Not all is subject to law

Agamben's account of the messianic overcoming of law relies on a homology with law in the state of exception. And, as we know, law in idea of the state of exception draws from Schmitt's account of the suspension of the law as the product of the sovereign decision.

Zizek's approach to law, one that recognizes how law is split between injunction and utterance, between obscene supplement and public letter, seems much more promising for left politics. It doesn't require a fantasy of a place beyond law, an inhuman place. Rather, it sees the beyond and inhuman as already within law. To this extent, it accepts impurity, refusing to find excuses in a messianic future even as it pushes against the given.

Comments

[Amish Lovelock]

I realise that this might be a little off the scale here, but I ought to come clean.

I've been trying to work through Agamben, Zizek, Badiou as a way of interpreting the following. Here is a short translated excerpt from an Ainu (the indigenous people of northern Japan) writer, Sasaki Masao, who was quite prolific in the late 60s-early 70s, at least in Hokkaido, Japan.

"As far as I understand it, the problem of whether or not this law [the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Act of 1899] is abolished or not cannot be resolved merely through referring to the present conditions of those 'Former Natives' it is supposed to be protecting. If we begin by investigating the current conditions of these 'Former Natives' the problem will simply be reduced to that of the [what to do about the] Other. In this case, even if approaching the problem from an ethical standpoint is the entirely the perogative of those who choose to get involved, as long as they remain within that ethical mindset they will not be able to reach the base of the problem. That reality cannot be percieved through ethics alone; that human beings cannot be saved through good will alone; should be obvious. Let me state it clearly: Understanding the problem of the Other means exposing the roots of that otherness and destroying it. In this regard, I must state to those who find themselves as the Other the, in a sense, painful awakening that recognising each other as having something in common, the same 'blood,' in the end means nothing. Today, unable to escape that one is in the position of the Other, you question the meaning of your existence, you question your very way of life, and then after finally realising that an answer does not lie in one's 'blood' as an Other, your efforts are wasted. If their is an answer then it is this: I must declare my being different from that of this 'Japan' that relies on its Others, I must be antagonistic towards it and upset the structure at its very core. The only grounds for me to declare myself an Other to this 'Japan' are these grounds."

Sasaki had studied both philosophy and history. He was fairly active in the 1970s but then had to quit his activism for personal reasons. His critique of normative ethics is pretty before his time, I think, and Badiou's "Ethics" reminded me of Sasaki a lot.

I guess what I'm getting at is that Sasaki's second "Other" here - the one posed against the structure itself - has always seemed to me to be a position, or at least a gesture, if not to go beyond, then at least to render impotent the constituent and constitutive power that makes Ainu (and other indigenous people for that matter) like him into being the objects, and subjects, of protection, hate, admiration, and promotion.

It's not beyond law in the sense that he wouldn't feel the need to be against the system if he wasn't consituted by the law in the first place. He takes it at its word and declares, 'yes, I am Other, but not Other in your sense. Other to the whole damn system,' in a way. He doesn't adopt the ideological position of looking for common bonds among his kin and then 'resisting' in that sense.

Under the Former Natives Protection Act, Ainu (dispossesed of their usual means of existence)were forced into being both equal imperial subjects as farmers and at the same time, as the title of the law suggests, forever marked as 'Former Natives.' They were indeed the exception to modern imperial equality.

I guess what I am constantly interested in is just what Sasaki's gesture means in this case - which is why I'm usually pretty incoherent.

This has been a pretty unrelated comment.

[mattcalarco]

Jodi,

I think your critique of Agamben hits the mark on one level. It is important to understand, as Zizek stresses, that the beyond and the inhuman are always already within the law. To place them in a messianic space risks turning possible forms of resistance into mere piety or beautiful-soul-style handwringing and infinite patience. Agamben constantly runs both of those risks (and I'm no defender of his work along these lines!).

But the *real* question is not the inhuman but the transhuman and the nonhuman, about which Zizek apparently knows nothing (despite his occasional nod to ecological politics--but I'm afraid this doesn't suffice; nor can these questions be reduced to the "New Age" thinking he [rightly] rails against). His recovery of subjectivity and universality, while useful on one level, do nothing but reinforce classically metaphysical conceptions of all life beyond the human. Here is where, despite other differences, he marches in lockstep with Badiou. Had either of them properly understood the stakes of Heidegger's thought, or Derrida's, or even Deleuze's, their notion of how best to challenge the established order of things would be much different. It's not just a political, juridical, or economic task--it's also properly ethical and ontological (and not in the Lacanian sense of these terms, but in the philosophical sense).

Since this is just a comment, let me suggest the following as a nutshell summary. Agamben's messianic space is less political and more ontological. Zizek doesn't need (or doesn't think he needs) that messianic ontological space that Agamben is looking for because Zizek completely misses the ontological problematic. Has Zizek ever gone beyond Marx and Lenin? Really?

The question that Agamben would pose to you and Zizek might be: where, within the law or in the dominant discourses of resistance, do we find even a trace of Benjamin's "saved night" of nature? Perhaps breaking history in two (the classical messianic dream) is *precisely* what is required in order to actualize this possibility . . .

[Jodi]

Matt, thanks for the comment. I don't know what you mean when you refer to the 'saved night of nature.' I can be convinced, I think, of your claim regarding transhuman, but not quite yet. I think in part it's because Zizek's subject is so already alien, so dependent on the object, any contingent object that in becoming non-contingent (a Thing) it lets the subject be what it is. This bridge or dependence on the object strikes me as a useful point in thinking a kind of trans.

Although Zizek's writing on cyberspace are not the strongest part of his work, they might also provide a jumping off point for such a project.

But, I confess, my own tendencies as a political theorist are away from ontology and more towards representation, language, decision, etc (a terrible place for 'etc'). So, I've no doubt missed the ontological problematic as well--it doesn't grip me.

On Agamben, I think that he wants his messianic space to be political--or he wouldn't have linked it to the camps.

[Jodi]

Amish, wow. Really interesting passage from Sasaki. I was intrigued and perplexed by the Other in the passage, really unsure how to read it. What a great project you have!

[nuncstans]

Jodi,
I just stumbled upon your blog searching for a Rancière article, and I find it very interesting.

I wonder if you are giving Zizek too much credit here. Maybe it's less that his vision doesn't require a fantasy of a place beyond law, but that it has difficulty conceiving of such a place. In other words, perhaps it is a bit wishful to see the beyond and the inhuman as already within the law.

What he shows strongly is that the law contains what the law disavows; but that is not the same as containing what it cannot articulate...

[Jodi]

Nuncstans,
Good point. Containing disavowal is not the same as containing what is not articulated. Perhaps it makes sense to think this unarticulated as the Real that disrupts or fractures law, its gaps. A fully determined law, particularly in the sense of containing what is disavowed, would be a totalitarian horror.

[mattcalarco]

Jodi,

BTW, I read your recent post about watching TV a lot--same here! Nice to know there are fellow academics who are also TV junkies. Colbert is the fire--period. Gotta dig him.

Also, thanks for posting the TOC for the book. That was very kind of you!

I admire your reading of Zizek a great deal (I read several of your other posts on his work and I really look forward to reading your forthcoming book). I think you're right about Zizek's subject being "already alien"--no doubt. The problem, for me at least, is not so much with Zizek's notion of subjectivity; it's rather that his rethinking of subjectivity only takes place at the level of the human/inhuman (even in his cyberspace writings, which I have glanced at briefly in the past). Zizek can stay at this level because his work remains unwittingly within an anthropocentric ontological and metaphysical orbit (this is where a better reading of Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida in particular would help him--he tends to give a bit of a straw man reading of all three of these guys). In my estimation, his work suffers from the same problem Negri's does with regard to constituting power and its relation to the established order (see, for example, Agamben's remarks on negri in Homo Sacer).

In plain English, Zizek's (along with Negri, Badiou, etc., despite their differences) particular political emphasis makes him miss the real political stakes of the current moment. The *only* thing that can bring about the kind of political reality he and these other guys envision--a politics that is genuinely universal--is one that empties the universal of *all* specific content. The universal can't be tacitly filled in with an "already alien" human being, a revolutionary agent, a subject of truth, etc. It can't be filled in at all! To make human beings (no matter how emptied of content they might be) what are at stake in politics (humanism), or even the "ground" of politics (anti-humanism), is already to re-start the anthropological machine, to separate the animal/nonhuman from the human within the human being (see, for example, Zizek's remarks on Peter Singer in his "A Plea for Leninist Intolerance" essay where Zizek does precisely this--re-start the anthropological machine in the name of a politics of truth).

The "saved night" remark was just an allusion to the Benjamin letter Agamben discusses toward the end of The Open. And it makes the same point as I just made, basically. At stake in radical politics is an affirmation of unqualified life, life viewed non-instrumentally (the saved night is just this), no matter what form life takes--human, nonhuman, abject, whatever. Hardt and Negri gesture toward this idea at the very end of Empire, but everyone knows much more needs to be said on that point (Chaloupka's essay in your book is good on this). The politicization of capital, while absolutely necessary, will do nothing to bring about a politics of life, a "saved night." An ontological shift is required for that, largely because the theoretical and political resources are simply not available in the established order or in the counter-discourses.

So, it is politics that necessitates the move toward ontology. Like you, I'm primarily a political thinker--that's the only thing at stake for me.

In terms of concrete politics, messianism is dangerous and ultimately nihilistic. In terms of the *conditions of possibility* for radical politics today, messianism is essential. Agamben seems to want us to choose between the two. The Derridean in me (there's only a bit in there!) wants to do both at once.

As for the camp, sure the stakes are political--but I'd suggest that the camp is a philosophical and ontological concept (as Deleuze understands that term). But, that's a debate for another day.

I've rambled on long enough--we'll have to argue this one out over lunch at a conference some time!

[Jodi]

Thanks so much for your kind words, Matt. Let's see if this takes us anywhere. It may be best for coffee or something at a meeting, though.

Of course the universal cannot be filled in; yet, it can be thought in terms of remnant or new division; this is how I take Zizek, Agamben, and Badiou to be using St. Paul.

I take what I think of as the onto-folks (who I know best through William Connolly and Jane Bennett, weakly through Deleuze, and a bit through that guy's book on piety and capitalism plus articles and manuscripts I've had to review) as disagreeing with any thinking of universality in favor of thinking of multiplicity and possibility. Before I say any more, is this perspective or angle close to what you are suggesting?

On life, or unqualified life, why should this be the ultimate point for radical politics? Here I admire Zizek's account of the excess in life, the sort of cause or conviction or 'being taken' (my term) that makes life more than what it is, that lets it be something beyond itself. In your view, is such a position problematic?

[Marc Lombardo]

Perhaps I am mistaken, but it seems to me that the position attached to Zizek re: law in this post and discussion comes remarkably close to the very position on law which Zizek attacked Judy Butler for having in his review of The Psychic Life of Power. Specifically, if the beyond to law were given a name for Zizek it would be the act. Zizek reprimands Butler for only recognizing the articulations and disarticulations of law, without acknowledging the possibility of an entire displacement of law, on the order of the act.

[Jodi]

Thanks, Marc. I didn't think my gestures to law as split between public letter and obscene supplement involved the same sorts of incited transgressions or patterns of articulation etc that Butler mentions. But if it seemed like I was blurring matters, I stand corrected.

On the Act--yes of course that allows for an entire displacment. But, and here's what I think is interesting, even as the Act might disrupt everything, it can occur within the Symbolic for Zizek. Recall, crucial to the Act is its retroactive interpretation. And, those Zizek most admires don't simply Act, they establish new orders: St. Paul, Lenin, Lacan. So, they don't in any way remain beyond law; they transform it.