THE HANDSTAND

SEPTEMBER 2003

 

A Critique:  Power has Accumulated
in a Polarity which
Philosophy must seek to Disempower!

In a discussion of Spinoza’s Ethics Gilles Deleuze observes:.."above all, there exist people who can only establish their Power on sadness and affliction, on the diminuition of the power of others, on the darkening of the world.  They institute a cult of sadness, of servitude or impotence,of death....The cries of the language of signs are the mark of this battle of the passions, of joy and sadness, of the increase and decrease of power."

To choose this quote above as the core of a meditation or discussion may seem to be a redundant project.  For it is presumed facile, now-a-days, to engage in a debate on the polarity of language and signs at this moment of Time, historically, when we are confronted with the "human nature" of acquisitive method in all spheres of life.

The solitude and perspective of the philosopher has now been crudely set aside, texts are now magnified on subjects of social significance concerning "human nature".  Philosophy is dumped on students as a perfected and wrapped up history, of which we are no longer in need.  Analysis of those historic texts is invited as the only project, and their clues to a history of political significance eradicated.  Why is it that academia desires to pull a fast one on these studies, and the students?  Has modern life become so restricted by its essentials as "fantasy" and an "indulgence in search of potentials", that real life linked to the natural conditions of the world has been voluntarily and perhaps unconsciously excluded from contemplation by both the mature and the scholars within our modern human existence?

I suggest, in fact, that the polarity of language and sign is all that is used intensively, at present, to describe and to analyse, a state of mind that is spread across all types of existence. It distresses the young mind into a fast forward mode that precludes serious meditation and radical thought.

Deleuze' discussion of Spinoza goes on to define the scholia that could intrude and liberate us from this scenario of general notions.... "Scholia inserted into the demonstrative chain...they have another style, almost another language. They operate in the shadows trying to distinguish what prevents us from reaching common notions and what, on the contrary, allows us to do so, what diminishes and what augments our power, the sad signs of our servitude and the joyous signs of our liberation.  They denounce the personae that lie behind our diminuition of power, those that have an interest in maintaining and propagating sadness, the despot and the priest. They herald the sign or condition of the new man, one who has sufficiently augmented his power in order to form concepts and convert his affects into actions."

The scholia by intruding their definitions break and desecrate the chain that binds us that is described  now as our insignia of western civilisation.  "Each scholium is like a lighthouse that exchanges its signals with others across the flow of demonstration."

One such a scolia quite different from that of art, is the impassioned cry, “That the impossible should be asked of me, good, what else could be asked of me?”

To achieve polarity is not hard, everything divides, a process of division inscribed in language. But not in the case of the acceptance of the challenge to the mind : the "impossible,” preface to the unknown. The sense that a human co-ordination of energies could reach a plateau of the joyful senses and know no longer what is next, and begin to understand the meaning of coincidental events, is irresistible in that challenge. This does not imply chaos, but the expansion of mental horizons. No similar co-ordination can be concentrated within grief or horror or within the modern "terror" concept, "it is either them or us". That the "impossible" is almost certainly the acceptance of burdens, of the irrational, but not reactionary, choice and decision, based on seemingly ephemeral reason, a challenge that is not a gamble, we cannot deny. The "impossible" is a word that cannot be divided into sections of the possible, these are the first steps into the unknown and despite the aggression that congregates suddenly, a sneer, as “Possible, is it?”, the veil closes around the surface of the first "impossible" impulse and all subsequent moves until a choice of disclosure is forced into the open by the successful structure of a new logic.

Is polarisation, and the exhaustion of emotion, the reason why the anti-war and anti-global groups find it now, difficult to survive and discuss the future since the outbreak of a war that subjugated their motivation?  Of the thousands on the streets before the war, where and what has caused the recession of that wonderful voice that declared “.... the Impossible logic of Peace is what we Demand”

Joy is not the immoderate passion of contrast – it is the affirmation of difference. That joy enhances the senses, indicates that the mind is gearing up toward a challenge.

The mistakes that group struggles evoke, including quarrels and discension indicate that the rigormortis of institutional polarities is occurring.  The only organisation that could possibly escape this, is one that queries of each member –“What is your personal challenge and sense of responsibility in this affair? Can you carry it out? Does anyone want to help here, and here, and here to share these differing aspects of Peace as a challenge? If you have the unknown step before you try it out…. If indicted, by the powers that be, you have a group that stands beside you.” 

These are essentially the projects of groups that know no political polarisation or social or racial polarisation. Unexpected acts and structures of future policy can and must be expected to appear from them.  Thus prescient theory on the “potential” of the group is inhibitive; and such groups must not be contained by rules, numbers and time equations. The only way forward is to recognise the joy of being.  The preserve of freedom, no less.

jos.braddell, editor