Futures of Life Death on Earth: Derrida's General Ecology

285 Pages·2018·1.392 MB·English

by  Philippe Lynes

Futures of
Life Death on Earth
Future Perfect:
Images of the Time to Come in Philosophy,
Politics, and Cultural Studies
Series Editors: Michael Marder, IKERBASQUE Research Professor of
Philosophy, University of the Basque Country, Spain, and Patricia Vieira,
Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown University, USA.
The Future Perfect series stands at the intersection of critical historiography,
philosophy, political science, heterodox economic theory, and environmental
thought, as well as utopian and cultural studies. It encourages an interdisci-
plinary reassessment of the idea of futurity that not only holds a promising
interpretative potential but may also serve as an effective tool for practical
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gions, and the planet as a whole.
Titles in the Series
The Future of Europe: Democracy, Legitimacy and Justice
after the Euro Crisis
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Taming an Uncertain Future: Temporality, Sovereignty,
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The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future
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The Future of Meat without Animals
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Manifestos for World Thought
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The Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene
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The End of the World: Contemporary Philosophy and Art
Edited by Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback and Susanna Lindberg
Futures of Life Death on Earth: Derrida’s General Ecology
Philippe Lynes
Futures of
Life Death on Earth
Derrida’s General Ecology
Philippe Lynes
London • New York
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Copyright © by Philippe Lynes, 2018
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB 978-1-78660-995-3
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ISBN: 978-1-78660-996-0 (electronic)
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Printed in the United States of America
MATTHIAS FRITSCH
in Verehrung und Freundschaft zugeeignet
Pour la vie, c’est à dire . . . ,
for
JENNIFER SCHADE
for her love and unwavering support,
and for
FRANKY and SCHMOO
my research assistants, le mort/la vivante. Meow, meow.
La Terre
Le mort
saisit le vif
et l’oiseau ferme la marche.
—Georges Bataille,
Œuvres complètes IV: Œuvres littéraires posthumes, 29/39.
Contents
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: General Text, Death, and Time xxiii
§0.1: General Ecologies xxx
§0.2: General Texts xxxiv
§0.3: Death, Time, and Entropy in the Ecological Model xxxix
§0.4: Futures: Extinction and Survival xlv
1 Survivance and General Ecology 1
§1.1: Survivance: Life and Death in Différance 4
§1.1.1: The Economy of Repetition and the Impossible:
Freud and Jacob 4
§1.1.2: Doublings of Life Death: Blanchot 11
§1.2: From General Economy to General Ecology 16
§1.2.1: Bataille’s Ecology of the Impossible 16
§1.2.2: From General to Strictural Ecology 20
§1.3: How the Organism Structures Its Environment:
Immanence and Transcendence 25
§1.3.1: Immanence: Concept, Metaphor, and Norm
in Canguilhem’s Knowledge of Life 25
§1.3.2: Transcendence: Levinas and the Ethics of the
Beyond-Within 28
§1.4: Futures of Life Death 31
vii
viii Contents
2 Transcendence and the Surviving Present 43
§2.1: The Restricted Ecology of the Living Present in Husserl
and Derrida 48
§2.1.1: The Dialectical Form of the Living Present in
Organic Life: Time, the Other, Hylè 50
§2.1.2: Teleology: Science, Earth, and World in the
Living Present 56
§2.2: Tra(nscenden)ce: Death, Ethics, and Violence in the
Living Present 65
§2.3: The Arche-Writing of Ecological Relationality 71
§2.3.1: The Living-Dead Present 71
§2.3.2: The Sur-viving Present 77
3 Resistance and Ex-Appropriation: Letting Life Live-On 85
§3.1: Heidegger and Res(is)tance 87
§3.1.1: Dasein’s Resistance and Transcendence: World,
Others, and Things 87
§3.1.2: Letting Beings Be: Beyond the Economy of Eidos
and Idea 94
§3.1.3: Death, Time, and Powerlessness 99
§3.2: Derrida and Ex-Appropriation 103
§3.2.1: The Destruktion of the Living Present 103
§3.2.2: Ethical Transcendence, Nonreal Resistance, and
Letting Life Live-On 109
§3.2.3: Ent-eignis, Ent-fernung, and Ex-Appropriation:
Walten and Life Death on Earth 112
§3.2.4: The Zusage and Letting the Earth Be 118
4 Animmanence: Life Death and the Passion and Perpetual
Detour of Difference 123
§4.1: Heidegger’s Nietzsche and Planetary Domination 127
§4.2: Deleuze, Double Affirmation, Double Death, and
the Outside 132
§4.2.1: Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Spinoza: Double
Affirmation and Eternal Return 133
§4.2.2: The Plane of Immanence and the Resistance
of the Outside 139
§4.2.3: The Syntheses of Individuation and Double Death 143
§4.3: Animmanence in Bataille and Blanchot 147
Contents ix
§4.4: Derrida, the Double, the Transgression to Powerlessness,
the Infinitely Finite Revenance of Différance 154
§4.4.1: Doubling Heidegger’s Nietzsche 154
§4.4.2: The Transgression to Powerlessness 160
§4.4.3: The Infinitely Finite Revenance of Différance 163
5 Biopolitics and Double Affirmation: Steps/Nots beyond
an Ecology of the Commons 171
§5.1: Derrida: Performative Powerlessness and the Event
of Ecology 176
§5.2: Foucault: Resistance, Mortalism, and the Outside 180
§5.2.1: Making and Letting Live and Die 180
§5.2.2: Rethinking Life and Death in Cuvier and Bichat 183
§5.2.3: Transgression and the Outside 187
§5.3: Hardt, Negri, and Affirmative Biopolitics 190
§5.3.1: The Plane of Immanence and Dominion over
the Earth 190
§5.3.2: Biopower and Biopolitical Resistance 193
§5.3.3: Immaterial Labor, the Machine Economy, and
the Ecology of the Commons 198
§5.4: Esposito: Steps/Nots beyond an Ecology of the Commons 199
§5.4.1: Inverting Biopolitical Sovereignty, Inverting
Affirmative Biopolitics 199
§5.4.2: Individuation, the Impersonal, and the Impolitical 205
§5.4.3: Par(t)ages, or Terra-che-si-ritira 208
Index 217
About the Author 229