{"id":883,"date":"2016-11-28T14:46:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T19:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/?p=883"},"modified":"2017-03-31T13:35:04","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T17:35:04","slug":"883-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/883-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Epilogue: The Critical Potential of the Deleuzian Nietzsche"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"olive\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Bernard E. Harcourt <\/strong><\/p>\n

The stimulating interventions of Barbara Stiegler<\/a>, John Rajchman<\/a>, and Mick Taussig<\/a> at last night\u2019s seminar, Nietzsche 4\/13<\/a>, raised a number of challenging issues regarding Gilles Deleuze\u2019s reading, interpretation, and \u201cuse\u201d of Nietzsche\u2014regarding both the Deleuzian Nietzsche and the Nietzschean Deleuze. In this epilogue, I would like to address three loose ends: (1) the turn to law in Deleuze and Foucault; (2) the relation between the Deleuze of the 1960s and the Deleuze of the 1970s; and (3) the magic and sorcery in Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s Thousand Plateaus.<\/em><\/p>\n

I.\u00a0 On the question of law<\/h3>\n

In response to questions about the political<\/em> dimensions of the Deleuzian Nietzsche, John Rajchman urged us to explore further the legal <\/em>writings of both Deleuze and Foucault from the 1970s, and also to relisten to Deleuze\u2019s discussion of \u201cG,\u201d for Gauche<\/em>, in his Ab\u00e9c\u00e9daire<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

A lot of new work is being done on Foucault\u2019s writings on law, though slightly less on Deleuze\u2019s. The interest in Foucault\u2019s writings on law are due to the very recent publication of his three most \u201clegal\u201d lecture series\u2014Penal Theories and Institutions <\/em>(1972, Coll\u00e8ge de France), The Punitive Society<\/em> (1973, Coll\u00e8ge de France), and Wrong-Doing, Truth Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice<\/em> (1981, Louvain). Several scholars had been working on the topic previously, especially Ben Golder (see <\/em>his Foucault and Law<\/em>, 2010), Peter Fitzpatrick (with Golder, eds., Foucault\u2019s Law<\/em> (2009), and Mariana Valverde (see <\/em>recently her review of The Punitive Society<\/em><\/a>). The recent publication of these lectures and the availability of his extensive reading notes at the Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France<\/em> (which reveal that he conducted, during the early 1970s, a full-blown study of law from the Roman period to the 19th<\/sup> century), demonstrate Foucault\u2019s interest in legal forms. Foucault elaborated, in those years, a series of analyses on truth and legal forms, from the test or ordeal, to the inquiry, to the examination, and ultimately to the prison and detention as a unique legal form associated with the production of a coercive society in the 19th<\/sup> century\u2014what he called a \u201cpunitive society\u201d or later a \u201cdisciplinary society.\u201d Foucault\u2019s analysis of illegalisms<\/em> (from The Punitive Society <\/em>through Discipline and Punish<\/em>), as well as his exploration of repressive judicial state apparatuses in Penal Theories and Institutions,<\/em> and the juridical avowal in Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling,<\/em> are also rich sources of material for such an analysis (as we explored last year in Foucault 2\/13<\/a> and 3\/13<\/a>, among others).<\/p>\n

There is slightly less material to work with in Deleuze\u2014it is typically more suggestive and less extensive. Recent work here has been done by Laurent de Sutter, Deleuze: La Pratique du droit<\/i> (Editions Michalon, 2009), as John Rajchman suggested; Laurent de Sutter has also edited a collected volume with Kyle McGee, called Deleuze and Law (2012)<\/em>, with excellent contributions by Paul Patton and\u00a0Alexandre Lefebvre (see book review<\/a> here).<\/p>\n

The differences, though, between Foucault and Deleuze can be stark. For instance, Deleuze willingly writes about \u201cLaw\u201d with a capital \u201cL.\u201d So, for instance, in his Foucault,<\/em> he writes that \u201cmodern subjectivity rediscovers the body and its pleasures, as opposed to a desire that has become too subjugated by Law\u201d (Deleuze, Foucault<\/em>, p. 105 [English ed.]). As Rajchman suggests, this \u201cnotion of The Law\u201d is one that \u201cLacan had linked to Levi-Strauss\u2019 idea of a Symbolic Order in kinship as in exchange,\u201d and, as Rajchman emphasizes, one that Foucault had rebelled against, arguing instead that \u201cpower is positive or productive, not simply exclusionary.\u201d This is worth emphasizing, because it represents a potentially sharp difference between Foucault and Deleuze on the matter. Though Foucault was immersed in the analysis of legal forms, he would not refer to \u201cThe Law\u201d and rarely discussed \u201claw\u201d (droit<\/em>), viewing law more (as critical legal scholars would later) as a purely rhetorical layer imposed ex post<\/em> on the struggles or civil wars that ultimately resolve political conflict. As Fran\u00e7ois Ewald and I write in our course context to Penal Theories and Institutions<\/em>, \u201cFoucault, in the first place, speaks little of \u2018law.\u2019 It is not from law that we can derive the character of juridical and judicial institutions. Instead, one needs to start from the institutions, from the \u2018acts of justice.\u2019 Foucault makes a very precise distinction between justice, the juridical, the judicial, and law.\u201d[i]<\/a> That course context articulates the different juridical dimensions of Foucault\u2019s analysis (justice, the juridical, the judicial, acts of justice, etc.)[ii]<\/a> And, as we suggest there, \u201cLaw<\/em> comes in late, it\u2019s a discourse after the fact. It serves to recode institutions, to legitimate des coups de force<\/em> It\u2019s an instrument of power, an instrument in relations of power.\u201d[iii]<\/a> And, as we suggest, Foucault\u2019s theory of law serves as a \u201ccritique of law\u201d that needs to be read alongside the French movement of the \u201cMarxist critique of law\u201d and the American movement of Critical Legal Studies.[iv]<\/a> But these are just preliminary indications.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, as was mentioned at the end of the seminar, Daniela Gandorfer and Nofar Sheffi recently organized a conference called Synesthesia of Law<\/a> <\/em>at Princeton University that explored precisely the question of critical interdisciplinary approaches to law\u2013with a very Deleuzian intervention by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos especially. Just as Rajchman had urged last night, the conference panelists<\/a> included artists (Bradley McCallum, Chitra Ganesh, Miriam Ghani, and Carey Young), critical legal scholars and critical race theorists (Yishai Blank, Peter Goodrich, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Kendall Thomas, Patricia Williams, and Mikha\u00efl Xifaras), sociologists and anthropologists (Ann Stoler and Mariana Valverde), legal historians (Jes\u00fas Velasco), media and visual theorists (Christian Biet, Allen Feldman, and Eyal Weizman), and literary scholars (Eduardo Cadava and Thomas Levin), among others. Many interventions focused on the question of the critical sensual experience of the law and on the legal regulation of senses; others tried to develop a critical-synesthetic approach to law. Joseph Lawless is currently working on a synthetic piece that will link several of the interventions (I will link to it when it is up). Anyone interested in pursuing the conversation that John Rajchman began on Deleuze, art, and law, might want to begin with this remarkable conference.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Critical Periods, Periods of Critique<\/h3>\n

Both Barbara Stiegler and John Rajchman drew important distinctions between the Deleuze of the early 1960s, marked especially by his writings on Nietzsche in 1962 and 1965, and the Deleuze of the 1970s, marked by his joint authorship with F\u00e9lix Guattari of Anti-Oedipus<\/em> and A Thousand Plateaus<\/em>. Stiegler suggested that the misreading of Nietzsche that she identified in the earlier Deleuze\u2014having to do with Deleuze\u2019s erasure of the Apollonian (his \u201cbanishing Apollo\u201d) and his excessive rejection of the negative (\u201cthe constant opposition of active joy and reactive suffering\u201d)\u2014did not bleed into the later Deleuze and Guattari writings. Rajchman emphasized the \u201cchange in attitude\u201d that we already see in 1972-73 in La pens\u00e9e nomade.<\/em><\/p>\n

The question here is whether there is such a break and what that would tell us about critique<\/em>. For as you will recall, the Deleuzian Nietzsche of the 1960s is the focal point of critique: by contrast to Kant, who did not achieve \u201creal critique\u201d on Deleuze\u2019s reading, Nietzsche inaugurated the critical gaze by focusing on meaning and value\u2014at least, as argued here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Does Deleuze move away from that? That\u2019s an important question that we should explore further. My tentative answer is no\u2014not fundamentally. As Rosalind Morris reminded us last night, right in the middle of Anti-Oedipus<\/em>, about half way through, Deleuze and Guattari discard Marcel Mauss and return to Nietzsche\u2019s Genealogy of Morals<\/em>. Morris raised an important question about what the implications were for sociality and the political\u2014in response to Rajchman\u2019s suggestion that Deleuze\u2019s main political intervention was to \u201crethink what politics is.\u201d For my part, I think, this suggests the continuity with the earlier Deleuze, who portrayed Nietzsche as founding critique. If this is true, then what we need to explore is the continuities in relation to critique\u2014and variations, in order to excavate the critical potential of the Deleuzian Nietzsche.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Magic and Sorcery<\/h3>\n

Mick Taussig also drew our attention to the chapter on becoming (\u201cBecoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible\u201d) in A Thousand Plateaus<\/em>, and especially the section \u201cMemories of a Sorcerer,\u201d or what Taussig called \u201cbecoming a sorcerer.\u201d He suggests that the book as a whole can be interpreted as a form of sorcery or magic\u2014\u201cthe skilled revelation of skilled concealment,\u201d as he defines magic. As Taussig showed last night, the anthropological tradition from Boas to L\u00e9vi-Strauss has always been obsessed with revealing the fraud, fakery, or sham nature of shamanism (the words sham and shamanism share no real etymology, except in our imagination). But sorcery and magic, of course, persist. Widely. And so, the question is, then, what can this tell us about their political<\/em> potential? What is the role of \u201cthe skilled revelation of skilled concealment\u201d in bringing about political change?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTES<\/h3>\n

[i]<\/a> Fran\u00e7ois Ewald and Bernard E. Harcourt, \u201cSituation du cours<\/em>,\u201d 243-282, in Michel Foucault, Th\u00e9ories et institutions p\u00e9nales<\/em>. Cours au Coll\u00e8ge de France<\/em>, 1971-1972 (Paris: Gallimard\/Le Seuil, 2015), p. 273.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> See<\/em> ibid., p. 272-277.<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> Ibid., p. 274.<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> Ibid., p. 275.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt The stimulating interventions of Barbara Stiegler, John Rajchman, and Mick Taussig at last night\u2019s seminar, Nietzsche 4\/13, raised a number of challenging issues regarding Gilles Deleuze\u2019s reading, interpretation, and \u201cuse\u201d of Nietzsche\u2014regarding both the Deleuzian Nietzsche… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-4-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}