illuminé 1
To Señor Salsa, in response to Notes on the Struggle for Space in Bronze Age Mindset.
Hi Monsieur Salsa, I hope the season finds you in good health. On today my country celebrates an armistice, and yet I choose the moment take up arms. But if it were not time for war, why would I have my “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace?” (Ephesians 6:15)
Every just war begins with an unjust death, so I must begin by announcing that the king is dead. That is the same king Bodin had in mind when he noted: “it is said in this kingdom that the king never dies.” But of course we know the king may have two bodies.
Of course, this is a mystery. But give me a minute and I will explain the mystery of the two bodies.
1. fantaisie
There is a unique post-coital angst, when, dispossessed of desire, one wonders from where it came. Why does desire take this particular form? Will it ever arise again? After a momentous achievement in the arts or in politics we ask the same: is culture dead? Will we ever have the vivacity of the post-war world? Will we even continue to reproduce as a species, or are we slowly becoming number to everything, devoid of desire?
Why is there desire rather than no desire? Surely the tendency of the world is to let its energy peter out until we are frozen for eternity, finally bored to death of our own stamp-collecting.
And isn’t the Heidegger of An Introduction to Metaphysics the ultimate post-coital philosopher?
“…each of us is grazed at least once, perhaps more than once, by the hidden power of this question, even if he is not aware of what is happening to him. The question looms in moments of great despair, when things tend to lose all their weight and all meaning becomes obscured.”
But of course Heidegger was talking about the question of being, and clearly that is prior to the question of desire, isn’t it?
Heidegger makes a great effort here to center this question at the heart of philosophy, to make it “the first of all questions.” But isn’t that exactly what ideology is: the centering of one question? It is a well known fact that asking someone “what is the most pressing political question right now” is a better way to predict their alignment than asking them their stance on some particular issue, and of course this makes political differences largely irreconcilable. The best you can do is to convince your opponent that your question is “prior” to theirs, but there is no evidence or argument to appeal to if you want to prove such a priority.
Of course this is also the same structure as sexual fantasy. People for whom power is the central question may disagree on the outcome of the master-slave-dialectical calculus, but they agree on the framing of things. People for whom the central question is something else entirely will always have a sexuality illegible to these subs and doms.
There is still something very odd about this post-coital angst: it specifically comes after the departure of desire, yet its very ability to frame the world shows that it is fantasy and therefore must itself be a product of desire.
The first thing we notice about desire is that it always arises again. Even after death the desires of the flesh can arise. So there’s simply no need for angst: whatever may be the reason for this eternal recurrence of desire, it shows no sign of stopping. Then why the need to worry in the first place? Why would desire ever turn in on itself, to make the resurrection of desire the subject of its fantasy, when surely that will happen anyway? This is just a new incarnation of the Aztec dream that without a sacrifice, the sun would not rise again. (The dream which transmutes generality into repetition.)
This is the secret of desire: it is always bifurcated. Surely desire tends towards its own satisfaction, towards the “elimination of tension,” but all the same it tends toward prolonging the fantasy, even prolonging the state of tension. But these two halves of desire are contradictory: every fantasy is a dream of the end of the very same fantasy. If we are to know that deeper within us is the desire to prolong this fantasy, or worse to prop up another one in its place afterwards, would it not threaten the very fantasy itself? This is the essence of the psychoanalytic technique: by revealing this dark inner life of desire, which works to propagate itself anew after its own destruction, the fantasy of desire’s end is destroyed.
But this fantasy of Heidegger is a fantasy about the structure of fantasy itself: why does desire arise again? Why is there something rather than nothing? And there is no reason at all that we cannot treat Heidegger the same way that Freud treats Schreber, i.e. by reading his ontology as about desire. We can even say that Freud introduces an entirely new isomorphism. It’s typical to use an isomorphism to travel between epistemology and ontology, but Freud gives us a language of desire which works equally well. (And of course Žižek makes great use of this isomorphism without ever attempting to formalize it.)
It then follows that every work of metaphysics is a treatise of fantasy, and the question of whether it is a fantasy of fantasy can only be resolved by whether the work is posterior to some craft. Let me explain.
The metaphysical work is either a work of technology or pornography. That is to say, it is either (as it claims to be) in service of the reality principle, and therefore only an instrument for the libido, or it is directly in service of the libido as a work in itself. Clearly there is even some dispute as to which of these is the primary purpose of metaphysics to begin with. We remember Kant’s dry remark from the Prolegomena:
“Now I confess that I did not expect to hear from philosophers complaints of want of popularity, entertainment, and facility when the existence of a highly prized and indispensable cognition is at stake, which cannot be established otherwise than by the strictest rules of scholarly precision.”
Now it should be clear that any philosophy which is primarily in service of itself, or in other words which is meant to directly gratify desire (whether that be of the author or the audience) cannot be an authentic philosophy except in the situation where the desire to be satiated is the desire for truth in itself. So philosophy must always be either “the seal of God” or an instrument to aid in some practice. Now if we assume the latter, then we can deduce the craft from the instrument: the knowledge-instruments of all crafts are part of (inform) philosophical knowledge. Therefore the craft corresponding to philosophy must be the craft for which all knowledge is directly relevant (subsidiary). This craft is sovereignty.
So given any work of purported philosophy, we find ourselves with the following in some measure: a corrupted work, in service of satisfying base desires; a transmission of direct experience of truth (revelation); an instrument to aid in the craft of sovereignty. Now because all direct experience of truth is an aid in the craft of sovereignty, since of course no truth is irrelevant for such a craft, we can collapse the last two categories.
The truth of the matter is that for many the word philosophy has come to mean an incredible perversion, if not a series of perversions, associated with the worship of the application of reason, and in the worst cases the idea that knowledge comes solely from the application of reason. Philosophy has also come to mean linguistic output, and above all written output. This primacy of the medium is in no way aligned with the purpose knowledge-instruments.
For this reason I suggest the word illuminé for knowledge-instruments and their use. This word suggests two important things:
That the purpose of illuminé is to reveal truth that has been discovered. It is not a source of truth in itself, nor is it any particular method.
That, like in the case of illuminated manuscripts, different media may be useful.
2. réalité
Now to the mystery of the first body. You make a very strong indication in your essay:
“In other words, there’s a disjunction between “you” and your body, and I tend to believe that what’s uniquely human exists as the difference between “you” and your body.”
At first glance, you might seem like a good Lacanian. After all, desire constitutes the subject, and desire is equivalent to a lack, so we can prove “by algebra” that the subject is constituted by a lack. But the question I have for you is the following: why is the body specifically the origin of the lack which constitutes the subject?
I can think of many other alternative theories: the death of God is the lack which constitutes the subject; disharmony/suffering/dukkha is the lack which constitutes the subject, etc. Since desire is identical to lack, it could only make sense to identify the body with the source of lack if the body is the source of desire.
In other words this essay constructs a fantasy, and the body plays the role of the object of desire. This is why I warned I would compare you to Heidegger: you’ve both constructed a fantasy about fantasy. For him: where does desire originate? For you: desire originates in the flaw of the body.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, a fantasy is determined by its question, not its answer. Here you share something with Heidegger. But we don’t have to look hard to see the same thing present in BAP: he, too, is concerned with a dualist fantasy, as are all self-proclaimed materialists. How so? Let me give two disgusting examples to aid in your memory:
Imagine a man whose sexual identity includes the statement “I do not have a foot fetish.” Clearly he must be wrong: someone without a foot fetish does not consider the question at all!
Doms and subs are both subs, they have just chosen different orientations. How so? Desire always revolves around the lack of something: whether you identify with this lack of power or compensate for it by fetishizing its acquisition, in either case your identity is constituted by a lack of power.
The same reasoning applies to BAP. While he may claim to be a materialist, his logic is of the same dualist fantasy. He says “rejoice, for the material world has no lack!” This is in exactly the same way that the dom says “rejoice, for I do have power!”
BAP’s text can be read in exactly this way I’ve been describing all along: as a fantasy about fantasy. BAP’s two forms of life are very plainly the two parts of desire.
Repetition-compulsion/death drive: the Darwinian multiplication of lower life forms, seen in humans as filthy overpopulation. This drive constantly lifts up the world and creates new desire.
The pleasure principle: the striving of higher life forms towards their end, their homeostasis, even if this means death.
Now BAP’s work has a complicated relationship with these two forms of desire. Namely #1 is rejected while being simultaneously the source of much perverse intrigue.
You also realize that it is difficult, maybe even unwise, to read BAP directly as philosophy, saying:
“this exhortation itself may also indicate an understanding of space that isn’t always entirely geometrical/objective…”
And of course, BAP himself states that his work is “not philosophy,” but “the thought that motivates me and the problem faced by life in ascent and decline.” Or, in other words, an account of his desire and lack. And BAP is on a spiritual quest to rediscover the source of vivacity through his account of his own “reveries.”
But let me say in no uncertain terms something that BAP himself would not disagree with: that the quest for the font of life is a matter for the church and not for the illumineur.
3. fraternité
Now to the mystery of the second body.
The task of the illumineur is one of great asceticism and great responsibility. His right hand is the pen of the king. His words may only be published under the divine imprimatur. Like a saint, his heights may only be judged by the passage of time.
But we are not kings or saints and it is unlikely that we will be given the gift of prophecy. And, as I just said, the quest for the font of life is not a matter for the illumineur, so to posit the origin of illumination would be already beyond our bounds.
To put it another way, the quest for the head of the luminary corpus is beyond us, but we may receive its light and build its members. This is the battle I spoke of before, for which I come with feet shod with the gospel of peace. To build this body, this bride, I come even with “loins girt about with ἀληθείᾳ.” (Ephesians 6:14) Now even as I judge you I offer you the same in return, for what is fraternity but “the oscillations of the judicial relation?”
“Those heads are the enlightened, who constantly radiate and shine, contemplating that sky, the radiance flashing from there, radiance of Torah, sparkling constantly, never ceasing.” - Zohar 1:16a.