Abstract
In this concluding chapter I interrogate William C. Connolly’s neuropolitics and Brian Massumi’s politics of affect, in particular their claims to have finally transcended a politics grounded in rationalist and subjectivist rationales. Through recourse to Robert Pfaller’s and Slavoj Žižek’s concept of interpassivity, it is first argued that the brain might be the ultimate expression of interpassivity (we outsource our being to our brains). Then, from rereading Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments on how an intention becomes conscious, in conjunction with Daniel Dennett’s critique of Libet, the chapter reinterprets the old slogan “the personal is political”. Finally, concluding that the interpassive brain is an explicitly political issue, it is subsequently claimed that both Connolly and Massumi risk reproducing the rationale of today’s neuropsycho-politics and neuropsycho-economy.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, in a UNICEF document on children’s participation we read that, “[f]ostering children’s social, emotional and behavioural skills in and out of school has benefits for: academic achievement, self-esteem, personal responsibility, tolerance of difference, workplace effectiveness, classroom behaviour, and mental health” (Children as Active Citizens, 2008).
- 2.
Remember Žižek’s gloss on coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol (Žižek, 2004).
- 3.
David Pavón Cuéllar perspicaciously remarks that, perhaps more than Hegel’s critique of Spinoza (this is questionable and has already been discussed by Althusser and others), Marx’s questioning of the contemplative materialism of Feuerbach goes back to August Cieszkowski. Moreover, this discussion returned in the interesting debate within Marxism between those who endorsed Lenin’s theory of reflection (see Materialism and empirio-criticism and its giving centrality to the brain as a producer of a reflection of reality) and trends within Western Marxism (Korsch, Pannekoek, etc.) which criticize this as ‘contemplative Leninist materialism’ (David Pavón Cuéllar, personal communication).
- 4.
For both an overview of the turn to affect and a thorough critique, see Ruth Leys (2011).
- 5.
As Eric Shouse (2005) puts it: “Affect is not a personal feeling”.
- 6.
Of course, one could point here to certain strands within anarchist traditions or within Marxism itself, which reject any political mediation and instead put forward direct or spontaneous action as a means of class struggle (I owe this remark to David Pavón Cuéllar). But one could argue, insofar as they conceive of a terrain or a reality, as I claim Massumi does, outside of class struggle itself, they actually undermine and leave behind class struggle. One could opt for a more Lacanian position here, and stress that there is nothing outside of ideology and politics precisely as these are non-All. That is, it is not that there is something that escapes ideology or is outside of it, rather, it is the totality of ideology itself that defies itself. Or, phrased otherwise, the holes in ideology are in the end ideological, and, one could argue, one of the central names for this hole is class struggle, the basic antagonism running through society.
- 7.
Massumi equally overlooks that what he conceives of in terms of affective pre-subjectivity cannot but be ridden by subjectivity itself. From here, Massumi’s main problem is similar to Connolly’s that I mentioned earlier: how to explain how something like (the illusion of) subjectivity arises out of the pre-subjective. This is why, Massumi, as well as others such as Metzinger and Dennett, in their attempt to formulate an alternative for the Cartesian subject, eventually fall back unwittingly on a psychologising perspective on subjectivity (see for a critique of Metzinger (De Vos, 2015) and a critique of Dennett (De Vos, 2009)). Consider, for example, the way in which Massumi understands how the subjective arises out of the pre-subjective in terms of the affect of fear:
What … happened is placed under retrospective review and mapped as an objective environment. The location of the threat is sought by following the line of flight in reverse. The cause of the fright is scanned for among the objects in the environment. Directions of further flight or objects that can serve for self-defense are inventoried. These perceptions and reflections are gathered up in recollection, where their intensity will ultimately fade. It is at this point, in this second ingathering toward lowered intensity, in the stop-beat of action, that the fear, and its situation, and the reality of that situation, become a content of experience. (Massumi, 2005, p. 38)
The subject depicted here is the subject which could use a “much-needed humility” as Hibbing (mentioned in the beginning of this chapter) put it: it is the cognitively proceeding subject of psychology (of course, constructed in the image of the cognitive psychologist). A more radical position, the one of psychoanalysis, would be to conceive of the subject as a fundamental negativity and to think of the human being starting from a zero-level of subjectivity.
- 8.
Consider, in this respect, the similar critique of Ruth Leys: “manipulations operating below the level of ideology and consciousness can only be countered by manipulations of a similar kind” (Leys, 2011, p. 461, n. 48).
- 9.
Dennett writes: “Instead of switching media or going somewhere in order to become conscious, heretofore unconscious contents, staying right where they are, can achieve something rather like fame in competition with other fame-seeking (or just potentially fame-finding) contents. And, according to this view, that is what consciousness is” (Dennett, 2001, p. 224).
- 10.
Žižek writes: “the problem that Dennett does not resolve is that of the very form of narrative—where does the subject’s capacity to organize its contingent experience into the form of narrative (or to recognize in a series of events the form of narrative) come from?” (Žižek, 1998, p. 255).
- 11.
See for an example of the first version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater#/media/File:Cartesian_Theater.svg and for an example of the second version: https://reasonandsciencesociety.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/cartesian-theatre.jpg
- 12.
To be more precise, Dennett actually starts with political imagery, denouncing Libet and other authors as having a “Stalin-esque” or an “Orwellian” conception of how the brain functions; but then trades this Cartesian and political imagery for celebrity and fame metaphors.
- 13.
The role of conscious free will, for Libet, is limited to the act of saying no; it cannot initiate a voluntary act (Libet, 1999). In politics too, the veto-right is not a positive right and serves only as a way of blocking actions or decisions of others in order to safeguard one’s interests. But perhaps a more interesting reference to politics would be to refer to Jacques Rancière’s conception of politics (Rancière, 1998). The no of the veto would then in the first place indicate the true political moment, where a “non-part of society” (those who have no place in society) denounces the mainstream general consensus; through this “no” (e.g., “not in my name”) a particular (non)part of society can claim universality.
- 14.
Most noteworthy, the research to which Hibbing refers is about people’s opinions on marriage or sex between first grade cousins and not about gay people. The question could be what prompts Hibbing to change this to the issue of gay people?
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De Vos, J. (2016). The Political Brain: The Brain as a Political Invention. In: The Metamorphoses of the Brain – Neurologisation and its Discontents. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50557-6_7
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