Carsten Strathausen - A Leftist Ontology: Beyond Relativism and Identity Politics

To Valerie and Clara

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XIX

I. AGAMBEN, VIOLENCE, AND REDEMPTION

II. THE PERSISTENCE OF MARXISM

III. DECONSTRUCTION/POLITICS

IV. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE POLITICAL

In Sustaining Affirmation (2000), Stephen White examines four contemporary political theorists to ascertain how the ontology each adopts filters into his or her political theory and how the latter infiltrates into ontology.' By ontology, he means the most fundamental assumptions each makes about the world, including within that compass assumptions about time, nature, human subjectivity, the final source of morality, the territorial space of politics, and the often vexed relations between these elements. White does not make a sharp distinction between ontology and metaphysics, finding that the two terms have moved close to each other in recent discourse. His contention is that the postmetaphysical politics peddled by Habermas, Rorty, and Rawls in different ways loses credibility as soon as you compare theorists who acknowledge the active role of ontology (or metaphysics) in their work. This study also calls into question the valiant attempts by thinkers such as Lyotard and Derrida to escape metaphysics, even though each realizes from the start that the planned escape can never be complete. The ontological dimension of political thought and practice is robust, even while it may be marked by internal tensions, and a case can be made that the attempt to expunge this element from political thought recoils back on theory, making it less active and robust than it otherwise might be.

The theorists White selects for examination-George Kateb, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, and me-disagree on several critical matters. But we tend to converge on three. First, each embraces a positive ontological orientation, as when Taylor focuses on the complexity of human embodiment, supports a fugitive philosophy of transcendence, seeks to become more closely attuned to a final moral source that cannot be known in a classical epistemic way, and defines ethical life in terms of a plastic set of intrinsic purposes to be pursued rather than a set of universal laws to be obeyed. Each of the others takes different stances on the same issues. Second, each theorist discerns a loose set of relations between the ontology adopted, the ethical-political priorities endorsed, and specific dangers and possibilities to be identified. None suggests that an ontology determines a political stance, but all contend that it filters into politics, so that it would be a mistake to say that ontology has no influence on politics. Taylor's faith in the grace of a loving God, for instance, enters into his politics, even if the element of mystery he discerns in divinity means that he does not delineate the tight set of moral commands presented by Pope Benedict XVI and a large section of the evangelical movement in America. Third, each figure acknowledges the ontology he or she embraces to be susceptible to reflective and comparative defense; but most conclude that it is unlikely to be established either by such airtight arguments or universal recognition that it rules every other possibility out of court. Each party-though perhaps to different degrees-is thus a pluralist, seeking to bring their onto-orientation into the public realm while recoiling back on tensions and uncertainties in it enough to invite open-textured negotiations with others. Each advances a bicameral orientation to citizenship, seeking to give his or her own orientation public presence while conceding a place to others. Discernible in the differences between them is the common appreciation of a paradoxical element in politics.

None is a relativist, because each advances arguments and invitations designed to draw others to his or her orientation. And each thinks that some possible ontopolitical orientations fall below a minimal threshold for inclusion in the contest. But each is a pluralist, seeking to convince others while inviting relations of agonistic respect with them when the first invitation is not accepted. A couple also address the question of what pluralists should do when some parties are intransigent, when dogmatists define a set of minorities as enemies in order to squash or defeat them. How to cope with intransigence is a tough issue for pluralists. It involves resisting antipluralism without recapitulating by one's own actions the tone and temper of their exclusionary politics. It is not an easy issue to resolve. One senses that the neoconservative and evangelical right knows how its own intransigence places the left into difficult binds. Watch how Fox News regularly baits the left if you want to test this claim.

There is no necessity that the four conceptions ofontopolitics examined by White must issue in a presumptive commitment to pluralism. Carl Schmitt, for instance, could move close to the ontology of Judith Butler but fold a different sensibility into it. He might concur that national unity is not inscribed in a higher purpose of Being but, because of the implacable will to dominance inhabiting him, exploit that absence to impose artificial unity on the state by treating selective minorities as enemies to be conquered, excluded, or both. This means that ontology by itself does not "determine" either an ethical or political orientation. But it does not preclude more loosely woven relations of interdetermination between ontology and politics.

The key difference between Schmitt and Butler is one of sensibility, an element that helps to define the tone and spirit of a lived ontology. The relation between Butler and Taylor, on the other hand, is that of an affinity of sensibility mediated by differences of ontology. If either Taylor or Butler was to convert to the ontology of the other, an even closer alliance between them would emerge. As it is now, a discernible affinity of sensibility across ontological difference makes it likely that they will be allied on specific issues. Similarly, if Schmitt and Leo Strauss diverge on ontology but converge in temper, they may adopt a bellicose disposition toward the adversaries they define.

By temper or sensibility, I mean a set of affectively imbued dispositions to judgment and action embedded in ideas set on different levels of body/ brain complexity. Affect-imbued ideas on the visceral register are not as complex as those on more refined levels, but each region nonetheless communicates with the others. Sensibility and thought are interinvolved in a way that allows neither to be exhausted by the other. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty all appreciated the complexity of this interinvolvement. That is one reason you can find out more about your ontology through comparison with that of others. You do so first by drawing implicit elements into the foreground through critical comparison, and second by working on intensive thought fragments below articulation until they are altered and polished enough to be rendered articulate. The unarticulated dimension of an ontology is thus not only tacit; some of its elements are incipient in the sense that some embedded, ideationally imbued intensities must be altered in this way or that in order to be drawn into an intersubjective network of articulation. Maybe some things Freud said about memory traces are relevant here. At any rate, to the extent that such work is accomplished, the ontological problematic has been changed to some degree as it has been rendered more conscious. A sensibility is composed of a dense network of thought-imbued affects, with the thought element finding different levels of refinement and the affective element different degrees of intensity. Jokes, as Freud knew, often tap into tacit ideas or unconscious fragments that have not previously been articulated; and what is a joke to some believers is often blasphemy to others.