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Abstract
Revolutionary violence stems from the conatus of survival, from the appetite for life (Spinoza) and joy rather than from the desire to destroy and the hubristic pretension to punish (Žižek and Benjamin). It is an incursion of one's desire to affirm life and annihilate pain. Following Laruelle's methodology of nonstandard philosophy, I conclude that revolutionary violence is the product of an intensive expansion of life. Pure violence, conceived in non-philosophical terms, is a pre-lingual, presubjective force affected by the “lived,; analogous to Badiou's void (of the event in the absolute sense) and it is radically revolutionary. It is fundamentally different from Benjamin's lawmaking “divine violence; and its appropriations by Žižek. Revolutionary experience is inevitably translated into language. What preserves the revolutionary substance in a post-revolution political discourse is that it is constantly checked by the sense of fidelity to (; bearing witness to) the experience of the revolutionary event. Agamben, Benjamin, Schmidt and Žižek are discussed from an essentially non-philosophical stance, informed by Laruelle's theory that has been supplemented in some aspects by Badiou's concept of the pre-lingual event.
Notes
1 See Deleuze.
2 Badiou 173ff.
3 Benjamin I: 287.
4 According to Laruelle, it is precisely the radical dyad of Thought and the Real conveying the unbridgeable fissure between the two terms that, in its most fundamental impossibility, determines the possibility of Thought. Laruelle writes:
It is impossible, even in Freud and in Marx, and even more so within a philosophy, to find radical concepts of the Real and the uni-versal – solely the unconscious and the productive forces, desire and labor. As soon as one arrives at this discovery, psychoanalysis and Marxism gain one utterly new sense – a transformation of their theories into simple material […] These sorts of disciplines require more than just a simple theoretical transformation – a discovery from within a “non-” that would be the effect (of) the Real or its action
Il est impossible, même dans Freud et dans Marx, à plus forte raison dans une philosophie, de trouver les concepts radicaux du Réel et de l'uni-versel – seulement l'inconscient et les forces productives, le désir et le travail. Mais cette découverte faite, psychanalyse et marxisme en reçoivent après coup plus qu'un nouveau sens – une transformation de leurs théories comme simple matériau […] De telles disciplines exigent plus qu'une refonte simplement théorique – une découverte en “non-” qui soit un effet (du) Réel ou son agir. (Laruelle, Introduction au non-marxisme 61)
5 Žižek, Interrogating the Real 259–60.
6 Laruelle, Philosophie et non-philosophie 17.
7 Idem, Introduction au non-marxisme 47.
8 Žižek, On Belief 47.
9 Schmitt 36.
10 Agamben, State of Exception 24.
11 Ibid. 24–31.
12 Benjamin I: 287.
13 Ibid. 295.
14 Ibid. 297.
15 Ibid. 300.
16 Benjamin, Briefe I–II: 206/138 qtd in Agamben's State of Exception 61.
17 Ibid.
18 Cf. Laruelle, Introduction au non-marxisme 48.
19 Ibid. 47.
20 Laruelle, Philosophie et non-philosophie 46; idem, Théorie des identités 93ff.; idem, Introduction au non-marxisme 47ff.
21 Quoted in Agamben, State of Exception 61.
22 Benjamin II: 455.
23 Benjamin I: 287.
24 Ibid.
25 Žižek, Interrogating the Real.
26 Butler, Laclau, and Žižek.
27 Žižek, On Belief 120.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 See Laruelle, Théorie des Etrangers.
31 Idem, Introduction au non-marxisme 48.
32 Ibid.
33 See idem, Théorie des Etrangers.
34 Ibid.
35 Radical concepts are descriptive of the Real, “affected by its immanence,” and, hence, minimally determined by the transcendental; or, in Laruelle's words, the radical concept is established according to the following procedure:
On dira que la représentation, dans la vision-en-Un, est un reflet non-thétique ou non-positionnel (du) réel, qu'elle est descriptive, en dernière instance du moins, et non constitutive comme prétend l’être la philosophie. (Laruelle, Introduction au non-marxisme 57)
36 Žižek, Violence 193.
37 Ibid. 208.
38 Ibid. 210.
39
I term subjectivization the emergence of an operator, consecutive to an interventional nomination. Subjectivization takes place in a form of a Two. It is directed toward the intervention on the borders of the eventual site. But it is also directed toward the situation through its coincidence with the rule of evaluation and proximity which founds the generic procedure. Subjectivization is interventional nomination from the standpoint of the situation, that is, the rule of the intra-situational effects of the supernumerary name's entrance into circulation. It could be said that subjectivization is a special count, distinct from the count-as-one which orders presentation, just as it is from the state's reduplication. What subjectivization counts is whatever is faithfully connected to the name of the event. (Badiou 393)