La infrapolítica es, mínimamente, un campo de reflexión abierto a la indagación de condiciones y manifestaciones de experiencia en la época de la consumación de la estructuración ontoteológica de la modernidad.   Entendemos que la experiencia, la de todos y la de cada uno, está cruzada por la política, que la marca y determina y enmarca de forma fundamental e irreducible, pero postulamos que la determinación política no agota la experiencia. La experiencia excede o subcede la política, y puede por lo tanto ser tematizada y estudiada infrapolíticamente. Postulamos también que la política en la época de la consumación de la estructuración ontoteológica del mundo conocido no es un fenómeno naturalizable como dado por supuesto, sino que está él mismo sometido a condiciones históricas de manifestación.   La esencia de la política, podemos decir mimetizando a uno de nuestros pensadores de referencia, no es en sí política. Pero la infrapolítica no busca determinar filosóficamente cuál sea la esencia de la política, ni siquiera en sus dispensaciones contemporáneas. Su interés, hermenéutico, fenomenológico y deconstructivo, se da más bien en el intento de acotar la determinación política a favor de su exceso o suceso.   La infrapolítica es un campo de reflexión que indaga el suceso de la política en nuestro mundo.   En cuanto su-ceso, es decir, exceso que precede, campo experiencial no circunscribible ni agotable por determinación política alguna, la infrapolítica tiene dimensiones críticas—la infrapolítica piensa la política en la medida en que piensa su negación–, pero su ejercicio primario no es crítico (de la política) sino interpretativo.   La infrapolítica vive en una retirada de la política de la que no se nos oculta que incluye una intensa politicidad—pero es la politicidad impolítica que suspende y cuestiona toda politización aparente, y la coloca provisionalmente bajo el signo de su destrucción. Llamamos a la dimensión de politicidad impolítica de la infrapolítica posthegemonía, o democracia posthegemónica. La infrapolítica encuentra en la democracia posthegemónica, y en su praxis, que es la democratización posthegemónica, la interrupción suplementaria de su propia praxis subcedente.

Es claro en lo que antecede que este proyecto se sitúa en una tradición de pensamiento marcada por la obra de Martin Heidegger, a la que busca interpretar o reinterpretar en diálogo con sus continuadores históricos, de Reiner Schûrmann a Catherine Malabou, de Luce Irigaray a Felipe Martìnez Marzoa, de Jacques Derrida a Jean-Luc Nancy, de Giorgio Agamben a Roberto Esposito o Davide Tarizzo, e incluyendo a muchos otros. Pero también que la reflexiòn infrapolítica aspira a constituir un archivo de pensamiento más amplio y no contenible en la estela heideggeriana.   Nos interesa la práctica artítstica, la literatura, la ciencia y la religión en la misma medida en que también en esas prácticas se da reflexión y poetización de la encrucijada historial a la que remite el fin de la estructuración ontoteológica de la modernidad.   Nos interesa también el pisicoanálisis, que en ciertas de sus versiones puede entenderse como paradigmático de la práctica infrapolítica avant la lettre.   Y nos interesa el mundo de la vida cotidiana, con sus trazas de maquinación y cultura, de ética y moralismo, de historia y de desnarrativización perpleja.

Lo que proponemos es sólo derivada y subsidiariamente una práctica académica. Muchos de nosotros somos miembros de alguna universidad y tendemos a realizar nuestro trabajo en el contexto del aparato universitario.   Pero entendemos que la universidad está hoy sometida a condiciones de producción, en sí derivadas del acabamiento metafìsico de la modernidad, que son incompatibles con el futuro del proyecto infrapolítico. La infrapolítica es postuniversitaria y antiinstitucional en la medida en que busquemos su necesaria radicalización.   Se entiende como una modalidad de pensamiento salvaje, lo que Malabou llama la irrupción de lo fantástico en la filosofía, que nos desborda tanto como nos convoca, y nos destruye tanto como nos informa.

La infrapolítica no pide inscripción ni perdón. Se anuncia como voluntad de pensamiento al margen de canales establecidos y reconocibles, al margen de toda política cultural, al margen de toda recuperación biempensante. Tratará, por supuesto, de crear sus lugares, pero nuestra querencia es virtual y oscura, y nos atraen más los bares y las playas y los desiertos que las aulas, las salas de conferencia o los grandes hoteles convencionales. No insistimos en secreto alguno, pero sabemos que el pensamiento es siempre secreto.   No pedimos comunidad, no pedimos filiación, no pedimos siquiera comprensión alguna.   Nos manifestamos contracomunitarios y hostiles a toda formación de captura. Y apostamos a un largo plazo incalculable desde el cómputo servil del produccionismo excelentista.   Sabemos que sólo contamos con nuestro tiempo de vida, y que tal tiempo excede, y sucede, al tiempo de trabajo. Y esa es la cosa.

El vencimiento de la estructura ontoteológica de la metafísica, si esa es la tarea de pensamiento asumida, pide un cambio en la dis-posición del pensamiento mismo, también de la escritura: una nueva Ge-Stell escritural. Contra la representación calculativa hacia una meditación recolectiva. Tal cambio sólo se hace posible en la época, presumiblemente la nuestra, de la consumación de la metafísica en el agotamiento de sus recursos metafóricos o foranómicos.   La metafísica hoy está ya de antemano desmetaforizada—de ahí que la desmetaforización imposible sea el nombre del peligro mismo del pensamiento otro (dado el riesgo de su contaminación saturante.)   Ese cambio—prepararlo, ejercitarlo (ex + arcare, exercitium, Ge-Stell de escritura), ejecutarlo—es actividad de pensamiento desde el fin de la historia que nos vive hacia otro comienzo posible, desde cierto fin del pensamiento hacia un pensamiento otro posible.   Pero no conocido. Tal esfuerzo, cuya necesidad no es cuestión de fe sino que se siente o no, por lo pronto, íntimamente, poéticamente, es ya un esfuerzo infrapolítico. La infrapolítica es el doble juego de destrucción o desestructuración crítica (desmetaforizante, en su peligro) del pensamiento tradicional, que constituye la hegemonía de Occidente, y del paso atrás o salto hacia una re-estructuración posthegemónica.   Pero esto último implica una mutación, un cambio en, dentro de, el cambio permanente que informa y estructura la tradición metafísica, un cambio otro que sólo puede ser entendido como salto fantástico. En cuanto fantástico no es locura sino que permanece como proyección orientativa. El motor del pensamiento infrapolítico es el fantasma de esa intimación. A ese fantasma hay por lo pronto acceso poético, o mejor, poetológico, en la medida en que se trata de una instancia que debe tematizarse (Ge-Stell de escritura) para ser. Dice Derrida en algún momento de La bestia y el soberano que de Paul Celan puede derivarse una política: quizá hay que añadir que esa política no es política, sino infrapolítica. La política, en cuanto a la vez necesariamente aprisionada en la esencia ontoteológica de la metafísica e instancia fáctica del manifestarse en cada caso de la voluntad de voluntad, en el fin epocal de la metafísica, debe también ser destruida, desestructurada, desmetaforizada.   Se trata de encontrar una relación libre con la política. La retirada de la política es su necesario retrazo. El nombre de ese paso atrás o salto hacia una sub-stancia destituyente puede ser, es, infrapolítica del vencimiento. Pero, si esto es un programa, la letra no está escrita. Pasa por la liquidación del fantasma, por su encarnación vital.

No conozco la obra de Hans Blumenberg, y así no conozco sus presuposiciones. Lo que me interesa en esta nota es sólo iniciar una exploración, tentativa en la precisa medida en que, para mí, el texto de Blumenberg es todavía difícilmente descodificable, que se vincula a varias conversaciones recientes—sobre desmetaforización y diferencia ontológica en particular.   Quiero referirme a las páginas finales de Naufragio con espectador desde la traducción al inglés, Shipwreck with Spectator.   Allí Blumenberg introduce un comentario sobre Heidegger que me parece astuto y útil, pero al que Blumenberg parece darle una carga negativa que depende de sus presuposiciones (que son las que no conozco).

La segunda parte de Shiwreck with Spectator es “Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality.” Comienza diciendo que su propia teoría de la metáfora ha cambiado desde tratar de ser un método subsidiario para la historia de los conceptos a concebirse como un “caso especial limitado” de noconceptualidad (81).

La perspectiva metaforológica, por lo tanto, en la versión de Blumenberg, no trataría ya fundamentalmente de incidir en la explicación de la constitución de la conceptualidad, sino que habría girado hacia las conexiones de la metaforicidad, y del sistema de metáforas o incluso de cualquier puntualidad metafórica específica, con “el mundo de la vida como el apoyo constantemente motivante . . . de toda teoría” (81).

Siguen algunas consideraciones donde lo que parece el rasgo dominante es asegurar la estabilidad de la conciencia a partir de los mecanismos metaforizantes—si es así, el proyecto de “asegurar la estabillidad de la conciencia” sería una de las presuposiciones fundamentales de Blumenberg (fundamental en el sentido de que no es una presuposición trivial).   Dice Blumenberg que la metáfora puede ser entendida no sólo como elemento desestabilizador, sino quizá primariamente como todo lo contrario, reparador de desarmonías. “To repair its disharmonies, to again and again find its way back to the harmony of the data as data of one experience, remains the constitutive accomplishment of consciousness, which assures it that it is following reality and not illusions” (82).

Hay una escisión básica entre metáfora e intuición teórica, parece decir Blumenberg, que no es meramente histórica sino estructural.   Esto lleva a Blumenberg a una afirmación de carácter fundamentalmente nietzscheano, y criticada por Heidegger como dependiente absolutamente de la comprensión del mundo como campo de expresión de la Voluntad de poder. Se trata de la división del mundo entre objetualidad propia (susceptible de certeza) y objetualidad potencial o artística, que dependería del entusiasmo estético—verdad en cuanto certeza y arte son dos facultades primarias de la Voluntad de poder. Dice Blumenberg: “The homelessness of metaphor in a world determined by disciplined experience can be seen in the uneasiness encountered by everything that does not meet the standard of a language that tends toward objective univocity. Unless it fits into the opposing tendency, as ‘aesthetic.’ This attribute provides the ultimate, and therefore completely unhampering, license for multiple meaning” (88-89).

Ese sentido múltiple se derivaría de una necesidad elemental de lo humano no colmable por pensamiento teórico o univocidad científica.   Para Blumenberg, una teoría de la noconceptualidad entiende esa “situación de necesidad” como necesidad de “racionalización de una carencia” (96).   La teoría se relaciona con esa racionalización de carencia “supplementing the consideration of what we should do to fulfill the intentionality of consciousness with a—more anthropological—consideration of what we can afford in the way of fulfillments” (96). En mi opinión este es un claro reconocimiento de que la capacidad crítica de la metaforología entendida como teoría de la noconceptualidad tiene un horizonte estrictamente antropológico y antropologista.

Y es desde ahí desde donde se produce el comentario sobre Heidegger, introducido mediante una curiosa referencia al principio de equivalencia general. Blumenberg nos cuenta que el dinero buscó “hacer presente el valor” buscando una conexión con el oro, pero que esa relación oro-dinero debía estar refrendada por la autoridad gobernante.   Pero que el símbolo, en todo caso, no está refrendado. “It maintains distance in order to constitute between object and subject a sphere of nonobjective correlates of thought, the sphere of what can be represented symbolically. It is the possibility of a mere idea having an effect—an idea as the sum of possibilities—just as it is the possibility of value” (98).

And then Blumenberg adds “or the possibility of ‘being’” (98).   De esta forma Blumenberg está ya introduciendo, no sé con qué grado de intencionalidad, una “valorización” del ser como monetización simbólica, lo cual sería, desde el horizonte heideggeriano, una operación altamente ilegítima.  Blumenberg parece acordar con el horizonte general del principio de equivalencia general en cuanto herencia de la Ilustración.   Y esta sería, en nuestra interpretación, una diferencia irreconciliable con los parámetros del pensamiento de Heidegger.

“Do we really understand what was meant by Heidegger`s fundamental ontological question about the ‘meaning of being’?” (98).    Blumenberg habla de un “truco” de sustitución mediante el que Heidegger eludiría la necesidad convencional de dar una definición al decir, en su analítica existencial, en Ser y tiempo, que el Dasein entiende ya siempre de antemano la noción de Ser, de hecho, que el Dasein es ante todo ese saber. Esto tiene implicaciones radicales, fundamentalmente en relación con el acceso al entendimiento de nuestros modos de conducta y sus implicaciones. “That is why the being of Dasein is care, care implies time, and time implies being. Such an answer relates to none of the objects that we know, nor to their totality as a world like the one in which we live. That existence is being-in-the-world means precisely that the world of this ‘being-in’ is not composed of ‘objects’ but cannot be grasped in metaphors either” (99).

Me parece que la descripción de Blumenberg de las implicaciones de la determinación heideggeriana de la diferencia ontológica es correcta en su mayor parte–de nuevo, mis dudas ocurren en el momento de intentar entender por qué esas implicaciones constituirían un problema para Blumenberg. “Heidegger posited an enmity between his question about being and positive scientificity, and this enmity was supposed to be more deeply fundamental than that between intuition and concept, between metaphor and formula. But for this relationship too . . . it is true that the question concerning the ‘meaning of being’ can affect or even occupy us only because the question concerning the conditions of existence is neither decided nor even influenced by it” (100).   No puedo entender a qué remite la expresión “conditions of existence” en Blumenberg, porque me parece que la pregunta por el sentido del ser, o más bien dicho, la noción de la diferencia óntico-ontológica, afecta drásticamente nuestra relación a cualquier posible determinación de “conditions of existence.”

Eso no es trivial, pero puede ser la indicación de un diferendo, de una diferencia irreconciliable entre Heidegger y Blumenberg.  Pero en cualquier caso creo que Blumenberg acierta en casi todo en lo que sigue: “Nothing can be ‘represented’ metaphorically if all elementary modes of behavior towards the world find their original totality in care, whose ontological meaning lies in temporality, which in its turn is probably the unfolded horizon of an ultimate radicality whose designation may be arbitrarily exchangeable (I would also express a caveat concerning this last phrase: the arbitrary exchangeability is mere errancy: factical, yes, but not warranted). To this, the strictest prohibition on metaphors applied” (101)

Pero no es asunto de “la más estricta prohibición,” sino más bien de la necesidad de la destrucción de la metáfora, y del trabajo sostenido en la destrucción de la metáfora y de la historia de la metáfora en el sentido técnico específico de la noción de ¨destrucción” en Heidegger, puesto que la metáfora, en cuanto mediada por la historia de la metafísica o por la historia del ser en su manifestación metafísica, cubre y oculta la posibilidad misma de acceso a la diferencia ontológica.

La demetaforización, que es ónticamente imposible en última instancia, es todavía sin embargo una parte necesaria de la destrucción de la historia de la ontología, tanto de la ontología conceptual como de esa otra ontología no conceptual que forma parte de la ideologización del mundo de la vida.  Blumenberg parece indicar que esto es un error, pero sólo sus presuposiciones, que no son las de Heidegger, pueden justificar su posición.

Joan Stambaugh, the translator and editor of the volume The End of Philosophy, where both texts by Heidegger are included, warns that “overcoming” does not mean “left behind and defeated,” rather “incorporated” and somehow neutralized, as one may perhaps do with a flu. Metaphysics has already done it to Being—Being is incorporated and neutralized through the history of metaphysics, which is why metaphysics is also the history of the forgetting of Being.

Metaphysics rules today, unconditionally, determining what is real and its objects.   But, from a certain perspective, this also means that it has entered its ending, which “lasts more than the previous history of metaphysics” (85).

At the terminus of metaphysics, man is defined as the working stiff, animal laborans, itself objectified as mere will to will.

At the time of completion there is a decline: “a collapse of the world characterized by metaphysics” and a “desolation of the earth stemming from metaphysics” (86).

A metaphoric sedimentation has taken place historically, at the end of which “Man wills himself as the volunteer of the will to will, for which all truth becomes that error which it needs in order to be able to guarantee for itself the illusion that the will to will can will nothing other than empty nothingness, in the face of which it asserts itself without being able to know its own completed nulllity.”

[Esta es una frase perfectamente nietzscheana. Esa “empty nothingness” es en mi opinión el resultado de la gran acumulación metafórica de la modernidad, que es también su reducción máxima al principio de, por ejemplo, excelencia universitaria: si usted es un profesor excelente, usted publicará durante el resto de sus días no menos de tres ensayos y dos cuartos al año en revistas indexadas de al menos 7.38 puntos de estimación, y sus evaluaciones de enseñanza en ningún caso bajarán del 4.562. Lo demás no importa, para eso están nuestra tolerancia y generosidad democrática ejemplares. El corazón de la metáfora, como ya Nietzsche intimaba en el texto sobre Verdad y mentira, es la sedimentación de la gran mentira que pasa por verdad histórica, y la verdad histórica del momento (el error que necesitamos para mantener la ilusión, etc.) es por lo pronto el produccionismo excelentista. Que podríamos desmetaforizar sin que eso implique en absoluto desmemorización ni desmundianización, todo lo contrario.]

Heidegger goes briefly into the history of modern metaphysics—Descartes, Kant, Hegel. “The completion of metaphysics begins with Hegel’s metaphysics of absolute knowledge as the Spirit of will” (89).   The countermovement that follows Hegel—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, but also Marx—“completes” Hegel, completes the completion. The thought of “value,” and of Being as value as a condition of the will, accomplishes metaphysics [Heidegger never says it, but value is the condition of the principle of general equivalence. General equivalence is at the same time a condition and a determination of the world understood as will to will].

But—at the time of completion, the ontological difference, the memory of an alternative figuration, veiledly appears. “Together with the beginning of the completion of metaphysics, the preparation begins, unrecognized and essentially inaccessible to metaphysics, for a first appearance of the twofoldness of Being and beings. In this appearance the first resonance of the truth of Being still conceals itself, taking back into itself the precedence of Being with regard to its dominance” (91).

If “destiny” is the granting of the ontological difference, metaphysics wards it off.   The lack of destiny is the unhistorical.   Completed metaphysics throws up an unhistorical unworld ruled by technology, understood as objectified nature, the business of culture, manufactured politics. (93)

Representational-calculative reason (the form of reason consistent with the principle of general equivalence, although Heidegger does not talk about general equivalence) is technology’s reason.   Driven by will to power, which is will to will.   This is the scaffolding of the order of the earth: truth as certainty and stability, art as enthusiastic push and drive.

“But with the end of philosophy, thinking is not also at its end, but in transition to another beginning” (96). “Philosophy in the age of completed metaphysics is anthropology” (99).   One could choose—either anthropology or a preparatory thought for another beginning.

Let`s think of this not as it related to Heidegger´s own time, or more specifically to the 1936-46 period when these notes were composed.   Let us think of it as related to today.   For instance, as pertains to US electoral politics for 2016 as reported in yesterday’s New York Times (Jan 27, 2015), in an article about the Koch brothers’ fund directly to influence elections. Heidegger says that representational-calculative reason, guided by the principle of equivalence (although he does not say it), is “the ubiquitous, continual, unconditional investigation of means, grounds, hindrances, the miscalculating exchange and plotting of goals, deceptiveness and maneuvers, the inquisitorial, as a consequence of which the will to will is distrustful and devious toward itself, and thinks of nothing else than the guaranteeing of itself as power itself” (100-01).

This aimlessness is called “mission” (or sometimes “vision,” and often “strategic plan.”)

And here comes the Heideggerian radical indictment of all (modern) politics, hence the first historical opening into explicit infrapolitics as the thought of the ontological difference. This is an important text, and very unusual in the Heideggerian oeuvre: “The struggle between those who are in power and those who want to come to power: On every side there is the struggle for power. Everywhere power itself is what is determinative. Through this struggle for power, the being of power is posited in the being of its unconditional dominance by both sides. At the same time, however, one thing is still covered up here: the fact that this struggle is in the service of power and is willed by it. Power has overpowered these struggles in advance. The will to will alone empowers these struggles. Power, however, overpowers various kinds of humanity in such a way that it expropriates from man the possibility of ever escaping from the oblivion of Beings on such paths. This struggle is of necessity planetary and as such undecidable in its being because it has nothing to decide, since it remains excluded from all differentiation, from the difference (of Being from beings), and thus from truth. Through its own force it is driven out into what is without destiny: into the abandonment of Being” (100).

Abandonment of Being, in the double genitive sense.   Nihilism in the completion of metaphysics.   Heidegger now says something unexpected: against so much “machination” a “pain must be experienced and borne out to the end.”   It is a curious pain: the pain of the lack of need.   It needs to be understood, Heidegger says, that experiencing “lack of need is the highest and most hidden need” (102).

Heidegger now engages in a long rant on global war, which foresees Carlo Galli’s recent determination of the concept. “The question of when there will be peace cannot be answered not because the duration of war is unfathomable, but rather because the question already asks about something that no longer exists, since war is no longer something that could terminate in peace” (104). Beings are out everywhere for consumption as raw material, and war is the name for the consumption.   For that, “leaders” emerge everywhere, in the various “sectors,” including the university sector, or the poetry sector, or the culture sector.   But leaders are only “the necessary consequence of the fact that beings have entered the way of erring in which the vacuum expands which requires a single order and guarantee of beings” (105).

And Heidegger also engages in a rare diagnostic of the division of the world between superhumanity and subhumanity, hegemony and subalternity, using the category of “instinct,” which seems to take us back to Alexander Kojève’s meditation on the end of history into animality: “Instinct is the superescalation to the unconditional miscalculation of everything. It corresponds to superhumanity. Since this miscalculation absolutely dominates the will, there does not seem to be anything more besides the will than the safety of the mere drive for calculation, for which calculation is above all the first calculative rule. Until now, instinct was supposed to be a prerogative of the animal which seeks and follows what is useful and harmful to it in its life sphere, and strives for nothing beyond that. The assurance of animal instinct corresponds to the blind entanglement in its sphere of use. The complete release of subhumanity corresponds to the conditionless empowering of superhumanity. The drive of animality and the ratio of humanity become identical” (106).

What remains is an ordering as the form of guaranteeing aimless activity. “This circularity of consumption for the sake of consumption is the sole procedure which distinctively characterizes the history of a worl which has become an unworld. ‘Leader natures’ are those who allow themselves to be put in the service of this procedure as its directive organs on account of their assured instincts. They are the first employees within the course of business of the unconditional consumption of beings in the service of the guarantee of the vacuum of the abandonment of Being” (107).

Heidegger ends by warning that “no mere action will change the world” (110). Something else is needed.   In the meantime, and we might as well think here about global warming, which was not present for Heidegger as a demonstrable phenomenon, “the desolation of the earth begins as a process which is willed, but not known in its being, and also not knowable at the time when the being of truth defines itself as certainty in which human representational thinking and producing first become sure of themselves. Hegel conceives this moment of the history of metaphysics as the moment in which absolute self-consciousness becomes the principle of thinking” (110).

Something else is needed.   A process of Andenken, or recollection, Heidegger will call it, which is also a step-back from the unworlding of metaphysics.  That will be for Part II of this commentary.

We could start by assuming that Jacques Derrida´s “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy” (1971) is boring, and laboriously says many things we have come to understand and accept long ago. So it is a text that has grown performatively boring over the years. It is no longer possible, perhaps, to understand its novelty, what could have made it exciting in the first place, and this is the mark of its own success.   So be it.

But is there something in it that might still be properly productive, that might still speak in a defamiliarizing way, that might still incorporate metaphors in action, that may be itself more than white mythology?

The difference between “metaphors in action” and “metaphors that have been effaced” is traced back to Hegel as its more explicit provider: “the movement of metaphorization (the origin and then the effacing of the metaphor, the passing from a proper sensible meaning to a proper spiritual meaning through a figurative detour) is nothing but a movement of idealization. And it is covered by the master category of dialectical idealism, namely sublation (Aufhebung), that is, that memory which produces signs and interiorizes them (Erinnerung) by raising up, suppressing and conserving sensible exteriority” (25).   Derrida says that this procedure describes “the possibility of metaphysics,” since the schema just mentioned will resolve the opposition “between nature and spirit, nature and history, or nature and freedom, an opposition genealogically linked to that between physis and its opposites, and at the same time to that between the sensible and the spiritual, the sensible and the intelligible, the sensible and sense itself” (25).

In a footnote to that passage Derrida says that it “explains Heidegger’s distrust of the concept of metaphor,” and quotes Der Satz vom Grund: “Once the distinction between the sensible and the non-sensible is recognized to be inadequate, metaphysics loses its authoritative role as a mode of thought . . . The metaphorical exists only within the boundaries of metaphysics” (25-26, n. 22).

This is perhaps the general, not so explicit framing of the essay.   If it is a matter of dwelling within the end of metaphysics, what are we to do of metaphor?   Let us take an objection to the Hegelian Aufhebung, as it resolves too much, at great cost, and we are no longer willingly paying the cost.   Then what?   If the metaphorical exists only within the boundaries of metaphysics, can we afford to step out of metaphor? Can we abjure metaphor? Can we demetaphorize terminally?   Would that be our only way of dissolving “this sleep of philosophy”? (29)

It is not until many pages later, in Section V of the essay, that the question gets picked up again, at first under a rhetorical question (we can see from the beginning that the answer is going to be “well, no, forget it”): “Might we not dream . . . of some meta-philosophy, of a more general level of discourse which would still be of a philosophical kind, on ‘primary’ metaphors which open up philosophy?” (61).

The question comes up whether there is necessarily a metaphysical destination of all metaphorology—“the same physis, the same sense (sense of being as presence or, what comes to the same, as presence or absence), the same circle, the same fire of the same light that is manifest or hidden, the same turning of the sun” (68). Well, yes, take Descartes. The tenor of his onto-theology will always return to “the circle of the heliotrope” (69), the dominant metaphor, lumen naturale in his case: “a presence disappearing in its own radiance, a hidden source of light, of truth and of meaning, an obliteration of the face of being—such would be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor” (70).

And yet sublation occurs, and sublation is the final taming of metaphor, its effacement. “Metaphor is included within metaphysics as that which should penetrate to the horizon or to the depths of the proper, and in the end there regain the origin of its truth. The turning of the sun is then seen as a reflecting circle, returning to itself with no loss of sense, no irreversible expenditure” (71): “This end of metaphor is not understood as a death or dislocation, but as an interiorizing anamnesis, a recollection of meaning, a sublation of living metaphoricality into a living property” (72).

But there is another end of metaphor. Derrida is very brief about it.   It says of it that, in contrast with the previous end, in which “the death of philosophy is the death of a particular philosophical form in which philosophy itself is reflected on and summed up and in which philosophy, reaching its fulfillment, comes face to face with itself” (74), in this second end there is “the death of a philosophy which does not see itself die” (74).

If the first end is associated to Plato or Hegel, the second one is associated to Nietzsche or Bataille.   To their different “heliotropes” (74).   Something breaks down in the second one: “Self-destruction here still has the form of generalization, but in this case it is not a matter of extending and confirming a philosophical notion, but rather of deploying it in such a way, without limit, that the borders of what is proper for it are torn from it; consequently the reassuring dichotomy between the metaphorical and the proper is exploded” (74).

The explosion of the heliotrope—it is hard to see it as a goal of philosophy. It happens when a philosophy “does not see itself die,” Derrida says little else. It is the other end of metaphor in philosophy, the one that will not be sublated into heliotropic reconciliation.

I wonder whether the enterprise of demetaphorization, understood as the attempt to push past metaphor in metaphysics, impossible and unfinishable, ceaseless and necessary as it may be, can only cor-respond to the darker heliotropic activity.   There is no demetaphorizing the circle of the first heliotrope. It would be a waste of time.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pc/12322227.0006.013?view=text;rgn=main

Comments Welcome:

Hispanic Studies 640-400: History of Ideas in the Hispanic World. Thinking Infrapolitics: Martínez Marzoa, Sánchez Ferlosio, García Calvo.

Instructor: Alberto Moreiras

Office: 204A Academic Building

Email: moreiras@tamu.edu

Term: Spring 2015

Meeting Days: Wednesdays 5:45-8:35.

Seminar Room: ACAD 224

Office Hours: Wednesdays 2:00-4:00, or by appointment.

Description and Learning Outcomes

The Infrapolitical Deconstruction project, which some of us both at Texas A&M Hispanic Studies and in the field at large launched in the early Spring of 2014, is advancing through social network conversations, blogs, and publication projects.   This seminar, the second one in a projected series, attempts to contribute to it by thematizing the work of three of the most significant Spanish thinkers of the second half of the 20^th century (and into the 21^st): the writer and essayist Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, the professor of classical philology, playwright, and committed anarchist Agustín García Calvo, and the Galician philosopher, now retired from the University of Barcelona, Felipe Martínez Marzoa.   This seminar, which does not presuppose knowledge of texts or discussions covered in the previous seminar, will attempt an in-depth familiarization with these thinkers’ main topics of engagement.   The overarching theoretical project for the seminar will be a consideration of the three thinkers’ position vis-à-vis the so-called Principle of General Equivalence at the ontological and political level.   If the Principle of General Equivalence can be said to constitute the most radical ontological foundation of modernity, having come to be understood as a supplement-substitution for the Hegelian dialectics of Absolute Spirit or the Nietzschean Will-To-Power, then it is important to understand how these three thinkers relate to it, and whether they do so from an interior or a destructive position.   Hence, the second overarching question: are these three thinkers engaged in a preparatory thinking for what we could call, following a Heideggerian notion, an Other Beginning of thought?   The questions are large, and we can only hope to embark on their path.   The path is, nevertheless, significant both for contemporary thought and for an understanding of any possible “philosophy of the future.”

Learning outcomes for this seminar are the following: 1) To obtain a contextual understanding of the position of the three thinkers in question within the field of contemporary post-metaphysical thought; 2) To become as familiar as possible with their written work and topics of engagement; 3) To produce significant interventions at a hermeneutic level.   This seminar means to foster publishable work from the students in the context of the ongoing preparation of a monographic journal issue or issues.

Suggested Reading

The oeuvres of the three thinkers under study are vast, and we cannot read it all. Whatever segments of their work we choose to read will inevitably imply some degree of arbitrariness. My proposal is that we take the following list of suggested readings as mere suggestions.   Our discussions will often center on them, after appropriate presentations, but our seminar encourages students’s initiatives for alternative readings and seminar presentations, which should be discussed with the instructor beforehand if they are to be offered as substitutes for suggested readings (no need for consultation if additional readings are above and beyond suggested readings.) We will initiate the seminar with some work by others that should help set the context. NOTE: for Beistegui, Schürmann, Malabou, students will be asked to read only one of them, not all three. The following list follows an approximate order of class discussion:

-Jean-Luc Nancy, After Fukushima. The Equivalence of Catastrophes. Charlotte Mandel transl. New York: Fordham, 2015.

-Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy. Joan Stambaugh transl.   Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1973.

-Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy. Christine-Marie Gross and Reiner Schürmann transl.   Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.

-De Beistegui, Miguel. The New Heidegger. London: Continuum, 2005.

-Cathérine Malabou, The Heidegger Change. On the Fantastic in Philosophy. Peter Skafish transl. Albany: SUNY P, 2011.

-Arturo Leyte, Heidegger. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2005.

-Felipe Martínez Marzoa, Heidegger y su tiempo. Madrid: Akal, 1999.

—. Ser y diálogo. Lectura de Platón. Madrid: Istmo, 1996.

—. Filosofía de El Capital, de Marx. Madrid: Taurus, 1983.

-Agustín García Calvo, Sermón de ser y no ser. Madrid: Visor, 1977.

—. Lecturas presocráticas. Madrid: Lucina, 1981.

—. Contra el tiempo. Zamora: Lucina, 1993.

-Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Vendrán años más malos y nos harán más ciegos. Barcelona: Destino, 1993.

—. Mientras no cambien los dioses, nada habrá cambiado. Barcelona: Destino, 2002.

—. El alma y la vergüenza. Barcelona: Destino, 2000.

Grading Policy

Seminar participation is expected to be ongoing, and based on seminar readings as well as other pertinent readings you may want to bring to bear on course discussions.   You will have a choice between submitting a final paper not to exceed 20 typewritten and double-spaced pages (which must include secondary bibliography consisting of at least ten sources), or producing during the semester three review essays of books authored by the thinkers under study of around 8 typewritten and double-spaced pages each (which must also include secondary bibliography).

Participation: 10%

Final Paper or Three Reviews: 85%

Attendance Policy

The student is granted the right to two unexcused absences. More than two unexcused absences will affect the participation grade in the class at the rate of 3% per missed seminar meeting. More than five unexcused absences will be reported to the Hispanic Studies Director of Graduate Studies for advice on an adequate course of action.

Syllabus

Weeks 1 to 3. Introduction.   Discussion of Nancy, After Fukushima; Heidegger, The End of Philosophy.

Week 4-5: Student Presentations: Beistegui, Schürmann, Malabou.

Week 6-7:  Leyte, Heidegger; Martínez Marzoa, Heidegger.

Week 8-9: Martínez Marzoa, Filosofía de El Capital; Ser y diálogo.

Week 10-11: García Calvo, Sermón; Lecturas presocráticas; Contra el tiempo.

Week 12-14:  Sánchez Ferlosio, Vendrán años; Mientras no cambien; El alma.

Summary Discussion.

NOTE: Given instructor’s professional travel commitments, one or two seminar meetings may need to be rescheduled.

Grading Scale

A: 90-100

B: 80-89

C: 70-79

D: 60-69

F: Below 60

American With Disabilities Act (ADA)

The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. Among other things, this legislation requires that all students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodation of their disabilities. If you believe you have a disability requiring an accommodation, please contact Disability Services in Cain Hall, Room B118, or call 845 1637. For additional information visit http://disability.tamu.edu

Academic Integrity

“An Aggie does not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.”

Upon accepting admission to Texas A&M University, a student immediately assumes a commitment to uphold the Honor Code, to accept responsibility for learning, and to follow the philosophy and rules of the Honor System. Students will be required to state their commitment on examinations, research papers, and other academic work. Ignorance of the rules does not exclude any member of the TAMU community from the requirements or the processes of the Honor System.

For additional information please visit www.tamu.edu/aggiehonor