As a way of both wrapping up this
semester's topics and tying together a number of threads that
have spun out of our discussions, I would like to consider (or
perhaps re-consider) the "metaphysics of suspicion".
You may recall that this was Paul Ricouer's way of focusing our
attention on what is common in the fundamental assumptions of
Marx and Freud. In both discourses -- historical materialism and
psychoanalytic theory -- there is an emphasis on the unseen, the
hidden, the latent causal factors that produce and shape the manifest
nature of things as they appear to us in our everyday experience.
In Marx it's the forces and relations of production that constitute
the economic base which determine "consciousness", i.e.
one's way of thinking, valuing, believing, desiring, etc. In Freud,
the hidden causal factors can be found in the unconscious and
the irrational impulses of the Id. In both cases, you are not
what you think you are and reality is not what it appears to be.
While this thesis about that which is hidden from us is generally
understood to apply to the contents of the mind, I showed how
it can be extended to include not only the contents but the mechanisms
that constitute the functioning of the mind. So, for example,
you may be able to remember what you had for dinner last night,
but you cannot observe the mechanism that makes it possible for
you to retrieve this information. Thus, if we adopt a metaphysics
of suspicion we find that we are strangers to ourselves.
This "metaphysics of suspicion" is a dramatic concept
which, while sounding like the title of a 1940s film noir production,
draws our attention to a way of experiencing the world that emerged
well before the modern period. In fact, it may be a return of
the repressed notion, prevalent in many religious traditions,
that there are hidden, often insidious, forces at work that distort
the otherwise good nature and reliable perceptions, thoughts,
and behavior of individual subjects in ways that are difficult
if not impossible to understand and explain. The only hope for
these isolated, weak, and vulnerable subjects is to put their
faith in another more powerful, knowledgeable, trustworthy guide
capable of leading them out of the darkness and despair of this
world of suffering and illusion and into the Promised Land. The
saviours change, but the message remains the same.
But let's step back for a moment and ask the following questions:
Is the persistence of the metaphysics of suspicion a sign of its
truth? Can we accept the fact that we may be temporarily deceived
about the nature and source of our desires and interests while
maintaining that there are ways to escape from our ignorance?
Are there alternatives to the hierarchical structures of the past
which assume that we are dependent on others -- the "priestly
caste" -- for liberation from our poverty of self-understanding?
Are there other, less paranoid and life-denying ways to re-imagine
ourselves in the world? From what resources can we draw in formulating
other concepts of life and "lines of flight" from "the
human condition"?
Perhaps the most obvious and well-explored approach to these questions
emerges from the genealogical analyses of Friedrich Nietzsche
who, by providing a critical re-interpretation of the function
of Judeo-Christian morality and its effects, was able to clear
a space for inventing new "possibilities of life" lived
in a spirit of affirmation rather than denial. Nietzsche's influence
can be found throughout French and German philosophy of the Twentieth
Century, most significantly in the writings of Martin Heidegger,
Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray,
and Gilles Deleuze. (For an brief summary of Nietzsche's life
and work see Robert Wicks' article from the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/)
We also need to re-think the very notion of the subject and subjectivity.
Consider, for example, the following comments:
One should, for all sorts of reasons, avoid all talk of a return
to the subject, because these processes of subjectification vary
enormously from one period to another and operate through very
disparate rules....A process of subjectification, that is, the
production of a way of existing, can't be equated with a subject,
unless we divest the subject of any interiority and even any identity.
Subjectification isn't even anything to do with a 'person': it's
a specific or collective individuation relating to an event....It's
a mode of intensity, not a personal subject. It's a specific dimension
without which we can't go beyond knowledge or resist power....[W]hat
are our ways of existing, our possibilities of life or our processes
of subjectification; are there ways for us to constitute ourselves
as a 'self', and (as Nietzsche would put it) sufficiently 'artistic'
ways, beyond knowledge and power? And are we up to it, because
in a way it's a matter of life and death?[1]
[...to be continued...]
1.
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin, NewYork:
Columbia University Press, 1995, 98f. Deleuze is discussing Foucault's
late writings, in particular his theory of subjectification.
© T. R. Quigley, 2000