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Jason Barker
To cite this article: Jason Barker (2016) Slow Down, Angelaki, 21:2, 227-235, DOI:
10.1080/0969725X.2016.1182743
Article views: 26
Download by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] Date: 30 May 2016, At: 07:40
ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 21 number 2 june 2016
227
review essay
a simple glance at history reveals that philos- absolutely divorced from it, or whose aim is
ophy is merely the science of problems solved.3 to abstract itself from the worldly totalization
In the early 1960s Althusser will (tempor- of given reality, merely to revert to a form
arily) drop his adherence to non-philosophy of political idealism in the high Althusserian
in favour of philosophy as meta-theory, or mode?
uppercase Theory uncontaminated by politics, Benjamin Noys is yet another example of an
which ironically reinstates a very un-Marxist English or un-English critical theorist
and hierarchical relation of philosophy to struck by the French theory bug. Like this
science beyond the unwelcome scrutiny of the author, a corresponding member of the Organis-
party. Despite Althussers renunciation of ation Non-philosophique Internationale
Theory and his conversion, by the end of the (ONPhi) founded by Grelet, Ray Brassier and
decade, to philosophy as theoretical practice Franois Laruelle in 2002,10 Noys has written
in the form of politicized science: the rep-
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barker
learn, in The Persistence of the Negative, becoming a derelict on coke, which is integral
whereas its Sturm und Drang pyrotechnics to the cynicism of frontier capital. This is the
owe their theoretical origins to Nick Land and advance modernity of Beckett, where high
the long-since defunct Cybernetic Culture culture is immanently differentiated from
Research Unit (Ccru) of Warwick University. inarticulacy, absolving itself from ontological
specier. It is thus that there is a becoming-
In turns out, Noys remarks, that the term
zombie of the bum just as there is a becom-
occurs in Roger Zelaznys sci- novel Lord of ing-wired of the real managers of the social:
Light (1967), which Id read. The unconscious, the skagged-out housing estate as base line
as usual, works in mysterious ways.15 for the effervescence of the stock market
Like Arnold, Noys is an accomplished expo- oor. It is quite inaccurate to suggest that
nent of the essay form. No irony is intended yuppie nanciers are oblivious of depri-
with this comparison between Arnold, whose vation, since the limit oblivion of an absolute
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works would be sketched out in the train proletarianization is consumed with each
waiting rooms of provincial towns, and Noys, bubble of champagne.18
whose latest offering bears the stamp of his par- Having eagerly devoured Malign Velocities
ticipation in journees detudes, university from cover to cover I am sadly no nearer to
theory laboratories and art conferences held understanding precisely what might have pro-
throughout the United Kingdom and further duced that, or at least to gaining a sense of
aeld. For Althusser recall that the essay is situ- what the members of the Ccru were actually
ated as an objective condensation (sometimes on. How should the theorist respond to such
explosive) of a singular idea or problematic. mania? With the aloofness of an outsider? Or
The philosophical monograph (e.g., Reading is the aloofness to be explained by the fact
Capital) is not primarily interested in support- that Noys simply wasnt involved in the Ccru,
ing such interventions in theory, which in the didnt speak their language, and that where a
case of the essays published in 1965 as For former associate might have chosen to write an
Marx (collected together exactly as originally empirical case study, Noys, for whatever
written, without any corrections or alterations) reason, felt no inclination to explore its insti-
would have had a cumulative effect through tutional dynamics?
serial publication (between 1960 and 1964, in Psychoanalysis claim to fame, notes Bruce
the form of articles in French Communist Fink, does not reside in providing an archime-
Party journals).16 dean [sic] point outside of discourse, but simply
Despite his adherence to the essay form, the in elucidating the structure of discourse
formalism, to coin a phrase, is not taken itself.19 Given that there is no metalanguage,
nearly far enough in Malign Velocities. Aside one has to wonder at Noys preferred strategy
from acknowledging Lands search for a new of countering accelerationist mastery with
post-human state beyond any form of the knowledge, rather than subverting its hysteria
subject, along with his Deleuzian Thatcher- through analysis. It might have been for lack
ism,17 Noys shies away from an adequate exam- of reliable rst-hand sources20 that Noys
ination of the Landian unconscious. Lets pause decided to take his critical distance from the
and re-read Land at his post-cinematic best: clamour of theoretical accelerationism.21 In
any case the book alternates between themed
The coked-out futures dealer passing a drunk observations of the accelerationist modelling of
on a Manhattan street translates the destiny
capitalist dynamics on one hand, and Noys cri-
of class difference into an immanent intensity
ticisms on the other.
traced on a smooth surface of social disap-
pearance. The bum inhabits the social zero My aim is not to offer an exhaustive account
preferred by capital as the vanishing point of accelerationism, Noys concedes, but rather
of pre-modern legality, from which the coke to choose certain moments at which it emerges
rush is repulsed as an anonymous distance as a political and cultural strategy.22 Accelera-
of death. There is a becoming a rich bum, tionism could be seen as a result of the defeat
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without which there would simply be no narra- of the defeat of May 68, is in fact the triumph
tives at all. Arnolds theorist is the dramatist of the critical imagination in search of revolu-
or critical power poised in the wings (of the tionary practice la hauteur. For if we are duty
event), ready to ignite the creative power of bound to defend lost causes, as Z izek insists,
revolutionaries and other creative artists.25 then why should we be obliged to admit the
Grelets theorist is also a dramatist of sorts, defeat of the hopes inspired by the revolution-
albeit one who directs a non-theatre closed to ary events in France, which are condensed in
the public (Jean-Luc Godard remarks some- the signier May 68? Shouldnt we instead
where that the public is a National Socialist be ready to dene May 68 as the beginning,
invention). In topological terms the theorist rather than the end, of the revolutionary con-
stands between man, or he who is radically densation inducing the dissolution and resol-
immanent, or that which is real-and-nothing- ution of the whole, that is, a global
but, the real in person, and the people, restructuring of the whole on a qualitatively
which is simply non-thetic transcendence or new basis?31 Had Noys adopted a strictly theor-
the cutting edge of a thought-without-subject ist position then it might have changed his mode
(as angelic as it is anti-humanist).26 of attack, convincing him that his narrative
Much like George Peyrol aka Alain Badious needed to be written in the future anterior,
rejection of the angelic narrative of May 68, and not the past perfect, with the gure of Mao sub-
of the Cultural Revolution as an exercise in self- stituted for Thatcher, the former the accelera-
agellation,27 Noys rejects theoretical accelera- tionist ventriloquist of the latter, and of a
tionism in the form of ecstatic suffering, of wholly other history.
jouissance, experienced in our deepening
immersion into a capitalism without
horizon.28 However, note how, for Grelet, the disorders
horizonless topology immanence provides
the a priori guarantee for the theorists emer- Noys is at his combative best when he takes
gence. Glossing somewhat, if there is determi- on accelerationist impotence by way of its
nation in the lonely hour of a last instance that seeming aporias and equivocations, such as the
never comes then who better than the theorist Deleuzian trope of innitely prolonged desire
to decide in the rst instance?29 In effect, or (be)coming:
the theorist decides into existence the see-
While accelerationism might promise an inte-
mingly intractable social contradictions
gration of desire and labor in a machinic
between capital and labour an intractability synthesis, to accelerate the boredom of
that renders May 68 the signier of defeat work it disguises the boredom of desire.
by setting such contradictions before the Accelerationism wants to enchant sex as
people for its decision. The determination, in something accelerative and machinic away
other words, is radically reversed, such that from the iterative reverie of fantasy.32
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Broken promises and botched desire. It might technologies or software applications, but was
talk the talk but when it comes down to it accel- the name Turing gave the algorithmic procedure
erationism is just a metaphysical prick teaser. In by which its possible to compute any comput-
the books most persuasive chapter on War able sequence of numbers.35
Machines Noys mounts a sustained attack on Second, I wonder if Noys is too literal in his
accelerationisms disturbing and disturbed ante- treatment of war machines. However dubious
cedents, the Italian Futurists. We visit the the concept might be in the hands of the accel-
futurist prophet and poet Gabriele DAnnun- erationists, doesnt the war machine feature in
zios villa on Lake Garda, in whose gardens the Deleuze and Guattaris work as an occasion for
bow of the Italian warship Puglia has been set abstracting free-thinking machines from
into the hillside, making for an unsettling lake- state apparatuses of capture (political, cultural,
side fantasy. This techno-pastoral gures the economic )? Recall how Arnold remarks at
being struck by the profound, permanent,
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interventions or theory-bombs had been landing fairly late in life. Of course, in the UK and
with timed regularity on the enemy stronghold US, student nancing already forces them
for no less than ve years. Consider their cumu- into a future life of debt servitude. Also,
lative impact besides that of the simultaneous many are working, trying to get ahead or,
theory contagion of unpublished texts of more often, stay aoat. That said, this
merely adds to the fact that the world of
secret meetings, lectures, reading groups
labor is confronted as one of future horror
and the like in and around the E cole endless and trivial. Accelerationism pro-
Normale. In response, an assembly of commu- vides an answer by turning the horror of
nist philosophers was convened by the PCF work into the jouissance of machinic immer-
Central Committee at Choisy-le-Roi, providing sion. We may face a life of labor, but we can
for the ultimate showdown between Althusser try and face it kein Schmerz, kein Gedanke
and Roger Garaudy, the PCFs chief without feeling, without thought.44
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theoretician.40
Was Althusser deluded to think he could This reads far too much like an endorsement of
crack the communist citadel with theory? Or, Peter Starrs failed revolt thesis to be credible.
on the contrary, as G.M. Goshgarian suggests, I simply dont buy it, and nd it difcult to
Was he not training up a mass of theoreti- believe Noys does. What intellectual situation is
cians in whom Theory would one day take he actually describing here? And far from avoid-
esh, acquiring the historical existence that ing an ad hominem argument, isnt Noys mor-
neither Party nor class had yet succeeded in alizing tone that accelerationism threatens
[providing]?41 Consider other militant arms postgraduates with machinic immersion also
of his theory revolution: the School for Theor- paternalistic? Did Althusser lead his normaliens
etical Formation set up by normaliens in astray? Should he have been more of a career
which the classics of Althusserian Marxism advisor? (Some of them did very nicely for them-
stood high on the syllabus. The abstract gulf, selves! Note also how Land is fondly remembered
Althusser would admit in 1967, separating by his students as a multimedia Svengali respon-
these intellectuals without organic (in the sible for launching dozens of careers!45) Or, since
Gramscian sense) links to the workers move- this isnt an argument ad hominem, should
ment [ ] by no means precluded their sallying theory come with an ofcial government health
forth from the world of reection to revolutio- warning or disclaimer from Warwick University
nize the political world.42 For Althusser the or the E cole Normale?
limitations of politics were no impediment to For everything thats thought-provoking in
the power of Theory. Land might well have Noys book and I applaud the heuristic
agreed. nature of his observations and
In light of the above would Noys not agree criticisms its author seems far
with me that the idea of theory in search of a too eager to close the case
revolutionary practice or in search of a against accelerationism and its
method of public salvation as Grelet prefers theory experiments. Why the
to put it43 may not be quite so deluded after rush?
all? Noys description of a postgraduate dis-
order, he tells us, is not just a reference to disclosure statement
the subjective position of contemporary accel-
erationists, and neither is it mere name-calling No potential conict of interest was reported by
or ad hominem argument: the author.
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barker
his posthumous works of the mid-1970s. See 25 Arnold writes in Essays in Criticism:
Althusser, Initiation la philosophie pour les non-phi-
losophes; tre marxiste en philosophie; Goshgarian,
Thus [the critical power] tends, at last, to
A Marxist in Philosophy.
make an intellectual situation of which the
6 Grelet, Soutenance de Nanterre 1.2. creative power can properly avail itself. It
tends to establish an order of ideas, if not
7 See n. 43.
absolutely true, yet true by comparison
8 Grelet, Thorie-rbellion 5. with that which it displaces; to make the
best ideas prevail. (12)
9 G.M. Goshgarian in private correspondence
with the author, 25 October 2015. And:
10 Originally conceived as a collective research
enterprise, the organization has declined in the French Revolution derives from the
recent years to the point of being little more force, truth, and universality of the ideas
than a bulletin board for Laruelles back catalogue. which it took for its law, and from the
See <www.onphi.net>. passion with which it could inspire a multi-
tude for these ideas, a unique and still living
11 See Noys, Georges Bataille; The Culture of Death;
power; it is it will probably long remain
The Persistence of the Negative.
the greatest, the most animating event in
12 Idem, The Great Refusal n. pag. First pub- history. (16)
lished in 2006 at <www.sans-philosophie.net>.
13 See Grelet, Son of Man, Brother of the People 26 Grelet, Son of Man, Brother of the People
in which the author distinguishes between theorism, 2.2.1.2.2.2.
theoreticism, and theorrorism. Profoundly anti-phi-
losophical in the sense of ante-philosophical: 27 See Peyrol.
28 Noys, Malign Velocities 7.
Theorism, which operates on the basis of the
radical elucidation of the real (which is the 29 Grelet, Dclarer la gnose 80: If we cant deny
unsurpassable achievement of non-philos- the enemy the last word, then at least we can
ophy), refuses the amphibological practice deny it the first.
and semi-worldly violence of theorrorism,
just as it refuses theoreticisms indifferent 30 Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
and negatively domineering force (of) Party 8; translation modified.
thought. (5.4.1.) 31 Althusser, For Marx 216.
14 Noys, Malign Velocities 10304. 32 Noys, Malign Velocities 47.
15 Ibid. xi. 33 Ibid. 14.
16 Althusser, For Marx 9. 34 Walter Benjamin qtd in ibid. 19.
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35 See Turing. I attempted to highlight some philo- Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great
sophical implications of Turings work in a recent Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Peking Review
special issue of diacritics, edited by G.M. Goshgarian 9.33 (1966): 611. Print.
and myself, which was devoted to Althussers post-
humous writings of the mid-1970s; see Barker. Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language
and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.
36 Arnold 17. Print.
37 Noys, Malign Velocities 93. Fisher, Mark. Nick Land: Mind Games. Dazed and
38 Althusser, For Marx 9. Confused. 2011. Web. 5 Apr. 2016. <www.
dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/10459/1/
39 Goshgarian in private correspondence with the nick-land-mind-games>.
author, 25 October 2015.
Goshgarian, G.M. Introduction. The Humanist
40 Goshgarian, Introduction xxx.
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barker
Jason Barker
Department of British and American
Language and Culture
School of Global Communication
Kyung Hee University
1732 Deogyeong-daero
Giheung-gu
Yongin-si
Gyeonggi-do 17104
South Korea
E-mail: lmsnoirs@gmail.com