keith ansell-pearson

8/11/2019 Keith Ansell-Pearson

1/15

Review: Freedom and the Politics of Desire: Aporias, Paradoxes, and ExcessesAuthor(s): Keith Ansell PearsonReviewed work(s):

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality by G. A. CohenMichel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom by Thomas L. DummDeleuze and Guatarri: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire by Philip GoodchildReal Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? by Philippe van Parijs

Source: Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jun., 1998), pp. 399-412Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191843

Accessed: 14/03/2010 14:42

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2/15

REVIEW ESSAY

FREEDOM AND

THE

POLITICS OF DESIRE

Aporias,

Paradoxes,

and Excesses

SELF-OWNERSHIP,

REEDOM,

ND

EQUALITYby

.

A.

Cohen.

Cambridge:

CambridgeUniversity

Press,

1995. 277

pp.

MICHELFOUCAULTAND THEPOLITICS

OF FREEDOM

by

ThomasL.

Dumm.

Thousand

Oaks,

CA:

Sage,

1996. 168

pp.

DELEUZEANDGUATARRI:N INTRODUCTION OTHE

POLITICS

OF

DESIRE

by

Philip

Goodchild.Thousand

Oaks,

CA:

Sage,

1996. 226

pp.

REALFREEDOMFORALL:

WHAT(IF

ANYTHING)

CANJUSTIFYCAPI-

TALISM?

y

Philippe

Van

Parijs.

New

York:Oxford

University

Press,

1995.

322

pp.

These four books

indicate that

political

theorizing

n

the

English-speaking

world s

in a

healthy

and

ively

stateand

hat

new

conceptual

ools for

working

through

the

anxieties and

uncertaintiesof our late

modern times are not

lacking.

With the

exception

of van

Parijs,

he books

underreview

are

keen

to

place

the notion of

freedom,

as

inherited

by

us

from

both

the liberal

and

Marxian

traditions,

under

suspicion.

It is

probably

Nietzsche who

best

captures

the sense of

disorientation

many political

theorists

currently

eel

abouttheir nheritanceDummmakesmuchof theseriousnessof Nietzsche's

death of

God thesis

with

its

vertiginous

descent into the

abyss).

The

experience

of

nihilism

refersto the

experience

of a

disjunction,

n

which our

actual

experience

of

the world and

the

conceptual

vocabulary

we have

at our

disposal

for

making

sense of it no

longer

fit

together.

As is well

known,

Nietzsche's

response

o

this

predicament

not

necessarily

modern)

was

to

call

for

a

revaluation

of all

values,

subjecting

our

metaphysical

and

moral con-

cepts

to a

supreme

elf-examination. This

experience

of

nihilism,

which

exists

in

excess

of the

opposition

of

negative

and

positive,

or

good

and

bad,

seems to definewell ourtroubled ontemporaryense of freedom,and t finds

POLITICAL

THEORY,

Vol.

26 No.

3,

June

1998 399-412

?

1998

Sage

Publications,

nc.

399


3/15

400

POLITICAL

THEORY June 1998

articulation,

lbeit n

very

different

ways,

in

these books under

review. In

the

last hundredor so years,we have seen a revolution n thought akeplace in

the wake of the modem masters of

suspicion

(the

unholy

trinity

of

Marx,

Nietzsche,

and

Freud),

and once this

trajectory

f

thought

s

enhancedwith

the likes

of

Deleuze,

Derrida,Foucault,

and

others,

he

question

can no

longer

be

avoided:

what is the

status,

in both

the

ontological

and

axiological

dimensions,

of such a centralandcrucial

notion

n our

mental

andscape

ike

self-ownership ?

t

is

impossible

to remainnaive or

complacent

about the

status

of

this

notion,

the one that is

perhaps

definitive of the

triumph

and

tragedy

of

the

West,

but also

the

one

that

has

been

placed

in

peril

by

the

new

postmetaphysics.

The link between theeventof nihilismand the

calling

into

question

of the value

of

self-ownership

ies in

the

fact that

nihilism

signals

the end of

our

anthropocentric

aivete,

in which

the human

was

posited

as

the

meaning

and

measure of all

things.

Furthermore,

he notion of

an

autonomous

agent

n

possession

of miraculous

powers

of

autoproduction

nd

in

control

of its

own

destiny

has

been undermined

by

key trajectories

of

modern and late-modem

thought,

which

have

sought

to

show the heterono-

mous

determination

f

subjectivity,

whetherthese determinations

ake the

form of history, echnics,the transcendentalnconscious,orcapital.Itis with

these

thoughts

n mind that

I

shall

approach

he books

I

have

been asked to

review.

Thomas Dumm

has

written what

is

on the

whole an excellent

book on

Foucault

for the

Modernity

nd Political

Thought

eries edited

by

Morton

Schoolman.

It

reveals a

scholarly

intelligence

in

possession

of a nuanced

late-modern

sensibility.

Anyone

who has

any

doubts as to the

lasting

bril-

liance

of Foucault's

hought,

and ts

relevance o

political

theory,

houldread

this first-ratepiece of work. For what comes across most from Dumm's

skillful

reconfiguration

f

his

oeuvre,

s

the sense that

here

was a

philosopher

of

great

daring,

courage,

and

ntegrity

who made

one of the most

original

and

provocative

contributions

o

the

way

we think

aboutour ives

in the twentieth

century.

Foucault

was a

thinker not afraid

to take

risks,

and who never

remained

complacent

about

his own attainments

n

thought.

He was a

minor writer

n Deleuze's sense

of the

word,

that

is,

a thinker

who never

analyzed

the

marginal

and

dispossessed

of

society-madmen,

delinquents,

prisoners,

perverts,

and the

homeless-from

the

superior

moral

standpoint

of

the

majority,

ut

who

sought

o

tap

nto theiroften silent andautisticvoices

and

to utilize

the

experience

of the minor

so as

to

arrive

at a

more

dynamical

and

dangerous

conception

of

freedom-dangerous

in

the

sense that it

lives

in

excess,

esteems

transgression,

nd

engages

in

self-experimentation.

This

is not so much

an

aestheticization

f

the

ethical,

a

charge

requently

and

azily


4/15

Pearson REVIEWESSAY 401

leveled

at Foucault's

late

work,

but more

of

a nonhuman

or

overhuman)

ethics. Dumm shows that Foucaultwas committedto the constructionof a

set of

practices

n which

self-experimentation

an be cultivated

beyondgood

and

evil.

Such

practices

engage

in excess and

transgression

but do not

eschew concerns

with

responsibility

nd

commitment.The

emphasis

s on

learning

the

meaning

of these notions

through

ived

experiences

where

the

identity

of

the

self

is not taken

as

given

and

where

self

and other

come into

being

through

processual

nteraction.

n

Foucault's

ransgressive

philosophy

of the

Outside,

the other

is to be treatedas one's

consumingpassion. '

As

Deleuze

wrote: To

eat and to

be

eaten-this

is the

operational

model of

bodies,

the

type

of their mixture n

depth,

theiraction and

passion,

andthe

way

in

which

they

coexist

with each other. 2

Dumm's

study

will

makean deal introduction

or

anyone

new to Foucault.

It

has

been

deftly

constructed,

t is written

with

care,

precision,

and

passion,

and

t

succeeds

n

enabling

he reader

o embark

pon

a radical

elf-questioning

concerning

the notion

of freedom.

The book

is divided into four

chapters.

The first

chapter

ays

out the

question

n the context of a

consideration

f our

liberal and

Marxian

heritage.

The second

chapterapplies

the

problematic

of

freedomto thequestionof space, dealingwith the loss of space,the sense

of new

spaces

such

as

cyberspace, utopian space,

Foucault's

heterotopias,

and it

contains

a

superb

critical

reading

of Isaiah Berlin's canonical

and

much-cited

essay

on the two

concepts

of

liberty.

This

part

of

the book should

be set

reading

for those

theorists rained

n

the

analytical

raditionand who

champion,

blindly

and

naively,

the cause of

good

sense and

common sense

in

philosophical

hinking.

His

basic

argument

ontra

Berlin,

to whom Dumm

is

remarkably

haritable t

should be

noted,

s to insist

that

the

assumption

of

a neutral

pace

of freedom

viz.

Berlin's

argument

n

favor

of

negative iberty)

betrays he inherent nstabilityof such a spacewhenvalorizedas anabsolute

category.

The

third

chapter

s devoted to an

exposition

of one of

Foucault's

most

seminal

texts

Discipline

and

Punish,

while

the fourthand

final

chapter

considers what

new

senses

of

freedom

might

be

possible

afterthe

demise

of

the

disciplinary

society

and locates in the

Holocaust

writings

of Primo

Levi

a

model

for a

modern

versionof the careof the

self

(it

was

possible

to cultivate

practices

of freedom

even in

the death

camps).

Dumm's text

is not without

problems.

He has a

tendency

for

the

pithy,

which,

at

times,

tested this

reader's

patience

and which allowed

the

quasi-

existentialistvoice

of the author o arrest

he flow

of

the

imaginative

exposi-

tion,

such as

when he

brazenly

declares at the

end of the

book that

a

world

without domination s

the

telos

of

genocide

(a

sentence that s too

pithy

for

its

own

good).

This kind of

homespun

philosophy

is

not to

my

taste,

but it

may

be fine for other readers. He also runs

the

danger

of

simplifying

or


5/15

402

POLITICALTHEORY June

1998

eviscerating

he

challenge

of

Foucault's

conception

of new

ethical

practices

by makingit far too palatable, orwhile thesepracticesareindeedintended

to

display

generosity

oward he

Other r

otherness hat

s

both

inside

and

outside

of

oneself,

it also needsto

be

acknowledged

hat

such

practices

annot

escape

the dimension

of

cruelty.

The Foucault hat

emerges

romthis

probing

study

is a

deeply

historical hinkerbut not a

historicist.While

exposing

the

contingent

and

open

natureof social

practices

and ethical

norms,

Foucault

always

held thatsites

of resistance

and

self-overcoming

were

ocatablewithin

power

relationships;

ndeed,

for

him,

transgression

s never

simply

an

escape

but

always

an

entirely

contextualand relational

affair.The care

of the self'

advocated

by

the late Foucault

requires

no 'hard'notion of the self, the self

is

always

a

fragile

achievement,

engaged

in

a fluid

becoming,

a

processual

'self-overcoming

(this

is the

paradox

of Nietzsche's doctrine of 'how

one

becomes

what one

'is':

the

self

'is'

nothing

otherthan ts

becoming).

Dumm

succeeds

in

showing

the extent to which freedom for Foucault is

always

situated

and

situational,

constrained

by

social relations and

involving

the

mediation

of external

forces. The forces

of the outside are never

fully

present

or

determinable,

nd so serve to

guarantee

hat

the

self is

compelled

to alwayslive beyonditself.3Any nonutopian ision of freedomforDumm,

therefore,

must

comprehend

he

constitutive

powers

that situate t.

Dumm

has conceived

his

re-working

of Foucaultand

freedom

as

making

a

positive

contribution

oward

a

revitalizationof liberal

theory.

But

what

transpires

s a

major

testing

of our liberal

heritage

in which

many

of its

fundamental

notions

are

found

wanting.

His

critique

of

Berlin

could

quite

easily

be

extended

to once-called

postmodern

iberals such as Richard

Rorty:

In

presenting

space

as

neutral,

Dumm

writes,

Berlinmakes

it

the

ground

of freedom.

To establish his

space

as the

ground

s to render

t

outside

of contestationorstruggle.Spaceis uncontestable s a neutralground o the

extent

that

one is

prevented

rom

questioning

ts

production

or

recognizing

that

he

production

f

space

s

always

already

n

architectural

nterprise p.

48).

In

short,

he

liberal

conception

of

freedom,

as

articulated

romBerlinto

Rorty,

is incoherent

and

devoid

of

any

real

meaning

or substance.

Because

of

their

failure to

appreciate

he

importance

of contest and

struggle

in

the ethical

praxis

of

freedom,

iberals

end

up

positing

a

non-politics

of

freedom

(hence

the

significance

of

the

title

of Dumm's

book).

Of

course,

egitimations

of the

liberal

conception

of

freedom

requently

ake he

formof

a

historical

defense,

defending,

for

example,

the

sanctity

of

the

private

individual

against

the

totalitarian

hreat

of the

modern

State

(in

Rorty's

ate-modern

iberalism,

his

takes the

absolutist

form

of

stating

that the

practices

of

private

ironic

self-creation

can never

be

reconciled

with the demands

of

public

freedom).

But these

historical

arguments

imply

serve

to

highlight

the

largely

reactive


6/15


7/15

404

POLITICAL

THEORY June

1998

question

once and for all

Marxism's

commitment o a

communist

utopia

in

which thepromised andwould offerabundanceor allreadilyandaccessibly.

It is not

surprising

hatsuch a

model of

social life

hadno

sustained

onception

of the

political

(there's

nothing

to

contest in a

land

without

need or

want).

We now

need a differentvision in

which

we learn o

live in

symbiotic

relation

with

the resourcesof

the

planet

and

sharethem

equally.

This

requires

a

loss

of faith

in

any extravagant,

re-green

materialist

ptimism:

A

(supposedly)

inevitable future of

plenty

was

a

reason for

predictingequality.

Persisting

scarcity

s now a

reasonfor

demanding

t,

Cohen writes

in his

introduction.

Of

course,

one

could accuse him here of

committing

a

naturalistic

allacy

to

the extent that he ends

up

depoliticizing

such a crucial

question

concerning

resources:

plenty

and

scarcity

do not exist

independently

and

ahistori-

cally

of

the

mediating

realms of

economics

and

technologies,

so to talk of

them in the

way

that

he does is to

treat them as

reified

abstractions.

One

wished he hadn't

completely

ettisoned

his

former

materialist

raining

n the

desire to

engage

with our dearmoral

philosophers

over the

value of certain

values.

Of

course,

Cohendoes

recognize

thathis

argument

n favor of an

ecologi-

cal socialism faces a majorproblem.Is not a class society,or some kindof

society

of

divisions,

inevitableunder

conditions

of

scarcity?

n

other

words,

how can

one

argue

or socialism from

ecological

premises?

Cohen's

response

is to disown Marx's

optimism

about material

possibility

while at the

same

time

disowning

his

pessimism

about social

possibility

under

conditions of

nonabundance

nd self-denial.The

major

ask of a Marxian

political

thinker

then

is

one

of

defining

equality

n a

context of

scarcity.

n

fact,

the

emphasis

in

this

argument

hould not

be on

scarcity,

believe. For what is

clear is that

Cohen's

denial of

the abundance

hesis of

old,

pre-green

Marxism is

as

much,if notmore,a moralargumenthan t is aneconomic one. He holds the

position

that

we

have

no

right

to continue

exploiting

and

exhausting

the

resources

of the

planet

in the

way

that we

allegedly

are. It is not

simply

that

we

can no

longer rely

on

technology

to fix

things

for

us as

the Marxism

of

old led us to believe.

Cohen's

ecological

socialism commits him to a

position

of

securing

a

tight

control over

technology,

in both

its

inventions and its

directions.

If

not an old-fashionedMarxist

any

longer,

Cohen

remains an

old-fashionedhumanist

or whom man

enjoys supreme

moral value on the

planet.

So

while I have no

great

problem

n his

calling

into

question

he

notion

of

self-ownership,

I

do

have

major

problems

with his eco-socialist vision

since it could

all too

easily

generate

a new

moralauthoritarianismhat

might

provejust

as

damaging

to the

dangerous

and excessive

cause

of

freedom as

any previous

deological

movement,

such

as

that

of

the liberaland ibertarian

crusadeof

self-ownership.


8/15

Pearson

REVIEW

ESSAY

405

Cohen finds

self-ownership

a

pernicious

value notfor Foucauldian

thical

(or supra-ethical) easons but for ecologico-moralones. He rightlylocates

with the old Marxisma latentand

concealedcommitment o

the same

liberal

principle

of

self-valorization,

where

the sense of self and its

various

fulfill-

ments

are

rendered

unproblematic

nd its

importance

akenfor

granted.

The

libertarian

rinciple

of

self-ownership imply

statesthat

every

personenjoys

over

him-

or herself full and

exclusive

rights

of control

and

use,

owing

no

service

or

product

o

anyone

else that

they

have not

contracted o

supply.

Of

course,

such a

conception

of the

self or human

being

is

instantly

recognizable

as a fiction. There is

nothing God-given

about

it,

and it

rests on a

complete

depoliticization

of socialexistence. It is the

metaphysicalposition

par

excel-

lence,

offering

neithera

transcendental

eduction

n

Kant'ssense

of a critical

philosophy

nor a

convincing

empirical

or

historical

account of its own

naturalistic tatus.

Cohen is also

right

to

point

out

that:such a

conception

of

the individualrests on a

complete

disavowal of

the

autonomous

character f

nature tself: nonhuman

hings

are

granted

value

only

to the

extent that

they

serve the function

of

satisfying

individual

human needs

and

desires. Self-

ownership

is

an

invalid

principle

for

Cohen because

it

disavows both

the

mediationof natureand substantive ocial relations.He admits hathisessays

may

not

strictly

refute the thesis of

self-ownership,

but he

hopes

that

they

will

make it seem a lot less

attractive o

many.

This is a

strong

collection of

essays

that will

appeal

to

anyone

who has

been

following,

or

participating

n,

the debates

hathave

taken

place

over the

last decade

and more

surrounding

he

competing

claims

of

liberalism

and

communitarianism,

nvolving

defendersof

liberty

and

champions

of

equality,

and

requiring

novel

thinking

concerning

distributive

ustice.

Cohen

does a

lot of

good

work in

exposing

on the

social and

political

level

the

hollow

characterof the thesis of self-ownership.But he has failed,with this reader

at

least,

to

make his

alternative

eco-socialism

any

more

attractive han

the

liberal

gregariousness

t seeks

to

supersede.

Of the

books under

consideration,

an

Parijs's

s the

least

philosophically

interesting

and

inspiring.

No new

conception

of

freedom

s

offered,

and

the

value and

valorizationof

the

principle

of

self-ownership-that

it is a

desirable

end-in-itself and that

we all know

what

it

means-is

simply

taken

as self-

evident. This

may

be an unfair

criticism

to

make since

the

author's

concern

is

not with the

finer

points

of

ontology

but with

making

a

pragmatic

contri-

bution to

policy

studies. As the

book's

inner

acket

has

it: The

book is

not

just

an

exercise in

political

theory,

but

seeks to

show

what

the

ideal of

a

free

society

means in

the real

world

by

drawing

out its

controversial

policy

implications.

Of

course,

this

begs

all

the

questions:

what is

just

an

exercise

in

political

theory?

And

what s

this

talisman

being dangled

n

frontof

us

that


9/15

406 POLITICAL

THEORY June 1998

goes

by

the

name

of the

real

world ?Since

Parijs

does not

dwell on

these

points,neitherwill I, butswiftly move on to give thereadera sense of what

he

means

by

real

reedom

for all.

Parijs

opens

with two

uncontroversial

heses:

one,

that

capitalist

societies

aremarked

by

unacceptablenequalities

of

power

and

opportunities;

nd

two,

that freedom

is of

the

greatest

mportance.

One

of

the central

tasks of

the

book, therefore,

is

to

provide

a

concerted and

credible

response

to

the

libertarian

hallenge

hatwould claim

that hese two

convictions

are

mutually

exclusive

and that

one cannot have

both

real

liberty

and

equality

for

all.

If

we

value

freedom,

must we

necessarilygive

our

blessing,

whether

with or

withouta blind

eye,

to the

inequities

of the

presentsystem?

Is this the

price

we

pay

for our freedom?

It

is

certainly

not the

price

those who are

excluded

from

the

pleasures

of

this

freedom

pay.)

For

Parijs,

real

libertarianism

ntails

real freedom

for

all,

and

his

project

is

best

seen

as

an

enlightening

contribution

to

a

left-libertarianism.

The

opening

chapter

considers

the

question

of freedom

in

relationto

ideal-type

models

of

pure

socialism

and

pure capitalism.Chapter

2

unfolds the claim

that

the

regime

best suited to

attaining

he left-libertarian

deal is

one that

s

able to

afford,

and

mplement,

the highestsustainableunconditionalncome subject o the constraint hat

everyone's

formal freedom should be

protected. Chapters

3 and

4

then

attempt

to

respond

to the most

powerful objections

that could be raised

against

the

pursuit

of such an ideal.

Chapter

5 tackles

the

problem

of

exploitation,

aiming

to refute

the

objection

that the thesis of real

freedom

for

all cannot

serve as

a

model

of

social

justice

simply

because

it

insuffi-

ciently

takes

into account the

proper

basis

for an ethical

critique

of

capitalism,

namely,

an

outright

condemnation

of

exploitation.

The

final

chapter

oncludes

by

exploring

herelativemeritsof

capitalism

and

socialism

as social systems best able to actualizethe author's deal. Needless to say,

given

the author's

pragmatic

ent,

he

chapter

does

not

resolvethe issue

either

way

but

keeps

the debate

open,

preferring

reformist

ine that

commits itself

not to

any

outdated

model of

political

revolutionbut to

presenting

a

system-

atic

ethical

case for radical reform of

the

existing

system

through

the

introduction

f

an

unconditional

basic income.

The most

pertinent

question

to

ask

in

the context of

this

review

essay

would

seem to be this:

What does

Parijs

exactly

mean

by

real reedom for

all ?

What

exactly

does

freedom

enote

in

this schema?

The first

thing

to

noteis that

by

freedom

Parijs

means

something

neither

political

nthe

praxial

sense

nor

something

ethical

n the Foucauldian ense. For

Parijs,

both formal

freedom

(the

freedom

guaranteed

y

property

ights)

and

real

freedom

to

be

defined

shortly)

are

aspects

of

individual

reedom,

neither

of which has

any

relation to

collective

freedom

(whether

political

or

ethical)

except

in

an


10/15

Pearson

REVIEW

ESSAY

407

instrumentalist

ense.

These two senses

of freedom

constitute,

therefore,

a

solely negative iberty f contrastedwith, say, the libertyof the ancients.

Real freedom s the freedom

to do

whateverone

wishes

to

do,

rather

han

the freedom o

practice

what

s dictated

o one

(the

freedom

f moral

duties,

for

example)

or

autonomously

chosen

preferences

this

is

a

significant

point

since it does

give

a

degree

of

levity

to

real

reedomthat

would

alarm

any

self-respectingmoralizing

iberal).

Formal

reedom

presupposes

he

right

to

self-ownership,

while

real

freedom,

t

logically

follows

for

Parijs,

deals

with

the

constraints

upon

a

person's

purchasing

power

and even

their

genetic

makeup.

Real freedom hus

entailsnot

simply having

the

right

to do

what

one

mightwant to do butequallyhavingthe meansto achievewhat one wantsto

do.

However,

this

conception

of real

freedom

is

qualified-for

obvious

practical

reasons of limited

resources

and the

possibly

exorbitant

demands

that

would be

placed

on social

provisions-by

stating

that

the

opportunities

for

accessing

the means for

doing

what one

might

want to do

are

distributed

in

maxim in

fashion: Some can

have

more

opportunities

han

others,

but

only

if

their

having

more does not

reducethe

opportunities

f

some

of

those

with less. In

other

words,

institutions

must

be

designed

so as

to

offer the

greatestpossible real opportunities o those with the least opportunities,

subject

to

everyone's

formal

freedom

being

respected

p.

5).

Of

course,

on the

model of a

socialist

philosopher

ike

Cohen's,

the real

freedom

proposed

by

Parijs

must

remain

irredeemably

apitalistic

since it

never

questions

the

ontological

and

ecological

primacy

accorded to self-

ownership.

It comes close

to the

old

Marxian

fantasy

of

maximizing

the

opportunities

f

individual

reedom or

all

draped

n

new

garb.

n

fact,

Parijs's

vision

of

freedom s

resolutely

and

consistently

antipolitical.

He

pours

scorn

at the

compromise

dea thatone

could

combine he

freedomof

self-ownership

with full democraticownershipof publicgoods andutilities,indeed,public

ownership

of

the external

world in

general.

For

him,

this is

incoherent

ince

the

individualself

cannot

possibly

be

said to be

free

in

any

real

ense if

he

or she

cannot

breathe,eat,

move,

and so

on

without

he

prior

approval

of

the

political

community

hat

owns

everything

n

the

world

except

the

self.

Parijs

is

good

at

attacking

he

incoherenceof

these

kind

of

half-hearted

onceptions

of

freedom,

but his own

arguments

are

so

ontologically

impoverished

hat

his

thesis on real

freedom

for all

ends

up being

both dull

and

singularly

unattractive. n

the face

of such

a

platitudinous onception

of

the

self,

one

positively

embraces the

experimental-abnormal

even-freedoms

cele-

brated

by

the

likes of

Foucault.

The

great

rony

here s

that

defendersof

Parijs

would

probably

argue

hata

Foucauldian

practice

of

freedom s

nothing

more

than he

fantasy

of an

eliteor

deviant

minority

from

Athens o

San

Francisco)-

whereas,

n

fact,

it is this

conception

of

so-calledreal

freedom

or

all,

in

which


11/15

408 POLITICAL

THEORY June

1998

all the

emphasis

s

placed

on

private

ownership

of the

self and on the

private

ownership of externalobjects, which would serve to guaranteethat the

self-owned

individual

gets

shored

up

in a static and sterile

world of

private

fantasy.

Parijs

at one

point

accuses

normal libertarians

the

ones he calls

rights-fetishists )

f

being

seduced nto

offering

a moralized

conception

of

freedom

without

any

real substance

or

extensive

validity.

But he himself

is

guilty

of

offering

both

a

moralizedand

a

privatized

conception

of freedom.

In the

end,

therefore,

or all

its relevanceto concrete

policy

making

(and

I have

no doubt

that

it will

prove

to be

highly

relevant

n this

domain),

it is

the

lack of

ontological

magination

hat

seriously mpairs

he value of

Parijs's

intellectuallabors.He writes as if

modernity,

et alone

postmodernity,

had

never

happened

and

we could

talk about

freedomand

self-ownership

as

if

it

were 1789.

This

is

not to

say

that

he does not

recognize

he

peculiarly

modem

status

of the

thesis

of

self-ownership,

ince

he

clearly

does.

What s

missing

from

his

theorizing

is

any

recognition

of

the

philosophical

revolution of

modernity

and

postmoderity,

which,

as

we

approach

he end of

the twentieth

century,

might

egitimately

ead

in the direction

f some

kind

of

eco-socialism,

or,

alternatively,

n a

more

schizo

direction,

where

practices

of freedom

are

takento aplacewhere,to quotefromtwo

authorsdiscussed

below,

We

ain't

seen

anything

yet. 4

All of

this

brings

us

to

Deleuze

and Guattari

nd

their novel

and discon-

certing

attempt

o

map

out

the

complex

relationship

etween

capitalism

and

schizophrenia.

Deleuze

and

Guattari's

wo volumes

on this

topic-Anti-

Oedipus

1972)

and

A

Thousand

Plateaus

(1980)-remain

highly

controver-

sial

(there

would

be

something

wrong

f

they

ever

became

readily

assimilable

into

academic

practices),

and

as

yet,

they

have

not

had

any

major

mpact

on

Anglo-American

political

theorizing

(there

are

the odd

exceptions,

such

as

the workof WilliamConnollywhohasrecentlybegunto use their notionof

a rhizome

to rethink

he

politics

of

space

and

territory).5

n his

introduction

to

the

Politics

of

Desire,

Philip

Goodchild

provides

he first

systematic

study

of their

work

from

the

perspective

of

social

and

political

thought.

He

has

sought

to

carry

out

the

unenviable

ask

of

making

heir

deas

comprehensible

to

a

wide

audience

while

at

the same

time

remaining

aithful

to

the

mobile

and

intensive

character

of

their

lines of

thought.

The fact that

he has

only

partially

succeeded

in this

task

is

no small

achievement.

Deleuze

and Guattari

re

preeminently

ocial

and

political

thinkers

ince

they

construe

desire -the

fundamental

oncept

of theirfirst collaborative

work,

Anti-Oedipus-as

a

nonpersonal

orce

functioning

on

every

level

of

life

from the

biological

to the

social

and

the

technological.

Their

utilization

of the

notion

of

desire

an

readily

be

interpreted

s

metaphysical,

but

the

intention

is to

be

rigorously

materialist.

For

them,

desire

is

always

to

be


12/15

Pearson

REVIEWSSAY 409

thought

of

in

terms

of the

neologistic

couplet desiring-machines.

The

reality of desire precedes any distinctionbetween subject and object, or

between

ontology

and

epistemology (production

and

representation).

As

Guattari

nce

said in an

interview,

t is

everythingwhereby

he world and

its

affects

constitute

us outside of ourselves and in

spite

of

ourselves. It is

frequently

associated

with

some kind of

undifferentiated

magma,

but

this

is

to miss the

significance

of the

couplet desiring-machines,

which

is de-

signed

to

capture

he idea

of

permanent

low and of a

reality

hat s

constantly

dividing

and

inventing

tself anew.

Machines-whether

biological

functions

or

technological

artifactsand

prostheses-serve

to

arrange

nd

connectflows

of

production.

Moreover,

hey

do not

recognize

distinctionsbetween

persons

or

organs,

and between material luxes

and semiotic

ones

(all

codes

contain

a

margin

of

decoding

intrinsicto them because of

the fact

that

they

possess

a

surplus

value of code: chromosomal

DNA,

for

example).

It

was

a

concern

with the

politics

of

desire that

informed

Deleuze and

Guattari's

critique

of

antipsychiatry

and their

call for a

politicization

of

psychiatry

n

Anti-Oedipus.

For them the

experience

of

breaking

down is to

be an

experience

of

breaking-through.

heir

argument-contra

the likes of

the antipsychiatrists f the 1960s, such as R. D. Laingand David Cooper-

was to

insist that this

experience

be

intimately

inked

up

with

the social and

historical

reality

of

capitalism

o

that

o

separate

mental

alienationand

social

alienation s to

depoliticize

the

schizo-experience.

The

decoding

and deterri-

torializationof flows is what

defines the

process

of

capitalism

n

termsof its

fundamental

eality,

ts innermost

endency,

and ts

external

imit. At

the

same

time,

because

capitalism

s an

economic

system

based on

massive

antipro-

duction

(that

is,

producing

immense

surpluses

that

then

get

directed into

increased

policing,

militarization,

bureaucratization,

nd

general regulation

of society), it is subjectto a majorreterritorialization f the codes it has

decoded and the

flows it

has

unleashed.

Capitalism

onstantly

alls back

onto

the

invention of

neo-archaisms

and

maintaining

the

security

of

juridical

subjects

(the

fiction

of

persons

and

things)

so

as to

ward off

the

ultimate

tendency

toward

absolute

schizophrenia

it

shouldbe

apparent

hat his

term s

completely

de-medicalized

y

Deleuze

and

Guattari

and

refers

to the

social

experience

and

political

praxis

of

self-transformative

esire).

For

Deleuze and

Guattari,

herefore,

an

individual s

to be

conceived as

always

caught

up

in

assemblages

of desire

made

up

of

heterogeneous

com-

ponents;

indeed,

an

individual

cannot

be

thought

outside of

these

relations.

As

such,

the

individual s

neverthe

locus or

center

of

action.And

yet

Deleuze

and

Guattari

wish

to

valorize

freedom,

but

always

the

freedom

valorized is

the

nonhuman and

extra-human

kind,

which

belongs

to

desire.

Here one

might

take,

for

example,

as

an

analogy

with the

human

ndividual

of

modern


13/15

410 POLITICALTHEORY June

1998

thought,

the

biological organism.

Deleuze and Guattari

would claim that an

organism s alwaysthe functionof theframe nwhich it is encoded; t enjoys

no

privileged

existence

independently

of our

cognitive mapping

of

the

phenomenon

of life. Their later

conception

of

the

rhizome,

for

example,

contests

the idea that there exist

living systems

that are

informationally

closed.

A rhizome s a networkof

overlapping

erritories nd molecules

that

functions

as an

open system,

both

entropically

and

informationally,

nd that

designates

a constructive eedback

loop

between

independent

nformation

lineages

(whether

cultural,

inguistic,

or

biological germ

lines).

As

opposed

to conventional

phyletic

models, therefore,

hat

of the

rhizomedemonstrates

the extent to which

exclusively

filiative models of

evolutionaryphenomena

are

dependentupon exophysical

system

descriptions

hat

are

simply

unable

to account

for what is novel or

creative

within

evolutionary dynamics,

whether the

system

one

is

treating

is

biological

or social. Conventional

frames

thus

capture

only

a small

part

of the

possible

information that

assemblages

are able to

express.

Goodchild

has divided

his

Introduction

o Deleuze and Guattari nto

three

parts,

dealingrespectively

with

knowledge, power,

ndthe libera-

tion of desire. In part 1, he provides a useful outline of the principal

philosophical

influences

on Deleuze

(notably

Spinoza,

Nietzsche,

and

Bergson),

while

in

part

2 there s an instructive

and

intelligent

discussion of

the

ideas of

Deleuze and

Guattari

n

relation

o the

major

ntellectualmove-

ments of

the

century,

such as

structuralism,

econstruction,Marxism,

psy-

choanalysis,

feminism,

and

postmodernism.

The book concludes

with

some

speculations,

some

fanciful,

others

incisive,

on ethics and

becoming-

Deleuzean, which,

according

o

Goodchild,

nvolves

leading

a full and vital

life so as

to

escape

the

repetitive

movementsof the

death-instinct

this

claim

is based on a very poorreadingof Deleuze'sre-workingof Freud's nfamous

death-drive).

In

many ways

his book offers

a

refreshing

and

invigorating

account

of

Deleuze

and Guattari's

politics

of

desire,

and

it does so I

think

largely

because

of

its insistence

hat heir

project

was

a

positive

one

designed

to come

up

with

novel

images

of

positive

social

relations hat

would unleash

desire

from

its liberal

stranglehold,

eleasing

freedom

from its

privatization

and sanitization

n

bourgeois

society.

The ethical

guidelines

to be found

in

Deleuze,

and

they

are

indeed

nothing

more than

that,

are for Goodchild

the

expressions

of a

vitalist and

optimistic

philosophy,

in which each

wound

incurredn thetrialsof life constitutes

problem

or an affirmative thos-

one

has to

discover

how to turn

ts sad

passions

into active

joys (p.

208).

Throughout,

Goodchild

has striven

to

produce

a

reader-friendly

ext.

However,

his

attempt

to

be

overly

accessible

by

not

being

too technical

backfires

at

times.

For

example,

he

appends

at the

end of the book

a

glossary


14/15

Pearson

REVIEWESSAY

411

of

key

terms o

guide

the untutored

eader

hrough

he

thicketsof the

Deleuze

and Guattarirhizomatic unnels andpassagesof thought,but this has been

done

in

a far too cavalier

and

diosyncratic

ashion,

and

the

end result s

quite

abominable.

There is no substitute for

technical

precision.

Deleuze

and

Guattari's

ategories

need to

be treated

carefully

since

they

function n

quite

specific

contexts and

always

have a

material

dimension. The

concept

of

deterritorialization eans

something

quite specific

in relation

to the

logic

of

capitalism,

and

equally something specific

in

relation to their

under-

standing

of

the rhizomatic

evolution of

hominid

species

(where

it

serves to

explain

the transition o

bipedalism

via

the

deterritorializationf a back

paw

into a free, locomotivehand).InGoodchild's

glossary,

deterritorializations

risibly

renderedas

meaning leaving

home

and

traveling

n

foreign parts.

No

doubt

the author s

thinking

of Deleuze

and Guattari's

predilection

for

nomadic forms of

ethological

and ethical existence over

sedentary

ones,

but

even on this level the

description

s

lacking

in

precision:

need one

point

out

that

traveling

n

foreign

parts

also

happens

o be a

favorite

pastime

of fascist

brigades?

The

politics

that

emerges

from the

challenge

of

Deleuze and

Guattari s

clearlya politicsof freedom,but this is freedomconceived in a way thathas

never

been articulated

by

the

traditionof modern

thought,

whether

iberal,

Marxian,

or

libertarian.

n

contrast

o

a

politics

of

controlor

regulation,

hey

advocate a

politics

of desire that

allows

for

the

emergence

of

informal

networksor rhizomesbetween forms

of

life,

human

and

nonhuman,

n order

to

generate

maximumfreedomof

diversity

and

novelty-hence

theircham-

pioning

of nonhuman

ranssexuality

nd

polysexuality

as

well as their

nterest

in

the

symbiotic

possibilities opened up by

new

cybernetic

echnologies.

But

the

celebrationof the new

by

them

is

always

done in

the

context of a social

critique: why is it, they ask, for example, that the immense processual

potentials

brought

nto

being by

the

revolutions n

information

echnology,

biological

engineering,

elematics,

robotics,

and so

on lead

only

to a

revitali-

zation

of the

politics

of

control and

manipulation?

How

does one

resist an

oppressive

and

stupefying

mass-media

culture

and the

infantile

politics

of

consensualism

that

goes

with

it?

Postmoder

liberalism can

only

serve to

guarantee

a machinic

solitude for these

new

life-forms

since it

cherishesand

values

only

an

impoverished

and

infantilizing

subjectivity.

To

bring

this review

to a

close,

then. Few can

doubtthatwe

have

reached

something

of a

postmodern

impasse

in

our

conceptions

and

practices

of

freedom. Ethics

and

politics

have

perhaps

never

been more

demanding

or

us

moderns

ince we now

find ourselves

compelled

to think

aboutnew

values,

visions,

and

vistas withoutthe

support

or

aid of

transcendent

rinciples.

But

these

books,

each of which is

progressive

n

its own

way,

make one

confident


15/15

keith ansell-pearson

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