Leo Luks Paper

7/30/2019 Leo Luks Paper

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Zwizschenzustandforever - rhetorics of complete nihilism as politics of undecidability

Dear listeners! At the beginning this presentation, I find myself at a loss. The topic of our

panel, Literature and/as the Politics of Undecidability may seem to be, at first sight, quite

concrete, but this illusion dissipates quickly when you start thinking about it. Leaving

everyday institutions aside, we are faced with a need for a number of definitions and

elaborations. What is literature? What is the political and what is its possible distinction from

politics? How to tie the two together with the conjunction and or as? The title of my

presentation also introduces the vague concepts of nihilism and rhetorics. It is probably not

impossible to provide all the necessary conceptual specifications, but not within the space of a

brief presentation. As bad would be to use the key concepts as defaults the implicit

definitions of the concepts would immediately predetermine the fate of this discussion. Today

I will try to discuss not only undecidability as an object, but also in such a manner that the

politics of undecidability that has been presented as a hypothesis for our panel would in fact

be realized in my presentation. For this purpose I will nevertheless survey all the conceptsIve mentioned and will attempt to weave a rather contingent web of thought out of them, at

the risk of remaining superficial and of drowning in the labyrinth of specificities.

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1. Rhetorical opening embracing nihilism. No thought is born ex nihilo. Todays

presentation draws on my previous research in which I have formulated the fuzzy network of

ideas know as nihilist thought. The line of thinking that began with Nietzsche to comprehend

contemporary Western civilization through the image of European nihilism seems to me (as to

several other researchers, see Levin 1988, Rosen 1969, Vattimo 1994, Weller 2008) to this

day to be an arbitrary way of thinking about the surrounding reality. Let us recall the fragment

of an aphorism that my title refers to (fragment 9[35], year 1887):

Nihilism represents a pathological transitional stage (what is pathological is the

tremendous generalization, the inference that there is no meaning at all): whether the

productive forces are not yet strong enough, or whether decadence still hesitates and

has not yet invented its remedies. (Nietzsche 1968: 45).

This passage from Nietzsche (as well as other similar ones) point to the necessity of

completing the transitional stage and overcoming nihilism. To this day, many philosophers of

culture debate the methods with which nihilism can be disposed, and in general the issue is

whether one should put stakes on active overcoming or passive expectation. This last option

was chosen by the most noteworthy developer of Nietzsches conception of nihilism, Martin

Heidegger, according to whom the essence of nihilism resides in the forgetfulness of being

and that the only prospect is to wait for the overcoming ( Verwindung, see Heidegger 1978,

1999). Such an attitude is undecided; it abstains from an active assault against nihilism and

many later thinkers who put their stakes on undecidability (e.g. Derrida) undoubtedly owe

much to Heidegger.


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But is this wait for the end of nihilism warranted? The heideggerian line of thought itself

provides no guarantees; Nietzsches predictions, on the basis of which voluminous

monographs have been written (Kuhn 1992), remain vague in this issue, and there arises a

need for interpreting the status of the various forms of nihilism. There are also thinkers, for

whom there has never been an age of nihilism (e.g. Badiou 1999: 53-59). I myself have been

best convinced by Gianni Vattimos hermeneutic interpretation of nihilism (Vattimo 1994,

1997),

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according to which we should read both Nietzsche and Heidegger in the manner that excludes

the possibility of overcoming nihilism. Vattimo argues that Nietzsches and Heideggers

conceptions of nihilism coincide (Vattimo 1994: 20): on the one hand, the death of God and

the absorption of all higher values into exchange value; on the other, the forgetting of Being

and transformation into values that circulate in the challengig-fort connections of

contemporary technology as enframing (Ge-stell). To expect the overcoming of such a

situation is, for Vattimo, a sign of metaphysical nostalgia, and we should rather muster our

courage to embrace complete nihilism. In Nietzsches words:

Presupposition of this hypothesis: that there is no truth, that there is no absolute nature

of things nor a thing-in-itself. This, too, is merely nihilismeven the most extreme

nihilism. It places the value of thing precisely in the lack of any reality corresponding

to these values and in their being merely a symptom of strength on the part of the

value-positers, a simplification for the sake of life. (Nietzsche 1968: 45).

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2. The rhetorical nature of truth.What is the theoretical status of Vattimos conception of

nihilism? Is this not just a philosophical feint, where on the one hand the eternal permanence

of nihilist undecidability is announced, but on the other, one particular discourse is decisively

imposed? Vattimos philosophy does not conclude with the acceptance of complete nihilism,

but rather begins there in a sense; the ontologically substantiated weak thinking develops into

ever new ethico-political speeches against violence (Vattimo 1992, 2004). And all these

books are written rhetorically in a highly persuasive manner. Nevertheless, one cannot accuse

Vattimo of naivety: he is well aware of the paradoxical nature of his thinking, and hasreflected repeatedly on the foundations of his thinking.

Drawing on Nietzsche, Vattimo claims that we live in a world that has lost its own essence

and turned into a fable, in which the information-technological merry-go-round makes all the

previous metaphysical distinctions oscillate, including that of subject and object. (Vattimo

1994: 164-181) Yet one must not claim that Vattimos description is the (one) objective

description of the state of things. The discourse of complete nihilism is merely one narrative

among others, a tall tale that can only be effective due to a certain rhetorical persuasiveness

just like any other story. (Vattimo 1997: 13) The peculiarity of Vattimos story is the

conscious acknowledgement of his own weakness, since within his hermeneutic thinking truthhas no other status than its rhetorical commitment within a particular discourse. Hermeneutic


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reasoning is a rhetorical act that remembers its own external perspective and thus the

contingency of its own validity. Thus Vattimo attempts to consciously abate the internal

hegemonic pretensions of every discourse, including by repeatedly outlining, in his works,

family resemblances with other theories of cultural philosophy. A programme to which I

subscribe with both hands.

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3. From epistemology to literature. In order to discuss the political function of literature, we

require if not a definition of literature, then at least a qualification of literature with respect to

non-literature. Briefly, the most general, institutionalised definition of literature goes

something like this: literary signification is fictional, fictive; literature createspossible worlds.

In this manner, literary utterances differ from such speech acts that describe or attempt to

change reality (e.g. scientific theories, political statements). On the basis of this distinction

rests Derridas claim that today literature has the right to say anything, which can, however,

be always taken back (Derrida 2008). To be sure, to proceed from this distinction does not

mean a complete isolation between fiction and reality; it generally acknowledged that literary

draws its subject matter from reality and in its turn affects reality. The front line of debates

about the political role of literature indeed mostly consists in settling the tensions between

literature and reality, such as when is it justified to ban literary works that impinge on the

rights of actual individuals? A widespread contemporary practice is to present as literature

those speech acts that aim to insult, in order to avoid litigation.

From the position of complete nihilism, the distinction between reality and fiction stands on

feet of clay. When we proceed from the rhetorical definition of truth, we must accept whatVattimo calls aesthetic consciousness (Vattimo 1986) and cast doubt on the possibility of

descriptions that correspond to reality (metaphysics, scientific realism). This disposition is

neither new in philosophy nor particularly unique to Vattimo: similar thoughts have been

expressed by Richard Rorty, Nelson Goodman and the post-Kuhnian philosophers of science

(Feyerabend, sociologists of science). Elsewhere I have called the rhetorical programme of

complete nihilist thought the fusion of philosophy and literature (Luks 2010a, 2010b). I will

now sketch the different poles of this attempted fusion.

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The pole of philosophy: giving up the pretension as if philosophy (or any other theory) could

describe the world as it really is. The world is fabulated by intertwining different narratives

(Nietzsche: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations, Nietzsche 1968:

267). Literature, philosophy, science, religion are all merely different genres of this

fabulation. True enough, this far the pursuit of clarity, the attempt to understand how things

fit together has been widespread (pragmatism has put its stakes on this). For me, the

foremost political task of complete nihilism is to sow confusion, to undermine all hegemonic

attempts at the field of fables, to propagate cognitive pluralism a la Feyerabend (such as by

pitting an alternative against theory, parasciences against science, anarchism against

democracy, etc.), and chaosophy in the vein of Guattari. To be sure, I have nevertheless no

basis to claim that nihilist thinking has achieved, once and for all, the status of a meta-


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discoursethe field of fables is open and there always remains the danger of being absorbed

into other stories. Thus Vattimo, for example, has discovered for himself the kinship between

hermeneutic nihilism and early Christian thinking (Vattimo 1999) and in recent decades has

focussed precisely on dispelling violent discoursesa limitation that I currently do not share.

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The pole of literature: getting rid of the notion that literary fiction resides all alone in a

unique ontological sphere. Literary fabulation also creates worlds, generates truth (understood

as openness). For example, it has been documented how the Estonian nation was

constructed in the 19th

century primarily through different literary works. Fictional and virtual

realities do not reside somehow outside reality: they are parts of reality. Since literature

uses language in a particularly non-mundane manner, it in fact has greater rhetorical potential

than dry scientific texts here Heidegger is correct about the function of poetry as

constituting the world (Heidegger 1977).

For the longest time, getting absorbed in fictions has been treated as playing a conventional

as-if game. This definition need not be generally valid nor lasting. On the one hand,

technological development intensifies the suggestive force of fictions (already, a fight that

started in Second Life has led to a murder in the First One). On the other hand, the critical

pathos of nihilist thinking undermines the persuasive force of everyday narratives. To be sure,

works of fiction are not limited to creating a world (that is, representations presented to

subjects); narratives create and reshape subjects themselves, their subjectivity.

Undoubtedly, the field of philosophy (and the field of scientific theories more broadly) and

the field of literature (art) have so far been sharply differentiated institutionally, for which

reason we need a politics of undecidability that would blur this boundary.

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4. The political in nihilist thinking. My colleague Jri Lipping, who will also give a

presentation in this panel has emphasized in one of his recent papers the distinction, currently

much in vogue, between the concepts of politics and the political (Lipping 2010). Politics

refers to the customary practices of everyday political procedures; and the political to the

ontological dimension of antagonism that constitutes society itself (ibid: 189). Referring to

Oliver Marchart, Lipping places the political on the field of post-foundationalism, that is, a

constant interrogation of metaphysical figures of foundation such as totality, universality,

essence and ground. (ibid: 190). This definition completely coincides with the rhetorical

pathos of complete nihilism, for which reason it can be said that nihilist thought that puts its

stakes on undecidability is thoroughly political.

It is precisely because of the political, understood in this manner, that nihilist thinking can

have no concrete programme, nor a comprehensive list of required politics. Since the

configuration of discourses that lay claim to objective truth and its solitary power changes

over time and in space, the strategy of nihilist thinking must also change accordingly. In any

case, it is counter-thinking that has a large family resemblance to deconstruction. It should be


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clarified that the rhetoric of complete nihilism is not confined to perpetuating antagonism

between subjects or discourses, but much like the Lacanian tradition thinks antagonism

internally: in every subject, text, or thought there is a chaotic plurality, always threatening to

disrupt identity and clarity.

At the conclusion of this presentation, I have a few words about the front lines of the politics

of undecidability, and I will put forth a couple of contingent tasks related to the fusion of

literature and thinking.

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On the front line. It is important to understand that the debate does not take place on the

abstract level of thought, but on the level of practices. Thus for example the position of

science within a society does not at all depend on the debate about scientific truth between

realists and instrumentalists in philosophy of science. Science, which functions as an effective

network within a society and tends to displace other forms of cognition, does not need thehalo of pure truth for anything else than self-promotion for the masses. In order to convince

the masses, nothing else is required from science than to facilitate the standard of living on the

level of practice. The network-like functioning of power relations operating in todays world

was understood by Michel Foucault at the latest (although in fact Heideggers treatment of

technics already includes an image of the arbitrary functioning of the modern world). Thus it

is important to understand that the counter-thinking that characterises nihilism will have no

effect if it is enacted on the abstract level, as assaults on the foundations of theory (the top of

the so-called power pyramid). What is needed is to operate on the micro-level, against the

closest repression (Foucault 2000: 330).

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Some contingent tasks of nihilist thinking:

1. To undermine the hegemonic pretension of science by way of texts that formally appear to

be scientific worksthis both on the level of the message and the form (blurring the message,

fragmentarity).

2. Counter-thinking against the hegemony of theories in both writing and teaching (by

demonstrating the philosophical premises of every theoretical position, and to relativizethem).

3. To interpret, under the cover of literary theory, precisely the kind of literature that, by its

very existence, casts doubt on widespread ideologies (democracy, ethics), and thereby to

amplify the power of literature to utter anything. Interpretations of undecidability in

contemporary thinking have commonly been ethico-religious (e.g. Levinas, Agamben), thus

the field of interpretations must be opened further, for example to the sublime of terror.

4. To thematise negativity in language the pursuit of pure poetry in literature. This task,

which I had no time to discuss in this presentation, is to cease to generate meaning and to letlanguage decay (e.g. sound poetry).


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Leo Luks, Estonian University of Life Sciences

References

Badiou, Alain 1999. Manifesto for philosophy: followed by two essays: The (re)turn of

philosophy itself and Definition of philosophy. Albany: State University of New YorkPress.

Derrida, Jacques 2008. The Gift of Death & Literature in Secret. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Foucault, Michel 2000. The Subject and Power. // Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984.

Power. New York: The New Press, pp. 326-348.

Heidegger, Martin 1977. Der Ursprung des Kustwerkes. // Gesamtausgabe, I Abt, Bd 5,

Holzwege, pp. 1-74.

Heidegger, Martin 1978. Zur Seinsfrage. //Wegmarken. Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, pp 379-

419.

Heidegger, Martin 1999. Das Wesen des Nihilismus // Gesamtausgabe, III Abt, Bd 67,

Metaphysik und Nihilismus, pp. 177-267.

Kuhn, Elisabeth 1992. Friedrich Nietzsches Philosophie des europischen Nihilismus.

Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Levin, David Michael 1988. The Opening of Vision. Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation.London and New York: Routledge.

Lipping, Jri 2010. Souvereignty beyond state. //Hent Kalmo; Quentin Skinner (Ed),

Sovereignity in Fragments. The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept. Cambridge

etc: Cambridge University Press. PP 186-204.

Luks, Leo 2010a. Fusion of Philosophy and Literature in Nihilist Thought. Problemos, no. 77,

pp. 129-141.

Luks, Leo 2010b. Philosophy and Literature: Two Lines of Fusion. Problemos, no. 78, pp.125-142.

Nietzsche, Fiedrich 1968. The Will to Power. New York: Vintage Books.

Rosen, Stanley 1969. Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay. New Haven and London: Yale

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Vattimo, Gianni 1986. Hermeneutics and Nihilism: An Apology for Aesthetic Consciousness.

// I. Wachterhauser; R. Brice (Ed) Hermeneutics and modern philosophy. Albany: State

University of New York Press. Pp. 446-459.

Vattimo, Gianni. 1992. The Transparent Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.


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Vattimo, Gianni 1994. The end of modernity : nihilism and hermeneutics in postmodern

culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Vattimo, Gianni 1997. Beyond Interpretation. The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy.

Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Vattimo, Gianni 1999. Belief. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Vattimo, Gianni 2004. Nihilism & Emancipation. Ethics, Politics & Law. New York:

Columbia University Press.

Weller, Shane 2008. Literature, Philosophy, Nihilism. Palgrave.

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