Kastritis: Lifes (Re)-emergence

Lifes (Re)-emergence Philosophy Culture, and Politics

Goldsmiths College London 23 May 2003

ferentiation, time is not a mere aggregate of measured moments, and evolution is not a line of species succeeding each other. This proposed continuity of time and experience, however, is not a progression towards a pre-given end, but rather a source of continuous unpredictable novelty. It is a philosophy not so much of Being as of Becoming. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote on Bergson, as well as Hume, Nietzsche and Spinoza. In collaboration with the psychoanalyst and political activist Flix Guattari, he reworked several of Bergsons ideas towards a philosophy of difference and the non-rational. The day began with Bio-Aesthetics or the Memory of the Senses? FilmPhilosophy Meets Vitalism2 . John Mullarkey (Sunderland) attempted to reconstruct those elements of a Bergsonian approach to cinema that reconcile actualist [i.e. the immediate sensation of the cinematic experience] and virtualist [i.e. the explanatory power of the continuity of experience in memory] accounts of film. He developed Bergsons notion of refraction into an optical metaphor: the virtual is associated with the indirectness of reflection (change in direction of light and the resulting replication of an image) and the actual with the directness of refraction (light passing through a different medium, resulting in the change of an image itself). Film, being a medium, is seen in this framework as an object of refraction which is subjected to an act of virtualising, i.e. absorbing that which is different into a continuity, like that of Memory. Mullarkeys paper, working on a theme of Life on film and film as Life, was a well placed introduction for what was to follow, but left me wishing for a tighter substantiation of his ideas. In the same session but with a distinctively different tone, Howard Caygills (Goldsmiths) presentation, Life and Energy, offered a captivating account of the relation between these two concepts in nineteenth century philosophy and physics. Caygill spoke vividly about the different ways of conceptualising Life at the beginning and the end of that century. At first, Life is understood as energy: a vital force, a vis vita, which needs to be discovered. But as the century came to a close, and through the efforts of the physiological school, Life would come to be related to the consumption of energy. Linked to this consumption is the difference in the treatment of heat in physics and physiology: physics treated heat, the product of friction, as loss of work that had to be minimised. For physiology, on the other hand, heat was less associated with loss of work and more with Life itself. Of the five conference offerings, this was my personal favourite, both for its accessible style and for the wealth of the researched material.
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Thanos Kastritis

Attending Lifes (re)-emergence was, for me, an act of self-indulgence. There was no obvious connection to my academic work, yet the topics discussed and the way it was all woven together had an air of novelty about them. I did not go to Goldsmiths college with the intention of writing about my experiences. More to the point, I can claim no expertise in the field whatsoever, aside from a personal interest in Bergsons philosophy of time. Yet it was a thought provoking experience, which aroused my interest on a number of issues. As one of the organisers would later tell me, for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths the conference reflected a shift away from popular culture and towards an investigation of the origins of the field in the work of Deleuze and, through him, Bergson. With Bergsons philosophy of life serving as a point of departure for the exploration of lifes importance for mind, individuality, and culture1 , the organisers offered a platform from which to draw connections among heterogeneous approaches to life. Each of the speakers explored a different aspect of this key concept; the end result might at first glance seem disjointed. But as the day progressed the connections became clearer, as if the conference itself were an exercise in emergence. Henri Bergsons work comes as an attempt to oppose the mechanistic view of the world that prevailed in late 19th century science. A key idea, which seems to traverse the various subjects he engaged with, is a firm denial of the notion that we can construct the entirety of an object or experience out of the divisions that make up our perception. Hence, difference precedes difPage 79 Studies in Social and Political Thought

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Kastritis: Lifes (Re)-emergence

The key speaker of the Conference, however, was Brian Massumi (Montral). His paper Living Memory addressed Walter Benjamins notion that a mimeticism based on nonsensuous similarity lies at the heart of the human bodys capacity for expression. He set out to investigate how it is that we come to experience such similarities, which do not correspond to any actual sense impression, but seem to emerge out of an indiscrete influx. Massumi explored current psychological research into the mechanism of cross-modal perception: the function by which the brain integrates sensory information from more than one sensory modality into a unified percept. Of particular interest to this approach was the case of Synaesthesia: a rare perceptual phenomenon by which the activation of one sensory modality elicits an experience perceived as arising from two or more modalities3 (for example experiencing vivid sensations of colour while reading words or digits). The discussion of the paper expanded to include reference to Massumis latest work Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, likened by one of the two Goldsmiths respondents to Bergsons Matter and Memory written again. There was great enthusiasm surrounding Massumis work, such that, having not read (or heard of) Parables myself, I couldnt help feeling slightly out of place. Fortunately, Luciana Parisis (East London) Abstract Sex: Bio-Digital Machines and Symbiotic Micropolitics, promised to be a much more familiar territory. The third and final session of the conference marked a focal shift from Bergsonian philosophy to the realm of biopolitics. Parisis presentation combined a Deleuzian framework of analysis with an informed look at recent developments in genetics and biology. In particular, she suggested that Serial Endosymbiosis Theory4 provides a scientific framework that seems to complement Bergsons, Deleuzes and Guattaris notions of Life. She expanded this symbiotic model beyond the limits of organic matter, arguing that the relationship between body and technology is one of adaptation by mutation: at the levels of the cell, the reproduction of bodies, and culture itself. Abstract sex, then, represents capitalisms machinic conception of nature as relations between parts. This relation is reflected in practices such as genetic engineering and cloning, where genetic material is arbitrarily moved from one organism to another. Parisi offered a stream of exciting ideas, but the density of her paper made it hard to follow at times, especially in the absence of a pre-circulated text. I am also slightly concerned that, while the paper drew substantially on scientific research, its specialised language would have prevented most scientists from verifying the proper employment of these ideas.
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The last contribution to the conference was Jamie King and Matthew Hylands An Inherited Agenda for Annihilating Nothingness. They continued on the theme of biopolitics, with a slideshow inspired by Giorgio Agambens concept of Bare Life. With its origins in Benjamins Critique of Violence, the term is defined as the statement life that may be killed but not sacrificed because it has no sacrificial value. In other words, Bare Life defines a space of exclusion, designated by sovereign violence that may serve to uphold the Law, or may simply break it. Several issues were raised in this context, among them a comparison of the western workplace and the free trade zones established by regional trade agreements, and the inability of workers in the developing world to take over production when a factory is shut down, due to Intellectual Property restrictions. But the overall style of this presentation was more that of an educated exposition than of a genuine critical engagement with the topics raised. Looking back at these five presentations, one can trace several different incarnations of the central theme: the memory of life in art; the biology of life; the lived experience; technology and the political control of life; and life against the backdrop of social exclusion. But what I leave with is a feeling of convergence of focus. What seems to re-emerge is life as a point of reflection across various disciplines. If this is the case and it is a case one can argue for as well as against then why now? One could point at the increased public focus on scientific achievement in bio-informatics and genetic engineering, along with the social and political questioning of the effects and scope of such research, and come to the rather obvious conclusion that Life is in fashion these days. There is a degree of truth in this claim, but to rely on it would to some extent identify the cause with the outcome of this development. Id rather think of it as the result of a long-term change of practices in science and technology. Where the logic of clockwork fails to satisfy the increased need for complexity, science and technology incorporate the logic of growth and adaptation, the logic of Life. From neural network based spell-checkers to the paradigm of network economies, we can see a fusion of the made with the born and vice versa, resulting in hybrids which Kevin Kelly calls vivisystems. 5 Bergson saw life as a mode of organisation of matter.6 This definition works well in this context, especially since one of the characteristics of this mode of organisation is constant inventiveness and differentiation. 7 The
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Kastritis: Lifes (Re)-emergence

Kastritis: Lifes (Re)-emergence If you would like to know more about the themes of the conference, you might find these books interesting: Agamben, Giorgio, 1998 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, HellerRoazen, Daniel (trans.) Stanford, Stanford University Press. Ansell Pearson, Keith 2002 Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life, London, Routledge. Bogue, Ronald, 1989 Deleuze and Guattari London, Routledge. Capek, Milic 1971 Bergson and Modern Physics, New York, Humanities Press. Kelly, Kevin 1995 Out of Control: the New Biology of Machines, London, Fourth Estate, [currently available online at: http://www.kk.org ] Kolakowski, Leszek 1958 Bergson, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Massumi, Brian 2002 Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham, Duke University Press. Mullarkey, John 1999 Bergson and Philosophy, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Parisi, Luciana forthcoming Abstract Sex: the Emergence of an Intensive Body from Bacteria to Nanotechnology, Continuum Press. Footnotes 1. From the conference website: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/culturalstudies/html/life.html . 2. It is important to stress that Bergson rejected the docrine of vitalism, which implied an internal finality inherent in each organism (Kolakowski, 1958:56-57). Mullarkey intends vitalism in a sense that is particular to Bergson (Mullarkey, 1999:62-64); but I think using it in his title, where it cannot be explained properly, was an unfortunate choice that may enforce the misapprehension that Bergson was somehow a vitalist. 3. Both quotations from: A.D.Wilkerson, Sensis Communis: Perceptual Variance in Conscious Experience abstract from Towards a Science of Consciousness, Tucson, Arizona, 2000. 4. See: Margulis, Lynn, The Symbiotic Planet. 5. Kelly (1995:1-5). 6. Mullarkey (1999:64). 7. The term turbulent used by Luciana Parisi is also quite fitting.

price science pays for the added complexity and adaptability offered by vivisystems is the loss of the absolute predictability of, and control over, their operation. Where this process becomes interesting for the humanities and social sciences is in the age-old practice of applying the made upon the born: in this case, upon human forms of organisation such as cultural groups, societies and political organisations. They too echo the actions of the living beings that comprise them, by defying totalising explanations and resisting control and prescription. Technology becomes part of these organisations, either in an attempt to ease life or in an effort to regulate it - a theoretical distinction which is often hard to demonstrate in practice. Hence, it is not only the apparent triumphs of biology and genetics that bring life to the foreground. I believe this is also an outcome of the profound degree of incorporation of biological strategies in technology. These strategies could potentially match our ability to adapt and innovate beyond the limits of the infrastructure with which we surround ourselves or find ourselves surrounded by. Life in this sense emerges as a challenge to reconsider disciplinary boundaries and incorporate the study of processes that were outside the scope of traditional academic divisions. Life re-emerges, but not only in a historical sense. We can see life physically emerge, by sheer persistence, in the most hostile of environments. And we then see it re-emerge, against all distractions, upon reflecting about our lives, our lived experiences, and those of others around us. It is this degree of endurance and persistence that seems to establish the primacy of Life above all other processes and considerations. Except in the case of that two-legged political animal, who may turn around and ask: whose life?

Thanos Kastritis (haps0@sussex.ac.uk), BA Sociology (Panteion University, Athens), MA in Social and Political Thought (Sussex), is a part-time SPT Dphil student working on the interaction of modes of behaviour and the emergence of inhibitions. He has interests in the social aspects of knowledge, information and communication; the effects and interpretation of the notions of space and time in social life; and the impact of scientific developments on social theory.

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