me, for another subjectivation is possible.
In conclusion, Lazarus’ rigorous conceptualization of “political investigation”
enables us to understand past political struggles against the dominant social order
without reducing them to a long series of failures. Here again, contrasting Lazarus with
Badiou proves useful. In Badiou’s analysis of politics, the end of delity is necessarily
a moment of failure: “to fail to live up to a delity is Evil in the sense of betrayal,
betrayal in oneself of the immortal that you are.” By contrast, Lazarus’ “Preface to the
English Edition” introduces Anthropology of the Name as a project that intends to nourish
enthusiasm:
322021, issue 2
“‘People’ is an indistinct. Nothing is prejudged
(this is what makes it ‘indistinct’), except their
existence (and this is what makes the term certain)”
(Lazarus 2015, x).
Recently, an international group of Marxist
scholars whose work is increasingly influenced by
Lazarus organized the first American conference
dedicated to studying his work. See Haider, Marasco,
Neocosmos, Tutt, Tupinambá 2020.
To name a few examples, see Neocosmos 2016,
Wamba-dia-Wamba 1993 and 1994, Corcoran 2015,
Harper 2016, and Bosteels 2018. For one attempt to
disentangle Lazarus and Badiou’s thinking on time,
see Calcagno 2007.
Lazarus and Badiou together formed a
post-Leninist, post-Maoist political group called
“Organisation Politique.” For a short history of this
organization, see McLaverty-Robinson 2015.
One interpreter who has tried to center
Lazarus’ methodology in his reading of Anthropology
of the Name is Asad Haider. See Haider, 2018.
Indeed, my engagement with Badiou in this
paper is relatively narrow. I focus on his formulation
of fidelity in Ethics, and I supplement this reading
with passages from Logic of Worlds, Metapolitics,
and Plato’s Republic that either directly engage with
Lazarus or help further develop Badiou’s notion of
fidelity.
This example is far from random. Lazarus has
been particularly well-received outside of France
by Marxists who study past sequences of resistance
against racism and colonization. See Neocosmos
2016, Wamba-dia-Wamba 1993 and 1994, and
Haider 2019.
To offer one example, Lazarus is particularly
critical of previous Marxist thinkers who view
worker’s thinking as a simple reaction to pre-existing
external historical conditions like ‘the economy’ or
‘class struggle.’
“From the standpoint of an investigation of
forms of thought, the dialectic of the objective and
the subjective is a direct mapping of intellectuality
onto an exterior reality” (Lazarus 2015, 78).
Lazarus attributes Lenin’s refutation of Marxist
determinism to his early works – and most especially
to What is to be Done? See Lazarus 2007, 255.
To rephrase this claim as a conditional syllogism:
‘If there is enthusiasm, then politics happened here.”
Although Lazarus adopts Mao’s notion of
enthusiasm, he also argues that Mao’s distinction
between ‘new’ and ‘old’ is less helpful for identifying
modes of politics than his own opposition of the
extant and the possible: “But it is not a matter
here of a problematic position that, through the
new and the rupture, would reintroduce revolt or
social upheaval, even revolution. If this were so, we
would find ourselves facing a new attempt at the
historicization of forms of thought, by opposing
two forms: one which would reflect on the same
and the law in historical processes – it is what
would maintain, regarding the phenomena that it
studies, the said history as a longue durée; and the
other which would maintain that it is the history
of ruptures, transformations, mutation, revolutions
that are situated at the heart of the order of things”
(Lazarus 2019).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
What I would readily call the site of the book named Anthropology of the Name is
an enthusiastic site. Enthusiastic about what? For one thing, about the fact that
a new conception of politics can be opposed to the end of the great period that
extends from the Russian Revolution to today (Lazarus 2015, ix).
If the task of politics is to contest the extant itself, then the task of inquiry is to oppose
the scientic and historical paradigm of our time. This opposition requires a “new con-
ception of politics,” and therefore a dierent approach to studying the sites where pol-
itics once took place, a dierent way of identifying the political sequences of “the great
period that extends from the Russian Revolution to today.” By naming ‘enthusiasm for
possibility’ as the disposition that allows us to identify politics, and by “conguring the
real through prescriptions and possibles,” Lazarus poses a signicant challenge to the
persistent, violent demand that thought hold forth on its requisites. We, in turn, would
be naive to neglect the tremendous possibility nourished by such an endeavor.
Notes
332021, issue 2
13 14
15
These two claims regarding enthusiasm
do create necessary conditions for enthusiasm’s
existence. Enthusiasm, unlike people’s thought,
does hold forth on its requisites. More specifically,
people’s thought is required for the creation of
‘an enthusiastic site.’ To put this as a conditional
syllogism: it is true that “If there is enthusiasm,
then there is people’s thought.” However, it is not
true that “If there is people’s thought, then there
is enthusiasm.” If the first statement were false,
enthusiasm would not be helpful for identifying
moments when people think. If the second
statement were true, enthusiasm would become a
requisite for people’s thoughts. Lazarus thinks that
enthusiasm can help us identify particular moments
where people think, but he wants to avoid using
enthusiasm to give a full account of what does and
doesn’t count as people’s thinking.
For a more extensive treatment of Lazarus’
discussion of the French auto worker strikes, see
Haider 2018.
Of course, Lazarus is not the first one to give
inquiry or “worker’s inquiry” a vital role in radical
political struggles (see Haider and Mohandesi, 2013,
and Hoffman 2019). What is unique about Lazarus
is his understanding of the inquirer as a figure who
asserts that another world is possible, and who
radically contests the historians and social scientists
of her time on behalf of this possibility.
Badiou, Alain. 2001 [1998]. Ethics: An Essay on
the Understanding of Evil. Translated by Peter
Hallward. New York: Verso.
Badiou, Alain. 2009 [2006]. Logic of Worlds. Translated
by Alberto Toscano. London: Continuum.
Badiou, Alain. 2015. Métaphysique du bonheur réel,
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Badiou, Alain. 2005 [1998]. Metapolitics. Translated by
Jason Barker. New York: Verso.
Badiou, Alain. 2012 [2012]. Plato’s Republic.
Translated by Susan Spitzer. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Beard, Charles and Mary Beard. 1927. The Rise of
American Civilization. New York: Macmillan.
Bosteels, Bruno. 2005. “Post-Maoism: Badiou and
Politics.” Positions 13 no. 3: 575–634. https://
doi.org/10.1215/10679847-13-3-575.
Bosteels, Bruno. 2018. “Translator’s Introduction.”
In Can Politics Be Thought? Durham: Duke
University Press.
Calcagno, Antinoa. 2007. “Abolishing Time and
History: Lazarus and the Possibility of Thinking
Political Events Outside Time.” Journal of French
Philosophy 17, no. 2 (Fall): 13-36. https://
jffp.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/
view/196/192.
Corcoran, Stephen. 2015. “History/Historicity.”
In The Badiou Dictionary, edited by Stephen
Corcoran. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1992. Black Reconstruction in America:
1860-1880. New York: The Free Press.
Haider, Asad. 2019. “Martin Luther King and the
Meaning of Emancipation.” n+1. https://
nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/
martin-luther-king-jr-and-the-meaning-of-
emancipation/.
Haider, Asad, Robyn Marasco, Michael Neocosmos,
Daniel Tutt, and Gabriel Tupinambá. 2020.
“Socialists Think: A Plenary on the Thought
of Sylvain Lazarus.” https://danieltutt.
com/2020/04/24/socialists-think-study-group-
on-the-thought-of-sylvain-lazarus/.
Haider, Asad. 2018. “Socialists Think.” Viewpoint
Magazine, https://www.viewpointmag.
com/2018/09/24/socialists-think.
Haider, Asad and Salar Mohandesi. 2013. “Worker’s
Inquiry: A Genealogy.” Viewpoint Magazine,
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2013/09/27/
workers-inquiry-a-genealogy/.
Hoffman, Marcelo. 2019. Militant Acts: The Role of
Investigations in Radical Political Struggles. Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Lazarus, Sylvain. 2015 [1996]. Anthropology of the
Name. Translated by Gila Walker. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Lazarus, Sylvain. 2016 [2013]. “Can Politics Be
Thought in Interiority?” Translated by Tyler
Harper. Cosmos and History 12 (1): 107-130.
https://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/
journal/article/view/465.
Lazarus, Sylvain. 2007. “Lenin and the Party.” In
Lenin Reloaded, edited by Sebastian Budgen,
Stathis Kouvelakis, and Slavoj Žižek. Durham:
Duke University Press.
Lazarus, Sylvain. 2019 [2001]. “Worker’s
Anthropology and Factory Inquiry.” Translated
by Asad Haider and Patrick King. Viewpoint
Magazine. https://www.viewpointmag.
com/2019/01/09/workers-anthropology-and-
factory-inquiry-inventory-and-problematics/.
Marx, Karl. 1993. The First International and After.
Edited by David Fernbach. Translated by Joris
de Bres and David Fernbach. New York: Verso.
References
342021, issue 2
McLaverty-Robinson, Andy. 2015. “Alain Badiou:
Political Action and the Organisation Politique.”
Ceasefire Magazine. https://ceasefiremagazine.
co.uk/alain-badiou-political-action-
organisation-politique/
Neocosmos, Michael. 2016. Thinking Freedom in
Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Wamba-dia-Wamba, Ernest. 1993. “Democracy,
Multipartyism and Emancipatory Politics in
Africa: The Case of Zaire.” Africa Development
18 (4): 95-118. https://www.jstor.org/
stable/24486780?seq=1.
Wamba-dia-Wamba, Ernest. 1994. “Africa in
Search of a New Mode of Politics.” In African
Perspectives on Development. Edited by Ulf
Himmelstrand. London: James Currey.
Biography
Bryan Doniger studies philosophy and the idea of
communism at the New School for Social Research.
He is interested, in particular, in the history of
post-Althusserian Marxism. His work has previously
appeared in Critical Legal Thinking.
2021, issue 2
Sanctuary Politics and the Borders of the Demos:
A Comparison of Human and Nonhuman Animal Sanctuaries1
Eva Meijer
Abstract
Sanctuary traditionally meant something dierent for humans and nonhuman animals,
but this is changing. Animals are increasingly seen as subjects, and, similar to human
sanctuaries, animal sanctuaries are increasingly understood as political spaces. In this
article I compare human and nonhuman sanctuaries in order to bring into focus under-
lying patterns of political inclusion and exclusion. By investigating parallels and dier-
ences I also aim to shed light on the role of sanctuaries in thinking about and working
towards new forms of community and democratic interaction, focusing specically on
the role of political agency and voice.
I begin by briey discussing the political turn in animal philosophy, in which
nonhuman animals are conceptualized as political actors. I then discuss “Zatopia”, a
thought experiment that shows that viewing sanctuaries as separate from larger political
structures runs the risk of repeating violence, and I investigate parallels with certain
practices and policies in farmed animal sanctuaries. In order to overcome the obstacles
thus identied, I turn to the concept “expanded sanctuary”, which explicitly focuses on
connections between sanctuary and larger political structures. I discuss two examples
of expanded sanctuary in which the agency and voices of those seeking or taking
sanctuary are foregrounded: VINE Sanctuary, and the Dutch migrant collective WE
ARE HERE. In the nal section I briey touch upon the consequences of these con-
siderations for our understanding of sanctuary in relation to political membership and
reforming communities.
Animal Sanctuary, City of Sanctuary, Expanded
Sanctuary, Interspecies Relations, Political Aimal
Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
Krisis 41 (2): 35-48.
Keywords
DOI
Licence
10.21827/krisis.41.2.37174
352021, issue 2
Sanctuary Politics and the Borders of the Demos:
A Comparison of Human and Nonhuman Animal Sanctuaries
Eva Meijer
Introduction
The sanctuary movement in Europe and North America is growing (Carney et al.
2017; Lenard and Madokoro 2021). Responding to global crises and the rise of populist
regimes, churches, campuses, cities, counties, and even states declare sanctuary status to
protect the human rights of all, and to provide safety. These sanctuaries focus primarily
on assisting migrants with precarious status, often refugees, but may also assist others
who are in need of safety. The nonhuman animal sanctuary movement is also growing,
especially in the US (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2015; Gillespie 2018). There are many
dierent types of nonhuman animal sanctuaries, which for example provide permanent
housing and care for formerly exploited farmed animals, assist stray animals living in
urban areas, or rehabilitate and release wild animals.
Originating in the context of religion, human sanctuaries are seen by many as
apolitical spaces, which provide a safe haven for those who fall outside of the legal and
political order (Lenard and Madokoro 2021; Squire and Bagelman 2013). In this view
of sanctuary, those seeking sanctuary are regarded as outsiders or guests, in contrast to
citizens (Derrida 2000), and connections between sanctuaries and political institutions
and practices are often not made explicit. Conceptualizing sanctuaries in this manner,
however, runs the risk of reproducing exclusion and hierarchies of power (Yukich 2013)
and even of legitimizing certain injustices, because the underlying power structures are
not challenged, while their eects are mitigated. New sanctuary practices challenge
this and oer a more political model of sanctuary, which focuses on political agency,
resistance, and redening the demos, the people (Carney et al. 2017; Délano Alonso et
al. 2021; Lenard and Madokoro 2021).
Animal sanctuaries are currently often seen and presented as safe havens. This
is perhaps most clear in the farmed animal sanctuary movement, where nonhuman
animals who are “rescued” from the intensive farming industry can “live out their lives”
in peace. Even though this is often combined with vegan outreach, which is aimed at
societal change, and even though these sanctuaries save lives that are seen as worthless,
which is a political act, this way of formulating the situation – by society at large, but
also sometimes by the sanctuaries themselves – runs the risk of reinforcing the under-
lying anthropocentric hierarchy that sees humans as saviours and nonhuman animals
as victims. This attitude is reected in dierent practices, some of which are directed
at other humans, such as for example visitors’ programs, and some of which concern
the lives of animal residents, such as deciding where and with whom they live, as I
will explain in more detail below. Similar to the human case there are however also
animal sanctuaries which explore more political models of interaction with animal
residents and the outside world (Blattner, Donaldson and Willcox 2020; Donaldson and
Kymlicka 2017; Jones 2014).
While sanctuary traditionally meant something dierent for humans and non-
human animals, there have always been parallels. In both cases those seeking sanctuary
362021, issue 2
fall outside of the borders of the political community. Their political agency is contested,
they have no fundamental rights or citizenship rights, and thus they often depend on the
goodwill of others for safety and basic needs, like housing or medical care. In the case of
humans there is a basic structure of universal rights. However, these often collapse when
humans leave the political community to which they belong (Arendt 1951, 1996 [1943];
Agamben 1998). While humans generally nd it easier to recognize that other humans
are political agents and (possible) bearers of rights compared to other animals, there is
a long tradition of viewing certain human groups, such as Blacks, women, Jews, and
refugees, as less-than-human (Spivak 1988). If these groups are awarded rights inequal-
ities often remain, because dominant practices and institutions are designed to benet
the historically powerful groups. In processes of exclusion and stigmatization members
of these groups are furthermore often animalized: they are portrayed as animals, in
language and/or images, and sometimes treated similarly (Adams 2010 [1990]; Derrida
2008; Gruen 2015; Ko and Ko 2017; Taylor 2017).
Further conceptualizing parallels and dierences between human and non-
human groups can be helpful towards better understanding exclusionary mechanisms
in current nation states, and, perhaps, in moving beyond them. This works both ways.
Thinking about justice for nonhuman animals is often based on insights about human
justice, but the treatment of nonhuman animals can also shed light on ways in which
humans are silenced and their agency is not taken seriously.
This comparison is especially relevant given that the status of nonhuman
animals in society and theory is changing. In recent years there has been a ‘political
turn’ in animal philosophy. Building on insights from the life sciences and social justice
movements, it is argued that the interests of nonhuman animals should be taken into
account in political decision-making, some even claiming that they should be consid-
ered as political actors. Before I turn to discussing parallels between dierent types of
sanctuaries, I therefore rst briey discuss this political turn.
The Political Turn in Animal Philosophy
In The Politics, Aristotle famously stated that only humans are political animals, because
they speak, or, more specically: they have logos, which means reason, or rational speech,
and therefore can distinguish between good and evil (Aristotle 1991 [350BC]). He con -
nects this rationally informed political agency to the borders of the demos: other animals,
who may have voices and express themselves but who lack logos, cannot be part of the
political community. Contemporary political philosophers from dierent theoretical
backgrounds still follow Aristotle’s views, both in the sense that they only regard humans
as political animals and in making a strict distinction between humans on the one side
and other animals on the other (i.e. Habermas 1981; Rancière 2014; Rawls 1971).
But there are reasons to resist this strict distinction. It is impossible to draw
a rm line between all human and all nonhuman animals on the basis of capacities;
moreover, the lives of humans and other animals are intertwined not just socially but
also politically.
The inner lives of nonhuman animals have become a serious topic for research
in the past decade. Studies focusing on agency, cognition, emotion, culture, and lan guage
372021, issue 2
challenge a strict border between humans and all other animals (Despret 2016; Donaldson
and Kymlicka 2011; Meijer 2019; Smuts 2001). Furthermore, the image of the human
as a rational being, separate from nature, has in the past decades also been challenged
in poststructuralist, decolonialist and feminist thought, which has had consequences for
who we see as political actors, and which acts are seen as political in the case of humans
(Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011; Meijer 2019).
Following evolving views about animal subjectivity, recent years have seen
within political philosophy an interest in animals (Cochrane, Garner and O’Sullivan
2016; Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011; Meijer 2019). In philosophy animals were tra-
ditionally mostly considered within the eld of ethics. Ethics focuses on how humans
should treat other animals, for example whether it is morally allowed to eat them, kill
them, or keep them captive (Regan 1983; Singer 1975). Political animal philosophy
focuses on a dierent set of questions. For example, it investigates the relations between
groups of nonhuman animals and human political communities, what kind of relations
other animals would desire with humans, and how existing institutions can be extended
to incorporate their interests. Concepts such as justice, democracy, citizenship, resistance,
and sovereignty are used to reect on why we should, and how we can, reformulate
relations with animals.
Many authors in the political turn in animal philosophy argue that human
institutions should take into account animal interests for reasons of justice (Cochrane,
Garner and O’Sullivan 2016) – for example, that animal interests should be taken into
account in democratic decision-making regarding their lives (Garner 2013). There are
also theorists that question the existing system more fundamentally, and argue that non-
human animals should be seen as political actors (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011; Hobson
2007; Meijer 2019). The lives of humans and other animals are interconnected in many
ways. Other animals are part of myriad social, economic and cultural practices through
human consumption and trade; they are companions, neighbours, used for amusement
and food. In these – sometimes political – relations, they are not passive objects, but
agents who, when possible, actively shape their lives (Hobson 2007).2 Dierent groups
of animals, such as domesticated animals or wild animals, stand in dierent relations to
human political communities, leading to dierent rights and obligations.3
Viewing nonhuman animals as political actors and investigating questions of
community and justice concerning them raises many challenging questions: about
justice and citizenship, but also about what other animals want and how we can nd
out (Donaldson 2020; Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011; Meijer 2019).
Mainstream animal rights theory traditionally focused on abolishing relations
with nonhuman animals, because these relations were seen as necessarily inherently
oppressive (Francione 2008; Regan 1983; Singer 1975). While currently they usually are
so, this view is problematic since we share a planet with the other animals, and better
relations are possible and often already exist (see Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011 for
a longer version of this argument). Furthermore, an abolitionist standpoint reinforces
anthropocentrism in the sense that it again relies on humans deciding what is just for
other animals. Taking seriously animal agency and subjectivity implies reformulating
relations and societies with them (Donaldson 2020; Gillespie 2019; Meijer 2019).
382021, issue 2
The role of animal sanctuaries in the political turn
In order to nd out what other animals want, we need to develop new forms of con-
ducting research (Blattner, Donaldson and Wilcox 2020; Despret 2016; Gillespie 2019),
new ways of living together (Smuts 2001), and new political experiments (Meijer 2019).
These aspects are interconnected. The questions humans ask in research determine the
framework in which other animals can answer. For a long time research into animal
behaviour was mostly conducted in order to nd out more about humans (Despret
2016; Meijer 2019). Furthermore, much of this research involved captivity or even sol-
itary connement. But studying animal agency at sites which limit that agency will
inuence the outcomes of the study (Blattner, Donaldson and Willcox 2020; Gillespie
2019). Also, in many studies researchers projected the social norms of their time onto
their animal research subjects, for example with regard to gender and power hierarchies
within groups (Despret 2016). To move beyond this and to be able ask other questions,
as well as to allow the animals to respond in new ways, we need a dierent starting point.
Animal sanctuaries challenge existing human-animal hierarchies and take animal
subjectivity seriously. Therefore they can play an important role in developing new
forms of knowledge production (Blattner, Donaldson and Wilcox 2020; Gillespie 2019).
As Kathryn Gillespie writes: sanctuaries “pose a possibility for exploring other nonnor-
ma tive ways of creating livable spaces for formerly farmed animals that do not reproduce
farming models of species segregation, farm-based practices of care, and highly uneven
power relationships between human caretakers and animal residents” (2018:127). An
important aspect of exploring new ways of living together involves deliberation about
collective decisions: “One way to mitigate captivity and transform knowledge about the
care of farmed animal species is to incorporate animals in the decisionmaking process”
(ibid., see also Blattner, Donaldson and Wilcox 2020; Meijer 2019).
However, not all sanctuaries share the same commitment to foregrounding
animal agency and creating new societies with the animals, but instead focus on abol-
ishing relations, or simply on rescuing animals and highlighting suering. Sanctuaries
that are committed to reforming society may also adopt practices and policies that carry
traces of this attitude towards animal residents.4 This is unfortunate, because (partially)
viewing them as victims or patients of care obscures their agency and leaves intact
part of the existing power hierarchies which might reinforce the patterns of exclusion
sanctuaries aim to challenge (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2015). An image of nonhuman
animals as not capable of political agency or as having no interest in democratic interac-
tion lies at the basis of the political exclusion of other animals in western societies, and
stands in the way of reformulating communities together with them (Donaldson 2020;
compare Meijer 2019 on speaking for other animals in activism).
In the literature about human sanctuaries, understood broadly to include, for
example, refugee camps, shelters, and City of Sanctuary practices, this is a familiar theme
(Délano Alonso 2021; Squire and Bagelman 2013). When sanctuaries only focus on res-
cuing lives – which in the case of humans too is an act of resistance in a world in which
these lives are not valued – they are not automatically addressing the larger political
logic of insider and outsider, nor the injustices that led to the need for sanctuary for
certain groups in the rst place. In other words, rescuing refugees, or even assisting them
392021, issue 2
to become citizens in a given nation state, treats a symptom and does not address the
underlying problems (Agamben 1998). A narrative based on helping or rescuing also
leads to a risk of repeating hierarchical relationships in the sanctuaries themselves. In
order to explore this dynamic in more detail, I rst turn to Zatopia, a thought experiment
about a human sanctuary, and then discuss farmed animal sanctuaries.
Sanctuary as Utopia and the Risk of Repeating Exclusion
In the essay Nergensland (2017, Nowhere Land), Dutch green left politician Femke
Halsema introduces Zatopia. Zatopia is an imaginary city, located at the border of
Jordan and Syria, where refugee camp Zaatari is currently located. On the 200 km2 that
Zatopia would rent from Jordan, refugees would be able to work and study, and have
access to rights. They would build an economy and have democracy and freedom of
the press, as well as a police apparatus trained by the United Nations. The UN and the
UNHCR would guard Zatopia and have the right to keep people out. After a year of
good behaviour refugees would receive a refugee passport, with which they would be
able to travel and regain their freedom of movement. The government would be shared
between the refugee community and the UN. Zatopia should be seen as a common: a
space outside of the borders of existing nation states, where those previously without a
right to rights would have them. Written in response to the European “refugee crisis”
that began in 2013, Halsema’s rationale behind developing this utopia is that Europe
cannot simply open borders and welcome all refugees, for this would lead to too much
pressure on existing European countries. However, many humans are currently stuck in
refugee camps without the possibility of continuing their lives, a situation that can last
for many years. In order to overcome this impasse we need a common, a new type of
location, in between the countries the refugees ed and Europe.
The idea of establishing a Zatopia has rightfully received criticism from Dutch
antiracist and decolonial thinkers (a.o. Nduwanje 2018; Prins 2018). They argue that
borders remain closed, which leaves intact the idea and physical reality of “fortress
Europe”: a wealthy utopian society that needs to be protected from outside. The logic
of the nation state within this framework is not adequately challenged. Furthermore,
the hierarchy between white and non-white bodies is left intact, violence against non-
white humans is not taken seriously, and the historical and present exploitation of other
countries by European countries, both in colonial times and in the current age, is not
addressed. Olave Nduwanje (2018) calls Zatopia, for this reason, “more of the same”.
This criticism can be summarized by saying that the idea of Zatopia is a mere
pal li ative: instead of changing political and legal structures so that humans do not need
to leave their countries, challenging structures of economic exploitation, and/or turning
Europe into a welcoming place (see also Agamben 1998; Arendt 1996 [1943]), we would
found a large sanctuary which would in the end function as a sort of nation state for
the stateless, with increased monitoring and control of the movements and behaviours
of res idents. While this could indeed improve the opportunities of individual refugees
to lead a good life – they would be able to study and work, as would their children – it
leaves in tact structural inequalities, and could even legitimate them because it mitigates
excessive violence.
402021, issue 2
Problems with viewing farmed animal sanctuaries as utopias
Many farmed animal sanctuaries (FAS) bear similarities to Zatopia. Farmed animal
sanctuaries are committed to oering formerly exploited nonhuman animals a home
and care. The animal residents at these farms can “live out their lives” in safety until
they die of natural causes. Many of them are portrayed as ambassadors for their species.
Their personalities and relationships with one another and with humans are often made
public through social media posts and visitors’ programs, which aim to educate individ-
ual consumers about animal individuality and promote veganism.
Similar to Zatopia, FAS oer a space where nonhuman animal residents can
live in safety and build relationships, thereby realising and developing themselves over
time. There is border control in the form of fences, and their behaviours and relations
are monitored (see Emmerman 2014 for a discussion of the similarities between sanctu-
aries and zoos). They live in a site outside of the nation state, in which they have certain
rights, and which is developed in order to oer a permanent solution for those lucky
individuals who make it there, as the outside world cannot provide them with rights
or guarantee their safety. With some imagination we can also compare the structure of
government: animal agency provides input for how sanctuaries are run on a daily basis,
with human caretakers playing the role of the UN, providing additional knowledge and
protection. For example, the animals decide upon certain activities – they play, eat, sleep,
make friends, or negotiate social structures – while humans decide who lives where or
decide upon meal times, intervene in conicts, build shelters, and allow visitors from
outside or not.
There are of course also large dierences. Nonhuman animal rights are cur-
rently not recognized in the way that human rights are (awed though the system is
in the human case), and their position is therefore even more precarious. They did not
ee their country, but are without rights in their country of origin (Donaldson and
Kymlicka 2011). In contrast to humans in Zatopia they do not receive a passport after
a year – they usually can never leave the sanctuary because they would not be safe in
the outside world.
Part of the criticism that Zatopia attracted also applies to certain practices and
policies of farmed animal sanctuaries; for example, where sanctuaries focus on rescuing
individual animals and changing the behaviour of individual consumers by promoting
veganism, but do not address the larger structure underlying the political exclusion
of animals. Placing violence against nonhuman animal bodies in the forefront of out-
reach actions to the larger public, online and oine, and mentioning their exploitation,
does not automatically challenge the epistemic and cultural hierarchy between humans
and nonhuman animals (see Gillespie 2018 Chapter 6 for a careful discussion of this
problem).
This can be visible in attitudes towards political animal agency. Micro-agency
– for example, regarding what foods animal residents eat, which friends to hang out
with, preferences in interaction with visitors – is often respected in animal sanctuaries,
but nonhuman animals are thought not to be capable of, or have an interest in, making
decisions that concern the larger structures or their lives, specically the political struc-
tures (Donaldson 2020; Donaldson and Kymlicka 2015; Meijer 2019). In line with
412021, issue 2
ideas about animals in larger society, political nonhuman animal macro-agency is often
not taken seriously (for discussions of how micro-agency connects to macro-agency,
see Abrell 2019; Gillespie 2018; Jones 2014; see also Emmerman 2014). For example,
in FAS residents cannot usually choose to opt out of relations, they cannot leave the
community; there is sometimes species separation, which limits their options for social
choice; while they can choose not to engage with visitors, they cannot always choose
not to participate in visitor programs (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2015; Gillespie 2018);
and while how sanctuaries are run is often shaped by animal agency, there is often no
co-government, based on democratic negotiations about what the good life means to
them (ibid.; see Jones 2014 for an alternative; see also Donaldson and Kymlicka 2015,
2017). This focus on micro-agency can be visible in the narratives about the animal
residents in larger society, but also as sometimes provided by the sanctuaries themselves.
Animals are for example said to be “rescued” and can “live out their lives safely”, implying
there are human saviours who know what is best for the other animals.
When farmed animal sanctuaries are presented as utopias for animals living
there, emphasizing that they nally live the life they deserve (Abrell 2016; Donaldson
and Kymlicka 2015), they seem to be end stations where all is well. This glosses over the
diculties of caring for and working towards equality with formerly exploited animals,
but also obscures the new forms of agency that can arise in these settings, as well as the
possibilities for moving beyond anthropocentrism and the given power relations that
follow from that (Donaldson 2020; Emmerman 2014).
There is, furthermore, an additional problem, one that we do not nd in Zatopia.
Animal sanctuaries often rely on donations in order to be able to sustain themselves, so
they need to invest time and eort into fundraising and having visitors, which sometimes
compromises the wellbeing of residents and invades their privacy. Nonhuman animal
residents are in some farmed animal sanctuaries also expected to perform emotional
labour, such as, for example, cuddling with visitors. Elan Abrell (2016) argues sanctuary
animals in these cases can be seen as “sacricial citizens” because their interests and
rights are sometimes compromised by the practical, nancial, and educational priorities
of sanctuaries.
Statism and Pastoralism
Zatopia is a thought experiment that can shed light on problematic features of sanctu-
ary practices and policies. Specically, it draws our attention to the risks of repeating,
within sanctuary structures, the very political and social hierarchies that led to the need
for sanctuary in the rst place.
Vicki Squire and Jennifer Bagelman (2013) point to two possible dangers asso-
ciated with human sanctuary, namely statism and pastoralism. Statism refers to dividing
people into categories of citizens and noncitizens, which rearms state hegemony
and the logic of inclusion and exclusion. Pastoralism refers to a hierarchy of protector
and protected, and in this categorization certain lives are deemed worthy of protection
and others not; for example, refugees are often portrayed either as victims or crimi-
nals (ibid.). Pastoralism arms statism because it constitutes the noncitizen migrant or
refugee as apolitical.
422021, issue 2
Both pastoralism and statism can be found in nonhuman animal sanctuaries too.
As we saw, a focus on victimhood obscures their political agency as well as possibilities
for new political relations and engagements. Not recognizing political animal agency
is interconnected with their exclusion from the demos (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011;
Meijer 2019).
The need for sanctuaries follows from unjust political and economic systems.
The examples of Zatopia and farmed animal sanctuaries that replicate hierarchies in
their practices and/or policies make clear that instead of viewing sanctuary as a place,
or a set of practices, which support the integration of outsiders into a given people, the
underlying political structure needs to change. This requires rethinking membership
both in relation to national borders but also within nations, where we nd exclusionary
mechanisms regarding nonhuman animals but also human citizens. Moving beyond
statism and pastoralism requires not only a dierent attitude towards those needing
sanctuary, as (co-)authors of change, but also towards larger political (and economic)
structures (Abrell 2016, 2019; Délano Alonso et al. 2021).
In both human and animal cases there are sanctuaries and sanctuary practices
that address this challenge and focus explicitly on connecting to larger society. The
concept “expanded sanctuary” captures this intersectional movement which strives
towards justice for all (see also Abrell 2016, 2017, 2019; Délano Alonso et al. 2021;
Emmerman 2014; Pachirat 2018).
Expanded Sanctuary and Transforming Society
Nonhuman animals and refugees are not the only groups in society who fall outside
of the borders of the demos, either completely or partially, by being denied certain
rights, justice, or political voice. In the US, organizations such as BYP100, Mijente,
and Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) call for sanctuary for all communities
that experience criminalization, policing, and incarceration, especially Black commu-
nities. For example, social justice scholar Monique Worris and attorney and researcher
Andrea Ritchie (2017) argue for an expanded sanctuary that centres Black women,
girls, and femmes who experience racial proling, criminalization, and exclusion in
their daily lives.
Expanded sanctuary means that in providing and thinking about sanctuary we
should take into account not just those who come from abroad, but also those suer-
ing from injustices within societies. Furthermore, sanctuary requires a commitment to
changing the economic, political, and ecological structures that force refugees to leave
their country. This also requires providing support in countries abroad because wealth
is unequally distributed and countries in the global north have contributed to, and are
still involved in, the exploitation of other countries.
Providing sanctuary is in this understanding interconnected with working
towards social justice for all (Abrell 2019; Ferdowsian 2018), within and beyond state
borders (Délano Alonso et al. 2021).
Alexandra Délano Alonso (2021) shows that sanctuaries in places where the
economic and political conditions are insucient to guarantee protection and safety
for their own inhabitants can transform local communities, such as, for example, the
432021, issue 2
Las Patronas group of women who hand out food to migrants in freight trains passing
by their town of La Patrona, Veracruz, near the Gulf of Mexico. They do not view
their work as a hierarchical situation in which citizens assist migrants, but rather as an
egalitarian process which is not just about food, but also about sympathy, sharing and
solidarity. In this process, the groups are equal. Through the interactions the women
are transformed, and the rest of the community is too. This transformation can concern
gender roles, social awareness, or education about structures of violence that bring
about migration processes. The actions of these women not only form a critique of
violent structures, they also present the alternative. Délano Alonso describes this form
of sanctuary as a critical, dynamic and transformative practice which focuses on build-
ing new forms of community and relationships, aiming to challenge existing structures
of inclusion and exclusion. These practices of solidarity are not just a response to
unjust laws, or forms of civil disobedience, but rather consist of a new form of politics
that begin with a perspective of the equality of all, ultimately aiming to rebuild social
structures (see also Délano Alonso et al. 2021).
In order to further investigate what expanded sanctuary could mean in the case
of humans and nonhumans I will discuss two examples: VINE Sanctuary and the Dutch
migrant collective WE ARE HERE.
VINE Sanctuary
VINE Sanctuary is a farmed animal sanctuary that oers refuge to nonhuman animals
who were rescued from, or escaped, the egg, dairy and meat industries, cockghting, or
zoos (Blattner, Donaldson and Wilcox 2020; Jones 2014; jones 2014, 2019). The resi-
dents include chickens, cows, ducks, doves, emus, geese, pigeons, and sheep. In addition
to creating a multispecies community with the residents, VINE conducts research and
educates on local and national levels. By creating and sharing knowledge they aim to
contribute to systemic change in agriculture, trade, and consumption, as well as change
human attitudes in these matters. Working from an ecofeminist perspective, they actively
seek out alliances with other animal, environmental, and social justice organizations.5
Furthermore, they emphasize the importance of taking seriously animal agency
in their community (Blattner, Donaldson, Wilcox 2020, Jones 2014; jones 2014, 2019).
The spaces, practices, routines and relations in VINE sanctuary are almost all co-formed
by the animals (see Jones 2014 for a discussion of how this works with chickens). While
there are limitations on the residents’ agency for reasons of their safety, a hostile larger
society, and the fact that agency is always inuenced and limited by living with others,
the humans who live and work with them actively search for ways to foster subjec-
tivity, communication, and relations (ibid.). The animal residents express themselves in
myriad ways: they take on dierent social roles in the group, choose their own spaces to
live, make friends of dierent species, shape social norms and co-author governments.
Humans in VINE and similar sanctuaries no longer behave as hosts or rulers who have
predecided what is the best way to act, but engage in sometimes dicult processes, with
uncertain outcomes, of question and response with the animal residents in order to nd
out (Blattner, Donaldson, Wilcox 2020; Jones 2014; jones 2014, 2019).
Sanctuaries like VINE can have a transformative eect on society. Donaldson
442021, issue 2
and Kymlicka (2017) argue that they are spaces for deep learning and slow transfor-
mation.6 This “slow transformation” model does not aim to attract visitors from cities
in order to convert them to veganism, but instead invests in connecting with the local
rural community they are part of, and in intersectional justice by “becoming a good
citizen of the local community (…) and planting the seeds of alternative rural economy
in Springeld” (2017, 4).
This model proposes to learn about care and justice with nonhuman animals.
In this understanding, both building better interspecies relations and connecting to
other social justice movements can contribute to changing larger political and economic
structures.
WE ARE HERE
A second example of an expanded sanctuary is the work of the Dutch group WE ARE
HERE. WE ARE HERE is a collective of undocumented and illegalized migrants,
based in Amsterdam, who campaign for human rights. The group came together
in 2012, when they decided to collectively squat a building. Shelters in the city of
Amsterdam can only be used between 5 pm and 9 am, and the collective wanted a real
place to live. Many members were in the Dutch asylum system for years or even decades
without receiving a residence permit. The rst real place of residence was the Vluchtkerk
(the refuge church). Their squatting of the building and the activities they organized
received a lot of attention in Dutch media. Celebrities performed there in solidarity,
and they organized a Christmas dinner which was open to everyone. Since then they
have squatted a series of buildings, and have been visible in dierent ways. They spoke
to journalists, participated in street demonstrations, gave concerts, and worked together
with a theatre collective. This allowed them to bring to light their precarious position,
and to voice their opinion about the Dutch system. WE ARE HERE members take
their own position as a starting point for bringing to light problems with the Dutch
shelter system, focusing specically on the situation in Amsterdam. Instead of hiding, as
most undocumented refugees do, they make their daily realities visible. While they are
supported by volunteers and people who work for Vluchtelingenwerk, a Dutch organ-
isation that supports refugees, they are the ones in charge and speak up for themselves.
The collective is constantly in ux – some gain Dutch residence permits, others
disappear. It currently exists of dierent sub-groups, such as a women’s collective and
a Swahili collective. While some group members plead for citizenship, others explicitly
state they do not want citizenship, but basic human rights. They keep emphasizing that
all should have access to medical care, education, work, housing, freedom of expression,
and so on. The collective believes the right to speak up is extremely important for those
without rights.7
While adequately addressing the injustices WE ARE HERE face requires
institutional change, with their acts they already change the script and contest the
violent structures they are subjected to. When WE ARE HERE squat a church and
publicly speak out against an unjust system in the media, they claim the citizens’ rights
to housing and freedom of expression. With their acts they call the law into question
in creative ways and develop new ways of being heard and of expressing themselves
452021, issue 2
politically. By doing so, they put issues on the agenda that would otherwise not receive
much, or any, attention.
Sanctuary as Starting Point
In this brief exploration I explored the role of sanctuaries in working towards new
forms of political community, and mapped obstacles to this process. In both cases of
human and nonhuman sanctuaries, working towards a more just future requires more
than providing safety: it also asks for a critique of larger political, economic, and eco-
logical structures, and for being aware of the dangers of replicating hierarchies in the
contexts of sanctuaries.
Both VINE Sanctuary and WE ARE HERE explicitly challenge social and
political injustices beyond the scope of sanctuary. They also challenge the dichotomy
between citizen and non-citizen. While members of the WE ARE HERE collective do
not have ocial citizenship, many of them participate in society and have done so for
a long time. De facto, they are members of society, even though they are formally and
legally not recognized as such (see also Isin 2013; Johnson 2012; Sassen 2002).
In farmed animal sanctuaries such as VINE Sanctuary nonhuman animals also
exercise political agency and are members of the demos. While they do not take part in
street demonstrations, theatre plays, or are interviewed by newspapers, they do partic-
ipate in building new forms of community with others. The humans who form these
communities with them make sure of paying attention to their expressions and agency
in this process, and of learning from them (Abrell 2016, 2019; Blattner, Donaldson and
Wilcox 2020; Donaldson and Kymlicka 2015; Jones 2014; jones 2014, 2019). Jones
(2014) points out the importance of observation and learning from the animals them-
selves in VINE, especially in relation to freedom.
For those engaged in the human sanctuary movement, learning about these
processes in animal sanctuaries can be useful because they can shed light on the ways
in which humans seeking sanctuary can be silenced and not be taken seriously. They
present new ways of working towards equality, and show the importance of taking
seriously the political agency and voice of those who have no right to speak within
ocial democratic practices and institutions, and who might have internalized that
deprivation. These new interspecies societies also present a dierent perspective on
political membership which can inform new understandings of citizenship as a practice
instead of something that is given.
Working towards alternative forms of community and relationships with others,
and developing alternative political structures inside and outside of sanctuaries, requires
setting aside xed views of the demos and citizenship. It asks for discussing dicult ques-
tions, changing unjust institutions, and listening to others. In these processes sanctuaries
and sanctuary practices can provide safety or assistance, and oer a new starting point:
for conversation, imagination, and new relations.
462021, issue 2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
The author would like to thank the anonymous
reviewers for their valuable questions and comments,
Sue Donaldson, Yolande Jansen and Will Kymlicka
for feedback on earlier formulations of these ideas,
and everyone present at the Stakes of Sanctuary
workshop in Montréal, March 2019, especially Patti
Lenard and Laura Madokoro.
In this context Hobson (2007) makes a useful
distinction between “Politics” and “politics”.
“Politics” is often understood as the institutional
arrangements of the state and international relations.
This is however not the only space where political
acts occur. There are also peoples, spaces and
practices that challenge these institutions through
non-traditional political avenues, such as social
movements, as well as a politics of the ‘everyday’.
Hobson calls these acts, actors and movements
“politics”. While Politics often relies on rational
deliberation in human language, politics might
include street protests, acts of civil disobedience, art
and music. Hobson argues convincingly that other
animals also take part in politics.
In their book Zoopolis. A Political Theory of
Animal Rights (2011), which is one of the most
influential works in the political turn in animal
philosophy, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka focus
on these relations to develop a theory of political
rights. They propose to view domesticated animals as
co-citizens of shared multispecies communities, wild
animals as sovereign self-governing communities,
and liminal animals – those who live among humans
but are not domesticated, such as pigeons or rats –
as denizens.
As mentioned above, there are many different
types of sanctuaries that have different practices and
philosophies. In what follows I focus on farmed
animal sanctuaries. I recognize the wide variety of
practices that take place in farmed sanctuaries, as
well as outside constraints on nonhuman animal
agency (for example, the need for fences; see Jones
(2014) for an exploration of this issue in relation to
chicken freedom). My point here is not that there
are “good” or “bad” sanctuaries, but rather to zoom
in on a certain aspect of human/nonhuman animal
relations in certain sanctuaries.
See http://vinesanctuary.org for a longer
description and photographs.
One example of deep learning in the context
of farmed animal sanctuary is in veterinary
medicine. Currently, there are not many places
where farmed animals can live until their natural
death – they are usually killed when they reach
adulthood. In sanctuaries people have learned about
medical care for older farmed animals, and through
internships and connections with other vets and
scientists brought these insights back into veterinary
knowledge (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2017).
https://wijzijnhier.org/tijdslijn/
what-did-we-achieve-in-four-years/
Notes
Abrell, Elan. 2016. “Saving Animals: Everyday
Practices of Care and Rescue in the US Animal
Sanctuary Movement.” PhD diss., The City
University of New York.
Abrell, Elan. 2017. “Interrogating Captive Freedom:
The Possibilities and Limits of Animal
Sanctuaries.”Animal Studies Journal6, no. 2: 1-8.
Abrell, Elan. 2019. “Sanctuary-Making as Rural
Political Action.”Journal for the Anthropology
ofNorth America22, no. 2: 109-11.
Adams, Carol. 2010 [1990]. The Sexual Politics of
Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory.
London: Continuum.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998.Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power
and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 1996 [1943]. “We Refugees.” In
Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile. ed. Marc
Robinson, 110-119. Washington: Harvest
Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism.
New York: Harcourt Brace.
Aristotle. 1991 [350 BC]. “History of Animals.”
In Books VII–X, translated by David Balme. .
Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library.
Blattner, Charlotte, Sue Donaldson & Ryan Wilcox.
2020. “Animal Agency in Community: A
Political Multispecies Ethnography of VINE
Sanctuary.” Animals and Politics 6: 1-22.
Carney, Megan et al. 2017. “Sanctuary Planet: A
Global Sanctuary Movement for the Time of
Trump.” Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space. http://societyandspace.org/2017/05/16/
sanctuary-planet-a-globalsanctuary-movement-
for-the-time-of-trump/#Coutin 2011
Cochrane, Alasdair, Robert Garner, and Siobhan
O’Sullivan. 2016. “Animal Ethics and the
Political.” Critical Review of International Social
and Political Philosophy 19(1): 1–17.
Délano Alonso, Alexandra. 2021. “Sanctuary in
Countries of Origin.” Migration and Society 4(1):
84-98.
Délano Alonso, Alexandra, Farman, Abou, McNevin,
Anne, & Ticktin, Miriam. 2021. “Sanctuary
Says”,Migration and Society,4(1), 16-18.
References
472021, issue 2
Derrida, Jacques. 2000. Of Hospitality: Anne
Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond.
Trans. Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford Univ.
Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2008. The Animal That Therefore I
Am. New York: Fordham University Press.
Despret, Vinciane. 2016. What Would Animals Say If
We Asked Them the Right Questions? Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press.
Donaldson, Sue. 2020. “Animal Agora: Animal
Citizens and the Democratic Challenge.”Social
Theory and Practice46(4): 709-735.
Donaldson, Sue & Will Kymlicka. 2011. Zoopolis: A
Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Donaldson, Sue & Will Kymlicka. 2015. “Farmed
Animal Sanctuaries: The Heart of the
Movement?” Politics and Animals, 1(1): 50-74.
Donaldson, Sue & Will Kymlicka. 2017. “Co-Citizens
in Resistance, Community Building, and
Knowl edge formation.” Paper presented at the
Wesleyan Sanctuary Conference, September
2017.
Emmerman, Karen S. 2014. “Sanctuary, Not Remedy:
The Problem of Captivity and the Need for
Moral Repair.” InThe Ethics of Captivity, edited
by Lori Gruen, 213-230. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Ferdowsian, Hope. 2018. Phoenix Zones: Where
Strength Is Born and Resilience Lives. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Francione, Gary L.2008. Animals as Persons: Essays
on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation. Columbia:
Columbia University Press.
Garner, Robert. 2013. A Theory of Justice for Animals.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gillespie, Kathryn. 2018.The Cow with Ear Tag
#1389. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gillespie, Kathryn. 2019. “For a Politicized
Multispecies Ethnography: Reflections
on a Feminist GeographicPedagogical
Experiment”.Politics and Animals5: 17-32.
Gruen, Lori. 2015. Entangled Empathy: An Alternative
Ethic for Our Relationships with Animals. New
York: Lantern Books.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. The Theory of Communicative
Action Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of
Society. Boston: Beacon Press.
Halsema, Femke. 2017. Nergensland: nieuw licht op
migratie. Amsterdam: Ambo-Anthos.
Hobson, Kersty. 2007. Political Animals? On Animals
as Subjects in an Enlarged Political Geography.
Political Geography 26 (3): 250-267.
Isin, Engin. 2013. “Theorizing Acts of Citizenship”.
In Acts of Citizenship, edited by Isin, Engin F.,
and Greg M. Nielsen. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Johnson, Heather. 2012. “Moments of Solidarity,
Migrant Activism and (Non)Citizens at Global
Borders: Political Agency at Tanzanian Refugee
Camps, Australian Detention Centres and
European Borders.”. In Citizenship, Migrant
Activism and the Politics of Movement, edited
by Nyers, Peter, and Kim Rygiel. New York:
Routledge.
Jones, Miriam. 2014. “Captivity in the Context of
a Sanctuary for Formerly Farmed Animals.”
InThe Ethics of Captivity, edited by Lori Gruen,
90-101. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
jones, pattrice. 2014.The Oxen at the Intersection: A
Collision. Brooklyn: Lantern Books.
jones, pattrice. 2019. “Queer Eros in the Enchanted
Forest: The Spirit of Stonewall as Sustainable
Energy.”QED: A Journal in GLBTQ
Worldmaking6, no. 2 (Summer): 76-82.
Keulemans, Chris. 2017. ”Amsterdammers maar
geen Nederlanders.” de Groene Amsterdammer,
May 31, 2017. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/
amsterdammers-maar-geen-nederlanders
Ko, Aph, and Syl Ko. 2017. Aphro-Ism: Essays on Pop
Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two
Sisters. Herndon: Lantern Books.
Lenard, Patti and Laura Madokoro. 2021. “The Stakes
of Sanctuary”,Migration and Society,(1), 1-15.
Retrieved Apr 2, 2021.
Meijer, Eva. 2019. When Animals Speak. Toward an
Interspecies Democracy. New York: NUY Press.
Nduwanje, Olave. 2018. “Femke Halsema’s tirannie
van de middelmaat.” Oneworld.nl, August 8,
2018. https://www.oneworld.nl/movement/
femke-halsemas- burden-de-tyrannie-van-de-
middelmaat/
Pachirat, Timothy.2018.“Sanctuary.” InCritical
Terms for Animal Studies,edited by Lori Gruen,
337-55. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Prins, Janneke. 2018.“Halsema’s Nergensland biedt
vluchtelingen geen perspectief.” socialisme.nu,
January 23, 2018. https://socialisme.nu/
halsemas-nergensland-biedt-vluchtelingen-
geen-perspectief/
Rancière, Jacques. 2014.Hatred of Democracy. New
York City: Verso Books.
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Oxford:
Oxford UP.
Regan, Tom. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ritchie, Andrea and Monique Morris. 2017.
“Centering Black Women, Girls, Gender
Nonconforming People and Fem(me)s in
Campaigns for Expanded Sanctuary and
Freedom Cities.” National Black Women’s Justice
Institute. https://forwomen.org/wp-content/
uploads/2017/09/Centering-Black-women-
final-draft6.pdf.
482021, issue 2
Eva Meijer is a philosopher and writer. Meijer
works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University
of Amsterdam (NL), on the four-year research
project The politics of (not) eating animals, supported
by a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council,
and as a postdoctoral researcher in the project
Anthropocene ethics: Taking animal agency seriously at
Wageningen University and Research (NL). She
is the chair of the Dutch study group for Animal
Philosophy. Recent publications include When
animals speak. Toward an Interspecies Democracy (New
York University Press 2019), Animal Languages
(John Murray 2019) and The Limits of my Language
(Pushkin Press 2021). Meijer wrote twelve books,
fiction and non-fiction, and her work has been
translated into eighteen languages. More information
can be found on her website: www.evameijer.nl
Biography
Sassen, Saskia. 2002. “The Repositioning of
Citizenship: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for
Politics.”Berkeley Journal of Sociology 4-26.
Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation. New York:
HarperCollins.
Smuts, Barbara. 2001. “Encounters with Animal
Minds.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (5):
293-309.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the
Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the
Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson
and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Squire, Vicki and Jennifer Bagelman. 2013. “Taking
Not Waiting: Space, Temporality and Politics
in the City of Sanctuary Movement.” In
Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics
of Movement, edited ny Peter Nyers and Kim
Rygiel, 146-165.
Taylor, Sunaura. 2017. Beasts of Burden: Animal and
Disability Liberation. New York: The New Press.
VINE Sanctuary. http://vinesanctuary.org
Wadiwel, Dinesh.2015. The War against Animals.
Leiden: Brill Publishers.
Yukich, Grace. 2013. “Constructing the Model
Immigrant: Movement Strategy and Immigrant
Deservingness in the New Sanctuary
Movement.” Social Problems 60 (3): 302-320.
492021, issue 2
Dossier: Adorno’s Minima Moralia at 70
This year is the 70th anniversary of the publication of Adorno’s Minima Moralia. Written
on the occasion of Max Horkheimer’s 50th birthday, these “reections on damaged life”
(as the subtitle reads) became, after publication in 1951, widely read also outside of aca-
demic circles, and established Adorno’s reputation as an essayist and public intellectual
in post-war Germany. Jürgen Habermas later referred to it as the author’s “Hauptwerk”,
(“that one can study as though it were a summa”) and while it may have to compete for
this title with the later-written books Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory, it is safe to
say that Minima Moralia is in any case the richest of Adorno’s books, in thematic scope,
emotional depth, and most certainly in literary style.
In the canon of philosophical works, it is dicult to nd anything like it. There
are of course precursors, like Pascal’s Pensées, Nietzsche’s Morgenröte, and Benjamin’s
Einbahnstrasse, but still Adorno’s aphorisms are quite unique, weaving together parodies
of poems or lullabies, personal memories, dense philosophical prose, art and literary
criticism, and social and cultural analysis. Some of his most quoted lines, like “The
whole is the false”, “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly”, and “The splinter in your eye
is the best magnifying glass”, come from this work, even though Adorno himself would
shudder at the thought of his philosophy being reduced to set of catchphrases.
Adorno’s work has, in recent years, again gained a lot of interest, but one might
argue that his use of the genre of the philosophical aphorism has had little follow-up
(nor, for that matter, by Adorno himself, who did not write anything resembling it in
later life). Today, especially, the practices and institutions of academic publishing, and
the cultural hegemony of analytic philosophy, all but forbid anything diering from the
“steel-hard shell” of the journal-article.
This is why, on the occasion of this anniversary, Krisis decided to make a dossier
devoted to Minima Moralia, which is at the same time dedicated to the aphorism form.
We asked a diverse group of authors to write a short, aphoristic text. The topic was of
their own choosing; it didn’t have to deal with Adorno’s philosophy, let alone would we
dare ask authors to write in an “Adornian” style. Rather, we asked the authors to pick a
quote and/or fragment from Minima Moralia, and use it as a point of departure for their
own reections.
Either explicitly or implicitly, the contributions in this dossier together address
the question whether life, seventy years after publication of Minima Moralia, is still
damaged. Although we might not compare our own time and experiences to the ones
that Adorno lived through, we have in recent years, and are still, faced with numerous
catastrophes, not in the least the ecological catastrophe that puts grim truth to Adorno’s
lines that “even the blossoming tree lies the moment its bloom is seen without the
shadow of terror.” (§ 5)
While Minima Moralia was written only by Adorno, such was not the case in
many other texts produced by the Frankfurt School. Following the latter example, we
want to thank the many authors who contributed a text and the four co-editors: Samir
Gandesha, who was a guest editor on this dossier as well as Thijs Lijster, Tivadar Vervoort
and Guilel Treiber from the Krisis editorial board. Finally, a note on referencing: since
502021, issue 2
the authors used dierent translations of Minima Moralia, or sometimes chose to amend
an existing translation or use their own translation, we decided to refer in all cases only
to the aphorism number. With this strategy we also encourage readers to read the entire
aphorism when they are interested in the reference.
512021, issue 2
From Downton Abbey to Minneapolis:
Aesthetic Form and Black Lives Matter
Tom Huhn
After 400 years of brutality and oppression, what nally made possible for a majority
of American citizens the realization that some large portion of our fellow citizens con-
tinues to be systematically diminished and discriminated against? One answer is Netix
and HBO, along with the whole suite of online viewing platforms that deliver visual
narratives.
By summer 2020 there was a certain fatigue – after months of quarantine
viewing – and thus an appetite for more compelling drama. More pointedly – and here
is where the role of aesthetic form becomes prominent – there was the preparation
provided over the last several years by the expansion of a relatively new form of visual
narrative, of the miniseries and multi-season series formats. Contemporary viewers are
thus aorded, via these novel forms of consuming narrative, a more extended, nuanced,
and thus deeper involvement with whatever dramas unfold. We thereby became, by
means of our narrative imaginations having been reformatted and extended, more
invested in the signicance of things and perhaps thereby more attentive. These formats
cultivated in us a hunger for an ever-greater commitment to extended drama, just like
that which Aristotle dened as the enactment of the meaning of what human beings do.
Regardless of how explicit the video evidence of black people being dehu-
manized and killed, we have only our imaginations to rely on to tell us the meaning of,
and allow us to sympathize with, the horrors that we witness. However well-meaning
all those Sidney Poitier lms, or the poignancy of Norman Rockwell’s paintings of
integration, whatever sympathy they elicit seems not to have suciently prompted
the imaginations of white people; they did not go deep enough within the souls of
white folk to rouse them very far up. So too the relentlessness of the video evidence
of violence against blacks, the CNN format of the 24-hour repetition compulsion of
horror, which often leaves us more numb than awakened. Evidence, sadly, might prove
insucient fuel for the imagination.
We can only imagine ourselves, unfortunately, into the humanity of our fellow
citizens – as well as our own (which remains an ongoing task for each of us) – and I’m
suggesting that what might have played a critical role in the retrotting of the white
imagination such that it could take in the reality of ‘I can’t breathe,’ is that black lives can
come to matter only if the white imagination is prepared to see them and to admit it.
Other commentators on race relations, far wiser, believed that love would be the means
for preparing the expansion of the imagination. But, in the imagination, love – at least
in regard to race – has shown itself to be as feckless as evidence.
In the face of the ongoing insuciency of love, the multi-season, multi-episode
form of visual narrative helped make possible what love has been thus far incapable of.
It’s as if the accumulation, nally, of so many previous seasons of violence against blacks,
the episodes of Emmett Till, Rodney King, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland,
Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, et al., culminated
in the season nale George Floyd. Binge-watching helped prepare the imagination to
522021, issue 2
realize Floyd’s murder as the culmination of too many episodes and seasons of brutality.
I don’t in any way mean to equate these horric events and murders with entertain-
ment, but I do believe that what made it possible only now for white America to see the
meaning of them is that they appeared to happen – in the imagination – according to the
aesthetic forms by which we now mostly consume visual dramas. (Note the curiosity
that the broadcast of Roots in 1977 was one of the very rst miniseries).
Human actions become meaningful when the imagination has the means and
forms to make them appear so. Aristotle explains in his Poetics that art is superior to
history because the latter, regardless how true, remains too close to events for their
signicance to be experienced. History thereby oers precious little opening for us to
imaginatively take in and feel the drama of events. It’s as if we couldn’t fully imagine the
extent of the system of tragedy until we had repeatedly witnessed an unending mini-
series of tragedies. Consider again the prophecy of Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution
Will Not Be Televised; the revolution that consists of the realization of systemic racism
was indeed televised, but only after television was revised to aord the appearance of a
deeper and broader drama. Seeing exactly what continues to happen did not suce to
elicit the desire for change. We can’t know the meaning of the reality we inhabit until
it appears as a form we can imagine it in. And only then, perhaps, might we begin to
imagine it otherwise.
Tom Huhn is the chair of the Art History and BFA
Visual & Critical Studies Departments at the School
of Visual Arts in New York City. He received a PhD
in Philosophy from Boston University, and has
been a visiting professor at Yale University and the
University of Graz, Austria. His books include:
Imitation and Society: The Persistence of Mimesis in the
Aesthetics of Burke, Hogarth, and Kant;The Cambridge
Companion to Adorno;The Wake of Art: Criticism,
Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste; andThe Semblance
of Subjectivity: Essays in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory.His
publications include:New German Critique, Art &
Text, Oxford Art Journal, British Journal of Aesthetics,
Art Criticism, Telos, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Oxford Encyclopedia of
Aesthetics, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Art Book,
Art in America.Huhn has been a Getty Scholar and
Fulbright Scholar. Huhn’s curatorial works include:
«Ornament and Landscape,» at Apex Gallery; «Still
Missing: Beauty Absent Social Life,» at the Visual Arts
Museum and Westport Arts Center; “Between
Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary
Painting” at the Visual Arts Gallery, NYC.
Biography
532021, issue 2
Truthful Hope
Ruth Sonderegger
Wherever we look these days too little is happening too late although it is utterly clear
what needs to be done.
Despite the facts presented by both scientists and activists, the recent Glasgow
Climate Change Conference ended with empty proclamations and promises that will
hardly change the alarming speed of the climate change on planet earth. Similarly, the
pandemic, which is not yet over, has made it very clear that it is the poorly-paid jobs
related to reproduction and care that are the most essential ones; jobs that are executed
by people on whom we all depend. However, reproductive work is as belittled and
under- or unpaid as ever since the onslaught of capitalism. The worlds of so-called
professional caregiving, meatpacking, or logistics, are still the very hells of exploitation
and exhaustion as those which have been identied in earlier phases of the current
pandemic. Against all evidence that zoonotic diseases (like covid-19) have everything
to do with human practices of ever-more cruel encroachment into the habitats of
animals, for example by way deforestation, monocultures, or the sealing of soils, such
practices are intensied by the hour. Also, there is ample evidence that all of these
and many other global challenges cannot be met within the borders of nation-states.
Nevertheless, national borders are more than ever protected, if not militarized, and new
border walls are erected. “Westernized” (Ramón Grosfoguel) humans in particular seem
to be attracted to the illusion that they can rescue themselves by denying vaccines no
less than denying breathable air, non-toxic soil, regions of bearable temperatures, and
much more, to others, although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that isolated
solutions are a part of the problems we are facing. The brutalizing tendency of acting
with reckless disregard to the deaths of millions on the shores of rising seas, in deserts,
war-, border- or otherwise toxic zones, takes its toll even on those (mainly inhabiting
the global north) who prot from this neglect; what is more, we know it.
The blame for us northerners’ inability to act in light of what is knowable, if
not blatantly obvious, cannot solely lie with the defenders of post-truth or alternative
truth, although neither their existence nor the powerful networks and unsocial media
associated with them can be denied. Such enemies of truth are too easy a target for
those who see themselves as representatives of enlightenment and the search for truth.
The failure of the Glasgow Climate Change Conference is a very good case in point.
It made room for impressive and moving speeches by scientists, activists, and politicians
(particularly from the global south) whose ndings and warnings were not denied but,
worse, simply ignored, and therefore remained without consequence. Of course, there
are the myriads of vested (class) interests that are always present at conferences like
this one which recently ended in Glasgow, but there has to be more than the blatant
incapability of acting in accordance with what is obviously known; more than the
unwillingness to sacrice egoistic prots and privileges that are so clearly tied to the
ruin of the earth as we know it. It can’t be the vastness of the relations and networks of
a globalized world that keep humans from acting in accordance with what they know.
For there are fascinating stories, animated statistics, and what have you… that bring
542021, issue 2
us closer to the devastating and excruciating facts than we seem to be able to digest.
What is missing in even the most compelling evidence and the most obvious truths is
hope. Truth alone seems to not be enough. Or, according to Theodor W. Adorno, truth
alone is not even fully true. This is so because mere truth ties us, today more than ever,
to a cluster of disastrous barbarities that are obviously wrong even if their depiction
is correct. Therefore, Adorno writes in his reections upon the damaged life: “In the
end hope, wrested from reality by negating it, is the only form in which truth appears.
Without hope, the idea of truth would be scarcely even thinkable, and it is the cardinal
untruth, having recognized existence to be bad, to present it as truth simply because it
has been recognized.” (§ 61).
Such Adornian hope cannot be reduced to empty wishes. Much rather it is the
art of imagining and improvising an alternative to the facts that need to be researched,
talked about, and circulated as meticulously as possible and fought against as hopefully
as we can. However, only the ercest and most negative critics seem to be able to
practice such hope; critics such as, for instance, Asad Rehman, who spoke on behalf of
the “black, brown and indigenous people” of the global south at COP26. His closing
speech addressed the rich who oered nothing but “more empty words”. And he con-
tinued: “You’re not keeping 1.5 alive. You are setting us on a pathway to 2.5 degrees,
you’re setting the planet on re while claiming to act. Your greenwashing kills […]
but we are not without hope. It just will not rest with you but with us and we don’t
compromise on justice.”1
Adorno, Theodor W. 1951. Minima Moralia.
Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2005. Minima Moralia. Reflections
on a Damaged Life. London/New York: Verso.
Ruth Sonderegger (1967) is Professor of Philosophy
and Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna, Austria. She completed her PhD in
Philosophy at the Free University Berlin. From 2001
to 2009 she worked at the Philosophy Department
of the University of Amsterdam. Currently, she
researches the history and systematics of the concept
of critique as well as (everyday) practices of critique;
her second research focus is on the history of
aesthetics and its entanglements with the history
of colonial capitalism. Since 2004 she has been a
member of the editorial staff of Krisis: Tijdschrift voor
actuele filosofie [Krisis: Journal for Contemporary
Philosophy].
“‘Blackness Itself Is the Crime’: Bishop
William Barber on Racism in the Ahmaud Arbery
Murder Trial,” Democracy Now!, accessed November
17, 2021, cf. min15:06-16:28. https://www.
democracynow.org/2021/11/15/rev_dr_william_
barber_ahmaud_arbery.
Notes Biography
1
References
2021, issue 2
The Idea of Tolerance and The Perspective of The Individual
Arthur Cools
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
DOI Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 55-56.
10.21827/krisis.41.2.38240
552021, issue 2
The Idea of Tolerance and The Perspective of The Individual
Arthur Cools
How is critical theory possible? – The question must have had an immediate urgency in
the context in which Adorno was writing the aphorisms of Minima Moralia. The legit-
imacy of Max Horkheimer’s distinction between critical theory and traditional theory
and the social relevance of the interdisciplinary research programme at the Institut für
Sozialforschung were radically at stake given World War II and the ongoing destruction
of the European continent through fascism. Exiled in the United States, Adorno was
facing the breakdown of civil society, the subjugating logic of industrial production,
the rise of the consumer society, the solitude of the individual. The historical context
has changed but late-capitalist production, individualism, and consumer society did not
disappear.
How is critical theory possible? – the question still demands. The answer to
this question that motivated Adorno to write the aphorisms of Minima Moralia is “the
sphere of the individual”: in this sphere, he contends that “… critical theory lingers not
only with a bad conscience” (“Dedication”).1 In the individualist society, the historical
meaning of the social and the inner conicts of society are repressed, but they re-appear
in the experience of the individual. Moreover, in an individualist society, the emanci-
patory power of contestation can only come from the individual. The aphorism is the
form that imposes itself in order to take into account this condition of the individual.
The negative is given with this form because the aphorism does not lead to synthesis.
It refuses to be integrated with the dialectical unication of opposites. However, the
aphorism is not sealed – it is not a hedgehog as in the case of Schlegel’s Romantic
idea of aphorism – it leads the individual beyond itself. It intends to reveal and express
from the perspective of the individual the meaning of the social, the various relations
of actual society to the individual, and how far disconnected they may be from a true
sense of universality. There is no encompassing theory, no argument-based connections
between denitions, no conclusions, but in each fragment, a new unique reection on
basic concepts of modernity and modern society arising from a minimal individual
sensibility; – how does critical theory appear from this condition?
Tolerance is such a concept to which Adorno draws our attention in the aph-
orism “Mélange” (§ 66). It is a fundamental principle in a multicultural society. The
idea of tolerance is based upon the argument that all people and all races are equal, but
“it lays itself open to the easy refutation by the senses”.2 Given the scientic evidence
that Jews are not a race, the idea of tolerance does not alter the fact that in the event
of a pogrom, it is the Jew who is intended to be killed. The “refutation” of the idea of
tolerance is not limited to the factual event of genocide. As an abstract normative ideal,
the idea of tolerance is complicit in supporting social mechanisms which neglect dier-
ences between individuals and stimulate convictions that not enough has been done to
consider individuals as equal. In this way, the individual is subsumed under a standard of
which they fall short. “To assure the black”, says Adorno (who is using here the N word
in German), “that he is exactly like the white man, while he is obviously not, is secretly
to wrong him still further.”3 From the perspective of the individual, the idea of tolerance
562021, issue 2
appears to be an instrument of adaptation to a given standard of norms. However, the
aphorism that critically reveals this complicity between the idea of tolerance and the
system of industrial capitalism cannot guarantee avoiding the risk of being unjust in its
turn. Nor can the individual that opposes the normative ideals of the system: “stubborn
enthusiasm for blacks gets along with outrage at Jewish uncouthness”.4
How then is critical theory possible? – The question is not resolved. The answer
is not given once and for all. Yet the very act of addressing this question anew in the
present context of political activism attests to the power of critical theory.
I slightly changed the English translation of
Minima Moralia by E.F.N. Jephcott (London / New
York, Verso, 2005) in accordance with the original
text that I quote in the footnote. “In ihr [die Sphäre
des Individuellen] verweilt die kritische Theorie
nicht nur mit schlechtem Gewissen.”
“Es setzt sich der bequemen Widerlegung durch
die Sinne aus, […].”
“Attestiert man dem Neger, er sei genau wie
der Weiße, während er es doch nicht ist, so tut man
ihm insgeheim schon wieder Unrecht an.”
“mit der sturen Begeisterung für die Neger
verträgt sich die Entrüstung über jüdische
Unmanieren.”
1
2
3
4
Arthur Cools is professor in the philosophy depart-
ment at the University of Antwerp. He teaches
Contemporary Philosophy (continental tradition),
Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics. He publishes in the
field of critical theory, philosophy of literature,
herme neutics and contemporary French phenome-
nol ogy. He is the author ofLangage et subjectivité.
Vers une approche du différend entre Maurice Blanchot et
Emmanuel Levinas(2007) and has co-editedLevinas
and Literature. New Directions(2021),Kafka and the
Universal(2016),Debating Levinas’ Legacy(2015),
Metaphors in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy
(2013),andThe Locus of Tragedy(2008) amongst others.
BiographyNotes
572021, issue 2
The Possibility of a “Felt Contact with Objects”
Sudeep Dasgupta
In the “Dedication” to Max Horkheimer which opens Minima Moralia, Adorno reects
on the personal aphorisms which follow thus: “Subjective reection, even if critically
alerted to itself, has something sentimental and anachronistic about it” . Sentimentality,
because the reections of the subject seem irrelevant or deluded in the face of the
objective conditions which have precipitated “the dissolution of the subject” (ibid).
Reections from a damaged life, the subtitle of the collection, will have something
anachronistic about them, because the life out of which the subject reects has been
thoroughly debased by the social relations of production: “Our perspective of life has
passed into an ideology which conceals the fact that there is life no longer”. However,
in typical Adornian fashion, the dim and depressing picture being drawn will be given
a negative dialectical turn of the screw. Adorno continues: “But the relation between
life and production, which in reality debases the former to an ephemeral appearance of the
latter, is totally absurd … Reduced and degraded essence [life] tenaciously resists the
magic [produced by production] that transforms it [life] into a façade” (ibid., emphasis
added). In what follows, I will glean those moments in Minima Moralia where Adorno’s
reections from this debased and degraded life oer ways of thinking resistance.
In his defense of the particular Adorno assigns “individuation” not “the inferior
status” in relation to the whole Hegel constructs, but “a driving moment in the process”
of a social and historical totality marked by contradiction. Precisely because “the social-
ization of society has enfeebled and undermined him”, Adorno argues “the individual
has gained […] in richness, dierentiation and vigour” (17). A politics of the possible
emerges from the very rifts and contradictions engendered by objective conditions and
registered at the level of subjective experience. That is why the violent conditions of
socialization are both the context and the very conditions of possibility for resisting it.
Minima Moralia closes in the “Finale” with the suggestion “Perspectives must be fash-
ioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices” as
both “indigent and distorted”. Yet these perspectives can only emerge from perspectives
“marked […] by the same distortion and indigence which it seeks to escape” (§ 153).
How can estranging perspectives on the world emerge from “felt contact with objects”
(§ 153)1 in an estranged world, and what help could Adorno’s reections in Minima
Moralia oer?
The resistance of the object to conceptual capture, and the ways in which this
resistance is felt at the level of subjective experience, is precisely what the subject feels
in its contact with, rather than violent appropriation of, the object. The use of style
defamiliarizes the subject’s exposition of its relation to the object and registers, through
writing, the immorality of the demand to be clear and communicate. In “Morality and
style”, Adorno avers “Regard for the object, rather than for communication, is suspect
in any expression” (§ 64). The demand for “certain understanding”, that is the certainty
produced by perfect comprehension, negates what emerges when style registers “the
regard for the object” rather than its subsumption to concepts. Subjective experience
which registers “felt contact with objects” will sabotage the demand that the exposition
582021, issue 2
of thought must be made familiar to the reader through showing “explicitly all the
steps that have led him to his conclusion” (§ 50) to enable duplication.2 Estranging
perspectives on reality are expressed and registered through the form given to thought’s
relation to the object: “For the value of thought is measured by its distance from the
continuity of the familiar” (§ 50), its distance from “the instantaneous sizing-up of
the situation” in order “to see what is ‘going on’ more quickly than the moments of
signicance in the situation can unfold” (§ 92).3
The non-transparency of the objective world, sought to be made clear by
communicative reason and lucid language, requires a reformulation of the knowledge
produced by the subject. Reections that emerge from the damaged life of a subject
produce knowledge that registers precisely the contradictions, rifts and ssures which
accompany the subject’s experience of what Shierry Weber Nicholson (2019) calls
“malignant normality”. That is why in “Gaps”, Adorno asserts “knowledge comes to
us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppo-
sitions and exaggerations, in short through the dense, rmly-founded but by no means
uniformly transparent medium of experience” (§ 50 emphasis added). Estranging perspectives
emerge then precisely from the felt experience with objects of the partly opaque and
contingent process by which thought reects on life as “a wavering, deviating line” (§
50). Experience registers the contingency of the normalcy of domination, of life being
otherwise, of another “possible” life, and that is why Adorno casts life as “an ephemeral
appearance” rather than the permanent and achieved eect of reication. Miriam Bratu
Hansen (2011) has explored precisely the importance of bodily experience in Adorno’s
aesthetic theory where the contradictions, rifts, and violence of damaged life are reg-
istered. The concept of “dissonance” also describes precisely an aspect of subjective
experience from which Adorno begins to glimpse the possibility of a critical reection
on damaged life4.
Estranging perspectives on the given to think the possible, the deployment of
style to register the felt contact with the object, the potential of subjective experience
to register an indigent and distorted reality, the centrality of rifts, dissonance, and con-
tradiction in thinking the relation of the particular to the general – through the form
of the aphorism –, Minima Moralia congures modalities of resistance for a possible
other life as it itself, and as a collection/constellation the book exemplies the process
of “thought thinking itself”5 through a felt contact with objects.
592021, issue 2
1
2
3
4
5
Elsewhere Adorno begins to expand on this
aphoristic phrase: “in philosophy, we literally seek to
immerse ourselves in things that are heterogenous
to it, without placing those things in prefabricated
categories […] to adhere as closely to the hetero-
genous” (Adorno 2000, 13, emphasis added).
In “genuine style”, Adorno offers a counter-
formulation to systemic thinking. Here, he argues
that “style is a promise” to the extent that it refuses
“achieved harmony, in the questionable unity of
form and content, inner and outer, individual and
society” and registers the tension between the
poles of the general and the particular (Adorno
and Horkheimer 2002, 103; see also Edward W. Said
2007).
Critiquing the static character of systems in
which thought places objects and thus subsumes
them to concepts, elsewhere (2000, 25) Adorno
states: “To comprehend a thing itself, not just to fit
and register it in its system of reference, is nothing
but to perceive the individual moment in its
immanent connection with others”. An estranging
perspective refuses precisely the temporality of a
system, of thought as “instantaneous sizing-up”, and
notes the unfolding moments of the object in its
relation to others.
“What we differentiate will appear divergent,
dissonant, negative for just as long as the structure
of our consciousness obliges it to strive for unity”
(Adorno 2000, 5; See also Dasgupta 2019).
Cook analyzes Adorno’s call that “metaphysics
today should question whether, and to what extent,
thought can transcend the sphere of concepts, or
of thought objects, to think material things” (2007,
229). The essay is one place which fleshes out what
“the felt contact with things” for Adorno might
mean for philosophy. The subject’s feeling through
contact with things, as Adorno argues and Cook
explains, is quite different from the recent focus on
objects in Object-Oriented Ontology.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2000. Negative Dialectics. New
York: Continuum.
Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer. 2002.
The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical
Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bratu Hansen, Miriam. 2011. Cinema and Experience:
Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W.
Adorno. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cook, Deborah. 2007. “Thought Thinking itself.”
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 38
(3): 229-247.
Dasgupta, Sudeep. 2019. “The Aesthetics of
Displacement: Dissonance and Dissensus in
Adorno and Rancière.” In S. Durham, &
D. Gaonkar (Eds.),Distributions of the Sensible:
Rancière, between Aesthetics and Politics. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press.
Said, Edward W. 2007. On Late Style: Music and
Literature against the Grain. London: Vintage.
Weber Nicholson, Shierry. 2019. “Adorno’s
Minima Moralia: Malignant Normality and
the Dilemmas of Resistance.” Lecture at
Symposium “Theodor W. Adorno: Fifty Years
after his Death”, Institute of the Humanities,
San Francisco University, November 29, 2019.
References
Biography
Sudeep Dasgupta is Associate Professor in the
Department of Media Studies, the Amsterdam
School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and the
Amsterdam Centre for Globalization Studies (ACGS)
at the University of Amsterdam. His publications
focus on the aesthetics and politics of displacement
in visual culture, from the disciplinary perspectives
of aesthetics, postcolonial and globalization studies,
political philosophy, and feminist and queer theory.
Publications include “The Aesthetics of Indirection:
Intermittent Adjacencies and Subaltern Presences
at the Borders of Europe”, Cinéma et Cie 17:28
(2017), the co-edited volume (with Mireille Rosello)
What’s Queer about Europe ? (Fordham University
Press, 2014), and Constellations of the Transnational:
Modernity, Culture, Critique (Rodopi, 2007).
Notes
602021, issue 2
The Fragile Strength of a Dissolving Subjectivity
José A. Zamora
As a man who, by rights, should have been put to death, and according to whom it
was only by chance that he escaped the extermination perpetrated by the National
Socialists, he felt “the drastic guilt of him who was spared.” This feeling was born of the
inevitable complicity of the survivor and the basic principle of bourgeois subjectivity
that made such extermination possible in the rst place: coldness. In this respect, Adorno
had no doubts: one cannot continue to live if the enormous suering brought about by
catastrophe is constantly borne in mind. To continue reproducing one’s own existence
under the conditions established by capitalist socialization demands coldness in the face
of the suering of those who were annihilated. Such coldness is not simply an attribute
of certain individuals, but rather, it is an objective principle of social relations under
which all the members of capitalist society reproduce their existence.
Therefore, when rethinking the linkage between subjectivation and suering,
we must not overlook the fact that Adorno writes not about the damaged life but, rather,
from it. In Minima Moralia it is not the sovereign subject, master both of his own will and
ability to know, who ponticates on the just life. Rather, it is a subject who is doubly
wounded by the violence of the barbarity that blighted Europe and by the keen aware-
ness of the dehumanizing cost of continuing to live during and after the catastrophe. In
other words, it is a subject that acknowledges the impossibility of leading a just life in
the wrong and who therefore recognizes that it is no longer possible to experience the
truth about life other than by confronting its alienated form; that is, confronting “the
objective powers that determine individual existence even in its most hidden recesses”
(“Dedication”).
Indeed, thought becomes paralyzed when faced with such an unfolding of eec-
tive destruction, one that even assumes the irrational price of ultimate self-destruction.
Furthermore, many of the great ideas of enlightenment modernity pale in the face
of such destruction: reason, the subject, autonomy, emancipation, and progress. The
reversal of means and ends that undermines the enlightened imperative of treating indi-
viduals as ends themselves, which, within this tradition, could nevertheless be criticized
and countered, reveals the absurdity of the process of capitalist modernization which
consummates this reversal by transforming life into an ephemeral apparition. Before
such a process, naivety is no longer possible. Barbarity is not the other in relation to this
process. Rather, barbarity’s roots are buried in that process and its contradictions. This
fact requires a radical self-critique of enlightened modernity and its fundamental gures
of self-understanding. First, the idea of the subject, which in itself is an exemplary
compendium of the signal ideas of said modernity; all of Adorno’s eorts to radically
critique modern subjectivation and subjectivity are motivated by the experiences of
barbarity that blight the twentieth century. Such experiences drive him to attempt to
unravel not only the processes that constitute this specic subjectivity, but also the ties
that bind the crushing objectivity of the historical dynamic and the dissolution of the
subject, ties that became absolute in the extermination camps but was never limited to
the camps.
612021, issue 2
Throughout Minima Moralia, Adorno repeatedly reects on the conditions of
possibility of an inquiry into the subject’s experience of dissolution, which itself is
necessarily aporetic. This moment of reection is aporetic because even if one lacks
any intention of doing so, in its unfolding one reproduces the illusion of the same
subject that questions its own existence in light of its experience of self-annihilation.
For this reason, such reection cannot simply surrender itself to the immediacy of an
apparently authentic subjective experience, disregarding the objective mediation that
constitutes and transcends it. However, neither is there some theoretical understanding
of objectivity that dissolves the “subject” form without the painful experience of the
individual who has been emptied of this substance, one which can only come from
non-antagonistic objectivity, from a place free of coercion. Following Hegel’s inten-
tion and not his bias in favour of a false totality over and against the singular, Adorno
considers precisely that which disappears as essential in perceiving the true character of
the false totality. Recognition of the primacy of an antagonistic totality, of the objective
tendency that manifests itself in the annihilation of the individual, its eective ally, pro-
hibits its reication and, all the more, the glorication of a universality whose negativity
is accessible only through the individual experience of the coercion and domination
that ruin his life.
The point of intersection between antagonistic objectivity and individual
experience is suering, the “objectivity that weighs upon the subject; its most subjective
experience, its expression, is objectively mediated” (Adorno 1973, 17-18). Hence, for
Adorno, the two poles—individual experience and a critical theory of society—claim
each other, without the tension between them disappearing and without either one
being able to do without the other at any time. Theory that intends to articulate a crit-
ical self-awareness of reied social relations, which are objectied and almost closed o
to theoretical and practical questioning, must feed on subjective experience. However,
this experience needs this very same theory if it is to become an undiminished, unad-
ministered experience. This collaboration is possible because it involves an experience
that develops from its object as a contradictory and dynamic object and which, precisely
for this reason, is not purely subjective and insubstantial: the experience gathers in itself
all the burden of objectivity that courses through it, and as soon as it is mediated by the
rationality that informs this objectivity it makes possible its theoretical approach, namely
the work of the concept. Regardless of how weakened it became, for Adorno, the
possibility of experiencing in itself the coercive force that individuals suer in a society
marked by the tendency to total socialization had never been suppressed. Furthermore,
he never lost trust in the possibility that the content of that experience could emerge in
the interpretation of social and cultural phenomena. It is precisely upon such content
that the theory of social objectivity should draw.
622021, issue 2
José A. Zamora is a Senior Researcher at the
Institute of Philosophy (Spanish Higher Council
for Scientific Research - CSIC), Madrid-Spain.
PhD (Münster/Germany). His research lines are
Critical Theory (Th.W. Adorno, W. Benjamin),
Social Suffering, Authoritarianism, Philosophy
after Auschwitz, Political Theologies of Modernity.
Main publications:Krise -Kritik -Erinnerung.
Ein politisch-theologischer Versuch über das Denken
Adornos im Horizont der Krise der Moderne[Crisis –
Critique - Memory. A political-theological attempt
about Adorno›s thinking in the horizon of the
crisis of modernity] (1995),Th. W. Adorno: Pensar
contra la barbarie[Th. W. Adorno: Thinking against
Barbarism] (2004; port. 2008) andLa crisis y sus
víctimas[The crisis and its victims] (2014). He chairs
the «Sociedad de Estudios de Teoría Crítica» and is
editor ofConstelaciones. Revista de Teoría Crítica.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1973. Negative Dialectics.
London and New York: Routledge.
References Biography
632021, issue 2
Unity in Suffering
Nicholas Baer
“One should be united with the suering of people: the smallest step toward their plea-
sures is one toward the hardening of suering” (§ 5). Thus concludes the fth aphorism
of Minima Moralia, Part One (1944), where Theodor W. Adorno reects on the role of
the intellectual in a world of ongoing horror. Preguring Leo Löwenthal’s identication
of Nichtmitmachen (nonparticipation) as an essential feature of critical theory, Adorno
characterizes Mitmachen (participation) as a screen for the tacit acceptance of inhuman-
ity: the pleasantries of everyday sociability perpetuate silence on injustice, and aability
masks brute domination under the guise of egalitarianism. In place of a disingenuous
self-alignment with the oppressed and their sources of pleasure, steadfast isolation serves
as the intellectual’s sole form of solidarity, with suering as the true basis of unity.
Adorno’s statement marks a rebuke to Hegelian philosophy, which had rational-
ized individual suering as part of a grand metaphysical plan of history. This theodicean,
idealist philosophy had ascribed a higher truth or meaning to material suering, thereby
arming the existing social order and justifying abuses of power in the name of divine
right or progress. Joining a lineage of Hegel’s critics (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche), Adorno
and other members of the Frankfurt School sought to lend voice to the senseless,
irreparable suering of history. In Negative Dialectics (1966), Adorno wrote that if Hegel
“transgured the totality of historic suering into the positivity of the self-realizing
absolute,” the world spirit that moves forth—like the ruinous storm that drives Walter
Benjamin’s angel of history into the future—“would teleologically be the absolute of
suering” (2004, 320; see also Noble-Olson 2020).
Yet suering was not only a historical-philosophical issue for Adorno, but also
an aesthetic one. While Adorno was critical of a culture industry that oered a sinister
palliative for mass suering, re-consigning consumers to misery through false promises
of pleasure and escape, he also maintained that art was unique in its ability to give
expression to suering without betrayal. Famously asserting and later nuancing the
claim that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (1983, 34; see also 2004, 362),
Adorno postulated that the abundance of suering paradoxically both prohibits and
demands the existence of art, which necessitates an aesthetic autonomy from the real
suering that it nonetheless serves to remember. At the close of his posthumously
published Aesthetic Theory (1970), he asked “what would art be, as the writing of history,
if it shook o the memory of accumulated suering” (2002, 261).
When revisiting Minima Moralia today, Adorno’s resolute isolation from the
pleasures of the oppressed may sound ascetic and elitist, and his call for suering as a
point of unity rings hollow in a geopolitical landscape where even the most coercive
entities mobilize the rhetoric of victimhood (see Geuss 2005, 17-18). Yet, however
undierentiated and undialectical Adorno’s account of suering, it remains a vital anti-
dote to the often-cynical, reied politics of Leiden (suering, pain) and Mitleid (com-
passion, sympathy) in our own time. Adorno’s work helps to establish suering as a
key concern of philosophy, opening a series of questions that have lost none of their
actuality: Which art gives unbetrayed expression to suering? How can we avoid forms
642021, issue 2
of complicity, desensitization, and false comfort? And what is the role of the intellectual
in a world of violent domination and unremitting horror?
Adorno,Theodor W. 1983. “Cultural Criticism and
Society.” In Prisms, translated by Samuel and
Shierry Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2002. Aesthetic Theory. Edited by
Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, translated
by Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: Continuum.
Adorno,Theodor W. 2004. Negative Dialectics.
Translated by E. B. Ashton. London: Routledge.
Geuss, Raymond. 2005. “Suffering and Knowledge
in Adorno.” Constellations 12 (1): 3–20.
Noble-Olson, Matthew. 2020. “The Angels of
Accumulated Suffering.” New German Critique
47 (2): 217–246.
Nicholas Baer is Assistant Professor of Film Studies
in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at
the University of Groningen and Junior Fellow at
the Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study in
Greifswald. He has co-edited two volumes of film
and media theory: the award-winning The Promise of
Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 (University
of California Press, 2016) and Unwatchable (Rutgers
University Press, 2019). Baer has published on film
and media, critical theory, and intellectual history
in journals such as Film Quarterly, Leo Baeck Institute
Year Book, Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Seminar,
and October, and his writings have been translated
into six languages. At present, he is completing a
monograph, Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and
the Crisis of Historicism, which examines films of
the Weimar Republic in relation to the “crisis of
historicism” that was widely diagnosed by German
intellectuals in the interwar period.
References Biography
2021, issue 2
Politics of Solitude
Johan Hartle
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
DOI Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 65-66.
10.21827/krisis.41.2.38244
652021, issue 2
Politics of Solitude
Johan Hartle
“For intellectuals, unswerving isolation [Einsamkeit] is the only form in which they
can vouchsafe a measure of solidarity. All of the playing along, all of the humanity of
interaction and participation is the mere mask of the tacit acceptance of inhumanity”
(§ 5). This is one of Adorno’s descriptions of damaged life in the fth aphorism of
his Minima Moralia. After having missed the historical moment for redemption and
reconciliation, the intellectual is, somewhat narcissistically, presented as the one who
preserves the universal idea of humanity, which nds itself betrayed by the logic of the
everyday, by the false concreteness of popular culture, and the ctitious reality of ordinary
people. The postulation is, however, not free of bad conscience. In the next aphorism,
entitled “Antithesis”, he suggests the exact opposite: by not participating, the intel -
lectual also demonstrates snobbishness, falsely assuming to be better than ‘regular’ folks.
The general attitude of distance and the loss of social embeddedness reects
the historical experience of exile. Every “intellectual in emigration,” Adorno writes, “is,
without exception, damaged”. Forced to emigrate from Germany under fascism, the
experience of deracination and solitude had fully inscribed itself into the intellectual
disposition of the rst-generation Critical Theorist. This experience of exile following
the historical rupture caused by the failure of the progressive working-class movement
and the rise of fascism, strengthened and transposed the feeling of loss into an epochal
historical perspective.
In this sense, the specic intellectual disposition and the gesture of critique that
Adorno suggests bears a strong historical signature. This connects Adorno’s thought
with various post-colonial perspectives (diaspora philosophy) and even with certain
minority politics (if they are critical about dominant milieus and not merely arming
specic identities); but there are also other, less historically contingent, conditions under
which the situation of the intellectual is characterized by estrangement, distance, and
solitude.Exile and emigration also appear as structural conditions for the position of
the intellectual.
For what, really, is an intellectual? In Adorno’s concept of the intellectual, the
idea of intellectual labor is characterized by various forms of separation, specically
the separation of manual and intellectual labor, and of popular and high culture. In a
functionalist understanding of the intellectual (most famously presented by Antonio
Gramsci: “All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of
intellectuals.”), the intellectual is constituted by her institutional role. In this light (which
is not explicitly present, but neither alien to Adorno’s account) intellectuals are formed
by their position in social institutions (such as universities, museums, concert halls,
theatres, public media etc.). In bourgeois societies, such institutions full general, public,
and potentially universal tasks. Thus, being constituted and subjectivated by such insti-
tutions, also means to represent these ideas, tasks, and societal norms. The intellectual
is, as such, a representative of humanism, and of the ction of bourgeois universalism.
This is where the antinomies of the intellectual, as an embodiment of the norms,
begin. Clearly, no one can possibly embody the universal (not the Sartrean universal
662021, issue 2
intellectual, for sure). But no intellectual can persist without this ction. Living by, and
according to this ction, thus means overcoming the gravity of particular interests,
of lobby groups, specic cultural milieus, lifestyles, and so forth. It is also in this light
that gures of distance, solitude, tactical alienation, and strong aects against “the nice
people, the popular ones, who are friends with all” (§ 3) play a decisive role in Adorno’s
collection of aphorisms.
Ever since the French revolution, so Claude Lefort and others have emphasized,
the idea of democracy (equality, universality) was based on the idea that the throne of
the king had to remain empty. The intellectual, as a personication of this aporetic idea
of universality as an empty seat,has this contradiction inscribed into herself: she cannot
be the esh of universality and thus has to think beyond herself to also leave her own
chair empty for an idea of universality that is yet to come, or is at least postponed. This
is the existential antinomy by which the intellectual lives, the antinomy that is inscribed
into her social role. Distance, estrangement from common life, from popular milieus
and mass culture, the solitude of the intellectual, is unavoidable still. She is diasporic and
in exile.
Such condition bears, however, as all estrangement, a messianic dream of rec-
oncilement: of the intellectual and the people, of the material organization of social life
and the universal claims and promises that bourgeois society have given for the past
250 years. She has to believe in the possibility of real universality and thus has to abstain
from “the toasts of cozy sociability”.
Johan Hartle is the dean of the Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna. He held professorships at the State
University for Arts and Design Karlsruhe, the
Academy of Fine Arts Münster/Westphalia, and the
China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. For several
years he taught philosophy of Arts and Culture at
the University of Amsterdam (UvA). His publications
include:Aesthetic Marx(London: Bloomsbury 2017,
edited, with Samir Gandesha),The Aging of Adorno‘s
Aesthetics(Milan: Mimesis 2021, edited with Samir
Gandesha and Stefano Marino).
Biography
672021, issue 2
Intellectual Bad Conscience and Solidarity with the Underdogs
Titus Stahl
There are few aphorisms in Minima Moralia that display a less sympathetic attitude
towards their subject than “They, the people” (§ 7). Adorno denounces the “amor intel-
lectualis for [the] kitchen personnel” in the subsequent aphorism, but “They, the people”
already seems to conrm all suspicions about the alleged elitism of critical theory. The
idea that intellectuals mostly encounter those less educated when “illiterates come to
intellectuals wanting letters written for them” is laughable, even for the 1950s, and the
claim that, among the “underdogs”, “envy and spite surpass anything seen among literati
or musical directors” (ibid.) oozes with contempt, no matter how much Adorno insists
that these alleged character decits result from the social structures in which unedu-
cated, working class people nd themselves.
Yet the point of Adorno’s remarks is not to disprove a deferential form of a
Lukácsian “standpoint theory”, according to which workers are epistemically and/or
perhaps even morally superior to the intellectuals who take up their cause. Rather,
he wishes to criticize those intellectuals who promote such theories because of the
“justied guilt-feelings of those exempt from physical work”. While Horkheimer had
already criticized those who were “satised to proclaim with reverent admiration […]
the creative strength of the proletariat” as evading intellectual eort in “Traditional
and Critical Theory” (1975, 124), Adorno oers a social-psychological explanation of
persistence of this form of deferential standpoint theory: It is a species of bad conscience
arising from the fact “that intellectuals are […] beneciaries of a bad society” as he puts
it later in Minima Moralia (§ 86).
This critique seems to have become obsolete, however. Not only is it a mistake
to read Lukács’ original argument as entailing that working-class people have superior
knowledge even before any theoretical eort—an insight of which feminists such as
Hartsock (1983), who took up Lukács’s argument in the 1970s to formulate more well-
known versions of “standpoint theory”, were well aware—no serious theory espouses
anything close to such an uncritical deference to the working class, the existence of
which is in any case up for debate.
What, then, remains of Adorno’s argument? What remains is the question of
whether there is a distinctive standpoint characteristic of intellectuals, rooted in their
social situation—one that induces a systematic “guilty conscience” that prevents a real-
istic assessment of their own situation.
Being exempt from hard physical labor is no longer a distinctive character-
istic of intellectual professions. What makes intellectual—including academic—labor
dierent from other forms is that it is impossible to control it by spelling out in advance
the steps that intellectuals must perform and how to perform them. Those tasked with
coming up with theories, narratives, or justications must be accorded a certain amount
of autonomy in their work if they are to perform it at all.
This has always made intellectuals suspect in the eyes of their managers, since
there seems to be no completely reliable way to ensure the subordination of their
activities to institutional imperatives. The desperate attempts to quantify “academic
682021, issue 2
output” and the equally desperate attempts of humanities departments to show that
they produce some sort of predictable benets for society (in the form of “critical
thinking skills”) are evidence of a desire to dissolve these suspicions.
In the “Culture Industry” chapter of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno spec-
ulates that the “remnant of autonomy” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, 105) which
intellectuals still enjoy, is on the brink of being replaced by their total subordination
to the interests of the market or, more directly, economic-political rulers. His claim
that ideology is being replaced by direct command has been proven false, however,
and intellectual production has not disappeared as a functional requirement for social
integration.
Yet intellectuals face suspicion not only from those who, more or less grudg-
ingly, grant them the freedom to perform their function in the cultural and educa-
tional sphere, but also from those whose work is more directly subordinated to social
imperatives. It is a cliché among academics that their relatives openly wonder how
one can earn a living doing things that one cannot really explain. There is always a
ne line between this skepticism and open resentment of the fact that intellectuals
are not subject to those forms of subordination and control that others face in their
daily working lives. Not a small part of the hatred directed towards “liberal elites” may
derive from this resentment. The bad conscience of intellectuals that results from their
internalization of this resentment, and their acceptance of the claim that they enjoy
substantive privileges, can still be detected everywhere, even if it is no longer expressed
by an attempt to subordinate themselves to the cause of “the workers”.
This bad conscience is not a feeling that leads to any form of progress, however.
It leads those in intellectual professions to overstate the amount of freedom they enjoy,
which is always conditioned in any case, and it causes them to come up with uncon-
vincing justications for why they, in particular, should be exempt from direct subordi-
nation under the prot motive. Such justications tacitly agree with the idea that there is
something special about intellectual labor that justies granting it a degree of autonomy
not aorded to other kinds of labor. The bad conscience of the intellectual thereby
begins to legitimize the “real subsumption” of other forms of labor (Marx 1992, 1028).
As those who resent the fact that intellectuals are granted such autonomy
correctly perceive, this idea is unconvincing—not because intellectual work could be
equally well subordinated, but because all forms of work require autonomy, creativity,
and knowledge on the part of those who perform it. More often than not, and in
almost all jobs, managerial control keeps people from doing their job well. This is most
obviously the case with care work, where attention to the particular needs of others
systematically resists external control. But even those who perform work that is cul-
turally seen as requiring less creative eort, such as cleaning, understand themselves as
engaged in a creative task that often requires them to subvert the rules imposed by their
managers if they are to do their job well (Tweedie and Holley 2016, 1889).
It is therefore neither a unique form of creativity nor a special need for auton-
omy that distinguishes intellectual work from other forms, but only a dierence in the
degree to which those in control are willing to grant such autonomy to dierent kinds
of work. If intellectuals were less concerned with proving the usefulness of their specic
692021, issue 2
type of work to a society that serves neither their own interests nor those of others, and
if they were more interested in challenging the prevailing standards of usefulness which
justify denying that autonomy to others who deserve it to the same degree, then their
bad conscience could make way for a form of solidarity that rejects a distinction in
normative status between intellectual and non-intellectual work. Such solidarity is not
envisioned by Adorno, however. In fact, he reserves his few positive remarks on solidar-
ity in Minima Moralia for relations among intellectuals (§ 83). Attention to a wider form
of solidarity that overcomes the isolation of intellectual work is needed, however, both
to remove the sting of Adorno’s remarks and to develop a politically reective theory of
the social standpoint of the intellectual.
References
Adorno, Theodor. 2006. Minima Moralia: Reflections
from Damaged Life: Reflections on a Damaged Life.
London: Verso.
Hartsock, Nancy. 1983. “The Feminist Standpoint.”
In Discovering Reality, edited by Sandra Harding
and Merrill B. Hintikka, 283–310. Dordrecht:
Reidel.
Horkheimer, Max. 1975. “Traditional and Critical
Theory.” In Critical Theory: Selected Essays,
188–243. New York: Continuum.
Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002.
Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments.
Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Marx, Karl. 1992. “Appendix: Results of the
Immediate Process of Production.” In Capital:
A Critique of Political Economy, edited by Ernest
Mandel, 1:948–1084. New York: Penguin.
Tweedie, Dale, and Sasha Holley. 2016. “The
Subversive Craft Worker: Challenging
‘Disutility’ Theories of Management Control.”
Human Relations 69 (9): 1877–1900. https://
doi.org/10.1177/0018726716628971.
Titus Stahl is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at
the University of Groningen where he does research
on contemporary and historical issues in Critical
Theory, theories of oppression, domination, ideology,
the philosophy of hope and the ethics of privacy.
His most recent publication is Immanent Critique
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2021).
Biography
2021, issue 2
To Be Recognized by the Dog
Vladimir Safatle
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
DOI Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 70-71.
10.21827/krisis.41.2.38281
702021, issue 2
To Be Recognized by the Dog
Vladimir Safatle
It is one of my joys, not to be a house-owner,” wrote Nietzsche as early as
The Gay Science. To this should be added: ethics today means not being at
home in one’s house. (§ 18)
Odysseus nally arrives home dressed by Athena as an old beggar. On the threshold of
his house waited his dog, Argos. At the time of his departure, Argos was a cub. Now, old
and ea-ridden, he doesn’t even have the strength to stand upright, yet when Odysseus
appears, Argos has no doubts. He recognizes him and stands up, unable to even run
towards his master. The tears ow when Odysseus sees him old and weakened. The dog
then “goes into the darkness of death”, as Homer says, a bit like someone who was just
waiting for a re-encounter.
The dog recognizes Odysseus, but his wife does not. Even after having regained
his composure after the battle with the suitors who had taken over her house, Penelope
isn’t certain that it is, in fact, Odysseus standing by her side, the husband she’d been
waiting for. In fact, Penelope needs proof, and therefore tests the memory of he who
claims to be her husband. It is through memory that the moment of recognition will
transpire, deciding what is certain and what is uncertain. Odysseus will have to show
that he knows what his bed is made of. He will have to recount, once more, the
promises of rooting that had constituted the bed he shared with his wife. Recognition
appears here as an acknowledgment that is supported by the capacity of recall.
But to the dog, Odysseus needs to show no such thing. Beyond appearances,
Argos is the only one capable of recognizing something like the “brute being” of
Odysseus. Here’s a detail to which we ought not to be indierent. For it poses the
following question: Is there something in us that is only recognized by the eyes of what
is not human? If not even the love of the woman who had always waited was true, if
only the dog was certain, then we might wonder where such certainty comes from? For,
perhaps, he found his certainty in the trace of the animality that exists in us, that is, in
what for the Greeks is inhuman, in what does not bear the image of man.
It is ironic to think that, after returning home after many years of exile, it is
this inhuman quality that rst indicates the return to the “nostos”. Odysseus nds his
singular belonging in being recognized by an animal, that is, by a creature that is, in a
certain way, “below man.” Here, singularity is linked to precisely not being an attribute
of humanitas.
It is vital to remember this point because we are so caught up in the search
for recognition from other subjects, we so need the assent provided by other subjects
that we forget how often what comforts us, what really tells us we are at home, is
to be recognized by an animal, to be recognized by something that, after all, is not
self-consciousness. Animals perceive the animality that remains within us, they remind
us of the trace of the non-identical from which we have never been able to completely
distance ourselves.
Perhaps this is why we human beings have never been able to completely
712021, issue 2
distance ourselves from other animals. Even when domesticated, other animals remind
us of something that was left behind, though not completely, in the rationalization
process. This trace of otherness is terrifying. For Odysseus would certainly feel the
worst of men if the dog forgot him. It would be an unbearable deterritorialization not
to be recognized even by the dog. Perhaps it is for no other reason that Freud, sick and
broken at the end of his life, realized that his time was up when, due to the repulsive
smell that came from his jaw, even his dog withdrew from him. When this happened,
his reason for living was gone. It was precisely at the moment of his dog’s withdrawal
that Freud died.
Vladimir Safatle, Professor at Universidade de São
Paulo (Department of Philosophy), author of,
among others: Grand Hotel Abyss: Desire, Recognition
and the Restoration of the Subject (Leuven University
Press, 2016).
Biography
722021, issue 2
New Labor
Martin Shuster
The advertising character of culture shines in its gaudy light (§ 26)
We last humans no longer even rub elbows for warmth. We do not touch, except by
means of our screens and our newsfeeds. A cornucopia of blue light, the phone screen
is at best illusory warmth, one whose actual coldness cuts us to our core. “If you’re
not paying for it, you’re the product.” Pundits repeat the line endlessly, as if repetition
alone conrms its truth. Of course, as with all lies, there is a modicum of truth here:
we are the product of social media, but only in the sense that we are produced by it,
produced by the algorithms hidden beneath the light of the screen. We are its workers,
laboring at all hours, in post oce and grocery lines, in classrooms and cafes, in parks
and playgrounds, in bathrooms and bedrooms; we labor tirelessly, tiredly, tiresomely.
Jobs are in fact now just a “side hustle.” Every click, every share, every like creates
more content, streamed back to us, like Saratmak. A urophagia of prot, every click
a current, each more current than the last, a shower of gold for Mr. Zuckerberg. Like
all fool’s gold, however, its scientic use can only be incendiary. Not satised with the
spark of a wheel-lock, this pyrite now lights re to everything in its path. The same
feeble light inches its way from the iPhone screen to the uorescent lights of the Senate,
each animated by the same meme, now fashioned onto insurrection t-shirts shining
back to us via news screen. Ernst Cassirer once noted that there is no eld into which
the problem of space does not in some way enter. This is no less true of cyberspace.
Where physics corrects us and invites us to speak of space-time rather than mere space,
speak here of prot-space, rather than cyberspace, which now stretches far beyond the
connes of the digital realm, lodged increasingly within every inch of time-space, like
a global virus. “Augmented reality” betrays more truth than we’d like to admit: our
labor accounts for every augmentation, our clicks and likes and views and our smart
devices and glasses and TVs forming hubs on Elon Musk’s race to outer space. “Never
have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppressionaected as
many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the
advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of
the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great
emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of
innumerable singular sites of suering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that
never before, in absolute gures, have so many men, women and children been subju-
gated, starved or exterminated on the earth” (Derrida 2006, 106). These lines remain
true still, except that for the masses even potentially to countenance them, they must
now be fused into a meme, sent into cyberspace only in order to be sent back—long
the fate of all things in the autonomy of modernity—all things doubled, now for prot.
732021, issue 2
Derrida, Jacques. 2006. Spectres of Marx.
London: Routledge. Martin Shuster is associate professor of philos ophy
and holds the professorship of Judaic studies and
justice at Goucher College, where he also directs
the Center for Geographies of Justice. In addition
to many articles and essays, he is the author of
Autonomy after Auchwitz: Adorno, German Idealism,
and Modernity (University of Chicago Press, 2014),
New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre
(University of Chicago Press, 2017), and How to
Measure a World? A Philosophy of Judaism (Indiana
University Press, 2021).
References Biography
742021, issue 2
Dwarf Fruit, or: The Impertinent Self
Josef Früchtl
One might think that dwarf fruit is fruit for human beings so small that in our imagi-
nation they tend to populate myths and fairy tales. But dwarf fruit is simply the name
for fruit that grows on little trees, even in a big pot on the balcony. It does not dier
from the fruit – apples, pears, cherries, plums – of bigger trees, but it ripens faster.
Thus, though the tree seems ridiculously small, the fruit – the apple – is as sappy and
sweet-sour as you like to have it. It may even give you a kick as if it were from the tree
of knowledge.
“Dwarf fruit” is also the title of an aphorism – it is number 29 – in Theodor
W. Adorno’s Minima Moralia that arranges a series of short sentences, among them the
famous and last one: “The whole is the false”, inverting Hegel’s: “The true is the whole”.
Another sentence has also become famous, or at least it has caused some trouble and
personal criticism. It sounds laconic, and at rst sight the implicit scandal may escape
the reader: “In many people it is already an impertinence to say ‘I’”.
In principle, saying ‘I’ is the simple, and at the same time crucial, characteristic of
that kind of being that is able to refer to itself and to identify itself in verbal language. It is
the privilege of articulated self-consciousness in the shape of human beings. But – here
we go again – Hegel has already told us that there is a specic contradiction or dialectic
in using the pronoun “I”. Whoever uses it refers to a Self that is absolutely individual
and at the same time thoroughly universal. By saying “I” we distinguish ourselves from
all other beings able to say “I”, and this includes expressing what is common to all of us,
namely the capacity to say “I” and thus express self-consciousness.
Given the historical conditions of the 1940s when Adorno wrote down his
Minima Moralia, the Self that proudly presents itself by saying ‘I’ is nothing but a univer-
sal cover that includes in fact nothing, at least nothing individual. The whole that has
become the false is the whole of a totalising systematic theory, the totalitarian state, the
“iron cage” of capitalism (Max Weber), and the ideological manipulation of the “culture
industry”. Saying “I” under such circumstances is the sad prerogative of a few critical
intellectuals, artists, and philosophers, but for the majority of people it is an imperti-
nence. They claim to be individuals, but in fact their individualism is fake. This can be
conrmed by a prominent line of theorists after Hegel, a line that connects Marx and
Kierkegaard (about whom Adorno wrote his rst philosophical book) with Nietzsche,
Freud and Weber. But following the aphoristically sharpened dialectical thinking of
Minima Moralia, it can also be conrmed in apparently small gestures and expressions.
For example, if we hear someone talking about a work of art - a Beethoven symphony
or a play by Beckett – by simply saying: “I like it”, thus using a catch-all term to describe
a specic experience, we have to admit – far from being impertinent ourselves - that we
are confronted with faked individualism (Adorno 1992, 244).
This is the story Adorno is telling us. Or more precisely, it is the main story.
For in between his rm and exaggerated statements there are dierentiations and
doubts. Above all in the 1960s, twenty years after having written Minima Moralia in his
US-American exile, Adorno becomes more and more aware of a split consciousness
752021, issue 2
in all these people who are shaped by the absorbing power of a capitalist consumer
society. Their individualism is not only fake. They show a tension between having fun
and doubting it, or the other way round: despising something intellectually while liking
it aectively. While a band playing traditional German music for brass instruments is
marching past and the young intellectual standing at the wayside contemptuously twists
his mouth, he realises that he is following the primitive beat by pounding softly with
his right foot.
Since the 1960s, for a larger proportion of the readers of Adorno, popular music
has been as important as the texts of the philosopher. They have learnt that they can
do one thing – listening to the music of Beethoven – while not abandoning another –
dancing to the music of Chuck Berry (and a lot of other rock ‘n’ roll bands). For them
there is no demand for Beethoven to “roll over”. There is the demand to make room
for rock ‘n’ roll, certainly, but not entirely, only to an equal extent. So, the revolting
students of the 1960s (and later) also know about the contradiction they themselves
incorporate. To express it simply with a refrain from the Rolling Stones: “I know it’s
only rock ‘n’ roll, but I like it”. I really know that it is only rock ‘n’ roll, but I like it
because it expresses what I – together with a lot of other people – feel. It is – expressed
in ne Hegelian language – a form of cultural self-assurance or sensuous self-reection.
Adorno certainly is a burnt child and thus xated on the continuing elements of a
totalitarian society after World War II, but the re-educated children of the ruins start
dancing and ghting in the street while carrying Minima Moralia in their pockets and
digesting its bitter-sweet dwarf fruit.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1992. “An Open Letter to
Rolf Hochhuth.” In Notes to Literature, Vol. Two,
transl. by Shierry Weber Nicholson. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Josef Früchtl is professor of philosophy with a focus
on philosophy of art and culture (Critical Cultural
Theory) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
He is publishing in the field of aesthetics (with a
focus on aesthetics and ethics as well as aesthetics
and politics), Critical Theory, theory of Modernity,
and philosophy of film. His recent publication is
Vertrauen in die Welt. Eine Philosophie des Films
(München: Fink 2013), translated as Trust in the
World. A Philosophy of Film (New York & London:
Routledge 2018).
Biography
762021, issue 2
Fanon Pulls Out a Knife and Cuts Adorno’s Throat
Willem Schinkel & Rogier van Reekum
[W]hen the colonized hears a speech about Western culture he pulls out his
knife – or at least he makes sure it is within reach. (Fanon 2002 [1961], 46)1
Savages are not better human beings. –One can nd in Black students
(Negerstudenten) of national economy, in Siamese students at Oxford, and in
devoted art-historians and musicologists of petty bourgeois background
generally the inclination and readiness to combine the appropriation of what
is new and to be learned with a boundless respect for what is established,
validated or recognized. (§ 32)
I
It is 1952, a year after Adorno wrote Minima Moralia, an acclaimed culmination of cul-
tural criticism. Fanon takes out a knife and cuts Adorno’s throat. Let Martin Jay (1984)
ruminate over the motherfucker’s picture now: no longer mournfulness, not even (this is
important) surprise, just despair. You can just see Adorno think, with his despair-ridden
deer-in-headlights gaze, ‘but that was only a theoretical model!’
Or so we imagine. We imagine Fanon’s knife as a device of invention, as partak-
ing in the invention of human beings that he describes, in 1952, in Peau noire, masques
blancs. This invention is the invention of modalities of togetherness that do not yet exist,
and the very imagination of invention already constitutes what Harney and Moten have
called fugitivity (Harney & Moten 2013). A mode of being that recognizes, as Adorno
does, that there is no escape, but also that there is, at least, at the very least and all the
time, fugitivity, lines of ight, invention.
II
What appears to have hardly been noted thus far is that Fanon, anyhow preoccupied
with the role of the knife in Algerian (anti-)colonialism, seems to be ring o of Nazi
poet Hanns Johst: “Wenn ich Kultur höre... entsichere ich meinen Browning.” What
Fanon establishes seems, at rst sight, to be the exact inverse of Johst: the deployment of
a fascist trope against fascism itself. But he’s deploying it against the fascism long recog-
nized (by Du Bois, Césaire, and many others) as expressed in the fact of the colony as
both precursor to and experimental testing ground of the European concentration camp.
And this means it’s not quite an inversion. It’s an inversion that ends up with
an excess, a bycatch. Johst inverted gives something that doesn’t only put the knife
to fascism’s throat, but to Adorno’s as well. Like a magical mirror showing more
than expected – the ghosts in the room – putting the knife to fascism’s throat means
putting it to something that, more generally, ruminates about its culture, assesses it over
against those Adorno calls savages (Wilden) – by which he means Black people, Asians,
non-occidentals generally speaking, perhaps accidentals. This something that shows up
as Fanon’s bycatch to fascism, this excess that extends the very meaning of fascism, is what
can simply be called whiteness. Invisible, until it appears in the reection of Fanon’s blade.
772021, issue 2
III
Adorno, we imagine, does not survive Fanon. He does not survive this encounter with
blackness that he very well knows (herein lies Adorno’s exceptional contribution) to be
the epicentre of the double helix of fascism and capitalism. And so he avoids it, being
caught up in, and most forcefully and tellingly expressing, an aect we might call ‘white
pessimism’ – but only if you promise to crack a smile, or giggle a little at the very idea,
at the very thought that this could be an aect one is caught in.
White pessimism acts as, pretends to be, the last defense against… well, what
else: history. Against the return of history, of all those ghosts, of lives expended. Payback
time. This pretense acts to hold up, swallow and piteously regurgitate the history of
mankind so that our future never arrives and is forever cast as a foreshadowing of man’s
disillusionment. Caved still. Negative dialectics: something to claim to have arrived at, a
claim to history, history now undone – undone only now, it is implied.
The catch, of course, is that the pessimism is fully justied. There is nothing to
redeem. We will be stripped of everything we may once have thought was ours, and
we lack even a single reason to object. As it was gained, it will be lost. Capital will not
endure anything else. So as long as one pretends that all of this would eventually come
about, that all of this, however contingent, has been unfolding along some temporal arc,
progress now unmasked as doom, one is still masking, still clinging to whiteness and,
as such, even if resigned to a stationary posture, still waiting for some contradiction, for
help. However, as Jonathan Jackson writes to his brother George, “While we await the
precise moment when all of capitalism’s victims will indignantly rise to destroy the
system, we are being devoured in family lots at the whim of this thing. There will be
no super-slave” (Jackson 1990, 10-11). There was never going to be one. Dialectics is
how this thing called whiteness entertains itself in the meantime. Or, and this cannot be
controversial: dialectics tracks the time it takes the master to abolish himself. A long time.
And while we wait: what if we practice pessimism not as any negative con-
clusion to what humanity, at one time, might have expected, but as the lived reality of
our common existence in invention? The ever-recurring inventiveness that lives from,
in, and through the failure of the world. Never getting stuck on words. So let’s quickly
rush past words, words about how white people don’t deserve pessimism. White people,
like the rest of us, deserve nothing to begin with. The pessimism that is our existence
in common was already right there, plenty already, escaping history, coming with us,
returning with us. We were never going anywhere, so what’s the wait? Why the posture?
IV
Martin Jay is right to point out the despair and mournfulness on Adorno’s face. But
why is Adorno not surprised when Fanon cuts his throat? Don’t you know he’s been
talking to Houria Bouteldja all along?
Adorno’s despair, this aect of total capture, emerges as the ultimate realiza-
tion of capital’s avowal of its operations as eacement, as desertication. Is there any-
thing negative here? Anything that is not folded into a logic that claims total capture,
but that of course fails to achieve it, fails to preclude invention? Why does Adorno
appear to believe capital’s confession of total capture, this armative admission of guilt?
782021, issue 2
Why does he perform it? Why, when it is clear (to him) that capital generates outsides,
that there are outsides generative of capital, that capital always already presupposed the
not-quite-human subjects (not-quite-subjects) of ‘race’, never quite enlisted as life but
always available as death, as objects for the act of killing? Why, when it is clear that,
despite all that, there is and will be fugitivity, invention?
Adorno writes: “Hitler’s stupidity was a ruse of reason” (§ 69). Now, in the
fullest loyalty of betrayal, let’s paraphrase him. Let’s substitute Adorno for Hitler (and
is this substitution not the secret summary of Adorno’s theoretical program?): Adorno’s
stupidity was a ruse of reason. Now cut it.
“[...] lorsqu’un colonisé entend un discours
sur le culture occidentale, il sort sa machette ou du
moins il s’assure qu’elle est à portée de sa main.”
1Rogier van Reekum is an assistant professor at the
department of Public Administration and Sociology
of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His work
focuses on the politics of migration and knowledge
controversies. Rogier has published on border
visuality, nationalism, place making, citizenship &
migration politics, immigration policy and education.
Willem Schinkel is professor of social theory at
Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Fanon, Frantz. 1952. Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris:
Seuil.
Fanon, Frantz. 2002 [1961]. Les damnés de la terre.
Paris: La Découverte.
Jackson, George L. 1990 [1972]. Blood in My Eye.
Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press.
Jay, Martin. 1984. Adorno. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Harney, Stefano & Fred Moten. 2013. The
Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study.
Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions.
References
Notes Biography
2021, issue 2
After All, It Is Only an Animal…
Guilel Treiber
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
DOI Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 79-80.
10.21827/krisis.41.2.38280
792021, issue 2
After All, It Is Only an Animal…
Guilel Treiber
A standard bon ton in the milieu of radicals is that the colony was the testing ground
for Auschwitz. Initially, the statement was meant to elevate the suering of the colony.
It ended by downgrading Auschwitz. Nowadays, Auschwitz is a mere repetition of the
horrors of colonialism. It is nothing more than the perfection of methods tried else-
where. The argument only holds if one tries hard to forget history, and only if one dives
fully dressed into the warm, murky waters of a Judeo-Christian Europe. What better way
is there to clean one’s sins than by making the victims the originators of the culture and
land that has devoured them again and again and again. According to this logic, very
soon, one will write of Judeo-African-Arab-Christian Europe. One should beware of
naively adopting the discourse of those whose identity has always been mere imitation.
Freud may have been wrong on all points concerning Moses; however, there is
one where he got it right. Antisemitism is one of the oldest, most ancient forms of the
hatred of dierence and, simultaneously, of identity. One hates those who tried to do
things dierently by reducing everything to the one. If there is an original Jewish sin, it
is the sin of the universal, not that of whiteness or European culture. Nietzsche already
stated as much in his genealogy of slave morality. He thought he saw a way out of it.
Little did he know that what he understood as overcoming was just a tiny drunken hic
before full acceleration. Indeed, slave morality and its nihilistic drive have never been
better. The creation of values is dead. Long-live the return of the repressed, long-live
the universal Victim (or the victim of the Universal?).
Adorno wrote that the real dierence between the intellectual and the activist
is that the latter is less aware of its “entanglement” in capitalism and colonialism (§ 6).
He did not know the startling, synthetic form very well: the intellectual-activist who
not only eaces self-reexivity but renders its eacement opaque by linguistic prowess
and wordy acrobatics (Adorno may have detected this gure in the wrestler-intellectual,
§ 87). In their work, the intellectual-activist states, in passing, what they would have
wanted to say out loud – by becoming Israelis, Jews replaced the Nazis. To be honest,
the Jews were never that dierent from their oppressor. The dominated are always
implicated in their own domination (§ 117 & § 119). However, those Jews who replaced
the torments of Europe by wanting to become like all other nations needed time to
learn the art of domination, to master that of colonialism and oppression. They are yet
to grasp that of genocide. They have not actualized a potentiality always implied in
nationalism. Indeed, only the contamination of Jewish thinking by raison d’état could
have led to Gaza.
However, let us not make the mistake, Gaza is not Auschwitz (not yet). And
Auschwitz did not take 400 years to perfect. It took two millennia of ongoing perse-
cution. What was done in Africa, the Americas or Asia was rst tried at ‘home’ on the
Jews. Forgetting this is to forget that the Jewish bourgeois and the European colonialist
of pre-WWII Europe may look alike yet are dierent in rank and kind (§ 6). Let’s say it
clearly: Algiers, Auschwitz, or Gaza, should not be made into a competition of suering;
they are humanity’s “progress into hell” (§ 149).
802021, issue 2
“Only a crippled mind needs self-hatred in order to demonstrate its intellectual
essence – untruth – by the size of its biceps” (§ 87). Indeed, by its willingness to use
violence in the name of victimhood it does not know, to employ misogynic-phallic
metaphors in the name of women it always ignored, and to declare grand state-
ments to obsessively veil the narrowness of mind it tries so compulsively to hide, the
wrestler-intellectual ignores the fact that they too are walking knee-deep in blood.
That the Jews are the apex of White European bourgeoisie and, hence, may be erad-
icated (theoretically at least) is not only “economic sophistry” but also the denial of
“the infernal machine” that is Western history (§ 149). The wrestler-intellectual who
“relinquishes awareness of the growth of horror” for the sake of choosing only one,
most horrible Victim, where all others are eaced, “fails to perceive” “the true identity
of the whole”, that is, “terror without end” (§ 149).
The only “emancipated society” that can exist is not one where pessimistic
intellectuals will pit racial dierences against each other in the name of the Victim’s
moral purity. Nor is it a society where these dierences are eaced for the sake of an
abstract “equality for all”. A truly emancipated society is one where “the realization of
universality” can happen in the “reconciliation of dierences”, where one (and com-
munities) can be “dierent without fear” (§ 66). The only way forward is by writing a
history of the pogrom, of which Auschwitz, Gaza and Cape Town are chapters, where
the perpetrator being Aryan, white, black, Jew, or Asian is a mere epiphenomenon of
what is truly at stake: “what was not seen as human and yet is human, is made a thing”
to be discarded since “after all, it’s only an animal” (§ 68).
Guilel Treiber is an affiliated post doctoral researcher
at the Centre for Research in Political Philosophy
and Ethics Leuven (RIPPLE). He specializes in
the study of resistance and political protest via a
poststructuralist perspective. He is currently working
on a synthesis between Foucauldian genealogy
and Critical Theory in order to use the resulting
methodology to analyse our present conditions in
digitally connected mass societies.
Biography
812021, issue 2
Bad Innity, and Beyond
Thijs Lijster
With the ink of the Phenomenology of Spirit still wet, Hegel famously remarked, in a
letter to a friend, that he saw the world-spirit on horseback in the shape of Napoleon, as
the Emperor and his troops marched into Prussia. It is highly doubtful whether it would
have been a consolation for Napoleon’s victims to know that their suering was a
necessary stepping-stone in the history of progress, but also for the man himself Hegel’s
remark can hardly be considered a compliment: the “cunning of reason”, after all, implies
that the individual acts not on its own volition, but as a mere instrument. Theodor W.
Adorno understood that well when, in the 33rd aphorism of Minima Moralia, he saw the
world-spirit in a V2 rocket:
Had Hegel’s philosophy of history embraced this age, Hitler’s robot-bombs
would have found their place beside the early death of Alexander and similar
images, as one of the selected empirical facts by which the state of the world-
spirit manifests itself directly in symbols. Like Fascism itself, the robots career
without a subject. Like it they combine utmost technical perfection with total
blindness. And like it they arouse mortal terror and are wholly futile.
Each era gets the world-spirit it deserves. In the summer of 2021, Amazon founder
and CEO Je Bezos, in his rocket-ship called New Shephard, made his rst successful
ight outside the earth’s atmosphere. Ocially, it was not the rst private-commercial
spaceight on record (Richard Branson beat him to it by a few weeks), but it was
certainly the one that was most discussed. This was, amongst other things, due to the
shape of the rocket which, even to those not into Freud, left so little to the imagination;
due to Bezos’ cynical words of thanks to the exploited Amazon employees to which
he owes his billions; and due to the mind-blowing superciality of the rst words he
uttered in space (“who wants a Skittle?”).
The dark irony in Adorno’s appropriation of Hegel lies in the image of the
world-spirit personied, but blind and without will, “not on horseback, but on wings
and without a head”. According to Adorno, this “refutes, at the same stroke, Hegel’s
philosophy of history”, for it demonstrates not a progress in self-consciousness and
freedom, but merely of instrumental reason, a cunning that merely perpetuates the
blind struggle for power that reason attempted to escape. (As he later put it in Negative
Dialectics: “No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one
leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb”, a realization he considered as “the
horror that veries Hegel and stands him on his head”).
Unlike Hitler’s robot-bombs, Je Bezos does in fact have a head, as well as a face,
although (just like Zuckerberg’s) it is a rather generic one. As faceless as these men may
seem, and as devoid of soul and character traits (almost making one feel nostalgic for
the oligarchs and aristocrats of yore, the Bourbons and the Romanovs, the Rockefellers
and Carnegies, who were just as ruthlessly exploitative but at least appeared to have
personality and taste, and paid for their indulgences in the shape of art and culture),
and as much truth there is in Marx’s conviction that we cannot blame the individual
822021, issue 2
capitalist (since “he is only capital personied”), as well as in Adorno’s famous statement
that “wrong life cannot be lived rightly”, this also should not keep them o the hook;
they are, in fact, subjects.
Perhaps for this very reason, and so as to add a grain of personality to his other-
wise mundane appearance, Bezos might have felt compelled to wear a cowboy-hat
during the press conference following the spaceight, by far the most fascinating and
haunting element of the entire spectacle. The hat, moreover, also provided yet another
image, in which the world-spirit manifested itself as a symbol. In the popular imagina-
tion of the twentieth century, the cowboy, hero of the wild west from John Wayne to
Toy Story’s Woody, became the personication par excellence of the discovery and con-
quest of the “new world”, the go west that had encompassed modernity, and according
to Hegel even the entire human history; but with that also the retroactive legitimization
of white-settler colonialism and the primitive accumulation of which history Marx
remarked that it is “writtenin the annals of mankind in letters ofblood andre.” This
relay-race of domination which had started in ancient Athens, and went via the Roman,
Frankish, Dutch and British Empires to the United States, had to end at the West Coast
(lest one ended up in the “Far East” again). On the coast of California, the horizon of
the so-called “western world” reached its natural, albeit not its actual, limit. As W.J.T.
Mitchell wrote: “The ‘westward’ imperative has no more literal or concrete meaning,
and can only be replaced by something gurative: cosmic or inner space, Star Wars or
self-actualization.” Hence, the US West Coast became the habitat of both Hollywood
and NASA, and of Burning Man as well as cyberspace.
In Bezos’ cowboy hat, this entire history crystallizes as in a symbol: not only
capitalism, colonialism, ecological destruction, and patriarchy seem to be condensed in
this single image, but also the entanglement of inner and cosmic space mentioned by
Mitchell. In the oligarch’s overblown ego Star Wars and self-actualization go hand in
hand. Capitalism’s accumulation, expropriation, and expansion acknowledges no natural
limits, and hence “it will not die a natural death”, as Benjamin rightfully remarked. If
Napoleon was the world-spirit on horseback for Hegel, and the V2 rocket for Adorno,
then we have seen the world-spirit in the shape of a Beverly Hills space cowboy, step-
ping out of a gigantic phallus, and spraying the crowd with champagne.
Biography
Thijs Lijster is assistant professor philosophy of art
and culture at the Faculty of Arts of the University
of Groningen, and member of the Krisis editorial
board since 2007.
2021, issue 2
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
Transparency and its Schematism
Sjoerd van Tuinen
DOI Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 83-86.
10.21827/krisis.41.2.38258
832021, issue 2
Transparency and its Schematism
Sjoerd van Tuinen
“Just as the old injustice is not changed by a lavish display of light, air and hygiene,
but is in fact concealed by the gleaming transparency of rationalized big business, the
inner health of our time has been secured by blocking ight into illness without in the
slightest altering its aetiology” (§ 36). Adorno’s analogy between the administration of
social conict in monopoly capitalism and the objectication of subjectivity through
the repression of mental suering deserves to be unpacked in full. It is exemplary of
an inchoate freudomarxism, which sees psychopathology as mirroring capitalist modes
of production. It anticipates critiques of power structures and commercial interests at
work in the psycho-therapy-education industry. But it also extends to domains beyond
the corporation and the soul. It resonates with the contemporary failure of ‘leaks’ to
end tax evasion or change the operations of secret services, as well as with the impotent
appeals for more transparency made by technocrats and populists alike. In suggesting the
real and not merely metaphorical interconnectedness of heterogeneous forms of false
positivity, it performs the arch-gesture of the negative dialectic.
Today transparency still counts as a panacea. It promises accountability and
healing for romantic relations, markets, and democracies as much as for the planet
at large. Yet while transparency is celebrated both as a duty and as a right, it remains
false insofar as it triggers no new forms of responsibility or liberation. For as Adorno
would no doubt remind us, ‘seeing through’ is rst of all the fetish of an enlightenment
blinded by its own light. Transparency is the homogenizing element of the “context of
delusion” (Verblendungszusammenhang): the convergence of total mobilization with
total access in the form of a universal competition – the commodity form – of images.
At the heart of Adorno’s analogy lies the socio-cultural drama of the impov-
erishment and mutilation of experience (Erfahrung). Accordingly, the analogy marks
the beginning of an encyclopedic series of loose connections between social and indi-
vidual pathology (§ 36), bourgeois psychology and authoritarianism (§ 37), the pursuit
of happiness and mass ignorance (§ 38), or the replacement of speculative philosophy
by the scientism shared by the analytical philosophy and psychoanalysis (§ 42). In
fact we are not dealing with empirical analogies but with transcendental “schemata”.
They produce opaque but distinct kinds of evidence where the natural light of liberal
democracy fails.
Kant introduces the notion of “schematism” in the First Critique to explain
the harmony between disparate domains of experience, the intuition and the under-
standing. Whenever things appear transparent, this is because the imagination operates
under the general ‘rule’ of the concept. Nevertheless, the schematism is not the head
of subjectivity but its heart. It is hidden in the living ‘depth’ of the soul, indicating
that it does not belong to the subject but rather to a drama in which we are always
already beyond ourselves. The question that Kant fails to investigate is what makes
the schematism submit to the rigid frame of our understanding at all. How did our
capacity to synthesize get damaged this way? What remains of subjectivity when the
schemas – the outlines of identities and equivalences – are already in place? This, as well
842021, issue 2
as the consideration of its own schematizing activity, should be the starting point of any
critique of transparency.
Because subjectivity was considered the transcendental condition of enlight-
ened transparancy, it could never appear as such. As a consequence, it will not be
missed when the conditions of transparancy are replaced by other forces. In Dialectic
of Enlightenment Adorno demonstrates that what naturalizes our experience is social
practice. The culture industry relieves us from the labor of schematization, providing
us with the framework of readymade concepts and sentimental clichés to which both
nature and subjectivity must conform. Hence, the world of the binge-watcher imme-
diately translates the humanist enthusiasm for the free use of one’s own understanding
into the objective necessities of self-preservation.
It would nonetheless be too simplistic to blame Hollywood and Netix alone
for this degeneration of subjectivity. The need for transparency is quite a bit older, and
its dialectic is not bound to the enlightenment epoch. In short, the problem is that
transparency is intrinsically polemical. While it is an important weapon in the demys-
tication of power asymmetries, the polemical never fails to turn against itself – in its
hardened dialectical fashion, the negation of the negation always precedes the initial
negation. This explains why, historically speaking, the need for transparency is more
insatiable and encompassing than the need for secrecy that was typical of traditional
dictatorships. It arises from the dream of global mastery and control.
In the panopticons, shopping malls, and boulevards of the nineteenth century,
one already sees that the truth of openness and accessibility lies in the surveillance
and governance of ubiquitous circulation rather than in the stripping of the emperor’s
clothes. By the time of the publication of Minima Moralia the schematism of human
experience was already being usurped by Cold War information technologies. Nowadays,
Silicon Valley has replaced mass mediatization with big data, probalistic logic, and auto-
mated decision-making. In surveillance capitalism, the market transparency of deregu-
lation combined with centralized planning turns us all into passive ‘users’ – laboratory
rats with or without UBI – from whom protable behavioral data is harvested.
When understood in terms of logistics, transparency means invisibility and
absence of noise. It is not a quality of information, but of the medium in which infor-
mation becomes visible or readable. Modernity bathes in the pervasive light of maritime
maps and GPS, of Vermeer’s windows and of conceptual art, of remote sensors and MRIs,
of dating-site algorithms and credit scores, of high-frequency trading and automized
weaponry. In all these cases, technology dissolves the appearance of nature and reveals
the blind workings behind it. Through the foreshortened emplotment of space and
time, it provides the expansive schema of a world that knows no negativity, only con-
stant improvement – the meta-world of whiteness (Harney and Moten 2021, 15-17).
The problem with transparency, then, is double. It is perhaps best understood as
a code of conduct in the triple sense of behavior, management, and medium for trans-
mission. It encodes and produces the circulating ows from which it extracts a surplus
value of information. Whether it is our language, our attention, our will, or our intimate
relationships, logistics renders them legible, calculable, available. At the same time, every
code is an encryption. There is no transparency without means. These are typically light,
852021, issue 2
electricity and money – media that disappear into what they communicate and obscure
what makes communication possible. Under modern conditions, it is not nature but
technology that loves to hide. This means that no quantity of transparency can ever take
away the suspicion that is inherent in the use of all media. It is precisely our restless
desire for knowledge and information that reinforces mistrust and disorientation. What
could possibly go wrong?
Our contemporary problem, perhaps also the problem of the enlightenment as
a whole, is not a lack of transparency but of imagination. If the task of the schematism is
to establish communication across dierences without collapsing them, the understand-
ing does the opposite: It renders us indierent. Whether it is the mass murder at the
European borders or the impact of climate change, we are unable to actually experience
what we already know or feel beyond the necessities that we immediately recognize.
Here the schematism functions like the famous invisible hand of the market. It is the
lter of a hypocrisy that destroys the experience of the other, letting through only what
can nourish the thick skin of our clear conscience.
This is also implied by Adorno’s critique of psychologization as a means
of dominance that forbids any knowledge of the suering it produces. Just as fact-
checking or ethical considerations about fairness constitute a degree zero of free thought,
the exposure of hypocrisies oscillates between the emancipation of the repressed and
the apology for absolute self-alienation. The very word ‘happiness’ – today revealingly
substituted by ‘resilience’ – suces to disparage its contrary, thereby relinquishing our
capacity of imaginative schematization to the Kantian depth, or indeed the Freudian
id (§ 38). Its authoritarian schema is that of a bad conscience that seeks compensation
in herd-like ways of mobilizing the irrational and subhuman drives (§ 37, § 40). What
better condition for the emergence of fascist states than this internalization of castration,
the libidinal performance demanded of the individual who can be considered healthy
in body and soul?
Today’s return of behaviourism under the sign of the digital is well exem-
plied by Apple’s agship store in New York (Alloa 2016). The glass cube with base-
ment illustrates how it is no longer necessary to hide the extreme asymmetry between
user interface and the machinery underneath. The same goes for AI decision-making
systems or the nance sector. Although the schematizing backend of social life remains
unknown, its dierence from the frontend fails to scandalize us. Through microtargeting
and modelling, technologies for the automated distribution of privileges, we happily let
ourselves be nudged into a libertarian paternalism instead.
Yet when it comes to the logistical conditions of fascism, perhaps there is no
more adequate contemporary analogue than the distributed surveillance and total
symmetry of blockchain technology. While a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin decen-
tralizes the control over currency, it subjects everything from law-keeping, healthcare
and education to competition. Consequently, its unique transparency can only lead to
reliability, not trust. Although its source is fully open, it only communicates its own
schematization of human interaction, which is even more compelling as it immu-
nizes us to the anonymity that denes everyday life. Hence the libertarian fantasy of
self-sovereign identity: Where privacy no longer exists, demand data ownership. Yet in
862021, issue 2
complete abstraction of the vital need to share data, property will not solve the dilemma
between privacy and security, or between well-being and convenience. Just as a sele is
unthinkable without the compulsive desire for personal transparency, commodication
will not make us freer human beings, only more calculable and calculating ones.
The critical task today, then, is the same in philosophy as it is in psychology
and technology; it is to jam the smooth functioning of schematism and turn the imag-
ination into the broken mirror of reality. How to reclaim the thickness of a subjectivity
that interrupts ows, instead of remaining a hollow switchboard for circulation? How
to restore the aesthetic element as the ground of rationalism? Nobody is dreaming
the depoliticizing dream of de-mediation, of getting rid of interference and regaining
authenticity. On the contrary, it is only in the intransparancy of means and the accom-
panying indeterminacy of ends that the instrumental reason of eective neoliberalism
opens a new, dreamlike dimension for a denaturalized politics (Brouwer, Spuybroek,
and van Tuinen 2016).
In this regard, it is precisely Adorno’s analogies that provide nuanced – some
would justiably add paranoid and far-fetched – intuitions of the falsity of the world.
Our task as readers is not to reconstruct the networks that connect the terms. As with
the essay, the aphorism, and the miniature, it is rather a matter of being incomplete and
knowing it. In particular, critical language must stray from the demands of straight talk,
that is, the total equivalence and interchangeability of language – its policed insignif-
icance. Against the ‘secularist’ defence of the freedom of speech, it upholds language’s
non-innocence. Against ‘progressive’ attempts at explicitly codifying and designing lin-
guistical behaviour, it maintains ambivalence and ambiguity. And against the ‘egalitarian’
pretension to analytical clarity, it asserts the rights of a philosophy that swims beyond
the shallow end of the pool of language. Aesthetic Theory: the free use of the imagina-
tion in experimenting with non-indierent modes of schematization.
References
Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten. 2021. All
Incomplete. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions/
Autonomedia.
Alloa, Emmanuel. 2016. “Radikaler Durchblick.
Auch der Kapitalismus hat seine Tempel –
und die sind gläsern. Zum New Yorker Apple
Store.”Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20 March 2016.
Brouwer, Joke, Lars Spuybroek, and Sjoerd van
Tuinen (eds.). 2016. The War of Appearances.
Transparency, Radiancy, Opacity. Rotterdam: V2_
Publishers.
Sjoerd van Tuinen is AssociateProfessorof
Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Biography
872021, issue 2
Normality Proper to the Time is Sickness
Fabian Freyenhagen
Capitalist societies have the uncanny ability to constantly change, and yet remain the same.
An envisaged psychoanalysis of the prototypical culture of mid-twentieth-cen-
tury society – especially as it presented itself in California – was predicted to reveal
that sickness proper to this time is normality (§ 36). Being a regular guy or popular girl
then required blocking all signs of illness, displaying exuberant vitality and cheerfulness
as if one’s soul’s salvation depended on it. In fact, the mechanical nature of the bodily
comportment and the suppression of even as much as a furrowed brow inadvertently
suggested that the hearts had stopped beating long ago; and that what was presented
to us were corpses, skilfully prepared so as to not scare o anyone at the open-casket
funerals that were hidden in plain sight. It was a time when being homosexual was
considered a mental illness, which tells us not only about the sexual mores then, but
also about the stigma – even taboo – that was attached to those not considered normal
in their mental or emotional make-up.
As times have changed, so have mores. Being diagnosed as presenting with
mental illness has become much less stigmatised, especially if the suerers are privileged
and do not have socially unacceptable delusions. Certain conditions are now often
understood as examples of neurodiversity, rather than abnormality. Being neurologically
dierent is sometimes even celebrated, as in the trope of the troubled geniuses of the
world of art, mathematics, or nance that populate the silver screen and on-demand
streaming devices. It has become statistically likely and accepted – even fashionable,
judging by how many princes and other celebrities go public with it – to receive at
least one diagnosis in one’s lifetime, be it anxiety, depression, attention decit hyper-
activity, or autistic spectrum. It is seen as a mark of individuality to be an instance
of a general category, although this absurdity is partly masked by the exceptions and
reasonable adjustments an acknowledged diagnosis might make available to whoever is
prepared to accept it (this quid pro quo can be witnessed in university contexts, where
the rise in mental health problems has been particularly striking). Still, perhaps, so far
so good. Things become more troubling when we consider the open secret that an
ever-increasing number of us are prescribed and take medication meant to address
low mood or anxiety, conceptualised as chemical imbalances in the brain; and the less
open secret that the side-eects might be worse than the (purported) disease. The shift
from the “age of anxiety” to the “age of depression” has been accompanied by a shift of
response, from one of telling people to man up or be locked up to one of popping pills
and exemption badges. What it means to be mentally distressed has changed in a way
that can almost be dated to a specic year: in 1980 a watershed occurred in psychiatry
– inevitably rst in the USA – whereby mental distress became understood as a bundle
of symptoms, for which the aetiology need not be known. The individualisation of
mental distress – something that already worried Adorno about mid-twentieth-century
psychoanalysis’s becoming part of social hygiene – thereby reached a completely new
level. The change in ontology within psychiatry made this distress into an illness of the
brain of yet-unknown origin. The causal nexus of these developments is like a vortex
882021, issue 2
of forces that cannot be easily disentangled. Yes, there have been changes in cultural
and moral – including sexual – norms, but the result we are faced with today also owes
much to the material forces brought to bear by the pharmaceutical companies and the
incentives structures of private and public health-care providers. Destigmatisation, in
our times, has come at the expense of commodication. If only the suering wouldn’t
so stubbornly persist through its normalisation and medicalisation! For while it is a
source of income, it is also a source of inconvenience for the new enterprenerial world.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.Whether to be normal is to deny illness
to the point of being dead, or to accept illness to the point of dying of the supposed
cure, does not alter in the slightest the aetiology of the individual and social malaise, or
indeed the lack of a real cure. Once again, bringing to light – be it the mid-twentieth-
century hygiene of social adaptability or the early twenty-rst century explosion of
mental illness diagnosis – does not automatically remove but instead can hide, indeed has
hidden, the “secret domain of the faeces” (§ 36), the remaining wretchedness; and more
eectively so. The signs of repression are perhaps no longer repressed at the individual
level, but now at the collective one. Yes, there is increasing recognition that there are
social causes of illness, including mental distress. But even this insight is co-opted into
social control, albeit often in the supposedly innocent and subtle form of changing the
“choice architecture” advocated by behavioural insight teams. Instead of social change,
we get mindfulness and resilience training; and whether the default becomes ‘opt out’
instead of ‘opt in’, will not change this.
When the norm has become for society to be ill, what’s the future for health?
Perhaps there is hope in the thought that no normalising of suering can completely
erase the critical potential suering has as motor of thinking.
Fabian Freyenhagen is Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Essex, UK. His publications include
Adorno’s Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly
(Cambridge University Press, 2013) and articles and
book chapters on Critical Theory. He is investigating
the idea of social pathology, particularly in relation to
mental distress, its conceptualisations and social causes.
Biography
892021, issue 2
This Side of the Pleasure Principle
Peter E. Gordon
“He alone who could situate utopia in blind somatic pleasure [...] has a stable and valid
idea of truth.” This surely ranks among the more memorable and provocative statements
in Adorno’s Minima Moralia; it appears in the reection (§ 37) in which the author
oers critical remarks on the more repressive or anti-utopian themes in psychoanalysis.
The title itself is intended as a sly riposte to Freud, whose Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920) introduced the controversial idea of a destructive instinct (Todestrieb) alongside
the instinct for pleasure (Lustprinzip) or libido. Written in the immediate aftermath of
the First World War, Freud’s revisionist argument for a second and competing instinct
of aggression arguably marked a conservative turn in psychoanalytic theory, insofar as
it prepared the theoretical terrain for the idea that civilization can only survive if it
represses the instinct for aggression that is a piece of the human being’s own psychic
constitution. Adorno rejects this conservative theme as a sign of Freud’s “unenlight-
ened Enlightenment.” On the one hand, Freud was the great opponent of bourgeois
moralism; he endorsed the maligned ideal of human happiness as a “critical standard”
for his work. On the other hand, Freud reconrmed the that very same moralism as a
social necessity. In modern culture, Adorno writes, psychoanalysis is poised in ambiva-
lence—between a “desire for the open emancipation of the oppressed, and apology for
open oppression.” In my own ongoing encounter with Minima Moralia, these critical
reections on psychoanalysis remain of greatest importance, not least because they oer
a corrective to the dominant interpretation of Adorno as an embittered negativist who
looks upon modern society as a place of unremitting darkness in which true happiness
is impossible and “life is not lived.” In his rejoinder to Freud, Adorno appears in a dier-
ent and unfamiliar light: he aligns himself with “blind somatic pleasure” as if it furnished
the key to unrealized utopia. Perhaps nowhere else in the book does its author provide
such a forthright conrmation of what he has announced in the opening dedication to
his friend Max Horkheimer, namely, that his “melancholy science” remains faithful to
philosophy’s ancient task: “the teaching of the right life.”
As someone who feels an ongoing connection to the tradition of critical theory,
I nd this particular reection from Minima Moralia especially instructive. It reminds us
that social criticism remains committed to a standard of human happiness even if the
surrounding world has miserably failed that standard. Few aphorisms in the book so
vividly express this commitment and thereby underscore the normative ideal of a life
worth living that still animates critical theory. Most striking of all is Adorno’s conclud-
ing suggestion that in modern culture, the imperative of repression imposes itself on
us from two directions: the moralist’s hostility to pleasure and the unbeliever’s hostility
to paradise. Although he lies at the furthest remove from any religious faith, Adorno
resists the crude dualism between materialism and metaphysics. He recognizes that the
religious longing for ultimate fulllment is not merely annulled in the simplest demand
for material pleasure but nds its dialectical realization. Metaphysics is honoured at the
moment of its fall.
902021, issue 2
Biography
Peter E. Gordon is the Amabel B. James Professor of
History and Faculty Affiliate in Germanic Languages
and Literatures and in the Department of Philosophy
at Harvard University. A frequent contributor of
reviews and criticism to periodicals such asThe
Nation, The New Republic, The Boston Review, andThe
New York Review of Books, he is the author of several
books on critical theory and the history of modern
European philosophy, includingRosenzweig and
Heidegger: between Judaism and German Philosophy
(2003);Continental Divide:Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos
(2010);Adorno and Existence(2016); andMigrants
in the Profane:Critical Theory and the Question of
Secularization(2020).He has also co-edited several
volumes, includingThe Routledge Companion to
the Frankfurt School,with Espen Hammer and Axel
Honneth (2018).
912021, issue 2
Thought’s Last Chances: On Being Bound and Free
Cecilia Sjöholm
…the glance at what is remote, the hatred of banality, the search for that
which has not yet been grasped, for what has not been encompassed by the
general conceptual schema, is the last chance for thought. In an intellectual
[geistigen] hierarchy, which continually holds everyone responsible, then
irresponsibility alone is capable of immediately calling the hierarchy itself by
name. The sphere of circulation, whose marks are borne by intellectual
outsiders, opens the last refuges to the spirit [Geist], which it is selling o, at
the moment when these no longer really exist. Whoever oers something
which is one of a kind, which no-one wants to buy anymore, represents, even
against their will, freedom from exchange. (§ 41)
This last chance for thought has perhaps escaped us, since Adorno wrote those lines in
Minima Moralia. Thought is today wholly administered by bureaucracy, workpackages,
digitalization, social media. We must search for it elsewhere. Perhaps in art, which has
stood in the middle of thought for thousands of years.
The long history of the relationship between art and philosophy speaks for
itself. Not only is it long, it is also slow. Philosophy tends to return to the same genres
and works; Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, modernists. These are all so familiar to philoso-
phy, and yet so elusive. To Adorno, canonized modernist avant-gardism was still radical.
To some, its formal revolution appeared threatening. Avant-gardism made conservatism
and fascism join forces in diligent hatred, a hatred rooted in weakness and the incapacity
to withstand the deterioration of the self. In contrast, Adorno saw modernist art provide
the glimpse of an insight into the possibilities of that which in our times comes across
as the impossible: it is both free and bound. It is both bound in and by the warmth of
things, and free to move beyond those things.
The object of art which harbours thought is not just any kind of object. It is the
conict-ridden focus of political opposition, social antagonism, aects and drives. The
object of art is a body of constant changes, appearing in multiple forms, and it can derive
both out of conscious work and what is unconscious in work. Adorno sees all these pos-
sibilities. The object of art—at least in the form that Adorno nds radical—is a symbol
of almost eternal freedom. But it is also the origin of projections, hopes, and dreams.
How to nd warmth in innite freedom? How can free unbounded thought
attach to the rooted life of love, intimacy, closeness? How can art oer routes where
these antagonistic spheres are combined, joined, or merged? Most often, Adorno con-
ceives of art in abstract terms of autonomy and freedom. And yet art gives us the hint
of a context of life and living beings: social ties of warmth and trust.
With regards to social relations, Adorno forestalls a full climatology containing
warmth and cold. We strive towards warmth. It is a fundamental element that we cannot
forestall, that we seek but cannot nd. It is lost to modern man. There are no societies,
known by us, that are governed by warmth. Cold, in turn, is a perversion of warmth.
In a cold society, human relations have been formed by technologies and tools. Once
922021, issue 2
started, this development easily spins out of control. It mutates. It morphs into the
natural, into the social, into the self, into thought.
A subject that is truly thinking freely needs to intertwine a form of critical
consciousness with an attraction towards the warm and the intimate. To approach the
warmth of things requires a kind of dialectic between the free and the bound. Thought
cannot naturally be held warm. It does not seek to restore unmediated warmth. Rather,
it is seeking to undo the conceptual dualism which has led to the submission of warm
life under cold thought. In approaching art, and the hope that art gives rise to, Adorno
is seeking to liberate thinking from the cold inherent to it. In the Western tradition,
thinkers are expected to master distance and objectivity, with a certain cold. But art can
be both hot and cold. A symbol for freedom and for love. The one who is attracted to
the warmth of things, does not think through mere distancing, but through the attrac-
tion towards a certain light, which may be both cold and warm. In art, lost possibilities
are nourished through a hope of experiences beyond the cold of freedom.
Art holds a sensitivity and a sensibility which is not a memory of an original
love, but rather an intensication of thought’s own process. Through art, the philoso-
pher becomes capable not only of thinking freely, but also of returning to the many
intensities that life may oer. Such as erotic intensity, the intimacy of whispered words,
or the warmth of a love that has vanished or that is kept hidden. In this way, thought
can open itself to a vigour which is almost corporal. Aesthetic experience may bestow
us with a powerful sense of life. Art is not weakened by thought, but intensied. It
becomes the daimon which keeps the possession of thought unresolved, and alive.
Let us see how this continues. Perhaps administered thought will marginalize
art even more than today, marginalize the warmth, life and love inherent to it and give
up on its lost possibilities, of joining the free and the bound. But still, we can and should
keep thinking about art, against the thought administered by sheer bureaucracy.
Biography
Cecilia Sjöholm is professor of Aesthetics at
Södertörn University. Her research is particularly
focused on the relation between art and politics
in contemporary culture. She has published
extensively on art, psychoanalysis and critical theory,
engaging in particular in how art and aesthetics
invite us to rethink political concepts and structures.
932021, issue 2
Malignant Normality and the Dilemma of Resistance:
Honoring Minima Moralia
Shierry Weber Nicholsen
Normality is death. (§ 561)
Malignant normality: an inhumane social actuality that is “presented as normal,
all-encompassing, and unalterable.” (Lee 2017, xv), a term originally coined by Roberty
Jay Lifton for Auschwitz. But as Adorno says, “wherever the momentum of [the logic of
history] carries it, it reproduces equivalents of past calamity.” And so, normality is death.
One of the many forms of death is the attening of the structure of the mind.
Adorno calls this the mutilation of the subject. The destruction of the dierence
between truth and lies by the Trump regime, for instance (Lifton).
If normality is death, terror sustains and enforces it. Adorno speaks of the
abolition of the distinction between sleeping and waking. Terror generates dreams that
are no dierent from nightmares: in 1934 Charlotte Beradt records a dreamer testifying
to the destruction of the dierence between interior and exterior. In his dream, the
dreamer says “I looked around, horried, and all the dwellings around, as far as the
eye can see, no longer have walls.” (1966, 25; my translation). The distinction between
reality and nightmare is eliminated along with walls. Individual nightmare and collec-
tive malignancy are two sides of the same thing.
All-encompassing terror creates the sense that the malignant normality is indeed
all-encompassing and inescapable: “just the way things are.” Language – the capacity to
articulate experience and to think about it – falls victim to this terror, mutilating itself.
In 1933 a woman dreams that in her sleep she speaks a language she does not know, “so
that I won’t understand myself and so no one can understand me, in case I say some-
thing about the state, because that is of course forbidden and has to be reported.” (Beradt
1966, 56; my translation). Currently, we struggle to make meaning with corporate-speak,
a facsimile of language that defeats meaning at every turn.
Language and the attened mind cooperate to create versions of denial, main-
taining the semblance of normality in a malignant situation, from the “doubling”
(Lifton) in which a special personality is created to allow sta to endure the malignant
normality of Auschwitz, to the corporate insistence on “deniability”. Stanley Cohen
details some of the ways language can be perverted into accounts that serve to justify or
excuse and thereby deny atrocities: It can be used to deny responsibility for the actions,
to deny that injury was done, to deny that victims are victims and not perpetrators, to
condemn those who condemn the atrocities, and to appeal to alleged higher ends that
would justify the actions (2001, 60-61).
The terror of malignant normality induces not only the sense that it is
all-encompassing, but the sense that it is unalterable – and dangerous to even think that
it could be otherwise. In this situation, Cohen remarks, the question may be not so much
why we resort to denial but why do we ever not do so? (2001, 248). With Minima Moralia
in mind, we may pose the same question about resistance: The question is not so much how
entanglement in malignant normality comes about but how it is ever possible to resist it?
942021, issue 2
Resistance must be possible, for malignant normality’s claim to constitute the
totality of reality is not tenable. It is an illusion propagated by the forces of malignancy;
an absolute totality is a contradiction in terms. Resistance would consist in the mutilated
subject’s struggle for self-reection on its own entanglement in malignant normality –
reection from, in Adorno’s formulation, the “perspective of redemption” which would
“displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent
and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light” (§ 153).
But here is the dilemma of resistance: it is virtually impossible to disentangle
oneself enough to achieve a standpoint removed “even by a hair’s breadth” (§ 153)
from what is, and whatever is gained in the struggle will necessarily be distorted by the
status quo, the all-encompassing malignant normality from which it has been wrested.
Anything gained in that struggle will be not something abstract and pure but merely the
humble, contingent, confused, naive pain of a subject sensing betrayal.
Rather than the perspective of ‘redemption’ – in these days a suspect word - we
might speak of something akin to it: the mutilated subject’s struggle for a perspective
animated by ‘moral injury’, a term hitherto used for the anguish of combat veterans
suering from the betrayal of their moral values. Moral injury, with its experience of
outrage and shame, acknowledges the world as indigent and distorted from the perspec-
tive of what would have been “right”, resisting a malignant normality by acknowledg-
ing damaged life.
Beradt, Charlotte. 1966. Das Dritte Reich des Traums.
Munich: Nymphenburger.
Cohen, Stanley. 2001. States of Denial: Knowing about
Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge (UK): Polity.
Lee, Bandy (ed.). 2017. The Dangerous Case of Donald
Trump, foreword by Robert Jay Lifton. New
York: St. Martin’s.
Biography
Acknowledgements
Notes
1
Based on my “Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Malignant
Normality and the Dilemmas of Resistance,” in
Critical Theory: Past, Present, Future, edited by
Anders Bartonek and Sven-Olov (2021, Wallenstein,
Stockholm: Soedertoern).
Unless otherwise indicated, quotations come
from the NLB edition of Minima Moralia (1974),
translated by E.F.N. Jephcott.
References
Shierry Weber Nicholsen is a psychoanalyst in
private practice in Seattle. She is the translator of
Adorno’s Notes to Literature and Hegel:Three Studies,
and the author of Exact Imagination, Late Work: On
Adorno’s Aesthetics. She is currently working on a
bookon moral injury.
952021, issue 2
The Wound and the Flower
Surti Singh
“Is femininity secreted by the ovaries? Is it enshrined in a Platonic heaven? Is a frilly
petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women zealously strive
to embody it, the model has never been patented. It is typically described in vague
and shimmering terms borrowed from a clairvoyant’s vocabulary” (de Beauvoir 2011,
3). Only a few years before the publication of Minima Moralia, Simone de Beauvoir
had published the Second Sex, a work in which she raised this paradox of femininity:
it was something so enmeshed in the understanding of womanhood, and yet, could
not be properly located. Femininity was to be found neither in the biological body,
“secreted by the ovaries,” an eect of being in possession of a womb or uterus, nor
in the appeal to some eternal feminine soul, which by the mid-twentieth century
had already become anachronistic. Yet, on de Beauvoir’s account, femininity was also
not simply a gender performance—the donning of a frilly petticoat—as Judith Butler
would later famously argue. For de Beauvoir, femininity was a negative term, some-
thing that embodied everything that in a heterosexual, patriarchal society, man is not. If
masculinity and femininity shared an abstract legal parity, in concrete reality, there was a
deep asymmetry. The “feminine character” is Other—it is inessential, inferior, irrational,
a situation of bodily imprisonment marked by menstruation, childbirth, menopause and
hormones—a condition, therefore, of great repulsion.
Adorno’s Minima Moralia is not a feminist text, but it is comprised of a set of
aphorisms that, like de Beauvoir, ask after the condition of femininity in a patriarchal
society. In the aphorism, “Since I set my eyes on him,” (§ 59) Adorno discusses the fem-
inine character, and the ideal upon which it is based, as products of patriarchy and, in a
fashion similar to de Beauvoir’s, views this masculine production of the female character
as a “negative imprint of domination”. This aphorism culminates in Adorno’s provoc-
ative formulation “femininity itself is already the eect of the whip”. Adorno refers to
the infamous passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the little old woman says to
Zarathustra, “You are going to women? Then don’t forget the whip.” For Adorno, this
injunction reects Nietzsche’s adherence to the idea of an eternal feminine soul, and
the equation of “the feminine” with women, “hence the perdious advice not to forget
the whip”. Adorno thus reverses Nietzsche’s formulation: rather than woman requiring
submission through violence because of the unruliness of her feminine nature, feminin-
ity itself is always already an eect of male violence.
Adorno’s provocative formulation has formed the basis for thinking about how
a feminist critical theory might be recovered from the canon of the Frankfurt School,
in which it appears to be all but absent. Recent feminist accounts of this aphorism have
positioned Adorno as holding both radical and conservative views of sex, as both a
queer theorist avant la lettre (Duford, 2017) and as reproducing the dichotomy between
male sadism and female masochism as the only horizon of female sexuality within a
heterosexual patriarchal society (Marasco, 2006). I cannot enter into these debates here;
instead, I propose to return to this aphorism once more, but through the door opened
by de Beauvoir. There is an unexpected experiential dimension—the lived experience
962021, issue 2
of the body—that Adorno attends to in this aphorism, which complicates his notion of
the feminine character.
Adorno recalls the founding psychoanalytic myth of femininity, according to
which a woman experiences her body as an eect of castration. Because of castration,
a woman’s genitals are perceived as a wound, and this wound is reactivated when she
begins to menstruate. This experience of the body gives rise to neuroses but also to a
certain epistemic privilege: “The woman who feels herself a wound when she bleeds
knows more about herself than the one who imagines herself a ower because that suits
her husband” (§ 59). The crucial distinction Adorno makes in considering this myth
of femininity is that between feeling and imagining, between the experience of one’s
corporeity and the fantasy that one adopts about it. Adorno suggests that women come
closer to knowing their feminine character through their embodiment, through their
lived experience, rather than through the assumption of an ideal.
Yet the distinction between feeling and imagining is not so clear in Adorno’s
analogy, for to imagine oneself as a ower is also at the same time to feel oneself as a
site of injury, which in the patriarchal script of womanhood is an injury either on the
horizon or one that has already transpired. That is to say, the wound or injury of castra-
tion, which is reactivated during menstruation, is reactivated yet again when a woman
loses her virginity, when she is de-owered. The image of femininity as a ower is thus
not so innocent for it in fact contains a history of bodily injury, the ow of blood as a
rite of passage that conrms a woman’s purity to her husband.
In Adorno’s formulation, to imagine oneself as a ower, as a being-for-others,
happens through the male gaze of the husband, and later he gives another example in
relation to the gaze of the jealous male:
The femininity which appeals to instinct, is always exactly what every woman
has to force herself by violence—masculine violence—to be: a she-man. One
need only have perceived, as a jealous male, how such feminine women have
their femininity at their nger-tips—deploying it just where needed, ashing
their eyes, using their impulsiveness… (§ 59).
This performative aspect of femininity requires an active form of mutilation, one that
requires woman to violently bend herself to the prevailing ideal, an ideal produced by
the (male) ego and thus fully adapted to the rationalized order. Adorno presents the
she-man as a female form that wields the violence of masculinity, a paradoxical gure of
allure and frustration, desire and horror; but does this gure, when ashing her eyes and
using her impulsiveness as the jealous male watches, enjoy her masculine femininity? For
de Beauvoir, enjoyment borne of submission was an obstacle to women’s emancipation
from the patriarchal order. And surely for Adorno, if the she-man bears enjoyment, it
only serves to further will her own submission. In the dialectic between the wound
and the ower, between embodiment and the assumption of an ideal, enjoyment is not
discussed, but it arrives on the scene.
972021, issue 2
Surti Singh is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at
Villanova University. Her research interests include
Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Global Critical
Theory, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Philosophy, and
Aesthetics. She is Co-Principal Investigator of the
research project,Extimaces: Critical Theory from the
Global South,and currently serves as President
of the Association for Adorno Studies. Recent
publications include “Dark play: Aesthetic resistance
in Lukács, Benjamin and Adorno,”Philosophy and
Social Criticism(2020),“Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory:
The Artwork as Monad” inThe ‘Aging’ of Adorno’s
Aesthetic Theory: 50 Years Later(2021) and “Mahdi
Amel and the Non-Identical,”Critical Times:
Interventions in Global Critical Theory(Forthcoming).
de Beauvoir, Simone. 2011. The Second Sex.
Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila
Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Vintage Books.
Duford, Rochelle. 2017. “Daughters of the
Enlightenment: Reconstructing Adorno on
Gender and Feminist Praxis.” Hypatia 32 (4):
784-800.
Marasco, Robyn. 2006. “‘Already the Effect of the
Whip’: Critical Theory and the Feminine
Ideal.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural
Studies 17 (1): 88-115.
Works Cited Biography
982021, issue 2
Mammoth, or: the Dialectic of Human Afterlife
Stefan Niklas
It is a troubling thought: Humanity might be at its best only in hindsight, when its
afterlife will be its sole mode of existence. In other words, only when humanity will no
longer exist in the ‘actual’ sense – not as humanity, at least – but as a retroactive projec-
tion, will it nally become the fulllment of its own Concept. Yet, who will project it?
I nd this troubling thought expressed in aphorism 74 of Minima Moralia, called
“Mammoth”. Here, Adorno refers to the reported discovery of a well-preserved dino-
saur (not a mammoth, which is in fact nowhere mentioned except for the title1). This
specimen is said to have outlived its kind, being a million years younger than all other
known specimens. How the enormous gap in the timeline of that species could be
explained – whether it is due to false assumptions about this specic discovery or the
earlier ones – is not Adorno’s concern. His focus is rather on the public imagination
that absorbs such paleontological information alongside “the repulsive humoristic craze
for the Loch Ness Monster and the King Kong lm” (§ 74), thus treating all these
dierent phenomena and sources on the same imaginative plane.
There are two functions Adorno ascribes to this occupation of the public
imagination. The rst one goes roughly like this: In familiarizing themselves with
the gigantic images, people imaginatively prepare for the terrors of the “monstrous
total State”, desperately trying “to assimilate to experience what dees all experience”
(§ 74). The result is a happily fatalistic anticipation of the end of spontaneity as the heart
of human life.
However, Adorno is quick to admit that this cannot be all there is to it. He
therefore adds the second function which confronts happy fatalism with its dialectical
inversion: miserable hope. “The desire for the presence of the most ancient is a hope
that animal creation might survive the wrong that man has done it, if not man himself,
and give rise to a better species, one that nally makes a success of life” (§ 74). It is
mostly in this quote that I nd expressed the speculative thought about the realization
of the suppressed better possibilities of humanity – i.e., the better species which is to
arise only after humankind has made way for it by suspending itself. For if a dinosaur
can live a million years beyond its ocial extinction, thereby taking its kind into the
future, maybe humankind could do the same.
Admittedly, the quote could also be read as saying that hope for the better species
means the abolition of all things human. The animals suering under the human rule
over the world would then be surviving the oppression, even outliving their oppressors,
and, nally, be left alone in peace. It would be left in the unoppressed paws and ippers
of these animals then to make life a success. This interpretation, however, would not only
be prone to a fatalistic kind of romanticism, but it would also jump to a constitutively
external standpoint that potentially invalidates the central impulse of Minima Moralia
to oer immanent critique of society and humanity at large. Furthermore, it creates the
epistemic and logical problem that this vision of life as either successful or failed (rather
than indierent) is after all a projection of the human mind. And it is the human mind
which imaginatively passes on this vision to the animals. If making life a success means
992021, issue 2
to realize the good life, and if the good life means “entering a truly human[e] state”, as
the Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002, xiv) suggests, then humans – or humanity – cannot
yet be ruled out of the speculation entirely. The question, or paradox, is rather how
humanity – i.e., the existing human species – could abolish itself without abolishing the
claim of humanity – i.e., the humane state which humans, apparently, are themselves
unable to enter. In a way, this is a variation, or rather a farewell to the Übermensch-theme
where the idea of humans uplifting themselves by way of their own will and strength
is given up.
Besides the kind of Hegelianism that explains the problem of simultane-
ously abolishing and not abolishing something in terms of “sublation”, I consider the
mammoth-aphorism to express a transposition and complication of the Warburgian
motif of Nachleben – meaning afterlife as material remembrance – which Adorno
himself praises in his Aesthetic Theory (1997, 5). Early modern Europeans had to know
enough about ancient Greek culture to be able to arm the respective “pathos for-
mulas” (Warburg) while transforming their meaning (including a great deal of misun-
derstanding and misrepresentation) in its acts of reappropriation. Analogously, though
on the scale not just of historical cultures, but of evolutionary (or even cosmic) species,
those who will come after the abolition of humanity will still have to be human enough
to identify with the conserved remnants of the human life-form; but at the same time
they have to be suciently beyond humanity – or in any case beneath it – to make a
fresh new start in realizing the hitherto unrealized better possibilities of that human
heritage. The unmentioned mammoth of Adorno’s aphorism might indeed be an
adequate image to describe this: Returning from the ice in one piece, this specic
specimen is still dead, but its life-form can be re-enacted (to borrow a concept from R.
G. Collingwood) in more than one sense. It can be re-enacted theoretically by using
the evidence the specimen provides for understanding and learning from the kind of
life the mammoth was leading. Beyond that, the mammoth may even be reconstructed
genetically, meaning that the mammoth as an organic life-form could literally be res-
urrected as a living species. Its appearance in a world in which the mammoth had
been extinct, however, would still amount to a real-life re-enactment, a simulation, or a
performance of mammoth-life in a non-mammoth-world.
So, what could this mean for the question of humanity outliving itself in the
(metaphorical or cryonic) ice? As with all transgressive consequences of thought, it is
not only the understanding but mostly the imagination that must do the job here. It
does so by calling on the nexus of speculative possibility. What the human mind needs,
in other words, is a medium that oers the seemingly impossible standpoint of thinking
and complementing humanity in hindsight; a way of imaginatively experiencing the
afterlife of humanity in order to make the better possibilities, which remained sup-
pressed, tangible In speculative ction the imagination has indeed found a powerful
medium for doing just that.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (which, among other things, is about creating
a necessarily selective archive as the eponymous foundation for the reconstruction of
humanity after its psychohistorically prognosticated downfall); Liu Cixin’s Death’s End
(the concluding novel of the Trisolaris trilogy which, among other things, radicalizes
1002021, issue 2
the problem of gathering material that can be stored for the future remembrance of
humankind, and which also spells out the fate of humans that are no longer human
without being sub- or superhuman); Joanna Russ’ We Who Are About To [Die] (which
amplies the troubling nature of the problem of human afterlife, by having the pro-
tagonist, among other things, meditate about how pointless a record of human history
would be which nobody will nd, or which will be found by creatures that will not be
able to understand it at all); or Dietmar Dath’s The Abolition of Species (which takes the
subjunctive standpoint of the advanced animal kingdom after humanity’s irrecoverable
downfall), and many, many other science-ctional artworks may each be interpreted
as contributions to taking the impossible vantage point of anticipated hindsight from
which the unrealized – often surprising and never denite – possibilities of the human
species can be explored.
The minimal morale of this, I believe, is that through speculative ction –
which, for sure, is an outlet of the culture industry – we can in a way experience
humanity in hindsight already. In other words, a vital sense for the better possibilities
– which, presumably, will remain unrealized – is itself not only possible but actual, and
is in no way compelled to surrender to the dogmas that claim to already know how to
tell the better possibilities from the worse. It is only speculation! And luckily so, because
speculative ction – despite speculation’s bad name in unimaginative society – does not
mistake itself for “the way things truly are”, as some non-ctional metaphysics may have
done. As ction it is the playful try-out behavior of rigorously imaginative minds. The
thought that humanity might become humane only in hindsight does not appear any
less troubling in this way, but at least its conscious ctionalization has more to oer than
just fatalism (happy or not), or the stale kind of solace that is attractive only to the fanatics
who comfort themselves by holding that life will truly begin only after it has ended.
For as long as the promise of humane humanity remains constitutively unful-
lled, we will have to be content with hope. And as far as Adorno is concerned, this
hope is miserable. It will still be enough to defy complete surrender.
Not only does joking about the ‘mammoth in
the room’ force itself onto the mind or the reader
of this aphorism, also was “mammoth” in fact the
nickname of Max Horkheimer, to whom Adorno,
the “hippo”, had dedicated the Minima Moralia.
(Thanks are due to Josef Früchtl for reminding me
of Horkheimer’s nickname.)
1
Notes
Stefan Niklas is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at
the University of Amsterdam where he is part of the
Critical Cultural Theory group. His work focusses
on aesthetics and the critical philosophy of culture.
Biography
1012021, issue 2
Adorno, Theodor W. 2005. Minima Moralia. Reflections
on a Damaged Life. Translated by E. F. N.
Jephcott. London: Verso.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2001 [1951]. Minima Moralia.
Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory. Translated
by Robert Hullot-Kentor. London/ New York:
Continuum.
Asimov, Isaac. 1951. Foundation. New York: Gnome
Press.
Collingwood, Robin G. 2005. The Idea of History.
Revised Edition with Lectures 1926–1928.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dath, Dietmar. 2008. Die Abschaffung der Arten.
Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Dath, Dietmar. 2013. The Abolition of Species.
Translated by S. P. Willcocks. London: Seagull
Books 2013.
Horkheimer, Max & Theodor W. Adorno. 2002.
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments.
Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Liu, Cixin. 2016. Death’s End. Translated by K. Liu.
New York: Tor Books.
Russ, Joanna. 1977. We Who Are About To…. New
York: Dell Publishing.
Warburg, Aby. 2010. Werke in einem Band. Berlin:
Suhrkamp.
References
1022021, issue 2
The Eyes of the Ape
Matthew Noble-Olson
What life is implicated in the question: ‘Is life still damaged?’ How do we reckon with
the question of a damaged life in the face of global climate catastrophe and the sixth
extinction, which threaten much of the earth’s animal and plant life, in addition to
human life? In the seventy-fourth aphorism of Minima Moralia, titled “Mammoth,”
Adorno notes the discovery of a fossil in Utah from an animal that had survived mil-
lions of years past any previously known similar species. For Adorno, the interest in life
long since extinct expresses a hope that something might survive humanity: “The desire
for the presence of the most ancient is a hope that animal creation might survive the
wrong that man has done to it, if not man himself, and give rise to a better species, one
that nally makes a success of life” (§ 74). The life that survives past its moment provides
a hope that a better version of life might still appear even in the face of catastrophe
and suering. Do we still desire the hope provided by such ancient creatures? Does the
presence of such monstrous nature still oer the hope of a better species? One of the
exemplary expressions of this desire identied by Adorno is Merian Cooper and Ernest
Schoedsack’s 1933 lm, King Kong, which combines “gigantic images” with the desire
for the ancient.1 What can we learn of the present condition of the damaged life in the
shift from the earlier portrayal of natural monstrosity to more recent instances of such?
One recent example appears in Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s 2017 lm, Kong: Skull
Island. The lm follows a team of scientists on a mission to nd Kong. As in the 1933 lm,
Kong is not the only ancient life on the island. In the earlier lm, he battles dinosaurs
and other creatures in defense of his romantic interest before being subdued, kidnapped,
and taken to New York, where his inability to survive the violence of humanity is cast as
a tragic sacrice to progress. In Kong, Kong is enlisted as a defender of humanity against
more vicious and dangerous monsters, which are no longer simply sideshows on the
way to the grand spectacle. While in King Kong (as well as the 2005 remake by Peter
Jackson), Kong is aorded a tragically romantic and spectacular end atop the Empire
State building following his kidnapping and imprisonment, in Kong he communes
with the male and female leads, who decide to save him from the more vicious human
intruders on the island. Rather than falling to his death amidst heartbreak and bullets,
he deantly watches as the humans with whom he has reconciled secure their escape,
waiting to be called upon to protect humanity again in the already expected sequels.
Kong portrays a humanity that saves Kong and is, in turn, saved by him. Each
relies upon the other in this version of the myth. The harmonious relationship between
humanity and Kong stands in stark contrast to the violence and domination portrayed
in the earlier versions. But Adorno reminds us that the solace oered in this semblance
of reconciliation is illusory: “The more purely nature is preserved and transplanted by
civilization, the more implacably it is dominated” (§ 74). The tragic portrayal of human-
ity’s violent domination of nature in King Kong has been reformulated as a tenuous
alliance, where enlightened humans must defend Kong against the violence within
humanity so that a now civilized Kong can survive to repel the threat that nature poses
to humanity’s self-exception.
1032021, issue 2
1
The mutual recognition reached between Kong and the enlightened element
of humanity involves a forgetting of the original and ongoing violence which puts
Kong at the service of his own domination. In contrast to the closing shot of King Kong,
where the audience is left with the dead, lifeless eye of Kong in the foreground after
his nal fall, the audience of Kong leaves Skull Island by way of a zoom into Kong’s
face and ultimately his eye as he deantly roars and beats his chest. This con fron tation
with the eyes of the monstrous ape invites a reconsideration of what life is damaged and
how some species might make “a success of life” under the conditions of the present
catastrophe. In Aesthetic Theory Adorno associates the expressive capacity of the artwork
with the eyes of animals: “…there is nothing so expressive as the eyes of animals—
especially apes—which seem objectively to mourn that they are not human” (Adorno
1997, 113). In this understanding, the ape’s eyes serve as a model for those elements of
the world that are external to humanity and yet exist in its thrall. It is telling, then, that
as Kong survives, waiting to defend humanity, the confrontation with his eyes is not
the nal image but merely a prelude to the lm’s nostalgic imag ination of humanity
reconciled to itself. In this revision the hope for survival beyond extinction is lost
amidst an imagined repair of the past itself, and the moment when such a hope for
the survival of something beyond the damage of humanity could still be rendered. The
tragic death of Kong which served as a reminder of humanity’s damage done to nature
is no longer tenable. The fate of nature is now understood as tied to our own. Humanity
now welcomes Kong as an honorary ape among men, a benevolent defender against the
violent threat of nature; he will not survive us.
Notes
Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Doane, Mary Ann. 2021. Bigger Than Life: The Close-
Up and Scale in the Cinema. Durham: Duke
University Press.
For a recent consideration of such “gigantic
images”, see Doane 2021.
References
Biography
Matthew Noble-Olson is a scholar of visual culture
with interests in film theory, avant-garde cinema,
digital cinema, moving-image installation, and
aesthetics. He is currently completing a manuscript
titledExile, Trauma, Ruin: The Forms of Cinematic
Lateness, which theorizes lateness in twentieth-
and twenty-first-century cinema. His writing has
appeared inDiscourse, Modernism/Modernity,New
German Critique, andCultural Critique.He teaches
film studies at the University of Michigan.
1042021, issue 2
Either Or
Oshrat C. Silberbusch
The a priori reduction to the friend-foe relationship is one of the
Ur-phenomena of the new anthropology. Freedom would be not to choose
between black and white but to step out of such prescribed choice.(§ 85)
Either Or, which holds such sway these days, is about much more than political
polarization. It is about a strangely contracted imagination, about thought broken o,
freedom crushed by prescribed choices. The prescription is all the more inescapable as,
by all accounts, there is no prescriber. In their stead, there is paucity: the reduction of
an innitely complex reality to the black and white of the Either Or, the squeezing of
the messy, unruly phenomena into a neat binary. Red or Blue, Pro-Life or Pro-Choice,
Free Markets or Servitude, Live Free or Die, Pro-Vaccine or Antivaxx. Binary thinking
is identity thinking on steroids. Everything is either friend or foe, A or not-A. There
is no need for reection, only sorting. The answer is already given. Just check the box.
Either Or forces thought into a corner, a corner in which reection is stied
or worse: a threat, a dangerous concession to the other side. Just like in the One Drop
Rule – the paroxysm of America’s primal binary – the most innitesimal trace of not-A
erases A, turns it into its opposite. There is no in-between, no nuance, no new coming
out of the old, no innity of possibilities, only a jealously guarded Either Or for which
intransigence is strength and humility a weakness. Lost is the possibility of true reec-
tion, the richness of an argument not decided in advance. Lost is the fragile freedom in
which thought blossoms, the quest for a truth that can only be found because it can be
lost. For Adorno, the ability to think, to reect, hinged on the ability to see in the small
dierence a Dierenz ums Ganze – a dierence that changes everything. In the world
of Either Or, there are no small dierences, only the Big One, and there is no change
either, certainly no change of mind –only xity, ever-sameness, and the unshakeable
conviction to be on the right side.
Either Or is the language of power. It tends to be most forceful where power
needs to be consolidated or feels under threat. In America, British settlers, at the fore-
front of their white supremacist times, created a black-white binary so rigid that it
would outdo all its colonialist peers in exploitative power and longevity. Spanish settlers,
on the other hand, relied on a complex nomenclature of intermixtures (negros, mes-
tizas, mulatas, moriscos, castizas, albinos, barcinas, cambujos, zambaigas, and many more)
whose multiplicity undermined the very hierarchy it aimed to construct. Power relies
on the constriction of the possible, on the withering of social and political imagination.
Complexity, multiplicity, ambiguity, and nuance feed the imagination. They are the
beginning of freedom, just as Either Or is its end. Those who trumpet the prescribed
choices know that all too well. They do not want you to be free; they do not even want
you to choose. They want you to believe that there is no alternative.
Either Or thrives on fear. “Either” it ominously rumbles, “or else… ”. War,
imagined or real, is its terrain of choice. In the United States, the protracted Cold War,
with McCarthyism as its brief but revealing ideological paroxysm, has led to a withering
1052021, issue 2
of the collective political imagination whose legacy continues. But America, as Adorno
knew all too well, is not an exception – it is the exaggeration that is the medium
of truth, always one step ahead. The thought-structure that the One Drop Rule and
McCarthyism relied on and perpetuated, the merciless A or not-A, is alive and well and
can be found everywhere. As the prescribed choices become ever more entrenched, the
capacity to step out of them wilts away. For the sake of that very freedom whose name
is so often fraudulently invoked by the Either Or, we need to relearn, urgently, not to
choose between black and white.
Biography
Oshrat C. Silberbusch holds a PhD in Philosophy
from Tel Aviv University and an MA in German
Studies from the Université de la Sorbonne
Nouvelle, Paris. She is the author of Adorno’s
Philosophy of the Nonidentical. Thinking as Resistance
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and has written articles
on Theodor W. Adorno, Jean Améry, W. E. B. Du
Bois, George Orwell, Günther Anders, post-Shoah
thought and German-Jewish history. She lives in
Brooklyn with her husband and three children.
1062021, issue 2
Knock Knock
Henry W. Pickford
The individual owes his crystallization to the forms of political economy,
particularly to those of the urban market. Even as the opponent of the pressure
of societization [Vergesellschaftung] he remains the latter’s ownmost product
and its likeness. What enables him to resist, that streak of independence in him,
springs from monadological individual interest and its precipitate, character.
The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained societal law of
exploitation, however much mediated. This means too, however, that his
decay in the present phase must itself not be deduced individualistically, but
from the societal tendency which prevails by means of individuation and not
merely as its enemy.(§ 971)
Adorno’s “urban market” has become today’s digital domain, and its forms of political
economy and ubiquitously reticulated “veil of technology” mark a new phase in the
decay of the individual. “Bourgeois walking” (§ 102) has been eclipsed by the coarse
gestures of scrolling, swiping, and hitting, requiring only the four compass points of left/
right, up/down and target buttons: with these gestures ‘users’ consume content (a mass
noun) and choose people and wares alike in a similar mode of solipsistic distrac tion that
blithely and mercilessly caricatures Walter Benjamin’s now seemingly wistful collectiv-
ist vision. One is dispersed phenomenologically before one is reconsti tuted virtually.
Each person is delivered products – screeds and stories, toothpaste and pharma adverts,
candidate pets and sexual partners – “chosen just for you” with more speed and less
answerability each day. Pseudo-individuation – “have it your way” – has advanced to the
point where the almost innumerable harvested data points for each singleton “end-user”
ensure the delivery of a mixed concoction of mass-produced mediocrity with planned
obsolescence that is perfectly suited to his “prole,” a term that tellingly reduces the
human being to a silhouette. The neness of the grid’s mesh by which our authenticity
is packaged and sold to us preempts genuine experience and growth more than any
self-help book ever could: “werde, was du klickst” and “to thine own bot be true.”
But a qualitative reversal has taken place. The exchange principle remains in
force, of course, but now reaches further into the subject, transforming him into a
social object, for the user-prole is the actual commodity that is traded in the “digital
handshake.” The individual is dissolved –“rendered” –into a set of data points, input
for Markov-chain algorithms, “black box” routines that yield behavioral expectations
for each data set. Individual autonomy and interiority, the process of weighing goals
and conicting values that animates the Kantian picture of the will, seems now as
quaint and kitschy as a creaking Black Forest cuckoo clock. Individual subjectivity is
epiphenomenal; idiosyncratic deviation, ambivalence and inner struggle, conscience, are
statistically insignicant; the algorithmically aggregated is nowadays the rational, and
only it is the real. The bearer of an ‘ethics of conviction’ is a mere screen-memory of
an earlier phase of capitalism, the afterglow of a device permanently powering down.
“Through this dissolution of all the mediating elements within the individual himself,
1072021, issue 2
by virtue of which he was, in spite of everything, also a part of the societal subject, he
regresses, impoverished and coarsened, to the state of a mere societal object” (§ 97).
A primal phenomenon of “the social principium individuationis” is the further
dissolution of an integrated self as theorized by Freud. Alongside making each individ-
ual the executor of repression of his impulses, including those impulses required for any
genuine happiness, neo-liberalist ideology elevated each individual’s rational ego into
the manager of his own assets: natural talents, and the acquired skills and credentials
that insidiously constrict and subordinate his realm of possible experience to the logic
of return on investment. At the same time, this ideology insinuated that each individ-
ual was wholly responsible for his economic fate, rather than the systemic “laws of
motion” that constitute an increasingly overwhelming second nature confronting him.
The cruelty and aggression that one inicted upon oneself for being a “loser’” could
easily be redirected, by charismatic self-promoting “winners,” onto any out-group:
immigrants, elites, political opponents. Part of the psychic regression is precisely this
reduction of others into friend or foe (§ 85). Anonymity online, the use of pseudonyms
or avatars, raties the disintegration of the self; the autonomization [Verselbständigung] of
semblance in online “screen identities” both masks and reveals the autonomization of
unchecked, unrepressed impulses IRL: countless Underground Men impotently seeth-
ing within the Crystal Palace.
In this development the capacity of people to speak with each other is further
degraded, not only by the atrophying of “experience worth communicating” but also
because the means of expression are being replaced “by a societally prepared mech-
anism” (§ 90). Adorno, who castigated the use of slogans, catchphrases, and so on as
symptoms of reied thought, also foresaw the further development into what bears the
deceptively harmless, infantilized name of “emoji.” “The omnipresent images are none,
because they present the wholly general, the average, the standard model, as something
unique or special, and so at the same time deride it. The abolition of the particular is
turned insidiously into something particular. The desire for particularity has already
sedimented in need, and is reproduced on all sides by mass culture, on the pattern of the
comic strip [Funnies]” (§ 92). Emojis are the death masks of the comic strip, frozen rigor
mortis in the service of utmost eciency in the simplest communication, the quickest
means to signal good and bad, friend and foe.
And yet as all language has a double character, so too this picture language
contains within it what might transcend it (§ 97). Underneath the anodyne image
personifying the rationalized signal as stripped of noise as possible, the labored smile of
the salesman heeding the command to “always be selling,” the cartoon-like images at
the same time suggest the reassuring imago of the child’s world as a room full of toys;
they at once evoke and mockingly betray the delicate intimation of what it would feel
like to be genuinely at home, bei sich im anderen, in a sheltered space where a self
still in statu nascendi can wondrously lose and nd itself within an artful second nature
populated by playful possibilities.
1082021, issue 2
All quotations, often modified by me, are from
T.W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, translated by E.F.N.
Jephcott. London: Verso, 1974.
Henry W. Pickford is Professor of German and
Philosophy at Duke University. He is the author of
The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of
Holocaust Art (Fordham University Press); Thinking
with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion, and
Art (Northwestern University Press; forthcoming
in Russian translation with Academic Studies Press);
co-author of In Defense of Intuitions: A New Rationalist
Manifesto (Palgrave Macmillan); co-editor of Der
aufrechte Gang im windschiefen Kapitalismus: Modelle
kritischen Denkens (Springer Verlag); editor and
translator of Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models:
Interventions and Catchwords (Columbia University
Press) and Selected Early Poems of Lev Loseff
(Spuytenduyvil Press); and author of over twenty-
five articles and book chapters. He is currently
co-authoring the book Adorno: A Critical Life and
co-editing the Oxford Handbook to Adorno. More
information about his work can be found on
academia.edu.
1
Notes Biography
2021, issue 2
Conciliation ”Out of Sheer Egoism”
Rolando Vitali
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
DOI Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 109-111.
10.21827/krisis.41.2.38279
2021, issue 2 109
Conciliation ”Out of Sheer Egoism”
Rolando Vitali
In aphorism 97, Adorno states: “The individual owes his crystallization to the forms
of political economy, particularly to those of the urban market. Even as the opponent
of the pressure of socialization he remains the latter’s most particular product and its
likeness”. Particularly resonant today, this observation does not simply declare the dia-
lectical codetermination of the individual by the dynamic of the capitalistic economy
– an awareness present not only in Marx, but even in Hegel before him – it also points
at the contradictions within which even the dierent possible forms of resistance are
entangled in the context of our society. In fact, even “what enables him”, i.e. the indi-
vidual, “to resist […] springs from monadological individual interest and its precipitate,
character” (§ 97). How does this observation aect Adorno’s own political theory as
well as our present struggles?
The rst point to highlight is that Adorno clearly recognizes the social consti-
tution of the individual: the mediated character of its essence makes its objective eec-
tiveness on the political level illusory and misleading. But Adorno does not resort to a
collective subject either. Although Adorno substantially accepts the dialectical material-
ist interpretation of liberal society as a class-based society, he also traces the concept of
class back to bourgeois forms of individuation, stretched between a false totality and an
illusory particularity. In this sense, the concept of class itself is unveiled as an ideological
construct that merely “designates the unity in which particular bourgeois interests are
made real” (2003, 99). Class is a product of the division of labour and of class society
itself. This particularistic origin holds not only for the class of the exploiters, but also for
those of the exploited. As a result, the oppressed “are unable to experience themselves
as a class” and even those among them “who claim the name mean by it for the most
part their own particular interest in the existing state of aairs” (2003, 97). Individuals
and classes are thus equally predetermined by their social embeddedness, which makes
them, at the same time, products and functions of the existing social order. In both cases,
the possibility of resistance stems from individual interest, from the conditions of the
political economy.
Despite the apparent equivalence of the concepts of class and of the individual,
and despite the radical critique of the very presupposition of any form of individual
self-determination (“not only is the self entwined in society; it owes society its exis-
tence in the most literal sense. All its content comes from society, or at any rate from
its relation to the object” (§ 97)), Adorno seems to assign an implicit primacy to the
individual: not only because, as we have seen, he explains both the concept of class and
the one of bourgeois, i.e. individualistic, subjectivation as results of modern political
economy, but also because when it comes to challenging the falseness of the totality
Adorno mostly resorts to individual resistance and not to collective organization. It is
only the irreducible nonidentity of the particularity that contradicts and thus resists the
false reconciliation of the totality. However, “individuality” is “not the ultimate either”
(2004, 161) and nonidentity must not be understoodas an ontological substance: both
only emerge within the dialectical process, i.e. as moments of the social totality. That
1102021, issue 2
is why “he who wishes to know the truth about life in its immediacy must scrutinize
its estranged form, the objective powers that determine individual existence even in its
most hidden recesses” (“Dedication”). Yet, not only do both the concept of nonidentity
and that of the individual share a common (and indelible) moment of immediacy, but
“the substance of the contradiction between universal and particular is that individual-
ity is not yet – and that, therefore, it is bad wherever established” (2004, 151). Dominion
is rst and foremost described as the false identication with totality of the irreducible
individual – i.e. the forced subsumption of the qualitative non-identical particularity
under the dominion of the universal – and not as the class violence of the few exerted
over the many. In this sense it is qualitative particularity, and not the collective subject,
that can allow the possibility of a reconciled totality to emerge.
Adorno is well aware that both contradictions cannot be resolved on a purely
theoretical level: only true praxis would be capable of resolving them. However, since
the necessary presupposition of praxis – i.e. subjectivity – is in both cases unveiled as a
product of the false totality, then praxis primarily means critical self-reection: this alone
can set free the nonidentity within the falseness of identity. Theory and praxis thus over-
turn into one another: the only possible praxis seems to be theoretical self-reection,
able to reveal nonidentity within the false identity.
To face this dialectical paradox, we might do well to address it dialectically:
this Sackgasse can be considered as both true and false at the same time. True, insofar
as it conceptually deduces the objective impossibility of “true praxis” from the con-
tradictions within which all forms of individuation (both singular and collective) are
entangled; false, insofar as from the untruth of praxis in the given conditions it deduces
its impossibility as praxis. The recognition of its moment of untruth does not necessarily
imply its integral falseness. Individual resistance can become true even if it is codeter-
mined by the dynamic of political economy. Even more so, the collective struggles of
the subaltern classes – such as those for better working conditions – are not reducible
to a corporatist defense of particular interests. In fact, both would require overcoming
our current mode of production to be truly fullled. Even in their untruthfulness, both
individual distress and collective needs include a moment of truth that points beyond
their particularity. Is it then that true universality can be envisioned by following dia-
lectically the particular need – both individual and collective – to its most radical con-
sequences? As Engels wrote to Marx with regard to Stirner, the “egoistic man is bound
to become communist out of sheer egoism” (Engels 1982, 12), just as the working class
can overcome class society only out of sheer self-interest.
1112021, issue 2
Rolando Vitali has studied philosophy at the
Universities of Bologna and Berlin. Between 2017
and 2017 he has been fellow in residence at the
Nietzsche-Kolleg in Weimar and in 2019 research
fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici
in Naples. At the Friedrich Schiller Universität in
Jena, in partnership with the University of Bologna,
he has discussed his doctoral thesis entitled Macht
und Form - Individualität und ästhetische Kathegorien
in der Philosophie Nietzsches. He writes regularly
on Italian newspapers such as Alias, the cultural
supplement of Il Manifesto. His interests focus on
German philosophy and culture, modern aesthetics
and Frankfurt’s critical theory.
Biography
Adorno, Theodor W. 2003. “Reflections on Class
Theory.” In Can One Live after Auschwitz?,
edited by Rolf Tiedemann translated by
Rodney Livingstone and others. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2004. Negative Dialectic. London:
Routledge.
Engels, Friedrich. 1982. “Letter of Friedrich Engels
to Karl Marx, 19 November 1844.” In Friedrich
Engels and Karl Marx, Marx & Engels Collected
Works. Vol. 38. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
References
1122021, issue 2
Adorno on the Dialectics of Love and Sex
Stefano Marino
“Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar”.
“Love you will nd only where you may show yourself weak
without provoking strength”.
“There is no love that is not an echo”.
(§ 122; § 139).
“Sexuality is the strongest force in human beings,” claims Joe, the main character (por-
trayed by Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Lars von Trier’s famous and much discussed 2013
lm Nymphomaniac. And “love is strange: how can something so wonderful bring such
great pain?”, asks Murphy of himself, the main character (portrayed by Karl Glusman)
in Gaspar Noé’s controversial lm Love from 2015, thus pointing out what we may call
the antinomical character of the experience of romantic love, oscillating as it is between
the greatest of all joys and sometimes the greatest of all suerings; (as Nick Cave sings:
“Well, I’ve been bound and gagged and I’ve been terrorized / And I’ve been castrated
and I’ve been lobotomized / But never has my tormentor come in such a cunning
disguise / I let love in”). Although one could surely put this primacy into question and
wonder whether love and sex are really the strongest forces in humanity, as claimed by the
protagonist of Nymphomaniac, it is anyway impossible to negate their being at least some
of the strongest forces in our lives.
When one thinks of philosophies of love and sex, certain names may come
easily to mind, beginning with Plato’s conception of eros and arriving at Kierkegaard’s
intense meditation on the role of love in the aesthetic, ethical, and religious dimensions
of human life; and, more recently, coming to Foucault’s inuential work on the history
of sexuality. Scholars of philosophy and the history of ideas such as Anders Nygren
and Clive S. Lewis, in turn, have investigated the nature of love and paid attention to
such dierentiations as those between eros and agape, or between aection, friendship,
eros and charity (I thank my colleague and friend Donato Ferdori for these references).
Broadening the picture beyond the limits of the Western tradition, in his recent book
Ars Erotica. Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love Richard Shusterman has
investigated this topic by focusing not only on the Greco-Roman context and on
Medieval/Renaissance Europe, but also on Chinese, Indian, Islamic and Japanese
theories of erotic pleasure, politics, culture, religious beliefs, and habits. Thinkers belong-
ing to other traditions in contemporary philosophy have also sometimes paid great
attention to these questions, and in this context it can be worth noting the Frankfurt
School’s attempt to emphasize the relation of sexuality with domination in the unrecon-
ciled and administered world and, at the same time, its relation to potential emancipation
and freedom in the perspective of a future reconciled condition.
In reecting on the Frankfurt School and the role played by the dimension of
eros in the history of human civilization, most readers will probably spontaneously, and
understandably, think of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. However, Horkheimer and
Adorno also emphatically suggested in Dialectic of Enlightenment that “sexuality is the
1132021, issue 2
body unreduced”, “it is expression”, and, as such, it bears the trace of a potential trans-
formation to promote human liberation. It is especially in Minima Moralia that Adorno
oered signicant observations on love and sex. Among the penetrating, and sometimes
truly illuminating, meditations on love in Minima Moralia, we can nd, for example:
Someone who has been oended, slighted, has an illumination as vivid as when
agonizing pain lights up one’s own body. He becomes aware that in the inner-
most blindness of love, that must remain oblivious, lives a demand not to be
blinded. He was wronged; from this he deduces a claim to right and must at the
same time reject it, for what he desires can only be given in freedom. […] [H]e
who has lost love knows himself deserted by all, and this is why he scorns con-
solation. In the senselessness of his deprivation he is made to feel the untruth
of all merely individual fullment. But he thereby awakens to the paradoxical
consciousness of generality: of the inalienable and unindictable human right to
be loved by the beloved (§ 104).
Or further:
If love in society is to represent a better one, it cannot do so as a peaceful enclave,
but only by conscious opposition. […] Loving means not letting immediacy
wither under the omnipresent weight of mediation and economics, and in such
delity it becomes itself mediated, as a stubborn counterpressure. He alone loves
who has the strength to hold fast to love. Even though social advantage, sub-
limated, preforms the sexual impulse, using a thousand nuances sanctioned by
the order to make now this, now that person seem spontaneously attractive, an
attachment once formed opposes this by persisting where the force of social
pressure, in advance of all the intrigues that the latter then invariably takes into
its service, does not want it. It is the test of feeling whether it goes beyond feeling
through permanence, even though it be as obsession. The love, however, which
in the guise of unreecting spontaneity and proud of its alleged integrity, relies
exclusively on what it takes to be the voice of the heart, and runs away as soon
as it no longer thinks it can hear that voice, is in this supreme independence
pre cisely the tool of society. Passive without knowing it, it registers whatever
numbers come out in the roulette of interests. In betraying the loved one it betrays
itself. The delity exacted by society is a means to unfreedom, but only through
delity can freedom achieve insubordination to society’s command (§ 110).
Not only romantic love, however, but also sex is signicantly present in Minima Moralia,
Adorno’s collection of “ingenious aphorisms” and “vivid scenes taken from […] appar-
ently unassuming or remote subjects” that, because of its nuanced writing style, “fasci-
nated […] even Thomas Mann” (Müller-Doohm 2005, 344). For example, in critically
discussing some Freudian ideas about eroticism, reason, and society, Adorno establishes
a connection between sexual pleasure, truth, and utopia: here, indeed, the Frankfurt
thinker claims that “he alone who could situate utopia in blind somatic pleasure, which,
satisfying the ultimate intention, is intentionless, has a stable and valid idea of truth”
(§ 37). In a sense, Adorno’s aphorism seems to suggest that the “intentionless” nature
1142021, issue 2
and the intensity that characterize the experience of pleasure is able to satisfy the “ulti-
mate intention” of life, namely happiness and the achievement of a non-suocating and
non-coercive but rather liberating unity between dierent human beings. The joy of
lovemaking, with the somehow “blind” character of the somatic pleasure that it brings,
is nonetheless capable of “opening our eyes” (also at a philosophical level) more than
many concepts and argumentations can do, if only we are able to overcome certain
preconceptions and to fully understand the power and signicance of erotic experience
in all its nuanced richness.
For Adorno, the relation between eros and the aesthetic dimension was also a
fundamental and indeed constitutive one. As he claimed in Aesthetic Theory, his great but
unnished masterpiece in the philosophy of art: “[a]esthetic comportment assimilates
itself to [the] other rather than subordinating it. Such a constitutive relation of the
subject to objectivity in aesthetic comportment joins eros and knowledge” (Adorno
2002, 331). A passage from Müller-Doohm’s biography of Adorno is also revealing
about the relation between the aesthetic and the erotic dimensions in the Frankfurt
thinker’s philosophy. In fact, apropos of Adorno’s extramarital aair “with Charlotte
Alexander, the wife of his friend and doctor, Dr Robert Alexander”, Müller-Doohm
quotes a passage of a letter sent by Adorno to Hermann Grab in May 1946, in which
he talked “of his love for Charlotte” and wrote: “The term ‘fornication’, which by the
way refers to something the reverse of contemptible, is a far from adequate description
of what has taken place – terms such as ‘aura’ or ‘magic’ would be more apt. It was as if
the long-forgotten childhood promise of happiness had been unexpectedly, belatedly
fullled” (Müller-Doohm 2005, 61-2). The constellation of the ideas of aura, magic and
promesse du bonheur, that famously play a fundamental role in such works as Dialectic of
Enlightenment and Aesthetic Theory, is fascinatingly connected here to the erotic dimension.
Above all, what is surely remarkable in the context of a discussion on the
dialectics of love and sex in Adorno’s thinking is the fact that in Negative Dialectics, his
main work in theoretical philosophy, he precisely used an erotic metaphor to formulate
what he considered to be the nal aim of philosophizing, saying that “in philosophy
we literally seek to immerse ourselves in things that are heterogeneous to it, without
placing those things in prefabricated categories. We want to adhere […] closely to
the heterogeneous” (Adorno 2004, 13). Pietro Lauro, the Italian translator of Negative
Dialectics, has argued that Adorno, in using the verb sich anschmiegen in this passage
(translated as “adhering to”, and actually indicating a kind of “amalgamating oneself
with the other”, or also a kind of “coming together”, inasmuch as an anschmiegende
Umarmung is an amalgamating embrace, i.e. the union of two or more human beings in
a sexual encounter) aimed to claim that “an erotic metaphor was able to express the fun-
damental question of non-identity” (Lauro 2004, 370). As Lauro writes in his Glossary
to the Italian edition of Negative Dialectics, “just as in sexual intercourse the individuals
are united together but still dierent from each other, without cancelling their individ-
uality”, in a similar way a negative-dialectical form of philosophizing should promote a
form of non-coercive union or fusion with the non-identical, without aiming anymore
to arrive at “a Hegelian form of synthesis” (Lauro 2004, 370-1). Hence sexual inter-
course is not viewed as a one-sided activity, comparable to a boring monologue of an
1152021, issue 2
active subject with a passive recipient, but is rather comparable to a dialectical relation of
simultaneous “entering in” and “being-received in” or “being-welcomed in”, in which
all the partners involved, experimenting an enchanting sense of anity, take part in an
exciting intersubjective dialogue and quite often exchange their roles in a spontaneous
and pleasurable way.
As once noted by Marcuse in The Aesthetic Dimension, art as such “cannot
change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of
the men and women who could change the world” (Marcuse 1979, 32). Shifting our
discourse from artistic experience to erotic experience, we can perhaps paraphrase and
reformulate Marcuse’s convincing maxim by saying that perhaps a joyful sexuality as
such cannot change the world (in an emphatic meaning of the idea of “changing the
world”), but it can surely oer a glimpse of freedom and reconciliation even in an unfree
and unreconciled world, perhaps pointing to a gradual transformation of existing reality
and human relations starting from our most intimate, delicate, beautiful, communicative
and, for this reason, powerful and sometimes life-changing experiences of unity, fusion,
mutual permeation and interpenetration (or, so to speak, of merging together) with
other human beings. From this point of view, observations like those oered by Adorno
disclose the possibility of conceiving of sexuality in a radically non-reductive way as a
sort of actualization of something that, in the radiant eetingness of an intercourse, also
bears in itself a trace of the utopia of reconciliation between human beings.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 2002. Aesthetic Theory. London
and New York: Continuum.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2004. Negative Dialectics.
London and New York: Routledge.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2005. Minima Moralia: Reflections
on a Damaged Life. London and New York: Verso.
Lauro, Pietro. “Glossario.” 2004. In Theodor W.
Adorno, Dialettica negativa, 369-82. Torino:
Einaudi.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1979. The Aesthetic Dimension:
Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Müller-Doohm, Stefan. 2005. Adorno: A Biography.
Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.
Stefano Marino is Associate Professor of Aesthetics
at the University of Bologna. His main research
interests are focused on critical theory of society,
phenomenology and hermeneutics, neopragmatism
and somaesthetics, philosophy of music, and
aesthetics of fashion. He is the author of several
books on Theodor W. Adorno, Hans-Georg Gadamer,
Martin Heidegger, Radiohead, and Frank Zappa.
He has translated from German into Italian four
books by Adorno and Gadamer, and from English
into Italian a book by Carolyn Korsmeyer. He has
published as co-editor several collections (books
and special issues in journals) on Kant, Nietzsche,
Gadamer, Adorno, deconstruction, popular culture
and social criticism, popular music and romanticism,
aesthetics and affectivity, fashion, and feminism.
Biography
1162021, issue 2
For Felicitas
Jelle P. Baan
Paragraph 135 of the Minima Moralia, in which Adorno draws our attention to the
formal advantages of the “technical aid” of dictating for the dialectical procedure, could
be read as an ode to Gretel.1 She was the one who helped during those rst phases of
writing by translating, as it were, his spoken words into written form. The advantage
of this technique is that you can fall in the middle of the dialectic without having to
worry that the burden of the beginning, in which you make naïve and ungrounded
assumptions, will start to weigh as bad conscience later on. Because whoever starts
dialecticizing will almost immediately realize that the dialectical movement had always
already begun. How to catch up with the dialectic? Instead of being caught up in it, you
want to be engaged in the dialectic, to participate in it.
The technique of dictating functions like a dialectical trampoline that allows
the latecomer to arrive just in time by catapulting him directly towards that middle. Its
paradoxical logic lets Adorno outwit the dialectic. For “dictation makes it possible for
the writer, in the earliest phases of production, to maneuver himself into the position
of critic”, he explains. “What he sets down is tentative, provisional, mere material for
revision, yet appears to him, once transcribed, as something estranged and in some
measure objective. He need have no fear of committing something inadequate to paper,
for he is not the one who has to write it […] In face of the diculty, now grown to
desperate proportions, of every theoretical utterance, such tricks become a blessing”
(§ 135). By exteriorizing himself through Gretel, he does not have to feel the pain of
those rst torsions of dialecticizing. Before he has to put his thoughts on paper, he is
rst already his own second reader. She allows him to mediate immediately, and thus to
begin in the middle. The middle of the beginning is posited or gesetzt by that rst draft
of the transcript which is both his own and not his own, as if he was his own soueur.
But this contradiction is immediately sublated and in that sense gets to the bottom of
the text, to formulate it in Hegelian terms, because the transcripts reveals itself to be a
palimpsest. This rst version does not register the rst moment of the dialectic, but the
virtual trajectory before that. Thanks to their shared ruse Adorno is not the rst of the
dialectic, which is impossible, but the one before the rst. Thinking after Hegel is for
Adorno the heroic attempt to think before him. In that sense the dialectical trick of
dictating, too, is a ruse of reason, but then one that wrestles itself from the magic circle
of identity-thought.2 And that is precisely why “… thanks are due to the person taking
down the dictation, if at the right moment [s]he pulls up the writer by contradiction,
irony, nervosity, impatience and disrespect” (§ 135).
As Müller-Doohm demonstrates in his biography, Adorno used to call this
intensive dialectic between him and Gretel in those rst phases of the writing process
lämmergeieren. This is conrmed by the original German title of this fragment: Lämmergeier.
“Why this word?”, Müller-Doohm asks himself. As “a keen visitor to Frankfurt Zoo”,
he suggests, “he presumably saw lammergeiers or bearded vultures there (Gypaëtus bar-
batus). They feed mainly on carrion, but also on small mammals and birds. They are
particularly partial to bones. Very large bones are dropped from a height onto rocks to
1172021, issue 2
break them; the marrow can then be devoured. This method of arriving at the kernel
of a problem which at rst appears too dicult or inaccessible, of ‘cracking’ it in order
to extract its essence, may well have been the reason for choosing this word” (2005,
57). Combining this vital anecdote with Adorno’s own interpretation of the activity of
lämmergeieren reveals why any thinker who wants to taste the marrow of the dialectic
can never work entirely alone. Even the Sprechstimme of the couple Teddy-Gretel is
only the dominant voice in the contrapuntal composition of a philosophy in which the
faculties enter into a new dissonant accord.
Adorno does not mention Gretel by name once in a fragment that seems
entirely devoted to her (“thanks are due to the person…”). What interests him in this
fragment is not so much his wife Gretel, but only her formal function as a transcriber
in “cracking” the bones of the dialectic. More than a personal ode to Gretel then, this is
a conceptual reconstruction of the remarkable role of what we could call the Felicitas-
eect within the formal dynamics that keeps the chess-machine of negative dialectics
running. The head of this thought-machine is not Adorno himself but Horkheimer. He
is the director who administers the dialectic and keeps a close watch on its practical
applicability. He plays the role of the Understanding. Adorno himself is the incarnation
of Reason. He’s the man of Ideas, and in that sense the very heart of the dialectic. This
necessary division of labor is the secret behind what Adorno once described as their
gemeinsame Existenz. And yet that shared existence is supported by even more intimate
relations. Because the intuition of this dialectic falls apart in two uneven halves, which
could never t together, even though they do belong together: Felicitas and Detlef 3
(cf. Adorno and Benjamin 2014) which is to say Gretel Karplus and Walter Benjamin.
They represent feeling and imagination, even if it would be impossible to separate the
two, since they are always entangled. Only together they constitute the exact fantasy
that according to Adorno is the organon of the ars inveniendi that philosophy should
be (cf. Adorno 1977, 131). Gretel is the representative of the couple Detlef-Felicitas,
while inversely Felizitas, as Benjamin wrote, is what binds Benjamin to Adorno and in
a sense compensates for the latter’s absence. Without their aid, Adorno would indeed
remain a “Sorgenkind”, a problem child, as Gretel frequently wrote in her letters to
Benjamin (Müller-Doohm 2005, op. cit. 56). Whenever she wrote “be careful, T.W.A.”
in the margins of a transcribed manuscript this was from keeping their problem child
of innite reason to lose itself in the wild speculations that characterize the Ideenucht
of the dialectic.
The process that Adorno called lämmergeieren is the schematism of the dialectic. It
is the soul of the dialectic. During this intensive process reason and intuition enter into
direct contact and start to resonate; Adorno improvises and dictates, while Gretel makes
notes, but also directly comments and sometimes even corrects him.4 The notes taken
are so much more than a mere representation of what was said. What the transcript
should capture are the traces of the dark precursor of the dialectic, 5 the “non-identical”
that both animate it and keeps it moving, yet never nds its proper place within it. This
primary torsion of the dialectic, its original twist so to say, forms an aberrant movement
(cf. Lapoujade 2017), a “wavering, deviating line” (Adorno § 60) by which the whole
vertiginous trajectory of his “unleashed” dialectic is intagliated. Only together were
1182021, issue 2
Teddy and Felicitas able to crack the biggest bone of the dialectic, Hegel’s skull, in order
to devour the marrow inside, the cerebrospinal uid that is the lifeblood of this thought.
What they crack by way of negative dialectics as a logic of disintegration is the skeleton of
identity; the marrow which is released however, is the element of dierence that nour-
ishes their inventive schemas for tracing the aberrant movements of the non-identical
that secretly animate this dialectic. Thus, the trick of dictating is the ruse of a metasche-
matism6 in which the dialectic (Reason) and the aesthetic (Intuition) enter into an
immediate union, temporarily short-circuiting the analytic (Understanding).7 Only
together do they think those thoughts that do not comprehend themselves.8 And those
thoughts alone are true, claims Adorno.
That’s why thanks are due to Gretel-Felicitas. She operates as the organ of the
non-identical that picks up on the traces of the dierential element that precedes the
dialectic. The Felicitas-eect is the direct mediation by which reason and the “exact
imagination” (cf. Weber-Nicholsen 1997) produce schemas together that pick up on
the perplexities of the non-identical. Only by exteriorizing himself through her and
writing with her, could Adorno make the Ideas tangible. The irresistible charm of
Felicitas is that she operates as an intercesseur (Deleuze 1990), a mediator that helps
Reason orientate in thought, even in those distinct-obscure zones where the virtual
spasms of the dialectic are almost imperceptible. It’s in a very literal sense then that we
should think of her as Adorno’s ghostwriter that pregured his thought, and allowed
him to materialize the Ideas. Dialectics in its purest form.
Notes
Thanks are due to Gijs van Oenen for
functioning as the head of my dialectic.
This idea of a Zauberkreis, a “magic circle”
of identity-thought refers to a formulation used
frequently by Adorno himself, cf. Adorno 2007, 145;
177; 406.
Cf. Lonitz & Gödde, 2014, 6: “In her
correspondence with Benjamin, Gretel Karplus
adopted this name which belonged to a figure
from Wilhelm Speyer’s play Ein Mantel, ein Hut,
ein Handschuh [A Coat, a Hat, a Glove], in which
Benjamin had been a collaborator”.
This is alluded to in the fragment by Adorno
himself: “… thanks are due to the person taking
down the dictation, if at the right moment [italics
added] he pulls up the writer by contradiction, irony,
nervosity, impatience and disrespect”.
For the dark precursor, cf. Deleuze 2004,
145, 146.
On metaschematism, cf. Deleuze 2004, 316.
He discusses the term in relation to Leibniz who
borrowed the term from Francis Bacon’s Novum
Organon.
I take this formulation directly from David
Lapoujade who explains Gilles Deleuze’s logic in
these exact terms: “what characterizes transcendental
empiricism is the immediate relation between
aesthetic and dialectic, between the sensible and the
Idea […] There is in Deleuze only one aesthetic of
intensities and one dialectic of ideas, and no more”
(Lapoujade, 2017, 113). A similar, yet not the same,
immediate relation between a dialectic of Ideas and
an aesthetic of intensities is alluded to here.
“True are those thoughts alone that do not
comprehend themselves” (§ 122).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1192021, issue 2
Jelle P. Baan (1986) studied sociology and philosophy
in Rotterdam and Paris and wroteAdorno,noch
einmal.Een partituur voor esthetische theorie(2015,
Klement). He’s a Barthesian epigone who works
onamathesis singularis. His current research is
focused on metaschematism, panoramic intelligence,
late style, firstness, and what a soul is capable of.
Adorno, Gretel and Walter Benjamin. 2008.
Correspondence 1930-1940. Edited by Henri
Lönitz and Christoph Gödde. Translated by
Wieland Hoban. Cambridge: Polity.
Adorno, Theodor. W. 1977. “The Actuality of
Philosophy.”Telos 31: 120-133.
Adorno, Theodor. W. 2005. Minima Moralia. London/
New York: Verso.
Adorno, Theodor. W. 2007. Negative dialectics.
London: Continuum.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. Pourparlers. 1972 – 1990. Paris:
Minuit.
Deleuze, Gilles. 2004. Difference and Repetition.
London: Continuum.
Lapoujade, David. 2017. Aberrant Movements. The
Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e).
Müller-Doohm, Stefan. 2005. Adorno: A Biography.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Weber-Nicholsen, Shierry. 1997. Exact Imagination,
Late Work. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
References Biography
1202021, issue 2
Rattled
Samir Gandesha
Dedicated to the memory of Rosemary Bechler
In being seen as no more than the exit of a living creature from the social
combine, death has been nally domesticated: dying merely conrms the
absolute irrelevance of the natural organism in face of the social absolute.
(§ 148)
Fascism, it is said, is a death cult. National Socialism incubated within the habitus of
the thinkers of the so-called Conservative Revolution, in particular,Ernst Jünger, Carl
Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. In each of these writers, one nds an undeniable glo-
rication of death and what Adorno mockingly calls the “soldierly man” (der soldatische
Mensch). For Jünger, death formed the core of the Fronterlebnis or “experience of the
trenches.” For Schmitt, the essence of politics, “the political,” is disclosed the moment
the enemy––the one who threatens “our” very existence––comes into view as such.
And, nally,in Heidegger’s Being and Time, the “authenticity” (Eigentlichkeit) of the situ-
ated human being (Dasein) is dened explicitly as being-towards-death (Sein-sum-Tode).
In the awareness of this––its “ownmost possibility”––Dasein experiences an “ecstatic”
standing-out from a leveling, abstract everydayness. In response to a young female
student rather besotted with Heidegger who, as Adorno wryly notes in his Jargon of
Authenticity, remarked that “Heidegger had nally, at least, once again placed men before
death, Horkheimer replied that Ludendor had taken care of that much better.”
Against the fascist cult of death is counterposed the fetishization of human life
in liberalism. This means that life, dened and understood abstractly as mere duration, is
to be valued above everything else. Liberalism’s motto is simply: The more the better.
Yet, paradoxically, it fervently hides the aged, the inrm, the dying and the dead ever
further from the gaze of the living, as in Beckett’s Endgame, in which Hamm’s parents
are conned to trash cans, and therefore anticipate the fate of contemporary nursing
homes which became like morgues during the early stages of the unfolding Corona-
virus pandemic.
The drive for a mythic “fountain of youth,” as hinted at, for example, by
Herodotus in Book III: 23 of his Histories, is pursued with unparalleled zeal by liberalism
via the most advanced forms of biotechnology and genetic engineering. Pharmaceutical
companies invest massive sums in tiny pills designed to forestall the detumescence
of that most universally archaic symbol of youthful potency—the phallus. While the
multi-million-dollar tness and diet industries, drawing upon the best available medical
science, aim to abolish the nitude of the body, technicians of the soul such as Ray
Kurzweil take aim at the mortality of the mind by treating it as software, as so many
digital les to be transferred into endlessly replaceable, fungible machines, mimicking
the reduction of individuals to scarcely more than the empty social roles and functions
they mechanically perform.
If liberalism wages war on death in pursuit of the banal, routinized, and
1212021, issue 2
comfortable life of Nietzsche’s “Last Man,” then, in opposition, fascism aggressively
embraces the heroic cult of death as the means of accessing “concrete” and hence
meaningful experience. Can there be any more noble an act than to lay down one’s life
in service of the community? In their respective projects to embrace and repudiate death,
however, it escapes the noticeof fascists and liberals alike that the sharp line that once
separated death and life had already been erased, to the further embarrassment of both.
Damaged life is life that has ceased living. Capital is, as Marx teaches, nothing if
not dead labour, and, in the form of the exchange relation, itdominatesliving labour.
Capitalism always, therefore, had something of the monstrous about it in the sense
that the dead dominate the living. The death camps––whose ghosts haunt Minima
Moralia––reveal in extremis the logic of wage slavery. Particularly unfortunate inmates
referred to as Musselmänner were reduced to the condition of a living death. Perhaps
this is what explains our morbid fascination with Zombies.In the halting, aimless yet
persistent shuing of the “walking dead,” we see reected our own impoverished lives
as if pathetically parodying Odysseus’ heroic homecoming. The only possible way for
the subject to survive in capitalism in its late stage is to mimic the deathly state to
which it compulsively reduces sensuous nature. To preserve its life, the subject must
enervate itself. The unfolding ecological catastrophe tells the story, allegorically, of
the human species’ own eventual extinction: De te fabula narratur. What may once have
been possible as an emancipatory promise understood as the negation of all forms
of human negativity or alienation, becomes, itself, the teleology of a catastrophic
history––species-being-towards-death.
If life is lifeless, death loses its substance and therefore sense. Consequently,
understood as the event that once gave shape and meaning to the life of an individual,
death is no longer possible. As Weber put it with reference to Tolstoy, while in the past
it might have been possible to die, having felt “satiated by life,” on the disenchanted
landscape of the “steel-hard shell” (con?) (stahlhartes Gehäuse) we grow “tired of life,”
we seize up and keel over, when, as the saying goes, “our number is up.”
The primal origin of human meaning lies in the attempt to make the event of
death speak in eloquent terms. The earliest origin of hominid sense-making lies pre-
cisely here. As the conceptual renement of such a response to life’s end––understood
as both simple cessation and what Aristotle called nal cause or purpose––Socratic,
Epicurean and Stoic philosophy was understood as preparation for death. Recall, here,
Socrates’ nal words to Crito: “We owe a cock to Asclepius; pay it and don’t forget.”
Facing death with equanimity was amongst the highest ancient ideals and
informs the image of the redeemed condition: a life without fear. Today, such an ideal
has withered. It now seems impossible to die a meaningful death because it is not
possible to live life rightly, though, in truth, it never really has been possible to do so.
Perhaps the word “nihilism” signies not the inherent nothingness or meaninglessness
of an indierent universe, as was once suggested by Turgenev’s famous protagonist,
Bazarov, but rather the fact the death has, itself, died.
1222021, issue 2
Samir Gandesha has been a post-doctoral fellow at
the University of California at Berkeley (1995–97)
and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow
at the Universität Potsdam (2001–2002). He is
currently Associate Professor in the Department
of Humanities and the Director of the Institute
for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University.
He specializes in modern European thought and
culture, with a particular emphasis on the relation
between politics, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis.
He is the author of numerous refereed articles and
book chapters and is co-editor with Lars Rensmann
of Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical
Investigations (Stanford, 2012). He is co-editor
with Johan Hartle of Spell of Capital: Reification
and Spectacle (University of Amsterdam Press, 2017)
and Aesthetic Marx (Bloomsbury Press, 2017). He is
editor of the recently-published Spectres of Fascism:
Historical, Theoretical and Contemporary Perspectives
(Pluto, 2020). In the Spring of 2017, he was the
Liu Boming Visiting Scholar in Philosophy at the
University of Nanjing and Visiting Lecturer at
Suzhou University of Science and Technology in
China. In January 2019, he was Visiting Fellow at the
Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.
Biography
1232021, issue 2
Almost
Vivian Liska
“Toward the End,”1Minima Moralia’s nal aphorism (§ 153), plays a vital role in the
controversies about the theological dimension of Adorno’s thought. It famously invokes
the “standpoint of redemption” and its “messianic light,” which alone can reveal both
the total negativity of things as they are and, in a dialectic “mirror writing,” disclose how
they should be.
“Toward the End” is studded with expressions that suggest totality: “the only
kind,” “all things,” “no other than the one,” “everything else.” Of course, there are minor
mitigations: the vagueness of “similarly” and “at some point” briey challenge the “wholly”
and the “this alone.” But the “irrefutable,” the “completed ” and the “fully captured,” the
“entirely impossible,” and the “every possible” prevail. There is only one stark exception:
to perceive the utter blackness of the world, Adorno writes, would “require a standpoint
removed, even if only by the most minuscule degree, from the sphere of the spell of being.”
But Adorno presents this necessity as the epitome of the impossible.
Both the totalizing gestures and Adorno’s characteristic dialectical somersaults
culminate in the aphorism’s nal sentence, where the imperative addressed to philoso-
phy to stare into the depths of the abyss is deprived of its initial theological perspective.
Here the “standpoint of redemption” is nothing but a chimera designed to ensure the
totality of the demand. Yet a single word in this nal sentence slightly but fundamentally
unsettles this revocation: “the question concerning the reality or unreality of redemp-
tion itself” is, Adorno writes, “almost irrelevant.”
The rich and variegated afterlife of Minima Moralia’s nal aphorism—and with
it the very question as to where not only redemption, but God himself resides in
Adorno’s thought—can be measured by the fate of this “almost,” especially where it
is most tellingly absent. Those who seek to recuperate the aphorism for a Christian
“Theology of the Cross” (Kreuzestheologie, Thaidigsmann 1984) ignore the “almost.” So
do those who take the diametrically opposite view that ingeniously undoes any trace
of transcendence in arguing that “the messianic light in which the world will one day
appear need not shine from an outside source at all” (Truskolaski 2017, 210) Giorgio
Agamben likewise ignores the “almost” in accusing Adorno of politico-theological
quietism and his aphorism of a “melancholic reverie” (Truskolaski 2017, 208), a
conjuring-up of a merely aesthetic “seat of divine grace” (Agamben 2005, 35-38). Jacob
Taubes explicitly ignores the “almost” in his sharp critique of Adorno’s text and of his
thought altogether. For Taubes, Adorno’s aphorism presents redemption as an aestheti-
cizing “empty ction” and oers the entire idea of the messiah as “a comme-si,” a mere
“as if.” Blind to the wording of the text, Taubes writes that, for Adorno, it is “ganz
gleichgültig, ob es wirklich ist” (Taubes 2003, 104) – “it is totally irrelevant whether it
really exists.”
Adorno may have left the exact function of his “almost”—a word that inher-
ently undoes totality—deliberately in the dark, as though to deny the book any nality
or closure. It can be conceived in light of a Kantian idea of God as a metaphysically
1242021, issue 2
1
groundless yet necessary postulate to warrant the moral life. But it can also point to a
less enlightened illumination: to say that the Wirklichkeit (reality) of a “Standpunkt der
Erlösung” is only almost irrelevant is to open a crack through which the messianic light
can shine through. At the end of Minima Moralia Adorno might thus be opening up a
minimal space in which he concedes the possibility that a divine standpoint matters.
And, almost, that it exists.
Notes
Adorno, Theodor W. 2005. Minima Moralia. Reflections
a Damaged Life. Translated by E.F.N. Jephcott.
London/New York: Verso.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. The Time that Remains:
A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans.
Translated by Patricia Dailey. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Richter, Gerhard. 2006. “Aesthetic Theory and
Nonpropositional Truth Content in Adorno.”
New German Critique 97 (Winter 2006):
119-135.
Taubes, Jacob. 2003. Die Politische Theologie des
Paulus. München: Fink.
Thaidigsmann, Edgar. 1984. “Der Blick der Erlösung:
Zu Adornos letztem Aphorismus in den Minima
Moralia.” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 81
(4): 491-513.
Truskolaski, Sebastian. 2017. “Inverse Theology:
Adorno, Benjamin, Kafka.” German Life and
Letters 70 (2): 192-210.
Vivian Liska is Professor of German literature
and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies
at the University of Antwerp, Belgium as well as
Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of the
Humanities at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
She is the editor of the book series “Perspectives on
Jewish Texts and Contexts” (De Gruyter, Berlin) and
co-editor of Arcadia. International Journal of Literary
Studies. Her books include When Kafka Says We.
Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature
(Indiana UP, 2009) and German-Jewish Thought and its
Afterlife. A Tenuous Legacy (Indiana UP, 2017).
I use Gerhard Richter’s English translation in
(2006). All the references to “Zum Ende” are taken
from this text, which offers a valuable corrective to
the English version of “Zum Ende” in Adorno 2005.
References
Biography
1252021, issue 2
J’Accuse
Antonia Hofstätter
“First and only principle of sexual ethics: the accuser is always in the wrong.” (§ 29) –
What was once a daring line, written to challenge waning sexual mores and emerging
erotic conventions, has today become dubious. To ears attuned in an age of moral out-
rage and viral tweets, the lines’ hubris is resounding: Seemingly oozing self-righteous
masculinity, it takes its impulse not from the ubiquitous demand for “safety” that echoes
across campuses from Berlin to Boston, but from a sexual utopia in which power rela-
tions are divested of their scarring force. In reserving its ire for the accuser, it appears
to deny those who have been violated justice and restitution and to let the predator
o the hook. In the political and intellectual climate of today, this line would not have
been written.
But here it is, existing out of its time. Empowered singlehandedly to strip
Minima Moralia, the ultimate highbrow coee-table book, of its liberal credentials. Yet,
this line is no mere provocation; what it provokes is regard for its enigmatic appeal. It
calls upon our capacities for intellectual generosity and tenacity to tend to scars, and to
pursue a thought until cultivated sensitivities and fortied values begin to shake and
open themselves up to question. It is here that a truth might admit to the untruth that
it also is, and an untruth to a truth. The dim light of ambiguity that nourishes Adorno’s
outrageous line is inseparable from its promise: the promise of a wealth – however
murky and repellent – that exists beyond the conscious life of the subject, a wealth in
which it nevertheless partakes. And yet, this ambiguity, if it remains unacknowledged,
fuels our outrage. It touches us where we refuse to be touched. Whoever has tried to
teach Death in Venice to students in recent years, only to be met with a blanket rejection
of the book, hardly needs to be convinced of this point.
The prickly remnant from the past has arrived just in time. Under the guise
of the outdated and surpassed, it contains a scathing critique of the currency of today’s
thought, politics, and its societal forces. Condemning the discipline of “sexual ethics”
as futile, it takes wider aim at the drive of capitalist societies to incorporate and make
palatable even that which draws its power from transgression: sex. Without the thrill
of transgression, a sexual act degenerates into mere sport, or so Adorno would say. The
thrill feeds on the allure of the forbidden, the violation of manifest social conventions;
ultimately, it lives o the desecration of the most cherished of contemporary myths,
that of the integrity of the “self ”. Two decades after Minima Moralia, Adorno spelled
out what is implicit in his earlier aphorism: “It is a piece of sexual utopia not to be
your self, and to love more in the beloved than only her: a negation of the ego-principle.
It shakes that invariant of bourgeois society in the widest sense, which since time
immemorial has always aimed at integration: the demand for identity. At rst, it had to
be produced. Ultimately it would be necessary to abolish [aufzuheben] it again. What
is merely identical with itself is without happiness.” Pleasure lies in the gaze, the touch,
the play that arouses what is repressed, in the tremble with which the remnants of the
polymorphous escape integration. Latent in every sexual act is a reminder that subject-
hood is a forceeld of becoming and dissolution, and that its closure, identity, comes
1262021, issue 2
at a price. Every “I accuse you”, be it just or unjust, arrests a subject and an object in a
relationship of static reciprocity. Every “I accuse you” drags into the sphere of sexuality
the expectations and entitlements of conscientious consumers and those citizens who
know their rights.
It is the privilege of an aphorism not even to raise a brow at the gun held to its
head by inveterate literalists. Our line remains silent if pressed for solutions, indierent
if asked to take sides. (It is thus mistaken to impute to the line the joyful celebration
of uid identities. Minima Moralia, this much is certain, will never be “woke”). It is not
much more than a reminder of that which falls prey to even the most progressive causes,
of the hidden sacrices we make not only in political praxis but every time we raise
our voices and begin to speak. Yet, the line’s intention is not to silence but to provoke
self-reection. This splinter from the past hits a nerve: almost eerily, it accentuates our
peculiar moment in time in which the anxious guarding of intimate borders unites oth-
erwise antagonistic political forces, in which the fear of being pricked by a needle enters
a curious alliance with the allergic backlash against divergent opinions. Once identity is
the highest good – or rather, the last resort – the wound on the skin becomes intolerable.
The fortication of the self is also an assault on what it seeks to protect – it eradicates,
with the last pockets of somatic resistance, the hope that the dialectic of enlightenment
may grind to a halt. This hope is inseparable from that for a subject which emerges in
the remembrance of its other. Yet, whether we may hope at all hinges on the question of
whether we are still capable of engaging with what hurts, of unfolding the ambiguities
that lend a thought, a phenomenon, or a line their dubious and enigmatic air. This is not
the rst and only principle of critique; it might, however, be its last.
Antonia Hofstätter is a teaching fellow in German
studies at the University of Warwick. Her research
focuses primarily on early critical theory and
aesthetics, and she has published widely on the work
of T.W. Adorno. Recent contributions appeared in The
‘Aging’ of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory: Fifty Years Later
(Mimesis International, 2021) and Theodor W. Adorno:
Ästhetische Theorie (De Gruyter, 2021). Together with
Daniel Steuer she is the editor of Adorno’s Rhinoceros:
Art, Nature, Critique (Bloomsbury, 2022).
I am grateful to Lydia Goehr, Helmut Schmitz and
David Batho for their comments on this piece.
BiographyAcknowledgements
2021, issue 2
Democracy Beyond the Human
Jamie van der Klaauw
Fascism, Capitalism, Logistics, Biopolitics,
Democracy, Pandemic, Sociology
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 127-137.
Review of
Schinkel, Willem en Rogier van Reekum. 2019
Theorie van de kraal: kapitaal-ras-fascisme. Amsterdam:
Boom uitgevers.
Schinkel, Willem. 2020. De hamsteraar: kritiek van het
logistiek kapitalisme. Amsterdam: Boom uitgevers.
Schinkel, Willem. 2021 Pandemocratie. Amsterdam:
Editie Leesmagazijn.
DOI
Keywords
10.21827/krisis.41.2.37817
1272021, issue 2
Democracy Beyond the Human
Jamie van der Klaauw
Willem Schinkel, als socioloog verbonden aan de Erasmus School of Social and
Behavorial Sciences, is een zeer productief schrijver. De laatste jaren schrijft hij sneller
dan ik kan lezen, of eigenlijk sneller dan ik zijn boeken verwerken kan. Hoofdzakelijk
keert Schinkel zich tegen de bestaande laatkapitalistische (neo)liberale orde. Orde is bij
uitstek een sociologisch onderwerp, en ook zijn antikapitalistische gedachtegoed is te
situeren in de Marxistische/sociologische traditie, dit alles doorspekt met dekoloniale
en antiracistische inzichten van denkers uit verschillende tradities. Een academicus met
een activistische inborst die zich de laatste tijd meer en meer roert ook binnen die
bestaande orde. Bijvoorbeeld door middel van zijn bijdragen aan politieke nieuwko-
mer BIJ1. Zo’n liminale positie neemt hij vaker in. Waar hij zich in Theorie van de
kraal (2019) nog keert tegen het doelloze concurreren van academici die maar willen
voldoen aan de publicatiedruk (het publish or perish), zo publiceert hij sindsdien zelf in
moordend tempo. Schinkel wil met zijn werk vooral een knuppel in het hoenderhok
gooien om ons allen zo te confronteren met de spanningen en tegenstellingen die
spelen in de samenleving en die maar al te vaak bedekt worden met de mantel der
geleerdheid en beschaving. Uit de vele woekeringen van het leven ontwaart Schinkel
een woekering die zich opwerpt als iets ánders, als orde. Vanuit die positie claimt het
andere woekeringen te kunnen beoordelen, hun plaats te wijzen. Of problematischer: te
kunnen beknellen en zelfs verstikken. Maar, hoe verhoudt Schinkels theoretische keer
tegen de orde zich tot zijn eigen politiek? Wat blijft er dan nog over van de democratie?
Willen we een antwoord formuleren op de bovenstaande vragen, is het eerst
noodzakelijk om de theoretische basis waarop Schinkels programma steunt te explicite-
ren en nader te beschouwen. En waar beter te beginnen dan in het boek dat de laatste
jaren het theoretische zware werk doet voor Schinkel, een coproductie met collega-
socioloog Rogier van Reekum: Theorie van de kraal. In dit werk worden de begrippen
woekering, als aanduiding voor het vrije leven, en kraal, de aan orde gelieerde term
voor de ruimte die aan leven wordt gelaten, geïntroduceerd. Centraal staat de spanning
tussen de begrippen en hoe deze tot uiting komt in hoofdzakelijk de domeinen van
de politiek, economie en ecologie. Voordat Schinkel en Van Reekum dit begrippenpaar
inzet in dienst van de analyse daarvan en kritiek van de huidige orde, wordt de toon in
het boek meteen gezet door een zogenoemd nulde hoofdstuk. Een herkenbare toon
voor wie Deleuze & Guattari’s Mille Plateaux (1980) heeft gelezen, maar een sprekende
toepassing niettemin. Het nulde hoofdstuk houdt zich bezig met het onderwerp in de
redekundige zin, en dan speciek: het wij. Dat ‘smerige woordje’, aldus Schinkel en
Van Reekum (2019, 7) doet hier dienst als beginpunt voor een kritiek op kantiaanse
leest geschoeid met een benjaminiaanse twist. Het expliciteert en problematiseert het
‘wij’ dat impliciet vervlochten is in het verhaal dat wij over onszelf vertellen. Wij is
namelijk geen neutraal woord, maar een politieke daad, een woord dat verdoezelt en
wordt verdoezeld. Een mogelijkheidsvoorwaarde voor de politieke operatie waarlangs
het geweld in de samenleving wordt verhuld en het gewelddadige van de samenleving
wordt goedgepraat. Allemaal in naam van een wij dat inclusief klinkt, maar vooral dient
1282021, issue 2
als het beginpunt van een onderscheid tussen wij en zij. Een ‘wij’ dat hoofdzakelijk
buitensluit.
Dit is naast een aantijging tegen de bestaande orde, waarin het ‘democrati-
sche’ wij dienstdoet als legitimering van geweld, ook een ontologische conditie. Taal
is ons medium en die mediatie is onontkoombaar. Sinds de val uit het paradijs — wat
Schinkel het meest uitgebreid beschrijft in zijn later gepubliceerde proefschrift Aspects
of Violence — beschikken wij niet langer over de onmiddellijke toegang tot de natuur
der dingen (2010, 88-90). Taal is daarmee innig verbonden met verschil, met goed
en kwaad, maar ook een performatieve daad, het medium waardoor goed en kwaad
gerealiseerd worden. Geweld moeten we dan ook niet strikt opvatten in de fysieke zin
— dat is hoe de staat geweld denieert —, maar in verhulling, in het benoemen van en
het onderscheiden tussen — klassieke operaties van zowel de sociologie als de losoe.
Hier openbaart zich de spanning in het werk van Schinkel in zijn meest abstracte vorm.
Want, enerzijds zijn dit soort operaties voor de mens per denitie zondig, bij gebrek
aan directe toegang tot de dingen zijn wij verdoemt tot het in het leven roepen van (re)
presentaties van dingen. Anderzijds poogt Schinkel de verdoezelende gewelddadigheid
van het hedendaags taalgebruik als historisch gegroeid onrecht te vatten.
Kortom, woorden doen ertoe, volgens Schinkel. Aecten van taal, van taalge-
bruik, staan centraal in het werk van Schinkel niet alleen vanwege de mogelijke verhul-
lingsoperaties die ermee gepleegd kunnen worden, nee, woorden, zinnen, spreken, het
zijn daden op zich. Die vervolgens hun weerklank en eecten hebben op de organisatie
van het leven. De taal, als strijdtoneel, als situering van geweld, is dus niet slechts zondig.
Het kan gebruikt worden om nieuwe aecten in te brengen en oude vastgeroeste
connotaties weer los te weken. Dit komt naar voren in Schinkels paradoxale verhouding
tot politieke correctheid. Waar Schinkel in 2007, rondom de publicatie van Sociale hypo-
chondrie, zijn werk nog promoot met een pleidooi voor politiek incorrect denken1, vóór
het benoemen van de verhullingsoperaties van de (neo)liberale orde, is hij de laatste
jaren juist bekend geworden om zijn pleidooi voor politieke correctheid, of eerder voor
de verwerping van de tegenwerping van politieke correctheid. Deze keer moet worden
gelezen als een herpositionering ten overstaan van een veranderende wereld. In de
bijna vijftien jaar sinds Sociale hypochondrie heeft het politieke strijdtoneel namelijk een
inversie ondergaan. Probeerde de bestaande orde in eerste instantie nog met woorden
te verhullen, nu probeert ze met woorden te benoemen, de keerzijde van dezelfde
operaties. Schinkels eerdere tactiek, om in naam van vrijheid en waarheid durven te
benoemen, is daarmee gecoöpteerd in dienst van de bestaande orde.
Deze herpositionering werkt specieke theoretische overwegingen op. Wat
betekent dit voor de hegemoniale positie van het politiek correcte en voor de kracht
van de woorden zelf? Taal op zich werkt ordenend. En politieke correctheid, evenals de
aantijging ervan, zijn altijd zowel operaties van verhulling en openbaring. Wat maakt
deze paradox dan (tijdelijk) ondergeschikt aan de politiek-strategische keuze één beider
zijden te benadrukken? Ofwel wat maakt het één eigen, een woekering van het leven,
en het ander oneigenlijk, kraal in naam van de bestaande orde?
1292021, issue 2
Fascisme: mens, kapitaal, aarde
Het antwoord op die vraag heeft een lososch en een politiek component. Het lo-
sosche component betreft het onderscheid tussen de proliferatie van het leven en
de beknotting ervan, tussen een bijdrage aan de verscheidenheid van levensvormen,
levensvatbare vormen, en de inperking van levensvormen in naam van een specieke
levensvorm, in naam van een orde. Sterker nog, is er één rode draad door het werk van
Schinkel te vinden dan is het wel dat precies orde zelf problematisch is. In Sociale hypo-
chondrie heeft dit nog voornamelijk betrekking op de sociologie in haar poging van wat
in feite een uïde massa is een oneigenlijk geheel te maken door middel van benoemen
en onderscheiden, via het gebruik van het woord maatschappij en het oordeel wie
daar wel of niet deel van uitmaakt of mag uitmaken. Welk bevolkingselement heimlich
is en welke dan wel via integratie dient te worden opgenomen, dan wel via uitzetting
moet worden verwijderd — voor Schinkel innig verbonden met de poging politiek te
bedrijven op het niveau van het maatschappelijk lichaam. Is dit in Sociale hypochondrie
nog in koelbloedige analyse gesteld, wordt dit vooral vanaf Theorie van de kraal een
kwestie van aect en inzet van een politieke strijd, het tweede component. Een strijd
die zich afspeelt in de taal en de aecten, maar waarvan de inzet juist de weerklank
van die taal en aecten in het sociale leven behelst: de materiële condities, politieke
hiërarchieën en sociale systemen. Door het leven in de bestaande orde te benoemen
als kraal, een omsloten ruimte voor vee, wordt onze verbeelding aangesproken om die
systemen en hiërarchieën weer te expliciteren. De kraal is het gebied dat de orde aan
ons toelaat. Niet langer als vrije ruimte voor het leven, door Schinkel en Van Reekum
woekeringen genoemd, maar als oneigenlijke toe-eigening daarvan (2019, 11). Orde is
een woekering die zichzelf niet meer herkent als woekering, maar als iets dat daarbo-
venuit komt en zich het recht toe-eigent om andere woekeringen te remmen in hun
groei, te beknellen, of zelfs te verstikken. Overigens bedoelt Schinkel ons hier niets
nieuws mee te vertellen, wij kennen het namelijk allemaal al onder de noemer fascisme.
Fascisme ligt binnen de theorie van de kraal ten grondslag aan de verhul-
lingsoperaties van het (neo)liberalisme. Niet slechts het fascisme als politieke beweging,
of zelfs het fascisme dat Schinkel zelf veelvuldig aanhaalt in de woorden van Benjamin:
mobilisatie zonder verandering van de productieverhoudingen. Nee, eerder het fascisme
dat Foucault besprak in het voorwoord van Deleuze & Guattari’s L’anti-Oedipe (1972):
het fascisme dat in ons allen schuilgaat, waardoor wij verlangen naar datgene wat ons
onderdrukt en exploiteert. Dit wordt over drie schijven behandeld, elk via een eigen
hoofdstuk en elk symbool voor aspecten die Schinkel consistent terug laat komen in
zijn werken: politiek, economie en ecologie.
Het eerste hoofdstuk in die driedeling is ‘Randmensen’, dat een combinatie is
van een ‘kritiek’ op klassiek politiek denken, speciek liberalisme en zijn wortels in het
denken over de ‘natuurstaat’ en het sociaal contract dat ons moet leiden naar bescha-
ving. Randmensen zijn namelijk niet mensen aan de rand van de samenleving, maar
mensen die vinden dat ze zelf een rand hebben, een individueel contour. Neoliberale
subjecten die randen, contouren, of scherpe grenzen waarderen en ambiëren op indivi-
dueel en maatschappelijk niveau. Dit gaat langs verschillende aspecten van kolonisatie,
marginalisatie, identiteit, om uit te komen op een enkele tweespalt: waar een bepaald
1302021, issue 2
liberaal-fascisme — verpersoonlijkt in de witte man — vanuit haat vertrekt en op haat
uit is, zoeken Schinkel en Van Reekum zijn tegenstelling niet in vrijheid (dat is niet
de tegenhanger van haat) maar in vreugde en vooral liefde. Kritiek schreef ik zojuist
tussen aanhalingstekens omdat Schinkel en Van Reekum dit expliciet afwijzen. Kritiek
is namelijk verankerd in een dialoog van de bestaande orde, moet zich altijd al daartegen
verhouden, en dat is nu juist precies niet waar Schinkel en Van Reekum op uit zijn.
Maar, als het niet kritiek is, wat is het dan nog wel? Zoals we zullen zien, geen politiek
meer, maar theologie.
Het volgende hoofdstuk, schulden, verplaatst het speelveld naar de economie.
Theoretisch het sterkste hoofdstuk waar ook de basis wordt gelegd voor het latere De
hamsteraar (2020) en ook doorklinkt in Pandemocratie (2021). Dit hoofdstuk van Theorie
van de kraal zit vol van interessante observaties en pakkende karakteriseringen daarvan.
Bijvoorbeeld over de politieke aard van het economisch ‘boekhouden’, een langlopende
lijn in Schinkels werk, van hoe de economische dimensie door de hele maatschappij
gedrongen is en daarmee niet alleen mensen op waarde schat, maar tegelijk ook tot
die waarde verdoemt: “[…] de schuld is zowel een indicatie van wat we waard zijn als
ons verdiende loon. Bewijs en straf ineen” (Schinkel en Van Reekum 2019, 117). Dat
boekhouden is dus het systeem dat bepaalt wat waar in de samenleving staat, de econo-
mie heeft, in de Europese context, de rol van de Bijbel overgenomen. Niet langer lees
je de Bijbel om je plaats in de wereld te kennen, zoals het beroemde citaat van Hegel
luidt, maar je bankafschrift, de balans van je rekening. Economische schuld is daarmee
ook een soort ‘originele zonde’, aldus Schinkel, de verrekening waar het leven in dienst
van gaat staan. En dit heeft een tekenende terugslag op het voorgaande hoofdstuk:
migratie is een nooit te vereenen schuld. De migrant staat namelijk in het rood bij de
samenleving waar naartoe gemigreerd is, maar hoewel deze morele schuld economische
aossing vereist, kan hij nooit helemaal worden afgelost. Ten slotte is de mogelijkheids-
voorwaarde van dit alles, van het hele economische systeem, en daarmee het begrip dat
het zwaarste werk verricht: schaarste. Een begrip waarop ik zal terugkomen aangezien
het een sleutelbegrip is in niet alleen Theorie van de kraal, maar meer nog in De hamste-
raar en ook in Pandemocratie. Schaarste is precies het type (kunstmatige) woekering dat
zichzelf als (natuurlijke) orde presenteert. Schaarste is namelijk geen ontologisch feit,
maar het eect van verdeling.
De derde en laatste schijf in Theorie van de kraal is ‘Aarde’: een hoofdstuk over
de menselijke verhouding tot de (natuurlijke) wereld. Problematiseren Schinkel en Van
Reekum het idee van de verloren natuurstaat nog in het eerste hoofdstuk, opent dit
hoofdstuk met een theologische conceptie van de aarde als verloren natuurstaat: “Er is
geen weg terug naar de aarde. Aarde is de permanente en wilde productie van verschil.
Aarde is woekering, wordende aanwas van Geschiedenis. Voor zover wij woekeren,
zijn wij aardlingen. En voor zover we ordenen, zijn we eenlingen” (Schinkel en Van
Reekum 2019, 163). Om hier vervolgens aan toe te voegen: “Maar als eenlingen zijn
we altijd al aardlingen, want in weerwil van de hallucinaties van de orde, is ordenen
een modaliteit van woekeren” (ibid.). Een poging dus om de mens te ontdoen van
zijn illusies, van zijn oneigenlijke vervreemding. Maar, hier botst Schinkels marxisme
met het ontologisch feit van die vervreemding als immanente mogelijkheid van de
1312021, issue 2
‘menselijke natuur’. Juist Schinkel doet ook aan (lososche) vervreemding, zoals we
zullen zien bij De hamsteraar. Juist ook Schinkel heeft een vorm van orde voor ogen. En
juist ook woekeren is verstikken, beknellen en ruimte innemen.
Maar, voor ik daar verder op inga, nog een laatste hoofdstuk uit Theorie van de
kraal. Wellicht de meest bijzondere, maar tegelijk een logische theoretische uitkomst van
Schinkel en Van Reekums houding. Namelijk, een keer naar het abstracte en protestants
aandoende idee van ‘pure liefde’. Deze ‘liefde’ is puur abstract omdat het alleen in deze
vorm geweldloos gemaakt kan worden. Schinkel en Van Reekum verzanden in de klas-
sieke problematiek van theoretische schoonheid en (on)toepasbaarheid die al sinds Kant
wordt besproken. Theoretisch schoon omdat, inderdaad, vuur met vuur bestrijden niet
werkt, de enige manier om de vicieuze cirkel van het haat en geweld te doorbreken, is
liefde en geweldloosheid. Maar, ontoepasbaar, want hoewel we het hier theoretisch over
eens kunnen zijn, heeft dit praktisch geen uiting. Niet slechts omdat, zoals Schinkel en
Van Reekum zelf zeggen, wij nog niet weten hoe te leven, maar ook omdat de praktijk
nooit pure theorie is. De weg naar de hel is geplaveid met goede bedoelingen en een
oproep tot liefde is slechts de ideologische bevestiging in naam waarvan alles altijd al
wordt gedaan — ook het fascistische, ook het slechte.
Logistiek kapitalisme en de hamsteraar
Eindigt Theorie van de kraal in 2019 nog in de impasse van de abstractie, begint met
het in 2020 verschenen De hamsteraar Schinkels poging om dit theoretisch raamwerk
desalniettemin direct toe te passen op de hedendaagse samenleving, weer langs de
schijven van politiek, economie en ecologie, ditmaal gespecieerd naar de politieke
economie in tijden van een biologisch-ecologische crisis. Centraal in dit publiekswerk
staat de guur van de hamsteraar, wat ten opzichte van de liberaal-kapitalistische orde
een karikaturale uiting is van hoe de burger altijd al wordt gezien: “iemand die par-
ticipeert door naar willekeur en uit vermeend eigenbelang zich op geïndividueerde
manier een leven bijeen te kopen” (2020, 21). Schinkels punt is duidelijk, hamsteren is
in de huidige context een probleem, de vraag die hij opwerpt: voor wie is het nu precies
een probleem en waarom?
Hamsteren kan uiteindelijk niet beoordeeld worden langs de meetlat van soli-
dariteit, want het consumentisme waar het hamsteren een uitwas van is, is bij uitstek
“die vorm van subjectiviteit die zich op geen enkele manier nog via solidariteit vorm-
geeft” (ibid., 41). Schinkel betoogt dat er een hypocrisie in het verwijt van ‘hamsteraar’
ligt, namelijk de hamsteraar doet precies wat hem verteld is te doen: zich veilig kopen
als consument. Hier verbindt Schinkel een krachtige boodschap aan: “die moraliserende
kritiek op het hamsteren is precies daarom verdacht. Want het is een kritiek die gericht
is op consolidatie van kapitaalaccumulatie door die subjecten tot de orde te roepen die,
paradoxaal genoeg, precies doordat ze de perfectste belichaming van het kapitalistisch
subject zijn, zand in de wielen van de logistieke productie- en consumptiemachine
gooien” (ibid., 42). Hoewel Schinkel terecht de hamsteraar opvoert als ‘vlek’ op het
blazoen van logistiek kapitalisme, had dit betoog sterker geweest als het expliciteerde
hoe consistent het tegelijkertijd ook is. In het neoliberalisme is het morele appel altijd
in dienst van de markt, die dienstbare rol verschuift dus in de tijd en de omstandigheden
1322021, issue 2
naarmate de markt dat vereist. Het kopen van Mark Rutte — “Koop die auto!” — van
2013 is niet hetzelfde als het ‘leegkopen van winkels’ in 2020. Juist omdat de hamsteraar
niet de perfecte belichaming is van het kapitalistisch subject, juist omdat de hamsteraar
de informele regels van het spel niet helemaal begrijpt, legt hij dat systeem bloot.
De boodschap van Schinkel is interessant, als een soort apologie van de hamsteraar.
Hoewel niet een echte apologie, want hamsteren is altijd reactionair, in dienst van het
oude systeem, van de oude spelregels. Moraliseren is echter niet het devies, juist omdat
de hamsteraar het eigenlijk doelwit openbaar maakt: de just-in-time economie (ibid.,
43). Het doel van het boek is dan ook: een bijdrage leveren aan een analyse van de
mogelijkheidsvoorwaarde van het logistiek kapitalisme op grond van de manier waarop
de productie en distributie van levens-middelen — in de breedste zin van het woord —
georganiseerd worden, in een enkel woord gevat als: biologistiek (ibid., 43; 50).
Die hamsteraar wordt in het tweede en wellicht ‘grappigste’ hoofdstuk in een
tour de force van taalkundig-cultureel onderzoek naar de ‘hamster’ geduid. In een
aaneenschakeling van beelden over mens en dier legt Schinkel ons haarjn uit hoe het
dierlijke als irrationeel problematisch tegenover het rationele menselijke wordt gezet.
Zo ook de guur van de hamster, die transformatieve tegenstrijdigheid kent. Hoewel
de hamster al lang bekendstaat als een lieijk huisdier, is het beeld dat in een ham-
steraar nog doorechoot die van de ‘korenwolf’ of eerder de ‘wolf’, die gierigaard die
uit eigen belang voorraden aanlegt en daarmee anderen het leven onmogelijk maakt.
Tegenstrijdig echter is de tijdloosheid waarmee deze beelden worden verbonden. Als
dit universele operaties zijn, wat helpt het dan nog om de onderliggende instituties in
dienst van kapitalisme aan te pakken? De historisch-ontologische conclusie van Marx,
dat met de opkomst van de moderne bourgeoisie de klassenstrijd als principe van de
geschiedenis kenbaar wordt, wordt hier ogenschijnlijk oppervlakkig gesteld, maar niet
in zijn volledigheid doordacht.
Vervolgens komen we aan bij de hoofdmoot van het werk. Dit derde hoofdstuk
borduurt voort op het principiële idee van Theorie van de kraal, namelijk dat in naam van
de meritocratie een articiële schaarste is gecreëerd die dienstdoet als ultieme drijfveer
voor het zogenaamde ‘rennen’ — ofwel concurreren — in de kraal. Want, wat is de rol
van de guur van de hamster in dit alles? In de woorden van Schinkel: “Hamsteren
leidt wellicht tot tekorten aan bepaalde waren op sommige plaatsen en op sommige
momenten, maar met de creatie van schaarste, zou ik hier duidelijk willen maken, heeft
het niets te maken. Het hamsteren kan veroordeeld worden omdat het levens-midde-
len schaars maakt, maar in wezen wijst het hamsteren ons op het dieperliggende feit
dat ‘schaarste’ altijd een sociaal geproduceerd gegeven is” (ibid., 119). Overigens geen
origineel punt, Hans Achterhuis betoogde in 1988 nog iets soortgelijks met zijn Het
Rijk van de Schaarste. Maar de hamsteraar toont ons nogmaals aan dat schaarste niet het
uitgangspunt van de economie is, maar juist een eect. Het gevolg van de specieke
indeling van de economie zoals die in het logistiek kapitalisme is vormgegeven. Kritiek
die ook al door Horkheimer en Adorno is geformuleerd: kapitalisme is burgerlijke
berekendheid, reductie tot abstracte kwantiteiten.
In hoofdstuk vier wordt hier verder op ingegaan, onder de noemers
just-in-time-kapitalisme, of ook wel logistiek kapitalisme. Het probleem van onze
1332021, issue 2
huidige economische situatie is namelijk niet slechts het kapitalisme in de zin van
nancialisering van meerwaarde en het kenmerkende gegoochel van geldcirculatie
door banken, investeringsmaatschappijen, etc. maar ook en vooral de logistiek die
achter de geglobaliseerde toevoerlijnen schuilt. Deze analyse is tegelijk een kracht en
een zwakte in het betoog van Schinkel. Het is namelijk performatief, middels zijn
benaming van logistiek kapitalisme probeert Schinkel zowel onze situatie te duiden als
een construct in het leven te roepen dat een bepaalde coherentie moet verlenen aan
wat anderzijds wellicht losse aspecten zijn. Zo schakelt het betoog tussen verschillend
ietwat fragmentarische kritiek als de klassieke marxistische op automatisering, waarbij
een problematische vorm van vervreemding optreedt, tot een meer immanente kritiek
dat just-in-time logistiek eigenlijk niet echt just-in-time is, dat het niet echt eciënt
is omdat het slechts de voorraden die nog kenmerkend waren voor het Fordistisch
kapitalisme naar ‘achteren’ duwt, onzichtbaar maakt voor de consument. Hier wordt
de verbinding met het hamsteren gemaakt, omdat nu juist aan de zichtbare kant van
de ‘supply chain’ bij de ‘handelaren’ (zoals Schinkel ze dubbelzinnig duidt) het beeld
wordt opgeworpen van een schaarste die eigenlijk geen schaarste is. Een schaarste die
altijd al articieel was en in dienst is van de circulatie van geld, goederen, mensen, et
cetera. Deze analyse en het daarmee innig verweven pleidooi kan niet afgedaan worden
als een simpele terugkeer naar fordistische voorraden. Hoewel Schinkel enigszins ver-
wijtend wijst naar het gebrek aan voorraden in de zorg tijdens de corona-pandemie
maakt het vooral pijnlijk duidelijk hoe diep het logistiek kapitalisme ons bestaan heeft
gepenetreerd (ibid., 119).
Politiek spel of theoretische gevolgtrekking?
Schinkels poging is wat zijn doeleinde betreft noemenswaardig. Niet alleen is de ham-
steraar als guur, zoals Schinkel het zegt, een vervreemdend aect, een moment waarin
wij ons niet helemaal één voelen met de just-in-time-organisatie van onze maatschappij,
maar ook is deze guur op zich niet veel kwalijk te nemen. Zonder de hamsteraar te
bagatelliseren werpt Schinkel zich op tegen de burgerlijke reex de hamsteraar voor
‘idioot’ uit te maken, of erger: parasiet. Niet de hamsteraar, die uit gevoelde noodzaak
een eigen voorraad aanlegt is parasitair, nee, de architecten van het systeem, de eigenaren
van de globale ketens, middels hun articiële schaarste en zogenaamd noodzakelijke
ordening, zijn de echte parasieten. Schinkels betoog moet dan ook zo gelezen worden,
als een verschuiving van de aandacht naar deze vaak in het narratief van de hamsteraar
buiten schot gebleven guren. Hoewel dit werkt in een positionele strijd om aandacht,
is het theoretisch lastiger vol te houden. Acceptatie van het begrip schaarste leidt volgens
Schinkel tot een acceptatie van het historisch gegroeide systeem zoals deze is. Tegelijkertijd
is dit ogenschijnlijk in strijd met het idee dat niet alleen bepaalde natuurlijke bronnen
eindig zijn, maar ook dat het menselijke begrensd is. ‘Begrensd’ in zijn onvolledigheid,
zoals ook in de Theorie van de kraal wordt benadrukt. Dit ontkent namelijk niet het pro-
bleem van de menselijke en natuurlijke eindigheid, wat zou neerkomen op een klassiek
modernistisch betoog, maar situeert het probleem juist op zo’n manier dat het niet
onterecht ten koste gaat van een deel van de mens of van het leven in het algemeen. Net
zoals schaarste geen beginpositie, maar resultante is, zo ook overvloed.
1342021, issue 2
Voor Schinkel is dan ook niet de vrije markt het probleem, die heeft namelijk
nooit bestaan. Nee, de ‘macht’ is het probleem. Zoals Schinkel zelf zegt: “achter alles
wat ‘markt’ heet, staat de macht, en uiteindelijk het geweld” (ibid., 225). Het zijn dus
niet de globale markten die invloed uitoefenen op overheden of andere pogingen tot
democratisch zelfbestuur, die daar dus niet in de ban van zijn geraakt, maar andersom.
Andermaal volgt Schinkel hier Adorno en Horkheimer, de vrije markt en de burger-
maatschappij in zijn algemeen zijn slechts werktuigen van staten, wiens rol tegelijkertijd
beperkt is tot borg staan voor de metriek: zoals er in de 19de eeuw nog ergens in een
Franse kluis een platina staaf lag die de meter garandeerde. Hoewel Schinkel daarmee
terecht wijst op de ideologische dimensie van het kapitalisme, dat het geen natuurlijk
fenomeen is, verdwijnt een belangrijk inzicht. Namelijk, het idee dat bestuursvormen
via instituties van de staat, behorende tot de parlementaire democratie, pogingen zijn
tot collectief zelfbestuur, maar tegelijkertijd, op het moment dat het strijdveld daar
gelokaliseerd wordt, onder constante spanningen staan precies vanuit de ‘instrumen-
tele wereld’ in habermasiaanse zin. Spanningen die inherent zijn aan de democratie
als poging antagonistische krachten op enigerlei wijze te situeren en mediëren, zodat
zelfbestuur überhaupt mogelijk wordt. Hoogmoed echter, vanuit Schinkels perspectief,
want dat vereist ogenschijnlijk het soort scheiden en berekenen dat intervenieert in
het leven. Operaties die alleen aan het leven zelf, gelezen door een omkering van een
spinozistische formule, ofwel alleen aan God zijn besteed. Natura sive Deus.
Om het probleem in de termen van Theorie van de kraal te bespreken, fascisme,
kapitalisme en neoliberalisme, zijn precies het soort ‘vrije woekeringen’ dat Schinkel
theoretisch gezien interessant vindt. De consequentie ervan echter is dat wanneer wij
vrije woekeringen op zijn beloop laten gaan, deze bijna altijd parasiterend of verstik-
kend werken op andere woekeringen. Snel vermenigvuldigende woekeringen (zoals
onkruid, of voor dierlijke organismen: kanker) nemen de ruimte, zuurstof en energie
van de woekeringen eromheen in. Een pleidooi voor vrije woekering is daarmee niet
voldoende, een pleidooi voor een gelijke, eerlijke, of gemeenschappelijke woekering
is meer op zijn plaats. Maar, hoe zo’n woekeringsvorm te realiseren als niet via een
bepaalde vorm van democratische politiek die op het niveau van een orde werkt?
Schinkel zelf neemt ook zo’n (super)positie in, met als nieuw ordeningsprincipe: woe-
keringen mogen niet ten koste gaan van andere woekeringen.
Deze impasse wordt duidelijk in het laatste hoofdstuk van De hamsteraar, waarin
Schinkel van leer trekt tegen het RIVM en het OMT speciek. Hij verwijt hen zich in
te laten met calculaties over leven, elke ingecalculeerde dode is er één te veel. Daarmee
toont Schinkel zich andermaal protestants-kantiaans: het leven is te kostbaar om mee
te rekenen. Toch wordt dit betoog problematisch als Schinkel besluiten over het open
houden dan wel ondersteunen van specieke sectoren of instituties bekritiseert. Kritiek
op de te grote invloed van het economisch belang is terecht, de nationale luchtvaart-
maatschappij kreeg bovenmatig veel steun, maar om vervolgens in naam van speciek
leven — aan te duiden als naakt leven in de termen van Agamben — te betogen dat er
geen enkele dode mocht worden ingecalculeerd laat vervolgens andere aspecten van dat
leven, van de kwaliteit van het leven, buiten beschouwing. Schinkel noemt daarbij de
mogelijke heropening van de scholen, bij uitstek een politiek besluit, waar het RIVM
1352021, issue 2
en het OMT speciek overwegingen probeerden te maken hoe de kwaliteit van leven
van een grote groep jongeren niet permanent schade aan te richten, een onvermijdelijk
antagonistische overweging tussen verschillende levens – niet tussen leven en kapitaal.
Schinkel eindigt zijn Hamsteraar dan ook met een eigenaardige wende, een
bijna paternalistisch lijstje van richtpunten, een “tienpuntenlijstje dat we op toiletpapier
zouden kunnen schrijven, zoals op het keerpunt in de lm V for Vendetta” (ibid., 244).
Wat volgt zijn tien ‘al bekende punten’ die ter herinnering worden ingebracht en tege-
lijk erg lijken op de zogenaamde nostalgie voor de sociale welvaartstaat die Schinkel
een paar bladzijden daarvoor nog afdoet. Op zich allen overtuigend, zoals bijvoor-
beeld: democratisering van productiemiddelen en communicatiemiddelen, garantie van
inkomen, groene energievoorziening, planning in plaats van prijsmechanismes in de
economie, etc. (welke hij overigens herhaalt in het laatste hoofdstuk van Pandemocratie).
Maar de bescheidenheid en abstractie van het lijstje, gekoppeld aan de nadruk op her-
haling, doen vermoeden dat het zware mediërende werk van de democratie, waarin
erkenning en overtuigingskracht tussen radicaal verschillende perspectieven centraal
staat, slechts vooruit wordt geschoven.
Naar de pandemocratie
Uiteindelijk is Schinkel met recht niet alleen socioloog, maar ook echt een losoof te
noemen. Precies omwille van wat hij zelf nu juist zo problematisch vindt: het kunnen
scheiden. Dat betekent niet alleen het onderscheid maken op hoog theoretisch niveau,
het op begrip kunnen brengen van de hedendaagse conditie van de mens. Maar, ook
juist als aectieve operatie, als vervreemding. Schinkel probeert ons te vervreemden
van de alledaagsheid van het onrecht veroorzaakt door de systemen die wij hebben
opgetogen om zelf om te gaan met die moderne conditie. We mogen daarin juist niet
al te erg met deze systemen samenvallen, maar moeten altijd een beetje vervreemd zijn
en daarmee vragen kunnen stellen bij wat vanzelfsprekend lijkt.
Maar, Schinkel lukt het niet om daar consistent in te zijn, waarop hij overigens
meteen zal antwoorden dat consistentie op zich helemaal geen doel is of kan zijn.
Sterker nog, het devies is eerder: wees hypocriet, spreek je uit tegen de praktijken waar
je zelf deel van uit maakt. Maar het soort inconsistentie hier is anders. Het theoretisch
model dat is opgetuigd staat ergens haaks op de meer ecologische, socialistische en
antiracistische leest waarop de inhoudelijke lijnen van zijn recente werk is geschoeid.
De vervreemding is namelijk niet alleen de preconditie van kritiek, maar op zich de
menselijke conditie, dat wat eigen is aan mensen, dat ze nooit echt samenvallen met
de zelf-opgetogen systemen of de natuur. Anders gezegd, orde is te ontmaskeren als
woekering, maar menselijke woekeringen zijn per denitie niet slechts woekeringen,
kennen ook altijd een dimensie van ‘orde’ — de menselijke reectie, overweging, calcu-
latie, is altijd ingebed in zo’n woekering. Ook Schinkels programma is uiteindelijk een
woekering die zichzelf als orde op zal stellen, een orde die weliswaar meer ruimte laat
aan de pluriformiteit van leven, maar als het niet zelf weer slechts verstikkende blinde
wildgroei is — om met de woorden van Slavoj Žižek te schermen, die een uitspraak
van Lynn Margulis op zijn kop zette: Moeder natuur is een wrede moeder — een orde
niettemin. Schinkel heeft daarin veel weg van een rousseauiaans romanticus, terug naar
1362021, issue 2
de ‘amour de soi’ voordat deze gecorrumpeerd werd door de maatschappij, speciek
het kapitalisme. En zelfs optimistischer over ‘consensus’ dan Habermas, want waar con-
sensus bij Habermas een mogelijkheid is die nog verwerkelijkt moet worden via het
zware werk in instituties en de pogingen een ander te begrijpen, is dat voor Schinkel
klaarblijkelijk iets dat vooral verschijnt als we er niet aan werken, als we niet proberen
te begrijpen, maar als we leven maar leven laten zijn en woekeringen laten woekeren.
Daarmee slaat Schinkels theoretische betoog de onderbouwing voor zijn praktische
programma compleet weg.
Tegelijk zal Schinkel zeggen dat zijn programma dit ook juist ingecalculeerd
heeft, dat het einde ervan niet door hem, maar door de democratie zal moeten worden
geschreven. Maar, hoe verhouden we ons dan tot de uitkomsten van het democratisch
proces als die ook weer onrecht gedeeltelijk verankeren als recht? Omdat Schinkel
voornamelijk in wat Hegel de negatieve vrijheid van het denken noemt blijft hangen,
is de tweede stap van elk denken, de ‘positivering’, ofwel dat elke begrenzing tegelijk
eigenlijk mogelijkheidsvoorwaarde is, bij Schinkel een oppervlakkige constatering.
Nergens wordt dit zo duidelijk als in zijn analyse van de natiestaat. Of de duiding
hoe de Europese Unie dit reproduceert. In een interview met Lex Bohlmeijer voor
De Correspondent vertrekt Schinkel voornamelijk vanuit het idee dat solidariteit wordt
begrensd, letterlijk, door de natiestaat en tegenwoordig door de Europese Unie.2 Met
alle gevolgen, alle verloren levens aan de Griekse kust van mensen die mee willen delen
in het veilige en welvarend leven dat Europa voor zijn burgers heeft opgetogen, van
dien. Kritiek op de huidige staatsvorm is meer dan terecht ook gegeven zijn historische
opkomst, die innig is verweven met de opkomst van nationalisme en kapitalisme, twee
van Schinkels belangrijkste theoretische doelwitten.
En passant noemt Schinkel echter een belangrijk aspect van die staat, namelijk
dat het zelf juist een poging of mogelijkheidsvoorwaarde tot solidariteit was. Waaraan ik
zou toevoegen: omdat er daarvoor nog veel minder solidariteit was, omdat solidariteit
geen natuurlijk gegeven is, maar geconstrueerd moet worden. Met de tot nu toe meest
grootschalige poging tot zo’n solidariteit, de natiestaat en in het verlengde de Europese
Unie, ontstonden ook de grootste praktijken van uitsluiting en de vooropplaatsing van
het eigen belang van het politiek subject als resultante van solidariteit. Anders gezegd,
ruimte voor de kritische boodschap van Schinkel is er zeker en terecht wijst Schinkel
ons op de mogelijkheid en de noodzaak van een grotere solidariteit, in lijn met de
internationale, in de geest van de oproep van Marx en Engels aan het eind van het
communistisch manifest, en zoals Schinkel ook in De hamsteraar oproept: een vereniging
aller hamsteraars (ibid., 255). Een constructie blijft het echter wel.
Vandaar ook de titel van zijn meest recent werk op het moment van schrijven,
Pandemocratie. Hierin neemt Schinkel eenzelfde houding aan tegenover de complot-
denker als tegenover de hamsteraar. Andermaal hebben ze gelijk dat er iets niet pluis
is aan de bestaande orde, maar hun antwoorden zijn fascistisch. Pandemocratie is niet
slechts een analyse van de democratie in pandemische tijden, waarin het biologistieke
rekenen omklapt in een necropolitiek, een politiek gekenmerkt door dood (laten gaan),
maar ook een oproep tot een democratie voor allen, een democratie die niet alleen de
buitengesloten mensen, maar al het leven includeert (2021, 17-18). Zoals Schinkel zegt:
1372021, issue 2
“de democratisering van alles (pan) en voor iedereen (demos)” (ibid., 256). Dit mondt
uit in een drievoudige ‘uitbreiding’ langs de domeinen die wij al terugzien in Theorie
van de kraal: 1. Naar rechtelozen en onderdrukten, 2. Naar collectieve vormen van
economische democratie, 3. Naar wat tot nu toe slechts bekend stond als ‘natuur’ (ibid.,
257). Een rizomatische weergave van inzichten van guren als Bruno Latour, Donna
Haraway, en Cedric Robinson. Maar, meer dan een opsomming van die inzichten
wordt het ook weer niet. Juist omdat dat programma van inzichten niet logischerwijs
volgt uit het theoretisch raamwerk dat Schinkel al sinds Sociale hypochondrie op probeert
te zetten.
Schinkel is een verrijking voor het Nederlandse publieke debat. Zijn moedige
pogingen om ondanks bedreigingen — Schinkel werd genoemd door Vizier op Links,
een van de Nederlandse alt-rightgroepen — perspectieven toe te voegen aan het debat
in naam van rechtvaardigheid rondom precies de drie hiervoor benoemde domeinen
politiek, economie en ecologie, is prijzenswaardig. Maar, de weg daarnaartoe is niet
overtuigend en kent een onvoorzien eect. In zijn theoretische zoektocht naar de
ultieme bevrijding onder het juk van de liberale orde vandaan en zijn programmatische
activisme die gedeeltelijk gestoeld is op precies dezelfde ideologische operaties, blijft
er weinig over van democratie. Want wat voor soort democratie is er nog bij Schinkel
als ons zelfbestuur eigenlijk alleen aan God zelf toevertrouwd is? Als elke poging
orde aan te brengen in Gods natuurlijke woekeringen per denitie fascistisch is? Een
onmenselijke democratie.
Schinkel, Willem. 2010.Aspects of Violence: A Critical
Theory. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schinkel, Willem en Rogier van Reekum.
2019.Theorie van de kraal: kapitaal-ras-fascisme.
Amsterdam: Boom uitgevers.
Schinkel, Willem. 2020. De hamsteraar: kritiek van het
logistiek kapitalisme. Amsterdam: Boom uitgevers.
Schinkel, Willem. 2021. Pandemocratie. Editie
Leesmagazijn.
Jamie van der Klaauw is promovendus ‘politieke
theorie en zijn geschiedenis’ aan de Erasmus School
of Philosophy. Zijn proefschrift gaat over (politieke)
representatie als mediatie, waarin hij probeert het
concept tot zijn radicale eindpunt te doordenken.
Daarnaast houdt hij zich bezig met sociale en
culturele filosofie. In 2021 verscheen van zijn hand
het artikel: “Conspiracy Theories as Superstition:
Today’s Mirror Image in Spinoza’s Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus.”
Literatuurlijst
Notes
Biography
Zie bijvoorbeeld: https://bij1.org/speech-
willem-schinkel/
Zie voor het interview: https://www.felix-en-
sofie.nl/boeken/536/willem-schinkel--denken-in-
een-tijd-van-sociale-hypochondrie/
Zie voor het gesprek met Lex Bohlmeijer:
https://decorrespondent.nl/12188/welkom-in-de-
eeuw-van-de-necropolitiek-waar-bedrijven-en-
staat-over-lijken-gaan/859165661376-5b62f7fb
1
2
3
2021, issue 2
The Dark Underbelly of Capitalism:
Exploring the Capitalism-War Connection.
Marius Nijenhuis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
10.21827/krisis.41.2.37963
Krisis41 (2):138-142.
Review of
Maurizio Lazzarato. 2021. Capital Hates Everyone. Fascism or
Revolution. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Interventions.
Licence
Keyword
War, Capital, Maurizio Lazzarato, Neoliberalism,
Fascism, Domination
DOI
1382021, issue 2
The Dark Underbelly of Capitalism:
Exploring the Capitalism-War Connection.
Marius Nijenhuis
Kant famously wrote that “the spirit of trade […] cannot coexist with war” and that
liberal capitalism creates “perpetual peace” (1795, 92). More recently, it has again become
popular to argue that liberal capitalism is ‘the best’ system of government. Fukuyama
(1992) famously heralded Western liberal democracies as “the end of history”, and propo-
nents of democratic peace theory argue that liberal capitalism creates peace and prosperity
(see for example Mousseau 2019). The well-known post-workerist Maurizio Lazzarato
approaches the capitalist system from the opposite angle by exploring the connection
between capitalism and war. Over the last decade, Lazzarato (2012; 2014; 2015) has
explored the subjectivation and enslavement inherent to capitalism and the way in which
nancialization and indebtedness operate as particularly insidious mechanisms of control.
In Capital Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution (2021), Lazzarato takes a particularly radical
approach. In this book he draws on Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, and Marx, among
others, to argue that capitalism has an inherently violent and conictual nature. He uses
the book to argue that capitalism cannot be understood separately from historical and
contemporary fascisms.
One reason for why capitalism continues to appear so peaceful and non-violent
is specic to the neoclassical economic theory that dominates our contemporary under-
stand ing of capitalism. Within neoclassical economics, capitalism is typically understood
as a system of free and (formally) equal economic actors that enter into peaceful and
mutually benecial exchanges. Graeber (2011, 21-41) argues that this view of the
economy results from “the myth of barter”, the idea that capitalism originated when
one farmer needed milk and the other needed vegetables, leading these equal parties to
barter their goods for mutual benet. However, in practice capitalism has a dark under-
belly of violence and exploitation which it hides through its veil of formal freedom and
equality. Marx already noted that a prerequisite for capitalist relations was “primitive
accumulation”, the expropriation of land and property and their concentration in the
hands of the few (1867, 873-876). In this regard, Marx (1867, 878-895) used the famous
example of the British “enclosure movement” and the violent expropriation that this
land-grabbing of the commons by the wealthy constituted.
More recently, various scholars have noted how violent dispossession continues
to function under capitalism (see Harvey 2003; Li 2014). Thus, many capitalist exchanges,
especially those done in and through the Global South, are made possible via violence
or the threat thereof. Moreover, private property is itself constituted and maintained
through violence and coercion. As Graeber (2011, 160) remarks, “think about what
would happen if you were to insist on your right to enter a university library without a
properly validated ID”. Under capitalism there exists a comprehensive juridico-political
system of coercion and force without which existing property relations would break
down (Cohen 2011). Moreover, real-world capitalist relations are almost always char-
acterized by unequal power relations due to past oppression, rendering racial, sexual,
and other forms of exploitation possible through the vehicle of the ‘free’ and ‘equal’
1392021, issue 2
capitalist system (Mills 2017, 113-135). Is it any wonder, then, that many academics in
Western Europe are white, whereas the cleaning stas in the universities often consist
of people of color?
In Capital Hates Everyone, Lazzarato takes inspiration from Foucault’s 1975-1976
Society Must Be Defended (2003) lectures, in which Foucault approached power relations
through the prism of civil war. Lazzarato contrasts this approach with how Foucault
analyzed neoliberalism in his 1978-1979 lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics (2008) as
a predominantly non-violent governmentality, viz., as a non-violent “art of govern-
ment” (Foucault 2007, 92), that mostly relies on incentives and stimuli, rather than
coercion and force, to govern behavior. Foucault argued that neoliberalization entails
the subjectivation of individuals into “entrepreneurs of the self”, always concerned
with growing their ‘human capital’ by becoming tter, happier, more productive (2008,
226). In this way, neoliberalization transforms how we operate within the economic
system and within (formerly) non-economic realms of life like health, tness, and
relationships. Lazzarato criticizes authors such as Dardot and Laval (2014) and Brown
(2015; 2019) who, inspired by The Birth of Biopolitics, understand neoliberal capitalism
as predominantly non-violent (Lazzarato 2021, 27-28). Lazzarato, in contrast, argues
that all capitalisms, including neoliberal capitalism, have a violent undercurrent which
consists of interrelated but irreducible (literal and gurative) wars on the basis of class,
race, and gender. In the words of McClanahan (2017, 512), the idea that neoliberalism
is characterized by subjectivation rather than force seems to be the standpoint of “the
subject who polishes her college application, who selects among schools for his kid,
who improves her scholarly CV through obtaining national grants”. It is emphatically
not the standpoint of a Chinese worker screwing in backplates of iPhones for 29 days
a month.
Lazzarato uses the rst two parts of Capital Hates Everyone to construct a
post-workerist conception of capitalism that is inuenced by Deleuze and Guattari’s
(1987) theory of machines. Lazzarato understands capitalism as “a series of devices for
machinic enslavement and […] social subjection” (2006). These machinic assemblages
are not technological per se, as there are various kinds of machines (technological,
social, economic) that shape our lives. In Lazzarato’s conception of capitalism, capital
and labor are always at war, with putative social stability only being the result of one
faction’s temporary dominance. Lazzarato argues that within contemporary neolib-
eralism, which is characterized by the far-reaching nancialization of our everyday
lives and a dominance of capital over labor, our democracies are rendered increasingly
illiberal by the dominance of the “capitalist war machine” that turns everything and
everyone into cogs of capital’s machine (2021, 165). Thus, Lazzarato explains how even
leftist parties like Brazil’s Worker’s Party have become unable to escape the logic of
nancialization, as it has relied on debt as a means to give the poor access to essential
services (31-40). Lazzarato argues that the resentment, frustration, and isolation of the
“indebted men” that are created by this nancialization only fans the ames of the
new fascisms of Trump, Bolsonaro and friends (see Lazzarato 2012; 2015). Given the
logic of war underlying capitalism, Lazzarato argues, these new fascisms are “the other
face of neoliberalism” (2021, 9), and they are not some perverse neoliberal side-eect or
1402021, issue 2
“neoliberal Frankenstein”, as Brown (2019) argued. In this regard, Lazzarato points to
the anity of some neoliberals for right-wing dictators – Hayek infamously preferred
a “liberal dictatorship to a democratic government devoid of liberalism” (Caldwell and
Montes 2015, 44; Lazzarato 2021, 46-47) – and Lazzarato points to older syntheses of
capital and fascism (like Nazism) to argue that the new fascisms are merely the other side
of neoliberalization (2021, 41-46).
Lazzarato’s examination of capitalism via the prism of war helps underscore
the looming conicts, the violence and exploitation, as well as the possibilities for
revolution, that underly a capitalism of ever-deepening cleavages between winner and
loser, subaltern and dominant, colonized and colonizer, man and woman, Dalit and
Brahmin. Thereby, he lays bare the nasty and brutish side of capitalism. At the same time,
and perhaps due to his Marxist sympathies, Lazzarato also risks developing a kind of
totalizing theory which Foucault (2007, 6), as well as other postmoderns like Lyotard
(1984), rightly criticized as inadequate for understanding social reality. The attempt to
collapse all instances of capitalism into an all-encompassing theory of ‘capital’ and ‘war’,
of ‘fascism’ and ‘revolution’, creates an understanding of society which is not equipped
to cope with the multiplicity of social reality. It renders both capitalism and war as
unitary and monolithic processes with always and everywhere the same underlying
dynamics. One could therefore ask Lazzarato: How should we understand the “varieties
of capitalism” and the “varieties of neoliberalism” which exist in dierent countries in
regard to his seemingly totalizing theory of ‘capitalism’ (Hall and Soskice 2001; Birch
and Mykhnenko 2009)? Has there been no relevant improvement between the capital-
ism of, say, the colonial period, and the capitalism of the twenty-rst century? And does
Lazzarato not underestimate the power that certain players have under neoliberalism
to inuence the underlying capitalist dynamics for the better, and to rein capital in a
bit, as one could argue might be reected by the recent agreement on an international
corporate tax rate by the G7 (Rappeport 2021)?
Lazzarato uses the third and nal part of the book to critique the limitations
of the ‘post-68 movement’ in philosophy, by which he refers to, among other things,
French Theory and Postcolonial Theory. What Lazzarato argues for, in our current
predicament, is not just a social revolution that contests contemporary subjectivities
and normalization processes, which is the focus of much post-68 thought, but also a
political revolution ‘beyond capitalism’ (2021, 233). Making the Chinese workers at
Foxconn or the Bangladeshi slaves in Qatar aware of their subjectivity and the nor-
malizing forces at play, in so far as they are not already aware of these things, is in itself
insucient for freeing them from their predicament and will only make their lives
appear more miserable. Hence, the exploited and enslaved (the Global North’s precariat
and proletariat, the Global South, people of color) do not just require a “revolutionary
theory” which exposes relations of domination and subjectivation, they also need “a
theory of revolution” which contains “strategic principles” to successfully establish the
new world (Lazzarato 2021, 235).
There is a certain risk in revolutionary theories becoming disconnected from
theories of revolution, which can be seen clearly under neoliberal capitalism. The
social revolutions that have been brought about by the post-68 movement, however
1412021, issue 2
emancipatory they may be, have again and again been co-opted by the dynamics of
capitalism and put to use to hide capital’s ugly face. Thus, the struggle against racism is
co-opted for promoting one’s global sports organization whilst simultaneously sponsor-
ing large-scale slavery; LGBTQI+ rights are turned into something for selling electronic
devices which are made on the backs of Chinese workers; and women’s emancipation
is deployed as an electoral slogan to push neoliberal economic policies that dispropor-
tionately harm welfare dependents. Lazzarato in this respect criticizes techno-optimists
by arguing that technology and automation also will not free us from the “capitalist war
machine” (2021, 165). Any technological machine, Lazzarato argues, is always already
embedded in, and put to use by, the social machine (the “war machine”) of capital
(2021, 119). What we need is thus a social and political revolution away from capitalism,
not merely ‘technological innovation’ by way of capital. Capitalism, then, is in some
sense akin to ‘The Blob’: it is a depersonalized monster that consumes everything (tech-
nologies, social movements, etc.) in its path only to become stronger, bigger, and more
dangerous for it. At the same time, real social change tends to disappear somewhere over
the horizon.
In my view, Lazzarato should be careful of creating the impression that the
post-68 movement has failed to connect its problematization of subjectivation with
systematic critiques of capitalism and with revolutionary theories directed at toppling
capitalist power relations. Whereas Foucault has mostly kept a ‘safe’ distance from
Marxism, many post-68 scholars have never hidden their anity for, and connection to,
Marxism. The important task, then, should not be to chastise this or that social move-
ment or intellectual for failing to focus on how to move beyond capitalism. Rather,
we should attempt to nd a space where “revolution”, viz., a movement for bringing
about a society beyond capitalism, and “becoming-revolutionary”, viz., creating the
revolutionary subject aware of his or her domination, can come together in a fruitful
manner (Lazzarato 2021, 232). What we need in this regard is a ‘revolutionary theory’
that is produced by “future revolutionaries”, and which enables these ‘victims of capital’
to become a revolutionary body whilst simultaneously oering “specic strategic prin-
ciples” for reaching a world beyond capitalism (2021, 235). Given the multiplicity of
cross-cutting cleavages that run through the social groups which potentially form the
revolutionary social body, however, this will be an extremely dicult task, but consid-
ering the urgency of what Lazzarato (2021) calls our “apocalyptic times” (7), it might
well be the most pressing task within social and political philosophy today.
Birch, Keane and Vlad Mykhnenko. 2009. “Varieties
of Neoliberalism? Restructuring in Large
Industrially Dependent Regions across
Western and Eastern Europe.” Journal of
Economic Geography 9 (3): 355-380. https://doi.
org/10.1093/jeg/lbn058
Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York:
Zone Books.
Brown, Wendy. 2019. Neoliberalism’s Frankenstein: The
Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Caldwell, Bruce, and Montes, Leonidas. 2015.
“Friedrich Hayek and His Visits to Chile.” The
Review of Austrian Economics 28 (3): 261-309.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-014-0290-8
Literature
1422021, issue 2
Marius Nijenhuis is a Research Master’s student in
Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. He is
currently writing his thesis on the justifiability of
private debt under liberalism
Biography
Cohen, Gerald A., 2011. “Freedom and Money”.
In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and
Other Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by
Michael Otsuka, 166-192. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Dardot, Pierre, and Laval, Christian. 2014. The
New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society.
Translated by Gregory Elliott. London: Verso
Books.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. 1987. A
Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended:
Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-1976.
Translated by David Macey. New York: Picador.
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population:
Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78.
Translated by Graham Burchell. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics:
Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979.
Translated by Graham Burchell. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the
Last Man. New York: Macmillan.
Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The First 5000 Years.
Brooklyn: Melville House.
Hall, Peter A., and Soskice, David. 2001. Varieties
of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations
of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Harvey, David. 2003. “Accumulation by
Dispossession”. In The New Imperialism, 137-
182. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2006 [1795]. “Toward Perpetual
Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”. In Toward
Perpetual Peace and Other Writings, edited by
Paulien Kleingeld, 69-109. New Haven Yale
University Press.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2006. “The Machine.”
Transversal. Accessed November 26, 2021.
https://transversal.at/transversal/1106/
lazzarato/en.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2012. The Making of the Indebted
Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition.
Translated by Joshua D. Jordan. Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e) Interventions.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2014. Signs and Machines.
Translated by Joshua D. Jordan. Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2015. Governing by Debt.
Translated by Joshua D. Jordan. Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e) Interventions.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2021. Capital Hates Everyone:
Fascism or Revolution. Translated by Robert
Hurley. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Interventions.
Li, Tania. 2014. Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an
Indigenous Frontier. Durham: Duke University
Press.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translateby
Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi.
Minneapolis: Minnesota Press.
Marx, Karl. 1976 [1867]. Capital: A Critique of
Political Economy. Volume One. Translated by Ben
Fowkes. London: Penguin Books.
McClanahan, Annie J., 2017. “Becoming Non-
Economic: Human Capital Theory and Wendy
Brown’s Undoing the Demos.” Theory &
Event 20 (2): 510-519. https://muse.jhu.edu/
article/655783/pdf.
Mills, Charles. 2017. Black Rights / White Wrongs: The
Critique of Racial Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Mousseau, Michael. 2019. “The End of War: How
a Robust Marketplace and Liberal Hegemony
are Leading to Perpetual World peace.”
International Security 44 (1): 160-196. https://
doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00352.
Rappeport, Alan. 2021. “Finance Leaders Reach
Global Tax Deal Aimed at Ending Profit
Shifting.” The New York Times, June 5, 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/us/
politics/g7-global-minimum-tax.html.
2021, issue 2
Enough with the Caricatures: Now is the Time for Solidarity
Janneke Toonders
Marxism, Intersectioality, Capitalism, Activism,
Solidarity
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
Licence
Krisis 41 (2): 143-147.
Review of
Ashley J. Bohrer. 2019. Marxism and Intersectionality:
Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under
Contemporary Capitalism. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
DOI
Keywords
10.21827/krisis.41.2.37197
1432021, issue 2
Enough with the Caricatures: Now is the Time for Solidarity
Janneke Toonders
In Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary
Capitalism Ashley J. Bohrer argues that the “work of changing this world will have to
be done in conversation with both of these theories” (27). The book is a monograph
dedicated to bringing Marxism and intersectionality into a – long overdue and very
welcome – conversation. Bohrer’s personal motivation stems from her dissatisfac-
tion with how these traditions usually approach one another; for, although both are
theories on “the structure of injustice in the world” (19), they tend to approach each
other with derision, resulting in caricaturist (mis)understandings. The book aims to
“move beyond this intra-left stalemate” (14), since a more active engagement between
Marxism and inter sectionality could create the basis for a “theoretical coalition between
perspectives” (23).
The main objective of the book is to understand how gender, race, sexuality,
and class are constituted under capitalism. Capitalism, in this sense, is understood as
“the grammar” of the world, insofar as it produces and maintains a whole range of
oppressive and exploitive practices (14). These practices are particularly structured by
the connections between race, class, gender, and sexuality. To be clear, Bohrer does not
argue that phenomena such as colonization, racism, or heteropatriarchy can be fully
accounted for in an analysis of capitalism. Nevertheless, she contends that such an
analysis is needed for challenging, and hopefully uprooting, contemporary systems of
exploitation and oppression.
Importantly, Bohrer does not believe in the rigid distinction between academia
and activism. Marxism and intersectionality are two intellectual projects that are ded-
icated to causing a radical intervention in the world (21). Noteworthy is the consid-
eration of the history of activism that is present in both Marxism and intersectionality
throughout the book. Thus, while the book is mainly a theoretical exploration of the
two tradi tions, a deliberate eort is made to consider actual struggles and movements.
Bohrer’s appeal to activism is also reected in her own account of a possible shared
future of the two traditions. Ultimately, the book works towards a “coalitional politics”
(253) grounded in a particular understanding of solidarity that will be able to mobilize
a true transformational power.
The desired theoretical coalition is built up in three stages: “Histories”, “Debates”,
and “Possibilities”. Since Bohrer must rst demonstrate how the two traditions can be
drawn together, the rst two parts of the book are mainly devoted to providing a survey
of both perspectives’ thinkers and their theoretical positions. It is important to keep in
mind that Bohrer treats both Marxism and intersectionality as internally heterogeneous
traditions. According to her this allows for a much broader scope, one which includes
thinkers who have contributed to, are in dialogue with, and have been inuenced by,
either Marxism or intersectionality.
The rst chapter especially – cleverly called “Chapter Zero” – lays the ground-
work for the book by giving a broad overview of dierent thinkers who had aliations
with both traditions. In doing so Bohrer wants to demonstrate in what sense there
1442021, issue 2
is a certain historical and theoretical overlap. The main focus of the rst chapter lies
on the period between the 1920s and the 1980s, where critical thinkers came into
contact through shared struggles (41). Bohrer traces the connections between the two
traditions in early twentieth century activism, where there was a “massive upsurge in
black partition in socialist, communist and Marxist organizations in the United States”
(42), to the late twentieth century, where new approaches such as the jeopardy approach
and standpoint theory were developed. Additionally, Bohrer considers the precursors
of intersectionality, since this was only fully developed during the 1980s. The positions
of thinkers such as Claudia Jones, W. E. B. Du Bois, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and many
more, testify to a certain common ground between the two traditions.
Subsequently, the second chapter explores the full-blown theories of intersec-
tionality, by discussing several “positions shared by most if not all intersectional theo-
rists” despite “internal debates” (85). After discussing ve denitions of inter sectionality
(respectively oered by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Leslie McCall, Patricia Hill Collins, Ange
Marie Hancock, and Vivian May), Bohrer reconstructs “six postulates” that serve as
broad principles on which nearly all intersectional thinkers agree (84, 91). These pos-
tulates are also central to Bohrer’s own argument. Insights such as the “inseparability of
oppressions” (i.e. viewing oppressions as “mutually constitutive”; 91), or the claim that
“oppressions cannot be ranked” (i.e. the “rejection of primacy”; 92) are crucial for the
arguments she makes later on.
Demonstrating that Marxism and intersectionality are not “two completely
exogamous traditions” (78) allows Bohrer to engage more specically with why and
how these traditions diverge in contemporary debates. After all, despite their somewhat
shared history there have been numerous debates between the two traditions. Chapters
three through ve elaborate on these debates, and how they have been dominated by
mutual misunderstanding. Bohrer attempts to show how these misunderstandings are
grounded in certain caricatures rather than in accurate comprehension. She thoroughly
engages with the Marxist critiques of intersectionality which rely on the arguments that
the latter is a form of identity politics, that it is postmodern, and that it is liberal. This
is followed by her discussion on intersectionality’s critiques of Marxism, according to
which Marxism is class reductionist, essentially Eurocentric, and homogenizing of the
proletariat.
Surely these caricatures may be true for some Marxists and for some intersec-
tional thinkers, and as such, Bohrer’s point is not that these caricatures are completely
unfounded. Rather, she believes that the “best versions” of these two traditions have a
certain anity, while the caricatures are much closer to the worst versions (20). These
caricatures – as exacerbated tendencies existing within both traditions – should there-
fore be taken as a warning; in this sense, Bohrer argues, their mutual misunderstanding
could actually be quite informative.
While continuing to engage extensively with other thinkers, Bohrer explicates her
argument in the book’s third part. The general aim of this last part is to map new possi-
bilities for theory (academia) as well as for the organization of movements (activism) by
shifting beyond the supposed stalemate. In order to do this, Bohrer begins by examining
1452021, issue 2
the relation between oppression and exploitation for fully understanding the system of
contemporary capitalism. This is followed by a discussion of the method of dialectics as
a way of reading capitalism’s mechanisms and operations. Finally, in the last chapter, the
question of organization and the notion of solidarity is revisited.
In the sixth chapter, Bohrer rethinks the relation between exploitation and
oppression. On the one hand, structures of exploitation are usually understood as the
systematic taking advantage of workers’ labor and their products. On the other hand,
structures of oppression are seen as forms of systematic subjugation based on race, gender,
sexuality and so on. Generally – though there are certainly exceptions – Marxists have
seen oppression as a consequence of exploitation, while intersectional thinkers have
viewed exploitation as a form of oppression (187, 193). Inspired by intersectionality’s
rejection of hierarchizing oppressions, Bohrer proposes to render exploitation and
oppression as “equiprimordial” (196). From this perspective, capitalism is a system which
has both as its constitutive logics: “they are equally fundamental, equally deep-rooted,
and equally anchoring of the contemporary world” (198-199). Hence, no analysis of a
phenomenon will ever be complete without taking into account the interplay between
oppression and exploitation.
To demonstrate why we should understand oppression and exploitation as
equiprimordial, Bohrer oers the historical example of chattel slavery. Without doubt,
an analysis of chattel slavery must take into account the exploitation of the enslaved’s
labor; this analysis cannot be complete, however, without also considering the racist ide-
ologies that were equally fundamental in sustaining slavery. Chattel slavery was racial-
ized exploitation, but the capitalist prot motive cannot fully account for the structures
of racial oppression. Furthermore, the logics of oppression and exploitation distinc-
tive of chattel slavery were also permeated with gender and sexuality. Hence, Bohrer
asserts: “neither exploitation nor oppression can separately capture the phenomenon”
(200). An equiprimordial analysis can do justice to the multiple yet related shapes of
oppression and exploitation under chattel slavery (without reducing one to the other).
Considering both oppression and exploitation as co-constitutive logics of capitalism (in
all its historical formations), Bohrer thus paves the way for a non-reductive approach.
The following chapter elaborates on how we can understand capitalism’s com-
plexity, since its logics produce all sorts of real contradictions. For example, it “produces
both enormous wealth and abject poverty at one and the same time” (original emphasis;
209). According to Bohrer it is the dialectic method that is capable of navigating us
through capitalism’s muddied waters. First, however, dialectics is critically reconsidered
in order to arrive at the “dialectics of dierence” (225). Bohrer wants to get rid of
two misconceptions concerning the nature of dierence. According to her, both the
liberal tendency to entirely erase dierence, and the neoliberal notion to render us all
completely unique, are dangerous. Such one-sided approaches are incapable of recog-
nizing how capitalism dierentiates and homogenizes us at one and the same time. A
dialectic of dierence, however, can grasp how capitalism is “bringing us simultaneously,
sometimes painfully, closer together and farther apart” (226).
Capitalism’s tendency of concurrent homogenization and dierentiation is,
according to Bohrer, a crucial piece in the puzzle of organizing “political relationships
1462021, issue 2
of coalition” (232). The last chapter – “Solidarity in the House of Dierence” – turns
towards the question of solidarity, and how it can recognize both dierence and relation.
The title is a reference to Lorde’s assertion that connection and alliance is found in the
“house of dierence” (2018, 268). While elaborating on Lorde’s claim, Bohrer writes:
“we do not have to bridge our dierence; we already live together in the house of
dierence” (254). In the nal chapter, Bohrer starts by discussing the orthodox Marxist
idea that solidarity ultimately relies on a notion of “commensurability” (233). From this
perspective, however, solidarity is thought to be an articulation of a shared condition or
a unity. The issue with this is that a coalition would only become possible at the very
lowest level of commonality. As a result, moments of dierence or non-unity are either
thought to be secondary or completely irrelevant.
One of intersectionality’s substantial insights is that “solidarity does not have to
be based in commensurability” (249). Indeed, the non-commensurability of positions
is often central to intersectional thinking. As an example, Bohrer briey elaborates on
Crenshaw’s (1989) discussion of the momentous case of DeGraenreid v. General Motors
from 1976. After they were red, ve black women accused the automobile company
of specically discriminating against black women. However, because not all women
(i.e. white women) had been red, nor all black people (i.e. black men), the claim was
rejected. Hence, the court did not recognize the particular ways in which black women
were marginalized, and instead assumed that the “black women’s position is essentially
commensurable with black men and/or white women” (original emphasis; 250).
Not all experiences of oppression and exploitation are similar, shared, or
equally aecting everyone. The problem with a mobilization strategy that assumes a
certain minimum level of commonality, Bohrer claims, is that it can only recognize
“the ways oppression and exploitation aect all of ‘us’” (259). Understanding solidarity
as an expression of shared situation then quickly becomes what she calls a “politics
of the lowest common denominator” (251). Instead of a politics that only requires
action when ‘everyone’ is aected, Bohrer proposes a “coalitional politics” (253) where
solidarity is constructed through both dierence and relation. Arguably, one would not
need to form a coalition at all if everybody already shared the same position. The value
of a coalition lies in its capacity to relate to one another, despite certain dierences that
may exist between communities. A relational solidarity is therefore capable of truly
mobilizing a transformational power:
Capitalism thus links us together, in a tie that binds us, often painfully, in relation
to one another. This moment of relation is the true ground of solidarity. […]
Solidarity is thus the name for arming the dierences that exploitation and
oppression produce within and between us; it is also the name for recognizing
that every time I ght against anyone’s oppression or exploitation, I ght against
my own, I ght against everyone’s (259).
With this plea Bohrer concludes her inspiring book. To stand in solidarity means to rec-
ognize that there are dierent experiences of oppression and exploitation, of silencing and
marginalization. It is the realization that we are all aected by capitalist structures of dom-
ination, but in particular and distinct ways. Solidarity, Bohrer writes, is about “mobilizing
1472021, issue 2
the transformational power of dierential communities” (260). Understanding that various
groups and communities have dierent strengths can help us gain a more complex and
complete understanding of what might be possible. By putting Marxism and intersection-
ality into a conversation Bohrer begins a dialogue that might oer a deeper understanding
of capitalism’s structures of oppression and exploitation. In doing so she charts a creative and
exciting path for an anti-capitalist politics.
Marxism and Intersectionality provides an insightful and varied overview of texts, con-
cepts, and thinkers. Even though the reader is exposed to a sometimes overwhelming
amount of information, the book is incredibly easy to follow. Bohrer harnesses insights
from ‘both sides’ at every step of the way. She is therefore, while making her own argu-
ments, in dialogue with a tremendous range of thinkers and their positions. In general I
believe that Bohrer accurately examines the two traditions, and successfully undermines
a number of caricatures, which certainly invites further discussion. In doing so the book
succeeds in clearing a path that begins to move beyond the stalemate. Since Bohrer is
not interested in constructing an “uber-theory” (23), the relationship between Marxism
and intersectionality is one of (theoretical) coalition too.
The book makes an interesting case for why these two traditions should further
engage with each other, and hopefully this will be the start of a much longer and
stimulating conversation. The book is especially interesting for those academics and
activists who are concerned with thinking and articulating new opportunities for an
anti-capitalist politics. For those who are already well-acquainted with Marxist theory
or with intersectional thinking, or with both, the content of some sections in the rst
and second part might already be familiar; the third part, however, is unquestionably
appealing to anyone who wants to unsettle the structures of domination.
Lorde, Audre. 2018. Zami: A New Spelling of My
Name. London: Penguin Classics.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine,
Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” The
University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989): 139-67.
References
Janneke Toonders is enrolled in the Research
Master in Philosophy at the Radboud University
in Nijmegen. She specializes in social and political
philosophy, with a focus on topics such as post-
Marxism, (symbolic) political representation and
solidarity.
Biography
2021, issue 2
Rejecting Animal Exploitation: A Case for Interspecies Solidarity
Yvette Wijnandts
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License International License (CC
BY 4.0). © 2021 The author(s).
Licence
Review of
Katerina Kolozova. 2019. Capitalism’s Holocaust
of Animals. A Non-Marxist Critique of Capital,
Philosophy and Patriarchy. London: Bloomsbury.
Katerina Kolozova, Animals, Marxism,
Non-Philosophy
DOI
Keywords
10.21827/krisis.41.2.37975
Krisis41 (2):148-151.
1482021, issue 2
Rejecting Animal Exploitation: A Case for Interspecies Solidarity
Yvette Wijnandts
Katerina Kolozova’s book Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals: A non-Marxist critique of
capital, philosophy and patriarchy explores capitalism’s exploitation of animals. Kolozova
positions her argument in response to posthuman ideas grounded in the works of
scholars such as Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Katherine Hayles, and Cary Wolfe.
Kolozova identies posthumanist theories as often falling into three potential traps,
namely that they follow a teleological narrative, continue to place humans as main
points of reference, and lean toward transhumanism. Kolozova argues that a Laruellian
approach oers a strong alternative to these apparent shortcomings. Specically, she uses
Laruelle’s framework of “non-Marxism” to prove that the exploitation of animals for
human prot is philosophically indefensible.
The title of Kolozova’s book is immediately striking and calls for explana-
tion. Throughout Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals, Kolozova’s actual use of the word
“Holocaust” is sparing, and when it is used is done so in a way that could be con-
sidered provocative; while the term ‘the Holocaust’ usually evokes images of the
Jewish Holocaust, Kolozova does not reference the Jewish Holocaust at all. Instead,
in Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals, the word “Holocaust” is used in a literal sense.
Kolozova supports this kind of usage by noting that a holocaust was “originally a sac-
ricial burning of animal esh […] by men” (110). Within the argument presented in
The Holocaust of Animals, the Holocaust is thus rst to be understood as the sacrice of
the physical animal body for the purpose of pure reason. Kolozova integrates this use
of the concept of “Holocaust” within Marxist theory. In its simplest form, capitalism,
Kolozova explains, works to sell commodities for money that can be used to purchase
more commodities: the C-M-C equation. However, as Marx points out, within cap-
italism money has become its own commodity. Therefore, he proposes the M-C-M’
equation: Commodities are circulated for the purpose of increasing money, and money
has become a goal in itself. Kolozova continues this line of thought and argues that
within capitalism, where capital should be produced purely for capital’s sake, materiality
will be the ultimate sacrice. In other words, Capitalism in its purest form will eventu-
ally demand the Holocaust of materiality itself.
It is in Laruellian theory that the sub-title of Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals
nds its roots. Kolozova explains Marxist, Laruellian, and non-Marxist theory in the
introduction of her book. She outlines Marx’s and Laruelle’s shared ambition of replac-
ing “philosophy” with “realism”. The philosophy Marx and Laruelle aim to displace is
a philosophy that desires “to create a reality of transcendence of the real, or sublimation
of the real into sense, meaning, intellect as perfected form of the real, as if a more
evolved plane of realness” (5-6). As an alternative, Marx turns to materialism, which he
referred to as “realism” or “naturalism”. In doing so, he suggests a ‘scientic’ treatment of
philosophy; philosophy should be derived from the material, not the abstract or the tran-
scendental. Marx, as well as Laruelle and Kolozova, agree that science, as meant by Marx,
oers a valuable alternative to philosophy’s desire for transcendence; science accepts the
nitude of thoughts, and thus also the nitude of itself. Non-Marxism is where Laruelle
1492021, issue 2
continues Marx’s “scientic” approach to philosophy and adds that Marxism itself, along
with philosophical theory in general, will always be incomplete. Here Laurelle agrees
with Marx’s prioritization of materiality and the real, but insists that this must be applied
to Marxism itself. In other words, “non-Marxism” does not step away from Marxist
thought but rather applies it to itself to ensure that it does not succumb to the transcen-
dentalism it seeks to overcome. Kolozova agrees with Laurelle here and thus attempts to
ground her critique of capitalism’s holocaust of animals on “non-Marxist” theory.
The rst chapter of the book positions capitalism in philosophy and uses lin-
guistics to explore how non-capitalist understandings of species can form. The dyad
between the physical and the automaton, or ‘signier’ in traditional linguistics, is central
in this chapter. Following Saussure’s argument that language is both structural and
arbitrary (in that it adheres to a structure but that the words within that structure
are arbitrary), Kolozova makes the argument that linguistic theory allows thinkers
to return to the “real,” and therefore approach the world in a non-philosophical, i.e.
scientic, manner. In other words, while philosophy has prioritized the signier, or
the automaton, in its explanations of the world, a linguistic approach explores how
these signiers became meaningful by going back to the signied, or ‘real.’ The chapter
continues to position capitalism on the side of value, rather than the physical because,
as Marx explained, within capitalism, value (monetarized or fetishized) has become a
goal in and of itself. Thus, human and non-human animals are understood in terms of
value rather than their physicality within capitalist frameworks. A non-philosophical
approach prioritizes the physical over the automaton, which is required to envisage life
in non-capitalist terms. A non-philosophical approach to capitalism, therefore, also leads
to a non-Marxist approach to capitalism. Kolozova agrees with Marx that thought is
nite, and a return to the material is necessary to break away from capitalism. However,
Marx places revolt within the human classes whose labor is exploited and fetishized.
Kolozova takes this a step further and decenters the humanist perspective. She proposes
the development of “consciousness of the exploited” rather than the Marxist devel-
opment of “class consciousness” to form a more-than-human inclusive approach to
resistance against capitalism and exploitation. To change the treatment of the exploited
requires a new shared consciousness of the exploited “of and against the exploited
animal, body, nature, real economy, and reality in the name of projected values and
virtues” (48). In other words, non-capitalism can only exist if non-humans are included
within its framework.
Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals’ second chapter positions its argument in
broader philosophical and linguistic theory. In this chapter, Kolozova identies sim-
ilarities between Marx’s materialist formalism and structural linguistics. Formalism’s
strength lies in its acknowledgement that it is self-reexive and will not provide denite,
all-encompassing answers. Due to these abilities, formalism allows philosophy to depart
from transcendentalism and enter the realm of the material and real, argues Kolozova.
The second part of the chapter then applies Marx’s formalization to philosophy and
argues how feminism, through this framework, is allowed to return to a universal
approach rather than one dened by dierence. Through formalization, dierence
becomes a richness rather than a reason for division.
1502021, issue 2
In “Subjectivity as inherently philosophical entity and the third person’s per-
spective”, the third chapter of Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals, Kolozova argues that
the concept of subjectivity is disconnected from the physical/real. The chapter starts
by positioning itself within Marxist and Laruellian theory; philosophy should not aim
to oer universal truths but position itself within the world. Thus, philosophy and the
world should be studied unilaterally rather than in their totality. Kolozova connects this
instruction to Marx’s claim that philosophy’s fundamental problem is its subjectivity and
denial thereof. Because philosophy is inherently subjective, it will inevitably be limited
to partiality. Therefore, philosophy can never oer universal answers to the questions it
aims to answer.
The penultimate chapter carves out how the arguments presented in the book
dier from other scholarly explorations of critical theory, specically theory situated in
feminist philosophical arguments. The rst half of the chapter centers on Luce Irigaray’s
work, using it to explore how “[i]n the capitalist world, the excess commodity produc-
tion is solved through the Holocaust of use-value – literal destruction of products – to
preserve the mathematical projection of surplus value” (120). This Holocaust aects not
only commodity products; within capitalism, “a spectacular entity of the Transcendental
[is] enabled by the holocaust of its physicality” (ibid.). Consequently, the chapter argues
that dierent feminist critiques are still complicit in remaining within capitalism, thus
repeating the same narratives that maintain patriarchal and anthropocentric power
structures. Kolozova draws upon examples such as transhumanism, xenofeminism, and
Haraway’s gure of the Cyborg to make this argument. In summary, as long as feminist
theory does not take a radical stance against capitalism, rather than abolishing patriarchy,
feminism will unassumingly but inevitably contribute to power structures that oppress
and marginalize human and non-human animals.
The fth chapter, which concludes Kolozova’s argument, establishes the value
of Laruellian theory in critical animal studies. Kolozova relates it to Haraway’s position
that animal rights should be understood in terms of “instrumentality”. This instrumen-
tal approach towards animal rights is outlined in When Species Meet. Haraway proposes
approaching animals as fellow laborers for their roles as lab animals, food animals,
and service animals, and argues that humans must learn to treat non-human animals
responsibly. This does not mean that humans cannot kill or work with animals but
that humans should recognize and respond to the sacrices non-human animals make.
Kolozova, however, argues that the shift Haraway proposes is value-based and guilty of
“philomorphising” animals. In other words, perceiving non-human animals as laborers
focuses on how they are valued by human animals, without having much impact upon
the non-human animals’ lives themselves. In addition, any argument based on labor
rights falls short, as laborers are consistently losing their status and rights; non-hu-
man animals will not gain anything by being lifted to “laborers” if human laborers are
increasingly being turned into resources themselves. Kolozova instead proposes that
humans acknowledge non-human animals as companions rst and foremost. It is only
in this way that their lived, material circumstances can and should be improved.
Furthermore, Kolozova argues that acknowledging the need for humans to
stop making animals suer is not only important for animal welfare but is also key for
1512021, issue 2
the posthuman endeavor. She explains that “only by the emancipation of the animal
[is it] that the marginalized and exploited parts of humanity can be free from suering
and killing. Posthumanism can accomplish its goal of human decentering only by way
of emancipating the non-human, beginning with the animal […] They do not possess
a self as they do not possess reason” (148). In other words, philosophy can only be escaped
by emancipating materiality for the sake of being material. Other attempts at emancipation
will inevitably fail to address the structures that are at the root of oppression.
Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals would be most valuable for scholars of Kolozova’s
work, as well as scholars of Marxist and Laruellian theory. It is strongly informed by
the works of these two scholars to build upon posthuman arguments regarding the
exploitation of animals. In so doing, Kolozova’s exploration and explanation of Marxist
and Laruelle’s thought is of great value for both new and experienced scholars of
their works. Experienced Marxist and Laruellian theory scholars will enjoy Kolozova’s
original and interesting interpretations of their works. Early scholars of their work will
likely be intimidated by Kolozova’s thorough readings of these theories. Still, they will
nd that the book oers valuable and in-depth explanations of where and how these
theories inform her own thinking.
In summary, Kolozova oers a new approach to responding to philosophical
questions of animal exploitation. Her commitment to the rejection of animal exploita-
tion is admirable. Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals does not, however, oer many tools
to help translate Kolozova’s argument into action or change; it is rst and foremost a
theoretical exploration of the eld of animal philosophy. In addition, it is important
to note that Kolozova presents a Laruellian critique of animal exploitation. While the
book explores other forms of animal theory, most notably posthumanism, this is pre-
dominantly done to situate her argument. However, depending on the reader’s aims for
taking up this book, this may not be a signicant loss. At times, the approach towards
the main argument of Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals feels a little slow, but this is also
one of the book’s main strengths. Kolozova oers carefully constructed and essential
arguments that are novel and particularly interesting for those positioned in animal
philosophy.
Kolozova, Katerina. 2019.Capitalism’s Holocaust of
Animals: A Non-Marxist Critique of Capital,
Philosophy and Patriarchy. Bloomsbury Publishing.
References
Yvette Wijnandts has studied cultural studies,
political studies, and feminist philosophy in
Maastricht, Utrecht, and Singapore. Currently, she
is a PhD student at the University of Adelaide.
She explores relationships between human and
non-human animals and the ethical norms that are
constructed within these connections.
Biography
