5 responses to “Laruelle’s Deconstruction & Non-philosophy”
I don’t know if its just me, but reading Laruelle is such an arduous task. I’m always backtracking, reading, rereading, triple reading, finding blisteringly wonderful nuggets emerging from the text only to find myself, an hour or so later, unable to articulate them. This of course makes me want to keep reading him, push through the labyrinthine ways his texts flow, but I have to wonder at the end of the day – is there anything there to grab onto, in non-philosophy’s core? Or is that a ridiculous question?
I would say, in one manner of speaking, you have only to ‘grab into’ your self, maybe perhaps Dasein. Because once that happens — if it ever can happen — then Laruelles texts begin to speak ‘as if from nowhere’ in the Event, arising from the void, the immanent transcendence, in unilateral duality.. Etc and all that. The point of the whole thing is to avoid making ‘another philosophical object’ out of it. For the ‘core’ is the ‘non-object’, or as again Heidegger may have put it, the Being-there as a work of art.
“The point of the whole thing is to avoid making ‘another philosophical object’ out of it. For the ‘core’ is the ‘non-object’” – yeah, I was recalcitrant to use the word “core” for that very reason, but you put it far better than I could have. Perhaps the loss of articulation is indicative of just this – moving back and forth from philosophy to communication and information theories brings a sort of muted unity of communication’s compulsion to always communicate more and in wider ways with philosophy’s own ambition. Being confronted with something incommunicable was surprising, ironic even given that I’ve spent the path few months writing on noncommunication (albeit from a Deleuzian register). Either way, I’ve really just begun going through him (just read a few essays and “Future Christ,” which I figured would have been a good supplement to Vaneigem’s book on heresy)… any recommendations on where to go next?
Edmund, landzek…perhaps you could explain what it is about Laurelle that makes him any more than a beautiful writer? I mean to say, in times of some urgency, what makes him particularly worth reading? Or is this more of a ‘core’ thing even there- his writing sets up a resonance, establishes a rhythm that you are either drawn into or not?
While I can’t speak for Landzek, who obviously has a much better foothold in Laruelle, for me its certainly the latter – resonances in the text, those ineffable rhythms that we sometimes find ourselves in… I can see why Galloway, Thacker, and Wark are particularly attracted to Laruelle (though maybe Wark a little less so) and transposed him into the media theory; this could be an important maneuver given that in our current age *everything* is media, and thus a media theory. Perhaps this is the wrong thing to do with non-philosophy, to put it into a conjunction with something like media theory, or political theory, but Laruelle holds a special place in his hearts for heretics. That said, he has yet to ignite fires in my brain the way say, Deleuze and Guattari (both together and apart), Situationist theory, or even the Frankfurt School has. But personally I approach philosophy from the political, and vice verse, and my explorations largely follow in that vein..
synthetic zerØ 
I don’t know if its just me, but reading Laruelle is such an arduous task. I’m always backtracking, reading, rereading, triple reading, finding blisteringly wonderful nuggets emerging from the text only to find myself, an hour or so later, unable to articulate them. This of course makes me want to keep reading him, push through the labyrinthine ways his texts flow, but I have to wonder at the end of the day – is there anything there to grab onto, in non-philosophy’s core? Or is that a ridiculous question?
I would say, in one manner of speaking, you have only to ‘grab into’ your self, maybe perhaps Dasein. Because once that happens — if it ever can happen — then Laruelles texts begin to speak ‘as if from nowhere’ in the Event, arising from the void, the immanent transcendence, in unilateral duality.. Etc and all that. The point of the whole thing is to avoid making ‘another philosophical object’ out of it. For the ‘core’ is the ‘non-object’, or as again Heidegger may have put it, the Being-there as a work of art.
“The point of the whole thing is to avoid making ‘another philosophical object’ out of it. For the ‘core’ is the ‘non-object’” – yeah, I was recalcitrant to use the word “core” for that very reason, but you put it far better than I could have. Perhaps the loss of articulation is indicative of just this – moving back and forth from philosophy to communication and information theories brings a sort of muted unity of communication’s compulsion to always communicate more and in wider ways with philosophy’s own ambition. Being confronted with something incommunicable was surprising, ironic even given that I’ve spent the path few months writing on noncommunication (albeit from a Deleuzian register). Either way, I’ve really just begun going through him (just read a few essays and “Future Christ,” which I figured would have been a good supplement to Vaneigem’s book on heresy)… any recommendations on where to go next?
Edmund, landzek…perhaps you could explain what it is about Laurelle that makes him any more than a beautiful writer? I mean to say, in times of some urgency, what makes him particularly worth reading? Or is this more of a ‘core’ thing even there- his writing sets up a resonance, establishes a rhythm that you are either drawn into or not?
While I can’t speak for Landzek, who obviously has a much better foothold in Laruelle, for me its certainly the latter – resonances in the text, those ineffable rhythms that we sometimes find ourselves in… I can see why Galloway, Thacker, and Wark are particularly attracted to Laruelle (though maybe Wark a little less so) and transposed him into the media theory; this could be an important maneuver given that in our current age *everything* is media, and thus a media theory. Perhaps this is the wrong thing to do with non-philosophy, to put it into a conjunction with something like media theory, or political theory, but Laruelle holds a special place in his hearts for heretics. That said, he has yet to ignite fires in my brain the way say, Deleuze and Guattari (both together and apart), Situationist theory, or even the Frankfurt School has. But personally I approach philosophy from the political, and vice verse, and my explorations largely follow in that vein..